FIVE

MY DETECTIVE DID not badger me with questions. He waited for me to get myself together and then start the car so we could return to my home. The tears that had streamed down my cheeks blew off into the wind as we sped up the Pacific Coast Highway. Before we reached the hill leading up to my house, he spoke.

“I don’t think I fully realized until now just how much emotional and mental pain you are in,” he said. “I must apologize for not taking you as seriously as I should have from the start, but I’m sure you can appreciate how difficult that was for me,” he added. “I meet all sorts of people and hear all sorts of stories. Last week, I met an alien from the planet Rudor in another galaxy. He killed people for their fingernails.”

I didn’t appreciate his attempt at humor and he saw it.

“Anyway,” he continued, “I’m sorry if I appeared insensitive.”

I didn’t offer any forgiveness. At the moment his feelings were not very important to me.

“So,” he said shifting in his seat, hoping to shift out of his own discomfort as well, “does the male part of an Androgyne always get jealous of the female’s lover and kill?”

“No, not always.”

“But that’s what happened to Nicholas, right?”

“You have to remember he was still very young then and just learning how to control his emotions. Even though, as I have told you, androgynous teenagers are far more sophisticated than ordinary people at their age, they are still in some state of adolescence. Nicholas just … just lost it,” I said. I hit the button for the gate and watched it open. In the brisk breeze, the shadows cast by the moon swayed. The twisted, mangled contours looked like the odd but significant shapes on a Rorschach test.

“He just lost it? I’ll say.”

“Alison felt horrible about it afterward. I found her behind the school, just wandering about aimlessly. Nicholas had retreated immediately after his actions, cowering down in her like some mischievous little boy who knew his mischief was soon to be discovered. Alison had some of the boy’s blood on her hands, so I took her home quickly and scrubbed her fingers. Beatrice took one look at us and knew what had happened. She was very angry.

“‘I warned you,’ she said. ‘I told you to be careful and especially to stay away from boys in your own school. Didn’t I?’ She turned to me and said, ‘Let this be a lesson to you, Clea, and don’t be as impulsive as Alison is.’

“I wish she hadn’t done that sort of thing,” I said.

“What sort of thing?” the detective asked.

“Pit us against each other like that. Alison loved me and still does, but she resents me too.”

“Did she have anything to do with Michael Barrington’s death?” he asked quickly.

“No. Well, I shouldn’t say categorically no.”

“You’re not going to tell me she was jealous, are you? And she talked Richard into doing it?”

As the lights of passing cars flashed on his face, I saw his cynical smirk. I was sure it came from years and years of police work and having to confront all sorts of riffraff. It occurred to me that professions, jobs, the roles we play, all create masks in our faces, masks that fade in and fade out with an automation that dehumanizes us, makes us kin to machinery. Events or words trigger reactions that skip over thought and feeling. One moment he was feeling sorry for me and expressing a sincere compassion, and the next, he was mechanically denigrating me.

“No. What happened between Richard and me and Richard and Michael was different,” I said as we drove in.

“How so?”

I parked the car and turned to him.

“I was falling in love with Michael. It wasn’t just another sexual escapade.”

“So? I don’t understand. Why is that different?”

“Apparently, so was Richard.”

“What do you mean?” He thought a moment. “You don’t mean Richard was also in love with Michael Barrington?”

“That’s exactly what I mean. Michael had been his lover too. Actually, I found out very recently,” I added. “At first I did think it was just an incestuous jealousy.” I laughed with a maddening chill that startled the detective. “You see, even Androgyne can be blind when it comes to emotions, especially if those emotions involve other Androgyne. I had thought Richard’s motives were more sublime.”

“Incest? More sublime?”

“In a sense, yes. I thought he was thinking of me; he wanted me all for himself. But no, he wanted Michael all for himself.”

The detective shook his head.

“What happened to this built-in need to share?”

“Yes. What happened to it? I must confess, I didn’t like the idea of sharing Michael with Richard, any more than he liked the idea of sharing him with me. The difference is, I wouldn’t kill Michael over it.”

