Unspeakable

close to him. 'Listen,' he said, 'this is not exactly what I said it was, but Daisy is still being held hostage, and if you don't behave yourself she's going to suffer, do you understand?'

'Mickey?' she said. 'Mickey, what's going on here? Tell me!'

'It's a party, Holly, you were right. And you're the entertainment.'

Kenneth T. Mulgrew took hold of her other arm, and between them they forced her through the patio doors and through the ghostly net curtains as if she were a bride appearing on her wedding day. She found herself in a large living room furnished with heavy leather-upholstered couches and chairs and with landscape paintings all around the walls. The room was crowded with at least a dozen men, almost all of whom she either knew or recognized. As she came through the curtains, they raised their glasses and cheered.

Over the racket, Holly turned to Mickey and said, 'You have to tell me where Daisy is!'

'I'll tell you, don't you worry. But not just yet, okay?'

'Tell me where Daisy is!'she screamed, and the underwater sound of her voice momentarily silenced every man in the room.

Mickey gave her the smallest shake of his head. 'She's safe, Holly, I promise you, and she's going to stay safe. But I had to think of some way to get you out here on a dark and stormy night, now, didn't I?'

Holly wrenched herself free of him and approached the assembly of men. They were all dressed in casual clothes, some of them in shiny Hugh Hefner-style bathrobes. Middle-aged, mostly, although there were one or two younger men. She looked from one to the other, and she simply couldn't believe that they were all here. Martin A. Brimmer, with his white cropped hair and his cleft chin, commander of the Central Precinct; Gerry Valdez, an Omar Sharif lookalike, deputy district attorney; Oliver Pearson, paunchy and perma-tanned, senior partner in one of the most respected law firms in Oregon, Pearson Greenbaum & Traske. Ranking police officers and court officials and even Randolph Bruckman, the charming and helpful legal adviser from the governor's office.

She looked from one to the other, but not one of them was at all abashed. Instead they smiled at her and lifted their wineglasses, and one or two of them winked. There was a heavy smell of aftershave in the room, Obsession and Hugo Boss, and an aromatic undertone of marijuana too.

'What's going on?' she said at last. 'What's happening here? Gerry? Randolph? what are you all doing here? What have you done with my daughter?'

At that moment a white-haired man wearing a quilted black Japanese-style robe tied with a sash edged his way through from the back of the gathering. It was Judge Walter Boynton, who had always reminded her so much of Ray Walston inMy Favorite Martian.

'Ms. Summers! So pleased you could come! I'll tell you what we're doing here: We're having ourselves a party. A surprise party, as far as you're concerned.'

'I want my daughter back and I want her back now, and I want to go home.'

'So what are you going to do? Call the police?'

Holly looked desperately to Mickey, but Mickey did nothing but give her a shrug. Why didn't he say something? Why didn't hedosomething?

Judge Boynton came up to her and tried to put his arm around her, but she stepped away. 'Don't touch me. Take me back to Portland now and give me back my daughter.'

'Well? that's not really an option, I'm afraid,' Judge Boynton told her.

'If you want me to forget this ever happened, I'll forget it, I promise you. Just give me my daughter.'

'In all fairness, no can do. We've kind of committed ourselves, haven't we? You know who we are now: You've seen our faces.'

'But what do you want me for? What's this all about?'

Judge Boynton said, 'Come here, let me show you something.'

'What?'

'Come here, I won't touch you, I promise.'

The other men stepped aside as he walked toward the window at the far end of the room. Holly looked around for any sign of sympathy or support, but all she got in return were the same shameless smiles.

Judge Boynton stood by the window. She could see his reflection, and hers, but she could also see beyond the parking area, where there was dark scrub and rocks, and a ghostly white figure that appeared to wave in the wind.

'You know what that is?' said Judge Boynton. 'That's the spray from a waterfall, and whenever the wind gets up, it takes on the shape of a woman dancing. The Indians think that it's the spirit of Akula, the woman wonder-worker whose magic was so powerful that any man who crossed her was emasculated. That's why they call this place Phantom Woman Falls.

