EIGHT

“ARE YOU ALL right?” my detective asked. He was standing at the side of the bed looking down at me, but I hadn’t heard him return. I felt the beads of sweat on my forehead and when I looked up at him, I realized my vision had become blurry because his well-developed pectoral muscles looked like breasts.

“Here,” he said when I didn’t reply. “Drink some of this and you will feel better.”

I didn’t respond, so he brought the glass of juice to my lips, held my head and tilted the glass so the fluid would run in over my tongue. It was difficult to swallow, but I managed to ingest some. The cold juice was welcomed. My insides had become as blistering hot as the insides of a furnace. I knew my body was crimson and to my detective, it must look like a fire raged within, the flames just under my skin. I thought I would soon be consumed by the blaze and go up in smoke right before his eyes.

He put his palm on my forehead.

“You’re feverish,” he said. “Something’s happening, isn’t it?”

I could barely nod. I heard him rush into the bathroom and run water into the tub. Moments later, he returned and slipped his arms under me. I was surprised at the ease with which he lifted me and carried me toward the bathroom. When I rested my face against his chest, I thought the heat from my body would singe him, but he was oblivious to pain or discomfort. This close to me, he looked even more distorted. His lips were long and very red and his eyebrows were thin. His eyes were suddenly almond-shaped eyes and caught the light like crystal. I had to close my own eyes.

He lowered me slowly into the tub. The cold water was shocking. I tried to pull myself out, but he held me down, forcing me to endure the flow of the ice-cold water over my legs, my stomach, my torso. He dipped his hands into the water and anointed my head with it. I shivered and cried out, but he didn’t stop. It was as if he knew it was Richard crying out, not me; for the cold bath was having its effect.

I felt Richard lose his firm grip on the rope of identity. His fingers slipped as if the water I was submerged in had run down the rope, turning it into a cord of ice. He held on but continued to slide. He sunk quickly into the dark pool of anonymity again. I heard his final cry of panic and defeat, and then, all was quiet within me. I lay back against the tile, numb.

My detective lifted me from the water and quickly brought me back to my bed where he wrapped me in bath towels. My body still quivered so he embraced me and held me to him, rocking me as if I were a baby as he rubbed my back in small circular caresses. Soon, I felt a surge of warmth returning. It crawled up my body, covering me with a pleasant afterglow.

I sighed. My clear vision returned; my heartbeat slowed; and I resumed normal breathing.

“How are you doing?” my detective asked. All the distortions in his face were gone.

“Better. Thank you. But how did you know to do that and so quickly?”

“Just basic first aid,” he said nonchalantly as if he did something like it every day.

“Hardly basic. I doubt very much that anyone is taught how to stop a metamorphosis.”

He laughed and stood up.

“I took a shot, hoping it would help. You looked like you were on fire and water puts out a fire,” he said, shrugging. “Drink some more juice,” he advised and gave me the glass. This time I could hold it myself. He watched me drink, his eyes intent, riveted, looking like the eyes of a physician who studied his patient.

“What happened? What brought it on?” he asked. “I hope it wasn’t something I said,” he added, smiling.

“Sometimes, it just happens,” I replied, shifting my eyes away from him.

“But you usually have warning. Isn’t that why you seduced me earlier?” he asked, his smile turning salacious.

“I let down my guard and Richard took advantage. It’s as simple as that,” I added quickly.

“Why?”

“Why did I let down my guard or why did he take advantage?”

“Both.”

“I was careless, forgetful … perhaps because I had just finished reading his words.”

“It didn’t happen to you when you read his words before,” he pursued. “Did it?”

“Oh, what’s the difference. It’s over.”

“Why would he want to emerge now?”

“To rip off your head,” I snapped. I glared up at him. “Satisfied?”

“So then I saved my life by coming up with the cold bath therapy, huh?”

“I’m sure you did. Perhaps you should go.” I turned away from him and pulled the blanket over me.

“You want me to leave? After all that’s happened to you?” he asked incredulously. I didn’t reply. “What if someone tries to kill you again? What if Richard metamorphoses while you’re asleep?”

“So then you will return and arrest him for the murder of Michael Barrington.”

