She had written it out, though, because she wasn’t good at remembering numbers, but some instinct warned her not to tell him. She knew, without his saying it, that he wouldn’t want anyone else to find it.

  No one would, either, not the way she had written it. An old trick, from her childhood. Some knew it, but not everyone. The number was safe this way, and she could see it anytime she needed to. If she needed to.

  90 Victor J. Banis

  He was here for the present, though, apparently full time.

  There was no need for her to telephone him. They did not go out anymore. He did not, at any rate. She left to buy food, things that they needed for the apartment. When she came back, he was always behind the mirror. He never questioned her about her outings, however. It seemed that he trusted her.

  Of course, she suspected that he had few alternatives but to trust her now. She made a passing comment about his friends and he said, with no further explanation, but very firmly,

  “Forget them. Forget you ever saw them.”

  The mirror, of course, and the room behind it, could not help but remind her of them, but she never again mentioned them. At least the secret apartment had brought him more fully into her life than he had been before. Once or twice a week sex became sex every day, and sometimes more than once a day.

  She had come to know his body and its needs, its special pleasures, in detail.

  Yet she came to realize as well, as time passed, that she still knew nothing at all about him, about the man. That mask was always in place. She was aware of it now, in a way that she had not been before, before he disappeared.

  It fascinated her, that mask of his, and it offered her a challenge, too, the sort of challenge that appealed to a woman.

  She had a desire, a need, in fact, to learn what was behind the mask. Hadn’t women always been intrigued by challenges, by the need to know? The man would never have bothered with that apple, would he? That was a woman’s way of looking at things: what is it that makes this fruit forbidden? This man dangerous?

  Something else had changed, too, but it was harder for her to put her finger on it. She thought—had thought—that he loved her, and now she thought that he did not, and even more painful for her to consider she thought that perhaps he never had. Where this idea came from, that he had fallen out of love with her, or perhaps had never even been in that state, she couldn’t exactly say. The desire was still there, the sex still breathlessly exciting, as obviously for him as for her.

  DEADLY DREAMS 91

  It had changed though, some subtle shift in their relations.

  Something had happened, she thought, in that week when he had been away. She wanted to know what, and wanted not to know, in equal measure. She watched and listened, trying to find some specific point to touch upon, and couldn’t quite find it.

  He looked the same, he sounded the same, he even tasted and smelled the same. He wasn’t, though. They weren’t the same.

  That much she knew from woman’s intuition, if the rest were beyond her intellectual capabilities.

  She did not speak of these matters to him, however, and she was careful about asking questions, even more careful than before. He was here, and she had the number. For the present, that was enough. When he asked her to invite the detectives to the gallery opening, she had done so without hesitation.

  She had tried obediently, too, to lure the little one, Stanley, here for him. That he had expected her to do so puzzled her. If he knew the man at all… and if he didn’t, why should he have wanted him here?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Stanley had taken the pickup. Which, all in all, Tom had pretty much expected. It was a long walk back to the Castro, through not the best neighborhood in the city. A couple of drifters on the opposite side of the street paused to gaze with some brief interest at this man walking alone, where few did at night. They quickly decided he was not promising prey.

  Tom noticed them not at all, nor did he mind the long walk.

  He needed to sort out his thoughts. Especially, he needed to think what he was going to do, what he could say to Stanley. He would apologize, profusely, but it needed something more than that. This was the first real crisis that had come up since he’d moved in with Stanley.

  He wasn’t very good when it came to relationships, he knew that he lacked a certain sensitivity that others had, but he knew well enough that this was a critical juncture for them. He could lose Stanley, if he hadn’t already. As vague as his attitude toward their relationship was, he was quite definite that he did not want that to happen.

  In the past, with the many women he’d known, there had never been any commitment nor, so far as he knew, any expectation beyond the immediate giving and receiving of pleasure. Not only had he not anticipated love, he had hardly thought of it. That seemed to him something alien, something that “happened” to other people, but so beyond his expectations as to be quite unreal.

  He couldn’t exactly say it was love that he wanted from Stanley—no, not from, but with—but neither was he such a fool as to not perceive that there was something he wanted, and it was from Stanley he wanted it. He thought that if he failed with Stanley, he would fail himself as well, in some great way that perhaps would never again be put right.

  Thinking this as he walked through the Mission, he quickened his steps.

  94 Victor J. Banis

  § § § § §

  “Make that two,” Andrew said, stepping through the looking glass portal.

  She poured a second cognac, brought it to him. He took a mere sip, and set it aside.

  “I meant for you to pick up the other one,” he said.

  She laughed. “With what, ice tongs? He’s queer. Not just gay, queer. What could you have wanted him here for, anyway?”

  She went to one of the misshapen sofas and sat rather heavily, suddenly tired, dispirited. She felt all at once a failure; but why should she, simply because one man had turned her down? A man with a boyfriend pissed off at him. You could hardly call it a failure on her part.

  “Call it a whim. Maybe I just wanted to see him up close.

  Hear his voice.”

  “Why?”

  His look told her he didn’t mean to answer that. There was that unspoken rule again. He didn’t like to be questioned.

