(I)

“There he is,” Paul said, looking up from his booth at Harry’s Bar at the Helmsley Hotel. It was their after-work hangout, and seemed to be devoid of other attorneys but chock-full of stockbrokers, whose barside banter always proved more interesting than that of the former. Half of the brokers looked on the verge of suicide. Paul swizzled a Johnny Walker Blue on the rocks, and already had a bottle of Asahi waiting for Jess. Jess sat down as if winded, his hair perpetually disarrayed, and drained a third of the bottle.

“I take it Massacessi’s people didn’t dig your arbitration rebuttal,” Paul suspected of his partner’s more-harried-than-usual look.

“Oh, they loved it, but the traffic on Third sucks. Christ, it’s past seven.”

“I always cut up Eighth, then swing over on Forty-second.”

“Sure, probably to stop and snag some lap dances.”

“Don’t need to.” Paul huffed a chuckle. “Since Cristina’s moved in, she’s turned into a dynamo. She’s wearing me out.”

“There’s always the Big Blue.”

“Yeah. I take ’em in place of One A Days.” Paul sipped his twenty-five-dollar drink. “I tweaked the highlights on the Soledad motion and punted them. It looks good…even for billing five-seventy-five an hour. So what about Massacessi?”

“They want to renew for five years—”

“You’re shitting me?” Paul said, startled. “That’s great. Hell, I ought to let you pocket the whole retainer ’cos you did all the work.”

Jess’s brow shot up over his next chug of fancy beer. “Really?”

“Fuck you…partner.”

Both men laughed. “Don’t know how you can drink those fussy Jap dry beers, but I picked up a case for you anyway, for this weekend.”

Even Jess’s spiked goatee looked sloppy. “This weekend? Oh, yeah. Cookout at your place.”

Paul smiled. “Well, carryout, not cookout. You haven’t seen the house since we got all the furniture in. It looks so sumptuous I almost feel guilty living there…Almost.”

“Once a lawyer, always a lawyer. The Catholic Church has too much property as it is. You’re like Robin Hood but with none of that ‘give to the poor’ jive on the end.”

Paul shrugged through another sip of scotch. “Just as the Ten Commandments were written in stone so were these words: ‘A buyer’s superior knowledge of property value is NOT actionable.’”

“Amen.”

Through the front window, they both glimpsed a minibus waiting for the light on 3rd. Big letters along the side read: FAMILY SERVICES FOSTER CARE OF NEW YORK.

Both men averted their eyes at once, neither speaking, until the bus pulled off. Eventually Paul broke the silence. “Just when you think you’ve forgotten about something shitty.”

“I hear ya. But I read somewhere than 90 percent of the foster services in the U.S. are right on.”

“Yeah, but we’re both living with two girls who fall into that other 10 percent. It just burns me up, those Goldfarb psychos. Twenty years ain’t enough.”

“They’ll croak in stir, watch.” Jess always took the positive side.

Paul ordered another round. “Ain’t good enough. Sometimes I think about paying someone on the inside to fuck them up.”

Jess lost his joviality fast. He leaned over and whispered, “If you’re going to make yourself liable for premeditation and conspiracy, kindly refrain from doing it in front of me, and think about not talking that kind of shit in a public place.”

Paul waved it off. “You know what I mean. And don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it, too,’ cos if you do…you’re a liar.”

“Can’t argue with ya there. Better way to look at it is Goldfarb’s probably got a size-thirteen asshole by now. That’s good enough for me. And you’re forgetting the only good thing to come out of it.”

“What’s that?”

“Even after a childhood like theirs, Britt and Cristina landed on their feet and both got their shit supremely squared away.”

Paul nodded but it was half-dismal. “I guess I just think too much. That was some pretty awful shit they had to go through.”

“Sure. Giving barbs to little kids, and God knows what else, and molestation, I presume.”

Paul looked up, puzzled. “You presume? Didn’t Britt—”

“She told me some of it but none of the details,” Jess said. “She’s a strong chick, both of them are.” A pause over his beer. “You mean Cristina told you everything?”

Paul reeled a bit in the posh seat. “Well, yeah, pretty much. The Goldfarbs drugged them up all the time, and had them doing everything to each other.”

Jess squinted at the unpleasant revelation. “Each other? I thought it was just Andre, you know…”

“No, no, man,” Paul corrected, smirking as though the scotch were lemon juice. “Andre and his wife were switching off between the two of them and the foster brother, and they made them all…do…each other. They even had their friends over. The psychos were putting those kids in orgies.”

Jess looked shell-shocked. “I—I had no idea. Britt never got into that much detail.”

“It was some sick shit. And the brother never made it—he’s in an institution, all fucked-up. It was a fuckin’ kiddie porn club the Goldfarbs had going. They took thousands of pictures and sold the shit to their little network of perverts. I petitioned the prosecutor’s office to let me see the post-trial evidence, but I’ll tell ya, I wish I never had. I actually threw up once I got back to my car. You wouldn’t believe what those scumbags were doing to Britt and Cristina in those pics, and you can tell, even though they were just kids.” Paul gulped. “You can tell by their faces that it was Cristina and Britt.”

