"I don't believe I know him."

"The man who burned up."

"Somebody got burned?" she said. "Oh G.o.d, that's horrible."

"Surely you saw it."

"No," she replied. "We just saw the gla.s.s."

"And the lights. Philip was talking about the lights."

"Yes," she said, plainly puzzled. "He said the same to me. You know I don't remember any of that. Is it important?"

"What's important is that you're both well," he said, using the plat.i.tude to cover his confusion.

"Oh we're fine," she said, looking directly at him, her face suddenly cleansed of its bafflement. "I'm tired, but I'm fine."

She reached across to put the coffee cup down and this time the robe fell open enough for Grillo to catch sight of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He didn't have the slightest doubt that she knew exactly what she was doing.

"Have you heard any more from the house?" he asked, taking undeniable satisfaction from talking business while thinking s.e.x.

"I'm supposed to go up there," Ellen said.

"When is the party?"

"Tomorrow. It's short notice, but I think a lot of Buddy's friends were expecting some kind of farewell celebration."

"I'd like to get in on the party."

"You want to report?"

"Of course. It's going to be quite a gathering, right?"

"I think so."

"But that's just part of it. We both know there's something extraordinary happening in the Grove. Last night, it wasn't simply the Mall..." He trailed off, seeing that her expression, upon mention of the previous evening, had once again become distracted. Was this self-induced amnesia, or part of the natural process of Fletcher's magic? The former, he suspected. Philip, less resistant to changes in the status quo, had no such memory problems. When Grillo turned the conversation back to the party her attention was once more upon him.

"Do you think you could get me in?" he asked.

"You'll have to be careful. Roch.e.l.le knows what you look like."

"Can't you invite me officially? As press?"

She shook her head. "There won't be any press," she explained. "It's a strictly private gathering. Not all of Buddy's a.s.sociates are gluttons for publicity. Some of them had too much of it too soon. Some of them would prefer never to have it. He mixed with a lot of men...what did he call them?...heavy-duty players. I think, Mafia probably."

"All the more reason I should be there," Grillo said.

"Well, I'll do what I can, especially after you getting sick on my account. I guess if there's sufficient guests you could melt into the crowd..."

"I'd appreciate the help."

"More coffee?"

"No, thanks." He glanced at his watch, though didn't register the time.

"You're not going to go," she said. It was not a question, but a statement. The same was true of his response.

"No. Not if you'd prefer I stay."

Without another word she reached and touched his breastbone through his shirt.

"I'd prefer you stay," she said.

He instinctively looked towards Philip's room.

"Don't worry," she said. "He'll play for hours." She looped her finger between the b.u.t.tons of Grillo's shirt. "Come to bed with me," she said.

She got up and led the way through to her bedroom. By contrast with the clutter outside, the room was spartan. She crossed to the window and half closed the blinds, which lent the whole room a parchment tint, then sat down on the bed and looked up at him. He leaned down and kissed her face, slipping his hand inside her robe and lightly rubbing her breast. She pressed his hand to her, insisting on severer treatment. Then she pulled him down on top of her. Their comparative heights meant his chin rested on the top of her head, but she turned this to erotic advantage, pulling his shirt open and licking at his chest, her tongue leaving wet trails from nipple to nipple. All the while her hold on his hand didn't relax for an instant. Her nails dug into his skin with painful force. He fought her, dragging his hand away to reach for the sash of her robe but her hand was there before him. He rolled off her, and was about to sit up to undress, but she took hold of his shirt, this grip as fierce as its predecessor, and kept him at her side, her face at his shoulder, while she untied the loose knot of the sash one-handed, then threw the robe open. She was naked underneath. Doubly naked in fact. Her groin was completely shaved.

Now she turned her face away, and closed her eyes. One hand still gripping his shirt, the other limp at her side she seemed to be offering her body to him as a plate to be dined from. He put his hand on her stomach, running his palm down towards her c.u.n.t, pressing hard on skin that looked and felt almost burnished.

Without opening her eyes she murmured: "Anything you want."

The invitation momentarily flummoxed him. He was used to this being a contract between partners, but here was this woman waving such niceties away, offering him total command of her body. It made him uneasy. As an adolescent her pa.s.sivity would have seemed unbearably erotic. Now it shocked his liberal sensibilities. He said her name, hoping for some sign from her, but she ignored him. It wasn't until he once again sat up to pull off his shirt that she opened her eyes and said: "No. Like this, Grillo. Like this."

