FOUR

“TELL ME,” THE detective said, leaning toward me, “what happened after you first became Richard and then he became you again? How did it change you?”

We were sitting at my table in Antonio’s. It was a corner table out of the view of most of the others, although it was on a landing raised above the main floor. Vincent Antonio had designed his restaurant with a simple, but elegant decor: red satin drapes over the small panel windows, white tiled floors and synthetic gray stone walls. The small cast iron tables were covered with white silk tablecloths. The seats were cushioned. There were wall lamps and a very subdued set of crystal chandeliers. All of the tables had candles in red or yellow glass sleeves.

The music consisted of choral pieces like the Carmina Burana or arias from famous Italian operas. People who dined at Antonio’s kept their voices down. It wasn’t like the typical open, bright and noisy California restaurant with bright Southwestern colors.

I smiled at my detective. Ever since our arrival, waiters and waitresses, and Vincent Antonio himself, had been falling all over themselves to please me. Mayer had become every inch the moth hovering about the light of my smile. He enjoyed basking in my celebrity.

“You’re sure you want to hear all these nitty-gritty details? Most men, inferior men, would be bored.”

“Try me,” he said, lifting his wine glass. He peered over it as he drank. I could feel his mind poised like the mind of a marksman taking aim. Where was all this leading? What exactly was he trying to find out? I was beginning to enjoy the intellectual tennis. My serve.

“All right.” I took a deep breath and recalled. “I awoke the morning after my first conversion aware that Richard had been in my room and that what had once been solely my room was now our room. Yet, I did not resent the changes he had made. Things that he had removed were things I now saw as part of my preadolescent childhood. Although the room was distinctly less feminine, it hadn’t been turned into something solely masculine. It was truly androgynous.

“My closet had been divided into two parts with Richard’s clothing on the left and mine on the right. Without having to check first, I knew which drawers in the dressers were his drawers, now containing his socks, his underwear and T-shirts.

“Some of my things, mementos of junior high school experiences, stacks of perfumed letters I had received from my girlfriends, dolls and dolls’ clothing were placed on the floor of the closet toward the rear. It didn’t anger me, for I felt as if I had grown up overnight. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I discerned changes in my face, especially in my eyes. There was a new look of sophistication, a glint in my gaze that suggested a first-hand knowledge of intimate experiences.”

“But weren’t they Richard’s intimate experiences and not yours?” he asked quickly. He was snappy in his return, hoping to make a point.

“I told you we can share things, most things. In truth my metamorphosis had turned my eyes into two windows, and when I looked in the mirror, I thought I could see through them, see down a stream of history that flowed from the beginning of time. Images and visions of beautiful Androgyne passed before me. I saw men and women passionately embracing one another, turning and fitting themselves every which way to reach for some ultimate ecstatic moment. I sensed that I had inherited much knowledge and experience and this awareness aged me in moments.

“‘Experiences, wisdom, poetry,’ Janice would tell me, ‘link us together like some long, thick, but invisible umbilical cord.’

“In my newer, more powerful and far more vivid imagination, I envisioned this rope of flesh pulsating with the blood of a thousand Androgyne. Spaced along its surface from its origin outward were the scars marking where each Androgyne had fed on the cord; and out on its forward section, extending into infinity, were the nodules marking the birth of what would someday be new Androgyne.”

The detective grimaced.

“Where did you get these grotesque images?” he wondered aloud and then turned to his wine as if seeking comfort in its warmth and flavor.

“My ability to conjure such images didn’t surprise me. All of my senses had been heightened, enabling me to bring to life every aspect of my environment.

“When I looked at Richard’s things, I saw him. In everything he touched, in all that was distinctly his, he had left a print of himself. His face, his eyes, his smile and laugh were all about me. Even though he now was submerged within my identity and being, the essence of him was still present with sufficient intensity to give me the understanding that everything I had once had, everything that had been solely mine, was now his and mine. My world had truly been split in half, and I sensed that I would no longer feel complete unless I could somehow share what I had with him.”