“I can’t. I don’t have enough evidence. All I have is your testimony and it will be a little difficult putting you on the witness stand, you have to admit.”

“You will have the diary, Richard’s own words.”

“Can I take it with me now?” I didn’t reply. It was one thing to plan on doing it—turning Richard’s diary over to him, but it was another thing actually doing it. I wasn’t ready.

“No, not yet.” I turned back to him. “I just can’t do it yet. Don’t you see, I’m working myself up to this … this betrayal?”

He nodded, sympathetically.

“All right, but I don’t know that I should leave you just yet. Why don’t I lay beside you and let you talk yourself to sleep. Tell me more of your story.”

I lay back on my pillow, and he took my hand and lay beside me. We were both looking up at the ceiling as if my story were about to be projected on it.

“All right,” I said. I took a deep breath and began again. “After the incident with Ophelia Dell, I continued with college, performing in play after play. Whenever I returned home for holidays, Richard used the occasions to metamorphose and go on his hunts throughout Los Angeles and other parts of Southern California. I was home often enough for that to satisfy our needs.

“But eventually I started to give him other opportunities back East, especially whenever I visited Alison in New York. As was expected, she had done well in modeling school. In fact, she wasn’t there six months before she had landed a job modeling clothing for some department stores and catalogues. Before she graduated, she made the cover of Cosmopolitan and then her career skyrocketed when she became the model for Infatuation, a new perfume and cologne.”

“Oh, so that’s who she was. I remember those advertisements. ‘He can’t help but become infatuated once you put on Infatuation.’”

“Exactly. Her face began appearing everywhere—on the backs of buses, in subway trains and stations, in every magazine and newspaper, and finally, she was in television commercials, making a small fortune doing these ridiculous things to make women believe sexual power was in this cologne. I didn’t even like the scent.”

“You sound as if you were jealous.”

“Not jealous, just … impatient with my own career.”

“That’s the same thing.”

“No it isn’t. I told you—we’re not jealous of each other. We don’t have to be.”

“Uh-huh.”

I spun on him.

“You know you can be infuriating sometimes.”

“I’ve been told that,” he said nodding slowly. “So, Alison was becoming a celebrity, and you were still reciting lines in college theaters to a limited audience of faculty, students and friends. Then what?”

“I told you.” Irritated, I folded my arms. “One night Freddy Bloom attended a performance at my school. The drama instructor had written to him, asking him to come, and he did. I was doing Nora in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.”

“Great play. Timely, especially today.”

I turned to him.

“How do you know so much about literature, the arts?” I asked, narrowing my eyes suspiciously. Perhaps Richard and I knew less about him than we had first thought.

“Hey, just because I spend most of my life hunting down psychopaths and other riffraff doesn’t mean I can’t do worthwhile things with the rest of my time. So what was this Freddy Bloom like?”

I smiled, recalling Freddy’s chubby face and friendly smile.

“He was nice, fatherly, old-fashioned. He liked to pick up a young artist and shape his or her career. He wasn’t a money-hungry, hyped-up neurotic like so many Hollywood agents tend to be. He had a religious faith in talent, believing that eventually it will find its proper level.

“So he didn’t feed me to the columnists and publicists. The first job he got me barely paid enough commission for him to buy postage stamps.”

“The way the price of postage stamps is rising … that might not be so little.”

“You know what I mean. He wanted to showcase me, get people talking about me slowly.” I smiled at my memories of Freddy bringing people around to see me perform. He was more like a little old grandfather, proud. “Freddy used to compare his technique to an artist sculpturing. He was shaping me, carving, cutting away the rough places.”

“My Fair Lady?”

“Not exactly. I wasn’t unschooled raw material, you know.”

“Right.”

“Anyway, his strategy worked. It wasn’t that long before I landed a role in a Broadway show. Naturally, my performance stood out.”

“Naturally.”

“And the next time, I auditioned for the lead and got it. It was a revival of The Glass Menagerie. I received rave reviews.

“Actually, those days in New York were some of the happiest I can remember. Alison was making a lot of money then and had a large apartment on Riverside Drive. She invited me to move in with her. She had met a great many people who were involved in show business. Not only actors and actresses, but producers, directors, entertainment lawyers, entrepreneurs, artists, all great contacts. Her parties were wonderful events. Some of the brightest and most charming people in New York City were there. Those early days were rather exciting.

