Prayer for the Dead

Chapter 6

Dyce made his way through the pillows as he maneuvered across the bedroom, taking care not to step on them, even though they were everywhere underfoot. Helen filled her bed with pillows when she was not in it, at least ten of them arranged together like children propped against the headboard. Two of them were for sleeping, but the others-a motley group of calico-patterned cats, gingham dogs, hand-stitched samplers with pictures of cottages and comforting proverbs, and compact, satin-covered cushions suited for a doll-were lined up for decoration or solace, Dyce did not know which. When they got into the bed, usually with much display of sexual urgency, Dyce would sweep as many of them to the floor as he could take with his arm. Helen would remove those from her side of the bed rapidly, but with care. He knew she did not approve of his style of inconsiderate dumping, but she never mentioned it. Later, if they were out of the bed, even for a few minutes, she would line up all the pillows again. It made no sense to him, but he had decided it was a female crotchet, one he couldn’t expect to understand but must learn to tolerate if he was to exist in her world.

“It’s all right,” Helen said. “It doesn’t matter to me.”

Dyce pushed a red and white checked cat out of the way with his foot. Someone had sewn plastic whiskers onto the pillow’s face and they pricked his foot as he brushed against them while digging with his toes for his underpants that were buried under the cushions.

“I love it just having you hold me. We don’t have to do anything,” she said. She always said the same thing, and it sounded more accusatory to him every time.

“Don’t be upset. I don’t mind, really I don’t.”

“I’m not upset,” he said. He found the underpants and lifted them with his toes, keeping his back to her. Dyce was shy about letting her see him naked as long as he was flaccid. A natural modesty was compounded by his impotence. Helen, on the other hand, seemed to have no modesty at all. She paraded nude with as much indifference as if she were clothed. In his opinion, she didn’t look that good, either. Her breasts were full, he liked that, but so was the rest of her. Dyce had expected filmy peignoirs and full slips of the type he saw on television. He had not been prepared for this all-out assault of flesh and naturalness; it was not femininity as he thought of it. It was woman, but it was not feminine. Dyce would have preferred something with the lights out, something with soft music and gentle touches, perhaps some coy resistance on her part, a sense of conquest on his.

Instead, he was assailed by a woman who seemed to want to consume him, smothering him with her body and her mouth and her desire. Dyce felt overpowered by it all but did not know how to tell her so. His impotence was her fault, he knew it. He had done fine that first night when she burst into his house. With their clothes on and the unfinished business in the bathtub and the sound of the pot boiling in the kitchen and the air crackling with danger, he had performed like a champion. Helen had acted properly then, too, protesting that no, she mustn’t, and Mr. Dyce, it was too soon, and then, fairly swooning as she succumbed, oh, Mr. Dyce, Mr. Dyce! Afterwards he had escorted her to the door and out to her car and there was no question who was the master of the situation.

Later, he had been amazed at himself. He was a stallion, a champion, virile as a bull, cunning as a wolf. A small twinge of guilt for taking advantage of the girl had nagged at him. She clearly did not know what she was in for when she came into the lair of Roger Dyce; she had not been prepared. He had swept her along on the torrent of his passion and overwhelmed her. But his guilt was more than overcome by his pride. He had been faced with a dilemma and had dealt with it as masterfully as anyone could have.

But that was then and there. Since then they had been on her ground, in her tiny apartment, so small he could hear her going to the bathroom while he lay in bed two rooms away, and she had been acting as if she were the master. It was no wonder he could not perform under such circumstances. It was her fault.

Dyce stood in the bathroom and regarded his reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of the door. His body was smooth and virtually hairless except for the pubic area and the tops of his thighs. He took hold of his pathetic member and shook it angrily. Perhaps this was all a mistake, perhaps his involvement with Helen was an error in judgment. A tactical move that had dragged on too long. And was it really even involvement? She seemed to think it was; she spoke of them as if they were a permanent couple, already fixed and immutable. She regarded them as deeply in love, as needing each other, as being the answer to each other’s prayers. Dyce was not certain when all this had happened. One minute he had sat next to her on his own sofa and touched her hand and she had moaned and thrown her head back, and then his hand was on her breast and she was pleading with him to stop but too powerless to stop him even though her hand was atop his. The next thing he knew he was here, in this minuscule boudoir filled with pillows and a plump, naked woman who kept insisting that she didn’t think him any less a man because he couldn’t have sex with her. She spoke of togetherness and intimacy and cuddling and kissing, which sounded to his ears like so many gnats buzzing. He wanted her to turn the lights out and act more like a virgin, and she wanted to act as if they were an old married couple. And she wanted to watch him, as if he might dematerialize if her gaze faltered. She was perpetually probing. It seemed he could not say or do a thing without Helen’s instant, often lengthy analysis. Because they didn’t speak the same language, Dyce spoke less and less.

