She was becoming sure. It was in his eyes.

The thing.

Maybe even more than the ones before.

She ordered another kamikaze and walked to the pay phone, passing him. He stared out the window, chewing on a match, and she noticed the way his index finger traced the edge of his beer as if touching a woman's body.

The look.

Every location, she found it.

When the company was done filming and she'd finished going over the next day's setups with whichever director she was currently working under, she'd grab the location van back to the hotel the studio had booked the production team into, pick up mail and messages at the front desk, and go to her room. Always exhausted, always hating being an assistant director. Hating not being the one to set the vision. Run the set.

Be in control.

Then she'd strip; shower. Let the water scratch fingernails down her body as she closed tired eyes. Try to let the sensations take over. Try to feel something. But she never did.

She couldn't.

The sensual voyage her girlfriends felt when they were alone and naked, touching their bodies, allowing their skin to respond, no longer interested her. Her body searched for greater responses. Searched for the one who could hold her the right way, touch her with the exact touch. Make her respond; transcend. Stare into her eyes when she came.

Stare with that look.

She stood at the phone and called collect. Her husband was asleep and when he answered told her he loved her. She said it back but kept watching the man. He was pressing his lips against the matchstick, gently sucking it in and out as she stared in unprotected fascination.

Her husband offered to wake the kids so they could tell her good-night.

"They miss Mommy," he told her, in a sweet voice she hated.

She didn't hear what he'd said then, and he told her again, asking if she were all right; she sounded tired, distracted. She laughed a little, making him go away by calming him. He told her again he loved her and wanted to be with her. To make love. She was silent, watching the man across the barroom, catching his glance as he tried to get the waitress's attention.

"Do you miss me?" her husband asked.

The man was looking at her. Her husband asked her if she was looking forward to making love when she got back into town. She kept staring at the man. Her husband asked again.

"Yes, darling. Of course I am. ..."

But it was a lie. It never stopped being one. He did nothing for her. She wanted something that would make her forget who she was, what her life was. Something real.

Something unreal.

Her husband had gone to get the kids though she told him not to. He wouldn't listen, and when she lifted cold fingers from her closed eyes, head bowed in private irritation, the man was standing next to her, buying cigarettes from a machine.

"Say hello to Mommy, kids."

The kids spoke sleepily over the phone while the man stared at her, lighting his cigarette, eyes unblinking. She told them to go to sleep, and that she loved them. But she was watching the man's eyes moving down her face, slowly to her neck, her breasts. Further. He quickly looked back at her and she allowed the look to do whatever it wanted.

They went to his room.

Nothing was said. They made love all night and she clutched at the sheets on either side of her sweating stomach with both hands, bunching up the starched cotton, screaming. He touched her so faintly at one point, it felt like nothing more than a thought; a wish. Her body arched and tensed, the pillow beneath her head soaked.

He tied her to the bedposts with silk scarves and blew softly onto her salty mouth, gently kissed her eyelids. He circled his tongue around her ears and whispered rapist demands that made her come. He massaged her until her skin effervesced, until her fingers pulled wildly at the scarves that held her wrists to the bed. Until she moaned with such pleasure, she thought she was in someone else's body.

Or had left her own.

Everything he did aroused her like she'd never been and when he finally untied her, she slept against his chest, held in his soothing arms. She murmured over and over how incredible it had been, stunned by what he'd made her feel. What he was still making her feel.

He said the only thing he would.

"You won't forget tonight."

When she awakened at dawn, he was gone. No note, no sign. There was a knock on the door and she answered, wrapping a towel around herself. Room service rolled in a large breakfast, complete with omelet, cafe au lait, and a newspaper.

He'd taken care of everything.

She sat in bed and ate, untying the newspaper, aching sweetly from the evening, covered with tender welts and bite marks. The food tasted delicious and the flavors on her tongue made her want to make love. She smiled, listened to the birds outside her window. Their soft opera gave her goose bumps, and as she opened the newspaper, the sound of its crisp folds made her nipples tingle. She laughed a little, remembering the incredible way he'd licked and sucked them last night. They were still sensitive.

As she read, she sipped at her coffee and the creamy heat of it made her part her legs slightly as it spread over her tongue and ran down her throat, warm like sperm.

She began to breathe harder, sipping more, twisting her shoulders as a tingle ran delicate electricity across her shoulders; up her spine.

As she read the front page, she allowed her fingers to drift on the inky surface and could feel the words; their shape and length. The curve of the individual letters. The sound the sentences created in her mind.

She felt herself getting wet.

It was fantastic; her body responsive to every detail of the morning; its sounds, colors. Even the feel of the blanket, the scraping texture of the wool making her think about him, the hair on his chest and face. God, why hadn't she asked his name? He was the greatest lover she'd probably ever have and she knew it. She laughed out loud, feeling a strange, new woman inside coming forth; emerging.

The ice in the orange juice was melting and when it rubbed against the glass, the sound made her softly, involuntarily moan. She smiled and lit a cigarette, sensing an unfamiliar fulfillment in her cells and nerves. A happiness.

Lost control.

The cigarette flame gave off a heat she could actually feel and she began to perspire. She shook a bit, grinning, and blew the match out, watching the tiny curls of smoke that peeled from its blackened tip and smelled like the man's scent. She couldn't stop herself from sliding a trembling hand onto a breast. Her skin was hot and as the sounds of the birds got louder outside her window and the hotel began to wake up below her, making faraway morning sounds, she listened and began to groan pleasurably from the noise.

