Dreams That Burn In The Night (12 page)

"And you want me?
You find me desirable?"

"Yes." Lips parted,
he moved against her. Gracefully, with none of the hesitant clumsiness of the first shared
intimacy.

She responded
willingly.

The door opened at
the top and they stepped out, faces hot with the first warm flush of promised
intimacy.

The key fit the
door and they went inside.

"Drinks," he said,
making them each one.

"I suppose it's in
the script," she said.

"Always," he
said.

"Can I tell you
something you won't understand before I ex­cuse myself to go get into something more
comfortable?"

"Yes. Of
course."

"Well. It's just
that if you don't get what you want, you better want what you get."

"You're right. I
don't understand." He frowned.

"You weren't really
supposed to." She kissed him on the cheek, a small promissory note, and went to
change.

He smoked a
cigarette out of boredom, wondering how much money he'd eventually get off her. He saw no
pleasure in all this. Instead, he took a certain mechanical pride in his own
precision.

"You look
ravishing," he said, spinning her around, looking appreciatively at the expensive nightgown that
did not flatter her.

"You're
overdressed," she said, helping him off with his coat, loosening his tie for him.

Later, when they
had undressed, he admitted, "What you said before. I still don't understand it."

"Let's make love,"
she said. "It's not important. Just love me."

"Of course," he
said.

In the morning,
they awoke with their backs to each other.

He rolled over,
remembering where he was and why. Blinking in the light, he reached for her under the sheets,
fingers touching the places that would get a response.

She pushed him
away, almost violently.

He was surprised.
Very surprised. And he was a man who sel­dom had to experience that.

"But, darling . .
." he began, but she put her hand against his lips, cutting him off.

"I've made you
uneasy. There's no need to be. It's not that I don't like it or the way you do it," she
said.

He frowned,
expecting something unpleasant.

"You're very good,"
she assured him. "It's not what you think."

"What is it then?"
The sheet covered very little of him.

"It's just that I
have stomach cancer and I can't hold the pain off anymore. The drugs have worn off and I couldn't
stand it if you tried to touch me again."

"But. . ." There
was no compassion in his voice. No pity.

"I expect you're
disappointed. Not shocked. Just disappointed," she said. "It's not quite the long love affair you
counted on, is it? Short, not very sweet and not very profitable, is it?"

He was professional
enough to know the right response.

"But, darling,
surely with the right doctors?"

"I'd still be dead,
right doctors or not. A few weeks from now, days, who knows."

She seemed rather
calm about it.

He stirred in bed,
restlessly, his shoulders rising.

"It won't be a
total loss. I'll pay you well for tonight," she said.

"I'm not a
prostitute," he said, not really offended.

"I never said you
were," she said, and she reached for the drawer of the night table. Her hand came out of the
drawer with a pearl-handled .32.

"What's that
for?"

"It's for that
thing you don't understand," she said.

"You're not really
going to use that, are you?"

"Yes."

"On yourself or on
me?" He smiled somewhat cynically, aware that the dialogue was clever.

"Yes," she said.
"I'm going to use it. That's all you need to know."

"Why?"

"You think I'm
ugly, don't you?"

"What does it
matter? Please put the gun . . ."

"No. I'll ask
questions and you answer them. You'll tell the truth. The exact truth because this gun is
loaded."

He licked his lips
nervously, now aware of the tension edging the lines of her face. He pulled the sheet up over him
as if it were some kind of protection.

"You find me ugly,
don't you?" she asked.

"Yes. You're
ugly."

"I'm not the kind
of woman who's likely to get involved in a love affair, am I?"

"No. Probably not.
But look, you can't. . ."

"Don't ad-lib,
darling. An actor is only as good as his script."

"So you're ugly and
no one's liable to fall in love with you and I'm only after you for your money. So what? You knew
it all along. I don't see what that has to do with shooting me. What have I. . . ?"

"It has everything
and nothing to do with you. You're just not very lucky. You picked me and that was a mistake." He
moved, straightening up in bed. "I'm going." She cocked the gun and aimed it very carefully at
his head. "I'd really rather you didn't." "But. . ."

"Now tell me. Don't
you find me beautiful?" The gun did not waver.

He understood.
"Yes. Yes. Of course. You're beautiful!"

"Tell me how
beautiful I am."

"I've never met
anyone more lovely."

"And you love me?"
Her finger lightly caressed the trigger.

"Yes. I love you.
I've never met anyone I've loved as much as you!" He smiled insincerely, beginning to
perspire.

"And how long will
you stay with me?" She looked kindly, al­most lovingly at him.

He noticed the
tender look in her eyes and allowed himself to relax a little. So she was not serious about the
gun.

Encouraged, he
tried to sound as if he really meant it. "I want to stay with you always. I'll never leave you. I
really do love you."

He was as tender
and as loving as he had ever pretended to be.

She seemed to be
melting under his soft looks and soft words.

Her finger lifted
off the trigger. She looked like a woman who was very much in love.

Then her finger
found the trigger again and jerked it back.

The bullet took him
just above the bridge of the nose and ex­ploded bone and gray matter out the back of his head.
The body thumped back against the headboard, then slipped sideways, fall­ing over on her side of
the bed.