The differences between them were evident even here in the bathroom. The apartment was really a converted loft over what had once been a stable and was now a garage. Everything in the place was cramped and antiquated and the bathroom was no different. The room was not much bigger than a large closet to begin with, and an old claw-footed tub took up most of the room. What space was left she had crammed with shelves that groaned with powders, oils, unguents, creams, scents, and sprays. What a nudist like Helen was doing with all these cosmetics was more than Dyce could divine.

His eyes caught the can of talcum powder on the stick-on shelf over the bathtub. He had noticed it on previous visits but had not dwelt on it. That was one of the positive aspects of their relationship: He had not thought of the other thing since their first time together. It had been well over three weeks now and it had not even entered his mind. She was good for him in that way. She would keep him to the straight and narrow.

He had the talcum powder can in his hand and did not remember reaching for it. He should put it back, he knew he should put it back.

Dyce looked at himself in the mirror again. He shook his member but felt nothing, not a stirring. His gaze shifted to his face, then to the talcum powder in his hand. The lid was open. He shook some talc from the little holes into his palm. His breath caught in his throat, then shivered out.

Helen lay atop the covers, clutching a pillow to her chest. The air was just cool enough on her skin to make the goose flesh start on her thighs, a not uncomfortable sensation. Her eyes were on the ceiling where a hairline crack in the plaster spread in all directions like a spider web, but her ears were on the bathroom. He was so quiet.

Helen hated silence. It only reminded her that she was alone in life. She talked too much, she knew it, and when there was no one else in her apartment, she talked to herself She sang with the radio and had conversations with the television. When she read her magazines she did it with the radio or stereo or television playing. Her place was never quiet except when he was there. He was so quiet in everything he did.

She thought of him as “he.” She called him Roger, now, but the name did not fit him somehow. He could no longer be Mr. Dyce, of course; they were too intimate for that, but still she felt that the formal appellation fit him better than Roger. In her mind, he was “he” and “him,” and the two words filled her brain so that she could think of little else.

He had been in the bathroom so long she began to worry. The withdrawal seemed symptomatic of the relationship as a whole. She was losing him, he was pulling away from her. She could sense it but did not know what to do about it. His impotence was part of the problem, she was sure of it. God knows she had tried, she had done everything she could think of she had been positively brazen about it, flaunting herself, pawing him like a whore, but he had managed it only the first time. Of course she didn’t want him to brood about it since that would only make it worse, so she had reassured him constantly that it didn’t matter to her. It did matter, of course. She nearly ground her teeth with frustration as she lay next to him or on him or under him without so much as a suggestion of satisfaction. There were other things he could do to make her happy, but she sensed that even a hint would horrify him. He was so innocent, and so annoying. And yet he was her man, and she would cling to him no matter what. They were intended for each other; she knew that much even if she did not know what was wrong.

He had been gone too long and the apartment seemed to shrink in on her with the silence.

“Are you all right?” she called.

There was no answer. Perhaps he had fallen and hit his head on the tub.

Helen got out of bed. From the doorway to the bedroom she could see across the living room to the bathroom door, which was open a crack.

“Roger?”

If he had wanted privacy he would have closed the door. One of the pillows was in the doorway of the bedroom. Helen hugged it to her for a moment before deciding.

She crossed the living room, a distance of no more than fifteen feet, and stopped in front of the bathroom door. She listened.

At first she heard nothing at all except her own breathing. Holding her breath, she leaned closer. A strange sound, one she could not identify, something being softly patted, something like a swish, then nothing.

Then more, a high moaning, faint but definitely a moaning, like a child holding back a whimper. He was hurt, she knew it. She could picture him lying on the floor, blood on his head where it had struck the bathtub.

“I called but you didn’t answer,” she said even before she opened the door in case he wasn’t hurt.

An apparition stood before her. There was no light on in the bathroom and he shone like a ghost in the gloom. He was chalky white from head to toe. Deathly white. For one irrational moment she thought he was a standing corpse.

His eyes were wide and staring and his lips were peeled back from his teeth. She stood right in front of him and yet she was sure he did not see her. He had been looking at himself in the mirror and his mind was still fixed there, staring at his sepulchral reflection.

