out, they did the right thing. I don’t want him back. How can we get rid of

  him?”

  “Don’t worry about that,” said Macy. “He was got rid of before. He can be got

  rid of again.”

  —Up yours, friend.

  Lissa managed a brave smile. She took his hand between hers and clamped it. She

  looked transformed by soap and hot water, no longer the moody, embittered,

  disturbed waif of the restaurant. He realized that his collapse now tied her to

  him. She had brought him home. She had cared for him. He couldn’t throw her out.

  She said, “Can I get you anything? A drink? A gold?”

  “Not right now. I’d like to see—if I can stand up—”

  “You ought to rest. A nasty shock you had.”

  “Nevertheless.” He swung his legs over the side of the bed and tested his feet a

  couple of times before putting his weight on them. Precariously rising. Wobbly.

  Standing there showing his nakedness to her. Then a gesture that astounded him:

  modestly moving his hand to cover his crotch. Immediately pulling it back; he

  could think of six different reasons why it was crazy to want to hide himself

  from her, starting with the fact that she had been this body’s other owner’s

  mistress for all those months years ago.

  He took a step and another, and found himself in the middle of the room,

  lurching a little. His left elbow was stiff and sore, which was expectable

  enough, considering that all his weight had landed on it. Lucky thing it wasn’t

  broken. But there was also a curious numbness around the right side of his face.

  No sensation in the cheek, and his lips felt funny in the corner of his mouth.

  As though he’d had an anesthetic shot at the dentist. As though he’d had a

  stroke, maybe.

  He looked at his face in the bedroom mirror. Yes, a little lopsided, the way his

  father had looked afterhis stroke. The mouth pulled back, the lower eyelid

  drooping. Macy prodded the numb part of his cheek and tried to push the lips

  into their proper configuration. Everything hard, like plastic flesh.

  —Hi ho.

  “Areyou doing that?”

  “What’s the matter, Paul?”

  “My face. He’s holding the muscles. I can’t get him to ease off.”

  “Oh, Christ, Paul!” Terrified.

  A battle of wills. Her terror infected him. This was grisly, having the side of

  your face held captive by something in your brain. Like going swimming and

  coming up with a lobster pinching your cock. He fought back. Tugging at the

  muscles, trying to soften the flesh. Re-lax—re-lax—re-lax.Yes. Getting the upper

  hand, or whatever. Some sensation returning, now. The mouth no longer distorted.

  Hamlin scuttling lobsterlike into deeper recesses of his brain, letting go.

  Tomorrow I scoot over to the Rehab Center and have this taken care of. A

  complete and exhaustive burnout of whatever vestiges of the previous self still

  remain. Macy glanced at the mirror again. Opening and closing his mouth,

  practicing big grins. The first round goes to me. He stumbled back to the bed

  and toppled onto it, quivering.

  “You’re soaked with sweat!” Lissa cried.

  “It was a real struggle. The muscles.”

  “I watched it. Your face was writhing and grimacing. It looked like you were

  going crazy. Here, get back under the covers. You ought to rest. Would you like

  to smoke?”

  “Maybe that’s not such a bad idea.”

  She brought two golds over. Solemnly they lit up and went through the ritual of

  puffing, the deep drag, suck in lots of air. As the hallucinogenic smoke

  wandered through his lungs he imagined it traveling swiftly to his brain and

  befuddling the demon that Lissa’s ESP had conjured into life there. Lull him

  back to sleep. And then, when Hamlin’s groggy, drive a silver spike through his

  heart. Macy couldn’t feel any trace of the other’s presence now. For all he

  knew, the pot really knocked him out.

  “Turn out the light,” Macy said. “Get into bed with me. We’ll lie here and

  smoke.”