Jess just stared, his mouth sagging open.

A black aura seemed to settle over each man’s head. Paul cleared his throat—“But like you said, all that matters is that they both shook it off and landed on their feet in spite of it. Most girls who go through the wringer like that don’t. Neither of them are fucked-up at all…Well, maybe Cristina is a little sometimes—Christ, look at those dolls she designs, but the shrink she saw in Stamford said it was a constructive therapeutic outlet. And you wouldn’t believe the money she made last year from those things.”

“I know. Britt told me,” Jess said. He was trying to shake off the shock of the bombshell that had just been dropped on him. “Britt doesn’t make a whole lot of money herself but she is doing a whole lot of good. She told me that that’s her therapy. But I didn’t know about all that other shit. I’ll think twice whenever I give her a hard time about some piddly bullshit like forgetting to take my fuckin’ suits to the cleaners. Christ.”

“Yeah, and I drink too much,” Paul said, and raised his glass. “We’re both attorneys so I guess that means we’re both assholes.”

“Yeah, but at least we’re rich attorneys, so that’s got to count for something,” Jess tried to joke. “Ultimately, there’s a lot of really sick scumbags in the world, and we’ve got to do everything we can to protect our girls from them.”

“Tell me about it. There’s evil everywhere—it’s a sick, sick world, all right.” Paul seemed to ruminate on something. “I know this guy who does legal consultations for the cops, he’s always up at the Forensic Investigations Division in Queens. I ran into him today at Joseph’s Steak-house, and you know what he told me?”

Jess looked physically pummeled by everything he’d already heard in the last few minutes. “Do I want to know?”

“They managed to keep it out of the papers so far but he said the cops found a woman murdered yesterday by impalement.”

Jess gaped. “Impalement? What the hell is—”

“Somebody sharpened the end of a broomstick or something and pushed it up this woman’s snatch till it was in her mouth. And she was alive when they did it.” Paul clinked the ice in his glass, his eyes off-focus. “How’s that for a sick world?”

(II)

Sandrine laughed, munching the macadamia nuts she’d shoplifted dirtied-handed from the bulk foods section of a Gristede’s Supermarket. “It’s sort of like a Christmas tree. We should get lights!”

“There’s no electricity here, you dope,” Francy reminded her.

“Oh. Yeah. But still, it would be cool, wouldn’t it?”

She and Francy both looked with satisfaction at Doke, propped up now and quite dead on the sharpened wooden pike. He just hung there, his feet a few inches off the ground.

“He’ll start to-start to-start to stink soon,” Stutty commented, her wan face shifting in the candlelight.

“So what?” Francy kept looking at the corpse. Even after they’d propped him up, it had taken him a few minutes to die. She enjoyed the way he sort of quivered on the pike. “The New Mother said that our Prince liked the smell so much he kept impaled bodies in the room where he ate his meals.”

“Gross,” Sandrine offered.

“It was a different time, Sandrine.”

Sandrine shuffled idly to the corner where they kept a pile of canned food and candy bars they stole. She knelt before the several dolls she’d stood up on the floor, but…

She’d had three. Only two stood there now.

She wiped her smudged hands off on her pink sweatpants. “Who ripped off my doll?” She examined the remaining two, one a cutesy little girl who was blue and frosted, the other a smiling girl with black bangs who looked like she was rotting. Sandrine couldn’t really read but if she could she would’ve seen the names on the bottoms of each figurine: HYPOTHERMIA HARRIET and LEPROSY LINDA. “I had three here, but now one’s missing!” she complained, glaring at her associates with suspicion. “The boy with the bloody belly is gone.”

“We don’t steal, except the way our Prince did,” Francy reminded her. “Like the New Mother said. You only steal from those who steal from others.”

“But the boy with the bloody belly was the coolest one!”

“Where-where did you get them?” Stutty asked with a grin.

“Well, I ripped ’em off from the lady’s house, but…I wasn’t really stealing. I was gonna take ’em back.”

“That’s all right,” Francy bid as if forgiveness was hers to dole out. “She’s not in the convent. But you know none of us stole it. We’re your sisters now.”

“Virginia stole it, probably-probably-probably—”

“Be quiet!”

Sandrine fumed. “It figures. She was a shitty bitch anyway—”

Francy chuckled. “And she won’t be stealing anything now.”

“Yuh-yuh-yeah!” Stutty guffawed.

Sandrine cooled off, and put the two figurines in her pocket. “I hope the New Mother comes to night.”

“She will, unless we haven’t been faithful enough.”

Stutty frowned at a can of anchovies. “We should-we should-we sh—”

“Be quiet!” Francy yelled.

“We should what?” Sandrine asked, bored now.

Stutty concentrated, her fists clenched. “We should get something good to eat tonight. I’m sick of these gross anan-anchovies.”

“We can do that,” Francy approved. “We have some money now, and the New Mother says it’s okay if the money comes from the faithless.”