He moaned once more, almost a pleading, and it was then that Helen noticed that his penis was hugely erect.

“Roger?” she said, not knowing what world he was in at the moment.

He shook his head as if trying to clear it and powder floated off. Dyce struggled to focus on her, but Helen could not keep her eyes off the pure white of his stiff penis. The powder was smooth and uniform and had not been touched since application.

In the darkness its size was accentuated by its pallor. Helen thought it shined. She took one step toward him and he threw his arms around her, yanking her into his body. She groaned with gratitude as she felt the rigidity ram against her.

Becker sat at the corner of the bar so he could watch the door and see when his man was leaving. He had no need to watch him directly or to keep tabs on him in the mirror; the guy was not about to exit through the toilet window or the kitchen. He had no reason to know that Becker was tailing him, no reason to be suspicious of a thing.

Right now the man was sitting quietly at a table for two in the singles hangout called the Crossroads. Insurance literature was spread out on the table in front of him, and the man was studying it as he sipped a cup of coffee. He had a settled-in look about him as if he were here for the balance of the evening.

Becker had got onto the man initially when Laurie Seeger produced his business card from a desk drawer where Mick had presumably tossed it. Mick had purchased a life-insurance policy just before the birth of their first child three years earlier. Recently, Mick had contacted the insurance agency to increase his policy. The man who had sold him the original policy had since retired, but the new man who was now sipping coffee in the Crossroads had called on Mick and serviced the new requirement. It was, as far as Laurie knew, their only contact.

But it was not the insurance man’s only contact with one of the missing men. Marley of Guileford, mother’s name Cederquist, had taken out a policy from the same man two years earlier. None of the others had, but Vohl of Branford, mother’s name Nordholm, received a brochure from an insurance company the day before Becker’s second visit to Mrs. Vohl. The brochure was still lying on the kitchen counter, unopened, and on the brochure, stamped by hand in the bottom corner, was the name of the man’s agency.

Three of eight was pressing coincidence to the point of probability. Becker had watched the man for two days now in a sporadic pattern, checking in on his activities now and then, never staying long enough to draw attention to himself He did not expect to catch the man in the act; rather he wanted to get a feel of the man, to fill his nostrils with the man’s scent, and to get a sense of his pattern so that any aberrance would send off a warming signal.

The bartender placed another diet soda in front of Becker.

“From the lady,” said the bartender.

Cindi lifted a glass to him from the back of the room and Becker rose to join her. The insurance salesman cast him a casual glance as he passed, but Becker did not look back.

“We’ve been watching you,” Cindi said, “wondering if you’d ever turn around. Most men scope out a place. What’s the matter, not curious?”

“Who’s we?”

“Alan’s in the john. What’s the point of coming to a place like the Crossroads if you don’t check out the action?”

“I had this silly idea about getting something to drink,” said Becker.

“Yeah, I usually come to a singles place if I feel like a Coke, too. A buck and a half seems like a fair price for half a can.”

She was still wearing her spandex climbing outfit, but the front zipper was open far enough to suggest cleavage and her hair was flowing freely over her shoulders. Becker had not realized she had such a full mane of it.

“Are you a detective of some kind?” Becker said.

“I notice things,” she said, then grinned.

It was peculiar, Becker thought, but it seemed that he could see her better in the half light of the bar than in the full sunshine. There was a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose and her cheekbones. Not enough to even qualify as a dusting, a countable number. Her teeth were unnaturally bright when she smiled because of the fluorescent lighting, and her last swallow of beer had left her with a foam mustache just on the corners of her mouth.

“I notice you’ve been climbing again,” said Becker. “Or else you’ve got a very limited wardrobe.”

“Right on both counts. We tried a new face today. It’s about a quarter mile farther north than the last one.”

“How is it?”

“Kind of tough. We missed you.”

She seemed a little older than she had on the rocks, too, for which Becker was grateful. He had trouble finding himself attracted to women who were too young for him. Cindi, if one were liberal enough about these things, was just old enough for a man his age. Her bottom teeth were not quite straight, as if orthodontia had been abandoned before it could take full effect. A restless, impatient girl who did not wear her retainer often enough or long enough.

“Do you do anything else for fun, or just climb rocks?”

“Now that is a lousy come-on for a man of your age and experience,” she said.

“I’m out of practice.”

“That might be marginally in your favor,” she said.

The waitress stopped at the insurance salesman’s table and spoke to him. The salesman shook his head and the waitress moved off. Becker watched him from behind as he rearranged his papers, put some in his briefcase, then checked his watch.