“Are you sure?” Detective Mayer asked.

“What do you mean? Why do you even ask such a thing?”

He shrugged.

“Maybe you killed Michael after all and now you are concocting this story to cover your own guilt.”

“But when I first came to you, you said it wasn’t possible for me to have committed the murder. You said it had taken great strength to do the physical damage to his body.”

“Uh-huh. That’s because I was convinced then that Richard was not only the killer of Barrington, but had committed other murders too. But I also know that women caught up in some passion have been known to achieve great physical strength.

“Just yesterday, we had a situation. A four-year-old child was hit by an automobile in West Los Angeles and pinned under the rear wheel. The child’s mother literally lifted the car off her body and pulled her out from under. Later, she didn’t recall doing it, but there were witnesses who confirmed she had.

“I’m not saying you killed Barrington. I’m just showing you how everything is possible in an infinite universe,” he added, now smiling coyly. “I’m going to need more concrete evidence that it was Richard who committed the murder and not you, of course.”

“You’ll get your evidence,” I snapped.

“Will I?” He turned from me to the house and then looked at me again.

“You want to come in for an after-dinner drink?” I asked. Actually, by then the drink was a foregone conclusion. I didn’t have to ask. Mayer’s actions, his gestures, the look in his eyes were as good as a road map showing me the way to his motives and thoughts. Most men were like my detective: transparent.

“Sure.”

We got out and walked quietly to the front door. I dug for the key in my purse, but when I put it to the lock, my hand shook. How strange, I thought. Why did I suddenly feel this anxiety?

The detective saw my fingers tremble and put his hand over mine.

“May I?” he asked. I gave him the key and he inserted it into the lock. But just before he actually turned it, a bullet came crashing into the door right between us.

“Down!” he cried pulling me toward the patio floor. He reached up and continued to turn the key so the door would open. A second shot splintered the doorjamb on our right. He pushed the door open and we quickly crawled into the house.

“Stay down,” he said, holding his palm against the small of my back. Then he drew his gun and slammed the door shut. I felt ridiculous face down on the marble floor. He stepped past me, went to the front window, pulled back the curtain in the corner and gazed into the night.

“I don’t see anyone out there,” he whispered, but he kept searching.

I got to my feet and brushed down my clothing.

“Get away from that door!” he commanded. I moved farther into the house quickly. He looked out again. “What the hell…” He turned back to me, his eyes narrowing. “You don’t look all that surprised,” he said.

“I’m not.” I put down my purse and went to the bar. He returned his pistol to its holster and followed.

“What is this? Why aren’t you in some kind of shock? We were just shot at! Twice!”

“We weren’t,” I replied as I took out the Sambuca. “I was and I don’t think they meant to kill me. Although,” I added, looking up at his confused face, “I won’t swear to that.”

“What do you mean they didn’t mean to kill you? Who didn’t mean to kill you?”

“The Androgyne. One of them anyway … whoever Alison put on it, I imagine,” I added. “Rocks?”

“What?”

“Do you want yours on the rocks?”

“Oh.” He looked back at the door. “Yeah, please. Is there a back door, a side entrance?”

“French doors off my bedroom right down this corridor,” I said pointing. “They’re the closest.”

“I’ll be right back. I want to look around.”

“Should I say be careful?”

He found his way in the dark and slipped out of the house through my French doors while I prepared his drink. A few minutes later, he knocked on the front door and I let him in.

“Nothing,” he said. He studied the door, found the hole made by the bullet, and then followed its possible trajectory and went to the wall opposite the front door. I put his drink on the bar and sat down on the stool behind it to watch him. He returned to the bar and came around searching for a knife. After he found one, he returned to the wall and dug out the bullet.

“Nine millimeter,” he said holding it up. “Ring any bells?”

“Sorry.” I shook my head.

He pocketed the bullet and returned to the bar.

“What makes you think whoever it was didn’t mean to kill you?” he asked and sat down.

