“To see you, Noreen.”
“Noreen?” The lips quirking with distaste. “Are we so intimate, then, that we use first names?”
“Formality’s foolish. We were married once,” Hamlin said.
“I was married to Nathaniel Hamlin, God help me.” She conspicuously eyed the Rehab badge. “Your name is Paul Macy, and I have a stack of data cubes inside containing the documents that indicate that Paul Macy is in no way an heir or assign of the former Nat Hamlin. I don’t know you. I never did.”
“Don’t be too sure of that. Won’t you ask me in?”
“My husband isn’t home.”
“What of it? Am I some kind of wild beast? I’m house-broken, Noreen. You can let me in.”
Her invisible shrug was unmistakable. A quick grudging nod. “All right. For a few moments.”
The house was small but handsomely and expensively furnished. Hamlin’s gaze traveled quickly along the walls, taking in a pair of nightmarish masks from New Guinea, an African figurine, a baffling shaped painting in the form of a tesseract, and three magnificent little crystallines. Macy would have liked to linger and study the tesseract, but he was the prisoner of Hamlin’s eyes, and Hamlin continued turning until he came to rest on one of his own works, an exquisite porcelain-finish image of Noreen, half life size, nude. Small high breasts, flaring waist, and, coming from the cloud of airborne speakers mounted in the dark hair, an ominously sensual viewer-responsive hundred-cycle rumble. Hamlin turned from Noreen to Noreen. “I wondered whether you’d kept it,” he said.
“Why wouldn’t I? It’s superb.” Clouds crossing her face. “You remember it?”
“I remember plenty.”
“But the Rehab—”
“Let’s not talk about that. Who’s your new husband?”
“Sy Krafft. I don’t think you knew him.” Pausing. As if to run the tape of her conversation back a bit for a correction. “I don’t think Hamlin knew him. He does floating spectaculars. A charming and cultivated person.” Pausing again. “How did you find me?”
“I went to the old house. The woman who owned it gave me your name and address.”
“The Rehab Center assured me that I’d never be troubled by you.”
“Am I making trouble?”
“You’re here,” she said. “That’s enough. What is it you want with me, Mr. Macy?”
“Don’t call me Macy. You know who I am.”
She stepped back from him, doing it artfully, so that she seemed merely to be moving about the room and not retreating. She looked like a bird thinking of taking wing. In a low voice she said, “I never expected this. They assured me you were gone forever.”
“They made a mistake.”
“Rehab doesn’t make mistakes. I saw your body after they burned you out of it. No, you aren’t Nat. You’re Macy, the new one, and you’re trying to play a joke on me, and I assure you it’s not in the least funny.”
“I’m Nat Hamlin. His ghost walks the earth.”
“You’re Paul Macy.”
“Hamlin.”
“It can’t be.”
“You’re so fucking beautiful, Noreen. What is it, five years, and you haven’t changed at all. I get hard just standing in the same room with you. Are you making any films these days?”
“I think it’s time you left.”
“You still love me, don’t you? I know, I know, you feel uncomfortable having me here, you’re edgy and tense because you think Mr. Sy Krafft is going to walk in on us, but you want me as much as ever. I could prove it. I could put my hand between your legs and it would come away wet. It was always easy for me to smell a woman in heat, Noreen.”
“You’re crazy, whoever you are. I want you to go.”
“And I love you too, even more than before. Listen, don’t play-act with me, don’t give me that icy I-want-you-to-go crap. I’m back, Noreen. Don’t ask me how I managed it. I’m back. I’ll be going under the name of Macy, but it’s me, the real me here, and I’m going to start working again soon. I’ve already seen Gargantua. He’s signing me, he’s giving me money to open a studio. Very quietly I’ll reestablish myself. No rapes any more. None of that I’ll be sedate and bourgeois, Mr. Paul Macy, Mr. Nobody, only underneath it’ll be Nat Hamlin. And you’ll come visit me, won’t you?”
“I’ll visit you in jail, yes.”
