Intensity

Speechless, she stared at him.

'I know what you're thinking,' he said. 'Not many twelve-year old orphans get adopted. People are usually looking for infants to mold in their own image. But I was such a beautiful boy, Chyna, an almost ethereally beautiful boy. Can you believe that?'

'Yes.'

'People want beautiful children. Beautiful children with nice smiles. I was sweet-tempered and charming. By then I'd learned to hide better among all you hypocrites. I'd never again be caught with a bloody kitten or a dead grandmother.'

'But who? who would adopt you after what you did?'

'What I did was expunged from my record, of course. I was just the littlest boy, after all. Chyna, you wouldn't expect my whole life to be ruined just because of one mistake? Psychiatrists and social workers were the grease in my wheels, and I will always be beholden to them for their sweet, earnest desire to believe.'

'Your adoptive parents didn't know?'

'They knew that I'd been traumatized by the death of my parents in a fire, that the trauma had led to counseling, and that I needed to be watched for signs of depression. They wanted so badly to make my life better, to prevent depression from ever touching me again.'

'What happened to them?'

'We lived there in Chicago two years, and then we moved here to Oregon. I let them live for quite a while, and I let them pretend to love me. Why not? They enjoyed their delusions so much. But then, after I graduated from college, I was twenty years old and needed more money than I had, so there had to be another dreadful accident, another fire in the night. But it was eleven long years since the fire that took my real mom and dad, and half a continent away. No social workers had seen me in years, and there were no files about my horrible mistake with Grandma, so no connections were ever made.'

They sat in silence.

After a while he tapped the plate in front of her. 'Eat, eat,' he cajoled. 'I'll be eating at a diner myself. Sorry I can't keep you company.'

'I believe you,' she said.

'What?'

'That you were never abused.'

'Though that runs against everything you've been taught. Good girl, Chyna. You know the truth when you hear it. Maybe there's hope for you yet.'

'There's no understanding you,' she said, though she was talking more to herself than to him.

'Of course there is. I'm just in touch with my reptilian nature, Chyna. It's in all of us. We all evolved from that slimy, legged fish that first crawled out of the sea. The reptile consciousness? it's still in all of us, but most of you struggle so hard to hide it from yourselves, to convince yourselves that you're something cleaner and better than what you really are. The irony is, if you'd just for once acknowledge your reptile nature, you'd find the freedom and the happiness that you're all so frantic to achieve and never do.'

He tapped the plate again, and then the glass of water. He got up and tucked his chair under the table.

'That conversation wasn't quite as you expected, was it, Chyna?'

'No.'

'You were expecting me to equivocate, to whine on about being a victim, to indulge in elaborately structured self-delusions, to spit up some tale of warping incest. You wanted to believe your clever probing might expose a secret religious fanaticism, bring revelations that I hear godly voices in my head. You didn't expect it to be this straightforward. This honest.'

He went to the door between the kitchen and the living room, and then turned to look at her. 'I'm not unique, Chyna. The world is filled with the likes of me-most are just less free. You know where I think a lot of my type wind up?'

In spite of herself, she asked, 'Where?'

'In politics. Imagine having the power to start wars, Chyna. How gratifying that would be. Of course, in public life, one would generally have to forgo the pleasure of getting right down in the wet of it, hands dirty with all the wonderful fluids. One would have to be satisfied with the thrill of sending thousands to their deaths, remote destruction. But I believe I could adapt to that. And there would always be photos from the war zone, reports, all as graphic as one requested. And never a danger of apprehension. More amazing-they build monuments to you. You can bomb a small country into oblivion, and dinners are given in your honor. You can kill thirty-four children in a religious community, crush them with tanks, burn them alive, claim they were dangerous cultists-then sit back to the sound of applause. Such power. Intensity.'

He glanced at the clock.

A few minutes past five.

He said, 'I'll finish dressing and be gone. Back as soon after midnight as I can be.' He shook his head as if saddened by the sight of her. 'Untouched and alive. What kind of existence is that, Chyna? Not one worth having. Get in touch with your reptile consciousness. Embrace the cold and the dark. That's what we are.'

He left her in chains as twilight entered the world and the light withdrew.

8

Mr. Vess steps onto the porch, locks the front door, and then whistles for the dogs.

The day is growing cooler as it wanes, and the air is bracing. He zips up his jacket.

From different points of the compass, the four Dobermans sprint out of the twilight and race to the porch. As they scamper to Vess and jostle one another to be the closest to him, their big paws thump on the boards in a fandango of canine delight.

He kneels among them, generously doling out affection once more. Oddly like people, these Dobermans appear to be unable to detect the insincerity of Mr. Vess's love. They are only tools to him, not treasured pets, and the attention he gives them is like the 3-In-One oil with which he occasionally lubricates his power drill, hand-held belt sander, and chain saw. In the movies, it is always a dog that senses the werewolf potential in the moon-fearing man and greets him with a growl, always a dog that shies away from the character who is secretly harboring the alien parasite in his body. But movies are not life.

The dogs are no doubt deceiving him just as he deceives them. Their love is nothing but respect-or sublimated fear of him.

He stands, and the dogs look up expectantly. Earlier, they had been summoned from their kennel by the buzzer; therefore, they are now merely on an apprehend-and-detain status.

'Nietzsche,' he says.

As one, the four Dobermans twitch and then become rigid. Their ears first prick at the command word but then flatten.

Their black eyes shine in the dusk.

Abruptly they depart the porch, scattering across the property, having been elevated to attack status.

Putting on his hat, Mr. Vess walks toward the barn, where he keeps his car.

He leaves the motor home parked beside the house. Later, to minimize the distance that the two bodies will have to be carried, he will back the vehicle along the lane, closer to the meadow of unmarked graves.

As he walks, Mr. Vess draws slow, deep breaths and clears his mind, preparing himself for reentry into the workaday world.

He enjoys the charade of his second life, passing for one of the repressed and deluded who, in uncountable multitudes, rule the earth with lies, who pass their lives in denial, anxiety, and hypocrisy. He is like a fox in a pen of mentally deficient chickens that are unable to distinguish between a predator and one of their own, and this is a fine game for a fox with a sense of humor.

Every day, all day long, Vess weighs other people with his eyes, furtively tests their firmness with a friendly touch, breathes the enticing scents of their flesh, selecting among them as if choosing packaged poultry at a market. He does not often kill those whom he meets in his public persona-only if he is absolutely certain that he can