“I think they just meant to frighten me out of talking to you. Androgyne rarely kill their own kind.”

He sipped his drink and shook his head, smiling. There was a twinkle in his eye.

“But isn’t that what you’re doing in a sense?”

“Not in a sense; in actuality.”

“And you can live with that?” The smile left his eyes and was quickly replaced with an intense look, a delving, searching gaze that made me feel like some kind of specimen being studied under a magnifying glass.

“No,” I said softly. “But I don’t intend to live with it. I intend to die with it.”

“Oh yes.” He nodded. “I forgot.” He looked back at the door again. “Want me to call this in, get some protection up here?”

“No point. I’m positive that whoever it was is gone by now. Besides,” I added, “you’re here and you’re protection.”

He took another, longer sip of his drink.

“I don’t feel especially protective.” He thought for a moment. “Maybe that wasn’t your Androgyne. Maybe that was just some friend of Michael Barrington’s seeking revenge. Another lover, perhaps.”

“I doubt it.” He had an impish twinkle in his eye.

“What makes you so sure?”

“I was enough for him; I’d be enough for any man, for when men make love to an androgynous female, they make love to every fantasy they’ve ever had or will have. We can be many things to a man. He has no need to go looking elsewhere.”

“Unless he’s looking to make love with another man,” he said dryly.

“So what’s your point?”

“It could have been one of his gay lovers. I just had a case like that. One of the men in a relationship was also heterosexual and in love with this woman. She drew him away from his gay lover, so his gay lover killed her. In this case maybe Barrington’s gay lover thinks you killed him and wants to kill you.”

“I don’t know,” I said. I had to admit that he was presenting a feasible possibility.

“On the other hand,” he said, still smiling, “maybe he knew about Michael’s relationship with Richard and was jealous of that and thought I was Richard coming home with you. He was aiming for me.”

“You’re the detective,” I said.

“Exactly.” He dropped his smile. “I find it hard to believe that you didn’t know that Michael Barrington had gay lovers.”

“Why?”

“Any man’s sexual history, sexual preferences must be easily discernible to you. You claim you can provide any fantasy. If I buy that and buy your so-called androgynous powers, it would follow that you look with X-ray eyes at any man and see his sexuality like no one else can. Am I right?”

I scrutinized my detective for a moment. It was as if he were growing, changing, metamorphosing himself. And all because of his short, but obviously influential relationship with me. I shouldn’t be surprised, I thought. I often had a dramatic effect on men and changed them in one way or another. The detective was getting more sophisticated, more perceptive. It was almost as if he were beginning to look at the world through my eyes too.

“Let me say I had my suspicions,” I confessed.

“But you didn’t want to believe them?”

“Probably not and that was a mistake, a weakness,” I added quickly.

“Otherwise, you would have realized earlier that Richard was his lover too?”

“I imagine. You’re getting good, Detective Mayer. Should I begin to worry?”

“About what? You’re confessing everything anyway, aren’t you? Or are you holding back something?”

“We all hold back something.” I searched his face, running my gaze over it like the beam of a flashlight over the dark driveway outside. He didn’t change expression. “There’s something you’re hiding.”

“Yeah, but I’m not the subject here. Let’s get back to you and Richard,” he said quickly. I had plucked a string, touched a tender spot. He recoiled inside his detective’s mask and switched on his investigative eyes as if he literally had a knob he could turn on his body and change channels as one would change them on a television set.

“Was Michael Barrington Richard’s first homosexual experience?”

I smiled. “Hardly.” He raised his eyebrows.

“Not you too,” he groaned.

“I said we can be many things. It’s not particularly my thing, but I won’t deny that I have done it. It’s in our nature to explore every aspect of love, every sexual avenue. Let me assure you, however, that I have never found a woman who excited me as much as a man.”

“Thank goodness for the little things.”

“But Richard’s first homosexual experience was rather extraordinary. Care to hear it?”