“Let’s go to McDonald’s and get good stuff,” Sandrine enthused.

“I’d ruh-ruh-ruh—” Stutty ground her wobbly teeth. “I’d rather get a meatball sub at the Subway next to the health food store.”

“We can get what ever we want,” Francy told them. “Let’s go now.”

More than $500 comprised Doke’s till; these were high times. Thank God for the New Mother, Francy thought with a smile full of holes. But a scrabbling caused them all to look toward the narrow entrance.

“It’s probably Scab,” someone said. “I haven’t seen her all day.”

“Oh,” Francy said.

It was another homeless woman, whose name was Crazy because that’s what she was.

“Not her!” Sandrine complained.

“You can’t-can’t-can’t come here!” Stutty yelled. “This is our house.”

Crazy wore a pair of plaid men’s shorts she’d found in the garbage, and a black blouse with torn-off sleeves. Her black hair looked electrocuted, and one eye constantly looked to the left. She was barefoot and pallid as cream.

“Ruthie Mooseface and Blinda told me you lived here,” Crazy said, scratching lice. When she started coming closer, Francy blocked her; she didn’t want Crazy to see the impaled drug dealer stuck benhind the stack of boxes. Ruthie Mooseface and Blinda, huh? “Hi, Crazy. Yeah, we’ve lived here for nine months. That’s how long the place has been empty, and no workmen have come yet. But don’t tell anyone else we’re here, okay?”

Crazy stood like someone who’d had a bad stroke, which was actually true. “The Z-Men said they’d kill me, they’ve been looking for me. Can I stay here a while?”

“No!” Sandrine snapped.

“Be quiet, Sandrine,” Francy said more calmly. “Of course she can stay here. She can even join the convent. The New Mother said we have to help our sisters.”

Crazy didn’t even question the bizarre statement.

“But to join,” Francy told her, “you have to die—”

CRACK!

It was Stutty who’d brought the brick down on Crazy’s head from behind.

“Take her clothes off,” Francy ordered the two girls. She smiled. “I’ll get a stick.”

(III)

Cristina awoke just as the clock struck one in the morning. She lay still, thinking. Why am I…wide awake? She should be exhausted. Paul had come home from work later than usual but he’d scarcely stepped through the front door before they’d been wrapped up in one another. Cristina could tell by his breath that he’d been drinking yet the day’s rising desire melted any disfavor she might normally feel. She had his ocher-hued dress shirt off and on the foyer floor before his brain could register the act; just as fast she practically tore open his pants. Paul hadn’t had to bother removing Cristina’s clothes for she’d greeted him at the door nude.

She had felt desperate for the gluttonous sensations that only a man could provide—there’d be no waiting to get to the bedroom. “Here, here,” she panted, her breasts pressed against his chest. Her sex seemed to pulse along with her heart. “Right here.” And then she brought him down to the handwoven Ersari carpet. Paul was about to speak but Cristina began sucking his tongue before he got the chance. Frenzy sunk her crotch right down, taking him all the way. It didn’t seem that his previous imbibing had hindered his ability, as it had the night before. Cristina’s eyes rolled upward with each stroke. “Harder, my God,” her voice gushed. “Do it as hard as you can—” And when he did she squealed half in shock and half in delight. She felt gored now, and pommeled, but that was how she needed to feel. Her lust made her blood feel thick. Paul’s groin continued to bludgeon her most private place, and all she wanted was more. Each thrust only added more heat to her yearning, which now seemed primitive, more than human. She cringed as he climaxed and filled her sex with a flood of slickened heat. Cristina continued to ride him fast until he turned limp. Paul half-gasped his apology, “Aw, honey, I’m sorry I didn’t last long en—”

Her mind reeled, all her thoughts a stew of lust. “It’s all right, it’s all right,” she panted. Still straddling him, she grabbed his hands and forced them to her breasts, which now felt so full of blood and desire that they seemed alien to her, twice the size they should be. “Squeeze them, squeeze hard,” she pleaded. When she tensed her thighs, the well of semen drained out of her. She intricately plied her sex in unison with his kneading fingers, then shrieked again and climaxed. The series of spasms first clenched every muscle in her body, then collapsed her to the floor, wracked. Her own sexual fluids had seemed to pour out of her.

“Oh, baby,” he groaned when he got enough breath back to talk. “You’re an animal …but of course I mean that in a good way.”

She lay limp against him, one thigh draped over his stomach. “Well, this animal has been thinking about you all day long…even when I was still hungover. Her thigh nudged his spent genitals. “And, don’t worry, I’ll be taking advantage of you again before long.”

Paul chuckled. “Honey, you’re gonna kill me but…so what?”

When Cristina felt more of him trickle out of her, she suddenly lurched. “Oh my God! The carpet!”

“Probably the biggest wet spot of all time,” Paul laughed, still flattened.

“It’s from Uzbekistan!” she exclaimed. “You paid thousands for it.” She started to jump up, to grab some carpet cleaner and rags, but Paul just pulled her back next to him.

