I will remake you into your body. Lips and nipples and clefts. You will have no hopes, no anxieties. No thoughts, no philosophy. Only flesh, only sensation. I will sprinkle spring grass in your hair, Marianne, and force my tongue into your mouth; pour wine into the hollow of your throat and drink it as it spills down between your breasts and over your belly; I’ll slide my cock easy into you and rub velvety rose petals against your clit…
“And I’ll be the king of Romania,” Weiss murmured, raising the whiskey to his lips again.
It was night now, a cool mist at the panes of the bay window. He sat in his favorite armchair, facing out on his view of the city, the Victorian town houses across the way, the haloed streetlamps on the steeply descending hill. He held his glass just beneath his nose, savored the stinging scent of the malt, the Macallan’s that he loved. He sipped the surface of it, then let his gaze return to the papers on his lap.
They were the e-mails to Professor M. R. Brinks. The initials, it turned out, stood for Marianne Rose.
The world doesn’t need any more professors, believe me, Marianne Rose. It doesn’t need any more lawyers, any more corporate queens or drones. But most of all, my darling, what the world doesn’t need is any more big thoughts, any more grand ideas or brilliant theories that are utterly convincing and utterly untrue, that chain the free-floating mind into tormented templates, self-fulfilling patterns of torturous and tortured lies. Why do you cling to them, woman? To your theoretical religion? Is it because actions themselves aren’t beautiful? Is it because you can’t tolerate the intensity of sensation, the moment of desire? The moment of desire, Marianne! That’s what you’re yearning for, you know it is. The world is sick of the sight of you cowering behind your tailored suits. The world craves you naked on your knees with your round ass and your wet purple pussy lifted to me. I crave you that way…
“Foof,” said Weiss softly.
He made a sardonic face to himself as if he were beyond these things. But the images stirred him. There was sweat on the back of his neck, and under the papers his cock was pressed hard against the front of his pants. He lifted his scotch again, lifted his eyes again. He didn’t drink but, for a long moment and then another moment more, he merely sat like that, merely looked out the bay window, unseeing.
Aroused, his mind drifted back to Julie. To that video he had of her, that ten-second loop, a come-on for some kind of Internet site. He’d seen it often enough now so that he could run it in his imagination. She was crooking her finger at the camera, beckoning. Dressed in a lacy white outfit that was somehow prim and seductive at once. Her cheeks were pink and creamy, and her eyes were deep and blue. And there was an expression on her face—dreamy, distant, angelic—that squeezed poor Weiss’s heart every time he looked at it.
He pressed his glass to the side of his face, felt the cool touch of it. He broke off his fantasies and let his hard-on subside before he dropped his gaze to the page in his lap again.
Don’t try to sell your cant to me. You know I’m right, Marianne. You know I am. You’ve locked yourself in your dark ideas, hidden yourself away in a darkness of theories haunted by the twisted shadows of your desire. You think you hate your desires, but you only hate their twisted shadows. Crawl to me, and I will make you suffer and come until you’re only your body again. We’ll make love for slow hours and when you’re weary I’ll send you to gather young girls for me and you’ll lie by my side on the banks of a river and watch with me as they bathe and caress each others’ nakedness. Then I’ll go down into the water and be with them and you’ll watch without jealousy as they pleasure me and soon you yourself will be nothing but wetness and a craving ache. And then I’ll bring you down to the water too and you will be just one pussy in a row of pussies…
Weiss blustered like a horse, set the pages aside, tossed them onto the lampstand beside him with a dismissive gesture. Agitated, he stood. Carried his scotch to the center of the room. Paced to another window, peered out at another angle on the street, a glimpse over the building tops at the lights of Russian Hill.
His own reflection overlay the scene. His unattractive, hangdog face. His focus shifted to it. He made a grimace of distaste.
Then all at once his pulse skipped as he caught sight of a movement on the street below him. Something—someone—was watching him—there, at the corner to his right. He looked fast but no, there was no one—or whoever it was was gone. Probably nothing. An optical illusion. A late pedestrian he hadn’t noticed before. Still, he watched the corner a long moment, his heartbeat quick. He knew the man called Ben Fry would never stop hunting for her…
He made a noise in his throat, “Ach.” He faced his reflection again, sneered into his own eyes. God, he hated this. Standing here afraid of movements in the dark. Scanning the dark for dangers and plots and conspiracies. It reminded him of his father. He hated to think there was any trace of that old-style Jewish faintheartedness in himself. Hell, he had kicked down doors in his time, traded gunfire with gangbangers. He didn’t need this shit.
He thought: I should just forget her. It was ridiculous, embarrassing. What did he think he was up to, obsessing over sex thoughts about a woman he’d never met? Like some kind of kid, like some kind of twelve-year-old or something. At his age, he should be a man of substance. A husband, a father. At his age, mooning around, calling up whores—it wasn’t funny anymore. A person could die alone that way, without anyone to care at all about him. It was a pretty goddamned frightening thing to contemplate.
He thought. I should find her. He wanted to get in his car right now, track her down, start looking at least. He could lose anyone who tried to tail him. He could handle the man called Ben Fry when the time came. He should at least make an effort instead of standing here like this.
But he remembered what she had said to him.
You can’t come to me. Do you understand? Do you? You would only bring him with you.
If he made a mistake, if she died because of something he did…
He turned away from the window, undecided. He looked over at the pages on the lampstand, the e-mails to Professor Brinks.
The world craves you naked on your knees…
No, he couldn’t go on with those tonight. It was too much. They were beginning to get under his skin.
He went into the bedroom. Turned on the TV. Lay back on the bed, holding his scotch glass on his stomach with one hand, the remote control in the other. He watched the sports news for the baseball scores. He left the light off. It was dark except for the wavering glow from the set. He thought: I ought to go find her. But he couldn’t make up his mind. The Giants had won again—third time in a row. Weiss’s mind drifted.
The world craves you naked on your knees with your round ass and your wet purple pussy lifted to me…
He could see Julie Wyant like that.
“Ach,” said Weiss again, disgusted with himself.
He let go of the remote control and reached out for the phone on his bedside table. He called Casey and asked her to send over a girl.