  Her thighs cool against his. He felt feverish. The strain of the last few hours,

  no doubt. The tips of the golds glowing in the dark. They don’t burn as fast now

  as they did when you had to roll your own. Time to meditate, time to

  contemplate. But eventually they were gone. Stubbing out the roaches. He was

  still unable to detect the presence of the passionate, warped soul of Nat Hamlin

  within him. Pot the panacea, maybe,

  He reached toward Lissa.

  Moving about in the bed was difficult, because of his sore elbow. Yet he

  managed. His right arm curling around her back and the hand coming out front on

  the far side to cup her distant breast. Soft firm bouncy globe, overflowing his

  clutching fingers. Trapping the nipple gently between index and middle,

  twitching his digits tenderly to excite her. Then, not easily, he pivoted

  upward, wriggled, touched his bad arm briefly and dismayingly against the

  headboard, and succeeded in wedging his right knee between her thighs without

  losing his grip on her breast. Her legs parted and he got the top of his knee up

  against the warmth of her. She made little purring sounds. The trouble was that

  he couldn’t kiss her in this position, his neck simply wouldn’t reach, but okay,

  this would do for now. Tentatively he flexed the stiff arm, planning to slide it

  across to her groin if it wasn’t too painful for him.

  This was the first time since he had become Paul Macy that he’d been in bed with

  a woman.

  Oh, they’d given him a set of memories. Probably Gomez had taken care of the

  programming job, the little horny bastard. Dreaming up phantom lays for him. A

  proper heterosexual background, not even neglecting a spot of innocent pubescent

  homophily. Here he was with Jeanie Grossman in the cabin at Mount Rainier. Sweet

  sixteen, both of them, tiny boobies cold and hard in his hands, Jeanie’s long

  black hair all disheveled, her thighs clamped tight on his probing hand. Oh, no,

  no, Paul, don’t, please don’t, she was saying, and then she was breathing

  hoarsely and murmuring, Be gentle, darling, just the way they said it in the

  dumb romantic novels Gomez most likely had stolen all this from, Oh, be gentle

  with me, Paul, it’s my first time. On her and in her, wham and bam. Frantic

  hasty poking. My first time too, but he doesn’t tell her that. Jeanie Grossman

  gasping out her inaugural orgasm with the white bulk of Mount Ranier peering

  over her shoulder. But of course it hadn’t happened. Not to him. To Gomez,

  maybe, long ago; maybe Gomez programmed his own sex life into all his

  reconstructs, for lack of imagination. Poor Jeanie, whoever you are, a hundred

  different men think they’ve had your cherry.

  And there was much more to Macy’s curriculum vitae. The married woman, really

  old, easily past thirty, who had fallen upon him with sudden ferocity when he

  was seventeen years old and selling encyclopedias in the summer. Sitting next to

  her on the couch with all his charts outspread, saying, This is an outstanding

  feature, our three-dimensional visual aids presentation, and we have a choice of

  six bindings in beautiful decorator colors, and would you like to hear about our

  brand-new home videotape supplement, and while he prattles she pushes the

  brochures off his lap and dives for his zipper and then the amazing shattering

  sensation of her lips engulfing his cock.

  Good old Gomez. And the nurse at Gstaad, seducing him in his huge plaster cast.

  And the plump German girl who liked him to use the butler’s entrance. And the

  one with the rubber underwear and the whips. The endurance contest in Kyoto,

  too. The orgy on the beach at Herzlia. The dear doctor had stocked him amply

  with vivid and varied erotica. But what was the use? None of it was real, at

  least not so far as Paul Macy was concerned, and so he could no more claim it as

  earned experience than if he had got it all from Henry Miller and the divine

  marquis. He was minus any authentic lovemaking memories. So in effect he was

  about to lose his innocence at the age of thirty-nine. But as he fondled Lissa’s

  slim sleek body he realized the value of having had all those imaginary episodes

  of the flesh implanted in him. A real virgin would be up against anatomical

  confusions, the mechanics of the thing, the correct angle of entry, all those

  problems. He at least knew where the way in was to be found. Secondhand

  knowledge, maybe, but useful. The Rehab Center hadn’t turned him loose unable to

  cope.

