Dominion

DOMINION

BENTLEY LITTLE

Girls!

They were all girls, every last damn one of them. He stood at the top of the stairs, staring down into the dimly lit basement below. The infants crawled through the blood and mud and filthy, rancid water, mewling, crying, screaming. The mothers, chained to the wall, lay limply against the stone, heads lolling, half dead, their nude bodies still smeared with blood and afterbirth, gnawed umbilical cords angling stiffly from between their spread legs.

His eyes darted from one newborn to another, searching hopefully for a penis, but he saw none, only small, hairless cracks.

Mother had been right. He was not a man.

He began to cry. He could not help it. Hot tears of shame forced their way out from under his eyelids, streaming down his cheeks, only adding to his humiliation. An unintentional sob escaped from his mouth, and one of the women looked dazedly up at him. He saw her through the blurred curtain of his tears. He did not know whether she knew what was happening, but he didn't care.

"It's your fault!" he screamed at her, at the others.

One of the women moaned incoherently.

Still crying, he retreated into the kitchen, where he opened the cupboard doors underneath the sink and unwound the hose. He turned on the water full force and carried the hose back across the floor through the basement doorway, dropping the streaming snake end down the stairs.

He would fill up the basement and drown them all.

The water poured from the hose in a steady flow, coursing down the steps before merging with the low, dirty puddle which already existed at the bottom. Three of the women heard the splash-babble of the water and groggily raised their battered heads, expecting their daily hosing off, but when it didn't come, their heads slumped again with a muted rattling of neck and arm irons.

He watched as the water level in the basement slowly rose, his tears stopping, drying, disappearing. He wiped his eyes. It would be two hours, maybe three, before the basement filled up above their heads and drowned them. He would come back later, after it was done, and drain the basement and dispose of the bodies.

He stepped into the kitchen and closed the door, standing uncertainly for a moment before walking down the dark, narrow hallway toward the front of the house. Outside, he could hear the loud rumble of motorcars on the street, the excited screams of children at play. He stood for a few minutes at the front window, staring at the lawn outside, before realizing that the spot in which he was standing was the precise spot in which Mother used to stand while spying on the neighbors.

Blackness rushed over him, and he stepped away from the window, taking slow, deep breaths until he again felt all right. He looked down at his hands. Mother had always said that his hands were too big for his arms, were out of proportion compared to the rest of his body, and he had always tried to keep them hidden in pockets or behind his back. Now, though, they didn't seem that large, and he found himself wondering if they had shrunk. He wished Mother was here so he could show her his hands, ask her.

He wandered disconsolately through the empty house, past the drawing room, down the hallway, up the stairs, and found himself, as always, going to Mother's bedroom.

Mother's bedroom.

He sat on the red silk bedspread and picked up the leg chains attached to the tall wooden posters at the foot of the bed. He had not opened the windows since Mother died, and the room still smelled strongly of the mingled odors of wine and perfume and old sex. He breathed deeply, inhaling the delicious fragrance, at once sweet and sour, tangy and musky. He glanced around the room. The Oriental carpet was still stained with blood from the last time, dark red now faded to a dusty brown which blended in with the multihued rococo pattern. On the dresser in front of the oversize mirror were empty flagons. The soiled undergarments of various ladies and gentlemen were strewn about the room, many of them torn and tattered, ripped off willing bodies in the heat of passion.

His eyes were drawn to the door next to the closet, the door to the room where the unwilling participants had been brought.

He stood up and took the long brass key from its hook above the bed, using the key to unlock the door. This was the room in which she had worshiped, in which she had given herself over to her rituals. Precisely what these rituals were he did not know; she had always refused to tell him. He knew only that they demanded many sacrifices, that he had been forced to find for her two, three, sometimes four victims each time.

Mostly men. Women if necessary. And he knew that the rituals were loud.

He'd been able to hear the cries echoing through the halls of the house, feel the bodies being flung to the floor, slammed against the wall. It was good that they lived in such a large city. Otherwise the sacrifices Mother had required would have been missed, the noises heard by all. As it was, the victims' absences had seldom been noticed (he'd always chosen them well), and the sounds had merely blended in with the noises of the street.

Mother, however, always said that having to perform the rituals in this room, instead of in their proper place, was what had perverted their purpose, was what had led to his mistaken birth.

He stood in the doorway and slowly scanned the silent room. Broken bones were still scattered about the floor in no particular order, as if thrown there in a frenzy. The bones were clean, all flesh stripped. The walls of the room were painted with pictures of trees, painstakingly detailed renderings of forestation for which Mother had paid a substantial amount to a local artist who had later joined her for two days in the bedroom.

He stepped into the room and breathed deeply. The odor here was stronger due to the fact that the room had no windows, but it was more blood smell than sex smell and was not nearly as pleasant as the scent of the bedroom. He walked forward, kicked a jawbone out of the way. He had brought in the sacrifices, but he had never had to dispose of them.

After Mother had finished her rituals, there had never been anything left to dispose, only these cleaned bones and blood and occasional isolated bits of meat.

He had often wanted to join Mother in her rituals, but she had told him bluntly that he could not participate. Only in the last year, after she had reread the prophecies, had she decided that he should be allowed to carry on after her death. Only then had she fully regained her faith.

Only then had she told him what he must do.

Now even there he had failed her.

He thought of the infants in the basement. He would give them another hour, then check to make sure they had all drowned.

After that he would try again.

There was nothing more he could do.

He regretted that he'd had to dispose of the mothers as well. It had felt so good when he took them, when he beat them and forced them to submit to his will, when he felt the hot animal passion rising in them as well. Then he had truly felt that he was his mother's son.

But there would be more. He would find them the same way he had found these, and he would take them the same way, make them bear his children.

And if they failed to give him a boy, he would try again.

And again.

An hour later, he returned to the basement. The women had all been drowned--he could see their hair spread outward across the top of the filthy, bloody water like twisted lilies--but the babies were alive and happily swimming.

He stood there, shocked. This could not be!

Furious, he leaped from the top of the stairs and jumped into the cold, dark water, anger coursing through him. He grabbed the head of the nearest infant, pressing her down. There was a sudden sharp pain in his index finger, and he cried out, jerking back, letting the baby up. The thing had bitten him! He shook his hand to clear it of the hurt, then pressed the infant down again, gratified to see small bubbles percolate upward through the water.

He felt a stab of pain in his back and whipped his head around. One of the other infants was digging into his lower back with claw-like fingers. Another baby bit down on the fleshy part of his arm, teeth clenched hard around skin and fat.

The other infants were paddling forward. Laughing excitedly, their little mouths filled with tiny teeth newborns didn't have teeth --they splashed through the water toward him.

Frightened now, he let up the first baby, which promptly bit into his stomach. He screamed with pain, then screamed louder as tiny fingers dug into his crotch.

How many babies were there? He could not remember. One of the women had had twins, he thought. His feet touched a box underneath the water, and he pushed off, trying to reach the stairs. A tiny grinning infant head popped up directly before him, and thin hands lashed out at his eyes. He batted the baby away, but she bit into his too-big hands even as she was knocked back.

"Help!" he cried, and his voice sounded high, feminine.

He was not a man.

"Help!"

But no one heard.

And his children took him down.

OK It was hot as they prepared to leave Mesa, the temperature well into the eighties though the sun had not yet risen. The pale brightening above the Superstitions would soon bloom into a typical August morning, Dion knew, and by noon the lighted display on the side of the Valley National Bank building would be flashing triple digits.

He helped his mom carry the last of the luggage out to the car--the bathroom suitcase, the sack filled with trip snacks, the coffee thermos--then stood next to the passenger door as she locked up the house for the last time and deposited the keys in the mailbox. It felt strange to be leaving, but he was surprised to find that he was not sad at the thought of their imminent departure. He had expected to feel some sense of loss or regret, depression or loneliness, but he felt nothing.

That alone should have made him depressed.

His mom walked purposefully across the brown grass to the sidewalk. She was wearing a thin halter top which barely constrained her large breasts, and shorts much too tight for a woman her age. Not that she looked like a woman her age. Far from it. As more than one friend had admitted over the years, she was the closest thing to a real-life sex symbol any of them were ever likely to meet. He had never known how to respond to that. It would have been one thing if they were talking about a stranger, or someone's cousin or aunt, but when it was your own mother ... Sometimes he wished his mom was fat and plain and wore frumpy old lady clothes like everyone else's mother.

His mom unlocked his door and he got into the car, stretching across the seat and pulling up the lock on her side. She smiled at him as she positioned herself in front of the wheel. A thin trickle of sweat was cutting a path through the makeup on the far right side of her face, but she did not wipe it off. "I think we have everything," she said brightly.

He nodded.

"Ready to go?"

"I guess."

"Then let's hit it." She turned on the ignition, put the car into gear, and they pulled away from the curb.

Their furniture was already in Napa, but for them it was going to be a two-day trip. They were not going to drive for eighteen hours straight but were going to stop off in Santa Barbara and then continue on to Napa the next day. That would give them a little more than a week to unpack and get settled before he started school and his mom started work.

They turned onto University and drove past the Circle K, where he and his friends had said their final farewells the night before. He looked away from the convenience store, feeling strangely embarrassed. Saying good-bye last night had been awkward not because of the emotions involved but because of the lack of them. He'd supposed he should hug his friends good-bye, tell them how much they meant to him and how much he would miss them, but he'd felt none of that, and after a few hesitant, misguided attempts on all of their parts to drum up that sort of emotion, they had given up and parted in much the same way they always had, as though they would see each other again tomorrow.

None of them, he realized, had even promised to write.

Now he was starting to feel depressed.

They drove down University toward Tempe and the freeway. As he watched the familiar streets pass by, the familiar stores and personal landmarks, he found it hard to believe that they were really going, that they were actually leaving Arizona.

They passed by ASU. He had wanted to see the university one final time, to say good-bye to the walks and bikeways where he had spent so many weekends, but for once they hit all green lights, and the car sped by the campus inappropriately fast, denying him even the opportunity to savor his last look. Then the university was behind them.

He had half hoped that he'd be able to attend ASU, though he knew realistically that his mother could not afford to send him to anything but a community college. Now he knew it would never come to pass.

A few minutes later, they hit the freeway.

A half hour later, they were in the desert and Phoenix was in their rearview mirror.

Ten minutes after that, no buildings at all could be seen silhouetted against the orange globe of the rising sun.

They took turns driving, trading off at the infrequent rest areas they encountered. For the first hour or so they were silent, listening to the radio, each lost in private thoughts, but when static finally overpowered even the rhythm of the music, Dion-turned the radio off. The lack of conversation, which had seemed normal and natural up to a few moments ago, suddenly seemed tense and strained, and he cleared his throat as he tried to think of something to say to his mom.

But it was she who spoke first.

"Things are going to be different," she said, glancing over at him.

"This is going to be good for both of us. We'll be able to start over."

She paused. "Or rather, I'll be able to start over."

He felt his face reddening, and he looked away.

"We have to talk about this. I know it's hard. I know it's difficult.

But it's important that we communicate." She tried to smile, almost succeeded. "Besides, I have you trapped in the car and you're going to have to listen."

He smiled halfheartedly back.

"I know I've disappointed you. Too many times. I've disappointed myself too. I haven't always been the type of mother you wanted me to be or I wanted me to be."

"That's not true--" he began.

"It is true, and we both know it." She smiled sadly. "I'll tell you, there's nothing that hurts me more than seeing the disappointment in your eyes when I lose another job. It makes me hate myself, and each time afterward I

tell myself that I'm not going to do it again, that things are going to change, but ... well, they don't change. I don't know why. I just can't seem to ... you know." She looked at him. "But they're going to change now. We're going to start a new life in California, and I'm going to be a different person. You'll see. I know I can't just tell you; I have to show you. And I will. It's all over now.

All that's behind me.

It's in the past. This is a fresh start for both of us, and we're going to make the best of it. Okay?"

Dion nodded.

"Okay?" she said again.

"Okay." He stared out the window, at the sagebrush and saguaro passing by. It sounded good, what she said, and she obviously meant it and believed it herself, but it also sounded slightly familiar and more than a little pat. He found himself wondering if she had taken it from a movie. He hated himself for thinking such a thought, but his mom had given him these sorts of reassurances before, with equal conviction, only to abandon them when she met a guy with a bottle and good buns.

He thought of Cleveland, thought of Albuquerque.

They were silent until they reached a rest area. Dion got out and stretched before walking around to the driver's side. He leaned against the hood of the car. "I don't understand why we're moving to Napa," he said.

His mom, adjusting her halter top, frowned. "What do you mean, you don't understand why? J got a job there, that's why."

"But you could've gotten a job anywhere."

"You have something against Napa?"

"No," he admitted. "It's just ... I don't know."

"Just what?"

"Well, it seems like people usually have a reason for moving." He glanced at her, reddening. "I mean moving to a specific place," he added quickly. 'They have family there or they grew up there or they really love the area or their company transfers them or ... something. But we don't really have any reason to be going."

"Dion," she said, "shut up and get in the car."

He grinned at her. "All right," he said. "All right."

* * *

They spent that night in a Motel Six in Santa Barbara, staying in a single room with twin beds.

Dion went to bed early, soon after dinner, and fell asleep instantly. He dreamed of a hallway, a long, dark hallway at the end of which was a red door. He walked slowly forward, certain that the floor under his feet was soft, slimy, and not stable, though he could hear the clicking of his shoe heels on the hard cement. He continued to walk, looking straight ahead, afraid to look to the left or to the right. When he reached the door, he didn't want to open it, but he opened it anyway and saw behind it a stairway leading up.

Down the center of the steps trickled a thin waterfall of blood.

He walked up the stairs, looking down at his feet, following the blood to its source. He reached a landing, turned, continued upward. Now the trickle was thicker, moving faster.

He turned on the next landing and saw seated on the top step a beautiful blond girl of approximately his own age. Her straight hair was tied in a bun at the top of her head, and she was smiling invitingly at him.

She was completely naked.

His eyes moved down her body, over her milky white breasts to her widespread legs. From the hairy, shadowed cleft between her thighs streamed an unending ribbon of blood which cascaded downward from step to step. He walked slowly up to her. She reached out to him, motioning for him to put his head in her lap, and when he again looked at her face, he saw that she had turned into his mom.

They left early the next morning, before dawn, and for breakfast they stopped in the small town of Solvang, some forty miles north of Santa Barbara. A well-known tourist attraction, Solvang was supposed to be a Danish village, but Dutch windmills, Swedish flower boxes, and a varied amalgam of Scandinavian influences could be seen in the architecture of the storybook buildings. They ate at an outdoor cafe, and Dion had something called a Belgian waffle, a huge, exaggerated waffle square piled high with fresh strawberries and whipped cream. Although he was still troubled by his dream, he felt better today about leaving Arizona, and he looked up at the blue sky, at the green, rolling hills surrounding the community. He knew Napa was still an eight-hour drive away, but he imagined it looking much the same as Solvang--small, cute, beautifully unreal. For the first time he thought he understood why his mom wanted to move to northern California's wine country.

And then they were on the road again, taking with them a white wax sack filled with Danish pastries for the trip. The countryside grew flatter, more farmlike, and though it was initially quite scenic, the sameness of it soon grew monotonous, and Dion, lulled further by the subtle rolling motion of the car, soon fell asleep.

He awoke before lunch and was still awake an hour later as they drove into San Francisco. His mom, obviously excited, grew more talkative as they drew closer to Napa. Her enthusiasm was catching, and Dion found himself anxiously awaiting the moment they pulled up in front of their new home.

His first view of the Napa Valley was disappointing. He had been expecting to find lush green farmland surrounding a small town, a quaint clapboard community with a bandstand in the park and a steepled church overlooking a town square. Instead, the first sight they saw through the white, smoggy air was a crowded Burger King situated next to an abandoned Exxon station. After the build-up, the sight was more than just depressing. He stared out the window. There was no sign of a farm or even a grape arbor, only rather ordinary buildings on typical city streets. He glanced over at his mom. She was still happy, excited, but his own mood of anticipation had been effectively squelched. As they passed through town, he was filled with a growing feeling of dread, a feeling which reminded him for some reason of his dream.

The feeling grew as they drove by shopping centers, through subdivisions, and past tourist traps. The town became more rural, less developed, as they drove north, but it was more than just the physical surroundings which had brought upon him this dread, and he felt as though a great emotional weight had been placed upon him, a heavy, undefinable feeling which increased as they headed toward their new home.

Ten minutes later they were there. Dion stepped slowly out of the car.

The house was nicer than their house in Mesa. Much nicer. In place of the small carport and adjoining storage shed they'd had in Arizona was a beautiful redwood garage. In place of gravel and cactus was a yard filled with bushes and green trees. In place of the crackerbox dwelling was a small but breathtaking wood and glass structure straight out of Architectural Digest. The house was situated in the flatland between the hills which surrounded the valley, nominally part of a subdivision, but the way it was set back from the road, fronted by shrubbery, gave it a refreshingly rural air. His mom grinned. "How do you like it? I had someone at the office pick it out. I figured they'd have an inside track. What do you think?" Dion nodded his approval. "It's great."

"We're going to be happy here, aren't we?" He nodded slowly. "I think we are," he said. And he was surprised to discover that he believed it.

April felt good.

They'd been here nearly a week, and it was as if they'd been living here for years. Already Napa felt more like home to her than Mesa ever had.

She stood at the kitchen window, sipping coffee, watching Dion mow the back lawn. He was shiftless and sweating, and she thought that if he wasn't her son, she might try to seduce him. He was turning into a very good looking young man.

She wondered if he'd grow up to look like his dad.

Not that she remembered what his dad looked like.

Not that she knew who his dad was.

She smiled to herself. Omaha. There'd been a lot of guys back then.

Regular lovers as well as one-nighters. And she had never used any form of birth control. She hadn't liked condoms or diaphragms, hadn't liked any sort of barrier to contact, and she hadn't been responsible enough to take birth-control pills on a regular basis. So she'd trusted to luck or fate or whatever, and had just accepted things as they came.

She was glad she'd gotten pregnant, though. She was glad she'd had Dion.

She didn't know where she'd be today without him. Dead, she supposed.

Overdosed. Or carved up by a Mr. Goodbar.

He turned the mower, started back toward the house, saw her in the window, and waved. She waved back.

On the trip over, Dion had asked why they'd moved to Napa, and she hadn't been able to answer him. Why had they come here? As he had pointed out, there was really no compelling reason for them to start over in this place. She had no friends or relatives in the region; her job was one she could have gotten in any mid-sized city or major metropolitan area in the country. She'd told him that it was as good as anywhere else, that it was far enough away that she wouldn't be known, but the truth was that ... She'd been Called.

Called. That was how she thought of it. It didn't make any sort of logical sense, but emotionally it felt right. She'd seen an article on the Wine Country in the Arizona Republic's Sunday magazine supplement, and had found herself drawn, pulled to the area. For two weeks the idea of moving had grown within her, making her nervous and anxious, growing from a desire to a necessity in her mind, intruding upon her daily thoughts until she thought she'd go crazy. It was as if something inside her was telling her that she had to move to Napa. She'd fought it at first, but she'd finally given in. She had always been one to trust her instincts.

