Vapor

Chapter Fifteen

Damon’s visit with his brother had lasted a few days and had gone well. It had left him feeling relieved that they had resumed contact, but pained at the sight of his mangled body. What was most upsetting, he said, was the extent to which the child’s death had scarred his brother’s expressions.

After visiting his brother and before returning to me, Damon worked on an invention that had nothing to do with trying to make clouds solid. Even though we spoke on the phone every day, he wouldn’t tell me more about it.

During Damon’s absence, I tried to persuade my parents to accept my relationship with him. I begged them; I even fenced with them willingly. They threatened to cut me off. I threatened to cut them off.

“He’s dangerous. You can’t be safe with him,” said my father.

“Yes, I can be, and I have been, and I will be.”

“Don’t you care what this does to us? You are ruining our health. Not one moment passes these days when we are not stressed.”

“He’s not dangerous anymore,” I said. “What made him dangerous has been resolved. He can even wear opaque clothing now.”

“Oh boy, the mere thought of that dinner and his striptease gives me a headache. It’s easy to say he’s not dangerous, until we find you lying dead in a ditch somewhere.”

“And then won’t you wish you had listened to us,” interjected my mother.

“He’s an extraordinary person,” I said meekly.

“Why? Because he can make small clouds?” said my father. “That’s the most useless thing anyone could ever do. What good is it to anyone?”

“And he’s working on an invention now that sounds very remarkable,” I said.

“I’m sure humanity can do without it.”

Neither they, nor I, made any progress. Perhaps they softened a little more than I did, but they refused to make any promises to behave in a more civilized manner, to stop chasing me in cabs, to stop stalking my building, etc.

The next person I had to deal with was Nathaniel. I had seen him on rare occasions, and he had been acting so miserable since I broke up with him, despite my willingness to remain friends of sorts, that I asked him about it. He finally said: “You broke up with me. I accepted it. You agreed to remain friends. But you haven’t been acting like a friend. You’ve become secretive and uncommunicative.”

“I told you it would be different,” I said. Nevertheless, to make him feel better — or worse, I’m not sure — I told him all about my involvement with Damon.

To my surprise, he was entertained by my story of the cage, and of my meetings with Damon in public places for safety reasons, and of my overall love affair with my own kidnapper.

The only thing he reproached me for was having introduced Damon to my parents.

“What were you thinking?” he said, a bit harshly. “That was an ill-thought-out move on your part; it was bound to fail miserably. Now you may have alienated him.”

I was annoyed by his pessimistic attitude, but said nothing. The visit ended well; Nathaniel seemed in good spirits — considerably cheered up, in fact — to my slight confusion. I wondered if I understood anything about people.

While Damon was away, my friend Jeremy asked me to baby-sit his cat, Minou, for a while. I missed Damon and welcomed the company, even though I was busily working on a film almost every day.

Three weeks after Damon left me and the city, he finished his invention. He still wouldn’t tell me what it was, but said he’d be back in a week and would show it to me then, after doing some more tests on it. He added that he couldn’t wait to see me.

To my surprise, when Damon came back, he was wearing his old transparent clothes. But now he was also wearing huge, clunky metal shoes. I was very happy to see him and hugged him as soon as he walked in the door — or rather, as soon as he wobbled in (due to his weighty shoes). He kissed me and held me tightly. In my arms he felt unsteady, as if tipsy or tired. He sat down in a chair and was smiling expectantly, perhaps waiting for me to say something.

“How’ve you been?” I asked.

“Very well,” he said, nodding and still grinning.

“Have you had trouble wearing opaque clothing?”

“No trouble at all. I’m dressed like this today out of necessity. But don’t ask me about it right now.”

“Did you bring your invention?” I looked at his big shoes.

“Yes.”

He got up and walked to the middle of the room. He unlaced his shoes. So I was right: the invention involved his shoes.

He slipped one of his feet out of one shoe, and then slowly, delicately, slipped the other foot out of the other shoe.

“Do you remember how badly I wanted to make clouds solid?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, I failed. So then I thought: if you can’t solidify them, join them.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He gently hopped once. But the word hop is not accurate because it implies coming back down right away, which he did not do, at least not very quickly and not before having practically reached the ceiling. I understood then what he meant when he said he had joined them.

I felt weak.

Still, the explanation for what I was seeing had to be less far-fetched than that Damon had become a cloud. “Have you become bionic?” I asked.

“No. Just light.”