The expression both on her face and in her voice was like rage, and it unearthed in him a hunger to respond in kind. He rolled on top of her, taking her head in his hands and pushing his tongue into her mouth. Her body pressed up from the mattress, rubbing so hard against him he was sure there was as much pain as pleasure in it for her.

In the room they'd vacated the coffee cups trembled as though the mildest quake were underway. Dust crept across the table, disturbed by the motion of an almost invisible something which slid its wasted shoulders from the gloomiest corner of the room and drifted rather than walked towards the bedroom door. Its form, though rudimentary, was still too recognizable to be dismissed as mere shadow, yet there was too little of it to deserve the name ghost. Whatever it had been, or was to become, even in its present condition it had purpose. Drawn by the woman who was presently dreaming it into being, it approached the bedroom. There-denied access-it mourned against the door, awaiting instructions.

Philip emerged from his sanctum and wandered through to the kitchen in search of food. He opened the cookie jar, dug for chocolate chip, and headed back the way he'd come, a cookie in his left hand for himself, and three in his right for his companion whose first words had been: "I'm hungry."

Grillo raised his head from Ellen's wet face. She opened her eyes.

"What is it?" she said.

"There's somebody outside the door."

She raised her head from the bed and bit on his chin. It hurt, and he winced.

"Don't do that," he said.

She bit harder.

"Ellen..."

"So bite back," she said. He didn't have time to curb his bemused look. Catching it, she said: "I mean it, Grillo," and hooked her finger into his mouth, the ball of her hand locked against his chin. "Open," she said. "I want you to hurt me. Don't be afraid. It's what I want. I'm not fragile. I'm not going to break."

He shook her hold off.

"Do it," she said. "Please, do it."

"You want that?"

"How many times, Grillo? Yes. "

Her dislodged hand had gone to the back of his head. He let her draw his face back down to hers and began to nibble at her lips and then her neck, testing her resistance. There was none. Instead, moans that became louder the harder he bit. Her response drowned all misgivings. He began to work down her neck to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, her moans becoming steadily louder, his name breathed between, urging him on. Her skin began to redden, not just with bite-marks, but with arousal. Sweat broke out on her suddenly. He put his hand down between her legs, his other hand holding her arms above her head. Her c.u.n.t was wet, and took his fingers readily. He'd begun to pant with the exertion of holding her down, his shirt sticky on his back. Uncomfortable as he was, the scenario aroused him: her body utterly vulnerable, his closed up behind zipper and b.u.t.tons. His c.o.c.k hurt, hard at the wrong angle, but the ache only made him harder, hardness and ache feeding on each other as he fed on her, and on her insistence that he hurt her better, open her wider. Her c.u.n.t was hot around his straight fingers, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s covered with the twin crescents his teeth had left. Her nipples stood like arrow-heads. He sucked them in; chewed on them. Her moans became sobbing cries, her legs convulsing beneath him, almost throwing them both off the bed. When he relaxed his hold for an instant her hand took his and drove his fingers still deeper into her.

"Don't stop," she said.

He took up the rhythm she'd set, and doubled it, which had her pushing her hips against his hand to have his fingers inside her to the knuckles. His sweat dropped off his face on to hers as he watched her. Eyes clenched closed she raised her head and licked his forehead and around his mouth, leaving him unkissed but gummy with her saliva.

At last, he felt her entire body stiffen, and she arrested the motion of his hand, her breath coming short and shallow. Then her grip on him-which had drawn blood-relaxed. Her head dropped back. She was suddenly as limp as she'd been when she'd first lain down and exposed herself to him. He rolled off her, his heartbeat playing squash against the walls of his chest and skull.

They lay for a time out of time. He could not have said whether it was seconds or minutes. It was she who made the first move, sitting up and pulling her robe around her. The movement made him open his eyes.

She was tying the sash, pulling the front of her robe together almost primly. He watched her start towards the door.

"Wait," he said. This was unfinished business.

"Next time," she replied.

"What?"

"You heard," came the response. It had the tone of a command. "Next time."

He got up from the bed, aware that his arousal probably seemed ridiculous to her now, but infuriated by her lack of reciprocity. She watched his approach with a half-smile on her face.

"That's just the start," she said to him. She rubbed at the places on her neck where he'd bitten her.

"And what am I supposed to do?" Grillo asked.

She opened the door. Cooler air brushed against his face.

"Lick your fingers," she said.

Only now did he remember the sound he'd heard, and half-expected to see Philip retreating from his spyhole. But there was only the air, drying the spittle on his face to a fine, taut mask.