Of course, whether they moved here or someplace else, they still would have had to move. She had no choice in the matter. She had not been laid off from the bank, as she'd told Dion. She'd been fired and threatened with prosecution. Dion probably suspected more than she'd told him and more than he let on, but she doubted that his ideas and suspicions were anywhere near as bad as the truth. The truth was that the boy had been sixteen and that he'd been seriously and permanently injured, and that if the bank manager hadn't been involved as well, she would probably be in jail or on trial at this moment.

What was wrong with her? she wondered. Why did these sorts of things always happen to her? It wasn't as though she didn't try to live a normal life; it was just that this craziness kept intruding. As much as she tried to walk the straight and narrow, there was always someone or something waiting to tip her off balance. She wasn't entirely blameless.

Much of it was, in fact, her own fault. But it just seemed like fate wasn't doing her any favors.

All of that was over, though. This time things were going to be different. She was not going to fall back into her old habits, her old patterns. For the first time in her life, she was going to be the type of mother that Dion wanted. The type of mother that he deserved.

She finished one last sip of coffee, dumped the dregs in the sink, then walked into the bedroom to get dressed.

* * *

"First day!" Dion nodded as he sat down to breakfast. On the table before him was a pitcher of orange juice, two slices of toast with peanut butter, and a choice of two cereals. He looked over at his mom, standing next to the sink and pouring herself a cup of coffee. She was obviously nervous. She only played Harriet Nelson when she was under extreme pressure or extremely worried--ordinarily, they ate breakfast in silence, fending for themselves.

Of course, this was the first day for both of them.

"Are you excited?" his mom asked.

"Not really."

"Be honest."

"More scared than excited." He poured himself a glass of juice.

"You have nothing to be scared about. Everything's going to be fine."

He drank his juice. "You're not nervous?"

"A little," she admitted, sitting down in the chair next to him. He noticed that she was wearing a tight dress which clearly outlined the fact that she was wearing no bra. "But it's only natural to be a little jittery at first. After the first ten minutes, though, it's like you've been there all your life."

For you maybe, Dion thought, but he said nothing. He wished he was a little bit more like his mom in social situations.

He wished she was a little bit more like him.

"Come on," she said. "Hurry up and eat. I'll drop you off at school."

"That's okay. I'll walk."

"You sure?" she asked.

He nodded.

"Embarrassed to have your mommy drop you off, huh?" She smiled. "I understand. But in that case you'd better eat even faster. It's about a fifteen- or twenty minute walk, I think."

He poured himself a bowl of cereal. "Well, maybe you can drive me part of the way," he said.

She laughed. "Deal."

It was an old redbrick schoolhouse, the kind seldom seen outside of movies. Two stories with indoor hallways, the main building housed both classrooms and administration, stretching parallel to the football field. A tall clock tower topped the adjoining auditorium. The gym, set slightly apart from the other two buildings, was much newer and much uglier, constructed of plain gray cement.

Dion stood across the street from school, waiting for the bell to ring and dreading it at the same time. His mouth was dry, his palms wet, and he wished to God that they had never left Arizona. He was not good at meeting people. He hadn't known that many students at his high school in Mesa, and he had been there since freshman year. Coming to a new school, starting from scratch ... it was going to be tough.

At least it wasn't the middle of the semester. He was thankful for that.

It would have been much worse to walk in on classes already in progress, where all the relationships would have been established and cemented for the year. Now, at least, he would be in on the courses from the beginning. He might be new, but he would be able to start off on somewhat equal footing with his classmates. He would have a chance.

There would probably be other new kids here as well, students who'd transferred to the school over the summer, students who, like him, would be looking for someone to meet.

He walked across the street and up the steps into the schoolhouse.

Coming to a new school was frightening, but in a way it was also exciting. He knew no one in Napa, so no one would have any preconceived ideas about him. He carried no baggage. He was, as far as the students here were concerned, a blank slate, and he could create of himself anything he wanted. A few well-placed lies, the proper clothes, and he could be a jock or a party animal or ... anything.

Theoretically.

Dion smiled wryly. He knew himself well enough to know his place in the school hierarchy. He was neither athletic nor spectacularly handsome, neither a class clown nor a bravura talker. He was smart but not in the subjects guaranteed to bring him social acceptability. As much as he might try to alter his personality, his true nature would undoubtedly win out over any self-imposed public image.

He was not going to be Joe Popular here either.

But that was okay. He was used to it.

He stood outside the classroom and looked down at his schedule as if checking to make sure the room number was correct. He knew perfectly well that he was in front of the right room, but this conspicuous display of his newness somehow made him feel more secure, less afraid.

Students pushed rudely past him, around him, entering the class. He had half hoped that Napa High would be like those sitcom schools on TV where friendly students would notice his discomfort and immediately try to make him feel at home. No such luck. He was ignored; no one even noticed him.

He walked into class, aware that he was sweating heavily, and glanced quickly around, taking in the lay of the land. The desks in the middle of the room were taken, he saw, but there were a few open spaces in the back row, and the front row was entirely free.

He opted for the back.

He could hide better there.

Seating himself in the middle desk of an empty trio, directly behind a sullen-looking boy in a dirty T-shirt and a heavily made-up Hispanic girl, he looked around the room. He had expected the kids here to be cooler than those in Mesa. After all, this was California. But the students surrounding him all looked faintly anachronistic, the boys' hair a little too long, the girls' appearance a little too casual.

Obviously the latest wave of fashion which had crashed over Phoenix had come directly from southern California, its edges lapping only faintly at the northern part of the golden state.

He looked down again at his schedule of classes: American Government, Algebra II, Classical Mythology, World Economics, Rock History, and AP English. He was enrolled in what, for this school, was the standard college prep lineup. His sole elective, and the only class which looked like it would be any fun at all, was Rock History. The others were strict by-the-book academic courses, although in the case of the mythology class he had chosen the lesser of two evils; the alternative would have been a foreign language.

At least PE was not a required course at this school. That was one thing for which he was grateful. He was not good in sports, and he always felt a little embarrassed undressing in front of other guys.

An average-looking kid with blond mid-length hair dropped his books on the next desk over and sat down. His eyes flicked dismissively over Dion, who smiled bravely, determined to at least try to meet new people this first day.

"Hi," he said.

The kid looked at him, snorted. "What's your name? Dick?"

Dion thought for only a second before deciding to take the plunge.

"That's what your mama called me last night."

The kid stared at him for a moment, then laughed, and suddenly it was like one of those sitcom schools.

He had made his first friend in Napa.

As simple as that.

"What's your real name?" the kid asked.

"Dion," he said.

"I'm Kevin." He gestured magnanimously around the room. "And this is hell."

It wasn't as bad as all that. The subject was boring, but the teacher seemed nice, and since it was the first day he let everyone out early so they would have time to find their next class. "Where you off to now?"

Kevin asked in the hallway.

"Algebra II."

"Whoa."

"What do you have?"

"English. Then Classical Mythology, then PE, then Rock History, then Economics."

"Looks like we have two more classes together," Dion said. "Mythology and Rock History."

Kevin frowned. "Together? What do you think we are? Butt buddies?"

"I didn't mean--" Dion began, flustered.

"I thought I saw some pixie dust on your shoulder." Kevin backed up, shaking his head. "I'm out of here." And he headed down the hall, disappearing into the crowd which began streaming out of the line of doorways as the bell rang.

Dion stood there stupidly. Apparently he had crossed over some behavioral line peculiar to the subculture of this school, said the wrong word in the wrong way, and had offended his new friend. He worried about it all through math. But when he took an empty seat near the window of his Mythology class an hour later, Kevin sat down next to him as if nothing had happened.

Obviously Kevin's abrupt departure was a perfectly ordinary way of saying good-bye around here.

He would have to remember that.

Dion scanned the room, scoping out his fellow students. Kevin followed his gaze and commented on each individual who came under his scrutiny, revealing tidbits of gossip, information, personality quirks, but he shut up quickly when the teacher entered the room. Mr. Holbrook, a tall, thin man with an angular, bird-like face, put his briefcase down on the desk and strode directly to the blackboard, where he began writing his name in clear block letters.

He was followed through the door by the stairway girl from Dion's dream.

Dion blinked, held his breath. The resemblance was truly remarkable. The girl was wearing fashionable fall school clothes, and her hair was curled and hanging free rather than straight and tied up, but the similarity between the two was nothing less than amazing. His eyes followed the girl as she sat down in an empty seat in the second row.

She was gorgeous, almost unbelievably gorgeous, and she had about her a reserved, almost shy quality that made her seem even more attractive and which immediately distinguished her from her dream double.

He wanted to ask Kevin who she was, but it was clear from the silence of the classroom and the unyielding rigidity of the writing teacher's back that talk would not be tolerated during this period.

He settled in for a long hour, content merely to look. After a short introduction, Mr. Holbrook called roll, and Dion discovered that her name was Penelope. Penelope Daneam. It was a nice name, a conservative, old-fashioned name, and he found that he liked that.

Like everyone else, Penelope looked around as each name was called, connecting names with faces in her mind, and Dion grew increasingly nervous as the alphabetical roll call drew closer to S.

"Semele," the teacher called. "Dion?"

"Here," Dion said. He stared down at his desk, too timid to look up at her, too embarrassed to meet her eyes. When Mr. Holbrook called the next name and Dion finally did look up, her attention was elsewhere, on the new student.

Smooth move, he thought.

As the period dragged on, he found himself tuning out the monotonic drone of the teacher to focus on the back of Penelope's head.

Maybe tomorrow he would contrive to sit closer to her.

The hour was as long as he'd expected, but finally the bell rang. Dion moved slowly from his seat, watching through jostling bodies as Penelope rose and picked up her books. The pants she was wearing were not tight, but she had been sitting in such a way that when she stood up they unintentionally rode up the crack of her buttocks.

Kevin noticed the object of his attention and shook his head. "Rapidly approaching the Isle of Lesbos, bud."

Dion looked at him, surprised. "What?"

"She likes 'em fileted."

"Fileted?"

"You know, de-boned. No dick."

"You're lying."

Kevin shrugged. "I call 'em the way I see 'em."

"She's not a lesbian."

Kevin casually grabbed the sleeve of a student pushing past them toward the door, a heavyset guy carrying only a Pee Chee folder. "Hank?" he said. "Penelope Daneam."

The big guy grinned. "Cat lapper."

Kevin let go of Hank's sleeve, turning back toward Dion. "See?"

Lesbian. He wasn't sure he believed it, but he didn't disbelieve it either. He watched her exit the room and disappear into the crowded hall. A lesbian. He had to admit that the idea was rather exciting. He knew he probably didn't have a chance in hell with a girl that beautiful, particularly with his lame opposite-sex conversational skills, but at least he'd been provided with additional fuel for his fantasies, provided with not only the image of her naked but with the image of her in bed with another girl, doing exotic, forbidden, only partially imaginable things.

"Stuff a sock down your pants," Hank suggested as he stepped past them.

"Works every time. When she sees that bulging bohannon, she'll be yours."

"Yeah," Kevin added. "Of course, when you whip down your pants and she sees the Vienna wiener you really have, she'll dump you faster'n you can say 'tough titty kitty.'"

Dion laughed. Fileted. Cat lapper. Bohannon. He liked the creative obscenities, the idiosyncratic descriptions used by the students here.

In Mesa, guys were either "fags" or "dicks," girls "bitches," and the primary adjective used to describe everything else was "shit." The weather was either hot as shit or cold as shit, a person was dumb as shit or smart as shit, a job was hard as shit or easy as shit. In Mesa, shit possessed a number of contrary properties.

But the language here seemed to be more colorful, more interesting, more intelligent As did the people.

He might like living in California.

"Come on," Kevin said. "Let's get something to eat."

Dion nodded. "All right," he said. "Lead on."

* * *

The bus dropped her off at the foot of the drive, and Penelope shifted her books to her left hand, taking out her key, opening the black box, and punching the security combination with her right. The winery gates swung slowly and automatically open. The warm afternoon air was permeated with the rich scent of the harvest, a heady, organic fragrance that overhung the grounds like grape perfume, thick and redolent, undisturbed by any breeze. She breathed deeply as she walked up the winding asphalt road toward the house. She loved the smell of the harvest more than anything, more than the deeper, stronger scent of the pressing, much more than the tart odor of the fermenting processes to come. She had heard it said that olfactory memory was the strongest, that olfactory associations carried the most emotional weight, and she believed it. To her the fresh natural fragrance of the newly picked grapes always conjured up feelings she connected with childhood, joyous, happy emotions not linked to any specific event, and it was at this time that she was most grateful that her mothers owned the winery.

She walked slowly. Ahead, she could see sunlight glinting off the glass and metal of the cars in the parking lot. In the vineyard to her right, several groups of day laborers were cutting bunches of grapes from the vine, gathering the first pick of this year's crop. In the next few weeks, she knew, the ranks of workers would swell until, in early October, the vineyard aisles would be full of crowded, stooped laborers.

One of the women working closest to the drive stopped picking for a moment to look up at her, and Penelope smiled, waving. The woman returned to her work with out so much as a nod. Penelope hurried forward, embarrassed. Most of the laborers, she knew, were illegal aliens, many of them unable to speak English, their work overseen by exploitative day-contracted foremen whose only talent was that they could translate orders and requests. It was against the law to hire illegals, of course, but then Mother Margeaux had never been one to be deterred by such trifles as legality. She remembered once asking Mother Margeaux how much the laborers were paid per day. Her mother had replied curtly, "Enough."

She doubted that. And she assumed that that was why many of the day workers seemed to dislike her so. She had never personally done anything to engender any ill will among the grape pickers, but no doubt they viewed her as a follower in her mothers' footsteps.

The salaried employees, on the other hand, the winery workers, always treated her as though she were royalty, taking her much too seriously, behaving very deferentially toward her.

No one treated her like a normal person.

A gull swooped low over her head, a branch of half dried grapes in its mouth, and she followed its progress as it flew over the cars, over the buildings, toward the hills beyond, nesting finally in an anonymous tree in the heart of the woods.

The woods.

She felt a chill wash over her as she looked at the line of trees demarcating the rear boundary of their land, and she glanced quickly away, quickening her step toward the house.

She had always been allowed to go anywhere she wanted on their property, to roam the grounds, wander the vineyards, but ever since she'd been a small child she had been expressly forbidden to enter the woods. She had been told and retold, warned and rewarned, that the woods were dangerous, home to wild animals such as cougars and wolves, although she had never heard of a single animal attack occurring anywhere near the area. Up by Clear Lake a few years back, a hungry mountain lion had attacked and maimed a three-year-old girl, and near Lake Berryessa there had been isolated incidents of bears frightening away campers. But though she often saw weekend hikers trekking up one of several paths which led through the trees into the woods, she had never read or heard of a single attack on a human being in that area.

Her mothers had obviously instituted the rule because of her father.

Such a stern and seemingly arbitrary prohibition should have caused her to sneak into the woods at the first opportunity, and she knew that most of her friends would have done exactly that. But there was something about the woods which awakened within her a feeling of instinctive dread, a feeling that would have been there even if her mothers had said nothing at all to her about the area. Each time she looked through the barbed-wire fence at the back of the property toward the line of trees across the meadow, she felt the hairs tingle on the back of her neck, felt goosebumps rise on her arms.

The goosebumps were there now, and she pushed the thought out of her mind, running up the last stretch of drive, taking the porch steps two at a time, hurrying between the tall Doric columns which fronted the house. Pulling open the heavy double doors, she walked through the high-ceilinged foyer and past the stairway into the kitchen. "I'm home!"

she announced. She dropped her books on the chopping block and opened the refrigerator, taking out a can of V8.

Mother Felice, looking tired and wan, the dark circles around her eyes more prominent than usual, emerged from the pantry, wiping her hands on her apron. "How was it?" she asked. "How was your first day?"

Penelope smiled. "It was fine, Mother."

"Just fine? Not wonderfully spectacularly amazingly stupendous?"

"What did you expect? It was only the first day."

"How are your teachers?"

"I don't know yet. It's hard to tell until the end of the first week."

She looked out the window of the kitchen toward the twin buildings of the winery. "Where's everyone else?"

Mother Felice shrugged. "Pressing time. You know. It's a busy day."

Penelope nodded, grateful that her other mothers had not been there to greet her. She had told her mothers she was a senior this year, almost an adult, had asked them not to make a big deal over school for once, and apparently they had gotten her hint.

"Did you make any new friends yet?" her mother asked, washing her hands in the sink.

"I saw Vella and Lianne and Jennifer."

"I said any new friends."

Penelope reddened. She finished her V8 and tossed the empty can into the garbage sack next to the stove. "I know what you're hinting about, and, no, I have not met any guys yet. I will probably not have a date this week, okay? God, it's only the first day. What do you expect?"

"I don't mean to--"

Penelope sighed. "I know," she said. "But don't worry. Prom is eight months away," "It's not that, it's--"

"It's what?"

Her mother tried to laugh lightly, but the effect seemed hollow and artificial. "Never mind. We'll talk about it some other time."

"Okay." She looked again out the window, was glad to see no sign of other mothers. "If you need me," she said, "I'll be in the Garden."

"Don't you have any homework?"

"Mother, it's the first day. How many times do I have to tell you? No one ever has homework the first day. Or even the first week."

"We did."

"Times have changed." Penelope grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl on the counter and picked up her books. She was about to head upstairs to drop the books off in her bedroom when she was stopped by her mother's voice. "Aren't you even going to stop by and see your other mothers?"

Penelope turned around. She licked her lips. "I'd rather do it later,"

she admitted.

"It's your first day of school. They'll be interested in what happened."

She put a hand on Penelope's shoulder. "They care. We all care."

"Yeah," Penelope said.

Her mother punched her playfully on the shoulder. "Knock that off." She smiled at her daughter. "Come on."

Mother Margeaux, dressed entirely in black as usual, was seated behind the massive desk in her office, talking on the phone, berating the person on the other end of the line. She nodded curtly af Penelope, at Mother Felice, then continued unabated with her diatribe. "What I

expect," she said in a hard, even voice, "is that you correctly perform the function for which you were contracted. If that is too difficult, our company will find a more effective and efficient means of delivering our product Do I make myself clear?"

Mother Felice sat down in the dark leather couch against the wall and motioned for Penelope to do the same. Penelope shook her head and remained standing.

Mother Margeaux hung up the phone, coolly and carefully replacing the receiver in its cradle, then glanced up at Penelope, smiling tightly.

Light was reflected in her deep brown eyes and in the smoothness of her slick black hair. "I trust your first day of school was satisfactory?"

Penelope nodded, not meeting her mother's eyes. "Yes, ma'am."

"Are you satisfied with your classes? With your teachers?"

"I guess ..."

"If not, I can arrange to have you transferred. This is your senior year, and it's important that you maintain your grade-point average."

"My classes are fine."

"That's good." Mother Margeaux nodded. "That's good."