She held the raging
inferno in her stomach and leaned lovingly over the gore-soaked body in the bed. There was a red
stain on the wall above the headboard of the bed.

"Such a lovely
man," she said, the gun dangling from her fingers. "And he said he loved me."

She picked up a
hand rapidly going cold and held it against the side of her face.

"No man on his
deathbed could tell lies," she said.

"I'm beautiful,"
she said, in a room without mirrors. "Beauti­ful!" And the mirror was inside herself and she saw
the reflection clearly.

"I'm loved!" And
she felt the warmth of his arms around her and the taste of lips that her beauty had
bought.

"He'll be with me
always. He told me that he loved me," she said, and her faith was as strong and as real and as
lasting as the growth that burned inside her like a worm of death.

She put the gun
barrel against the side of her head.

"I'm having a love
affair," she said, "and unlike other love affairs, this one is going to end happily."

Love affairs being
what they are, the next bullet undoubtably proved her right.

As I, the
undersigned, lay here, body burned beyond recognition, having committed myself to death at my own
hands, I leave this final legacy. These words are mine and not mine and though I speak them after
the fact, the fact itself renders unto me that which is mine.

To my mistress, for
all the days of her life that she spent with me and I with her, I leave her all of that which had
value to me. In particular, I leave her my collection of paintings of horses with erections and
my collection of lampshades made out of human skin. Cherishing, as was her wont, material
possessions above life itself, she is now welcome to whatever bones I had not yet picked in this
life.

Although my
mistress is dead, I do not expect to meet her again. Her mind never penetrated any world but that
of mortal pleasures, so I am sure she ceased to be in all worlds the moment she put the gun to
her head.

To my father and
his father before him, my apologies for not fully appreciating in time the complete efficiency of
poisoning you both at an early age. In the folly of my times, perhaps I was led astray by the
conventions that so blinded me that I could not see the nobility of both your deaths. That I
aspired to it at a time when natural death had already deprived me of the opportunity in
both your cases, is a sin that shall be neither
forgotten nor for­given. Had I you to kill again, less of the world would have died.

To my mother, upon
whose grave are the ruins of an ammo dump, the memory of huge ovens, and the smell of other, more
energetic mass graves, I offer no apologies. In this life, nothing became you so well as your
leaving it. Time has not dimmed your role in the history of this world. You had become then what
you are now. An obstruction and a blight upon the land. In the realm of newfound senses, in the
spheres of expediency, you had be­come an experienceable and, of course, objectionable bowel
movement. As a child in your womb, I found that every kick I gave I also got in return. I felt
your mangled, your suffocating spirit traveling down the umbilical cord into my helpless body
like a cloud of fierce intent. With you long dead, and me dying, I suppose your womb has made
some adjustment to the inequality of our lives. I, for one, never experienced a moment of
remorse, then or now, over what we shared together. The criticism, the moral bleats of the common
man, were never of any concern for me. Our intimacy then, as now, was always my moment of highest
self-esteem, my one truly BIG LIE which I never tired of telling.

I have always felt
that Oedipus Rex should have put his mother's eyes out and not his own. After all, she was the
older of the two and probably had a venereal disease.

To those weak men
who advised me, who led me down the path that led to my eventual downfall, I leave my teeth and
the eventual dispute over my dental records.

To those who stood
by me when traitors turned like worms thawing in the half-warm meat of my century, I leave an
almost inexhaustible supply of wasted meat which can be found stacked neatly in rows and tucked
for safekeeping in the ground. I have instructed that markers, monuments, plain white crosses,
the memories of idiots, and other such items are to be left in the places where the meat is
stacked to light the way for the coming meatless ages. I do this out of a feeling of benevolence
for man­kind, lest he ever forget.

To the
psychiatrists, I leave a stringless guitar and a condom with a mental image of a hole in the tip
of it. May these dual in­strumentalities carry them through the coming ages as they pon­der the
kind of world I and my kind made and remade.

To myself, in the
extra-normal situation, I leave a pocket, com­pletely sewn shut, in which I would put all the
benefits, all the medals, all the glories, and all the triumphs which were mine in this
world.

I deem these things
my legacy and call upon the Gods and Goddesses of Valhalla to attest to my final and lethal last
act.

My own obedient
servant,

ADOLF
HITLER

I punch into the
console web, link into the main computer. The control room is warm and comfortable but outside
it's a misera­ble night. The street monitors sweep my sector and all of them shoot back the same
story. No action.

I'd lucked out on
assignment. Hit the graveyard shift, which is my favorite. Most of the action breaks at night.
Not tonight, though.

It's cold and it's
raining to beat hell and this is one of those kinds of nights that give me the womb cop
blues.

The streets in my
sector are deserted. Very depressing. I like action. I sit there behind my monitors, audio helmet
jammed on my head, feel like a football player sitting out a game on the bench.

I dialed Central to
report myself in.
"womb cop
345-45,
stevens,
Roger davis.
Reporting for duty, shift 2, punch in 0200, all systems functioning, nothing
to report, no shift 1 carry­overs."

It was a slow night
all over. I had only about half of my mobile street units out. Rain had the whole city locked in.
It was coming
down hard and cold and
nobody in his right mind was out in it, or anyone in his wrong mind either.