“Rich people in fine clothing and jewelry, celebrities, influential people from all walks of life. She had a grand piano in her apartment and there was always entertainment—someone from a Broadway show would appear to sing or some rock star would show up and perform his or her songs.”

“What was it like for two young Androgyne to live together?” He laughed before I had a chance to respond. “I can just imagine the confusion with the toothbrushes, or did Richard share yours and Alison share Nicholas’s?”

“Very funny. No, we didn’t share anything. And there was more than one bathroom, you know.”

“But there must have been some difficulties, some problems. Right?”

“Not between us.”

“Meaning not between you and Alison. But what about Nicholas and Richard?”

I turned and glared at him.

“What? What did I say now that was so terrible?” he whined, his arms out in protest.

“How do you know what questions to ask?”

He shrugged.

“I’m a detective, aren’t I? If I didn’t know what questions to ask, what the hell good would I be? I have a detective’s intuition,” he said, pointing to his temple. “So there were problems then?”

“There were difficult situations because of the males, yes. As hard as it may be for you to believe, female Androgyne get along with each other far better than male Androgyne do. They don’t have the insecurities.”

“Uh-huh. Meaning?”

“Meaning we don’t have to go around proving ourselves to each other all the time. Men always feel their masculinity challenged. They’re afraid their women will see them as diminished whenever they confront a taller, stronger, more dynamic man.”

“And women don’t have this fear? They’re not afraid their men will look elsewhere?”

“Not androgynous females.” He looked skeptical. “Maybe it has something to do with the hunt,” I admitted. “The male Androgyne has to prove himself all the time. Every time he metamorphoses, he’s challenged. It’s essentially the essence of his existence. If he fails, he doesn’t provide, doesn’t keep his androgynous being going, and don’t forget,” I reminded him, “he has more than himself to think about.”

“But how can he fail?” he countered. “Look at all his advantages—his good looks, his charm, his superior intellect and physical strength. Not to mention centuries of wisdom when it comes to seducing women. I’m just quoting things Richard said and implied,” he said when I reacted to the way he rattled off all of it.

“He can’t fail exactly, but he can fail to choose as well as another, I guess, and not provide as well. The results will be visible in the female who has that much less quality to draw upon for her own vitality and beauty.”

“So something of a competition developed between Nicholas and Richard, a competition in how well they were providing for you and Alison,” he concluded.

“Yes.”

“And it affected you and Alison, how you got along together?”

“Yes.” I looked away. I didn’t want him to see the tears in my eyes.

“You don’t sound too eager to talk about it.”

“It wasn’t pleasant … for anyone, and we all still disagree as to whose fault it was.”

“Well, if you tell me about it, maybe I can decide.”

I couldn’t help smirking at him.

“I know, I know,” he said. “It’s presumptuous of me to assume an inferior could possibly have more wisdom than one of you, but sometimes it takes an outsider, someone who can be objective.”

That made sense, but he was being manipulative.

“You’re a shrewd one,” I told him.

“Comes with the territory. It’s how I survive, how I provide for myself.” He smiled coyly and leaned over to kiss me on the cheek. “I’m just teasing you. So?”

“You will have two viewpoints on all this—mine and Richard’s. Whose do you want to hear first?”

“Yours,” he said quickly.

“All right, but if I’m going to tell you about those days, I could use some coffee to stay awake. How about you?”

“I’m so comfortable,” he cried.

“It will only take a few minutes,” I said, getting out of the bed. “You don’t have to move. I’ll bring it in.”

I didn’t want the coffee as much as I wanted a chance to gather my thoughts. It wasn’t going to be easy to tell this part of my story, our story, and I wasn’t sure I had the strength to go through it. I was afraid of some of the memories, what reviving them would do.

What I had to do was reinforce my purpose and strengthen my resolve. I had nearly lost it just before he submerged me in cold water. I had to be careful. I wanted this confession to be complete.

While I was making the coffee, the phone rang. I wasn’t going to answer it, but I was afraid the detective might, so I lifted the receiver. Even before I spoke, I knew who it had to be. Who else would phone this late at night? Actually, I didn’t have a chance to say hello.