“Cristina. I’ll buy another one. Let’s just…lie here a while…”

Cristina relaxed. I wore him out, all right. But in truth she only felt half-sated even after her own orgasm. He appeared to be drifting off to sleep right now. “Honey? Honey?” she said, gently jostling him. “You’re falling asleep on the floor.”

“Mmm,” he replied, then blinked back some alertness. “Since you’re responsible for completely immobilizing me…how about some coffee?”

Cristina giggled and kissed him quick, then slipped off to the kitchen. She made coffee and puttered in the kitchen a bit, not even really mindful of the fact that she was still naked. She felt brimming in sensations, her nipples still buzzing, and the soft afterglow between her legs working its way through the rest of her. “How was work?” she called out.

Paul answered groggily. “Not as good as after work but not bad. Jess landed a retainer renewal worth about two-point five mil, and I just closed a deal worth about half that.”

Good Lord! “You call that ‘not bad’? Paul, that’s fantastic…”

“It’s all this great sex you’re wearing me ragged with,” he replied. “It’s good luck. It’s an Oriental thing: sexual harmony brings prosperity.”

“I suppose you read that in a fortune cookie,” Cristina joked.

“I’m just…very lucky,” he muttered but kept glimpsing a slice of her nakedness in the kitchen. “Uh, you know it’s great having a gorgeous fiancée make me coffee buck-naked but make sure those blinds are closed all the way. Wouldn’t that be a riot if there was an evening service letting out of the church and they all looked over here?”

Good idea, she realized. The blinds were opened slightly but she knew no one street level could see in. “Father Rollin told me he doesn’t even have a congregation anymore,” she explained, darting into the bedroom to select a robe. “Said the church is mainly used for special occasions and meetings.” She pulled on a caramel-brown robe but momentarily shivered when the soft silk slipped across her nipples. I can’t believe this. I’m charged up like a battery tonight. “He said he’s going to come over sometime for coffee so he can introduce himself to you.”

“You can bet he was just being polite,” Paul said tiredly from the living room. “I doubt that he wants to meet the shifty attorney who clipped the New York Diocese out of a couple million bucks because they didn’t bother to find out how much the property was worth in the long term.”

“You didn’t really clip them, did you?” Cristina asked, but she was still distracted by the robe’s silkiness.

“Technically, no,” Paul chuckled. “I was just doing my job better than their guy. Rule Number One in real estate law. One man’s carelessness is another man’s fortune.”

Cristina was grateful for a career that didn’t involve such tactics. She was about to come back to the kitchen, though, when—

“Serveste pe domnul …”

Cristina froze in the short hallway. Had she really heard the bizarre utterance? It sounded foreign and…muffled.

Then she heard a creak of some sort. She stood right beside the door to the basement. Cristina opened the door and looked down…

“Honey?” Movement in the other room, and hushed footsteps. “Where’d you go?”

Cristina looked over, concerned. Paul came forward, pants back on but belt buckle and shirt still undone. “I could’ve sworn I heard a voice, and—I’m not sure—but I think it came from down here.” At once the obscure fear she’d expressed to Britt slammed back: that someone else was in the house.

Paul rolled his eyes. “I heard the same thing the other night, only upstairs. It’s the people in the condos next door. They’re all retired and hard of hearing; they turn their TVs up.” His arm touched her shoulder. “Relax. It’s nothing.”

Cristina remained poised, eyes wide on the open doorway.

“Just to set your mind at ease,” Paul said and snapped on the light switch, “I’ll go look.”

“Oh, please,” she mumbled. “It was just so strange. It sounded foreign.”

“So, they watch foreign shows next door. A lot of those old people are immigrants who made a lot of money starting businesses in the fifties.” But Paul descended the basement stairs just the same.

What if, Cristina fretted, someone really is down there?

What would she do? And what if she really were right in what Britt dismissed as paranoia and overreaction, that last night in her stupor someone else had scrawled on her breasts and stomach?

For a moment, all the invisible blonde hairs on her arms stood straight up like filings under a magnet.

“Nothin’ there, baby,” Paul said, trudging back up.

“It just sounded so—”

He put a finger to her lips. “Don’t worry your little heart about something that’s impossible anyway. Every single exterior door and window in this house has not one but two alarm triggers.” He snapped off the light and closed the door. “Come on.” He put his arm around her and returned to the kitchen. “Now where’s that coffee?”

Cristina poured him a cup, sluffing the incident off. “Sorry I’m such a nut today.” She couldn’t even begin to tell him everything else. “It’s late. Have you even had dinner yet? Let me fix you something.”

“Actually, with all the excitement at the office today, I’m not the least bit hungry, and besides”—Paul yawned—“I’m exhausted now, thanks to you. I’ll have something delivered for you. Grace’s delivers.”

“I”m not hungry either.” Now that her hasty fears had been allayed, she felt oversensitized again. “I’m never hungry after great sex…except for more great sex.”

Paul laughed with a shake of the head. “Let’s give the Captain a little time to get back to shipshape.”