“Let me ask you something,” the detective said. It was a poorly disguised attempt at something spontaneous. I knew he had spoken with some psychiatric expert and come away with a number of questions to pose, but I didn’t mind at the moment. I was eager to meet the challenge, to see what sort of weak strategy he and his so-called specialists could come up with. “When you’re not Richard, do you ever think as Richard or hear Richard’s voice?”

“At times. All Androgyne do. It’s like someone whispering in your ear. You’ll turn around, forgetting for the moment that he can’t be entirely separate from you, and you will look for him in crowds or among your friends. You might,” I added smiling, “reply.”

“And if someone hears you … an inferior?”

“I pretend I’m thinking aloud.” I leaned toward him sharply and seized his hand. The abrupt movement took him by surprise and he nearly dropped the glass of wine he held in his other. “Don’t you see,” I said emphatically, “he haunts me.”

He gulped down some more wine and I released his hand and leaned back again.

“Do you do the same thing to Richard? Speak to him? Haunt him?”

Good question, I thought. He was trying to see if I could have influenced Richard, perhaps have prevented him from killing Michael, or for that matter, any of the others.

I leaned back and gazed over the room. I didn’t want the detective to see the tears that had come into my eyes. I drew them back, buried them under my lids and took a deep breath. Then I slipped my Ingrid Bergman natural smile over my face and fingered the silverware as I stared down at the table.

“No. It’s not the same. The male in us is more insecure. He will need to reinforce his existence. Instinctively, he will know that he will be the first to go.”

“Like this Mary who could no longer become William after she had had her menopause?”

“Exactly,” I said, looking up sharply. He wasn’t just toying with me. He was keeping track of all the details. I was impressed.

The waiter brought our appetizers.

“Good-looking shrimp,” Detective Mayer remarked. “Not like the stuff I get at Mike’s, a small bar and grill near the station. Sort of a hangout for us police types.”

“I know your hangouts,” I said.

“Oh?” He started to chew his shrimp and stopped. “You’re not trying to tell me that there are … police who are your kind?”

“That’s precisely what I’m telling you.”

He resumed chewing, nodding thoughtfully.

“Why did you decide to have Richard keep a diary?”

“He was doing it anyway, in a sense.”

“What d’ya mean?” He ate slowly, enjoying the succulent flavors. I decided he was a man of great passion, this detective. He submerged himself fully in his pleasures and was the kind of a man who would suck the meat clean off the bone.

“He was writing me letters.” The detective stopped chewing.

“You mean sending you mail?”

“Of course not.” I had to laugh. A couple at the table just to the right of us looked our way. I saw they had the look of people who had grown bored with each other and whenever they went to dinner, tuned themselves in to other people in the hope of finding someone or something more interesting than themselves. Whenever I saw couples like this, I envisioned them as echoes dying out as they dropped through the dark and lonely caverns of time. To be married and lonely had to be a torment, I thought.

“I would awaken and find them waiting for me on the desk in our room. Naturally, I had no memory of their being written. I was supposed to destroy them after reading them, but I tried hiding them in a shoe box in our closet or in a pillowcase, or wrapped in my panties. Wherever I hid them, he discovered them and burned them. It was a game we played.

“Of course, there is one he didn’t destroy—his last letter to me; for he hasn’t yet returned to find it and burn it.”

“Can I see it?”

“Eventually,” I said. “I stuck it in his diary. It’s after the last entry and it pertains to his latest…” I hesitated to use the word “hunt” in the androgynous sense, for I knew that Richard hadn’t gone on a typical hunt to feed so he could live on. This was a pure act of jealousy and revenge.

“Tell me more about the letters,” he asked.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. What did he write about?”

“In the beginning his letters were like the letters an older brother might write to his younger, but budding sister. Like most men, he saw himself as wiser and far more sophisticated when it came to male-female relations. After all, he had emerged and had been the one to go on the hunt and get the kill, so it was just natural for him to assume he knew more.”

“He described all his kills, then?”

“Not all, some. The ones he found more interesting than others. Don’t worry,” I said, “I remember a lot of detail from those letters and I’ll tell you some of it.”

He nodded, a look of appreciation on his face.

