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  "Pathetic."

  "You are a demon. You know it." His voice was a bit muffled. His head was between her legs now. I recognized that sound. "Ha! You're wiggling," he announced proudly.

  "I'm just trying to make you feel your efforts are not being completely wasted."

  "Oh, they're being completely wasted all right. I can't believe what I do for you. I can't believe the depths to which I will sink, the humiliation I will endure."

  "Yadda, yadda, yadda," she said, laughing harder.

  "Stop laughing!"

  "God, this is so ridiculous. You'd never do this for a girl you were in love with. This is a battle to you."

  "And I'm winning. Look, you're wet."

  "Honey, that's from you."

  "Don't 'honey' me. It is not. Aha, how 'bout this?"

  "No, don't," she half-screamed.

  "See, these are the secret weapons. If I can get to these two guys, you are history." Loud lapping sounds.

  "Ouch," she said, quietly but seriously. "Too rough."

  "Sorry," he muttered.

  She seemed to be giving up the fight. I heard quite a few little murmurings, intakes of breath, tiny exclamations. I did not know if she was a slow starter in general or if this was simply a game between them (although I would gamble on the latter), but it did seem that when she let herself, she was quite a little responder. Everything he did resulted in some kind of audible act of appreciation. He grunted only occasionally. Then I heard her cry out somewhat louder; that must have been when he made his frontal attack, abandoning his flanking maneuvers, to belabor the analogy. I could hear her respond every time he drove himself into her. Now and then, he would say, as if in victory, "Yeah, yeah," but mostly he was silent. After some minutes of this, her cries began to sound a little tinged with pain.

  "Okay… you gotta stop soon," she said, slightly out of breath.

  "Uh-huh."

  A few minutes more.

  "Really." There was definitely an edge to her voice now.

  "I know, I know… but it feels so perfect. God, I love fucking you."

  "Yeah, well, that's why I let you do it. I don't know why you do, but it's sure flattering. I mean flattening. C'mon now."

  A couple of loud gulps of air, a small grunt. It was over.

  "Well, I got mine," he said.

  "Great."

  "What happened?"

  "You know I'm very clitoral. And when it gets too much stimulation, I can't come."

  "Damn, I should have made you come first. But then, maybe I was so irritated with you, I didn't want you to."

  "Maybe I was so irritated with you, I didn't want you to."

  "Nobody would believe how much work I put in here. How much embarrassment I'm willing to tolerate. As you lie there laughing at me in the midst of my most brilliant efforts."

  "If I wanted you to work that hard, you'd never do it. And if I was volunteering for sex, you'd be running."

  "Yeah, we really know how to make it work, don't we?"

  "You're sick."

  "So are you."

  "Great comeback."

  "Aaahhhh," he grumbled.

  Silence for a few moments. I suspect that, without a word, they were cuddling.

  "I've got to check my messages," he said..

  "Go ahead."

  There was nothing exciting there, from my perspective. A few minutes later, I thought I heard him lie back down on the bed, munching something. They discussed the President's China policy for a while. Then they engaged in some idle chatter about former colleagues, as far as I could tell. "So are we seeing a movie later this week?" he concluded.

  "Maybe. I don't know what I'm doing yet. Call me if you're thinking of one."

  "You call me. I always call you."

  "Whoever."

  He was pulling, on his pants now. "I gotta go," he said in a friendly tone.

  "Okay, sweetie. Are you walking home?"

  "Yeah. I think."

  They were near the door at this point. "Well, be careful. It's late."

  "Um-hmm."

  "Now, no thanking me," she laughed. It appeared to be a reference to an old joke between them.

  "Ha! I wouldn't wish you on my worst enemy." He laughed.

  A quick kiss, and he went out the door.

  There is something to be said for sleeping with somebody you know very well. They were extremely comfortable with each other. More than most couples involved in a romantic relationship ever get. That is why I was startled when I heard the telephone conversation in which she ended it. Startled, but not unhappy. I wondered if she and I could possibly ever share that kind of ease—at some point after we had met, of course. But I am not exactly confident that that is what I would want. Not immediately, anyway, but perhaps after a number of good years.