And he hopped again, and started leaping around the room, like a gazelle, practically hitting the ceiling each time, and doing it in slight slow-motion at that. His white flimsy clothes were fluttering and his blond hair was flowing. He looked like a privileged person.

After a while he stopped and stood in front of me. He took my hand.

“Raise me,” he said.

He was indeed very light. He couldn’t have weighed more than two or three pounds. I continued raising him until he was above my head. I slowly waved him over me.

Once down, he said he wanted to go to the car to get his accessories. He put his shoes back on and went clunking out. I went with him.

He took some bags out of his car, and we went back upstairs.

He opened his carrying case and out drifted a live rat. It floated in the air around us, trying to run away, but going nowhere, really. Minou, the cat I was baby-sitting, was transfixed. I had never seen a more miserable rat or a more excited cat.

“I had to experiment on rats before experimenting on myself,” explained Damon. “I’m sorry about it. I’m not in favor of testing on animals, but I didn’t know what else to do in this case.”

He then pulled out of his shoulder bag some hypodermic needles and a tourniquet.

“Bring out the scales!” he exclaimed.

“What scales?”

“I know you have scales.”

“I just have one.”

“No kitchen scale?”

I brought out my human scale and my kitchen scale.

He got undressed and stepped on the human scale. He weighed two pounds. He wrapped the tourniquet around his arm and injected himself with a clear solution. We watched the scale, and within a few seconds he lost one pound.

“I want you to bring me closer,” he said, stepping off the scale.

“To what?” I said.

“Zero.”

“Why?”

“Cause then I can do even more fun things.”

“Like what?”

“Like swim in air or be blown by your breath and stuff like that. The lower the weight, the more fun it gets. But don’t let it reach zero or I’ll die.”

“Do you mean you’ll die, as in: you’ll be upset, or you’ll die literally?”

“I mean the latter, and therefore the former as well. If I become completely weightless, I’ll be more cloud than human, and there’s no turning back. I won’t regain my weight, I’ll just eventually rain. Not right away. It takes a few days or weeks. But once you rain, you lose your life. You become a puddle.”

He placed one needle and the tourniquet on my kitchen scale, which he then set to zero.

He stepped onto the kitchen scale himself, trying to find his balance.

“Watch the scale and tell me what you see,” he said.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” I said.

“Yes.”

“What if my scale is inaccurate and you’ve reached zero and it says you haven’t?”

“Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.”

He was about to inject himself, when I shouted, “Wait! Are you sure you got all the air bubbles out?”

“The liquid is weightless. You can’t get the air bubbles out.”

“But if you inject yourself with air, it can be fatal.”

“I am air, or rather, cloud. It doesn’t matter.”

He injected part of the solution into his arm, and waited.

After a few seconds the scale steadied at eight ounces.

He injected himself again, and his weight went down to four ounces. He continued giving himself tiny doses of the solution, bringing himself closer and closer to zero.

“How close do you want to get?” I asked.

“Quarter of an ounce.”

“That’s crazy. My scale’s not that good. You can’t trust it at that level.”

“I’ve done it before on my own kitchen scale, which is no better than yours.”

“I don’t believe you. How could you tell how close you were getting if you had no one to tell you?”

“I used mirrors.”

He kept injecting himself with small doses until I lied to him and told him he had reached a quarter of an ounce, when he actually weighed half an ounce.

“Are you sure you’re not fibbing?” he said. “I think you’re fibbing, but let’s try it anyway.”

He stepped off the scale. “Oh yes, I feel heavy.”

Naked, he jumped in the air, reached the ceiling, and slowly drifted back down like a balloon. Before he landed, he started kicking his legs vigorously and doing the breast stroke with his arms, as if trying to swim in air. And then he landed.

“An-na. You fibbed. I’m not supposed to land when I do this.”

He went back on the scale and said, “I’m sure I weigh at least three-quarters of an ounce, which means I will inject myself with enough serum to eliminate half an ounce.”

“If you do that you’ll be dead. You weighed half an ounce, okay?”

“Okay. Don’t lie to me anymore, or it can be dangerous. Be very truthful, very accurate.”

He injected himself and we waited a few seconds. I then told him he had reached his ideal weight.

“Good. Now I’m as heavy as a Bic pen.”

He stepped off the scale, jumped toward the ceiling, and did the breast stroke and kicked his legs. He succeeded in not landing. He slowly, very slowly, advanced in air.

After a minute, he stopped and landed. He was panting from the exertion.