“That morning after I awoke and made all the discoveries about our room, I found his first letter on the desk, placed right next to my schoolbooks so I wouldn’t miss it.”

“Let me ask you this,” Detective Mayer said, “you say you have different fingerprints. Do you have different handwriting?”

“Of course. You still don’t understand that we are two different people, two entirely different people.”

He saw the anger in my eyes. He wasn’t this dense; he just didn’t want to understand.

“I’m sorry, I…”

“You’re just like any other arrogant man: You can’t accept the fact that God created something more wonderful than you.”

“He created you. I accept that. I’m just having trouble accepting Richard.”

“Um.”

“Hey,” he said, leaning toward me. “Don’t blame me for not wanting to see you become a man.”

We stared at each other for a moment and then I smiled. He was a little more complicated than he seemed to be, my detective.

“Getting back to the handwriting … I thought he had a fine, thin handwriting, in much more artistic script than mine. The ends of his words all had little sweeps at the base of the final letters. At first, that made it difficult to read, for the words seemed connected. But I quickly got used to it. I have his very first letter memorized. Do you want to hear it?”

“Very much.” He leaned back, folded his arms just under his chest, and waited.

I closed my eyes. When I did so, I could hear Richard reading me the letter in his voice.

Dear Clea,

Today you are beginning school as a woman. I can tell you that the boys in your class will be a little intimidated. They won’t be pushing and punching and joking around with you in the same way. They will stand back and do things to one another to fight for your attention.

Older boys, however, will approach you directly, expecting you to swoon. Many will try to take advantage of your innocence. Be alert and remember what they are after. It’s not a conquest, conquering you; it’s conquering their own innocence, their own insecurity. Men have always seen women as prey. It should come as no surprise then that the androgynous men literally hunt.

I know this sounds like a big brother preaching to a younger sister, but I can’t help but want to give you the benefit of my masculine viewpoint.

Forgive me for my condescending tone.

Love,

Richard

“Love, Richard,” I repeated, barely doing more than mouthing it.

I opened my eyes. Detective Mayer was staring at me intensely, his mouth slightly open.

“When you say that from memory…”

“Yes?”

“Your face, it seemed to change for a few moments.” He shook his head. “Must be the dim lights, the wine.”

“No,” I said. “Richard was probably using the moment to reach out. It’s as if I provided him with a window, a hole in the ice, and for a moment, he could come up for air.”

I shook my head and sighed.

“I couldn’t help it. The memory of that first letter … seeing his signature. You can’t begin to understand, but when you ask if our handwriting is different…”

“Yes?”

“Don’t you see? The sense of him being a whole, separate person was embodied in the way he wrote his name. It was so unlike the way I would write my own.” My heart was pounding. Perhaps I was going too far, reminiscing too vividly. I felt like a suicidal person stepping up to a precipice and then pulling herself back.

“What did you do with that first letter?”

“I put it in the top drawer of the desk. A day later, it was gone.”

“Maybe you had just misplaced it.”

“No. Richard had emerged and found it. He told me so in his next letter and asked … no,” I said pausing and smirking, “ordered me not to keep any correspondence.”

“What was he afraid of?”

“Someone like you, perhaps.”

“Or you,” the detective countered. That was good; that was brilliant. I looked at him with different eyes. This man wore many faces. I was beginning to think that he lived within a prism and it wasn’t possible to see clearly who he really was. Perhaps that came from his work, his need to win the confidence of those he questioned and suspected.

I wanted to warn him of the dangers, tell him that it was possible to lose track of who you really were. You could spend your whole life looking into mirrors, searching for the truth of your identity and seeing only one false face after another. Visual amnesia could terrify your very soul, for without a name, the soul would wander aimlessly from door to door, never sure which one opened on home.

The waiter, a dark-haired man with a face as pale as an unlit candle, brought our food. His lips were so red, I was sure he had painted them with a trace of lipstick. I could see he made the detective uncomfortable. Mayer sat back and looked the other way while we were being served.

“So many of your kind are not sure if they want to be male or female,” I told him when the waiter left us. “Why should you be surprised at learning about the Androgyne?”

