He placed his glasses on the nightstand, dropped his towel to the floor and crawled in naked under the cool sheets of his bed. With his face buried in his pillow, he fumbled around the headboard for the light switch and plunged the apartment into welcomed darkness.
Feldman slept deeply for an extended period before slipping into yet another dream. This time, he was out alone in the desert night, a wandering nomad. Lost, lonely, and confused. And desperately tired. He staggered and fell in exhaustion, facedown in the dust There was suddenly a bright light in front of him and he looked up to encounter the ethereal visage of Jeza, suspended above the ground, floating, arms outstretched, silhouetted by a massive full moon, her robes extraordinarily long and billowing around her. She was speaking to him, but he couldn't understand her.
Suddenly Feldman was aware of a red cast to the desert sand in front of his face, as if the sun were dawning behind him. He looked up and Jeza, too, was bathed in a rosy glow. She gazed past him in the direction of the light. He rolled on his side and looked over his shoulder. But it wasn't the sun blazing behind him, it was the meteor-large and churning hellfire, barreling straight for him. He was transfixed.
The meteor struck him, but he felt nothing. There was a loud ringing like a phone, jangling, pausing, jangling again. A shower of sparks, brightness all around him, and a feeling of confusion and helplessness. Reflexively, he flipped over on his back, holding out one hand in front of him to protect himself, hiding his face in the crook of his other elbow. Someone was softly calling his name. And finally, Feldman realized that this was just another dream. He relaxed, awakened himself and removed his arm from his face to open his eyes.
He was in his hotel room. But he was not awake. There, floating in the air, in the dark just beyond the end of his bed, was the glowing figure of Jeza. Larger than life. More lustrous than life. Her arms were outstretched to him her robe open, revealing a divine, surreal, phosphorescent nakedness.
“Jon,” she called to him again. He rose on his elbows and tried to focus his nearsighted, alcohol-dulled eyes on the apparition. Jeza stepped out from space onto his bed and descended to her knees, straddling him.
This was
Dropping from his elbows to his back, he pulled away, reached up and clasped the shimmering face in his hands. This was certainly Jeza's tousled mane of dark hair. This was Jeza's gleaming brilliance, if considerably brighter in candlepower. But this was
“Love me,” the voice whispered to him.
He withdrew his hands and his palms glowed in the darkness. “Erin?” he gasped incredulously.
“Love me, Jon,” she cooed again.
“Erin, what are you doing? How'd you get in here?”
She leaned down, nuzzled against his neck and began to slowly wrap herself around him. “Just lose yourself to me. Let yourself go.”
Grabbing her wrists tightly, he unwound her, casting her off forcefully as she collapsed beside him in reluctant resignation. The bed sheets were stained with luminescence.
“Dammit, Erin! How the hell did you get in here?” He flipped on the lights and retrieved his glasses.
Lying on her side, her head resting submissively on her outstretched arm, her hair in her face, she said nothing for a moment, and then with a curt sigh, “I told the desk clerk we were married.”
Exasperated, Feldman grasped the edge of her robe to cover her unselfconscious nakedness. “Jesus! What could have possessed you to do something as crazy as this?”
She dispelled the hair from her face with an upward puff of breath. “If you haven't noticed, Jon,” she said, rolling her eyes up at him, “ ‘crazy’ is the prevailing disposition of the world these days. A little inoculation of crazy is exactly what you need to deal with all this.”
“What I don't need are more complications in my life,” he snapped, irritably. “Please, just leave.”
“There don't have to be any complications,” she assured him, inching closer. “No one needs to know anything.” She rose on her elbow and leaned toward him again. “I can take you far away from all this turmoil,” she whispered softly. “I can be any woman you want me to be. I can clear your mind and unburden your soul. And all you have to do is just give yourself to me. Just let yourself go,” she purred as her robe fell away once more and her painted breasts glistened up at him pointedly.
It wasn't the sensuality, but the notion of surrender itself that was alluring. His psyche, wearied by weeks of relentless emotional expenditures and frustrations, longed for escape. To weightlessly, aimlessly free-float in the ethers of irresponsibility. He said nothing, allowing the concept to fill him.
“I understand what's troubling you,” she declared, her confidence growing with his indecisiveness. “The way you took on that cardinal tonight. The way you defended her against him. She's seduced you, hasn't she?” Erin sat upright to engage him directly, her eyes narrowing with the certainty of her prosecution. “You're infatuated with her. You've come under her spell. She's compromised your relationship with Anke and you don't know what to do!”
Cornered by the truth, Feldman remained silent.
“I can help.” She advanced persistently, tracing the fingers of one hand lightly across the sculpted pectorals of his chest. “I can break that spell, if you'll let me.”
It was ironic to him. Throughout his entire life he'd always abandoned his relationships whenever they became difficult or complicated, finding quick solace in the arms of someone new. Now enmeshed in the most complicated of triangles with Anke and Jeza, he refused to escape.
Brushing Erin off, Feldman concluded the issue decisively. “No. You
She sighed heavily, drew her legs into her body, and spun neatly out of bed to her feet, facing away from him. Without looking back she lamented, “We could have been so perfect together. The quintessential media couple…” Her voice dropped, she girded her robe about her and slipped away to the door, quietly letting herself out.
Surveying the room before he turned off the light, Feldman noted the chair at the end of the bed on which Erin had been standing. He shook his head sadly, hit the switch and watched smears of luminescent paint signal their presence randomly about the room: on the doorknob, in ghostly footprints across the carpet to his bed, in a handprint on the receiver of his desk phone, all over his sheets, all over himself. He shut his mind and fell back on his pillow, numb.
96
Brookforest subdivision, Racine, Wisconsin 8:40 P.M., Tuesday, April 4, 2000
This scripture stuff's lame,” Tommy Martin's friend told him. “Let's go to the weapons section.”
Tom Martin, Jr., was sitting in his darkened bedroom with a friend, in front of a computer screen, rapidly paging through the hellfire and brimstone Internet Web site of the Guardians of God.
“There,” his friend indicated, and the graphic of a medieval-looking castle came up on the screen. “This is it!” He impatiently grabbed the mouse away from Tommy and clicked on the drawbridge. Immediately, they entered a virtual great room, then turned right down a torch-lit hallway to a door marked “Weapons Keep.”
Tommy's eyes widened.
“Look,” the boy pointed at the screen, “they give you all these radical weapons, and then you click on the one you like and they show you exactly how to build it.”
He directed Tommy's attention to a short, broad, pointy club with a carved handle and sheath. “See, here's this thing called a
“Okay, cool,” young Tom agreed. “Let's do that one!”