“I feel like I’m in one of those twenty-five-cent peep shows,” he remarked. Then he saw the look on my face. “Just kidding. Of course I want to hear it. Anything that’s part of this investigation interests me,” he added.

I went to fetch Richard’s diary and returned.

“Perhaps you would be more comfortable on the sofa,” I suggested.

“Yes. Mind if I have a little more of this?” he asked, indicating the Sambuca. “I think I’m going to need it.”

“Top off my glass too, while you’re at it.” I waited for him to bring our freshened drinks. “Thank you.” He sat beside me on the sofa and leaned back against the thick, soft arm. Then he held up his glass.

“Ready?” he said.

I sat back, turned the page, and began.

“Sometimes I am so disgusted with the hunt because there is little or no challenge. It’s like a group of so-called hunters participating in a shoot-off, a thinning out of a herd. The dumb animals are assembled in some fenced-in area and the shooters just kill and kill and kill and after a while they get satiated and then nauseated. Shooting an animal without going through the hunt is like digesting food without having eaten it.

“I remember in my early days I would put on a pair of tight black jeans, so tight that my testicles were clearly outlined in the material and my phallus pressed against the zipper like some thick snake up against the glass in a cage. I’d slick my hair back and put on a black silk shirt unbuttoned to my navel. I would wear a gold chain and then I would go up to Hollywood and hang out on the streets.

“The parade of endless cars wove down the boulevard like an incessant, run-on sentence, a true circle in which the beginning and the end were indistinguishable. No one was going anywhere. It was the going that counted. Movement meant life, excitement, freedom. I saw from the way the young men and young women gaped and scrutinized other young men and young women on the street that they were all looking for that mythical lay, the ultimate sexual encounter. It was truly going to be like shooting stupid buffalo, oblivious to the sound of the guns and the members of their herd falling around them—fat, easy targets, so ignorant of their vulnerability they took any pleasure out of the kill. One might as well shoot at trees.

“And that was the way I suddenly felt, even though car after car paused near me and young women shouted, pleaded, cajoled, some practically begging me to get into their vehicles. This was not really a hunt in any sense of the word. My all-consuming hunger had driven me to take the easiest path, but something else within me, something superior now demanded more, and a realization came over me with that same intuitive pleasure that had accompanied so many new discoveries, a realization that the deeper pleasure came not from the capture, but the hunt.

“It’s in the hunt itself that we gain our strength, our wisdom. The challenge hones and sharpens our powers. We grow when we overcome adversity.

“There was no sexual challenge here. Sex for these young people had lost its magic. It had been reduced to a form of consuming. The parade of customized automobiles with their glaringly bright colors continued, their rap music thumping, making it seem as if we all stood on the shell of some giant heart, beating beneath us. Periodically, there was a pause in the line and girls or men would be drawn into one vehicle or another, sucked up like debris to be swallowed in a vacuum cleaner. Soon afterward they groped one another in the backs of automobiles, grunting and groaning, rushing to accomplish a sexual experience just so they could make their nights complete.”

“About how old was he here?” the detective asked.

“Fifteen,” I said quickly. Richard’s words held my eyes to the page and I wanted to run them through my eyes and my brain and down the channels to my tongue and lips. I was obsessed with them. I felt my face glow as I read on.

“Disgusted with the sight, I fled to another part of the city, a quiet, residential area known as Hancock Park. The houses here, some veritable mansions, had been built with old Hollywood money. There were nineteenth-century French styles, English Tudor, colonial, a potpourri of architecture constructed at a time when wealthy people sought individuality.

“I gazed into some of the lit windows and saw, however, that many of these houses were dying from the inside out. The inhabitants, descendants of their wealthier ancestors, were unable to keep them up, yet they couldn’t afford to move out and pay the higher rents or mortgages. Walls now had blanched squares where paintings once hung, paintings that had been sold to meet expenses. The gaping holes made me think of toothless old men and indeed the worn, crinkled rugs reminded me of the dried and wrinkled skin of old women. Many of the large rooms were underfurnished, their open spaces places for ghosts to hover and mourn the old days.