Penelope said nothing. The three of them sat silently for a moment.

"Is there anything else you wish to tell me?" Mother Margeaux asked.

Penelope shook her head. "No, ma'am."

"I'd better get back to work, then. Thank you for coming in, Penelope."

She was dismissed. The conversation was over. Mother Felice stood up. "I

guess we'll see your other mothers,"

"You'll do well this year,"

Mother Margeaux said to her daughter.

"You'll make us proud."

Penelope nodded, following Mother Felice out of the office. She did not notice that she was sweating until they stepped into the hall.

Although Mother Sheila was out somewhere in the fields, overseeing the collection of representative samples of today's harvest, her other mothers were in the testing area of the main building, supervising the analysis of grapes which had been picked this morning. A team of analysts sat at a long counter in front of the window, testing the balance of the must in order to make a preliminary determination of this year's product potential while her mothers looked on.

"Penelope's home!" Mother Felice announced, closing the white door behind her.

Mother Margaret was quietly conferring with two of the analysts. They both looked up at the announcement, smiled absently, nodded, waved, and continued talking. Mother Janine, however, immediately stopped what she was doing and hurried over, her spiked heels sounding loudly on the tile. Penelope felt herself tense up. Mother Janine reached her, threw her arms around her, and hugged tightly. The hug was a little too long, a little too unmotherly, and Penelope anxiously held her breath. As always, she tried telling herself that Mother Janine really loved her and cared about her, but what she told herself and what she felt were two different things. There was something disturbing about her youngest mother, something she could not quite put her finger on, and as soon as Mother Janine let go, Penelope stepped back and away.

"I missed you," her mother said in that cloying little girl voice she used when talking to Penelope. "I always hate it when summer ends and you have to leave us and go back to school."

Penelope nodded, said nothing. The truth was that for the past two weeks she had not seen Mother Janine except at breakfast and dinner. She didn't know how her mother could miss her.

"Did you meet anyone yet? Any cute guys?"

Penelope frowned. "It's only the first day."

Mother Janine laughed, a strange sound that segued from the high falsetto of a child's giggle to the low chuckle of a deep-throated woman. "Never too early to start."

"Yeah." Penelope nodded and turned toward Mother Felice. "Well, we'd better go, let them get back to work."

"Okay," her mother agreed.

"We'll talk at dinner," Mother Janine said. "I want you to tell me all about your day, everything^ that happened." She gave Penelope's shoulder a small squeeze.

"See?" Mother Felice said as they walked across the small lawn to the house. "That wasn't so bad."

Penelope grimaced and said nothing.

Her mother laughed.

The two of them parted at the kitchen. "Now I'm going to the Garden,"

Penelope said. She grabbed her books from the kitchen table and went upstairs to her bedroom. Her feet were silent on the heavy carpet as she walked down the long hallway. She glanced into the open doorways as she passed and noted as always how the tastes and personalities of her mothers were reflected in their bedrooms- Mother Margeaux's sleeping quarters were simultaneously imperial and practical, the warring values represented by a huge bed with an intricately carved oak headboard and a large, simple desk topped with neatly stacked piles of paperwork. The off-white walls were decorated with framed original prototypes of Daneam labels. Next door, Mother Sheila's room was the most mundane, filled with bland contemporary furnishings that looked as though they could have come straight out of a catalog photograph, and a single framed print on the wall that always reminded Penelope of hotel art. Mother Margaret's room decor was the boldest and probably most interesting, with its ultra-modern bed, non-dresser, and startling juxtaposition of Old World folk art and original paintings by young Native American artists, but it was in Mother Felice's bedroom that she was most comfortable. Cluttered with lace and flowers, antiques and needlework, a shiny brass bed in its center, the room was crowded and at the same time light, airy. It was a friendly room, and it suited her favorite mother perfectly.

Mother Janine's bedroom had no furniture at all, only a bare mattress centered on the red tile floor. The undecorated walls were painted a deep, unreflective black.

She had never liked going into Mother Janine's room.

She reached her own bedroom and threw her books on the bed. Grabbing her journal and pen from the dresser, she went back downstairs, walking through the library and opening the sliding glass door to the Garden. Or what her mothers called the Garden. To her it had always been much more than a garden. To her it was a sanctuary, a refuge, a place where she could come to relax and to think and to be alone. Her mothers seemed to recognize her feelings and to appreciate her kinship with the location.

The Garden had originally been the place where in the summer they read or sunbathed or just lounged around, but over the years their involvement with the area had become less, their visits more infrequent.

It was as though they had tacitly agreed that the Garden was her domain and not theirs, and gradually they relinquished their control to her.

For this she was grateful.

She glanced around the walled yard. In the center of the quadrangle was a fountain, an exact replication of a Hellenic fountain discovered in the ruined courtyard of an old villa by Mother Margaret on one of her trips to Greece. Spreading outward from the fountain like spokes in a wheel were Mother Sheila's medicinal herbs and rare flowering shrubs, the even rows of greenery subdivided by the purposeful placement of various Old World archaeological artifacts and folk sculpture purchased by her mothers over the years. There were several benches within the Garden, but Penelope had always preferred sitting on the edge of the fountain, listening firsthand to the burble of the water, feeling the spray of light mist against the skin of her hands and face.

Although she hadn't said anything to Mother Felice and probably wouldn't, the question of her mothers' sexual preference had come up again today at school. Last year she had nearly been suspended after fighting with Susan Holman, who had called the product produced by their vineyards "Lezzie Label Wine." She and Susan had no classes together this year, but in the hall after lunch she had heard Susan loudly say something about "the Dyke Factory" while her tough blue-jeaned cronies laughed hysterically. She had ignored the remark, continuing on to class as though she hadn't heard. But she had heard. And it hurt.

It always hurt.

What made her feel worse was that she wondered herself sometimes if any of her mothers were lesbians. That had been the rumor around town for years, and it was not beyond the realm of possibility. Each of her mothers went out periodically on dates, but for all she knew that could have been a cover-up, merely an attempt to maintain respectability for the sake of the business. There were no serious men in any of their lives, and there never had been, at least not in her lifetime.

Besides, her mothers were ... well, weird. She hated to admit it, but they not only seemed peculiar to outsiders. They often seemed strange even to her.

Particularly Mother Janine.

Of course, if that was the case, if they were lesbians, one of them had to be bisexual. Or had to at least have done it once with a man.

Unless she had been adopted.

No, she was not adopted. Of that she was certain.

She sat down, dipping her fingers into the cool water of the fountain pool. She called them all "mother," but she knew that, really, she had only one female parent. She had a pretty good idea of who her biological mother was too. It was something all of them denied when she put it to them, confronted mem with it. They all handed her the same line, saying that traditional one-on-one relationships, such as those usually associated with parents and siblings, were ultimately limiting and were not to be established or recognized within this household. They told her she must always treat each mother equally. But she noticed that they did not all treat her equally. Some were kinder to her than others, some were more open and honest with her than others, and so she was closer to some than others.

She felt closest to Mother Felice, and it was Mother Felice whom she believed to be her true mother, her biological mother. The reasons were vague, more feelings than thoughts, but they were consistent and always had been. It was Mother Felice who throughout the years had seemed most concerned with both her physical welfare and her emotional well-being.

Like today. It had been Mother Felice who had stayed in the house to wait for her. The apron and the pantry routine hadn't fooled her at all.

Her mother was here instead of at the winery because she wanted to know how her first day in school had gone.

That made her feel good.

Sometimes she wished that Mother Felice was her only mother.

She looked down into the water, seeing in the shimmering a distorted reflection of her face. She was pretty, she knew, and she liked looking at herself, though she was by no means obsessive about it. She had never been one to spend excessive amounts of time on makeup or hair care, but if she passed a mirror she invariably looked into it. She found it reassuring to see her own reflection, to know what she looked like, although it always embarrassed her if someone caught her at it.

Sometimes she wondered if she herself was homosexual. It was not inconceivable. Growing up in an all female environment, it might even be expected. She had always had a hard time talking to boys and had never really made that leap of socialization that most of her peers had made during the awkward years of junior high. At night, in bed, when she masturbated, she liked both the way her fingers felt on her vagina and the way her vagina felt against her fingertips. She enjoyed the pliant softness, the warm wetness, even the subtle pressure of the vaginal walls against her middle finger when she occasionally slipped it into the opening. She could not see herself ever touching another girl's body-^the very thought was revolting--but wasn't the joy she felt when fingering herself enough to make her a lesbian?

She wasn't sure.

Maybe the fact that she had trouble imagining herself in a romantic situation with anyone, boy or girl, meant that she was asexual. She splashed her reflection, dissolving her face in a fluid ripple. Why was it all so complicated? There was a knock behind her, and she turned around

to see Mother Felice at the window, waving. She waved J back, then looked down, opened her journal, clicked her pen. "Today," she wrote, "was the first day of my senior year ..."

As one, the four grandfather clocks lined along the wall next to the door chimed six, and Vie Williams stood up, shut off the cassette player, and moved from behind the counter to lock the door. It had been a long day, a boring day, and not a very profitable one. Tourist season had pretty well run its course, and only five people had come into the shop since he'd opened this morning, all of them browsers, not buyers.

It was a taste of things to come, he knew. School had started, vacations had ended, and from now until mid-October business would be pretty much hit-and-miss.

Time was when the antique market was bullish all year, when he didn't have to depend on outside trade, when even local women wanted stained glass windows to decorate their living rooms and conservative middle-aged men bought Victrolas for their wives' anniversaries. But antiques were out these days. People bought Nagels and Neimans now, mall art for their walls, and anniversary presents consisted of televisions or VCRs.

Vie pulled the shade on the window. He was hungry and wanted to grab a bite to eat, but there were still three cartons of Depression glass he'd purchased at an estate sale a few weeks back which needed to be catalogued. He could have, and should have, done that earlier today, during the long slow stretch between lunch and closing, but he hated going through purchases during business hours. Somehow, the ritual of examining, appraising, and pricing items seemed more suited to evening than morning or afternoon.

He'd pick up a burger on the way home.

Vie retreated behind the counter once again and walked through the beaded doorway into the back room. The three cartons were on the floor, and he hefted the largest onto the long metal table which ran the length of the side wall. He took a razor blade out of the desk drawer and cut two cross slits through the layered masking tape which sealed shut the top of the box. Dropping the blade on the table, he pulled up the cardboard flaps and, one by one, began unwrapping the individually stacked plates. The pieces were good. Rose glass from the mid-thirties.

He held each up to the light, checking for flaws and chips and scratches before setting it carefully down on the tabletop. After unwrapping, examining, and setting down the last plate, he looked into the box. At the bottom, lying as if thrown there by accident or afterthought, was an old waterstained paperback. In Watermelon Sugar.

In Watermelon Sugar.

Richard Brautigan.

Whoa, did that bring back memories. He picked up the book, flipped the pages. Half of them were stuck together, glued by the hardening of some spilled beverage. The photo of Brautigan on the front was almost completely obscured by a brown stain, although the woman next to him stared out of the picture undamaged. It saddened Vie to see the book in such shape. It had been originally purchased, no doubt, by a member of what had then been called "the counterculture," someone young and enthusiastic, hungry for new ideas. Now that person was probably balding and overweight, dully establishment, interested only in interest rates and IRAs, the book and its fallen idol author now not even a memory.

Vie dropped the book in the wastepaper basket and sighed heavily.

He had come to Napa as a college student in the late sixties, and though he now wore his hair short and dressed respectably in the fashions of today, he still aligned himself with the sentiments of that era, still considered himself a part of that generation. Of course, those days were long gone, even here in northern California, where small conclaves of ex-hippies still lived in converted Victorian houses amidst the faded relics of psychedelia. People these days were harsher, harder, more willingly insensitive. The pace of life was faster now; there was less time to talk with friends, less time to be kind to strangers, less time to stop and smell the roses.

It made him feel depressed.

A lot of things made him feel depressed lately.

Last night he had watched a television program on the Vietnam War which, straight-faced, had portrayed the army as an upright organization of highly moral men bravely doing their patriotic duty despite the protests of an obnoxious and misguided crowd of drug-crazed college students. He had turned the program off before it ended. If there was one thing that really drove him crazy, that made him absolutely furious, it was the revisionist history now fostered by the media which characterized the sixties as an anarchic aberration, a decade in which the traditional values of America had been trashed by rioting long-haired, dope-smoking freaks. Jesus, couldn't people even remember what it had been like? What the hell had happened to the nation's short-term memory? Of course there had been a harsh element--a protest against the amoral complacency of the establishment and the immorality of the war--but there had also been a kindness, a gentleness of spirit which had gotten lost in the translation, which was never captured by movies or television shows or news retrospectives. It had been a time of turmoil, yes, but the people of that time had been open and giving and trusting and honest, filled with an optimistic generosity which in today's pragmatic light seemed quaintly naive. He shook his head. Even the hip today, their counterculture counterparts, seemed much more materialistic and opportunistic, less real, much phonier, pretenders to the throne, pseudo-beatniks dressed in black turtleneck costumes of the past, capturing only the surface details of a much more serious movement.

The times they had a-changed.

Vie lifted the box off the table, put it on the floor, and was about to crush its sides when he heard a noise from the front room, the sound of someone bumping into a piece of furniture.

He frowned. What could that be? There was no one in the store.

The bump came again.

He stood up and walked out to the counter. The front door, he saw immediately, was still closed and locked, the window shade pulled down.

Could someone have been shopping in one of the rear aisles and not heard or noticed that the shop had closed?

He heard footsteps from behind a row of armoires to the left.

"Hey!" he called. "Who's there?"

There was no answer, but the footsteps retreated down the aisle away from the counter. The thought occurred to him that someone had been deliberately hiding in one of the trunks or armoires while he closed up, waiting until he left in order to rob the place. Common sense told him to call the police, but instead he walked around the front of the counter.

"Who's there?" he called again.

From the other end of the store, the dark furniture aisle farthest away from the windows, came the sound of a woman singing. Vie stopped. The sound sent a chill through him. There was nothing threatening in either the voice or the song, a folkish tune sung in another language, but the incongruity of the circumstances lent the situation a decidedly surrealistic tinge.

"We're closed," he said, instantly aware of how ineffectual his announcement sounded.

The woman continued to sing.

Heart pounding, he proceeded slowly down the aisle toward the source of the sound. I should be carrying a baseball bat, he thought, some type of weapon.

Then he was around the corner and it was too late.

The woman was of approximately his own age and was dressed in a long, sheer gown which recalled the earth dresses of the past. She was obviously drunk or stoned and was humming to herself as she swayed back and forth in the center of the aisle, eyes closed. Next to her on the floor was a stick about half the size of a broom handle, tipped with what looked like a small pine cone.

Vie stood silently for a moment, watching the woman instead of announcing his presence. She was beautiful. Her hair was long and black and hung in naturally uncombed splendor over her shoulders and down her back. Even in the dim light he could see the smoothness of her perfect complexion, the classic line of her well-formed nose, the sensuous fullness of her lips. Through the transjuscent gown he could see a dark thatch between her shifting legs, the outline of nipples where the light material caught at her breasts.

What was she doing here? he wondered. How had she gotten in?

He was about to clear his throat, let the woman know that he was here, when her eyes suddenly snapped open. The effect was so startling and unexpected that he nearly jumped. Her eyes fastened on his. There was hunger in her expression, and a wildness which seemed totally at odds with the makeup of her face. Although she had seemed spaced out a moment before, there was in her features none of the vagueness associated with being high. Her gaze was sharp and focused, crystal clear.

"I don't know what you're doing here," Vie said. "But you'll have to leave." His voice sounded more authoritarian than he'd intended, than he'd wanted.

The woman closed her eyes again, began humming, began singing.

"You have to leave," Vie repeated.

Smiling, swaying, almost dancing, the woman moved forward until she was directly before him. One arm snaked around his waist, the other lightly cupping his crotch, as she tilted her face upward to kiss him. He did not draw her to him, but he did not push her away. Unsure of how to react, he allowed her to control the moment, silently acquiescing as she kissed him, her soft tongue sliding gently between his lips. He felt himself growing. It had been a while since he'd been to bed with anyone, and to his body even this casual contact felt good. She gave his crotch a small squeeze.

Pulling away, still humming, she dropped to her knees and began unbuckling his belt.

This isn't happening, he thought.

She's crazy, he thought.

AIDS, he thought.

But he remained in place. He wanted to back away, to put a stop to this--it was too strange, it was happening too fast--but he stayed rooted, his body refusing to listen to the arguments of his mind.

She pulled down his pants, pulled down his underwear. He was hard and quivering, and slowly, expertly, she began massaging him, stroking him.

He found himself putting his hands on the top of her head. Her hair felt smooth, soft, wonderful. He closed his eyes.

The rhythm changed. What had been gentle became aggressive, then just plain rough. He opened his eyes, looked down. The woman was smiling up at him, and there was something in the expression on her face that chilled him.

She grabbed his-balls tightly and with one quick pull yanked them out by the roots.

Vie screamed, a primal, instinctive expression of agony, as his erection disintegrated in a wash of warm blood. The woman, still on her knees before him, lifted her hands to catch the spurting blood, smearing it on her face and in her hair, laughing with drunken, ecstatic glee. He staggered backward and would have fallen had it not been for the armoire behind him. And then she was wielding her pine-cone stick, shoving it deep into his stomach, thrusting upward. New agonies flared within him as the serrated, irregular end of the spear pushed in farther, piercing skin, rending muscle, ripping veins. She pulled the stick out and dropped it, trying to shove a hand into the hole she'd made. Her gown was covered with a Pollock canvas of red, and still she was tearing at him, her mouth open to catch the spray, greedy fingers bathing in the hot liquid.

He kicked out at her with what strength and coordination was left to him, all the time screaming, but she absorbed the blows happily, laughing, her head whipping back and forth in a frenzied motion as she clawed into his abdomen, grabbing viscera, squeezing. He slumped to the floor, his vision clouding, coherence slipping fast.

The last thing he noticed was that she had ripped off her gown and was naked.

After Mythology, Dion followed Kevin out of the building to the cafeteria. He felt pretty good. He had been here less than a week, but already he had settled in to the familiar rhythm of school, making the adjustment with unusual ease. The teachers, the classes, seemed not much different than those in Mesa, certainly no harder, and most of the students he met seemed all right, although he hadn't really spoken in depth to any of them except Kevin.

He was still not sure of Kevin's status in the school social structure.

His friend clearly did not belong to any of the identifiable cliques, but neither was he a true loner or outcast. He seemed to fall through the categorical cracks. Kevin knew almost everyone, was on good terms with most of the people he knew, yet he chose to spend his lunches with Dion. The two of them were still not completely at ease with each other, were still in fact defining their roles within the friendship, but a friendship it was, and for that Dion was grateful. Kevin talked tough, but between the frequent obscenities there lurked evidence of a mind, a sharp one, and Dion suspected that Kevin had latched onto him because he sensed a soul with similar interests. Indeed, their taste in everything from music to movies to schoolteachers seemed remarkably in sync, and Dion thought that perhaps that was one reason why he and Kevin seemed to get on so well.