  No. True lovers can never be that relaxed with each other. There can only be a complete lack of tension when neither one cares. Not that I can claim to know the answer to this inquiry. It had never occurred to me to wonder.

  17

  Grace

  When I opened the door and saw him, it was through eyelashes caked with blood. I didn't know whose. I had heard the knocks— steady, controlled, substantial taps—through a haze. I had had to push Ben's body off of mine, and this was almost as difficult as killing him. I could hear a little rattle from his windpipe as he sank to the floor by my side. My tiny apartment lay in ruins, and now the proverbial knock at the door. The last thing I wanted to do was to open it. It would mean getting up. A voice outside said urgently, "Grace, open the door." Well, if you put it that way. Slowly and painfully, I got up onto my feet and, without really thinking, staggered to the door, unlocked it, and swung it wide. A man walked in, all business, and— with no hesitation—closed the door behind him, turning both locks. I stared at him, numb, while he took in his surroundings.

  Usually, I'm not unhappy to show my apartment. What it lacks in space, it more than makes up for in character. A drug-addicted former tenant had painted the walls a deep blue and a dark red, with accents in forest green. There were shelves and shelves of books, piles and piles of magazines, racks of CDs and records, a table, chairs, bench, sofa, big comfy chair, filing cabinets, desk, oversized TV, stereo stuff, computer, humidifier, two big floor rugs and, of course, a bed.

  The charm part lay in how it was arranged, open and inviting, and in the variety of art on the walls and tchotchkes scattered throughout. There were representative objects from every part of the world where I had traveled, photos of the few people I loved and the many more places I'd been. Everything in it said "me," from the little wooden elephant whose original home was a small village outside of Bangkok to the large gray candle in the shape of a brain that my brother gave me one year for my birthday (from a Star Trek episode: "Brain, brain, and again brain. What is brain? Is brain controller?"). I had Mexican death masks on the wall and a Matchbox police car from my youth patrolling some books.

  I guess the current mess said "me," too.

  The man placed me gently in a chair and started to brush me off, so to speak. He seemed to take in far more of my appearance than I did his. All I could really see were his eyes. They were dark and serious. There was something else, too. I wasn't sure exactly what. Some kind of a depth to them, of age perhaps. Maybe even wisdom. That is all I could think at the time, but I wasn't thinking too clearly. He grabbed a little towel from the rack and wet it in the kitchen sink. Then he gently began to clean up my face. Most of the blood, apparently, was mine. My nose had bled from being hit, and in the subsequent melee my whole face had gotten smeared with it. My forehead above one eye felt bruised. There was a little cut on it. And I had sliced my hand on a broken lamp. Aside from that, every muscle in my body felt as if I had just pulled it. I might have.

  "Antiseptic?" he asked. I pointed to the bathroom medicine cabinet, just off the kitchenette. He grabbed some cotton balls and a bottle of rubbing alcohol and commenced to make me suffer. As he rubbed disinfectant on my wounds, he
kept looking at me, a slight frown on his face.

  "You should see the other guy," I offered in an inane attempt at humor.

  "I do."

  Okay, you talk, then, I thought, irritated.

  "When you have regained your composure somewhat, I suggest you take a hot shower. You are still quite disheveled."

  Disheveled? Who was he, Jane Austen?

  "Then you can get started on cleaning up this place," he added, "and I will get rid of the body."

  "Excuse me? I know about being calm in an emergency. I'm usually the one who's calm in an emergency. I mean, I once actually said to a sleazy guy who offered to rape me on a subway platform, 'No thank you,' but—"

  "Did you try that tonight?"

  "No," I snapped back. "I haven't been to the gym for a while. I thought I needed a workout." Why even try to explain?

  "You got one." Nothing fazed him. He stepped back and gazed at the corpse, thinking, I guess.