“So he finally looked,” said Alan as he slid into his chair. There was an extremely loose, limber quality to everything he did. A natural ease in his body that was completely lacking in his social manner.

“I summoned him.”

“Bullshit,” said Alan. “She was trying to make you turn around by the power of her thoughts. Her karma, or whatever you call it.”

“That’s pronounced charm,” said Becker.

Cindi grinned again. “Better,” she said.

“What?” said Alan, testily. “She came over and got you, right?”

“No. Like she said, she summoned me as if from afar.”

“Yeah, bullshit.” Alan waved impatiently for the waitress. Becker guessed it was at least his fourth beer. Alan seemed just at that point of balance where the night could go either way. Alan clearly had decided it would go downhill.

“So you were a hotshit fed, is that the story?” Alan demanded. He was the type of blond who should not try to grow a mustache. Becker felt an urge to pluck it off his face.

“Tee talks too much.”

“Tee? Who’s Tee? I heard this from my mother.”

“Who’s your mother?”

“Mrs. Tolan. That help?”

“Not much. Should it?”

Cindi was leaning back in her chair, looking slightly amused. Becker decided she was perfectly content to let them butt heads.

Alan said, “She said you wouldn’t remember her. She knew you from school.”

Becker instantly reappraised Alan’s age. The man had to be much younger than he looked.

Cindi laughed, without explanation.

“You’re some kind of a legend among the older generation,” said Alan. “What was it, you blew a lot of people away or something?”

“Cindi tells me you tried a new face today.”

“No, the same one. He didn’t even shave,” said Cindi.

“It’s not as if you were a war hero, though, is it? These were civilians you were killing, right?”

A middle-aged man in a tweed jacket approached the salesman’s table. They shook hands, the man in tweed sat down, and the salesman turned the literature so his companion could read it. Seven o’clock and the man was still working. Selling was not an easy life, Becker thought. Not that that was any excuse for the man’s hobby-whatever it was-but still not an easy life.

“Let it go, Alan,” Cindi said. “He doesn’t want to talk about it.”

“That was then, though, right? You were this kind of super fed and now you’re what? Nothing?”

“Now I’m nothing. You’ve got it.”

“Alan,” said Cindi. “Go away.”

“Listen,” said Alan. He gripped her elbow possessively and she twisted it away.

“Go on.” She did not raise her voice but spoke as if she expected to be obeyed.

To Becker’s relief, Alan went. He had been afraid of a scene developing that would have drawn the salesman’s attention to him. He was also gratified to see that whatever bond Alan had with Cindi, it was loose enough for her to order him off.

“Kind of an asshole, isn’t he?” Becker said as Alan made his way toward the bar. “I thought he was going to take me to the parking lot and bump antlers.”

“He’s just being protective of me,” said Cindi.

“Why? Are you in danger?”

Cindi grinned. “Mom made us promise to take care of each other.”

Becker winced. “Ouch.”

“No harm done. He can be an asshole.”

“He’s your younger brother, I hope.”

“Three years older.”

“See you around.”

She laughed. Becker liked the sound of it. She always seemed genuinely amused when she laughed, and as if she were more than prepared to stay in that mood.

“My mother was a high school teacher,” she said. “Not a classmate. She taught typing.”

“Oh. Mrs. Tolan. One of my favorites.”

“You didn’t have her. I’m thirty-one. You’re forty-two. Does that help?”

“It clears up the arithmetic, anyway,” said Becker. “Terrible thing, arithmetic.”

“It’s only numbers,” she said.

When the man in the tweed jacket rose to exit, Becker left. He wanted to go out the door first so that the salesman would not look back and notice him. Only a professional ever considered the possibility of being tailed from the front.

“Stick around,” said Becker to Cindi. “I have some things to take care of but I’ll be back.”

“Or I could meet you somewhere,” she said.

“Or you could meet me,” he said. “Where?”

There was nothing flirtatious about her manner as she wrote out her address on a napkin. She seemed more amused than anything else, as if she knew a joke that Becker did not. He would have to come see her to learn the punch line.

Becker went to the parking lot, sat in his car, and waited. Before long, the salesman came out, got in his car, and drove straight home to a neighborhood like many others in the Clamden area and the adjoining towns where one-family houses were perched close to the sidewalk and children filled the narrow yards. The only thing remarkable about this particular block was the salesman’s presence there: a single man in a neighborhood where families predominated.

Becker watched for several minutes but saw no lights come on. The house remained in total darkness long after the salesman had stepped inside.