He was surprised to find that his interest in Penelope Daneam had not abated. He had half thought that his first day attraction to her was the result of her resemblance to the girl in his dream, but as he heard her talk in class, as he eavesdropped on her conversations with the friend seated next to her, as she grew into a person of her own, distinct from his mental image, he found that his interest had increased. She too seemed intelligent, far more aware of events and ideas than the girls he'd known in Arizona, and that impressed him. What's more, she appeared to be approachable. She was gorgeous, of course, no doubt about that, but she did not seem as far out of his league as he had initially thought. She was not in the least standoffish or stuck up. There was an easiness to her manner, an unaffectedness obvious even within the confinements of the classroom. She seemed like a real person, not a phony.

She also did not seem like a lesbian.

The problem was that he didn't know how to go about meeting her. In class, he imagined what he would do if she accidentally dropped her books and he picked them up, their eyes meeting, but he knew that sort of thing happened only in film or fiction and wasn't a feasible possibility. He could, and did, however, move his seat closer to hers each day, changing and exchanging desks. In this class the teacher did not insist on a seating chart, allowing students to sit wherever they pleased, and this was an opportunity he was determined to take advantage of. He was not sure what he would say to her when he finally reached the adjoining desk, not sure of how he would initiate a conversation, but he would deal with that problem when he came to it.

That would be Friday, according to his calculations.

Luckily, Kevin continued to move forward through the seating ranks with him. It was always easier to bring a third party into an existing conversation than to start a conversation cold with someone you'd never talked to before.

Kevin bought a Coke and a burrito at the cafeteria, and Dion purchased a hot dog and milk. The two of them bat tied their way against the stream of traffic, and sat on a low wall next to the vending machines, watching the passersby.

Kevin took a bite of his burrito. He shook his head, "Do you realize,"

he said, "that every one of those girls has a pussy? Every one of them."

Dion followed his gaze, saw a well-endowed girl wearing a tight T-shirt and formfitting jeans.

"Between each of those legs is a hungry hole, ready for dick." He grinned. "It's a wonderful world."

Dion nodded. Yesterday, Kevin had called women's bodies a "life-support system for the vagina." Kevin's macho comments were funny, but Dion wasn't sure if they were simply public posturing or reflections of his real attitude, and it was something that bothered him, that made him slightly uncomfortable.

The two of them watched the girls pass by. Dion's eyes were caught by the sight of Penelope, carrying a brown sack lunch, buying a carton of orange juice from one of the machines. Kevin saw who he was staring at and laughed. "I knew it. The siren's song of Lesbos."

Dion reddened, but was determined to appear nonchalant. "So tell me something about her."

"Tell you what?"

"Anything."

"Well, she's a lesbian. But I told you that, right?" He pretended to think. "Let me see. She lives with a bunch of other lesbians at the Daneam Sisters Winery. They're all related somehow, her aunts or something. You can't buy the wine in stores. It's strictly a mail-order business. Sold to other lesbians, I believe."

"Be serious."

"I am. At least about the winery. The references to sexual preferences are my own editorializing."

Dion felt his chances slipping away. "So she's rich?"

Kevin nodded. "Nice work if you can get it."

The two of them watched Penelope take her juice carton out of the drawer and disappear into the crowd. "Don't worry," Kevin said. "There are plenty of other beavers in the valley."

Dion forced himself to smile. "Yeah."

Kevin offered Dion a ride home with one of his friends after school, but Dion declined and said he'd rather walk. Kevin and his friend took off in a squeal of burnt Mustang tires that left twin skid marks on the lighter black of the faded asphalt.

Dion walked down the tree-lined street. He usually avoided most forms of exercise--he was by no means a jock and he truly hated PE--but he'd always enjoyed walking. It offered him a chance to move about in the open air, to think without concentrating. He glanced around at the quiet residential neighborhood as he walked. He liked their house, liked the school, liked the people he'd met, and Napa itself seemed to be a pleasant enough town, but there was still something about living here that made him slightly uncomfortable, a lingering residue from that initial reaction. It wasn't anything as obvious or specific as a street that seemed sinister or a building that gave him the creeps. No, the feeling he got was more subtle, more generalized, and seemed to apply to the entire Napa Valley. There was a heaviness here, an indefinable sense of unease which he had never experienced in Mesa. It was not something that he felt would affect his day-to-day living, but it was persistent, a hum of white noise underlying everything. He could live with it, though. He could ignore it most of the time.

Most of the time.

He stopped walking. He was supposed to turn right at this corner, but in front of him the street continued onward, heading straight toward a grassy section of hill.

The hill.

He stood, staring. The view before him seemed somehow familiar and somehow unpleasant, and he felt cold suddenly, chilled.

He forced himself to look away and hurriedly turned down the cross street toward home. It was probably psychological, he reasoned. A

reaction to the pulling up and transplanting of his roots. Yeah. That was it. That had to be it. He would no doubt get over it soon, once he'd fully adjusted to his new surroundings.

He hurried forward, not looking to his left, not looking toward the hill.

His mom was not home when he arrived, but Dion was not worried. She wasn't scheduled to get off work today until five. Besides, he'd been keeping a close eye on her, and was surprised to see that she actually seemed to like her job and to get along well with her coworkers. As she described each day's events over dinner the past two nights, the behavior of the other loan officers in the bank, the customers, he'd listened carefully, trying to read between the lines, to ascertain the truth behind the facts. But her attitude of professional objectivity seemed real, not feigned, and he quickly decided that she wasn't attracted to anyone in the bank. That was a good sign. At her last two jobs, in Mesa and Chandler, she'd been inviting people over for what she called "a little get-together" even before the first week was out.

Maybe she really had turned over a new leaf.

He walked into the kitchen, took out a bag of Doritos, poured some salsa into a bowl. He walked into the living room, picked up the remote control, turned on MTV, but was quickly bored by the sameness of the music and the videos. He flipped around the cable channels, but there was nothing on, and he turned the set off. After he finished eating, he would put on the stereo, listen to music, and do his math homework. He had to have twenty algebra problems solved by tomorrow. His mom would be home soon after that.

Dion finished his snack, finished his math, read the front page and entertainment sections of today's paper, and glanced through a two-week-old Time they'd brought from Arizona.

When his mom hadn't come home by six and still hadn't called, he found himself worrying. He turned off the stereo and turned on the TV, settling into the couch to watch the national news. It was strangely comforting to watch the news, though the majority of the stories concerned murders, disasters, and other tragic events. It was a stupid attitude, he knew, an ignorant, uneducated attitude, but he found it reassuring to see the incidents of the day categorized, dissected, and discussed on national television. It made him feel that no matter how chaotic the world seemed, someone was on top of things and doing something about them, though he knew, intellectually, that was probably not the case.

The first commercial break passed, and then the second and the third, and then it was six-thirty. He stood up and looked out the window.

Already the sky was getting dark, the orange color of dusk dimming into the bluish purple of evening.

She couldn't be starting again, could she? Not so soon after her last job. Not after promising him she'd change.

He almost hoped that she'd been in an accident instead.

No.

He pushed that thought from his mind.

Dion sat down again to watch the local news. He tried to remain optimistic, to tell himself that she'd merely stayed after work and forgotten to call, but he didn't believe any such thing.

He just hoped that she had enough sense not to bring the guy home.

He was in the kitchen and was about to make himself dinner--macaroni and cheese or one of the frozen dinners in the freezer--when he heard the familiar sound of the Pinto's brakes in the driveway. He wanted to go out front, to peek through the living room window, to see what was going on, but he remained in the kitchen, rooted in place. His muscles were tense, his palms sweaty.

He heard the front door open. "I'm home!"

He stepped through the doorway into the living room, and felt relief flood through him as he saw that his mother was alone. "Sorry I'm late," she said, dropping her briefcase in the entryway.

She was not drunk, but she had obviously been drinking. Her voice was louder than usual, happier and more vivacious, and her movements were loose, expansive. "I met the greatest people!" she said.

The worry returned. "Mom ..."

"No, I'm serious. I think even you'd like them."

"Who are they?"

"Well, I met them at happy hour--"

Dion took a deep breath. "Happy hour? Mom, you said--"

"Don't worry. A couple of people from work decided to go there after they got off, and they asked me if I wanted to go. But when we were there we met these people who--"

"Male or female?"

She stared at him, understanding dawning in her expression.

Dion shifted his weight nervously from one foot to the other. "You said you were going to change," he reminded her gently.

Her mood shifted. "I have," she said angrily. "And don't give me that accusing look. People at work asked me to go. What was I supposed to do, say no?"

"Yes."

"And ruin my chances for advancement?" She pushed past him into the kitchen. "Sit down," she ordered. "I'm making dinner."

"That's okay--" Dion began.

"I'm making dinner!"

He knew it was useless to argue. He watched her take out a pot from beneath the sink, slam it down on the counter. Sighing, he walked out to the living room. He watched TV as outside the night darkened and inside the kitchen his mother swore loudly to herself, banging spoon against pan as she made their meal.

On Friday, Mr. Holbrook greeted them with a pop quiz. Immediately after the bell rang, announcing the start of class, the Mythology teacher told the class to put all books under the desks and to take out pencils and paper.

"Number from one through twenty-five," he said, "leaving two lines between each number." He stood up from his chair and walked over to the blackboard, turning his back on the class and picking up a stubby piece of white chalk. "You are to copy down each question and write the answer on the line immediately beneath it."

"Fucker," Kevin whispered, holding up a middle finger.

Dion stifled a laugh.

The teacher began writing on the board. "You may begin."

There was a rustle of papers, a sighing of seats as the students settled in to do their work. Dion was already trying to figure out what grades he would have to get on the paper and the regularly scheduled tests to balance out the F he'd get today. He rubbed his pencil sideways on the desktop to sharpen it. At least Holbrook could have warned them ahead of time, told them he would be popping quizzes on them throughout the semester. The teacher had given them an outline of the course, had told them which pages in which book were supposed to have been read by which date, but he had said nothing about quizzes. At least he could have had the decency and courtesy to explain to them how his class was run, how grades were determined.

Of course, looking back on it now, Dion recalled that the teacher had said several times, "I expect you to keep up with your reading." He realized now that that cryptic warning had been a foreshadowing of things to come.

Unfortunately, he had not read a word of the assigned text. He did not study that way. Never had. He had always worked better under pressure, cramming at the last moment, force-feeding his brain with information.

He always completed questions and turn-in assignments on time, but the reading he left to the very end.

Now he was going to pay for it.

What made it even worse was that this was the day he had finally completed his sneaky maneuvers, had unobtrusively slid into the empty seat next to Penelope.

Things were not going well.

Dion dutifully copied the questions written by Mr. Holbrook on the board. He did not know the answers to any of them, was only vaguely familiar with some of the terms after hearing them in class, and he simply wrote down on the paper whatever single-word answers came into his head. He turned the paper over, putting down his pencil, to signal that he was finished.

When everyone had completed the test, the teacher faced the class. "All right," he said. "Please exchange papers with the person seated next to you."

The person seated next to him. That meant either Penelope or Kevin. He looked to his left, saw Kevin exchanging his paper with a short, boy on the other side of him. Dion looked at Penelope, forced himself to smile, handed her his reaper. She handed him hers. He stared down at the writing. Her letters were light, formed with almost calligraphic precision, definitely feminine.

"Question one," the teacher announced. "Zeus."

Dion went down the paper, marking plus signs next to answers which were correct, minus signs next to those which were incorrect, just as the instructor had explained. Penelope had gotten two wrong, for an A-minus.

He was right. She was smart.

Of course, that meant nothing now. They exchanged papers and Penelope handed back his quiz. He did not meet her eyes, did not look at his score. He had blown it. She probably thought he was a dim-witted jerk.

His chances of getting to know her had probably shrunk from fair to zilch. He glanced miserably at Kevin, then looked down at the paper in his hand.

He blinked.

He'd gotten a perfect score.

He had not missed a single question.

As always, the cafeteria was crowded, and he and Kevin sat on top of one of the round plastic tables in the adjacent eating area outside as they waited for the lines to die down.

"You really know your mythology," Kevin said, running a hand deliberately through his hair. Like Dion, he too had not studied, planning to wait until the week before the test to crack the books, but unlike Dion he had missed nearly a fourth of the questions, putting him in the low-B range if the teacher graded on the curve.

Dion shrugged self-consciously. "Not really," he said. "I guessed. I was just lucky."

"On multiple-choice tests you can guess and be lucky. On short-answer tests you can guess only if you have knowledge to begin with, if you have some names to choose from. I mean, shit, you were the only one to get a perfect score in the whole class."

It was true, but Dion did not know why it was true or how. He was embarrassed, and he said nothing. He found himself glancing down at the tabletop to read the graffiti penciled on the faded plastic. He looked up as a skinny blond kid in a black heavy metal T-shirt walked belligerently up to them, frowning. "What do you think this is? A pussy convention? You're sitting on my table."

Kevin calmly raised his middle finger.

"You think that's cute, Harte?"

"Not quite as cute as your mama's titties, but it'll do for now."

"Get off."

"Fuck you."

"Your ass, Harte." The kid left, scowling, his own middle finger raised aggressively.

Dion said nothing. He had been silent during the verbal exchange, half afraid that the newcomer might try to pick a fight with one of them or, even worse, return with his bigger, tougher friends, but he let none of his feelings show. Kevin seemed to know how to handle this guy, or at least acted as though he did, and Dion trusted that his new friend knew who could be pushed and how far, knew when to speak out and when to shut up.

At least he hoped so.

"Guy's a needledick," Kevin said, as if reading his thoughts. "Don't worry about him. All talk and no show."

Dion nodded as if that was what he had suspected all along.

"Hey," Kevin said. "Check it out." He nodded toward the cafeteria lines.

Making their way between the tables toward the open double doors were Penelope and a short black-haired girl with thick glasses. "Here's your opportunity, bud."

Dion jumped off the table. "You come with me."

Kevin snorted. "Hell, no. This is your move. You go over there and talk to her alone. I'll still be here when she shoots you down."

Penelope and her friend were at the back of one of the lines, and Dion knew that if he didn't move now, someone else would take the spot behind her. He quickly zigzagged through the crowd of teeming students.

He was in luck. He got in line behind her just as a group of cheerleaders got in line behind him. It had all happened so fast, he had moved without thinking, and now he didn't know what to do. His hands were sweaty, his stomach churning. He didn't want to tap on Penelope's shoulder to get her attention or to speak to her before she noticed his presence, so he simply readied himself in case she turned around, trying to relax and put on a show of comfortable ease he did not feel.

When she did turn around a moment later and saw him, he pretended to be surprised. He cleared his throat. "Hi," he said. "I didn't recognize you."

She looked surprised too, but she smiled when she saw him. She had a nice smile, he thought. A friendly smile. A real smile.

"Hi," she said.

"My name's Dion. I'm in your Mythology class." He knew it was stupid the moment he said it, but there was no way to take his sentence back.

She laughed. Her laugh was warm, casual. "I know who you are. I

corrected your paper, remember?"

He reddened, unsure of what to say or how to respond, afraid he would say something even dumber.

"I was really impressed by how well you did on the test," she added.

"Yeah, well, thanks."

"No, I mean it. You really know your stuff."

The line moved forward, and Dion realized with something like panic that it was his turn to say something, but he could think of nothing to say.

There were at least six people between Penelope and the food. This was his one and only chance; he'd better think of something good, or they'd wait the rest of the time in silence and it would be all over. He glanced toward Kevin, who gave him a thumbs-up sign.

What the hell was he supposed to say?

It was Penelope's friend who saved him.

"I don't remember seeing you here before," she said, "Are you new?"

He relaxed. Now he was home free. "Yeah," he said. "I'm from Arizona. My mom and I just moved here a little over a week ago."

"It must be tough to come to a new school," Penelope said.

He looked at her. Was he imagining it, or was there more than just casual interest in her expression, in her tone of voice? She had spoken almost wistfully, as if she understood how he felt, as if she had been there herself.

As if she cared.

No, he was just reading nuances which were not there.

"Yes," he said. "It is tough. I don't know anyone yet."

"You know us," Penelope's friend said, smiling.

Dion smiled back. "That's true."

"And you know that Kevin Harte," Penelope said. There was something in the way she said "that Kevin Harte" which implied that she did not like his new friend.

"Well, I just met him," Dion said.

And then they were through the line and at the food, their opportunity for conversation at an end. Penelope took a covered bowl of salad and a can of V8 from the buffet. Dion grabbed a hamburger, a small cup of fries, and two Cokes, one for him, one for Kevin.

"I'll see you Monday," Penelope said, heading with her friend over to a cash register. She smiled that radiant smile. "It's nice to meet you."

"Yeah," her friend said.

"Yeah," Dion echoed. He wanted to say something else, wanted to invite the both of them to Kevin's table, wanted to ask Penelope if she would like to study with him some time, wanted to ensure that they would talk again, but he did not know how. He paid the two dollars, watched the girls walk away.

It was a start, and he should have felt good, but for some reason he felt disappointed, sort of let down. It made no sense. Things had gone well. It was the first week and they were already talking, but he still felt depressed about the encounter. He made his way through the crowd toward Kevin.

"So," his friend said, grinning, "how'd it go? She dive for your ding-dong?"

"Asked for it by name," Dion said, setting down the tray.

Kevin laughed, almost spitting out the sip of Coke he'd taken. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Penelope?" he said, laughing.

Dion smiled, chuckled, and then laughed himself. "Yeah," he said.

Already he felt better. He picked up his hamburger. "And her friend wants you."

"In her dreams," Kevin said.

Dion laughed. He thought of Penelope. Things had gone well, he told himself. Things might work out.

He unwrapped his hamburger and settled down to eat.

Lieutenant David Horton used the landlord's key to open the heavy glass door and stepped inside Something Old. The antique shop was empty, its dead air silent save for the low drone of outside noise. He was followed inside immediately by the two uniforms. "Mr. Williams!" he called out.

He waited a beat. "Anybody here?" His voice died flatly in the stillness.

Horton nodded to the policemen behind him. "Check it out," he said.

The two officers spread out, taking both sides of the front desk, entering the back room in tandem. They emerged a moment later, shaking their heads.

"Check the aisles," the lieutenant said. He lit a cigarette, watching his men take parellel paths away from the center of the store.

The antique shop had been closed for a week. No crime there. But it was highly unusual, noted by owners of several of the adjoining businesses.

And when rent had come due a few days ago and the landlord received neither a check nor an excuse from the usually punctual antique dealer, he'd suspected something was up. He'd called Williams' house, gotten no answer, called Williams' sister in Salinas, learned that she hadn't heard from him for over a week. Then he'd called the police.

Disappearances were not that unusual in the Wine Country. Northern California's reputation for fostering a laid-back lifestyle, combined with outsiders' perceptions of what life in the valley was like, attracted to the area a lot of flakes and transients, drifters who saw the wine industry only in terms of its alcoholic output, not realizing that mundane work went into producing recreational beverages, that life here was not one long, constant party.