“You know, I’ll have to get a more sensitive scale so I can get closer to zero, because a quarter ounce still requires too much effort to stay up in the air for long. I bet that if I could get down to one-twentieth of an ounce, I could stay up in the air with as little effort as staying afloat in water.”

We then played around. He asked me to blow on him, and I did: I blew him upward, I blew him away. I fanned him away. I opened the window slightly to create a draft. I tapped him like a balloon. He swam after the rat.

We even tried to have sex. When he was on top, he weighed nothing, which was pleasant on the one hand, but impractical on the other. The way we finally managed to do it was with me on top, pinning him down so he wouldn’t float away.

Then came the serious question, as we laid side by side, the weight of my arm holding him down.

“Do you want me to try it too?” I asked.

“That’s not up to me. It’s entirely up to you if you want to try becoming light. I’m not going to pressure you or even encourage you. I’m pretty sure it’s safe, health-wise, even in the long run, but I can’t be absolutely certain.”

For a moment I had a horrible vision of ourselves, a few months down the line, vomiting and shriveling up, due to having been injected with this potion.

“Is it fun? Becoming light?” I asked.

“Yes. It’s like being an astronaut. But God forbid, if you reach zero by accident, you’ll be like that rat, doomed to rain and die any day. I’ve already had three rats rain on me. It’s something to think about.”

“You won’t let me reach zero, right?”

“No. I would rather rain a thousand times than let you drizzle once.”

“Okay, I’ll do it.”

Damon made me light. He gave me a tiny dose at first, to see if I tolerated it, and if I wanted to go further. With that first injection, he made me lose ten pounds in about fifteen seconds. I giggled nervously. I felt giddy and, of course, light. It felt good.

As I soon found out, being twenty pounds lighter felt even better. But no matter how good that felt, it was nothing compared to getting down to a quarter of an ounce. I had to perform the injections on myself, after a certain point, because any touch from Damon would have altered my weight on the scale.

Being light, very light, was not much like anything I had ever experienced. It reminded me vaguely of the liberating feeling one gets when someone offers to carry one’s bag.

We bounced in slow motion around the apartment, danced and swam in the air.

Then we walked down the street with our heavy shoes (he gave me a pair of shoes like his) and took Damon’s car out to the country, to a deserted road, and while one of us drove, the other was pulled through the air by a thread attached with Scotch tape to the roof of the car. When we had exhausted the fun in that, we left the car and climbed trees using only the tips of our fingers and the lightest pressure. We sat on branches no thicker than chopsticks. We swung off leaves.

When the weight came back, it came back slowly, which meant we started landing just a little quicker than usual when we jumped off the top of trees. We drove back to the city and injected ourselves again and waited till night so we’d be less visible when we drifted outside. We went to deserted streets and made sure no one was around, and then climbed up the walls of buildings. We lowered ourselves down to the East River. We held on to threads that we tied to the railing, so as not to be blown away. It was a very warm night.

The next day Damon bought a scale that allowed us to get down to one-tenth of an ounce: the weight of a jumbo-sized paper clip. And later that day we weighed in at one-twentieth of an ounce. We had so much fun at that weight. We didn’t need to be any lighter.

That night the rat rained.

We spent the next two weeks enjoying our weight loss, playing with the freedom it gave us, injecting ourselves frequently and not spending much time at our regular weight. It was wonderful to hang on to birds. Or kites. Or one of those helium-filled party balloons, which would carry us up. When we’d let go of the string, we’d drift around or back down (depending on the breeze), like ordinary balloons. We rode on the backs of dogs and other small animals.

Walking on our hands was no problem anymore. Even walking on our fingers. We could run on the points of our toes, and jump that way, like ballerinas without needing toe shoes, and land that way. We could walk down the street on our bare points for hours if we wanted to and didn’t care what people thought.

We could do flips in the air, and if we fell on our faces, it didn’t hurt, and if we fell on our heads, we didn’t break our necks.

As far as I was concerned, it wasn’t possible for anyone to overestimate how much fun this was. If there was a heaven, weightlessness must be what it consisted of.

Due to our tremendously light weight, we were able to walk on water. And sit on it. We sat on rivers and took long walks on lakes and short walks on ponds and puddles.

We liked to sit on electric wires, like birds, and smooch. And then, when we got bored of sitting, we walked on those wires like circus performers, and when we lost our balance, we didn’t fall, but drifted to the side.