  One small problem, though. He didn’t seem to be able to get it up.

  Lissa was primed and ready, nicely lubricated, and his item still hung slack.

  Through slitwide eyes she watched him and frowned. The juices souring and

  curdling in her as she waited to have her vacancy filled. At last understanding

  the reason for the delay. Cuddling against him; her hand to the scrotum, a light

  tickling, very skillful. Ah. Yes. Some wind in the sails, finally. The old

  familiar rigidifying that he had never before experienced. Up. Up. Up. At full

  mast, now. Swing smoothly around, slide yourself into her. They made adjustments

  of their positions. She prepared herself to receive him. He was athrob,

  inflamed, aloft.

  Then came a laugh from within and a cold devilish voice:

  —Take a look at this, pal.

  Blossoming on the screen of his mind the image of Lissa spread wide on another

  bed in another room, and himself—no, not himself but Nat Hamlin—poised above

  her, seizing the calves of her legs, draping them over his shoulders, now

  lowering himself to her with ithyphallic vitality. Nailing her. And as that

  inward consummation took place Macy felt his own rod lose its vehemence. Limp

  again; shriveled, infantile, a wee-wee instead of a cock. Wearily he sagged

  against the girl. Doing it was impossible for him now. Not withhim watching. I

  carry my own audience in my head. Hamlin, still roaring with turbulent inner

  laughter, was sending up scene after scene out of his no doubt actual

  experience, coupling with Lissa in this position, in that one, Lissa on top,

  Lissa down on her knees being had dogwise, the whole copulatory biography of

  their long-age liaison, and Macy, helpless, his phantom images of Jeanie

  Grossman and the encyclopedia woman swept away by this gushing incursion of

  reality, lay stunned and sobbing and impotent waiting for Hamlin to stop

  tormenting him.

  Lissa didn’t seem to understand what was happening, only that Macy had lost his

  hard at a critical moment and was plainly upset about it. Her long thin arms

  cradled him affectionately. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “You’ve been under

  a terrible strain, and anyway that kind of thing can happen to anybody. It’ll be

  better later. Just lie here and rest. It doesn’t matter. It’s all right. It’s

  all right.” Pressing his cheek against her breast. “Try to get some sleep,” she

  said. He nodded. Closing his eyes, trying to relax. Out of the darkness Hamlin’s

  voice:

  —That was just to let you know I’m still here.

  FIVE

  SOMETIME during the night there must have been a flow of strength from her to

  him, for he had fallen asleep being comforted by her, and he was awakened by the

  sounds of her sobs. The room very dark: morning some hours away, yet he felt as

  though he’d had enough sleep. Lissa had her back to him, her bony spine pressing

  into his chest; she was curled up knees to breasts, making snuffling sounds, and

  every thirty seconds or so a great racking open-mouthed bed-shaking sob came out

  of her. Before he could tend to her he had to survey the condition of his own

  head. All seemed well. He was rested and loose. There was a delicious sense of

  aloneness between his ears. When he was in contact with Hamlin he felt inwardly

  cluttered, as though bales of barbed wire were coming unraveled in his skull.

  None of that now. The alter ego was sleeping, maybe, or at any rate busy in some

  other realm. Macy put his hand lightly on Lissa’s bare shoulder and called her

  name. She went on sobbing. He shook her gently.

  “What?” she said, sounding foggy and far away.

  “Tell me what the trouble is.”

  A long silence. No reply. Had she gone back to sleep? Had she ever been awake?

  “Lissa? Lissa, what’s the trouble?”

  “Trouble?”

  “You’ve been crying.”

  “It’s all a bad dream,” she said, and he realized that she was still asleep. She

  pulled away from him, getting even more tightly into the fetal position. Heaving

  a terrible sigh. Sounds of weeping. He wrapped himself around her, thighs to her

  buttocks, his lips just above her ear. Her skin was cold. She was shivering.