“Richard?” I heard Nicholas ask.

“No,” I said.

“He was supposed to meet me tonight,” Nicholas said sharply. I knew he was lying.

“Obviously, he doesn’t think so.”

“Clea, what are you doing?” he asked. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Michael’s dead,” I said.

“So?”

“You knew how I felt about him, and you knew what Richard was going to do.”

“So?” he repeated.

“Why didn’t you stop him? I thought you cared more about me.”

“Oh, don’t be so … so…”

“Inferior?”

“Yes. You knew that sort of relationship would come to no good. I want to see you,” he said quickly. “Now. Before all this goes too far.”

“No, that’s impossible. I can’t go anywhere tonight.”

“Someone’s there. That detective is there.”

I didn’t reply.

“Someone tried to kill me,” I said. “They shot at me when I returned home from dinner tonight. Do you know anything about that?”

“Of course not. Who would try to kill you? You certainly don’t think it was one of us, do you?”

“I don’t know what to think.”

“That’s ridiculous. Listen to me…”

“I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

“Clea,” he said in a firm, heavy voice, “don’t do anything you will regret forever. An Androgyne who is scorned by her own people is the loneliest creature on the face of the earth.”

“Good night, Nicholas.”

“I’m going to wait for Richard right where we were supposed to meet,” he said.

“Suit yourself.”

“Clea…”

I cradled the receiver and made the coffee. He didn’t call back, but when I returned to the bedroom and looked at my detective, I saw immediately that he had been listening in on the phone by the bed. I could see it in his eyes, in his attempt to disguise it. However, I said nothing. I handed him his cup of coffee and sat beside him on the bed.

“Very good,” he said after his first sip. “A French roast?”

“Yes.”

“You were going to talk about the New York days,” he reminded me when I sat sipping my coffee and staring blankly ahead.

“The New York days. Soon after I had moved in with Alison, I was in this off-Broadway musical, The Bag Lady by Sue Cohen. She and the play got a big write-up in Time and that brought attention to me. I had a great part, an opportunity to show my musical comedy skills, but I had to arrive at the theater hours before the curtain opened because I needed this elaborate makeup to turn me into an elderly street lady.”

“Were there other Androgyne in the theatrical world then?”

“Oh yes. There was and is a large community of Androgyne in New York City in all walks of life: doctors, dentists, lawyers, businessmen, brokers … you name it, Androgyne are part of it. Of course, they’re very supportive of each other. I imagine that each and every one of them at one time or another saw me perform on the stage in New York.

“One of them owns a famous discotheque.” I paused, hesitant to reveal the name. It suddenly occurred to me that the detective might have a wider purpose—perhaps hunting down all my people. I didn’t want to hurt anyone but Richard and me. But my detective read the meaning of my pause.

“You needn’t worry. I’m not taking notes. What happens in New York is the New York Police Department’s problem, not mine. I’m interested only in what’s been happening here in my jurisdiction.”

“Yes. Anyway, even though Androgyne would frequent the disco, it was understood that no male Androgyne would ever go there to hunt. Frequent pickups in one place might bring attention to that place.”

“Very clever.”

“I told you there were Androgyne in the major police departments everywhere.”

“Right.” He sipped his coffee and waited.

“After a while it was just natural for Richard and Nicholas to go out together to hunt. Living as closely as we did, Alison and I, Richard and Nicholas, we began to synchronize our metamorphosing. Actually, Alison and I would gaze into each other’s eyes and sense how much they wanted to be together. It was like two lovers looking longingly at each other through glass walls, their heartbeats quickening as the blood rushed to the, surface and their desire for each other became all encompassing, demanding.

“We might be sitting and having breakfast or just having a casual conversation and it would come over us. For both of us, it was a new kind of passion—more than a sexual craving. It was a lust for life itself, a desire to satisfy the appetite of muscles and senses; we had hungry eyes, hungry lips, hungry ears, hungry fingers. We thirsted for each other’s male companionship, and suddenly Alison stood in the way of Richard and I stood in the way of Nicholas. They became more and more demanding. It was like an addiction beginning slowly and gradually taking over our very being.”