The one thing we couldn’t do was fly in rain. A few dozen raindrops weighed more than we did and made us sink to the ground, unless the breeze was strong enough to compensate.

The only really dangerous thing for us to do was to jump off the edge of a cliff or a roof or a tree while absentmindedly holding something in our hands, like a rock. Then, of course, we plummeted to the ground unless we had the presence of mind to let go of the rock before crashing.

But otherwise, walking off cliffs was fun. We called it “diving.” We’d stand on the edge, take off our shoes, and push off for the wind to carry us.

Gliding until our weight returned was exciting, but we invariably regretted it afterward, when we landed far from our shoes. Sometimes we’d land in very undesirable places.

Once, we landed in the middle of a forest. The ground was prickly, which, while we were still relatively light, was fine, but as our weight increased, our bare soles began to sting.

A note about our shoes: I preferred the loafer style, to the style with laces, like Damon’s. He liked to hang on to the laces with his toes while he bobbed in the breeze. I liked to be able to slip out of my shoes in a bookstore and float up to a high shelf. There was a big risk of getting caught, of course, which was why I always made sure to pretend I was climbing up the shelves, not floating up.

Damon and I also did some weightless socializing. For fun we went to cast parties, wrap parties, and every other sort of movie party. We wore normal clothes and our heavy shoes. I think people noticed that we moved strangely. We had to be careful not to leave our muscles relaxed, otherwise our arms would be floating at our sides, like in a bath. It required hard work and concentration to look heavy when we were light. Of course, since our hair was weightless too and floating around our heads as if we were under water, we had to do something about it. We wore wigs in the style of our own hair. Sometimes we wore hoods instead. At home, after the parties, I loved to stand in front of the mirror and whip off my wig or hood and see my hair drifting around.

It was so sensual to cavort around weightless that we often became extremely aroused. But it was hard to have sex while being light; a bit like being on Prozac, from what I’d heard. To replace gravity, we had to use sheer muscles — but a whole different set of muscles than those required for traditional, weighty sex. We had trouble making each other stay in place. We were like two big balloons, laughing with exasperation, laughing so hard we’d feel spent, as if we’d succeeded.

Eventually we figured out we had to be intertwined in order to have light sex; I had to wrap my legs around his like vines. And once we got the hang of it, the floor was what became annoying. Our smallest movement would make us bounce up in the air, for many long seconds, and then we’d land. It was distracting to have the floor bump into us repeatedly during sex. We’d land in unexpected ways, like on our sides, but only for a moment, because we’d pop up again at the next movement. Sometimes we would slowly drift back down head first. When this wasn’t the case, I’d kick the floor away impatiently with one foot, but when I did that too hard, we’d hit the ceiling, which could also be irritating. And, like a fly buzzing around us, the floor always came back, no matter how many times we’d shoo it away.

This was why we decided to have sex in the wind. We did it in the sky over the ocean at night. We hoped no one would see us. I wondered if we might get arrested for public lewdness. The wafting aspect would surely overshadow the erotic aspect. Nevertheless, we avoided the full moon, not wanting to be back-lit.

We were carried with an uneven rhythm. The wind twirled us, flipping us over and over in the sky, like a dead leaf.

Our lovemaking tended to be gentle without gravity. And sometimes that was frustrating, when our passion was too strong to tolerate gentleness. We craved weight, the weight of our bodies on top of each other. Weight was sexy, as it turned out.

We’d be drifting and hugging gently, being loving. Like a spider patiently waiting on its web for an insect to land, Damon was waiting for a handle to come along. When that object came, Damon would grab it and slam me against the wall, the railing, the ladder, the seesaw, the root, whatever, anything resembling a handle or narrow enough for him to hold on to behind my back. Then the lovemaking could be stronger, almost as if we had weight. He bore into me with all the strength in his arms, revealing the frustration he felt.

And sometimes it was me. When his back bumped against the trunk of a tree, I latched onto the branches on either side of him, and I pinned him there and savored him, wrapping my legs around him and the trunk. But then, unable to resist sinking my fingers into his hair, I let go of the branches. He pushed us away, and we went off, drifting again.

We were like insects making love anywhere.

After the first two weeks of being light almost all the time, we cut down to twice a week, because of my work. Sometimes we still got light every night. It was very addicting. Not literally, that is. There were no withdrawal symptoms when we did an experiment and stopped for a week.