“Two houses down a young man emerged to walk his dog, a gray toy poodle who looked arthritic and waddled like a duck. When it saw me, it barked frantically, the sound dying halfway up its throat. It always amused me how animals sensed the danger in us faster than their inferior masters. Even birds flitted about madly when we approached. Cats raised their backs into humps and showed their teeth. Only snakes seemed unafraid, even friendly.”

“Now why is it that I would have thought that?” the detective said with his usual sarcasm.

“It just so happens that there is a biblical explanation for that,” I replied.

“In whose Bible?”

“Yours. With a different interpretation, however. It wasn’t the devil who tempted Adam and Eve in the form of a snake; it was an Androgyne. We were there at the time, too, you know.”

“So why would they like you if they were blamed for something you did?” the detective asked quickly.

“Because men hate them and they have no one else. They’re lonely.”

He started to laugh, but I raised my long, but graceful right forefinger and leaned toward him, forcing him to stare into my eyes.

“Don’t ever underestimate the importance of loneliness, Detective Mayer. People, animals, will do anything to avoid it. It will drive them even to do things you would consider kinky or at least bizarre.” His smile quickly faded. Had I struck a vulnerable place in his heart? What were his secrets? I wondered for the first time. I smiled. “Something sound familiar?”

“Go on, read the diary.”

“I will,” I said, “but first tell me what sort of an effect seeing all this—what should we call it—degenerative behavior has on you? Do you ever wonder about the deviants? Are you ever curious about their sexual behavior, about what it is that so fascinates them?”

“It simply disgusts me,” he said. “The diary. Please.”

I held my smile on him, keeping him uncomfortably in its glow like someone caught naked in a searchlight. He unbuttoned his collar and loosened his tie.

“Well?” he pleaded.

I turned back. My back stiffened into Richard’s posture, my shoulders felt thicker, stronger. Despite myself, I couldn’t prevent him from invading me in little ways when I read his words, but it was a sacrifice, a price I was willing to pay, even though I knew there were risks.

At any point during the reading of the diary, mouthing Richard’s words and thoughts, I could metamorphose. His hold on me could grow so firm that I would fall before him as if he had my wrist in his strong hand and was twisting it, bringing me to my knees.

“As I drew closer to the young man,” I read, “I could make him out clearly in the illumination cast by the driveway lantern. He looked to be a slim, five-feet-eight or-nine-inch man with dark blond thin hair that lay haphazardly over his forehead and temples like the thatched crown of some monk. He was as pale as one who had kept himself inside copying manuscripts.

“The same lack of concern for his appearance was evident in his clothing. He wore a faded, formal white shirt, the kind that required cufflinks. He had the sleeves rolled up unevenly, revealing narrow wrists, the left of which had an old watch in a rose gold casing strapped over it. His gray cotton pants were baggy and at least two inches too short. He wore old basketball sneakers with no socks.

“What attracted me to him were his eyes, magnified somewhat under the thick lenses in clear plastic frames. It seemed as if there was another man trapped within him, gazing out through those eyes, now early morning sky blue. He cracked a smile with his soft, thin lips when he saw me.

“‘You’re lost, huh?’ he said.

“I paused before answering, seizing his attention and holding him in my scope of gravity as if he were a moon and I a planet.

“‘No. I wanted to come here. I wanted to get away from the noise and the glitter.’

“He laughed, the sound seeming to echo within him as if the person who lived there repeated everything he did and said. His dog stopped growling, but eyed me hatefully.

“‘You got away from it all right,’ he replied. He looked around, the smile frozen on his lips. Although he was amused I had come to his neighborhood to escape the activity and excitement, he looked proud of what he saw about him. It made me think again that there was someone else within him looking out, for his eyes betrayed a longing for the way things had been.

“‘You know anyone here?’ he asked quickly, remembering I was there.

“‘No,’ I said and found myself speaking as softly and as seductively as I would had I been in the presence of a beautiful inferior female.”