  Sometimes it irritated her. Sometimes she broke the rules. Not this time, however. Some instinct told her it was not the right time. She did not repeat the question.

  “So you settled for the other one,” he said. “On your own whim.” In a disapproving tone, the voice one might use with a disobedient child.

  She was annoyed with herself that his tone made her feel guilty.

  “I thought that was better than nothing,” she said, regretting at once that she sounded so petulant. “I thought you must be hoping to pick up some kind of information, and maybe he would have it, maybe it would slip out in conversation, or well…” She shrugged. “But, really, I don’t know what it was you were hoping for. You never tell me things.”

  “There are things it’s better for you not to know.”

  Which, she thought, was surely true. She said, wanting to put them on a more even footing again, “Anyway, a bird in the DEADLY DREAMS 95

  hand, as the saying goes. He’s a very attractive man, the other one. And, he was the one who was interested.”

  He gave her a cruel smile. “Not so very interested, as it turns out. He left. Maybe he doesn’t like chocolate.”

  She glowered at him, lips tight. “I think he was interested.

  Just… reluctant. I think he was worried about the boyfriend.”

  “And now you are disappointed? By his reluctance?”

  “Yes, frankly. He looked… intriguing.” She smiled involuntarily. The detective had been ruggedly handsome, and instincts had told her he would make a good lover. Best, though, not to say that aloud. She’d learned that long ago. One lover never wanted to hear that someone else might be as good, let alone better.

  Andrew went to a Lucite topped writing desk, a slab of clear plastic atop four spindly columns of chrome. He picked up a letter opener shaped like a scimitar, and ran a finger along its edge, as if testing if for sharpness. “So am I, to be honest.

  Disappointed, I mean.”

  That surprised her, in any event. “You mean you actually wanted me to fuck him?”

  “Yes. Or, lead him up to it. I didn’t exactly want to see him planting the seed, so to speak, but I’d have liked for you to get him sufficiently distracted that he wouldn’t notice if I joined the party.”

  “A three way?” She raised an amused eyebrow. “If I’d known that was what you wanted…”

  “Of sorts. Oh, not what you’re thinking. My goodness, you do have a dirty little mind, don’t you?”

  She pouted, unconvincingly. She was on more familiar ground with sexual topics. She didn’t always understand men—

  who did?—but she understood male sexuality. She thought she understood that part of him, at least, whatever mysteries the rest of him might hold. Get their drawers down, and men weren’t very much different, to her way of thinking. “You’ve never minded before, as I recall.”

  96 Victor J. Banis

  “It has sometimes been useful.” His finger traced the edge of the letter opener again. He frowned, and set it aside on the Lucite slab, and took a cashmere scarf from around his neck.

  She was surprised to see it. It was one he had bought for her.

  She hadn’t noticed that he was wearing it, hadn’t even noticed it was missing from her closet.

  “What I thought was,” he said, “as long as you had him here, it would be a perfect time for me to kill him.”

  She blinked, surprised again, in a more unsettling way. “Kill him? Why, for Heaven’s sake. Don’t tell me, please, because you’re jealous.”

  She would like to have thought he was, but she did not truly believe so. In her heart, she had begun to suspect that, really, she meant very little to him. Perhaps it had all been about that hiding place after all. Perhaps he had only used her, as so many other men had before him, only he had just been more clever at it; and that was perhaps because he had more at stake.

  “No, not jealous,” he said. “Hardly that. Women were made for men. You, especially, were made to give men pleasure. If it weren’t me, it would be another, wouldn’t it? There’s no reason for us to pretend.”

  She found that she resented his remarks . But you have, haven’t you, she wanted to say. It’s all been a pretense with you—but she did not. Something about his expression, about the way he no longer looked directly at her, worried her. She had a sense that things were spinning out of hand, in some way that she couldn’t fathom. Why? What had she done? Or not done? This whole quarrel made no sense to her. It seemed contrived, as if they were simply reading from a script. Or, he was, at least, while she was left ignorant of her lines.

  “It’s simply that, he’s seen my face,” he said.

  Which, she thought, made no sense either. “But, people see your face all the time. When we’ve gone out shopping…”

  “That’s different. They had no reason to pay attention to me. Who was I to them? Just a man, passing by on the street, shopping in a store, drinking in a bar. There was DEADLY DREAMS 97

  nothing to connect face to name, to identity. He’s different.

  He knows who I am. The name and the face. He can put them together, don’t you see? He can identify me.”

  She knew she shouldn’t, but she asked anyway: “To whom?”

  To her surprise, he answered without hesitation. “To Homeland Security, for starters. If push came to shove.”

  “Homeland Security? But, they look for…” she caught herself before she said, “terrorists,” but in a twinkling, remembering the men who’d come here late at night, remembering his secrecy, his disappearance, she knew; knew as certainly as if he had written it all out for her, that this was why he was hiding here.

  Jesus, she thought, what have I gotten myself into?