I thought I had the solution for making my parents come ’round to liking Damon. After having heard them so often say things about Damon like, “He’s a loser, he’s pathetic, he’s mushy, he’s pretentious, he’s common, he’s evil or insane, in any case dangerous, he’ll make you unhappy,” I could prove to them that he was extraordinary by shooting up for them and showing them I could float.

Understandably, they were horrified at first when they saw me injecting something into my arm. They said Damon was influencing me to take drugs.

Then I started floating.

My father said, “That’s what drugs do. They give you the illusion of floating.”

“Is this an illusion?” I said.

“Probably.”

“Come on! Am I hallucinating that I’m floating?” I yelled at them from the ceiling.

“I don’t know if you are, but we are. The fact is, someone here is hallucinating; there is a hallucination going on.”

For Damon and me, it seemed things could not get better, that nothing could come between us. He continued to help me with my lines occasionally, when I asked him to. We lived in harmony. But then something did come between us.

It started when we sank into a routine. Flying was no longer new, and Damon became gloomy. He mentioned to me that he was having sick thoughts. When I asked him what they were, he just shook his head and said he couldn’t tell me. I wondered if they had to do with a desire to be unfaithful. I asked him and he said no. Then I asked if they had to do with a desire to kidnap me again. He said no.

I mentioned to Nathaniel that Damon was having bad thoughts. He wanted to know what they were and urged me to find out.

But I had already tried and failed. And anyway, something else began happening, something that sort of overshadowed the issue. Damon started trying to kill me.

At first I wasn’t sure if it was just my imagination.

He backed his car toward me, and if I hadn’t jumped out of the way, it would have hit me. Once, when I weighed my full weight, he almost pushed me off my balcony, supposedly by accident, and another time it was supposedly playfully.

He “jokingly” put a pillow on my face for a long time, until I was practically suffocating. I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t fought him off as hard as I did. And when it wasn’t a pillow on my face it was his hands around my neck. And he’d press. Nothing came of it, but it wasn’t pleasant. And he looked very tempted to press harder and longer, unless that was my imagination too.

And I noticed he felt drawn to my sword. One night I woke up and he was standing over me with the sword raised, as if about to stab me, and I wasn’t sure if I had caught him just in time, or if he had been standing that way for a while, not really intending to do anything. I’d see him in the kitchen sometimes, holding the big kitchen knife and staring at me in a dreamy way.

Granted, these attempts seemed ambivalent, but they preoccupied me. I felt depressed. I didn’t want to bring up the topic with him, because I didn’t want to acknowledge yet that there was a problem in our relationship.

I racked my brains as to what could be his reason for wanting to kill me; what could be his logic. Finally, it dawned on me what his sick thoughts were: he was afraid our relationship might be losing its initial excitement. To rectify this problem and to put spice back into the relationship, he tried to scare me by pushing me toward oncoming subways, for example. I was relieved that that’s all it was.

I mentioned to Nathaniel that Damon was trying to kill me.

“What do you mean he’s trying to kill you?” he said, very upset. “Doesn’t he tell you he loves you?”

“Yes, all the time.”

“Well then it’s ridiculous what you’re telling me. You’re paranoid or something.”

I told him the many instances of Damon’s murder attempts, and then I told him my theory about Damon’s need for spice.

“I don’t think he’s trying to kill you. I think he’s just goofing off, being playful. And I don’t think he’s doing it in a calculated way to add spice.”

A few days after this conversation, Damon said to me, “There is an issue we haven’t addressed.”

“What is it?”

“The fact that I try to kill you from time to time.”

“So you do try to?”

He nodded. “I’m afraid so. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I can’t hide from the truth any longer.”

“Well, I’m sad to hear it. I was hoping it was my imagination.”

“What do you think we should do about it?”

“Are you asking whether we should break up?”

“I don’t think I could live without you.”

“You may have to if you kill me.”

“I know. That’s why I’m tempted. The misery would be so acute.”

“Maybe I could try to make you miserable in other ways. I could take on lovers. I could be mean to you. No, I probably couldn’t. I love you too much. Can’t you just use your willpower to control yourself?”

“I do. I try to resist the temptation to kill you, and I have, till now, succeeded, but it’s a war within me. When the pain is so bad my logic is forced to accommodate it, the logic gets twisted into unnatural shapes.”

I told him not to worry, that we’d work through his urges to kill me.

Deep down I believed he wouldn’t actually go through with it, that he just needed to regularly scare himself about it.

Damon began to get notes on his windshield wiper that said things like, “Prepare yourself,” and “Not much longer now.” At first he wondered if I had put them there. Then we both wondered if my parents had. When I questioned them, they denied it. Soon the notes said “Brace yourself,” and “Better late than never.”