But Victor Williams was not a transient. He was a local businessman with roots in the valley. And Horton had serious doubts that he'd just up and leave on a whim, telling no one, letting his store remain closed. It was out of character, it didn't fit.

Which meant, Horton thought to himself, that Vie Williams was probably dead.

The lieutenant took a drag on his cigarette, sighed, exhaling smoke.

There had been a time when he'd hated this job, when the novelty of wearing a badge and wielding a little power had worn off, when the fact that his work consisted of looking up society's asshole day after day had really begun to get to him. He had almost quit then, had almost told the department to Johnny Paycheck it, but he'd realized that he was not qualified to do anything other than police work; he had no other skills and was too old to start over.

Now he just tried not to think about it. He didn't regret lost career opportunities, didn't piss and moan that he'd never finished college, didn't compare himself to other men of his age who were more successful.

He simply put in his hours, did his job, and counted the days toward retirement.

And he bought a lottery ticket twice a week.

A man had to have something to hope for.

"Lieutenant! Over here!"

Horton turned around, taking the cigarette out of his mouth. He saw Deets, the youngest uniform, frantically beckoning him from down the end of an aisle. He dropped the cigarette, stubbed it out, and hurried toward the rookie. "What did you--?" Find, he was going to say, but there was no reason to ask. The floor in this section of the shop was stained brown with dried blood, forming a huge irregular amoeba pattern against the dusty faded slats of the hardwood finish. Small speckles of blood could be seen on the lower portion of a beveled mirror, though the droplets were smeared and it was clear that someone had tried to wipe them away.

Bentley Little Protruding from underneath a piece of furniture was a small, ragged, fleshy segment of torn muscle.

"Jesus," Horton breathed. He glanced toward Me Comber, standing on the other side of Deets. "Call the lab," he ordered. "Get some dusters and photogs over here now."

The younger cop nodded, frightened, and hurried down the aisle toward the front desk.

"Don't touch anything," the lieutenant told Deets.

"Yes, sir."

"And stop that 'sir' crap. This isn't the goddamn marines."

"Okay, sir, uh, Lieutenant."

Horton looked at the rookie, shook his head. He reached into his pocket for another cigarette, pulled out the package, but found that it was empty. He crumpled it up, put it back in his pocket, and looked wistfully up the aisle to where he'd dropped his other cigarette. It was going to be a long afternoon.

After dinner, Penelope went out to the Garden. The air was warmer than it was inside the air-conditioned house, and more humid, but to her it felt wonderful. She sat on the edge of the fountain, bracing her arms against the rounded concrete, and leaned back, peering upward. The winery was far enough from town that the lights of the business district did not seep into then: air space, and the sky above was a deep purple, dotted with patterned clusters of millions of microscopic stars. Her eyes picked out the Big Dipper, the North Star at its corner, and her gaze swept across Orion's belt and the Little Dipper to the dot of pinkish light that was Mars.

She had always been fascinated by the stars, the moon, the planets, the movements of the heavens. It seemed amazing to her that the progress of celestial bodies had been noted and charted so long ago, the patterns of such an immense canvas identified and understood by peoples who had not even known the rudimentary rules of science grasped by today's grade schoolers. She had taken an astronomy course last semester, hoping to learn more about the subject, but had been disappointed to discover that the class dealt more with the mathematics of trajectories than with the background stories of heavenly bodies and their earthbound discoverers.

Which was one of the reasons she had signed up for, and really looked forward to, this Mythology class. Glancing through the book after the first meeting, she had seen that three full chapters were devoted to the constellations, and she had read those chapters immediately.

This was what she'd wanted to learn.

She had also met Dion in the class.

She found herself thinking of him now, just as she'd thought about him at odd times during the week. She didn't know Dion, didn't know anything about him, but there was something about the way he looked, the way he talked, the way he acted, which interested her. He was obviously intelligent, but he also seemed very nice, very down-to-earth, although that was not a quality to which she would have expected to be attracted.

Did he like her? She thought he might. Twice during the week she had caught him staring at her from the next seat over when he thought she wasn't looking, and he had always looked immediately away, acting guilty, as though he had been caught doing something he wasn't supposed to do.

And then today at lunch he had actually spoken to her. Vella, afterward, had said that Dion was obviously interested, but Penelope was not sure she could read that much into the few words that they had spoken together. The suggestion had flattered her, though, and the rest of the day she had found herself tuning out her teachers, going over each sentence they had spoken, looking for clues that backed up Vella's hypothesis.

Penelope looked up into the sky. She smiled. Maybe it was fate. Maybe their signs had coincided, and that's why they had met in this place at this time.

She closed her eyes. Several times today she had tried to imagine what it would be like to go on a date with Dion, but the image just wouldn't come. It was not that she wasn't attracted to him, or at least interested, but she had never before gone on a date, and it was hard to imagine herself carrying on the sort of vacuous conversation favored by high school daters in movies.

Movies.

All of her perceptions of dates had been formed by film, books, or television.

She heard a soft click and opened her eyes, sitting up. Mother Felice opened the sliding glass door and smiled at her. "Maybe we should bring your bed out here."

"And my dresser and TV."

"A refrigerator and microwave?"

They both laughed. Mother Felice crossed the gravel and sat down on the rim of the fountain next to Penelope. The two of them said nothing for a while, simply enjoying the quiet and each other's company. They often sat this way. It would have driven Mother Margeaux mad to sit for so long without doing something actively productive, and Molher Margaret and Mother Sheila would have had to talk, get up, move around. She would not have wanted to be alone with Mother Janine. But Mother Felice enjoyed the quiet, was thankful for silence after spending all day in the hurricane of the household. She was like her daughter in that way, which only served to reinforce Penelope's theory.

Mother Felice leaned her head back, trying to reduce the tension in her neck, then sat up. She looked casually at her daughter. "Is anything wrong?" she asked.

Penelope frowned, puzzled. "No. Why?"

Her mother smiled. "Well, you seemed kind of distant today at dinner. I

just ... well, we sort of thought ... I mean, we were wondering if maybe you'd met someone. You know, a boy."

Was it that obvious? She hadn't thought she'd acted any differently than usual. She looked at her mother. She wanted to tell the truth, and probably would have if her mother hadn't made mention of the rest of the family, but that "we" implied that the subject had been discussed, that Mother Felice had been sent out here deliberately. She had no doubt that Mother Felice had been the one to notice--she was always the most observant in emotional matters--but this obvious collusion, this attempt to invade her privacy, no matter how well intentioned, hardened her against revealing anything. "No," she said.

Mother Felice frowned. She looked confused, as though she hadn't understood the answer. "Haven't you even met someone who looks like he might be interesting?"

Penelope shrugged. "It's too early to tell." She shook her head. "God, Mother, it's only been a week. What do you expect?"

"You're right, you're right." Her mother's voice was understandingly apologetic, her smile sympathetic, but there was still a slight look of mystification on her face.

They were silent again, although the silence this time was not quite as comfortable. Penelope stared up at the recently risen moon, yellow and disproportionately large above the hills in the east.

When she was little, around eight or nine, she had seen the movie A

Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court with Bing Crosby. It had been light entertainment, a romantic musical comedy, but the thing that had made the biggest impression on her, that had stayed with her for years to come, had been the fact that Bing had been able to save his life by remembering the date of a solar eclipse, passing himself off as a powerful magician, pretending to the medieval men and women intending to burn him at the stake that he was able to make the sun disappear by simply making absurd hand gestures at the appropriate time. It had been a terrifying scene to her, and had been the cause of many a nightmare-filled sleep time. Throughout grammar school she had been obsessed with learning the dates for solar and lunar eclipses, past and present, just in case a similar situation ever happened to her.

There was still some of that fear in her as she looked up at the moon now. Her rational mind told her that it was merely earth's satellite, a dead, inanimate orb reflecting back the refracted light of the sun, but on a deeper, more visceral level she could not help feeling a little intimidated by it, as though, like the moon in a children's book, it was sentient and possessed some sort of magic that could affect her life.

The feeling was strange but not unpleasant, and she was grateful that even the cold facts of astronomy had not been able to completely dissolve for her the mystery of the night sky.

Penelope looked over at her mother. "Do you like looking at the moon?"

she asked. "Looking at stars?"

Her mother smiled. "Sometimes."

Her father had liked to look at the stars.

Or so her mothers had told her.

She found herself thinking of her father. She did not think of him often, and sometimes she felt guilty about that, but she had not really known him; to her he had been little more than a face in an old photograph. He'd been a handsome man, that she knew. Tall and broad-shouldered, with longish brown hair and a mustache, he looked in his picture as if he could be either a carpenter or a college professor.

There was about him that appearance of both intelligence and physicality which suggested that he was equally at home with books and tools, adept at both mental and manual labor; a romantic assumption which was born out by the descriptions of her mothers.

When she was younger, her mothers had talked about her father a lot, answering her myriad questions, invoking his perceived wishes in regard to discipline and learning, endeavoring to make his presence felt through affectionate stories and detailed reminiscences. But as she'd grown older, the talk had ceased, as if her father had been an imaginary entity like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, invented to aid a period of her development, as if the spectre of his life had performed its function and outlived its usefulness. By the time she'd hit her teens, the subject of her father seldom, if ever, came up in discussion, and her infrequent questions concerning him were often redirected elsewhere.

It was all very confusing to her, and sensing the shift in attitude, she had stopped mentioning him at all. Gradually, the details of her father's life began to blur and fade, blending in with the other secondhand stories of childhood.

The details of his death, however, remained sharp and clear.

Her father had been killed shortly after she'd beerf born, brutally murdered, torn apart in the wild woods beyond the fence by a stray band of rabid wolves. She knew the story by heart. It had been spring, late April, and her father had gone out for one of the evening strolls he enjoyed so much. Mother Felice and Mother Sheila had been preparing dinner in the kitchen, with Mother Janine watching television in the next room. Mother Margeaux had been in the office with Mother Margaret.

All of them, even Mother Margeaux and Mother Margaret, had heard the screams, and all had come running out, only to see the gray-white blur of wolves savagely attacking a human figure on the dirt path which led between the tall trees. The screams had already stopped, but though it was night, they could clearly see in the distance the fall of her father's upraised arm, the sleeve of his yellow shirt torn and streaked black with blood.

Mother Janine had screamed, and Mother Margeaux had rushed into the house for the rifle, ordering Mother Felice to call the police. Mother Margeaux had led the charge across the meadow, firing into the air, and the wolves had fled, scattering and disappearing into the woods.

There had been nothing left of her father's face. His chest had been chewed open, his entrails devoured, and large chunks of his arms had been bitten off. Only his legs, for some reason, had sustained minor injuries.

The six of them had carried his body back to the house themselves, his cooling blood dripping down their arms an dover their clothes, and waited for the ambulance to arrive.

, The tale had been told to her and retold hundreds of times, and looking back now, Penelope wondered why her mothers had felt compelled to dwell on the end of her father's life, why they had insisted on telling a small child such a horrifying story. For it had been horrifying. And frightening. And her mothers had always gone into gruesome detail in their descriptions of the blood and the body. She had had a series of ultra-vivid recurring nightmares in which her mothers had killed her father. What, she wondered now, had she been meant to learn from all that?

She didn't know.

But she knew that her life would probably be a lot less confusing if her father was still alive.

Mother Felice nudged her elbow, stood up. "Come on," she said. "Let's go inside. It's getting late."

"But it's a Friday," Penelope said. "It's not a school night."

"You still have a lot of chores to do tomorrow. Besides, your other mothers will be wondering where we snuck off to."

"Let them wonder, then."

Her mother laughed. "You want me to tell that to Mother Margeaux?"

"No," Penelope admitted.

"Come on, then."

Reluctantly, Penelope stood. She followed her mother into the house.

He dreamed of high hills, white outcroppings of rock punctuating the dull green of late summer meadow grass. There were no houses or buildings hi sight, no roads, only a thin, slightly worn dirt path which looked as though it had been formed by the continued passage of animal hooves. To the right, the path wound up the nearest hill toward the summit. To the left, it meandered toward a stand of trees in the flat bottom of a gently sloping valley.

He walked barefoot across the ground toward the path, rocky gravel beneath the grass digging deep into his heel and sole but not hurting.

The air was hot but not humid, dry and desertlike, the sky above a light pastel, bleached by the sun.

He felt good. His senses were heightened; he could see clearly for miles, he could hear the rickety click of insects moving in the grass, he could smell the heavy, warm, comforting odor of dirt and on top of that the lighter scent of growing weeds and grasses.

He realized that he was very tall.

He reached the path and turned toward the valley and the trees. The warm dirt felt smooth on his feet, and he began to walk faster, suddenly anxious to arrive at his destination. On his tongue he tasted the faint remembrance of grape, and for some reason that spurred his interest in hurrying.

Ahead he saw movement on the path, smelled the fetid odor of an unwashed animal. He reached the spot and stopped. On the path before him was a goat, a she-goat, breasts heavy with milk. He found that he was thirsty, and he lifted the animal until its multiple teats were above his face.

He took three in his mouth and began suckling. The warm, sweet milk slid smoothly down his thirsty throat.

When he was finished, he put the goat down, and he noticed for the first time that next to it, just off the edge of the path, was the body of its kid. Or what remained of its kid. The small goat had been killed, gutted, mutilated, and sharp wooden sticks protruded from the bloody wreckage of its torso. Its legs and head had been ripped, off and tossed aside. Small segments of skin, tufts of bloody hair, hung from the low, sturdy stalks of grass.

He knew that this meant he was getting close to home, and it made him feel good.

He heard screams from the trees, screams of joy and pain, and, smiling, he began to run toward them.

Dion spent Saturday with his mom, the two of them unpacking the last of their belongings, making adjustments to what was supposed to have been the final rearrangement of the living room. The work was monotonous, but Dion enjoyed doing it. Particularly since his mom seemed to be having a good time. Instead of moaning and complaining, making a big show of how much she hated doing domestic labor the way she usually did, she put on some records--Beatles and Beach Boys, music they could both agree on--and sang along as she dusted and cleaned the items she unpacked. She had been home from work on time both Thursday and Friday, acting like Holly Housewife, cooking dinner, cleaning dishes, watching television, making a visible effort to gain his trust, and she was low-key and conscientious in both her work and her conversation today, clearly trying to show him that things really had changed. He was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. It was obvious from the effort she was making that she'd meant what she'd said, that she really did want things to be different.

Everything was going to be okay.

On Sunday, the two of them spent the day exploring the Napa Valley. Life had been moving forward at such a hectic pace since they'd arrived, with school and work and unpacking, that they hadn't really had much of a chance to see the area beyond their own small section of the city. Both of them figured it was about time they got to know their new home.

They hit all the tourist spots, following a map of the valley given to his mom by the Auto Club. They drove past Lake Berryessa and Mount St.

Helena, went to the Bale Grist Mill, and paid to see Old Faithful and the Petrified Forest, lesser publicized cousins of the identically named natural wonders. The land was not spectcular, but it was beautiful in a quiet, subtle sort of way, the country roads winding between cultivated vineyards, skirting rolling hills and low, wooded mountains.

Although they drove as far as Sonoma to see Jack London's house, they did not stop at any of the wineries. It would have been too awkward right now, too tense. Nothing would have or could have happened, but the mere fact that they were at a winery would have served as a reminder of things past, would have dredged up recent memories neither of them wanted to face. The subject of visiting a winery did not even come up between them.

While his mom drove, however, Dion looked on the map for Daneam Vineyards, hoping to see where Penelope's family business was located.

Unfortunately, the winery was not listed. They passed several unnamed vineyards with both large and small complexes attached, any of which could have been the one owned by Penelope's family, but though he carefully scrutinized each gate and signpost, Dion did not see Penelope's last name written anywhere.

They returned home around five, travel-tired and sightseeing-worn, and while his mom took a hot bath, Dion drove to Taco Bell and bought a junk food feast for both of them. They pigged out while watching 60 Minutes and afterward watched a TV movie together. For the first time in a long while, his mom seemed to him like a mother, not like a sister, not like a peer, not like an adversary, and Dion fell asleep happy. He did not dream.

In the year and a half that he had worked as night watchman at Pauling Brothers Winery, Rob Fowler had never had occasion to investigate even a minor disturbance. There had been a few false alarms at first, brought about by his own jitters and inexperience rather than anything substantive, but those had disappeared after he'd learned the layout of the operation. Of course, Pauling was not Beringer's or Mondavi or Sterling or one of those other high-profile wineries. Those, he understood, often had problems with vandals. But Pauling was a small concern, out of the way, off the main drag, and tours were given by invitation only. This meant that ordinarily he had a pretty cushy job.

He read his mystery novels, watched his portable TV, did his crossword puzzles.

Which was why he now felt so woefully unprepared.

Ron walked slowly through the silent, empty building toward the entrance of the fermenting cave, peering anxiously in all directions, listening for any sound out of the ordinary. The huge room was empty, the only noise his own loudly clacking heels and the amplified drumming of the blood in his head. He was scared, much more scared than he'd thought he'd be when he'd imagined this scenario in his head. This was not something he was really trained for, not something he felt comfortable with. He had taken this job because it was supposed to be a cakewalk, not because he had any aptitude for it. As a retired maintenance worker, he drew a pension that was a step above bird crap, and he'd just wanted an easy way to pull in some extra cash. He'd been assured every step of the way that there was nothing to this job, that the gun he'd been issued was little more than a prop, part of the uniform, that he would never have to actually confront anyone.

Why the hell hadn't he got a job at Mcdonald's with the other senior citizens?

He walked slowly forward. He knew he didn't have to do this. Despite what it said on his job description, despite the gun and the uniform and the ersatz police trappings, he could have simply alerted the cops and waited in place until they arrived. But he still wasn't absolutely sure that this was anything. He had been at his station, in the small office next to Purchasing, reading an old Ross Mcdonald book, when the black-and-white picture on the screen monitoring the cave suddenly disappeared in a burst of snow. He caught the shift with his peripheral vision and immediately glanced up at the row of monitors above the desk, scanning quickly from one to the other. He had not counted on seeing anything, had assumed there had merely been some type of technical malfunction, but on the screen showing an overview of Distilling Room One he saw the door to the cave, which was supposed to be closed and locked at all times, swing slowly and deliberately shut.

His heart had leaped in his chest.

He'd immediately jumped up, grabbing his key ring and unholstering his weapon, and had hurried across the dimly lit parking lot to the distillery.

Scared as he was, though, he was glad that he had not alerted the police. Calling in a false alarm, making a fool of himself in front of them, probably would have lost him his job quicker than anything else.

Ron continued forward, toward the closed door leading to the cave. His hand on the butt of the pistol was sweaty, slippery, and he quickly switched hands, wiping his palm on the rough material of his pants before switching back.

Something clicked against the other side of the door.

He stopped in mid-step. The room suddenly seemed much darker, the tanks to each side much larger, more threatening. Even with the lights on, pools of shadow still existed, ill-defined patches of night which had seeped past the technology of electricity and phosphorescence into the building. There were a million hiding places here, he realized. An army of vandals, corporate spies, or terrorists could be staying in place, waiting for him to pass by so they could jump him.