“Oh no,” the detective said. “I feel it coming.”

“Do you want me to stop?” I asked him. My own heart had begun to pound in anticipation. It was beating with the intensity of Richard’s heart, the thumping reverberating through my arteries and veins and echoing in every chamber in my body. It was as if I were shut up in a room of pipes and Richard himself was hammering on them. The clamor was maddening. I nearly dropped the diary and put my hands over my ears.

“No, but are you all right? You look … pale.”

“Yes, yes.” I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and drove the thumping down. Then I opened my eyes and smiled. “I’m all right.” I turned back to the pages.

“‘I’m just taking Pebbles for his short walk,’ the young man said. ‘He’s nearly seventeen years old and has lived here all his life.’

“‘I thought he looked like an old dog,’ I said. I smiled at the dog, but as soon as I looked down at him, he growled again.

“‘He’s not usually this afraid of strangers. Perhaps he smells the scent of your dog. Do you have a pet?’

“I laughed, a thin, high laugh that surprised even me.

“‘No. I don’t have time for pets. Actually, most animals don’t like me.’

“‘Really? Now that’s interesting. Animals are instinctive and very perceptive, yet you don’t look like a bad person to me. What’s your name?’

“‘Richard,’ I said. ‘Richard Cave.’

“‘Cave? I knew a Caver, but not a Cave.’

“‘What’s your name?’

“‘Gordon Lathrop Cardwell. The name makes me sound a lot richer than I am. Presently,’ he added. He followed that with a short laugh and cleared his throat. ‘Well … Pebbles and I will be on our way. Have a good escape, Richard Cave.’ He nodded and started away.

“Now this was a challenge, I thought. I had found men attracted to me before. Some men admired me, or should I say, envied me and were in love with me the way they would be in love with an idol, a fantasy for themselves; but there were men who found me sexually interesting to them and who were confused themselves as to why that should be.

“Gordon Lathrop Cardwell didn’t seem at all attracted to me. His sexual impulses were a normal male’s or apparently subdued, stored away so long they were still in hibernation, despite his youth.

“Less than ten minutes later, when he returned, I was waiting for him. Just inside the stone wall and hedges in front of his colonial-style home, there was a gray marble bench. I was sitting on it when he turned in and Pebbles began barking again, this time his bark more shrill.

“‘Well, how do you do?’ he said, but there was something in his eyes that told me he wasn’t completely surprised, and in fact, was pleased.

“‘I hope you don’t mind.’

“‘No, of course not. You know, you do look lost. Well, can I offer you something to drink … something soft, of course. Maybe call you a cab?’

“‘I was just sitting here admiring your home. I’d like to take a look at it,’ I said, but when I looked at him, he could surely see that was subterfuge. He smiled and then sighed. It was as if I had just confirmed a suspicion he had been harboring for a long time, as if he had been expecting me. I must say, that threw me off a bit, and for a moment, I lost my androgynous confidence, my superior demeanor.

“‘Sadly, it’s not what it seems to be anymore, but you’re welcome.’

“The dog barked faster as if it understood what its owner had just proposed.

“‘Now, Pebbles, if you don’t behave you’re going into the garage. Okay, Richard,’ he said, and I got up and followed him into his house. And what a strange house it was.

“There was only one piece of furniture in the long entryway, a dark mahogany table with a glass surface. It was set against a dull blue wall spotted here and there with family portraits in silver oval frames.

“‘Parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, nieces and nephews,’ he declared, gesturing briefly at the wall without turning to it and continuing on through the entryway until we came to the enormous living room, a room which still contained most of its original furniture: a dark blue velvet settee and couch, a pair of matching high back French provincial chairs, marble tables, a hand-carved hutch filled with knickknacks, and a worn Persian rug. The room was lit by a single chandelier, some of its bulbs blown. At the center of the far wall was a white marble fireplace, obviously not used for ages. Now, a potted plant was set inside it.