Becker drove to a phone booth and called the salesman’s home phone. When the man answered on the third ring, Becker replaced the phone on the hook and drove back to the house. The car was there, the man was there, but still not a single light had been turned on.

Sitting in the silence of his car, watching the darkened house, Becker tried to empty himself of both thought and feeling. He did not want to impose anything on the situation-there was time enough for that later. Right now he wanted to shut off his rational mind and simply react with the senses of the beast. Was there something in the house to be feared? What lurked beneath the salesman’s respectable public pose?

Becker had done this before: At other times, in other places, he had relied on his instincts when the facts presented an inconclusive picture. He needed to be close enough to sense the subject’s feelings; this kind of work could not be done at a desk. He looked for mannerisms, expressions, gestures, the tic of the nervous man or-Becker’s own bete noire and specialty-the dead calm of the monster who took the shape of an average man but who lived to kill. Sometimes he gained that special empathy without any real effort. It was almost as if his guard’s impulses sought him out. Afterwards, he could not say how it manifested itself beyond a feeling, a tingling on the back of the neck, a stirring in the bowels, a silent but overpowering sense of immediate danger.

In this case, Becker was still not sure. Either he hadn’t gotten close enough or the man was not on the stalk and thus not sending out signals. They went through quiescent phases: Becker knew all about that. Their lusts and needs could be slaked for a time and they themselves forgot the awful reality of the appetite and its consequences. It was the on/off nature of their behavior that made them so very hard to find and identify, because when they were off, they were exactly what they pretended to be-indeed, wanted to be: average, normal, harmless men. A sated Hon was dangerous to no one, and the species that was its prey could stroll in front of it unmolested.

At such times the only evidence of their bloody habits was in the refuse of their lairs. Becker decided with reluctance that he might have to go into the house, and as soon as he realized that, he felt the familiar excitement building, deep and visceral, and he knew that it came not from the salesman but from himself.

He was grateful that Cindi was already at home, waiting for him. He did not trust himself to be alone.

Pulling on her jeans, Cindi heard his car pull into the driveway. She had not expected him so soon and she was still wet from the shower. Her climbing outfit lay on the bed where she had tossed it. Throwing the outfit into the back of the closet, closing the closet door, tugging the comforter up on the bed, Cindi told herself to relax. No time for makeup, no time for perfume or lotion. Jeans and a T-shirt and a harassed shower would have to do; she was fairly certain he wouldn’t mind. He did not seem like the type to need a geisha girl.

She forced herself to slow down, to walk to the door, to ignore the chaos and litter in the living room. This was how she lived, take it or leave it. Her heart was pounding as if she were halfway up the rockface without a next move, but she determined to play this just the way she would play the rock. Feign a virtue though you have it not, as her grandmother used to say. Act composed no matter what your stomach says. It fools almost everyone else and sometimes even yourself.

Now Becker, on the other hand, always was composed. Never mind faking it. Even hanging upside down, his head swinging against granite, the man had been in control. She marveled at his calm. He spoke about emotions, he admitted to fear-they had had a lengthy discussion about it after their first climb together-he claimed that he was as nervous and fearful as anyone, but she didn’t believe him. The very fact that he would admit to it seemed to deny its existence. She knew Alan was afraid half the time; she could smell it on him, but he would have died before owning up to it. But then she knew Alan inside out. Bluffers and showoffs were not hard to know. Becker, she suspected, would take a great deal more knowing.

Now he was smiling at her, sitting on the sofa, brushing aside the old newspaper and putting the dried Cup o’Noodles container on the coffee table as if he didn’t even notice them. Cindi fought the urge to pace and sat beside him, dropping the newspaper onto the floor behind the sofa.

“Should I offer you something to drink?” she said.

Becker put a finger to her throat where some water from the shower remained. He held the finger in front of her; a single droplet shivered on his skin.

I am not in this man’s league, she thought.

“You came a little sooner than I expected,” she said.

“I was eager.”

She smiled, suppressing a nervous giggle. If he touched her, she was afraid she would scream. If he didn’t touch her, she knew she would.

“More than eager,” he continued. “I needed to come.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed that,” said Cindi. “You don’t seem like a man who lets his needs dictate to him.”

“You know what spelunkers are? People who crawl into caves for fun. The deeper, the tighter, the more inaccessible the better. I’ve heard of spelunkers who lived in the city who had no access to caves-they explored the city sewer system instead. They needed that feeling, being underground, whatever it is, badly enough to crawl around in the city sewer.”