"Coffee?" she said. She didn't wait for an answer, but headed to the kitchen. Grillo stood and watched her go. His body, weakened by his sickness, had begun to respond to the adrenaline pumped around it. His extremities trembled, as though from the marrow outwards.

He listened to the sound of the coffee-making: water running, cups being rinsed. Without thinking he put his fingers, which smelled strongly of her s.e.x, to his nose and lips.

IV.

Jokemeister Lamar got out of the limo at the front of Buddy Vance's house and tried to wipe the smile off his face. It was difficult for him at the best of times, but now-at the worst, with his old partner dead and so many harsh words never healed between them-it was virtually impossible. For every action there was a reaction, and Lamar's reaction to death was a grin.

He'd read once about the origins of the smile. Some anthropologist had theorized that it was a sophisticated form of the ape's response to those unwanted in the tribe: the weak or unstable. In essence it said: You're a liability. Get out of here! From that exiling leer had evolved laughter, which was the baring of teeth to a professional idiot. It too announced contempt, at root. It too proclaimed the object of mirth a liability: one to be kept at bay with grimaces.

Lamar didn't know how the theory stood up to a.n.a.lysis, but he'd been in comedy long enough to believe it plausible. Like Buddy he'd made a fortune acting the fool. The essential difference, in his opinion (and that of many of their mutual friends), was that Buddy had been a fool. Which wasn't to say he didn't mourn the man; he did. For fourteen years they'd been lords of all they'd convulsed, a shared success which left Lamar feeling the poorer for his ex-partner's death despite the breach that had opened between them.

That breach had meant Lamar had met the sumptuous Roch.e.l.le once only, and that by accident, at a charity dinner in which he and his wife Tammy had been seated at an adjacent table to Buddy and his bride of the year. That description was one he'd used-to gales of laughter-on several talk shows. At the dinner he'd taken the opportunity of putting one over on Buddy by insinuating himself with Roch.e.l.le while the groom was emptying his bladder of champagne. It had been a brief meeting-Lamar had returned to his table as soon as he saw that Buddy had seen him-but must have made some impression because Roch.e.l.le had called personally to invite him up to Coney Eye for the party. He had persuaded Tammy that she'd be bored by the shindig and arrived a day early to have some time with the widow.

"You look wonderful," he told her as he stepped over Buddy's threshold.

"It could be worse," she said, a reply which didn't mean that much until, an hour later, she told him that the party thrown in Buddy's honor had been suggested by the man himself.

"You mean he knew he was going to die?" Lamar said.

"No. I mean he came back to me."

Had he been drinking he might well have done the old choking and spraying routine, but he was glad he hadn't when he realized she was deadly serious.

"You mean...his spirit?" he said.

"I suppose that's the word. I don't really know. I don't have any religion, so I don't quite know how to explain it."

''You're wearing a crucifix," Lamar observed.

"It belonged to my mother. I never put it on before."

"Why now? Are you afraid of something?"

She sipped at the vodka she'd poured. It was early for c.o.c.ktails, but she needed its comfort.

"Maybe, a little," she said.

"Where's Buddy now?" Lamar asked, impressed by his ability to keep a straight face. "I mean...is he in the house?"

"I don't know. He came to me in the middle of the night, said he wanted this party throwing, then he left."

"As soon as the check arrived, right?"

"This isn't a joke."

"I'm sorry. You're right of course."

"He said he wanted everyone to come to the house and celebrate."

"I'll drink to that," Lamar said, raising his gla.s.s. "Wherever you are, Buddy. Skol. "

Toast over, he excused himself to go to the bathroom. Interesting woman, he thought as he went. Nuts of course, and-rumor had it-addicted to every chemical high to be had, but he was no saint himself. Ensconced in the black marble bathroom, leered down upon by a row of ghost-ride masks, he set up a few lines of cocaine and snorted himself high, his thoughts turning back to the beauty below. He'd have her; that was the long and short of it. Preferably in Buddy's bed, with Buddy's towels to wipe himself off afterwards.

Leaving his smirking reflection he stepped back on to the landing. Which was Buddy's bedroom? he wondered. Did it have mirrors on the ceiling, like the wh.o.r.e-house in Tucson they'd patronized together once upon a time, and Buddy had said, as he put that d.a.m.n snake of a d.i.c.k of his away: one day, Jimmy, I want a bedroom like this?

Lamar opened half a dozen doors before he found the master bedroom. It, like all the other rooms, was decorated with carnivalia. There was no mirror on the ceiling. But the bed was large. Big enough for three, which had always been Buddy's favored number. As he was about to return downstairs Lamar heard water running in the en suite bathroom.