“‘Living room,’ he announced. I went in and sat back on the couch. He stood in the doorway, an expression of curiosity on his face now. ‘Don’t you want to see the rest of the house?’ he asked, smiling as though he knew the answer.

“‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘This is fine.’

“‘Oh? Something to drink?’

“‘Nothing.’

“‘Oh?’ He looked about as if he had come into the house for the first time himself. Then he turned to me and nodded knowingly, his expression growing very serious. ‘So … you’ve finally come.’ I tilted my head.

“‘Pardon me?’

“‘I’ve been expecting you, of course.’ He laughed. ‘I must confess, I expected you would look different … look older, but to be like the times, look like the times, I suppose. Well … I’ll just put Pebbles in his room. He has his own room now. It used to be a den, but I don’t use it and…” His voice trailed off. ‘Be right back,’ he said.

“The sound system still functioned. He put on some music.

“‘Movie soundtracks written by Percy Faith. I’m afraid I don’t have anything more up-to-date, more to the taste of you young people,’ he said apologetically.

“‘This is fine,’ I told him. ‘I’m a lot older than I look.’

“‘Of course you are. You‘re as old as … as death itself.’

“How did he know that? I wondered. Who was this strange young man? Was he an Androgyne, too? Janice had told me that there were some Androgyne who were undiscernible, even to other Androgyne, because the androgynous part of them had, for some unknown reason, dimmed. It was the only disease we knew, our AIDS virus, our cancer—the thinning out and weakening of our androgynous being.

“Of course, no one but us would recognize it as an illness because the effect of the sickness was to make us more like the inferiors.

“Gordon stood back, reminding me of someone who stands outside a store-front window gazing in at the beautiful but expensive things, afraid to go in for fear he or she will lose control and spend much more than he or she can afford.

“‘You live all by yourself in this big house?’ I asked. I couldn’t believe that I was nervous.

“‘Yes. My mother was the last to go.’

“‘Was she from California?’

“‘No, Chicago.’

“‘And your father?’

“‘He was from New York by way of Chicago. That’s where they met and got married,’ he said, and I thought unless he is fabricating a family history, he is not androgynous.

“‘How did your father die?’

“‘Automobile accident. I was only twelve years old at the time. My mother suffered from congenital heart disease and died in her sleep. I came in to bring her some juice and she was gone. They say it’s the best way to go.’

“My confidence returned. He was just another inferior, albeit a strange one, but just another prey.

“‘They’re wrong. There are better ways to go,’ I said provocatively.

“His laugh was thinner. The instinctive warnings had begun, I thought and then I thought, here’s a man who might listen to them. Surely not all inferiors fall to our advances.

“But he didn’t step back; he stepped toward me.

“‘What sort of work do you do?’ I asked. What I really meant was ‘Would anyone miss you?’ I think he understood the question.

“‘I don’t do anything of any consequence, I’m afraid,’ he confessed. ‘I clip coupons, live off some small family investments, just enough to exist, actually. I have no ambitions, no talents, no skills to speak of. I read, listen, to music, occasionally take in a movie. In short, I take from others and give little or nothing in return. Every morning,’ he continued coming closer to me, ‘I feel guilty I’m alive.

“‘I’ve got this theory, you see, that there is a fixed number of living things in the world and something new can’t be born until something else gives up. So you see, I’m holding back something new, something that might have talent or skill and ambition.’

“He was standing right before me now.

“‘That’s why I’m glad you’ve come tonight. I’ve been waiting for you. I’m tired and the echoes in the house are getting so loud I can’t sleep at night. I don’t even dream anymore. I just … relive the day … in reverse.’

“How strange and wonderful his words made me feel. It was as if I had stumbled upon another holy purpose for our existence, as if I had been selected to do something significant, something few Androgyne were chosen to do.

“I lifted my arms toward him and he fell to his knees before me. Then he raised his soft blue eyes to me. I took his glasses off and carefully placed them on the floor. His naked eyes were smaller and wet with suffering. When I looked at his thin lips, I felt myself aroused. My pants grew tighter in the crotch. He understood with a perception that made me wonder again if he had some extra sense.