Shortly thereafter Paul had gone in to take a shower but evidently Cristina’s voracity had taken a bigger toll than he’d let on. She’d lounged on the couch for a while, reading through a book on Max Ernst and the “irrationalism” art movement, but when she peeked in the bedroom she found Paul already asleep. Her more greedy side felt let down but then she admitted, He is forty, for God’s sake, and his job’s a pressure cooker, so she resigned to bed herself, presuming to awake fresh in the morning, but—

Here she lay now—hours later—wide awake. She pressured her mind to recover anything she might have dreamt that would waken her so abruptly but found to her relief that there was nothing, just a pleasant blankness chaperoning her slumber. Suddenly that aggravated confusion permuted to satisfaction. She smiled in the dark. No nightmare this time. No evil nun, no bowl full of blood in a dungeon with a man on a slab. Paul lay sound asleep beside her; she touched his shoulder as the dirtiest inkling suggested itself: that she should excite him in his sleep and let him wake to find her atop him—she was certainly aroused enough—but then she elected not to. I practically raped him tonight. She traced her fingers across her sex and winced at the gust of plea sure. Sex maniac, she scolded herself and gently edged off the bed, slipped on her robe, and left the room. The clock ticking followed her to the kitchen, and it somehow amplified the rest of the house’s silence. Even from outside—no sounds at all.

She lemoned some ice water as she reflected on the day. She’d gotten quite a bit of work done once her hangover had ebbed out; that and her ludicrous mishap with the magic markers. Jeez, what a ditz, she thought. It was funny now. Sometimes I’m so on edge, she realized, while other times not at all. Maybe everyone’s that way but I just don’t see it. She wandered the living room, sipping her water. A lewd smile came to her lips when she spied the expensive carpet that she and Paul had sullied; then she found herself turning out all but the light above the stove and peeking out through the wooden blinds. The church’s upper windows were dark, though she couldn’t imagine why she’d even be looking.

But of course: the priest. Father Rollin struck her as a very nice man, but his spirit seemed crimped by something, like a nerve pinched. But she’d only thought of him in the first place via the abstraction; she’d just begun on a priest, of sorts, for the second set of figures in her Evil Church line. At once her artist’s inclinations sparked, and she was heading upstairs for her studio to tweak her day’s work. Her feet took her quickly up the plush crimson carpet to the bare hall that led her to her studio.

She snapped on all the bright white overhead fluorescents, then turned on her computers. Several preliminary sketches, old and new, lay arranged on the drafting table. She eyed the most recent one—the Vampirical Vicar—then eyed the configured drawing model on the computer screen. No, no, no, she realized at once. It was the “tone” of the figure’s dress that was off. Too English, she realized. She wanted antiquated and Gothic but more European. Even the name now—vicar—struck an out-of-tune chord. Too obscure. She got to sketching again, keeping the figure’s dark eyes, prominent nose, and thick, straight-across mustache, but appareled him in religious raiments more reminiscent of early-Renais sance Eastern Eu rope. Her excitement surged. It’s so much more on the mark! she exclaimed to herself and kept sketching. No more Vampirical “Vicar,” she resolved. Her thoughts ticked. Kids today don’t even know what a vicar is, but …A quick glance to the first figure in the line—the Noxious Nun—and she thought, Every nun needs an abbot, right? So …

She wrote the words on the pad to see how they looked lettered out: THE ABOMINABLE ABBOT.

Yes. Much better …

Was this why she suddenly couldn’t sleep? Her muse stirring her to make this change forged in her subconscious? It didn’t matter. The image and the name was much more interesting.

She tinkered another half hour, growing more and more satisfied as her conception of the character grew more and more complete. An hour later she felt as mentally exhausted as a ditchdigger must feel physically. She spun in her chair, lounging back. Her feet reeled off the floor and she knew that one of her moods was returning—a sexual mood. Suddenly she felt pressed in by her needs, thinking back to her spontaneous escapades with Paul right on the floor. When she glimpsed his picture on a bookshelf, she bristled with more pent-up excitement.

I can’t believe I’m doing this, she told herself. She felt childlike, about to raid the cookie jar, but in this case they were very adult cookies. I know it’s here somewhere, she thought, rummaging through several boxes of supplies she hadn’t yet unpacked. Ahhh …She didn’t pack it with her clothes for fear of Paul finding it; instead she’d secreted it in this box of power strips and extension cords…

Her vibrator.

It had been the instrument’s style that essentially caused her to buy it—a stout plastic handle that tapered to a rubberized wand not much wider than a cigarette. She distilled her thoughts of Paul’s body after she retook her seat and let the device’s tip buzz over the pinpoints of her nipples. The sensation defied effective description, save to say that it seemed to stimulate nerves she didn’t know she had and in ways that no other such device—or man—could effect. You naughty girl, she thought, cringing as she removed the buzzing tip from her nipples and stroked the shape of each breast entirely with the wand’s curve. She imagined Paul’s mouth on her sex as she continued, eventually sweeping the wand slowly across her belly and up and down the insides of her thighs, but—

She had to be honest with herself.