While I was visiting Nathaniel one day, he asked, while ironing his laundry, how I’d been, if things were still going well with Damon: “He hasn’t tried to kill you recently, has he?”

“Sometimes he does, or at least he’s tempted to, but as we’re both aware of the problem, it’s under control. It makes a big difference when you have good communication; you know, when the channels are open.”

“Yeah, that’s true. You know, there’s something I want to tell you,” he said, moving the iron carefully over the sleeve of his blue shirt.

“What?”

He sighed and, without looking at me, said, “I care a lot about you.”

“I care about you too.”

“I want you to know that I care a lot about you, and I love you, and I think you’re an extraordinary person. You are so wonderful, and I never want you to think that you did anything wrong or that anything is your fault, but most of all, as I said, I never want you to think that I don’t care about you tremendously, no matter what I do, no matter what happens.”

At that point Nathaniel started to cry over his blue shirt. He placed the iron aside. I went over to him and put my arm around him and tried to comfort him.

“Please don’t,” he said. “You’re making me feel worse.”

I stopped.

“I didn’t think this would happen,” he said, “that I would cry. I am moved by my own speech. Something, you see, is making me sad.”

“What’s making you sad? What?” I felt dishonest for asking, because I was sure I knew: he was just heartbroken that I was in love with Damon and not with him. I finally suggested this idea.

“No, it’s not that exactly,” he said. “I can’t tell you quite yet. I want to compose myself.”

He tried to stop crying by closing his eyes and repeating to himself, “Think of Santa Claus, think of Santa Claus.”

The phone rang.

He picked up the receiver and, still crying, said into it: “Etiquette hot line.”

He listened for a moment and said, “No, you can’t dunk. Dunking is not good table manners. You’re welcome.”

He hung up. He breathed deeply and looked more composed.

“Can you tell me now?” I asked, hoping I wasn’t being too pushy, especially now that he had recovered and might feel more embarrassed by his display of grief.

But to my surprise he answered, “Yes, I can tell you now.”

I did not spend a comfortable night tied up on Nathaniel’s couch. Nathaniel demonstrated the procedure of how he was going to kill me, on himself, putting a plastic bag over his head the way a stewardess demonstrates how to don an oxygen mask. He was of the opinion that familiarizing me with details such as the fact that I would die within half an hour or an hour of the bag being closed around my neck, and that my head might feel stuffy during that time, would make me less anxious during the death experience; in short, according to him, my knowing what to expect would make dying less stressful for me.

He said he regretted I would not have the opportunity to live the rest of my exciting and promising life, but that he had planned this for so long, even before my life looked promising.

When I asked him for some explanation as to why he wanted to kill me, he said it was because he didn’t like his jobs. When I asked him since when had he not liked his jobs, he said since always. When I remarked that he had never told me this, and that I had gotten the impression he had liked them, he said: “How is that possible? You know me. Do I strike you as stupid or boring?”

“No.”

“Then how could you think I would enjoy being an etiquette expert, or a Weight Watchers’ counselor, or a stripper? How could you think that someone like me, with my mind, my character, would derive any satisfaction from those things?”

“Then why do you do them?”

“Because I’m not able to perform my true profession.”

“What is your true profession?”

“Plastic surgery. Please don’t look too surprised, or you’ll hurt my feelings.”

I was silent.

“You’re thinking about something,” remarked Nathaniel.

“Damon’s brother was a plastic surgeon.”

“I know him.”

“You do?”

“Yes, I’m Ben,” he said.

“It’s not possible.”

“Why not?”

“Because you and I met by chance, in the park, when I was being attacked and you saved me. It would be too much of a coincidence if you turned out to be the enemy of the man I saved two weeks before you saved me.”

“Yes, it would be too much of a coincidence. That doesn’t mean I’m not Ben. It just means it’s not a coincidence. I wanted to meet you, so I arranged your attack.”

“Why?”

“Revenge. Against Damon. I have let this simmer, held back, until the perfect moment; the moment in your relationship with him when the feelings have had enough time to grow very strong, but not enough time to settle into boredom or mere contentment. It seems, however, that I may have waited too long. You tell me he tries to kill you? I mean, it sounds like he’s losing his mind. Or you are. I hope it’s you. But if it’s him, how is a man supposed to get revenge on an insane mind?”