The smell of the unfinished food and the warm air from the heating vent felt like a caress, and her nipples got harder, her pubic hair more wet. Her eyes wandered lazily, sexually around the room and noticed the furniture; the way the fabric on the couch fit its plaid shapes together so perfectly, each cushion like the next. It made her shut her eyes in exquisite torture. She opened them and caught a glimpse of the ballpoint pen which the hotel provided on the bedside table. Its red color pleased her and she groaned happily. Her eyes drifted on. The ashtray on the floor, filled with crippled cigarettes and gum wrappers excited her, its smells and patterns making her think of making love, of the man entering her and ...

She suddenly realized what was happening and noticed an article on the front page section of the paper about a grotesque murder that had occurred the night before. A family had been gunned down by two men in ski masks and as she imagined it, her fingers moved over her body, searching wildly, uncontrollably. Scratching, squeezing. Shivering. She didn't understand the sexual storm her body felt as her mind filled with images of bullets shredding skin, faces twisting in horror, bodies slumping.

The tensing percussion.

The shudder.

She began to come again.

She couldn't stop the orgasm and it drenched her like a toxic wave that rose high and fainted; collapsing, then rising again.

Her body was wet with sweat and her teeth bit into her bottom lip, making it bleed. She squeezed herself so hard she began to bruise, more bluish ponds growing under her skin. Her arms drew back to the bedposts and grabbed tightly to either as if crucified, fingers white; desperate. She screamed louder and louder, flailing, coming again and again, not able to stop the flood of sights, sounds; tactile impressions.

She saw her children and began to cry.

Then, in her mind, she could see the man's face. His easy smile. The way he touched her.

The look.

She passed out for a few moments but the sound of maids beginning to vacuum and cars honking outside awoke her and she couldn't stop her body from starting to respond again.

Enabling.

The smile that watches.

The hand that reassures.

The enabler passes no judgment.

Doesn't deal in permission or sanction.

Only indulgence; assistance.

Yet in taking no position, it is a criminal, however unbloodied.

It poisons with a helping gesture.

And it becomes the pallbearer before we are gone.

It stands by and watches a houseful of screaming frailties burn to death.

This is a story about enabling.

About dreams bringing crucifixion.

And about those who allow us to dream.

RICHARD CHRISTIAN MATHESON.

SCALES.

LEWIS SHINER.

Lewis Shiner's books include the award-winning Glimpses, Say Goodbye, Black & White, Dark Tangos, and the career retrospective Collected Stories. All of his work is available for free download at www.fictionliberationfront.net or in print.

THERE'S A STANDARD RAT BEHAVIOR they call the Coolidge Effect. Back when I was a psych major, before I met Richard, before we got married, long before I had Emily, I worked in the lab fifteen hours a week. I cleaned rat cages and typed data into the computer. The Coolidge Effect was one of those experiments that everybody had heard of but nobody had actually performed.

It seems if you put a new female in a male's cage, they mate a few times and go on with their business. If you keep replacing the female, though, it's a different story. The male will literally screw himself to death.

Someone supposedly told all this to Mrs. Calvin Coolidge. She said, "Sounds just like my husband."

It started in June, a few days after Emily's first birthday. I remember it was a Sunday night; Richard had to teach in the morning. I woke up to Richard moaning. It was a kind of humming sound, up and down the scale. It was a noise he made during sex.

I sat up in bed. As usual all the blankets were piled on my side. Richard was naked under a single sheet, despite the air-conditioning. We'd fought about something that afternoon. I was still angry enough that I could find satisfaction in watching his nightmare.

He moved his hips up and down. I could see the little tent his penis made in the sheet. Clearly he was not squirming from fear. Just as I realized what was happening he arched his back and the sheet turned translucent. I'd never watched it before, not clinically like that. It wasn't especially interesting and certainly not erotic. All I could think of was the mess. I could smell it now, like water left standing in an orange juice jar.

I lay down, facing away from him. The bed jolted as he woke up. "Jesus," he whispered. I pretended to be asleep while he mopped up the bed with some Kleenex. In a minute or two he was asleep again.

I got up to check on Emily. She was face down in her crib, arms and legs stretched out like a tiny pink bearskin rug. I touched her hair, bent over to smell her neck. One tiny, perfect hand clutched at the blanket under her.

"You missed it, Tater," I whispered. "You could have seen what you've got to look forward to."

I might have forgotten about it if Sally Keeler hadn't called that Friday. Her husband had the office next to Richard's in the English department.

"Listen," Sally said. "It's probably nothing at all."

"Pardon?"

"I thought somebody should let you know."

"Know what?"

"Has Richard been, I don't know, acting a little weird lately?"

For some reason I remembered his wet dream. "What do you mean weird?"

Sally sighed dramatically. "It's just something Tony said last night. Now Ann, I know you and Richard are having a few problems-that's okay, you don't have to say anything-and I thought, well, a real friend would come to you with this."

Sally was not a friend. Sally was someone who had been over to dinner two or three times. I hadn't realized my marital problems were such common knowledge. "Sally, will you get to the point?"

"Richard's been talking to Tony about this new grad student. She's supposed to be from Israel or something."

"So?"

"So Richard was apparently just drooling over this girl. That doesn't sound like him. I mean Richard doesn't even flirt."

"Is that all?"

"Well, no. Tony asked him what was the big deal and Richard said, 'Tony, you wouldn't believe it. You wouldn't believe it if I told you.' Those are like his exact words."

"Does this mystery woman have a name?"

"Lili, I think he said it was."

I tried to picture Richard, with his thinning hair and stubby little mustache, with his glasses and pot belly, sweeping some foreign sexpot off her feet.