It wasn’t so much Paul she was thinking about but instead the lustier aspects of last night’s dream: the queue of women stroking her body with their hands and mouths alike. She tensed more in the soft chair, her belly sucking in and out as she now brought the maniacal tip closer and closer to the hood of her clitoris. If Paul walked in right now…what could I ever say in a million years? But the rankling thought was too weak to banish the fantasy. The images thickened in her head, and at last she let the tip find its target. She breathed through clenched teeth as the lesbian fancy summoned all those rising sensations at once and set them off like a bombshell. One orgasmic wave after another claimed her, leaving her helpless to spasm off in the chair, all the while those forbidden images in her head seeming more and more real as though she were genuinely being cocooned by several women.

Her body went slack in the chair; that rawness of post-climax would not allow her to leave the vibrator in place. It fell from her hand, buzzing inertly on the floor as she simply lay there in the chair as if floating.

When her breath returned she felt assailed by guilt. Sneaking upstairs to masturbate along with fantasies that didn’t include the man she loved seemed like psychic cheating. Nevertheless, she couldn’t deny the potency of the vibrator’s prowess. She reached down, turned it off, and stuck it in a drawer.

What am I going to do with myself? She sputtered and pushed her tousled hair off her brow.

Then her eyes shot wide.

In a split second, Cristina went rigid as if from a bolt of fear. She spun in her chair without volition but found herself staring in dread at the back windows. She knew the source of the sudden dread; it was the impression that she was being watched.

She rushed to the windows. But it would be impossible for anyone in the alley to see her all the way over at her desk. Why do I feel like someone was watching me? She gazed between the slats of the newly installed blinds. And who COULD? Across the alley only a few balconied condos could be seen a street back, and Cristina knew likewise that the sheer angle from those lofts wouldn’t allow for a voyeur’s prying eye. But when she inspected the windows more closely she found that when she looked to the right there was a vantage point she’d been previously unaware off: half of the alley’s opening could be viewed, and through it a wedge of the main road and some hotels and other buildings.

She frowned and shook her head, sputtering again. The notion was folly; even if someone that far away could see in here, what would compel them to? They’d need binoculars or a telescope, for God’s sake.

Enough of this. Back to bed. Downstairs, however, she paused at the door to the basement. Why am I …She looked at the door, touched the knob. Then she laughed to herself. Between passing out down there last night, and then her insistence of hearing strange voices several hours ago, she knew she had something to prove to herself. A test…to prove there’s nothing down there.

Unafraid, she opened the door, switched on the lone bulb, and went down. Masses of dust-skinned clutter seemed congealed in the dark. Boxes, mostly. None of it’s our stuff, she knew. The church must’ve abandoned it all once Paul bought the house. She peered into several of the boxes and found everything from old toasters and electric can openers to books decades old. One box was filled entirely with The Book of Common Prayer and another, Catholic Prayers for the Dead, but years of humidity left them bulged with rot. We’ll have to clean this place up eventually, she thought but found her eyes skimming along the floor. Would she find the magic marker she was sure she’d touched last night? Or perhaps she wasn’t even looking. The boxes formed wide aisles and now she meandered through them, toward the sodium light pouring in through the streetlevel windows. She looked out and saw only the alley street and the bricks of the buildings beyond. Without thinking, she tried the windows to make sure they remained intact and locked. She found herself trying to focus but didn’t know on what. No foreign “voices” were in evidence down here, nothing amiss. See? she challenged herself. But she never noticed the erratic footprints on the dusty floor toward the rear.

She had to squint in the weak light, half-feeling her way back toward the steps. Then she peered down…

That oblong patchwork of cement.

“The same exact spot I passed out on,” she told herself aloud.

The coolness of the cement reached up through her feet but strangely transformed into heat. She felt every square inch of skin beneath the robe glaze with a light sweat, while that maddening oversensitivity returned twofold. The silk robe was again charging her skin; at once she was anxious nearly to the point of audibly whining. Her nipples erected, and her sex began to prickle through some heady frisson. I’m insatiable, she realized. Even after the powerful sexual release just minutes ago, she cringed again in the same wantonness.

She kept staring down. Not again …She cupped her breasts outside the robe, then within, as she encircled the patch’s small emblem with her toe, the crude design that looked like a strangled dragon…

Her eyes widened, then squeezed shut, and in that black interim, images from the nightmare splashed into her mind like paint thrown against a wall: the fanged nun, the three-gemmed blood-filled bowl, the weird voices and the man on the slab and the bizarre decanter and the many sets of feminine hands cosseting her body…

And, indeed, when Cristina winked out of the mental jag, she caught herself openly caressing herself, right where she stood. This is crazy! she thought. She didn’t like this place. What had caused her to even come down here? She sashed her robe—frowning at not only herself but this new and seemingly limitless sexual angst—and started back toward the stairs.

A figure, obscure as soot, blocked the way.