The door clicked again, but this time the sound was wet, faintly organic.

Monsters.

It's vandals, he thought, clinging to the idea, trying to take comfort in it. It's corporate thugs, burglars, arsonists, murderers, terrorists, escaped lunatics. His mind ran down the list of possible assailants, possible human assailants, in a desperate attempt to keep that other idea at bay.

Monsters.

That was what he really feared, wasn't it? After all these years?

Monsters. The decades had passed, he had grown up and grown old, but inside he was still that little boy who was afraid of the garage, who heard noises in the bushes outside his window at night, who saw shadows in the hallway grow and move after his parents turned off the light. The rationality that had come with responsibility and adulthood was merely a mask, a thin covering over the real self he had never really outgrown or left behind.

The door to the fermenting cave was before him, a few steps away. He could clearly see the point at which the concrete foundation of the building met the side of the limestone hill. He wanted to run, to flee back to his office, to the homey comforts of his book and his TV, to pretend he had seen nothing and feign ignorance in the morning when the break-in was discovered, but he forced himself to put out his hand and knock loudly on the closed steel door.

"Who's in there?" he demanded.

There was no answer.

He tried the handle and, as he'd expected, the door was open. He pushed open the door with his left hand and gripped his gun firmly with his right.

He staggered back, gagging.

The floor of the cave was covered with blood, a thick red, viscous goo which looked like congealed Jello and smelled like rancid feces. Blood had splashed onto the sides of the wooden casks, and the odor of the blood mingled with the strong aroma of the fermenting vintage was almost overpowering. He pinched his nostrils together with his fingers so he could breathe, and held the door open with his foot. Flung randomly about the cave, on the floor, on top of the casks, against the limestone walls, were the rent and mutilated carcasses of dozens of small animals:

squirrels, cats, rats, opossums. In the refracted light let in by the door, he could see peeled fur skin backed by white-veined flesh, discolored and deflated organs clustered about lifelines of arteries and intestines.

There was a quiet pop, the sound of falling liquid, an alcohol blast of scent. Heart racing, he reached around the side wall, feeling the stone with his fingers, searching in vain for a light switch. He peered into the gloom at the far end of the narrow cave, and cursed himself for not bringing a flashlight. "Who's there?" he called.

There was no answer, but the liquid noise stopped. Now there was another sound.

Chewing.

"Come out now!" he ordered, but his voice was not as strong as it had been.

Monsters.

"Now!"

No answer. Only chewing. A low laugh.

He squinted into the gloom, and, to his horror, his eyes adjusted.

Dwarfish figures were crouched in the shadows against the far wall, low, hairy, misshapen forms clutching long, pointed spears. A tough, cynical part of his mind saw the entire scene in terms of a grocery tabloid headline--Night Watchman Attacked by Trolls--but the more instinctual portion of his brain was making him scream, had let loose the bladder muscle which held back his piss.

Now the shapes were moving, growing, becoming more human, evolving upward through the evolutionary scale until they stood erect. The smells of blood and wine were strong in the air, combined with a familiar underlying muskiness. One of the figures was eating something and threw it in front of him. A partially devoured chipmunk.

Turning, still screaming, trying to run, trying to escape, Ron slipped on the bloody floor. His right foot flew out from under him, twisting painfully, and the door which he'd been holding open with his left foot began to close. In the last few seconds of light, he saw with exaggerated clarity the wet red cement in front of his face, the segment of muscled animal bone beneath his nose.

Desperately in the sudden darkness, he tried to push himself to his feet, tried to pull himself along the floor, but he was not quick enough.

Behind him, the creatures were laughing, screaming, jabbering excitedly.

The first spear entered through his crotch.

From ten to twelve, between the crowded first hour and the noon rush, the bank was virtually dead, the only sounds in the light, air-conditioned lobby the relaxed, easy banter of the tellers, the muffled click of calculator keys, and the low drone of the soft rock Muzak which played incessantly over the bank's ceiling speakers.

April hated this time of day. For most of her coworkers it was the high point of their shift, the time when they could drop the public mask of servile civility, when they could relax and catch up on the bookkeeping or other behind-the-scenes paperwork which kept the bank running smoothly and efficiently. But these two hours always left her feeling bored and restless. Whatever else she was, she was a good loan officer, and she seldom if ever had any extra paperwork or leftover duties to perform. As a result, she usually found herself desperately searching for something to do, some way to look busy. Once she was settled, she knew, things would be different, she would be able to hang a little looser, but for the first few weeks on the job it would not do to look idle in front of her supervisor.

As far as she could tell, her new supervisor was a nice, if rather boring, soul, a family man with framed photos of his overweight wife and two pre-teen daughters set up on his desk. He was dedicated to his job but not fanatic and not overly strict, someone with whom it would be easy to work.

Someone of whom Dion would definitely approve.

It was strange to think that way, to use her son as a behavioral guideline, to mentally consult his taste and beliefs while making simple day-to-day judgments and decisions, but she respected him, she trusted his opinions. Somehow, despite her best unintentional efforts to screw him up, Dion had turned out to be a boy she not only loved but admired, a person with both feet firmly planted on the ground, who knew who he was and where he was going. She was aware of the fact that in many ways their relationship was the inverse of what it was supposed to be. She often looked to him for guidance and support, for strength she did not possess, and though this was something she felt comfortable with, she knew her son did not feel the same way. He would have been happier with a more traditional mother, the kind who offered heartwarming advice while making brownies, the kind who had all the answers all the time and could not only run her own life perfectly but could make sure that the lives of her family ran the same way.

Not the kind of mother she was.

And definitely not the kind she'd had.

All these years later, it was difficult to remember her childhood without seeing it through the socially conscious filter provided by endless TV movies. Her real mother, her biological mother, she could not even remember. She'd been abandoned at birth, and had been passed from foster home to foster home, from uncaring foster mother to uncaring foster mother, suffering the litany of abuses that continued to provide topics for daytime talk shows. She finally ran away from the last home at seventeen, and at nineteen she was a bank teller in Omaha and pregnant with Dion.

She had not done so badly, all things considered. She had not gotten trapped in the welfare cycle, had been fortunate enough to avoid the minimum-wage circuit, but she had never really been as independent as she wanted to be, as she felt she should be. There had always been the men, paving her way with sheets, assisting her financially and opportunistically in each of her attempts to better herself, to gain more experience or education.

And there had been mistakes.

Lots of mistakes.

Big mistakes.

Cleveland. Albuquerque.

But all of that was behind her now. She was going to try to start fresh here, to learn from the past. It was not going to be easy. She knew that. She was like a recovering addict--there were temptations everywhere. But she just had to be strong, to focus her sights on the future, and to always, always keep Dion's welfare--financial, educational, and emotional--first and foremost in her mind.

Mr. Aames, her supervisor, walked across the carpeted lobby carrying a stack of folders, which he proceeded to hand to her. "Backlog," he said.

"From your predecessor."

"Thank God," she told him, accepting the pile. "I was running out of things to do."

He grinned. "You never have to worry about that around here. Anytime you run out of things to do, you come and see me. I'll find something for you."

She looked up at him, her eyes level with his gold wedding band. Was that a come-on?

Did she want it to be?

She wasn't sure.

She smiled sweetly at him. "Thanks," she said, putting down the folders.

"I'll get started right away."

The afternoon was slower than usual, particularly in the loan department, and April found herself finishing all of Mr. Aames' backlog before closing. She was cleaning off the top of her desk, putting papers in their proper drawers, preparing to go home, when she heard a familiar voice.

"Hey there."

She looked up to see one of the new friends she'd met the other night when she'd come home late and she and Dion had had the fight. She couldn't immediately remember the woman's name, but she didn't need to.

"Margaret," the woman said. "Remember? Joan Pulkinghorn's friend?"

"Yeah. Hi." April glanced over at the teller's cage, but Joan was either in the vault or in the back office, not at her station. Her gaze focused again on the woman in front of her. "So what brings you around here?

Did you come to see Joan?"

"Actually, I wanted to see you." Margaret sat in the overstaffed chair reserved for loan applicants. "We all had a great time the other evening, and we were just wondering why you hadn't been by. A couple of us usually stop off at the Redwood Terrace after work to unwind a little before going home, and we were kind of hoping that you'd be one of our regulars. I mean, you certainly breathed some new life into the old group the other evening. I asked Joan about you, and she said she'd invited you to come along, but you were busy. I just wanted to make sure we didn't offend you or anything, or scare you away."

"No."

"So where've you been keeping yourself?"

April shrugged awkwardly. "You know. I've been busy with my job, my son, getting settled ..."

Margaret nodded. "Yeah, I know how that is. When we were just getting our business started, I never saw the light of day. I was up before dawn, not home until after sunset. Work-eat-sleep. That was my life."

She smiled. "But now I have time for play. So what about after work today? You're almost off. You want to come along, have a few drinks?"

"I'm not sure."

"Come on. It'll be fun."

April looked down at her desk, concentrated on picking up a paper clip.

The offer was tempting, the pull was strong. It was not just the inducement of a good time. There was something else as well, something more subtle; the promise of belonging, the same sympathetic camaraderie she'd felt the other night. She looked up at Margaret, thought of her other new friends, and felt her resolve slipping.

But then she thought of Dion, sitting alone at home, waiting for her, worried about her. What the hell kind of mother was she? How could she even think about leaving him to fend for himself while she was out on the town?

But then, he was old enough to take care of himself.

"Okay," she said.

Margaret smiled. "Great!" She leaned forward conspiratorily. "Do I

have some stories to tell you. Remember that construction worker I told you about?"

"The one with the--?"

"Yeah. Well, that wasn't the end of that tale." She raised her eyebrows comically and stood. "I'm going to stop by and talk to Joan. I'll meet you back here in a few minutes, okay?"

"Okay." April watched her new friend walk purposefully across the lobby to the teller window where Joan now stood counting her money. The two talked for a moment, and Joan glanced over, smiling and waving.

April waved back. She looked down at her phone, thought of calling Dion to tell him she'd be a little late, then decided against it.

Five minutes later, the bank closed.

Ten minutes later, the three of them were in Margaret's car, laughing about the construction worker, heading down Main Street toward the Redwood Terrace.

The week passed in that quirky time rhythm which always seemed to be generated by school--individual days that crept slowly by yet somehow added up to a quick week overall. Dion had planned out several conversational paths to take with Penelope, but she was absent Monday, and by Tuesday his bravery had fled. They nodded to each other, said hi, but the tentative stab at friendship they had made at lunch on Friday did not seem to have survived the weekend. They were strangers again, awkward and distant with each other, merely classmates. On Thursday, however, Dion caught her looking at him when she thought his attention was directed elsewhere, and that cheered him up immensely.

He and his mother had not spoken since the beginning of the week, the night she hadn't come home until nearly ten. This time she really had been drunk, old-style drunk, staggering, laughing, talking to herself, her speech slurred. She had ignored him that night, ignored his attempts to talk to her, to find out what had happened and why, and he had been ignoring her ever since, trying to punish her with his pointed silence, although it didn't seem to be working. He was more disappointed than anything else, more hurt than angry, but she probably thought he was furious at her. It was a tense situation, and one that wasn't getting any better, and he was dreading the weekend.

Dion saw Kevin in the parking lot after school, standing next to a red Mustang, talking to a long-haired boy he didn't recognize. He'd been planning to walk straight home, but Kevin called out his name, motioned him over, and Dion crossed the asphalt to where the other two boys waited.

Kevin turned toward Dion as he approached. "So what're your plans for tonight? What're you doing? Twanging your tater?" .

"Could be. I got this picture of your sister I bought last week."

Kevin laughed. "Well if you're not doing anything, you want to go cruising around with us? Who knows? Maybe we'll get lucky and find us some hitchhikers." He pointed at the license plate frame on the back of the Mustang. Written on the thin metal was the stock phrase "Ass, Gas, or Grass: No One Rides for Free." Underneath this had been attached an addendum: "And I have a full tank and I don't smoke."

Dion laughed.

"Whattaya say?"

"I don't know."

"You're not gonna pussy out on us, are you?"

Dion thought for a moment. The phrase cruising around carried connotations of passed bottles and passed joints in dark car backseats, images which made him extremely uncomfortable. On the other hand, he didn't want to alienate the only friend he'd made here so far. He looked at the long-haired kid leaning against the hood of the Mustang, and turned back toward Kevin. "Where're you going to go?"

"We're going to have some fun with Father Ralph."

"Who's Father Ralph?"

"Episcopal priest," Kevin said.

The long-haired kid grinned. "My dad."

Dion shook his head. "I'd like to, but I already- have some plans. Maybe next time."

Kevin looked at him. "What plans do you have? Sitting at home with your mom? Come on, it'll be fun."

Dion felt his options narrowing. "What are we going to do?"

"You'll see when we get there," the long-haired kid said.

"Paul always likes to keep it a secret," Kevin explained, "retain the element of surprise. But I guarantee you it'll be great."

"It's not illegal, is it?"

"Fuck it," Paul said. "This guy's a pussy. Let's leave him."

"No." Kevin moved defensively next to Dion. "I go, he goes."

"That's okay--" Dion began.

"No, it's not. You want to sit with your momma and watch the damn TV

while we're harassing Father Ralph and looking for bimbos?"

Yes, Dion wanted to answer, but he said, "No."

"Fine." Kevin nodded to Paul. "We'll meet you at eight at Burgertime."

Paul shrugged his shoulders, smiling indulgently. "See you there, then."

Paul got into the Mustang, racing his engine, and Dion and Kevin walked across the parking lot toward Kevin's Toyota. "He's kind of a wang sometimes," Kevin said apologetically, "but overall he's all right. You get used to him."

"You guys hang out together a lot?"

"Not as much as we used to."

"So why does he hate his dad so much?"

"He doesn't hate him. It's just ... well, it's a long story." They reached the car, and Kevin used his key to open the door. "We'll go by your place, tell your mom the plan, then we'll cruise by my house."

"Okay," Dion said. "Sounds good."

"Unless you want to skip telling your mom, give her a little scare, pay her back, let her wait up for you this time."

"I'd like to, but I'd better not."

"It's your call," Kevin said.

The two of them got into the car, and Kevin put his key in the ignition.

"Fasten your safety belts."

Before Dion could comply, they were off.

Kevin's room was the type usually seen only in movies. The walls were decorated with what looked like authentic posters of old horror films sandwiched in between an amazing collection of metal signs: stop signs, street names, yield signs, Coke signs. From the ceiling hung a lit display advertising 7-Up.

The shelves above the king size waterbed contained row after row of records. In the corner, next to the free-standing television, was a working traffic signal, flashing green-yellow-red in sequential order, and next to that stood an old life-size cardboard cutout of Bartles and Jaymes. Dion stood in the doorway, taking it all in. "Wow," he said.

Kevin grinned. "Pretty cool, huh?"

Dion stepped into the room. "Where'd you get all this?"

"Around."

"Did you--?"

"Steal it? No. My uncle did, though. Some of it. He used to work for the transportation department in San Francisco, but they fired his ass.

Before he left, he took a few souvenirs." Kevin laughed, pointing toward the stoplight. "I don't know how he got that one."

"This is great!"

"Yeah." Kevin scooped a pile of coins from the top of the dresser into his hand and grabbed a small wad of bills. "Come on, let's hit the road."

"I thought we weren't going to meet him until eight."

"Yeah, but I don't want to hang around here all night. We'll find something to do. Let's go."

They ended up simply driving around aimlessly. Dion asked where Penelope's winery was, and Kevin took him down a narrow road which ran along the edge of the foothills just outside of town. He stopped the car for a moment, pointed at a large white wrought iron gate.

"Beaver-chomping territory beyond. them there walls."

Dion tried to see something, anything, on the other side of the gate as they passed, but the daylight was gone, no lights were on, and whatever buildings lay within the property blended in with the foliage and the black background hills.

They drove by twice more, but saw nothing either time.

"Give it up," Kevin said. "No one's home. Besides, we'd better move out.

Paul's probably waiting."

Burgertime was straight out of American Graffiti, a chrome and tile drive-in complete with uniformed carhops. Paul was indeed waiting, and three other guys Dion did not recognize were sitting next to him on the hood of the Mustang. Paul grinned as the two of them got out of Kevin's.

car. "Well, if it isn't the famous butt brothers."

Kevin flipped him off. "Knick knack paddywack, give your mom a boner."

Paul laughed, pushing himself off the car. "Well, we're all here now.

You ready to hit the pavement?"

"Yeah," Kevin said.

"All right. We'd better take two vehicles this time." He looked purposefully at Dion. "It's getting crowded."

"We'll follow you," Kevin said, either ignoring or not noticing the slight.

"See you there."

The two cars raced quickly through the Napa streets, slowing to the legal limit only at known speed traps, those intersections where the city's men in blue consistently sat in wait to nab unsuspecting motorists. The buildings changed from commercial to residential, the garish glow of signs giving way to the low illumination of lighted living room windows. The houses became spaced farther apart, the roads more winding, as rural tendrils encroached onto city space. Finally the Mustang pulled to a stop just before a huge oak tree whose massive leafy branches overhung the pavement.

Paul and his friends got out of the car, Paul carrying a brown grocery bag.

Dion and Kevin met them halfway between the two vehicles.

"Hope you all wore shitty clothes," Paul said. "This is going to involve some dirty work." He gestured toward a two-story Victorian house on the other side of the oak. "My old man's camped out in the living room in the back of the house, and we're going to have to circle around through the trees and bushes to get to the window:"

The rest of them nodded in understanding.

"Let's make this quick." Paul disappeared into the blackness beneath the tree, and the other four followed. The night topography was confusing to Dion, but Paul obviously knew the way, moving swiftly between trees, around seemingly identical bushes, until suddenly the back of the house was before them.

They crouched low between the branches of an oleander. Behind the translucent curtains covering a large double window, backed by the flickering blue glow of a television, they could see the indistinct shadow of a stiff backed man.

"What exactly are we going to do?" Dion whispered.

"You'll see." Paul grinned. "Come on." He crept forward through the underbrush. The rest of them fell in behind him until they were just below the window. Putting a finger to his lips to shush them, Paul opened the sack. Inside was the object he had spent half of his afternoon working on.

A huge clay penis.

It was hard for Dion not to laugh as Paul placed the gigantic phallus on the windowsill. Grinning, Paul looked from one face to another. "Get ready to roll," he whispered.

Dion's heart was pounding in his chest. He had no idea what Paul was doing, and he was more than a little nervous. Still, he could not help laughing as he looked at the object, silhouetted against the inside light.

"Shut up!" Kevin warned.

Paul suddenly stood up, pounding on the window with both his fists. In the quiet night air, the sound was explosive. "Suck me, Father Ralph!"

he yelled at the top of his lungs.

The rest of them scattered, taking refuge in the dark safety of the trees.

Dion ducked behind a bush next to Kevin. He saw the curtains open, saw the priest's expression of shock as he saw the clay cock. A moment later, the front door flew open. "I'll get you punks!" the minister yelled. In his hand was a baseball bat, which he waved threateningly in the air.