“He unzipped my fly. I caressed his face, stroked his hair and leaned forward to kiss him on the forehead. When he lifted his face, I saw his tears.

“‘I’m afraid I’m not very good at this sort of thing,’ he whispered. He was already fondling me. ‘Am I doing it right?’

“‘Absolutely.’

“‘I’ve never had any real lovers, male or female,’ he explained. How he could carry on a conversation in the throes of passion amused me. ‘In fact,’ he confessed, ‘I’ve never really been with a woman, other than my mother.’

“‘You’ve been with your mother?’ I recoiled. Nothing was more distasteful to an Androgyne than an incestuous relationship with one’s mother.”

“Well, I’m glad there is something that is distasteful to an Androgyne,” the detective said. I barely heard him. My own breathing had quickened; the nipples of my breasts had hardened and a warmth trickled over the small of my stomach. I couldn’t pull my eyes from Richard’s words.

“‘Why with your mother?’ I asked.

“‘It’s another theory of mine … men struggle to return to the womb … to the safety. Never were we any more secure and comfortable. So,’ he said sitting beside me on the couch, ‘do you mind if I call you Mother?’ He closed his eyes and brought his head back on the couch. Then he took my hand and brought it to his now opened pants.

“Strangely, he had no erection. I felt as if I were caressing grapes and a small piece of rubber hose. But when he turned on his stomach and lowered his pants, I saw a most exquisite pair of buttocks, soft, enticing, very feminine.

“‘I feel as if I am falling back through time anyway. I’ll soon be an infant again, wanting to be fondled,’ he said.

“I took off all his clothes, and he lay there like some young obedient child.

“‘Oh Mother,’ he said and brought my hands to his penis again. It had hardened and I finally felt my androgynous hunger. It came roaring in over me, inflaming my skin. My lips became fuller, my tongue expanded and pressed against my teeth, the bottoms of which had become so sharp, they drew a thin incision along my own lower lip. The taste of blood sent a rush into my brain. I felt like roaring, like tearing through his chest and sucking on his very heart.

“He moaned like a baby and puckered his lips. I drew his life out of him with soft kisses first. He was so eager to surrender. I could actually feel his body dying from the bottom up. It was one of the most thrilling kills I had made during my short androgynous life. As his life left him and traveled into me, I grew larger, stronger and more demanding. I turned and twisted his body to fit it against me. I poked, drew, lunged into him and out of him and felt him shriveling in my arms, his body deflating like a balloon and suddenly becoming limp, empty, a shell of itself.

“In the end, I embraced him to me and did feel as if I were holding an infant in my arms. He died with a baby’s smile on his lips. I left him naked on the couch, his knees up, his arms bent, his small hands cupping imaginary breasts.

“I ran out of his house, his dog still barking behind me. I don’t remember how I got home. Perhaps I ran all the way. Suddenly, I was there.

“Janice was waiting for me, of course, and knew immediately what sort of experience I had had, for his essence still lingered in my eyes.

“‘Sex can be a torment for them, can’t it?’ I asked her. The taste of his turmoil remained on my lips.

“‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but it will never be for you.’

“We sipped some wine and sat in the darkness and talked until she had unraveled all the confusion. How wise and wonderful she was.

“I fell asleep that night, thankful I had been born an Androgyne.”

I took a deep breath and closed his diary. The detective was very quiet, his eyes fixed on me, his body frozen.

“Are you all right?” he finally asked.

Was I? I wondered. My heart was pounding with a new intensity. Richard was climbing up out of me, clawing his way to the surface. If I closed my eyes, I could see his eyes on the backs of my lids staring into mine. My arms tingled because hair was pressing up and out of my skin. My breasts were diminishing and there was a terrific throbbing in my genitals.

“He’s coming,” I whispered. “I’ve got to stop him … please.”

“What can I do?” the detective asked.

I opened my eyes and gazed frantically at him.

“Make love to me,” I said. “Quickly!”