“You’re right. Did you see that guy’s fingernails?”

“Maybe it’s a woman.” It wasn’t, but I wanted him to wonder.

“Christ. You sure this place is sanitary?”

I threw my head back and laughed.

“Sexual deviation doesn’t make its home in filth. Some of the fags, dikes, homos, gays—whatever term you want to use—are the most immaculate people I know.”

“I suppose,” he said and cut into his veal. I dipped my spoon and fork into my angel hair.

“What are you thinking about or remembering now?” he asked.

“Why?”

“You’ve been sitting there, smiling and twirling your angel hair for nearly a minute.”

“I was remembering rushing to school to see Alison the day after Richard had emerged and hunted.

“Of course, she knew instantly. We simply stood there, staring into one another’s eyes. The corridors were usually so noisy in the morning: students rushing in from their buses, lockers slamming, people shouting to one another, teachers monitoring the halls and demanding less roughhousing and noise, bells ringing. Yet, we heard none of it; only our own voices.

“‘His name is Richard,’” I said. She nodded, her eyes filled with happiness for me. ‘But tell me,’ I asked her quickly, ‘did Nicholas leave anything for you to read?’ You should have seen the look on her face, the envy.

“‘To read?’ she said. ‘What?’

“‘A letter? Advice?’

“‘No.’ She was practically in tears. Of course, I regretted telling her immediately, but how was I to know? Of course, I thought that everything happening to me had happened to her.”

The detective nodded, chewing harder.

“I told her Nicholas would surely leave her notes or letters, too, but instinctively I knew he wouldn’t. I knew that what had begun between Richard and myself was unique, even to Androgyne; and I sensed that I should be more discreet about it. The others wouldn’t understand and might even feel threatened by it.”

“Threatened? Why threatened?”

“Unusual or uncharacteristic behavior might lead to discovery, exposure. There was and has never been any doubt what would happen then.”

“What?”

“Your kind would hunt us down, exterminate us. Consequently, we don’t tolerate deviants in our race.”

He nodded, thoughtful. Then his eyes brightened. I knew what he was going to ask.

“What about you?”

“It’s complicated,” I replied. I finally lifted my angel hair to my lips. “But after a while, you will understand and appreciate why I am doing this.”

“I appreciate it already,” he kidded. “This food is fantastic. I’ve got this Italian buddy whose mother makes the best baked lasagna I ever ate, but even she can’t make food like this. I mean it’s not what you would call authentic Italian. It’s … it’s…”

“Gourmet,” I said.

“Yeah, gourmet.” He ate from his pasta side dish, rolling his eyes to indicate how much he enjoyed the food.

“Anyway,” I continued, “right from the beginning, I felt a great need to protect Richard. There would be secrets between us, secrets I would share with no one until I had met William, because I sensed he was no threat.”

“What do you mean? Why wasn’t he a threat?”

“He was in the autumn of his androgynous life. The spirit in the blood had slowed down. He rarely went on hunts anymore. The change was more for the sake of visiting himself than anything else. And he had taken a sort of grandfatherly interest in me. There was no competition between us.

“Not that competition is bad, you understand. It’s natural, good. Young Androgyne are like two wild horses, challenging each other’s endurance, speed. It sharpens them both.”

“So this envy of Alison’s didn’t damage your friendship?”

“Hardly. She wanted to know what sort of advice Richard had given me. I told her it was advice to the lovelorn. And then I added, ‘the nerve—him giving advice to me as if men know more than women when it comes to sex.”

“I bet Alison liked that.”

“Very perceptive. She loved it. Once again, we were allies.

“‘Nicholas wouldn’t dare impose his views on me,’ she declared.

“I told her after a while, Richard wouldn’t either.

“We laughed, pressing our shoulders against each other. Mr. Thornbee, a math teacher on morning hall duty, saw us together. His gray-black eyebrows lifted and the wrinkles in his forehead deepened into dark incisions. His lower lip looked much smaller than his upper to me because he had a small chin and a face that looked as though someone had squeezed it between a powerful forefinger and thumb while it was forming.