"Suck me, Father Ralph!" Paul called from behind a bush, The rest of them took up the cry:

"Suck me, Father Ralph!"

"Suck me, Father Ralph!"

"Suck me, Father Ralph!"

Dion laughed. "Suck me, Father Ralph!" he cried.

The priest ran toward the nearest bush, toward the sound of Paul's voice.

"Haul ass!" Kevin yelled, and the bushes rattled as all five of them scurried back the way they'd come, heading for the cars.

"I'm calling the cops!" the priest yelled after them.

Dion was still laughing, his heart pounding, blood pumping with adrenaline, as they broke onto the street. "This is great!" he said.

Kevin laughed with him. 'Told you."

"Take off!" Paul ordered, rushing to his car. "Follow me!"

"Let's go!" Kevin said.

Dion jumped in the passenger seat. He could not remember when he'd had this much fun. This was the kind of thing that happened in films, not in real life. Certainly not in his life.

The two cars took off in twin squeals of burnt tire.

The lights inside were off when Dion returned home, though his mom's car was parked in the driveway.

Parked in back of it was a red Corvette.

Dion glanced quickly back at Kevin's disappearing taillights, but it was too late to flag him down. He turned back around. It was nothing, he told himself. She had just invited a new friend over for some innocent talk, that was all.

But if that was all, why were all the lights off?

He stepped quietly over the gravel of the front walk, tiptoeing, until he reached the front door. It was locked, but he had a key. He pulled out his wallet, removed the key from its hiding place behind the bills, and opened the door.

He could hear his mom in the bedroom.

She was not alone.

He stood there, unmoving. That was it, then. She was starting again. All that cock and bull she'd given him about turning over a new leaf had been just so much hot air. She hadn't meant a single goddamn word of it.

So where did that leave them now?

How long was it going to be before she screwed things up here and got fired from this job?

He crept carefully across the wooden floor to his bedroom, moving silently, a trick he had perfected long ago. He could smell the pungent odor of whiskey in the still hall air. He wished he was one of those people who just didn't care, who could roll with the flow and accept things the way they were. But he was not one of those people; he could not do that.

He closed the door to his room, took off his clothes, and got into bed.

The loud drunken conversation which had greeted him when he'd first come into the house had now degenerated into something else. He could hear the loud squeak of bedsprings through the thin wall, accompanied by short, high, breathless cries. His mother would start her litany soon:

"Oh, God, you're good!... You're so good! ... Yes! ... Yes! ... Oh, God!

... You're so big!... Oh, God, you're big! ... Oh, God!" He knew it by heart. It never changed. She never used names, and he'd wondered more than once if that was because she did not know the names of the men she brought home.

He pulled the blanket over his head and plugged his ears, trying to block out the sound, but her cries were getting louder. Did she enjoy this? he wondered. Did she mean any of the crudely flattering things she said, or was it all simply an act? He had never been sure.

He closed his eyes, trying to focus his attention on the earlier events of the night rather than on the show in the next room, but it was impossible to do so.

He hated his mom right now.

It was said that teenagers rebelled against their parents, consciously rejecting their parents' value systems in an effort to forge their own identities. That sounded good in psych class, but he certainly didn't feel as though he was rebelling against anything. He had no doubt, however, that his social awkwardness stemmed from, or was a reaction to, his mother's "overly permissive" lifestyle.

Maybe that was why he'd never had sex.

It was not something which he would ever admit to in public, not something he would share with Kevin, but it was true. He rationalized it to himself, told himself it was better to wait until he had found the right person, but that was just an excuse and he knew it. It sounded good to have such high moral principles, and it did make him feel a little better about himself, as though he was making a conscious decision to do the right thing, but the truth was that he was just like anyone else. He would have jumped at the chance for sex if it had been offered.

Only it had never been offered.

Then again, maybe he wouldn't have jumped at the chance. People always seemed to assume that the children of so-called "liberated" parents had an easier time of it, were more comfortable with their own sexuality, but he knew from experience that this was not the case. If anything, knowing about his mother's love life in such detail tainted the sex act for him, made it seem distasteful and repulsive instead of exciting and desirable. He was also privy to his mother's morning-after comments and could contrast what she moaned in bed and what she said afterward.

And that scared the hell out of him.

"You're so good!" she cried from the other room. "You're so big!"

He plugged his ears more tightly.

He fell asleep still plugging his ears.

Dion awoke in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and stumbled out of bed into the hall.

Where he ran into his mom's "guest."

He jumped back, startled. "Sorry," the man said sleepily, grabbing Dion's shoulders. "Didn't see you." He was good-looking--weren't they all?--and was tall and muscular, with thick black curly hair and a mustache. He was completely naked.

Dion watched him pad into his mother's bedroom and close the door.

In the morning he was gone, and when Dion woke up and went into the kitchen for breakfast, his mom was already there, reading her paper and drinking coffee. She looked up when he entered, pretending as though nothing was wrong, as though nothing had happened. "What time did you get home last night?" she asked brightly.

"About eleven," he said. He walked over to the counter, took two pieces of bread from \ the unwrapped loaf, and dropped them into the toaster, pressing the handle down.

"Did you have fun?" she asked. Did you? he wanted to say, but he simply nodded. He took the butter out of the refrigerator. "I had a hard time sleeping, though," he said pointedly. His mom seemed not to notice the inference behind the words, and he poured himself a glass of orange juice.

She was being nice to him today, all traces of last week's hostility gone, but somehow that made him feel even worse. He thought of what a friend of his back in Mesa always used to say about the girls who treated him like dirt, that all they needed was "a good fucking."

His toast popped up, and he buttered it and sat down across from his mom at the table. She smiled at him. "What do you want to do today?"

"I don't know," he mumbled.

She folded the entertainment section of the paper and picked up the front page. "We'll find something."

He nodded, chewing slowly. He watched her as she read. His gaze focused on a small red stain on the right sleeve of her nightgown.

It looked like blood.

Lieutenant Horton looked down at the remains of Ron Fowler.

Remains.

It was an appropriate word. For the tangled mess of red muscle and bone which lay on the stone floor before him was barely recognizable as human. It looked like leftover food, something which had been chewed and rejected by the mouth of some gigantic creature.

He looked away, unable to stomach the sight except in short bursts. A

flash went off as the photographer snapped another picture. Horton stepped back, grateful for the battery of fans that were keeping the stench somewhat at bay. He turned toward the coroner. "How long would you estimate he's been dead?"

"Hard to determine without tests, but I'd guestimate two days. Three tops."

Jack Hammond, the detective assigned to assist Horton with the investigation, continued to quiz Jauvert Pauling, the winery owner. "How can you not have discovered this for two or three days?"

"What do you mean 'how?' We just didn't."

"Fowler's car was still in the parking lot."

"What do you want me to say?" The small man's face was getting red.

"This is a busy time of year for us. Ron wasn't there when we arrived in the morning, so we assumed he left. When he didn't show up that night, we found our daytime security assistant to take the watch, and when we discovered that he was missing, we called you."

"And no one noticed the body? Not even with all of your cameras and monitors?"

"The monitor to the cave was out; we were in the process of getting someone out here to repair it. And at this time of the season we don't check the cave but once a week. The wine ferments without us."

Horton tuned out the Q & A, looked again at the remains, turned away. He closed his eyes for a second, attempting to push back with willpower the major mother of a headache that was brewing behind his brows and that he knew could only be quelled by a double dose of industrial-strength aspirin.

He was getting too old for this shit.

Footsteps sounded on the concrete floor, and he looked up to see Chief Goodridge, Captain Furnier, and a group of flunkies striding across the concrete floor of the distilling room. The captain nodded at him, as did the chief.

"Capsule review," the captain said, taking the clipboard from his hand.

Horton gave him a shorthand version of the events as currently understood. Both Goodridge and Furnier listened without asking questions, their hardened eyes taking in the bloody scene.

It was the chief who spoke first. "Any theories?"

Horton shrugged. "From the nature of the crime, we're operating on the assumption that it was a cult of some sort, involved in animal and human sacrifice, although as you can see the scene seems more chaotic and unstructured than a ritual would indicate. I'll be checking the computer for the names and practices of our local wier dies when I get back to the station. Hammond'll be interviewing winery workers."

The chief nodded. "I want you to keep this as quiet as possible," he said. "If the media gets a hold of this, they'll blow it all out of proportion--"

"Blow what out of proportion?" Pauling asked, walking over. "What will they blow out of proportion? The fact that satanists snuck into my winery and drank my wine and sacrificed animals in my fermenting room?

Or the fact that they killed and tore apart my security guard?"

"It's a story that could easily be sensationalized--" the chief began.

"Because it's a sensational story! Jesus, what do you want to do? Hush all this up, pretend it didn't happen? It did happen!

It happened at my winery! My goddamn shoes are stuck to the goddamn floor with goddamn blood!" He pointed a finger in the chief's face. "I

don't give a fuck whether the media knows about this or not. I just want you to catch the bastards."

"You don't care?" the chief said. "What do you think it's going to do to sales of your wine when consumers find out that satanic rituals were performed on your premises?"

"Gentlemen," Horton said, sensing the tension building and stepping between the two men. 'There's no reason for us to argue. We're on the same side. We both want to catch whoever did this, and I think we'll have a better chance of that if we cooperate."

The chief looked at him coldly. "I don't need your advice, Lieutenant. I

know how to conduct myself in an investigation," Horton backed off, nodding in acquiescence, swallowing the retort which rose naturally in his throat and which concerned the species of the chief's mother. He was blinded for a second as he accidentally looked into the flash of the photographer, and he quickly glanced down. When the glare cleared, he saw again the security guard's gruesome remains, a shred of tattered shirt glued with blood to bone, fluttering in the fan wind. He turned away.

He was getting too old for this shit.

"Ariadne," Mr. Holbrook said professorially, pacing in front of the class, "was the princess of Thebes and--"

"Crete," Dion said.

The teacher stopped talking, stopped walking, looked at him. The eyes of the other students followed those of their instructor. "What?" Mr.

Holbrook asked.

"Crete," Dion repeated timidly. "Ariadne was the princess of Crete. You said Thebes." He looked down at his desk, at his hands, embarrassed that he had spoken up, not sure why he had mentioned the misstatement, not sure how he had known that it was incorrect.

The teacher nodded. "You're quite right, Dion. Thank you."

The lecture continued.

Twenty minutes later the bell rang, and though the teacher was writing on the board, still speaking, in the middle of a sentence, books were immediately slammed shut, pencils pocketed, as students stood and rushed toward the door. Mr. Holbrook turned around, wiping the chalk dust from his fingers. "Dion," he said. "I'd like to speak to you a moment."

There was a chorus of onimous "oohs" from the departing students. "I'll wait outside," Kevin said, passing by. Dion caught Penelope's eye and was gratified to see that she was looking at him.

The teacher walked to his desk as the class emptied and sat down in the swivel chair behind it. He leaned back in the chair and looked up at Dion, fingers steepled together. "It's obvious," he said, "that you have an extensive knowledge of classical mythology."

Dion shifted uneasily from one foot to another. "Not really," he said.

"Yes, you do. And I just wanted you to know that I can arrange for you to take independent study. Clearly you're just spinning your wheels in this class. This is basically a mythology primer, an overview for beginners. I think you would benefit greatly from accelerated coursework."

"No," Dion said quickly.

"Don't be so hasty. Think about it. I don't know what your future academic plans are, but I can assure you that such a move would look very impressive on your transcripts."

Outside the classroom, the hall was filled with talking, shouting, slamming lockers: the sounds of lunch. Dion glanced anxiously toward the open door, then turned his attention back to the teacher. "Okay," he said. "I'll think about it."

"Discuss it with your parents. I really feel that you'd just be wasting your time in this course."

"I will," Dion said, backing up. He picked up his book and notebook from the top of his desk.

Mr. Holbrook smiled. "I know. It's lunch. Go. Get out of here. But promise me you'll consider this option, okay? We'll talk more about it later."

"Okay," Dion said. "Uh, thanks. Bye." He walked out of the room. In the hall, Kevin, Penelope, and her friend Vella were standing togedier next to one of the lockers. Dion knew that he was the subject of their conversation, and for some reason the knowledge made him absurdly, unreasonably happy. He walked purposefully toward them, but Penelope, seeing him, waved a quick good-bye to Kevin, and she and her friend disappeared into the stream of people rushing through the building toward the outside lunch area. "What was that about?" he asked Kevin.

"Why? Jealous?"

He hadn't even thought of that.

"Don't worry." Kevin laughed. "She's all yours. I was just talking to her. I don't want to cornhusk her."

Dion grinned. "Oh, you want her friend, huh?"

"For what? I already have a dog." Kevin snorted.

"Come on. We're late and it's getting crowded. Let's grab some grub."

The two of them pushed their way through the crowd toward the cafeteria.

Dion was standing in line next to Kevin, trying to overhear the sexually explicit conversation of the two jocks in the next line over, when he felt a light feminine tap on his shoulder. A shiver of goosebumps surfed down his arm. He turned around. As he'd hoped, as he'd feared, he found himself face to face with Penelope. This close, he could see the clear smoothness of her skin, the natural redness of her lips. She nodded at him, smiled, but there was a trace of worry in her brow, a subtle hint of concern in her eyes. "What happened with Mr. Holbrook?" she asked.

"Are you in trouble?"

Dion studied her face. Did she care? Was she interested? His palms were sweaty and he wiped them on his jeans, but his voice betrayed none of his anxious excitement. "He said I should be in an advanced mythology class, but since there was none, he wanted me to take independent study."

The worry turned to alarm. "Are you going to?"

She was interested.

"No." He smiled.

A flush of redness spread over her cheeks. "It's just that ... I mean, I, uh--"

Kevin stuck his head between them. "She likes you, okay? God, just come out and say it. I'm tired of this. I have to listen to you two beat around the bush for an hour and a half, and then I'll have to listen to him analyze it for the next week. She likes you. You like her. You both like each other. Does that about cover it?"

Now both of them were red, embarrassed. They stood awkwardly silent, not looking at each other, neither of them knowing what to say.

"Would you like to sit with us?" Kevin asked, usurping Dion's obvious next line. "Yes, thank you," he answered himself.

Penelope looked doubtfully at Dion, then shifted her gaze toward one of the tables. "I'm supposed to eat with--"

"Bring her along," Kevin said. He motioned for the two of them to move forward in line. "And move up. You're blocking traffic. Jeez, do I have to do everything for you?"

Dion and Penelope looked at Kevin, then at each other, and laughed.

After paying for her lunch, Penelope went to get Vella, who was brown-bagging it, and the girls joined Dion and Kevin at a table near Senior Corner. It was Kevin who initiated the conversation at first, who expertly drew all of them into the discussion, but what began as a four-way dialogue was soon dominated by Dion and Penelope, who addressed most of their words to each other, involving Kevin and Vella only peripherally.

Dion drank his Coke quickly but hardly touched his hamburger as he kept his eyes and attention fastened on Penelope. He had expected the conversation to be stilted and awkward, filled with favorite food-favorite music favorite movie questions, and there was some of that, but for the most part the conversation flowed naturally, organically, not seeming the least bit forced or false. The two of them did not run out of things to talk about, as he'd feared, but found that each question, each answer, each observation, each reminiscence, opened up entirely new topics and fields for discussion. Neither of them mentioned what Kevin had brought up in line, and for that reason there was an underlying tension in their talk, a tension that maintained a steady rush of intoxicating adrenaline coursing through Dion's veins.

Lunch ended far too soon.

The bell rang, and Kevin stood up, throwing his wrappers in the metal trash bin next to the table, waving goodbye, and heading off to his sixth-period class. Vella threw away her trash too and waited a respectable distance away for her friend. Around them the flow of people began streaming toward the classrooms.

Penelope looked at Dion, glanced away. "So what are you doing after school?" she asked, not meeting his eyes.

"Why?"

"Well, I thought maybe we could study together. I mean, I'm having a little trouble in Mythology, especially keeping all those Titans and Olympians straight." She smiled. "Since you're the big expert, I thought you could help me out."

She was not having any trouble, and he knew it, but he decided to play along. "Okay," he said.

"We could meet in the library ..." She thought for a moment. "Or you could come over to my house. It's not as quiet there, but it's a lot more comfortable."

"Sure," he said. "I'd like that."

"Do you have a car?"

He shook his head, embarrassed. "No."

"That's okay. Neither do I. The bus takes me straight home, though, and you can ride with me. I'm sure I can get one of my--I can get" my mother to drive you home."

"Come on!" Vella called from the sidelines. "We'll be late!"

Dion smiled. "You'll be late."

"We'll both be late." ., "So where do you want to meet?"

"Outside the library, after school."

"I'll be there," he said.

"I'll see you then."

He waved good-bye and watched her hurry over to Vella. The two girls sprinted across the grassy expanse toward the lockers.

He was still staring at the spot where they'd disappeared into the building when the bell rang.

The conversation on the bus ride was not as relaxed and easy as it had been at lunch. Kevin and Vella weren't there, which put extra pressure on the two of them, and the tension which had been nascent earlier was now full blown and firmly in the forefront, the considerable effort involved in arranging this supposedly casual meeting making it nearly impossible to maintain the illusion that they were classmates simply studying together. Their talk was hesitant, their words infrequent, their discussion consisting of awkwardly worded questions and quick-to-the point answers. Nevertheless, the natural affinity they shared won out over this more superficial unease, and by the time the bus brakes hissed to a stop in front of the winery gates, the two of them were, if not talking as though they were old friends, at, least not acting as though they were terrified of each other.

They stepped off the bus, which pulled slowly away with a rattle of loose gravel. Penelope used a key to open a small black box attached to a low pole next to the gate, and she quickly punched in a series of numbers on the tiny console. She closed the front of the box, and the giant gates opened with a low whirring noise. She smiled at him. "Come on."

Dion followed her through the iron gates and up the winding paved driveway. The single lane was flanked near the entrance by a line of trees which acted as a natural fence and which disappeared almost immediately, giving way to a field of staked grape vines, laid out in parallel rows and spreading over what appeared to be acres of flat farmland. On the far side of the huge vineyard, he could see Penelope's house arid the adjacent structures of the winery.

He whistled. "Wow," he said.

Penelope giggled.

"I've never seen anything like this," he admitted. He stared at the tall Ionic columns which made up the peristyle separating the winery from the parking lot. Beyond it were three neo-Classic buildings arranged in staggered order. Concessions had been made to modernity--as they drew closer he could see metal heating/air-conditioning units, reflective window glass, clearly marked service doors--but from afar the complex looked like nothing so much as an ancient Greek hilltop city. The plantation style house, while set slightly apart from the winery and distinctly American, also contained complementary echoes of ancient architecture and did not dispel the impression.

Dion thought of the small house he and his mother rented, realized that he had never even imagined living in a place this big or this opulent.

He looked at Penelope. The differences between them suddenly seemed enormous.

She looked at him and smiled.

He tried to smile back, tried to think of something to say that wouldn't make him sound like a fool. He cleared his throat "I was looking at a tourist map of the wineries the other day, and I

didn't see yours listed."