Cindi nodded, waiting for the point, then wondering if that was the point: making her wait.

“And there are other people, I don’t know what the name for them is, who will crawl into a cave with a drowsy bear and stick a thermometer in its rectum to measure its sleeping temperature.”

“That would be a biologist,” she said.

“That’s not what I mean by biologist. It’s not the hibernating habits of the bear they’re after. It’s the sense of crawling into a place knowing something’s waiting for you there.”

“Why do they do it?”

“Some people just like to crawl into small, dark places. Spelunkers of the soul. Maybe they do it because it’s dangerous, or because it scares them, or because they can do their mischief there, or maybe just to be alone where no one can see what they’re doing. Does it matter?”

“Why do you ask?”

“If you thought a bad man was sitting in the dark in a pitch-black house, would you go into the house?”

“Mr. Becker, you’re beginning to scare the shit out of me.”

“Would you even entertain the idea of going in?”

“It depends what you mean by a ‘bad’ man. If he was the right kind of bad, I might even invite him over to my place.”

The droplet of water was still on Becker’s finger. As he lifted his finger it shook and sparkled like a diamond. He put the drop on his tongue, but casually, as if he had forgotten where he got it and placed no symbolism on it. As if it were an hors d’oeuvre, Cindi thought, and maybe it is.

But he still had not touched her.

“What else do you do that you shouldn’t?” he asked.

“I gamble some.”

“Are you gambling now?”

She studied him for a moment. She did not think he was flirting; he seemed to have something deeper on his mind.

“Men are pretty thin on the ground around here,” she said. “I take some chances.”

“You can’t have any trouble finding men.”

“A good man is hard to find. Not an original thought but sadly true. Also, I’m thirty-one, remember.”

“I’m not a good man.”

“The available material thins out real fast after thirty. By this stage the question is no longer are you single, but why are you single.”

“How did you get this far without getting married?”

“I didn’t. Jerry played polo. Not with his own horses, of course. Other people’s horses, other people’s homes, other people’s money.”

“Other people’s wives?”

“Is it that obvious? Their wives, their sisters, their daughters, their maids. The only good thing about being cheated on that much is that when you find out, you realize it’s not because of you. If he’d had one big affair, maybe I would have whipped myself around, maybe I would have thought it was my fault, I didn’t give him what he needed, that kind of victim-think. But when he views the whole world as parted thighs, you realize the man has a problem with his vision. Not to mention his hormones.”

“It lasted what, three years? Four?”

“You’re no fun.”

“You finally caught him when he was sleeping with your best friend.”

“His brother’s wife. And it went a full five years.”

“I’m not a good man.”

“I heard you the first time,” Cindi said.

Then a silence that Cindi thought would never end. He just stared at her with those milk-chocolate eyes. Normally she could see the humor in them and the sharp intelligence, but now she had no idea what went on behind them. They did not frighten her, but there was no comfort in them at the moment, either.

When he finally moved, it surprised both of them. She was sitting next to him with her legs drawn under her, her shoes on the floor where she had slipped them off. He took her bare foot in his hand and pressed his thumb gently into her sole. Cindi could not suppress the gasp of pleasure.

Becker spent ten minutes on each foot, holding her somewhere between tickling and massage, a pleasure that was just bearable but so intense. When he worked a finger between the toes, Cindi opened her mouth and let her head fall back and gave up.

When he drew her jeans off, he caressed her legs, running the smooth warmth of his palms along the calves, up the thighs. There was nothing professional or practiced about it; it was not a massage. It was touching for its own sake, and he seemed to feel as good doing it as she did receiving it.

They spoke some, but for long stretches the only sound was Cindi’s moaning when he found a new spot or another way of touching her. She could not believe the warmth and feel of his hands.

It took two hours, the first half just touching, the second half lovemaking that seemed like just an extension of the first. Becker was as slow and patient throughout as he had been at the beginning. It was the process that intrigued him. After all, he knew the destination.

Afterwards, Becker continued to embrace her, cradling her in his arms until he knew she was asleep. He was grateful she had not felt the need for comment or witty talk. They simply held on to each other, sustaining the connection that had begun hours ago until she slipped into slumber. Even then Becker continued to hold her, grateful for the comfort she gave him, hopeful that she had not seen the desperation with which he had clung to her. He gripped her until dawn and when she rolled away in her sleep, he moved with her and put his arms around her again. Only when the sun was up did he feel his need ebb away. Like a vampire, he thought. Retreat with the sun. Only then was he sure he would not go to the darkened house and crawl into the cave.