Intensity

Oh, God.

'You're a psychology student, after all, almost a genuine master of psychology. Right? Sitting there in such stern judgment of me, so certain that my mind is 'aberrant' and that you know exactly how I think. Well, then, how interesting it would be to see if any of the modern theories of the working of the mind are undone by this little experiment. Don't you think so? After I break Ariel, you could write a paper about it, Chyna, for my eyes only. I'd enjoy reading your considered observations.'

Dear God, it would never come to that. She'd never be a witness to such a thing. Though in shackles, she would find a way to commit suicide before she would let him take her down to that room to watch that lovely girl? to watch her dissolve. Chyna would bite open her own wrists, swallow her tongue, contrive to fall down the steps and break her neck, something. Something.

Evidently aware that he had jolted her out of gray despair into stark horror, Vess smiled again-and then turned his attention to her breakfast plate. 'Do you intend to eat the rest of that?'

'No.'

'Then I'll have it.'

He slid his empty plate aside and pulled hers in front of him. Using her fork, he cut a bite-size piece of the cold omelet, put it in his mouth, and moaned softly in delight. Slowly, sensuously, Vess extracted the tines from his mouth, pressing his lips firmly around them as they slid loose, then reaching with his tongue for one last lick.

After he swallowed the bite of eggs, he said, 'I could taste you on the fork. Your saliva has a lovely flavor- except for a faint bitterness. No doubt that's not a usual component, just the result of a sour stomach.'

She could find no escape by closing her eyes, so she watched as he devoured the remains of her breakfast.

When he finished, she had a question of her own. 'Last night? why did you eat the spider?'

'Why not?'

'That's no answer.'

'It's the best answer to any question.'

'Then give me second-best.'

'You think it was disgusting?'

'I'm just curious.'

'No doubt, you see it as a negative experience-eating an icky, squirmy spider.'

'No doubt.'

'But there are no negative experiences, Chyna. Only sensations. No values can be attached to pure sensation.'

'Of course they can.'

'If you think so, then you're in the wrong century. Anyway, the spider had an interesting flavor, and now I understand spiders better for having absorbed one. Do you know about flatworm learning?'

'Flatworm?'

'You should have encountered it in a basic biology course along the way to becoming such a highly educated woman. You see, certain flatworms can gradually learn to negotiate a maze-'

She did remember, and interrupted: 'Then if you grind them up and feed them to another batch of flatworms, batch number two can run the same maze on the first try.'

'Good. Yes.' Vess nodded happily. 'They absorb the knowledge with the flesh.'

She didn't need to consider how to phrase her next question, for Vess could be neither insulted nor flattered. 'Jesus, you don't actually believe you now know what it's like to be a spider, have all the knowledge of a spider, because you've eaten one?'

'Of course not, Chyna. If I were that literal-minded, I'd be crazy. Wouldn't I? In an institution somewhere, talking to a crowd of imaginary friends. But because of my sharp senses, I did absorb from the spider an ineffable quality of spiderness that you'll never be able to understand. I heightened my awareness of the spider as a marvelously engineered little hunter, a creature of power. Spider is a power word, you know, though it can't be formed from the letters of my name.' He hesitated, pondering, and then continued: 'It can be formed from the letters of your name.'

She didn't bother to remind him about her mother's precious spelling. Only spyder could be found in Chyna Shepherd.

'And it was risky, eating a spider, which added considerably to the appeal,' Vess continued. 'Unless you're an entomologist, you can't be sure if any particular specimen is poisonous or not. Some, like the brown recluse, are extremely dangerous. A bite on the hand is one thing? but I had to be sure that I was quick and crushed it against the roof of my mouth before it could bite my tongue.'

'You like taking risks.'

He shrugged. 'I'm just that kind of guy.'

'On edge.'

'Words in my name,' he acknowledged.

'And if you'd been bitten on the tongue?'

'Pain is the same as pleasure, just different. Learn to enjoy it, and you're happier with life.'

'Even pain is value neutral?'

'Sure. Just sensation. It helps grow the reef of the soul-if there is a soul.'

She didn't know what the hell he was talking about-the reef of the soul-and she didn't ask. She was weary of him. Weary of fearing him, even weary of hating him. With her questions, she was striving to understand, as she had striven all her life, and she was tired to death of this search for meaning. She would never know why some people committed countless little cruelties-or bigger ones-and the struggle to understand had only exhausted her and left her empty, cold, and gray inside.

Pointing to her red and swollen index finger, Vess said, 'That must hurt. And your neck.'

'The headache's the worst of it. And none of it's anything like pleasure.'

'Well, I can't easily show you the way to enlightenment and prove you're wrong. It takes time. But there's a smaller lesson, quick to learn?'

He got up from his chair and went to a spice rack at the end of the kitchen cabinets. Among the small bottles and tins of thyme, cloves, dill, nutmeg, chili pepper, ginger, marjoram, and cinnamon was a bottle of aspirin.

'I don't take this for headaches, because I like to savor the pain. But I keep aspirin on hand because, once in a while, I like to chew on them for the taste.'

'They're vile.'

'Just bitter. Bitterness can be as pleasing as sweetness when you learn that every experience, every sensation, is worthwhile.'

He returned to the table with the bottle of aspirin. He put it in front of her-and took away her glass of water.

'No, thanks,' she said.

'Bitterness has its place.'

She ignored the bottle.

'Suit yourself,' Vess said, clearing the plates off the table.

Although Chyna needed relief from her various pains, she refused to touch the aspirin. Perhaps irrationally-but nonetheless strongly- she felt that by chewing a few of the tablets, even strictly for the medicinal effect, she would be stepping into the strange rooms of Edgler Vess's madness. This was a threshold that she didn't care to cross for any purpose, even with one foot solidly anchored in the real world.

He hand-washed the breakfast plates, bowls, pans, and utensils. He was efficient and fastidious, using steaming hot water and lots of lemon-scented dishwashing liquid.

Chyna had one more question that could not go unasked, and at last she said, 'Why the Templetons? Why choose them of all people? It wasn't random, was it, not just the place you happened to stop in the night?'

'Not just random,' he agreed, scrubbing the omelet pan with a plastic scouring pad. 'A few weeks back, Paul Templeton was up this way on business, and when-'

'You knew him?'

'Not really. He was in town, the county seat, on business like I said, and as he was taking something from his