“Although he was nearly sixty-five and almost asexual to me, I sensed a male’s interest and curiosity in the way he looked at us now. Something dormant had been stirred in him. Perhaps it was only the memory of what it had once been, but it was enough to bring a flush to his face and a brightness to his eyes.

“‘Girls,’ he finally said and then paused as though he had forgotten why on earth he had said it. ‘I … you had better get a move on if you don’t want to be late for homeroom.’

“‘Oh yes. Thank you, Mr. Thornbee,’ I said. There was something in the way I turned my shoulder and gazed back at him that brought a smile to his lips. Alison sensed it too.

“Then we both swept our hair back and walked down the corridor, side by side, strutting with so much androgynous confidence that those who stood before us stepped back to let us pass, remaining some distance behind us. It was almost as if they could sense there were four of us and not two moving through the school hallway.”

I went back to my food. The detective sat staring at me for a few moments, his face locked in a gentle, almost loving smile. It was as if he could feel what it was like to be a young girl and have a close friend, one with whom you could share your thoughts and feelings, your fears and dreams. You could pass your most intimate thoughts between you as easily as you could pass lipstick. That was a wonderful thing, a wonderful time. Free of inhibitions, we marched brazenly into each new day, unafraid of being naked, eager to do whatever we could to bring the quiver of ecstasy into our flesh.

After a moment Detective Mayer emptied his wine and sat back.

“This has been one of the finest meals I have ever had,” he said.

“It’s the company.”

He laughed.

“Maybe.” He looked about. “I like this place; I really do. I didn’t think I would when we first came in, but now … it sort of wears on you like a new pair of shoes. You break them in and never want to give them up. It’s that way with everything that’s new I suppose.”

“Very much so. William put it another way. He said, ‘Be careful how you lose your virginity, for you will feel that exact moment first, each and every time you make love after.’

“Freud said it another way,” I continued. “He said there are four people in every love affair, the woman the man first fell in love with and the man the woman first fell in love with, as well as each other. Do you understand?”

“How the hell did you get all that out of my new pair of shoes?”

“Everything, one way or another, relates to sex. Did you ever have a foot massage?”

“No.”

“Well, if you did, you would see how slipping your foot into a shoe that fits comfortably is a very erotic thing.”

“Jesus.”

“Take your shoe off,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Go on. Take off your shoe and sock and give me your foot under the table.”

“You’re kidding.” He looked around to see if anyone had overheard. Even if anyone had, they wouldn’t have shown it. “Should I?”

“Do something dangerous, Detective Mayer. Go for it,” I taunted. He thought for a moment and then leaned down to slip off his shoe and his sock. I felt for his naked foot and placed it in my lap. Then, slowly, I began to massage his sole. He closed his eyes.

“Oh man,” he moaned. “I never would have believed it could feel so good.”

The detective insisted on paying for our dinner. He claimed he could write it off on his expense account.

“Despite my exposing my very sole to you,” he punned, “this is an investigation.”

“Every time a woman and a man make love or merely caress, it’s an investigation,” I told him.

I didn’t drive straight home after we left Antonio’s. First, I took him up the coast, driving very fast so that the wind whipped around us. The moonlight was so bright on the water; it was like a long finger of fire burning from the beach to the horizon. About ten miles north of Malibu, I pulled off the highway where there was enough room on the shoulder of the road to park and gaze out over the water.

“Beautiful night,” Detective Mayer said. “Makes me want to be young again, a teenager on his first date. You don’t live any longer than normal people, do you?” he asked.

“No, and as I explained, the male counterpart lives even less than a so-called normal male.”

“Why wasn’t it the other way around? As I remember it, God made Adam first and Eve only when Adam was lonely, right? How come the female half of you guys gets to live longer?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s just the way it is. You don’t have all the answers for your kind, do you?”

“Hey, don’t get testy. Just asking. Mind if I smoke?”

“Not in my car.”

He shrugged. “It’s all right; I’m trying to stop. So,” he said, “tell me more about those early days, when you first became Richard.”

“Those early days,” I said and smiled. I understood why he wished he could be a teenager again. There was such excitement in every discovery, in every change.