“You were like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?” my detective concluded quickly.

“Yes, and like the character in that wonderful story, Mr. Hyde began to absorb Dr. Jekyll until it became harder and harder for Dr. Jekyll to reappear. In short, Nicholas and Richard began to dominate us.

“It presented us with some logistical problems. A number of times Alison and I were late for appointments. Twice, I missed an audition. She missed three. Alison and I talked it over and decided we would try to resist what we Androgyne informally refer to as ‘The Knocking on the Door.’”

“Macbeth,” the detective said.

“Christ, what did you do, teach a course in literature?” He smiled a smile of self-satisfaction.

“Actually, I’m in training for Jeopardy. How successful were you two in preventing the metamorphosing?”

“Not successful at all. If Richard appeared, Nicholas wasn’t far behind, and vice versa. Neither Alison nor I could resist very well. We pleaded, explained, warned, but they were both in a very selfish state of mind in those days. Eventually, however, it backfired.”

“How so?”

“As I told you before, they became very competitive. At first their teaming up for hunts was novel and brought them more success. Most single women like to go out in pairs. Even in today’s far more liberated society, it’s more difficult for a single woman to go out on the town by herself than it is for a single man. It’s only natural that a woman would have a sense of security when she went out with a friend. But you know what happens when one girl finds someone and the other doesn’t … it makes it harder for her.

“So Richard and Nicholas would focus in on these helpless pairs of women seeking romance and excitement. In the early days, they didn’t care who got whom. A kill was a kill, but also, as I told you before, there are kills that are better than others, quality kills.

“Alison claims it was me, but I know it was she who started it,” I said sadly and sipped my coffee.

“Started what?”

“Comparing. Suddenly, my hair was richer, thicker, healthier than hers. My complexion was softer, my eyes brighter. I had more energy. All this explained why my career was suddenly exploding while hers seemed to have reached its plateau. She had tried a number of times to make the transition from modeling to acting, but she wasn’t being very successful. Naturally, her perception filtered down to Nicholas.

“She was wrong, of course. Actually, I thought her hair was nicer and her complexion richer.”

“So you complained too?”

“No, not exactly. Oh, I suppose merely thinking these things was the same as lodging a complaint. Richard sensed it, but Alison was the one who vocalized; she complained far more than I did, sulked, started to leave hints around the apartment: notes, evidence of new beauty creams, vitamins, et cetera.”

“Hmmm. Sounds like you’re not being honest about female Androgyne. They suffer jealousies of each other too.”

“We weren’t jealous; we were just upset with the way Nicholas and Richard were going about their hunts and how that was affecting us.”

My detective smirked.

“It’s not the same thing,” I insisted.

“All right, all right. I’ll take your word for it. So what did you do about it?”

“We didn’t do anything. Once the message reached them, they eventually did something. They began to argue about the choices, who would get the prettier, more vivacious prey, and soon after they decided they would be better off going out on their own. When they began to do that, the synchronized metamorphosing came to an end.”

“You sure you two weren’t just jealous of the male bonding, like two wives envious of the good times their husbands had without them?”

“Typical male conclusion.”

He laughed.

“Well, it doesn’t sound like things became so terrible for you though. What were you implying before when you said things weren’t so pleasant? There had to be more to it,” he added, coaxing me to continue.

“The competitiveness didn’t end when they ended their team hunts,” I said.

“Oh?”

“They were like two cavemen eying each other’s cave, coveting each other’s results. The more beautiful I looked, the more jealous Nicholas was of Richard.”

“And vice versa?”

“Yes.”

“So what happened?”

When I didn’t reply, he touched my hand and I looked up.

“You’ve told me this much, why not the rest?”

“Nicholas accused Richard of rape,” I blurted, “but it wasn’t Richard’s fault; it was Alison’s. She wanted it.”

The detective sat back, nodding softly with understanding. “He made her pregnant.”

“Yes.”

“Let me see if I remember what you told me—when an Androgyne becomes pregnant, the male part of her is virtually imprisoned within for nine months?”

“It’s longer than nine months because the mother breast-feeds.”

“How long was it?”

“Just about a year,” I said.