  I could have explained what had happened. I could have asked him who he was and what he was doing here. I could have asked him what he planned to do with the body. I could have asked him why. Instead, I said nothing. It didn't seem to matter to him. He appeared to have his mind made up as to what his next task would be, as if it didn't have anything to do with me. He was an extraordinary person. I knew that from the start. And it had been an extraordinary night. I don't know how else to account for my immediate and bizarre acceptance of him.

  Ben was lying on a fake Oriental floor rug in the bedroom area. The rug had some of his blood on it. After a moment's thought, the man went over and wrapped the corpse up in it and, first checking out the window and into the hall, he managed to heft it over his shoulder in a fireman's hold and headed carefully to the door.

  "It will wait," he said to me, and left.

  And I knew it would.

  The problem was that I had told the truth.

  I thought maybe it was the men I was seeing. Writers, actors. I hadn't had the best of luck with them (or they with me). I met Ben, the investment banker, while I was doing a profile of his boss, the head of the trading floor at his bank. My magazine was looking at several of the top traders, and Ben often turned out to be the phone link between me and the Big Man above. He was very funny. Traders usually are. They get all the jokes first: Christa McAuliffe and the space shuttle, Michael Jackson, O. J. Simpson. I found Ben amusing, and he me. I give good phone.

  Over the telephone wire, I can be a great combination of sassy and professional. Because I'm not facing the person, I guess, so he isn't quite real. But I had to drop by the firm one day to pick up some photos of our subject, since at our magazine we are always working at the last minute, and there was no time to send them. And that's how I met Ben.

  I have to say, from an objective standpoint, he looked delicious. I personally was not interested in trying another date anytime soon. I had had enough of killing, not to mention that awkwardness that seems to be a part of any first date, and besides, one can't count on good luck continuing forever. And however appealing he might be, I knew I probably wouldn't be attracted to him, but I discovered, as he gave me the five-cent tour of the trading floor, that I kind of was. He had a quiet intensity to him, even though he acted the bluff trader. He had close-cropped black hair and high cheekbones. There was almost an Asian cast to his eyes; it added a non-run-of-the-mill quality to him. At about five-eight, he was on the thin but not rock-star-skinny side. At least he filled out his crisp white shirt nicely.

  He kept up a patter of investment-banker bullshit throughout the tour, as I got the photos, and as he led me to the door to the department. Then he asked me out to dinner a couple nights hence. I didn't know what to do. What if I actually liked him?

  I'm not the only one who isn't what she appears to be. There are others like me out there. Ben was a date rapist, and I didn't know that. If I had, I might have been prepared. I might have even planned to kill him as a favor to the world. But he took me completely by surprise because he seemed so nice.

  "Are you okay?" I asked. "You don't look very happy at all." This is where I go wrong right at the beginning. I looked at him with real concern as the waiter handed us our menus.

  "I almost screwed up a major deal today. I was, like, this close to being fired."

  "What happened?" I asked softly, impressed.

  "I basically transposed a couple of numbers, and it was only caught at the last moment. I'm a little dyslexic."

  "At least it was caught in time. They're giving you another chance, right?" I looked at him hopefully, and he responded by smiling just a little bit.

  "Yeah, but I looked stupid. Which is not the ideal impression you want to give off there."

  "Well, you should be in my career, then. It's okay for us to look stupid. Sometimes ideal."

  "Look. I don't want to get started on such a down note. Let's figure out what to order."

  But he'd brought up his bad luck for a reason, actually. He was lying all the time. I'm sure of that now. And the reason wasn't obscure once I understood the theory. He wanted an edge on gaining my sympathy. He didn't know that nearly every man has that. But I led him to take that approach. Doesn't it sound like I knew and cared about him? I didn't. I'd be a much more successful dater if I didn't notice the other guy's feelings, ersatz or not, at all.