“My first menstruation and subsequent metamorphosis had hastened my female development, just as Alison’s had hastened hers. During the next five days, I thought I could actually feel my body growing and molding.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, I’m serious. In fact, one night I awoke because there was a tightness in my chest that made it hard to breathe. I began to panic and sat up quickly with a small scream. It was Dimitri who came to my door. He had just returned from a hunt in San Diego.”

“San Diego? Why San Diego? Wasn’t there enough prey for him here?” the detective asked, sounding surprisingly bitter.

“He had met someone and the pursuit took him to San Diego. Hey, we just don’t go after anybody, you know. Confident predators are selective, choosey. Why eat hamburger when you can have steak?”

“Well, what does the male Androgyne look for in prey—big tits, long legs, pretty face?”

I shook my head.

“Just like all the others, you measure a woman in terms of what you see on the surface. Your dicks make you blind, dull your perception. You lack insight. I suppose that’s why I’ve come to appreciate some of my gay men friends. Unobstructed by a normal male’s hormones, they look at the whole woman, see her potential as a person rather than only as a good lay.

“But to answer your question, male Androgyne see the essence of the woman, her life force. Sex is only a doorway through which we enter the heart and steal the fuel that makes it beat. Can you understand that?”

He looked skeptical and confused in the light of the moon, but there was something in his eyes, a twinkling that confused me for the moment. He laughed quickly.

“I’ll think about it. Hey, some of the things you’ve been telling me take a little digestion,” he said rubbing his stomach. “Like that gourmet meal. You don’t just chew and swallow.”

“Very good.”

“Go back to your story. You had screamed.”

“Yes. Dimitri came to the door and flipped the light switch. Then he rushed into my room. I was drenched in sweat, my nightgown clinging to my skin. I looked up at him and tried to take deep breaths. Of course, he knew immediately what was happening.”

“‘Stay calm,’ he said and sat beside me, taking my hand into his. ‘It will pass,’ he said reassuringly. ‘You will be all right.’

“I told him I had had a terrible nightmare. A giant hand had taken hold of me and was squeezing me.” I laughed.

“What’s so funny?” the detective asked.

“Dimitri said, ‘Perhaps it wasn’t a nightmare. Perhaps God is molding you this very night.’”

“Doesn’t sound like a nightmare; sounds like a nice way to explain it,” the detective said. I was surprised at his reaction, but continued my story.

“Dimitri smiled and leaned forward to kiss me on the cheek. I could smell the scent of the woman he had been with. Her perfume, her hair spray, her very essence was pungent. He was still in the process of absorbing her and that was what was keeping him from metamorphosing back to Janice.”

“You mean … the woman from San Diego that he…”

“Yes. He saw that I was soaking wet and told me to get up and shower and change into a clean, dry nightgown.

“I nodded and went into the bathroom. When I drew the wet garment over my head and gazed at myself in the mirror, I saw that my bosom had developed and my waist had narrowed. I turned and noticed how much tighter and curvier my buttocks had become.”

“This happened overnight?”

“Yes, and because these were changes that would come gradually to the inferior females, the sight of them frightened me at first. It was almost as if I had been transferred to another female form.”

“Understandable.”

“But as I turned about and considered myself, I grew more and more conceited. I was perfect; I was beautiful. I thought I was even better looking than Alison. Perhaps I was the prettiest androgynous female there was. The very sight of myself took my breath away,” I said and smiled, recalling the memory of those first images. The moonlight on the ocean glittered. I stroked my hair and took a deep breath, sighing like a lovesick teenager; only, I was in love with myself.

“Well, as far as modesty goes, you’re not much different from any other female, I suppose,” Detective Mayer said. I ignored him because I was still lost in my reverie. “Hello?” he said drawing me back.

“When I awoke the next morning,” I said, “I felt taller, fuller, and far stronger. I had a ravenous appetite and ate two portions of scrambled eggs. Janice wasn’t at all surprised, although she had no memory of what Dimitri had said to me the night before.”

“Why not? It was her as a man, right?”