I said, “So all this time, when you pretended to be my friend, and even to love me, you actually didn’t care at all.”

He kneeled next to the couch, on which I was lying with my hands tied behind my back, and hugged me. “Goodness, Anna, that’s not true! That’s why I prefaced all this by telling you how much I cared about you. Don’t you remember my preface? It was lengthy. I did love you and still do. More than I’ve ever loved anyone in my life.”

“And yet you want to kill me?” A tear rolled into my ear.

He wiped my eyes and nose with a tissue, and said, “Despite the strength of my love for you, my desire for revenge is stronger. My life has been destroyed by Damon, and yet his life has not been destroyed by me. I can’t let that rest.”

“But you have destroyed his life.”

“Not as much as he destroyed mine. Or at least not as directly, or as intentionally. I know he’s the one who wrote that anonymous letter. Not his brother.”

“How do you know?”

“From an article I read in Soap Opera magazine on Philip’s life. I’m sure Damon and Philip feared I might come across it. Damon has not only ruined my career, but also my chance at finding love. My plan was to find a beautiful woman and improve her face; alter it in certain ways that would enable me to love her. But then, thanks to Damon, I was no longer allowed to perform plastic surgery. I did try to fulfill my dream anyway, when I met Chriskate, by having another surgeon operate on her, following my specifications. But as you know, the results didn’t stir strong enough feelings in me. I had sent her to a doctor whose work I had followed and approved of. He and I didn’t know each other, but we had a similar style and technique. As I later discovered, he only lacked the vision, the imagination. The work he did on her was good. It was commercial. It was trashy, commercial surgery. It had mass appeal, as was proven by her stellar rise to fame. But it was a little too easy, a little too accessible and light for my taste. I needed more depth and layers within her beauty.”

When he had finished his story, Nathaniel asked me if there were any letters I wanted to write to anyone before I died. I tried the usual tactics to make him change his mind: threats, intimidation, begging, pleading, psychological tricks, lying, acting, wise arguments, reproaches, etc.

He said Damon would be notified of my location shortly before the event of my death.

Nathaniel expressed the hope that Damon would show up and witness my end. He then confessed, sheepishly and apologetically, that if this happened, he might decide to torture me (during my half hour of stress-free dying) to make the revenge be of superior quality. “If it does come to that,” he added, “let me say in advance that I am very sorry, but also very grateful that you went through the unpleasantness, thereby fulfilling my wildest fantasies of justice.”

Damon did show up. He had been warned not to bring the police, or I would be executed on the spot, regardless of the consequences to the executioner. So he came alone. He looked awful: pale, tired, ravaged.

My mouth was covered with masking tape. When Damon entered the room, Nathaniel pointed his gun at me, and with his free hand, pointed to a pair of handcuffs hanging from an iron bar attached to the wall. He told Damon to handcuff himself to the bar or he’d kill me.

“No,” said Damon.

“No, what?” said Nathaniel.

“I’m not handcuffing myself.”

“But I’ll kill her.”

“I understand.”

“And it will not be painless for her.”

“For me either.”

“You mean her death?”

Damon nodded.

Nathaniel said, “That’s right. That’s the whole point. You will suffer.”

“I’m counting on it.”

“You’re counting on it?”

“Why do you think I kept taking walks at night even after having been attacked regularly by men whom I assume were sent by you? Including that night in the subway when Anna saved me. It’s because for a while now I’ve been a masochist.”

Nathaniel turned his gun against Damon. “Handcuff yourself or I will kill you and her.”

Damon handcuffed himself.

“That’s better,” said Nathaniel. A moment later, he added, “I will kill her with a plastic bag.”

He took two rubber bands and slid them over my head. They fit snugly around my neck. He tore the masking tape off of my mouth. He slid the plastic bag over my head and tucked its edge under the rubber bands, making sure there were no leaks of air.

“It should take about half an hour for her to die,” said Nathaniel. “Maybe a little longer, since it’s a large bag.”

Through the transparent bag I could see Damon staring at me. He said, “I love you, Anna,” and did nothing.

“I love you too, Anna,” said Nathaniel. “It won’t be painful. I’ve decided not to use the torture, because this method of dying offers a subtle kind of horror, an exquisite kind of pain to the beholder. He’ll see your face and lips turning blue.”

Damon and Nathaniel began to talk.

“I’m finally getting what I deserve,” said Damon. “It’s such a relief, after all these years of torment and agony and guilt.”

“It was wrong of you to write that letter, to ruin my career,” said Nathaniel.