“During which time, Richard was free to metamorphose and hunt and Nicholas was incarcerated in Alison?”

“Yes.”

“And when he finally metamorphosed, he accused Richard of doing this deliberately, to put him out of commission, so to speak?”

“Yes,” I said. “Actually, Alison accused Richard of it first. That’s why I said she claimed she was raped.”

“Fascinating. Was she right?”

“You’re the detective,” I replied. We stared at each other a moment.

“Why didn’t Alison have an abortion? Surely the pregnancy interfered with her career.”

“Androgynous progeny are far more valuable than inferior progeny simply because there are far fewer of us. The importance of breeding our own kind is emphasized from the moment we can understand the meaning of the words. We don’t get pregnant that easily. If Alison had had an abortion, she would have been ostracized.”

Recalling Nicholas’s words just spoken to me on the phone, I added, “And an Androgyne who is scorned by her own people is the loneliest creature on the face of the earth.”

“Won’t you be scorned by your own people?” he asked softly, “when they find out what you’re doing here with me?”

“Yes, but I don’t intend to remain on the face of the earth,” I said.

We were both quiet for a long moment. My detective sat back thoughtfully, his hands behind his head, staring.

“Aren’t you tired yet?” I finally asked.

“No.”

“Do all detectives have your energy and perseverance?”

“Some, not all.” He smiled. “Why, are you too tired to go on?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Actually, you don’t look sleepy. Your rosy complexion has returned and your eyes are bright. You look revived, as if relating all this invigorates you.”

“Maybe it does.” I finished my coffee and put the cup on the nightstand.

“Well, since you’re up to it,” he said, “I’d like to hear Richard’s account of all this. Actually,” he mumbled, “I’d like to hear Alison’s and Nicholas’s accounts as well.”

“What?”

“Wouldn’t it be something … the four of you: first you and Alison and then you both metamorphose, and I hear Richard and Nicholas.”

I stared at him. He was beginning to worry me. Whenever I was in the midst of telling him the most serious things, he made jokes, and whenever I was being flippant, he looked serious. Perhaps all this was overwhelming for him, and in the end, he would be useless to me.

“Well you can’t hear them,” I said dryly.

“Just a thought.”

I continued to stare at him.

“Tell me,” I said, “what did you think when you first saw Michael’s body?”

“Michael? Oh. I thought … shit … what the hell happened here? He looked like someone used his head for a baseball.”

“And what else? Come on,” I coaxed, “you saw the rest of him.”

The detective squirmed.

“He had been castrated,” he finally said.

“How? By now you have your reports. How?” I insisted.

“Human teeth.”

I grimaced.

“Still think this is all so funny?”

“I never said it was funny. I…”

“The man who did that to him claimed to have loved him as much as a man can love another man, as much as an Androgyne can love an inferior.”

“Love does things to you, tears you up sometimes.”

I didn’t laugh.

“Look,” he said, “I have to be a little light-headed about all this. If I don’t joke, it will destroy me. It’s a madhouse out there, even without you and your kind. Human beings do the same horrible things to each other—they murder each other in hundreds of hideous ways and sometimes for no more reason than they didn’t like the way the victim glanced at them.

“High drama almost doesn’t exist in the streets. It used to be a police detective had a case of jealousy or greed or lust for power as the motive. He had something he could sink his teeth into. Nowadays the motives are as simple as ‘he was in my parking space.’

“You find the good stuff only in mystery stories,” he concluded so sadly I had to laugh.

“I feel sorry for you.”

“You should. Anyway, now you can understand why I am so interested in what you have to say and what Richard has to say.”

I nodded. He could be sincere when he wanted to be.

“All right,” I said reaching for the diary on the nightstand beside me, “but some of what Richard has written is untrue. He’s lying to cover up his own … selfishness,” I said. “And for the Androgyne, selfishness is a cardinal sin.”

“How do I know you’re not the one who’s lying and you’re not the one who was selfish?”

“You keep telling me you’re a detective,” I said, “and it’s your job to find the truth. So find it.”

He laughed, but my heart had begun to pound again.

What if he was right? What if I was lying to myself as well as to him? What if I was confessing to the wrong crimes?

My fingers trembled as I turned the pages.