“She wouldn’t remember,” I snapped.

“All right, all right. I’m sorry. So you woke up in this beautiful body. Then what?”

“What Richard had told me in his letter would happen began to happen that day at school. The boys in my class buzzed around me like flies longing to light on a piece of cake. They approached and pulled back, found reason to touch me, drew closer and then snapped away as if they sensed I could clamp down on each and every one of them and claim them forever. I couldn’t go from class to class without one of them coming up beside me to say something. Before the day was out, I realized I had become the object of some game they were playing. They were competing with one another to determine who would win me over first.

“Of course, Alison had been having a similar thing happen to her. She had already had a conversation about all this with her mother.

“‘We don’t want to bring undue attention to ourselves by becoming snobs,’ Alison said. ‘But we have to be careful about our relationships. Beatrice says that we are like newborn colts, unsteady on our feet, unsure about our strength. The adolescent still in us wants us to have normal teenage relationships, but we can’t have them. The longing will pass quickly,’ she assured me. I remember we were sitting by ourselves in the cafeteria…”

“Now wait a minute. Hold on,” the detective said turning to me. “You told me Androgyne are only deadly in their male form, right? I mean, you don’t make love to a man and … suck the life out of him, do you?”

“No, but we have a greater sexual capacity, a greater sexual appetite and things can happen sometimes, if we don’t control ourselves.”

“Things? What things?”

“I’m getting to it,” I said.

“Wait, wait, just tell me up front. These things, they can be deadly to the man with whom you are making love?”

“Yes.”

“Shit. And I had such great plans for the night.”

“But not always deadly,” I said, laughing. I was beginning to find him delightful, my detective.

“Okay. Go on.”

“Something remarkable but insidious had been occurring all that week—the girls who had been our friends were drifting away. Actually, it was more like they were standing still and we were pulling away. Things that made them laugh, things that titillated them and things that annoyed them were suddenly very insignificant to us. We no longer sympathized or agreed, nor had we any interest in doing the things we had all done together before.

“Like two foreigners who had just entered the school, we sat alone, speaking in our own language, while our old friends watched us, their eyes changing from confusion to anger and finally to indifference, returning once again, to mirrors of themselves. For us, they no longer existed. We were too involved in our own discoveries. And we were light years ahead of them when it came to emotions and desire.

“Before Richard’s genesis and my subsequent maturation, I had fantasized being this boy’s or that boy’s girlfriend. I had often dreamt of being desired by older boys just the way I was being desired now. The feelings weren’t completely gone, although they were weakened because most of the older teenage boys looked immature to me.”

“There goes your and Alison’s normal adolescent years, huh?”

“Almost. There were two senior boys, Paul Slattery and Jimmy Burton. Both boys were well over six feet, Paul being six-four and Jimmy, six-five. They were the school’s basketball stars.

“Before our conversions, like most of the junior high girls, Alison and I, too, had gone to the games and watched them lead our team to victory. We, too, had stood by in the halls and gazed longingly with fantasy eyes as they walked by with older girls, laughing, seemingly living on another level, worlds beyond the level we were on. They were the heroes, the movie stars, the celebrities of our school, respected and adored by so many, even by some teachers.

“They were handsome and bright, each on his way toward winning academic scholarships as well as athletic, both often likened to someone like Bill Bradley, a Rhodes scholar who had become a professional basketball player and then a senator from New Jersey.

“Although I no longer idolized them the way other girls my age did, I sensed their power and freshness in a new and more involving way. They weren’t as handsome and glamorous as they were delicious. Their health and sexual prowess turned them into a delicacy. I was drawn to them the way someone might be drawn to a gourmet meal, not that I had become cannibalistic in a literal sense. Rather, I had become sensitive to their masculine richness. I craved them the way someone with a weakness for sweets might crave a chocolate.

“Standing between them and very close to them, I was able to drink in the scent of their bodies and vividly imagine the taste of their lips. Whenever one or the other spoke, I concentrated on his mouth, feeling myself drawn to his tongue. Each had a way of accenting something he said by bumping his hip or shoulder against my hip or shoulder. What they said didn’t matter. I heard only the rhythms in their voices and nodded and smiled at the proper times.