Cristina’s heart gave a jolt.

“Cristina!” Paul exclaimed. “What are you doing down here?”

“Jesus, Paul, you scared me half to death!” Cristina wilted in the aftershock. But…how would she answer his question? “I—I’m not sure why…”

When Paul took several steps, the basement’s single bulb surfaced him from the blots of darkness. “When I woke up, you weren’t in bed,” he said, looking around with disapproval at all the excess clutter. “Then I thought I heard voices. Were you…talking to yourself down here?”

Had she been? She knew she did that sometimes. “I guess I could have been,” she admitted. Suddenly she became overly aware of her erected nipples pushing bumps in the sheer robe. Would he notice? And, worse, had he seen her caressing herself. My God, I hope not.

“Well, I talk to myself sometimes, too,” he said. The stacks of stained boxes seemed to annoy him. “Christ, I didn’t realize how much junk the diocese left. I’ll have to hire some refuse people to take it to the dump.”

Cristina’s head filled with a mild drone. She felt woozy by the sight of him meandering closer; her desires were hijacking her. I can’t help it, she thought hopelessly. I …“Paul?” she whispered and let her robe come undone. “I need you again.”

Had the light dimmed by some fluke in the current? Suddenly he was just an obscure shadow again.

“Oise plac’ute,” flowed the weird accent-tinted words and that’s when Cristina felt electrocuted by the shock of discovering that this figure in the dark was not Paul, it was a curvaceous woman, nude save for a nun’s wimple and hood, her flesh seeming half-composed by the darkness itself but flesh nonetheless for when her hands reached out to touch Cristina’s breasts they were warm and very, very real, and then the woman grinned, showing two long thin fangs ringed by wet lips. Cristina couldn’t budge as the lips moved closer, sealed over her own, and then the hot, phantom tongue slid between the fangs and plunged brassily right into Cristina’s mouth, all the while the nun’s hands kneading her breasts and twisting her inflamed nipples. Cristina had the impression of other figures scurrying around her from behind and sneaking up the stairs, but her horror quashed the observation. Meanwhile, the nun’s hot mouth sucked all the air from her lungs, and then Cristina quailed, rose up on her tiptoes, and fainted dead away.

(IV)

Paul shuddered out of sleep just as the clock in the hall struck two. His arms raked the bed’s left side where he expected to feel Cristina but she wasn’t there. As his grogginess wore off, he discerned the hiss of the shower, could see the thin thread of light under the door.

Paul rubbed his eyes. He felt some odd sensation that he couldn’t name but then forgot about it when he thought back to his and Cristina’s frizzly lovemaking earlier. What more could I ask? he thought, chuckling. Just as he was drifting off again, he heard the shower hiss stop. A pause for a minute or two; he could hear her now, drying off. Then a wedge of light hit his eyes as the door partly opened. Just as Cristina would step out, the light snapped off, leaving Paul blind. He could hear but not see her approach the bed, felt the mild jostle when she sat on the mattress-edge near his knees.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked.

Her hand ran down his stomach. “Uh-uh.”

I’ll bet I could go again, he realized, but when he touched her bare shoulder and attempted to slide his hand to her breast, she straddled him, gently grabbed his wrists, and placed them above his head. Then her own hands came back to his groin.

Oh, yeah …Paul still couldn’t see a thing. Cristina’s fingers wasted no time exciting him, but they also distracted him. “Aw, baby,” he said. He’d hardened already, and then his teeth clicked together at the meticulous way she was handling him, unlike anything she’d done before. He reached down, then, and touched her leg—

“Honey, that feels so—”

“Shhh!” she demanded and quickly returned his hands back up over his head, feigning bondage, he supposed.

“Oh, kinky, huh?”

Again, “Shhh…” And then her mouth immediately lowered to his genitals. Paul tensed up at once. Her mouth worked frenetically, fingers working in unison. She was performing the intimate act with a fast, slick intricacy that astonished him. It was noisy and wild. Paul’s head reeled at the feeling. She’s never done it this good before, he realized in a lusty stupor. She must be watching pornos or something …

Her mouth continued to work him. She was simply doing it and demanding nothing in return. In spite of being so thoroughly drained on the living room floor, Paul’s climax was breaking before he knew it, her mouth never abating. He tensed for many moments as his lust emptied, then went slack on the bed. Her lips remained tight as they eventually slipped off. He heard her swallow.

I guess it wouldn’t exactly be romantic to tell her that that was the best blow job of my life, he wondered. “Oh, damn, baby, that was just so—”

She errantly gave his spent genitals a caress, then the bed creaked as she got up. Was she walking around the bed? He still had no night vision thanks to the momentary shock of light when she’d come out of the bathroom. “Where are you…”

The bedroom door clicked open, but there was so little light in the hall that he could barely detect her form stepping out of the room and heading for the kitchen.

“Honey? Would you get me a can of Sprite?” he asked.

“Um-hmm.” And then her shadow disappeared.