  He seemed not to have noticed her omission, was still speaking as if to himself, still not looking at her. “I can’t have that, of course. He’ll have to be eliminated, and not too far in the distant future, either. This would have been a convenient time to do it, since you had him here. If you’d managed to get him a little more worked up.”

  She thought about that and frowned. “It would hardly have been convenient for me, would it? There I’d have been with a dead man on my hands, and an army of witnesses to say he left the gallery with me, that we came up here together. I’d have been arrested, charged with murder.”

  “So you might have.”

  He smiled at her, a frigid smile that sent a corresponding chill through her. She suddenly realized that for once, she was seeing behind the mask he wore, just as she’d always wanted to do, could suddenly see exactly what was going through his mind. What she saw was not a welcome sight.

  As if she’d spoken aloud, he said, “Well, you have the name as well, Danna, and the face. You could identify me too, you see.”

  “But… I couldn’t,” she said, genuinely frightened now.

  “Ever. You know that. I won’t.”

  “Yes. I know that. You won’t.”

  98 Victor J. Banis

  He stepped toward her, twisting the neck scarf between his hands. Her emerald green eyes went wide and she half rose from the sofa, but he was quicker than she was. She struggled, but without much hope. She’d always half known, hadn’t she?

  He’d always seemed dangerous.

  Somewhere inside, she’d always known Andrew was a snake; his beauty had blinded her to the truth. Like the cobra with his victim, he’d hypnotized her, held her in his spell. And now, the bite. The deadly bite.

  § § § § §

  Holding her pressed to his body, yanking the scarf tight around her neck until her struggles grew weak and weaker still, and finally ended altogether in a long, harsh sigh, Andrew felt his dick rise up against her.

  Killing always gave him a hard-on.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Who is as safe as we, Where none can do Treason to us, Except one of we two?”

  Donne had that right, Stanley thought, that two-edged sword of intimacy. An enemy couldn’t betray you. Who could, indeed, except someone you loved?

  Or maybe, he thought with bitter humor, gloomy old Tennyson would be more appropriate to the evening: “He cometh not, she said…”

  He had put Mozart on the stereo, started a fire in the small fireplace and was seated on the floor before it, a snifter of brandy in his hand, thinking of Tom and Daniella Bentham.

  Probably at this very moment Tom was fucking her—

  energetically, which was how he tended to fuck. Nothing mild-mannered about Tom Danzel once he got in the saddle.

  Oddly, Stanley’s feelings on the whole business were somewhat muddled. He was angry, but thoughtful, too. He’d always known Tom was part heterosexual; the larger part, indeed. However painful he himself might find it, it was surely inevitable that Tom would revert at some time to the sexual rituals more familiar to him.

  But, assuming that Tom was fucking at this very moment, it was only sex, wasn’t it? Their relationship, his and Tom’s, was surely more than that, or it was meaningless, they were reduced to tricking, on an extended basis. He’d had himself plenty of what he’d once heard called “snack fucks.” Who hadn’t? And one or two of them he’d had while involved, at least to some degree, with someone else, never mind that he suffered some pangs of guilt at the time. Not enough guilt, let it be said, to bar him from doing what he wanted to do.

  Someone—who he couldn’t recall—had said that sexual intercourse had a certain stink to it. It was utterly selfish, at least 100 Victor J. Banis

  at its ultimate moment, when no one had awareness of anything but the sensations he himself was experiencing, love for the partner be damned. It was almost invariably messy and, like murder, it found men surrendering to their most animal of instincts, putting aside thought and refinement, all that was noble and profound in their natures. No one thought of Donne or Mozart at the moment of orgasm, certainly.

  Of course, sex could be beautiful too, and sometimes approached the spiritual. But, Stanley thought, so could murder.

  If there were nothing beautiful nor splendid in the act of murder, it would surely not have fascinated so many writers, and some of them fine ones, so greatly for so many centuries. It was not unlikely that more words, more beautiful words, had been written about the nature of murder than about the nature of love. Or, were they so very different? “…each man kills the thing he loves…”

  Still, all in all, he thought if Tom had murdered Daniella Bentham he might have minded that less than his fucking her.

  Love was not a rational state, nor even most times a reasonable one.

  He had an idea that there ought to be something else for people who were in love, not just sex, which was only lust, wasn’t it? You could have that, and very nicely, too, without a modicum of love. You could have sex, and highly enjoyable sex, without even liking the other person; certainly, without any respect. Without, in fact, a word of conversation.

  But what he meant by “something else” was not just friendship, either, nor being together, talking, the pleasure in another’s company, all of which was fine, too. It’s not that there was anything wrong with any of it, really, it was simply that anyone, in or out of love, could share all those things. He just couldn’t get past the idea that there must be something different, something more and special, something transcendent for two people when they were in that transcendent state. The dying for love, the killing for love, the way people did in those old fashioned sagas. Tristan and Isolde, Violetta de Valery, Heathcliff and Cathy.

  DEADLY DREAMS 101

  Of course, people didn’t talk that way anymore, or even think that way. Maybe they never had, except in novels and operas. It was too over the top. Silly, he supposed, though the idea of dying for love did strike him as awfully romantic, in its old fashioned way.