“Their faces looked so shiny and soft. I felt as if I could dip my fingers into their cheeks and scoop out their tongues. No matter how I tried to avoid it, all my images were grotesque, a mixture of sex and violence. And, unfortunately, the same was true for Alison.”

“Why unfortunately?” he asked.

“One day, shortly after my conversion, I found Alison talking to them after school. Instinctively, I sensed some terrible danger in the intimate way she had wedged herself between them, rubbing her hips against theirs, stroking their arms and chests, tormenting them with her eyes. Even all the way across the hall, I could feel the heat and sensed something happening within myself.

“It was like … like a claw scratching at the inside of my chest, digging its way out and I thought if this was happening to me only gazing at her with the boys, what could be happening to her?

“I rushed to her side and pulled her away, but neither Paul nor Jimmy would give up pursuit. They followed us, trying to get us to stop and enter a conversation. Alison glared at me when I turned back to drive them away.

“‘Why did you encourage them?’ I demanded.

“‘I didn’t,’ she protested, but her voice was deeper and I had the distinct sense that Nicholas was emerging. It was the most frightening thing.”

“You mean right there in the school hallway?” the detective asked almost in a whisper.

“Yes. When I looked at her face, I saw almost imperceptible changes taking place: the metamorphosis of her eyes and mouth, even the faint traces of a beard and mustache. My heart began to pound. Paul and Jimmy were right behind us.”

“What did you do?”

“I pulled her into the girls’ room, thinking if I could splash her face with cold water…”

“Yes?”

“But the boys were under a spell. It was after school, no one was around … they followed us into the bathroom. I tried being annoyed, but Alison thought this was funny and even more exciting. When I looked at her hands, I saw the fingers had thickened and there was distinct hair over her wrist, darker, coarser.”

“It was happening?”

“Yes, Nicholas was emerging.”

“What did you do?”

“I thought if I drew the boys from her, I might stop the metamorphosis, but I succeeded only in accelerating it. I tried being nice to them, reasoning with them, promising them we would go someplace with them if they would leave the bathroom. That stimulated them further. Paul turned to me and Jimmy drew Alison into a booth.”

“And…”

“I realized it was too late. Something terrible was about to happen. I thought quickly, driven by a need to protect the Androgyne. I talked Paul into leaving the bathroom with me, promising to go for a ride with him and clearly suggesting that I would agree to park somewhere and have sex. He was so excited about it, he nearly walked through the door.

“I looked back once before we left. Alison’s ankles were already thicker.”

“Good grief, you mean she was changing into a male in the booth while she was with this boy?”

“Yes.”

“But wouldn’t he realize it?”

“He was mesmerized by now and would see what he fantasized. At least that’s the way it’s been explained to me. Men are like that you know; Pygmalions always sculpting their Galateas and making love to the images rather than the women, and then, when they realize the woman is just a woman, they grow depressed and start sculpting another image.”

“And women don’t do that, I suppose?”

“They do, but men do it more. Men are more in control of visual images in this country—advertisements, magazines, film and television. They make composites: take the lips of this model, the breasts of this actress, the legs of another … and create their dream girls.”

“Yeah, yeah. So you left this boy making love to his dream in a school toilet. What did you do?”

“I succeeded in getting Paul out of the building. We went for a drive and I asked him to stop to get me an ice cream. When he did, I slipped away and rushed back to the school, but it was too late.”

“Too late? Why?”

“The janitor had already discovered Jimmy’s body. His head had been submerged into the toilet and he was drowned. An autopsy later also revealed his neck had been broken.”

“Jesus. Why? Why did she do it?”

“She didn’t. Nicholas did.”

“Why?” the detective asked.

I took a deep breath and turned to him.

“For the same reason essentially that Richard killed Michael.”

“Barrington? The publicist?”

“Yes. He was my lover.”

“But … you couldn’t stop it?”

“I thought I could,” I said softly, tears now putting everything out of focus. “But I was wrong, I was arrogant and that’s another reason why I came to you to confess.”