"We don't give tours," she explained. "The winery is not open to the public."

"Really?" Dion was surprised at that. The winery seemed to have been built with tourists specifically in mind. With its pseudo-Greek architecture and distinctive layout, it would seem to be a natural point of interest, much more so than Edinger's or Scalia's or some of the other more pedestrian-looking wineries which did offer guided tours of their facilities. He frowned. "Then why does it look so ... Why does it look like this?"

Penelope shrugged. "That's how the women of the combine wanted it."

Dion looked again at the complex, and suddenly he didn't like it. The interest and admiration he had felt only seconds before disappeared. A

wave of distaste washed over him, an aversion so strong it was almost physical. He glanced quickly away, but not before Penelope saw the expression on his face.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

He waved it away. "Nothing," he said. But he looked again at the winery buildings, and he was afraid. There were goose bumps on his arms, and he was reminded of his equally irrational reaction to the hill last week.

He coughed, tried not to let his unease show. "Come on."

Penelope nodded, leading the way. They walked past the rows of vines and lines of pickers, through the parking lot, and down the short path to the house. The fear passed as quickly as it had come, and by the time they had reached the front steps it was just a memory.

"Home sweet home," Penelope said.

Dion looked up at the three-story mansion. "Have you always lived here?"

"All my life."

"You must have a big family."

"No. It's just me and my mother."

"Your dad doesn't--?"

"No."

He shook his head. "Just the two of you in this huge house?"

"Well, it's not just the two of us. My other ... women in the combine live here too."

Dion nodded, saying nothing.

Penelope stopped at the foot of the porch steps, turned to face him. "I

know what the kids say," she said, her voice low, "but I'm not a lesbian."

Dion found himself blushing. "I didn't say you were--"

"And neither are any of the women in the combine." Her voice was strong, her expression serious. For all of her shyness, for all of her earlier hesitancy, she seemed much older than her years, more poised and, mature than other girls her age. "Look," she said. "I know how it looks to a bunch of hormone-enraged teenage boys, but the combine is just a business concern. That's it. We all live in the same house, but that's because it's big and it's convenient. Our winery is not some sort of sex club or Playboy mansion or anything. Nothing like that happens here or has ever happened here. I'll admit that the women are all strong feminists, but contrary to what people seem to think these days, there's nothing wrong with that. They're aggressive because they have to be.

They're businesswomen. And everything they've done, they've done on their own. No one helped them, no one encouraged them, no one would even hire them when they were originally looking for positions in other wineries. They may have made it in spite of men and not because of men, but that doesn't make them lesbians." She stopped to catch her breath.

Dion smiled softly at her. "I wouldn't care if they were lesbians," he said. "But if I thought you were a lesbian, I wouldn't be here."

Now it was her turn to blush.

Both of them were silent for a moment. Dion's hands were sweaty, and he wiped them surreptitiously on his pants. He had said it. He had taken the plunge. He had spoken aloud what he had been thinking, and now she knew for sure that he was interested. He licked his lips. What would she say? How would she react? How would she respond? The silence dragged on, and he was suddenly certain that he had made a mistake, that he had tipped his hand too early.

Her response was no response. She chose to ignore his remark. "Are you thirsty?" she asked finally. Her voice was gentler than it had been, filled with an emotion he couldn't quite place but which for some reason made him feel good. She motioned him up the porch steps, refusing to look at him. "We have some juice in the refrigerator."

Part of him was disappointed, part of him relieved. If he hadn't been accepted, at least he hadn't been shot down. He was still in the running, and that was good enough for now. He nodded. "Sounds great," he said.

They walked inside.

The interior of the house was less impressive than the outside. Rather than the museum's worth of untouchable antiques he had been expecting, he saw a hodgepodge of furnishings and decorating styles, most of them contemporary, none which fit with the grandiose promise of the exterior.

The house was comfortable, though, the rooms warm and inviting. In a family room dominated by a large-screen TV, the day's newspaper was scattered over a low wood and white tile coffee table. On the armrest of the couch was an opened paperback, a Danielle Steele novel. Next to the doorway were two pairs of women's shoes.

Dion felt less intimidated than he had before. Penelope's family might be rich, but they lived the same way as everyone else.

"Kitchen's through here!"

He followed Penelope into the kitchen, where a middle aged woman wearing faded jeans and a plain white blouse was chopping bell peppers on a freestanding butcher block. The woman turned toward them as they entered. She exchanged a quick glance with Penelope, then beamed at Dion. "Hello," she said.

Dion smiled, nodded. "Hello."

"Dion, this is my mother. Mother, this is my friend Dion."

Penelope's mother looked nothing like her. She was small-boned and dark, whereas her daughter was tall and blond. Her features were plain and nondescript in contrast to Penelope's stunning good looks. She was also older and more careworn than he would have expected. The one thing mother and daughter did seem to have in common was an innate shyness, a natural reserve, although Penelope's mother appeared to be more deferential, less strong willed.

"Would you two like something to drink?"

"Yes," Penelope said. "Juice?"

"We have grape. Fresh squeezed today."

"That'll be fine."

Mother Felice opened the white refrigerator door and drew out a large glass pitcher filled to the brim with grape juice. She maneuvered carefully over to the counter, holding the pitcher with two hands in order to keep from spilling any on the floor. "Where are you from?" she asked as she put the pitcher down and took two glasses from the cupboard. "I know you're not from around here."

"Arizona," Dion said.

"Really? Whereabouts?"

"Mesa. It's near Phoenix."

"I know where Mesa is. I used to have a friend from Scottsdale, a girl I

went to high school with."

Penelope smiled as her mother handed her a glass of juice. Mother Felice had always been able to put people at ease, to make them feel comfortable. Of all of her mothers, she was the kindest, the most solicitous of the feelings of others, and it was she who was always chosen to soothe the waters after Mother Margeaux had bulldozed her way over someone. Penelope was glad to see that Dion seemed to like her mother, and that her mother seemed to like Dion.

The door banged open and Mother Janine stepped loudly into the kitchen, bumping against the frame as she pulled work gloves off her hands.

"Who's--" she began. She stopped in mid-sentence, saw Dion, and smiled.

"Hello," she said.

"This is Dion," Mother Felice explained. "A friend of Penelope's."

"Dion?" Mother Janine's smile broadened. She reached out, took his hand, shook it gently. "I am very happy to meet you.

Very happy. I'm ... Penelope's aunt, Janine."

"How do you do?" he replied.

Penelope saw her mothers exchanging surreptitious glances, smiling in approval. She reddened, but she did not look away. She was embarrassed but also proud. She had never before invited a boy to see where she lived, and she felt good that the first one she had chosen was Dion, someone of whom her mothers would obviously approve, a boy who was nice, intelligent, good-looking, and respectful.

"Would you like to go on a little tour of the winery?" Mother Janine asked. "I'd love to--"

"We have to study," Penelope said.

"We could study afterward," Dion suggested.

"We have to study," she repeated firmly.

He nodded. "Right," he agreed. "Right." He handed the empty glass to Penelope's mother. 'Thanks," he said.

There was silence for a moment. Dion was awkwardly aware that everyone was staring at him: Penelope, her mother, her aunt. He didn't know what to say and was about to make some sort of generic remark when Penelope saved him and suggested that they go out to the Garden.

"Study in a garden?" Dion said.

She laughed. "I'll show you. Come on."

He said good-bye to the two women and followed Penelope out of the kitchen. Though nothing had happened, nothing he noticed, he got the feeling that he had passed some sort of test. He thought of Penelope's mother and her aunt, and he was not sure if he liked that or not.

He followed Penelope through the library as she opened the sliding glass doors and stepped outside.

Frank Douglas had been a bartender for a long time, for thirty-three of his fifty-six years, and while he might not have had the academic credentials of a sociologist, he had learned a little about reading people in his time behind the counter. Individuals and crowds. He could be pouring drinks, wiping up, engaging in superficial chitchat with {

the more talkative regulars, but at the same time his senses were always open, his antennae out, working, measuring, gauging, sizing up.

And this crowd was weird.

He poured himself a mineral water and downed half of it in a single swallow. The night crowds had all been weird lately. Or at least weird for this bar. The Pioneer usually attracted a steady, stable clientele of after-work drinkers and evening socializers, a solid blue-collar beer crowd. But in the past few weeks the makeup of the bar had gradually shifted. No, not the makeup. The personality. For the people were still the same, and, individually, they seemed no different than they had before. They wore the same clothes, drove the same cars, came and left at the same times. But the configuration of the crowd when these people were together had changed completely, and that had changed the whole tenor of the bar. Gone were the endless public rehashes of the weekend's sporting events, the petty domestic complaints, the boring shop talk.

Conversations now were quiet, less public, more intimate, more personal, usually between two people. Usually between a man and a woman.

And these days most of his customers were drinking wine instead of beer.

A lot of wine.

Frank finished his mineral water, washed out the glass.

His gaze wandered to the back wall, where the once empty booths were all full, populated with people who sat very close together in the darkness.

That was the strangest thing of all. Many of these people had known one another for years, had been friends or acquaintances, bar buddies, but had always looked elsewhere for love. Now they suddenly seemed to have discovered each other, and they were behaving like high school students in heat.

It didn't make any sense.

At Josh Aldridge's high sign, he poured the roofer another wine cooler, placing it on a napkin before him.

What made even less sense was the feeling he got that beneath the surface calm there lurked a barely concealed storm. It was a strange feeling, an unfounded feeling, but as much as he tried to discount it rationally, it would not go away. Despite the intimate discussions, despite the quiet nuzzling, despite the lovey-doveyness, he had the impression that it would require only a very slight provocation to stir up this crowd, to bring whatever latent violence lay beneath its thin veneer immediately to the surface.

He had tended bar in a lot of places, a lot of towns. He'd mixed drinks in discos and punk clubs, in cowboy and biker bars. He could sense danger. And though his customers tonight were polite and well behaved, though they seemed to be merely looking for companionship, he could tell that they were looking for something more than that. Something nowhere near as nice.

And it frightened him.

There were buildings on top of the rocky hill, buildings not unlike those that made up the winery. Stately structures with tall Doric columns supporting heavy entablatures decorated with intricately carved friezes. There were three buildings altogether, the largest flanked by two coequal counterparts. Men were standing in line before the middle building, a long line which wound a considerable way down the side of the barren slope. In their hands were baskets of fruit and samples of recently killed game.

He wanted nothing to do with the men. Though he was hungry, he longed for none of the fruit, coveted none of the game. The sustenance he wanted was located far below the temples, in the valley.

Temples. That's what the buildings were.

He turned away from the line of men and began running down the hill.

Fleet of foot he was, possessing a strength arid agility that seemed natural but at the same time superhuman. He fairly flew over the rough terrain, feet finding purchase and springing from the ground's inlaid rock.

Then he was at the bottom of the hill, speeding toward the trees. He smelled the sweet frangrance of wine, and the musky odor of women.

He was late. In the meadow, in the valley, the celebration had already started. Vats of wine had been brought here, and two of them were now half empty. Whole and broken cups lay strewn about the grass in scattered disarray. There were nearly a hundred people laughing, screaming, singing. Many of them were naked and most of them were drunk.

Couples--men and women, women and women, men and men--were fornicating furiously on the soft grass.

He raced into the center of the meadow. "I am here!" he announced. His voice was loud, booming, echoing over the hills and back.

The people gathered around him. He had been planning to join in the festivities, but he realized that the celebration was in honor of himself. A huge goblet of wine was thrust into his hand, and he swallowed its entirety. The goblet was immediately replaced with another, and that with another, until he had drunk ten such draughts and his thirst was quenched.

He felt good, he felt primed, ready to satisfy his other hunger.

The smell of arousal was all about him, entwined with the fragrance of the wine, the heavy musk of the women, the lighter scent of the men.

He scanned the faces before him. He wanted two today.

His eyes alighted on the robed figures of a woman and her young daughter. He nodded, and both removed their clothes. The woman's breasts were full, milky, her thatch thick. The daughter was hairless and only just ripe. With one easy movement he stepped out of his own garb. The eyes of the two females widened with awe and lust at the sight of his enormous organ.

He took the woman first, bending her over a log and taking her from behind as the other celebrants cheered. She screamed with agony and joy and hot ecstasy, and he became wilder, more feverish in his movements as the wine was poured over them and the woman began to buck. His time was about to come, and he grabbed her head, smashing it against the log with each thrust as his seed shot deep into her body.

She had stopped breathing long before he was through, though the blood continued to pump from her gashed head.

Afterward, the daughter sat on his lap and rode him as he impaled her, tore her apart. His satisfaction came at the precise moment of her death, and he leaped to his feet as he gave a cry and around him the carnage began. Screams of pleasure and screams of pain blended, harmonized, created a music beautiful to his ears. He breathed in the blood and sex and death, looking proudly down at the broken, used, and twisted bodies of the mother and her daughter, bathed in liquid red and white.

They were dead, but the life force had not yet fled entirely, and their legs were still twitching in remembrance of ecstasy.

Dion awoke suddenly, his head jerking up from the pillow. The final image was still in his mind, the young girl and her mother covered in blood and semen, twitching. He was disgusted by the image, nauseated, frightened by it. He closed his eyes, breathed deeply, opened his eyes.

His room seemed far too dark, its night shadows much more threatening than usual, and he was sweating, drenched with the aftermath of fear.

He also had an erection.

"So did you feed her some sausage?"

Dion slammed shut his locker, ignoring the question.

Kevin grinned. "Come on, man. You can tell me. I'd tell you."

"I wish you wouldn't talk about Penelope like that."

"Whoa, it's love and not just lust!" Kevin reached out to grab a passerby and make some crude remark about the situation, but Dion stopped his hand.

"Hey, I'm serious."

Kevin's smile faded. "I'm sorry. I was just joking."

"No," Dion apologized. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be so defensive."

"You must be pretty serious about her, huh?"

Dion shrugged. "I don't know." He shifted the books uncomfortably in his hand.

"You are. I can tell."

"Bell's going to ring," Dion said, changing the subject.

The two of them started walking. "You coming with us Friday?" Kevin asked. "We're going to cruise up to Lake Berryessa, see if we can't scare-us some campers."

"Sorry. I hope to have a date that night."

"Hope to? You mean you don't know? You haven't asked yet?"

"No," Dion admitted.

"Don't be such a wimp. Use your balls. You do have balls, right?"

Dion laughed. "Your sister says I do."

"Ask her out, then. I mean, shit, how much more encouragement do you need? You expect her to come out and say she's madly in love with you before you ask her out on a simple date? Be serious. No offense, but if Pussy-Eating Penelope invites you over to her damn winery and introduces you to her mom, that would seem to be a pretty good indication that she likes you. As far as I know, you're the only guy who's ever made it past those gates."

Dion raised his eyebrows. " 'Pussy-Eating Penelope?' "

Kevin held up his hands in an expression of innocence. "I didn't make it up."

The two of them turned toward the east wing.

"So are you going to make your move?" Kevin asked.

"We'll see."

"So that means you'll be coming out with us Friday?"

"Hopefully not."

" 'Hopefully'?"

"Probably."

"Have some guts, dude."

"Okay, I'm not coming with you. I'm going out on a date."

"That's the way it always is," Kevin complained. "A guy finds himself a girl, forgets about his buddies--"

Dion laughed. "I could set you up with her friend Vella."

"J could get a rubber woman with more life."

Around them, the crowd suddenly thinned as students hurried into classes. "I guess that means it's time." Kevin hurried down the hall.

"See you in Mythology."

"I'll be there."

Kevin laughed. "I know you will."

Dion and Penelope walked slowly through the vineyard, the late summer sun streaming down on their heads. Penelope talked about grapes as they walked, about hybrids and planting techniques. Dion listened to what she had to say, looked at the examples she showed him. Close up, the vines looked different than he'd thought they would. The plants were not as leafy as he'd expected, and the stalks seemed dry and twisted, strangely grizzled. Even the grapes did not match the image in his mind. The bunches were full and plentiful, outnumbering the leaves on some of the vines, but the grapes themselves were much smaller than ordinary table grapes.

They continued to walk. The picking had stopped for a few days, until some of the remaining grapes had ripened, and they had the field entirely to themselves. They strode side by side as they moved farther away from the drive. The ground here was rough, furrowed, and it was impossible to step in a straight line. More than once the backs of their hands accidentally brushed, and Dion felt tingles of anticipatory excitement pass through him. He wanted desperately to breach the inches between them and hold her hand. It seemed natural, right, and though he thought he sensed a similar desire on her part, he was not experienced enough at these things to know for sure. He might be misreading the signs, and he did not have the courage to act on his instincts. He needed more than a hint, more than a promise; he needed assurance that she felt the same way he did before he attempted to make a move.

They stopped for a moment at the end of a row. Dion leaned his foot against a long, wheeled pipe sprinkler and wiped the sweat from his forehead as he looked around. "What's there?" he asked. "Behind the wall?" He pointed toward the stone fence which ran the length of the field, disappearing in back of the house and winery buildings.

"I don't know," she said quickly.

"You don't know?"

She shook her head.

"Come on, you can tell me." He grinned mischievously. "I won't sell your family secrets."

Penelope did not smile. "I'm forbidden to go back there."

"Forbidden? Why?"

She turned toward him. "Do you want to see how it's done?" she asked.

"Do you want to see how we make the wine?"

"Uh, sure," he said, frowning.

"Let's go, then." Without waiting for an answer, she began hiking back down the row the way they'd come, her arms swinging in a carefree manner that was too studied and too perfect to be real.

He looked toward the fence and wondered what it was about the forbidden area, behind it that had triggered this reaction. She was obviously afraid of the place and didn't want to talk about it, but her unexpectedly strong response had intensified what had before been only idle curiosity. He would definitely have to ask her about. the place sometime when he knew her a little better, when she wasn't so freaked.

She stopped, turned around, motioned him forward. "Come on!"

He hurried down the row toward her, and she began to run. Laughing, they raced over the rough ground all the way to the drive. Dion stopped first. "I give up," he said, breathing heavily. He bent down, putting his hands on his knees. "Whoo!"

"I take it you're not used to exercising?"

"I walk to school and back."

"A whole three blocks!"

"More like six."

Penelope laughed. "Another Arnold Schwartzenegger."

Dion stood, straightened, catching his breath. He smiled at her, acknowledging the joke, but he couldn't help feeling a little hurt by it. She hadn't meant it to be insulting--her tone of voice was light and completely innocent--but he vowed nonetheless to start exercising.

She looked toward him. "Ready?" she asked.

He nodded.

"Let's go, then."

They walked together up the drive and entered the main building through a tinted glass side door. Dion had expected the inside of the winery to be dark and rustic, filled with floor to ceiling oak casks, dimly lit by bare bulbs, the Hollywood conception of a winery. But the long room outside the small glass-walled office into which they'd entered was antiseptically white, with a checkerboard tile floor and a row of gleaming stainless steel tanks along the north wall. He could see a curled hose lying next to one of the tanks, and a drain in the center of the floor.