“No. It was wrong of me to have been the cause of my brother’s suffering. So now, finally, justice will be done.”

“You’re bluffing. It’s a ploy to get me to free her.”

“No and yes. I’m not bluffing, but it is a ploy. The truth is that my greatest deliverance would come if you killed her, and yet out of love and guilt, I feel I should make an attempt to save her, and the only attempt I can make is to tell you that my greatest deliverance would be if you killed her. That is what would truly put me at peace; I would then have suffered as much as my brother suffered.”

“Anna, did you know you were going out with a weirdo? It must be very disappointing to discover this on your deathbed.” He paused and turned to Damon, “So you’re telling me that the ultimate pain for you would be the pain of not having the pain. But you know, I think I’d rather simply give you the pain of having the pain.”

The phone rang. Nathaniel answered, saying, “Etiquette hot line,” and then said, “Actually, I’m sorry, that was a slip, I’ve quit my job and am no longer an etiquette expert.” After listening for a moment, he said, “No, please don’t insist. It can’t be that urgent. No, please.” He sighed. “All right. You say you’re at your own party and a woman has walked in with dog shit on her shoe, and she’s spreading it around your living room carpet, and your question to me is: Can you tell her? The answer is no, or you will forever spoil your relationship with her. Chances are the damage is not increasing but decreasing with every step. She will eventually notice the problem on her own and clean it off in the bathroom, and she will never reveal that she was the culprit. You’re welcome.” Nathaniel hung up.

Just then, there was an explosion at the door. Damon’s brother, Philip, entered the room in his wheelchair, holding a gun, an antique sword lying across his lap.

“Take that bag off her head,” he said to Nathaniel, who happened to be gunless, having placed his weapon aside after Damon handcuffed himself.

Nathaniel hesitated a moment, and obeyed.

“Now untie her,” said Philip.

Nathaniel obeyed. Philip tossed me the sword.

“Uncuff Damon,” said Philip.

As Nathaniel did so, Damon stabbed him in the arm with a hypodermic needle.

“What are you doing?” asked Philip. “Will it kill him?”

“Eventually,” said Damon. “In a few days.”

“That’s too long. I don’t want to wait that long. I want to kill him now.”

“Okay, but wait a minute. Take off your clothes, Ben,” he said to Nathaniel.

Ben just stood there and did nothing, as he became light. “I feel light-headed,” he said.

“No, you feel light, period,” said Damon.

“Do what he says!” Philip shook the gun at him.

Ben took off his clothes. He hopped up in the air and did not come back down. Damon had overdosed him; he was clearly past zero.

“What is this?” said Ben. “Am I dead?”

“I suppose, in a sense, you are,” said Damon.

“One sense is not enough,” said Philip. “He must die in all senses of the word.”

Philip rolled his wheelchair over to me and grabbed the sword from my hands.

He rolled himself under Nathaniel, who tried to swim away, in air. Philip slashed and poked his sword at him, but Nathaniel was too light to be pierced significantly. Each strike from the sword only caused him to bounce away, escaping with barely a prick.

When he reached a wall, he would push against it with his feet, to propel himself away from Damon, who came to retrieve him. Damon would tap him back, like a balloon, toward Philip’s sword. Sometimes he simply tossed him back to Philip, who swung the sword at him like a baseball bat, sending him flying off in another direction, with a shallow wound.

Nathaniel begged me to make them stop. I did nothing.

The phone rang. Damon picked up the receiver and listened. He then hung up, and said to Ben, “The woman of the party said the damage did not decrease but increased and that you can expect to receive her carpet’s cleaning bill.”

Philip continued trying to stab Ben, but unsuccessfully. So finally, Damon lifted Philip out of his chair and raised him over his head. They were standing under Nathaniel, who was hovering horizontally, face down, near the ceiling. Philip stabbed Nathaniel through the stomach, tacking him to the ceiling.

Nathaniel screamed, and then gurgled, as blood floated out of his mouth. Philip dislodged his sword from the ceiling, and was placed back in his chair by his brother. He shook the Nathaniel-topped sword like a baby shaking a giant rattle. He knocked and banged Nathaniel against the floor, cutting the sword through his stomach further.

It did not take long for Nathaniel to die in every remaining sense of the word.

Philip slid the sword out of his victim, and the bloody corpse was left to float around the room while we fell asleep, exhausted from the turmoil. When the serum wore off, the body gently landed on Damon, who woke up with a low scream.