'It turned out to be very appropriate that I built a weekend house here, because my friends and I have been seeing for many years how women have been emasculating men in all walks of professional life, and in the judiciary in particular.

'These parties-they started as a way for us stuffed shirts in the legal profession to let our hair down. We called ourselves the Justice League, after the comic books. We used to hire a girl or two, drink a lot, do some fishing. But then one day one of our members complained about the way in which a woman in the Judicial Department had been promoted over his head, for no other apparent reason except that she was a woman.

'He said, 'I'd like to bring her out here for a weekend and show her what it'sreallylike to get screwed.' So? to cut a long story short, we fixed it for him.'

Judge Boynton sipped his wine and smiled at the memory. 'That's how it started. Instead of hookers, we brought high-flying women to our parties and, to put it simply, we gave them an object lesson in why God created women. To serve, and to be obedient, and to give pleasure whenever required.'

Holly stared at him, appalled. 'What happened to all these women?'

'Whathappenedto them?' Judge Boynton didn't seem to understand the question.

'Oh my God,' said Holly. She felt as if she couldn't breathe.

Judge Boynton said, 'Believe me, if you're a good sport, you might even enjoy yourself. Now, why don't you relax, and have a drink, and we can all share an evening of grown-up entertainment.'

'I'm leaving,' said Holly. 'Mickey, drive me back to Portland-and if you won't drive me back, give me your keys.'

Mickey took off his coat and flung it over the back of an armchair. Then he unbuttoned his cuffs. 'Holly? my whole life I've been rejected or insulted or looked down on by the women I really want?.'

'What?'Holly stared at him in disbelief. She thought that she must have made some ridiculous misinterpretation in reading his lips. But he came right up to her, standing so close that she could feel his breath on her face.

'It means that I've had enough, like all of my friends here have had enough.' He pronounced his words very slowly and clearly, so that there was no mistake.

'Mickey?'She felt like hitting him with her fists in frustration. This couldn't be Mickey, talking like this. Not the Mickey who told Daisy a bedtime story. Not the Mickey who had brought her lilies. And to think she had sat in the Japanese Garden only this afternoon and thought about starting an affair with him. She almost felt as if she were going mad.

'Iwantyou,' he said. 'I know for sure that Kennie wants you; and Mark; and Randolph; and so what we're going to do is: We're all going to have you. You can make this easy and decide that it's going to happen anyhow, so you might as well have a good time. Or else you can make it difficult, and if you make it difficult, the odds are that one or two of us might have to slap you to get you in line.'

'Mickey, for God's sake, tell me this is some kind of joke.'

'No joke, baby. This is where the guys and me get what life has denied us.'

'You said you liked me. You said youlovedme.'

'Idolove you, Holly, don't doubt it. I've loved you ever since I first saw you standing at that barbecue with those two hot dogs, one in each hand, wondering what the hell to do with them. I always flirted with you, didn't I? I always took care of you, didn't I? Fetched and carried? But what did I ever get in return? A peck on the cheek and a plateful of pork and peppers.'

'Mickey, don't. Please, Mickey. This isn't you.'

Mickey gave her a slanting, Harrison Ford-playing-a-psychopath smile. 'Sorry, Holly. I've never really been the sympathetic sort.Patient,maybe, when patience is called for. Sometimes you can get what you want by knocking somebody's teeth out. But other times you have to play it more subtle. Like fly-fishing, you know? Casting, waiting, and reeling them in. And that's what I've been doing to you: casting, waiting, and reeling you in. And here you are, landed.'

'You're not going to?,' Holly began, but everything was rapidly beginning to make sense.Thiswas why she had been feeling that the world around her had altered so much, and that bad luck was sniffing so close to her heels. She hadn't been able to understand what was wrong, but of course it had been much too close to her, so close that she couldn't focus on it. It had been Mickey all the time. His lips had said that he loved her but his eyes had been watching her with nothing but dispassion. A raven's eyes. A predator's. In a way, it was worse than discovering that he had been killed.

'God, you're evil,' she said.

'No,' said Mickey. 'Just tired of you treating me like some kind of second cousin.' Before she could stop him, he ducked his head down and kissed her forehead. 'You're mine now. You'reours.'

She