Wow. That was something. I’ll bet Jess doesn’t get action like that …

Paul remained lying back, sated. He kept drifting in and out, but when he focused his thoughts and looked at the LED clock, he saw that ten minutes had passed and Cristina hadn’t come back to bed. It didn’t matter, he had to go to the bathroom anyway. He turned on the lamp by the bedside, glanced over, then did a double take at Cristina’s airy, walk-in closet. The door hung open and he noticed several dresses on the floor. They must’ve fallen from their hangers but it was odd. Cristina was a neat freak. Not like her to overlook something like that. Then he went into the bathroom, still steamy from her shower, but noticed water on the floor, the towel lying there, and the shampoo sitting on its side. What a mess. And again, it was odd to observe. Cristina always picked up after herself.

He finished, put on his robe, and went out to the kitchen. Another raised brow, then, when he noted more minor disarray: the refrigerator door an inch ajar, several cabinets hanging open, a bag of plantain chips busted open and sitting on the counter, along with crumbs. He chuckled at her sudden slovenliness.

But where was she?

Several chips crunched underfoot when he walked to the stairs. A glance up showed him her studio lights on. I guess tooting my horn gave her some creative inspiration, he joked. But she often would work spontaneously, sometimes jumping up from bed just to jot down some notes or pen a quick sketch. Artistic people were like that.

He thought of going up to talk but decided not to. Don’t interrupt her. Besides, my jones is taken care of for a while. But when he turned he noticed yet another oddity.

A pair of shoddy old blue jeans and an orange tube-top lay in the hall. Had she just dropped them there? Why not put them in the laundry room ten fucking feet away? he wondered, now a bit testy at her carelessness. I paid a lot of money for this joint and all of a sudden she’s treating it like a trailer. After a few seconds, though, he thought back to the outstanding sex and reconsidered. On second thought… she can mess the place up all she wants. I’ll hire a damn maid.

Next, he squinted at the clothes. Must be old stuff she wears when she works, he reasoned. He couldn’t even recall ever seeing her in the tube-top. I’ll just go back to bed, he decided, but after a glance into the cove at the foyer’s end, he amended, Or maybe I’ll have a drink first. One couldn’t hurt, right? I work damn hard. Quietly as he could, he went to the glass-and-mirror bar, poured two fingers of Dewar’s eighteen-year-old, and snuck back to the darkened kitchen for some ice. It only bothered him a little to sneak around like this; he knew more often than not her objections to his drinking were overreactive. Nevertheless, he went back to the bathroom to sip his drink, in case Cristina came back down unexpectedly.

The expensive scotch filled him with that inexplicable warm buzz, which blossomed in the belly, then crept to the brain. That’s even better than a cigarette after sex. He’d quit several years ago; these days, smoking only tarnished the upscale image he needed to accommodate his success. A Cuban Monte Cristo on the other hand was another story, but Paul only lit one up on special occasions. He kept an ear tuned for the bedroom door in case he had to dump the drink in haste, but all remained nice and very quiet.

As he drank, however, his thoughts had no choice but to drag back…to her. She was so beautiful and, now, so voracious. This house and this city really does suit her. She still had her sullen moods sometimes but what woman didn’t? Probably true for me, too. He repictured the lascivious scene from the handwoven carpet, the sight of her creamy thighs splayed over his hips, her back arched, forcing her desire-gorged breasts out. Damn, he thought next. Just picturing her body had him half-aroused again. He finished his drink. Can’t hurt to try. As kinky as she’s been lately?

He brushed and gargled, then popped three mints in his mouth and headed back to the stairs.

In the hall, he stopped short.

The jeans and halter that had lain crumpled there minutes ago were gone. I didn’t even hear her come down. Frowning, he shrugged, then hiked up the stairs to the studio.

What the hell is going on?

The overhead lights blared but Cristina was nowhere to be seen. Paul scratched his head, duped. “Cristina?” he called down the dark hall. Then to the stairs, upward: “Cristina? Jesus! Where are you?” He thought he heard a creak but knew it was only the house frame. A bellow this time, “CrisTINA!” But only a sterile echo bounced back. There’s no reason for her to go past the second floor, he realized. Nothing there but empty rooms, no fixtures, no lights.

Then he heard—or thought he heard—a voice.

Downstairs.

What is this bullshit? he thought, and thumped down. “Cristina?”

First thing he noticed back downstairs was the basement door in the back of the short hall. It stood open a crack, and he could see an outline of light from the basement’s only bulb. Paul pushed the door right open and proceeded down. “Cristina, why on earth are you—”

The air smelled moldy. He didn’t even have to go halfway down before he could see her lying limp on the cobbled floor. Jesus! He raced down. She lay crumpled, as if she’d collapsed. Her robe was tied shut but strangely parted over her chest to reveal her breasts, and V’d below the sash to reveal her pubic area. She must’ve simply fallen that way. The syrupy dread that poured over his mind dissipated when he felt a strong pulse. “Cristina?” He touched her face, jostled her slightly, until she began to moan a little.

Paul picked her up and carried her back upstairs.