“You’ll visit me in my studio. We’ll sit and talk about how good it was before I crapped everything up. Remember, ’02, ’03, when we were just starting out? Lying on the beach in Antigua, and we couldn’t leave each other alone, we did it right out there. Sand in your snatch, eh, Noreen? You didn’t like that so much, but even so, you loved it. And then. The other times. I’ve got them all up here in my head. They banged me around at Rehab, but they didn’t destroy me. They tried hard enough, but they didn’t destroy me.” He took a step toward her. Throat dry, fingertips cold. Getting harder and harder down below. “Don’t be afraid of me. I love you. I love you. I wouldn’t hurt you for anything. Stop backing away. Listen, it’ll be our secret, you and me, the world will think I’m Macy, you can go on being Mrs. Sy Krafft, this cute little house, kids—do you have kids?—whatever you want, only on the side it’ll be you and me again, Nat and Noreen, at my studio.
I’ll do another nude of you. Life-size. It’ll be better than The Antigone. Remember how sore you were, because I used Lissa for The Antigone instead of you? But we were drifting apart then. I didn’t know what was good for me. I had to go through hell to find out. But now. You’ll pose. Shit, I can see it now. You standing over there. Those sweet little tits of yours. Ten electrodes on you. And I’m at the machine, swearing like a bastard. Getting you down, immortalizing your body and your soul. An hour for work, an hour for screwing, an hour for work, an hour for screwing. Oh, Jesus, Noreen, stop staring at me like that!”
“I’ll call the police. When they catch you, Nat, they’ll finish you for good. They won’t even put you through Rehab. They’ll chop you up and flush you away.”
“No. A silver bullet in my head. A stake through the heart.”
“I’ll call them, Nat.”
“Wait. Please, no. Look, I don’t mean to frighten you. I came here to tell you how much I love you. I’ve been in hell, Noreen, literally in hell, and now I’m coming out, I’m going to live again. And I had to come to you. Why be afraid? Tell me you love me.”
“I don’t love you, Nat. You disgust me.”
Hamlin began to shake.
“Brava!” he cried. “Brava! Bravissima!” He started to applaud. “What an actress! What fire in your reading! What steel in your voice!” Imitating her: “‘I don’t love you, Nat. You disgust me.’” Wildly applauding. “Curtain. End of Act Two. Now tell me the real stuff, Noreen. How much you want me. You’re scared, yes, you remember me when I was crazy, when I was doing all that hideous crap, but you’ve got to remember the other me, too, the one you loved, the one you married, everything we did together, the places we saw, the people, the stuff in bed, remember, even the weird stuff, you and me and Donna in the same bed, and then you and me and Alex, eh, Noreen? Love. Trust Passion.” He reached toward her. “Come on. Now. Where’s the bedroom? Or right here on the floor. Let me prove it to you, that you still turn on for me. Okay? Why the hell not? You opened your gate for me five hundred times. Eight hundred. So one more won’t cost you anything.”
He was shouting now. Her cool poise was deserting her. She looked terrified, moving away from him, stumbling over things. He lunged at her. Seizing her wrist, pulling her close. The sweet fragrance of her body mixed with fear-sweat. Her eyes glazed with fright “Noreen,” he muttered. “Noreen. Noreen. Noreen.” The syllables losing meaning and becoming hollow sounds. His skull aflame. His jaws aching. His hands clutching at her clothing. Ripping. The little round breasts popping into view. Oh, Christ, how tender they are! His hands on them. Squeezing. She flailed at him with her fists, clubbing him on the mouth, the nose, the ears. He had one arm locked around her waist; the other, having laid bare her bosom, went to her crotch. To see if she was wet there. To prove to her how wrong she was to refuse him. He was snorting. Like the old days, the bad old days. Hamlin the animal. Hamlin the horny Minotaur. Fragile woman struggling in his arms. A red haze before his eyes. Sweat running down his sides. Noreen kicking, screaming, clawing.