  “Chasing me,” she murmured. “Ten arms, like some kind of octopus.”

  “Wake up,” he said. “It’ll all go away if you wake up.”

  “Why are you so sure?”

  And she sent him her dream, nicely wrapped. Popping from her mind to his,

  clicking smartly into place like a cassette. Jesus. A lunar landscape of

  crumbling concrete, thousands of miles wide, a million cracks and furrows and

  fissures. Not a building, not a tree, not a shrub in sight, only this gray-white

  plateau of flat ruinous stony pavement covering the universe. From above a

  fierce white light plays on the concrete, so that the upthrust rims of the

  fissurelines cast long harsh shadows. A frosty wind blowing. Footsteps. Lissa

  appears from the right, naked, breathless, running hard, her hair streaming

  behind her, streaminginto the wind. Her pale white skin is marked by dozens of

  circular red cicatrices, suction-marks. And now her pursuer thunders after her.

  Nat Hamlin, yes, wearing his bland even-featured Anglo-Saxon face, but he has

  eight, ten, a dozen curling tentacles coming out of his shoulders, tentacles

  equipped with big ridged sucker-cups. Not hard to tell where Lissa got the red

  marks on her body. And a dick a yard long sticking out in front of him, like a

  club. His feet are frog-flippers the size of snowshoes. Thromp! Thromp! Thromp!

  He comes flapping toward her at an incredible speed. And then there are the

  voices. People are saying things about her in Sanskrit, in Hungarian, in Basque,

  in Hopi, in Turkish. Unfavorable comments about her breasts. Snide remarks about

  her unshaven armpits. A cutting reference to a mole on her left hind cheek. They

  are laughing at her in Bengali. They are offering her perversions in Polish. She

  hears everything. She understands everything. Hamlin now has split in two, a

  double pursuer, one of him somehow coming from the other side of her, and she is

  trapped between them. Closer ... closer ... impaling her fore and aft ... she

  screams ...

  I reject this dream, Macy thought. It isn’t a necessary nightmare. To hell with

  it.

  “Wake up,” he said again, loudly.

  Waking her wasn’t so easy. She was hovering in a peculiar borderline state,

  almost a hypnotic trance, in which she was able to hear him and even give him

  rational answers, without, however, being plugged into the waking world in any

  meaningful way. Lost in her hallucinatory horrors. He switched on the light.

  Half past four in the morning. He’d been sleeping only about two hours, then.

  Seemed like a full night. Pulling her to a sitting position, he opened her eyes

  with his thumbs.

  She stared blearily at him. Eyes like mirrors, seeing nothing. “Lissa? Jesus,

  Lissa,snap out of it!” Waves of terror rippling across her face. Her sharp

  little elbows digging hard into her sides, fists balled and held tight to her

  clavicles. Still sobbing, a quick panicky inhaling and exhaling. Macy hauled her

  from the bed and frogmarched her into the bathroom. His palm touching the shower

  control. A computerized cascade of chilly water. Get under, girl. A shriek. As

  though he were flaying her. But she was awake now.

  “My God,” she said. “I was on some other planet.”

  “I know. I know.”

  “My head’s all full of it. A million square miles of cracked pavement. I still

  see it. And that light shining overhead, such a fucking bright light. And those

  tentacles.”

  “They’re gone now,” he said.

  “No. They came out of my head, didn’t they? They’re still in there, the way Nat

  Hamlin’s in you. I’m going crazy, Paul, isn’t that obvious? Christ, hold tight

  to me. Maybe the octopus is real and this is the dream.”

  Her teeth were chattering. He wrapped a towel around her and guided her back to

  the bedroom. Her cheeks felt hot. A high fever raging in her. “I just want to

  hide somewhere,” she said. “To disappear into my own brain, you understand what

  I mean? To get away into some inner world where nobody can find me. Where I