  For two and a half hours after Mr. Mystery Man left, I did nothing at all. I couldn't watch TV. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't read. I just sat on my couch and smoked. Even that didn't feel right. I'd be smoking a cigarette and already thinking about lighting the next one, as if the one I had just wasn't enough. When I heard his knock on the door, I felt relieved, I have to admit. I hadn't been worrying about him exactly, just felt uncertain. I let him in and, without saying anything, went back to my couch. He looked exactly the same as when he'd come in the first time— not mussed at all. I mean, I am not an expert on the disposal of dead bodies, but he made it look pretty easy. He came over and knelt in front of me. I had showered and cleaned myself up generally (for some reason repeatedly, almost mindlessly, conditioning my hair); I was wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt, so it wasn't exactly a romantic moment, but there is something somewhat devastating about a man kneeling in front of you.

  I expected him to ask me what had happened. I expected that I would tell him, but he surprised me.

  "Tell me about the subway," he said, with a slight smile.

  I looked at him for a minute, and then I did.

  "My best friend in college and I used to move together at the beginning and end of each year, into a dorm, out of a dorm, whatever. We'd always rent U-Haul trucks to do it; each year, the only trucks that were available for us got bigger. Ultimately, we ended up with the two-bedroom-house size. But it kind of encouraged us to feel and behave like truckers. We'd have our sleeves rolled up, cigarettes dangling out of the corners of our mouths, cursing a blue streak. Finally, the move would be over and we'd return the truck."

  "The truck rental place was in a fairly sleazy part of town. Because we were college students and didn't have a lot of money, we decided to take the subway one night to get back to school. It was only one stop. But this subway station was unprepossessing at the best of times. What we didn't know as we went down the stairs to enter was that it was also closed. Except it wasn't completely closed. It's just that the turnstiles were fenced 6ff. We knew the subway would stop there. It never didn't stop. But we didn't know how to get in."

  He was just looking at me seriously, listening.

  "Then we noticed, I think, three sleazy guys loitering down there. And I do mean loitering. Possibly with intent. We didn't act panicked or anything. And one of the guys pointed out a place where we could crawl through the fence. We looked and thought. We could hear a train coming. Diane went first. She bent down almost on her knees, looked through the fence, and started crawling through. One of the men was near her, and as she crawled through, he sort of grabbed at her leg, almost playfully. Playfully, if he'd been someone
we knew. Actually, it was scary. She didn't say a word. I thought that was kind of odd. She was always a much more assertive person than me. I mean, she used to get into rights all the time with rude people in the street or in stores. She finished crawling through, got up, and faced me from the other side. Now it was my turn. Two things happened at once. I need to explain that it had been a little chilly outside that night, and I had borrowed and was wearing one of Diane's jackets—a blazer, actually. All her clothes were gorgeous, and she was very protective of them. In fact, it was often a joke with anyone who helped us move that ninety percent of our stuff was her clothes. I can't remember which happened first, but another man, the one next to me, said, 'Would you like to get raped?' At just about the same time, Diane stared at me and said, 'Take off the jacket, Grace.' I looked at her after what the guy had just said, and she just repeated, 'The jacket, Grace.' There was no mercy in her voice. 'The jacket, Grace.'"

  I paused a moment in telling the tale, and the man asked gently, "What did you do?"

  "I took off the goddamn jacket. Said, very politely, to the sleazy guy, 'No thank you,' and crawled under the fence. And at that moment, the subway stopped and the doors opened, and we went in. I sat down in relief and then looked over at Diane. She had her head down, and I realized she was sobbing. I asked her what was wrong. She just looked at me, and I saw that she had been really scared."

  "After she calmed down a bit, she asked me why I had taken off the jacket. I told her it was because she'd told me to. The fact was, Diane was a very fierce girl, and in the end, I was more afraid of her in the long term, when I would have to deal with what would have happened if I'd gotten the jacket dirty, than I was of the sleazy guy. She thought I was nuts."

  "Why did she tell you to take off the jacket?" asked the stranger in my living room.

  "I didn't realize this at the time, of course, but at the touch of that guy's hand on her leg, she became truly terrified. Her brain had simply frozen on her last thought."