“I met my counselor, Riccardo,” David said. “Sometimes Richard. His mother was Italian. And this fucking guy. This fucking guy was beautiful. He was a maniac. Total drunk. Total drug addict. But that was the world he came from: drunk, drugged, full of maniacs. He told me a story where he and his brothers shot a dozen horses—wild, starving horses—and bulldozed them into a pile and set them on fire. He’d been vicious. Now he lives his whole life in penance to other people and to the earth. When I met your mother, she made me think of him. This idea that, instead of destroying, you could protect. That you could dedicate your life to that. Not like you think you’re a savior, but just because that’s what you do. I think they’d get along. Fucking Riccardo, man. He saved my life. One morning we took the horses for a ride. The sun was coming up over Utah. The stars were still out. I was bitching about the first step. I was like, ‘Fuck God. I don’t want anything to do with God. God’s a lie.’ The usual. And then we came over this ridge, and we looked out across the desert. At first, it was black-and-white like the moon, but then all at once the buds on the plants opened up with the sun. They were all blue. I’m talking for miles. In the middle of it was this crater or maybe a cave. It looked like a huge blue eyeball. But I guess sometimes it’s purple. Or green. Or brown. It blinks when the wind blows. And Riccardo said, ‘This is God, you asshole. You live on God.’ ”