can of Diet Coke, sitting in the easy chair across from him, feet tucked partly under her. She had those awkward little white socks they were wearing now, and a thin gold ankle bracelet. In the 60s she'd have had white go-go boots. At least she hadn't got one of those ugly fanny-paks yet.
Garner was wearing jeans, sneakers – real Converse sneakers, which were hard to find – and his Oakland Street Ministry t-shirt. He knew the trappings of the Ministry embarrassed her a little, but she liked the t-shirt because its graffiti-style design was at least marginally hip. He knew she was proud of him, too, because he was cooler than some other dads. He let her stay out later, let her watch the movies she wanted, was tolerant of profanity up to a point, let her go to rock concerts alone, never said a word about loud music, though he couldn't stand most of the bands she liked. What was that band? Bon Jovi…
She liked her father being politically liberal; it was hipper to be P.C., because MTV was mostly slanted that way. They both liked the Beatles and the Stones. He wished she'd known her mother. For one thing, her mother would know how to tell her she wore too much makeup…
'Daddy Dude,' she began, smiling sweetly.
'Let me guess. The car. Had your license two months and you think you get to wheedle the car.'
'I'm sure, it's not like the only thing I ever talk to you about is wanting something, I mean -'
'Not the only thing, no. But when you call me Daddy Dude, in that sweet voice, it's a dead giveaway.'
'Whatever. Daddy… Daddy Dad. We just want to go to the mall and the arcade.'
'I'm staying around here this evening because we're having a counselling group here. They're painting the Volunteer Centre in Oakland so it's got to be here. So yeah, okay. But if you hurta my car I breaka you face!'
She laughed. Then her expression went ludicrously earnest. 'Did anyone call for me?'
'No, hon, he didn't call, whoever he is. What's his name? Is he in puberty yet? Does he have pubic hair?'
' Da -ad!'
Ephram thought about doing away with Megan. He thought about it as he drove his '88 Porsche to the condo he'd rented near the beach, in Alameda. On the way, he drove through a neighbourhood of Victorian and Queen Anne houses, most of them prettily restored and trimmed, ostentatiously gardened. The matronly old houses seemed to wear the lush foliage of the street's many oaks and maples like fir stoles. He would have preferred one of the fine old houses to a condo. But anonymity was better, and you were more anonymous in a condo.
He left the old town neighbourhood, drove into the area of housing projects and condos and beach front apartment buildings; an area of town rather glaringly open to the sky. It was a sweet summer evening for a drive by the beach, a few clouds strikingly purple against the lemon glow of the horizon. It was an evening to savour, an epicurean's evening, and Ephram regarded himself as the last word in epicureans.
A nice night to do away with Megan. She was mostly used up. There wasn't much left but the sticky, impure stuff at the bottom of the bottle that was her brain.
He always thought of it that way: Doing away. It was such a pleasantly euphemistic expression. It made him think of the way Valentine Michael Smith had rid the world of unwanted people in that novel, that bit of silliness from the 60s. Stranger In… something. Valentine Smith would simply think them out of existence.
He couldn't do that with Megan, just think her out of existence when he was done with her. And having to do away with them physically, personally, was his least favourite part of the whole process. Well, the actual killing was all right, but the disposal – the away of it – was a bore and a mess. Literally, a mess. There was no truly pristine doing away, he thought. Not even incineration. There was always a mess of some kind. A cadaver leaving its mutely insistent signature on the scene, if only a little grease and ash.
Nothing for it but to roll up his sleeves…
Ephram arrived at the cluster of two-story security condos and pressed the door signaller that would let him into the parking lot. The gate lurched a little, then rolled aside. He drove through and neatly into his parking place. He was not a man to waste movements.
He went into his condo without bothering to check his mailbox. There shouldn't be anything in it except bills and trash. No one knew he was here. And, of course, there was no one alive who would write him a letter, anyway, ha ha.
Megan was right where he'd left her, under the sink in the bathroom.
Part of her naked, pale, pinkwhite body was set aglow by a long bar of light that expanded from the hall when he opened the door. She had her back to him, lay on her side, curled up around the sink pipes like a snail around a stem. Her long red hair – now matted and oily – fanned across the bathroom tiles. Freckles across her back. He often chose freckly girls, or girls with birth marks. Marks on the skin were signs to him.
She groaned when he switched on the bathroom light, but of course she couldn't move. He hadn't given her leave to move. She was still cerebrally locked. He reached oat with an exploratory impulse, the probe making her shudder and gag a little as it passed through her skull. He tasted the pleasure centres of her brain. The reward receiver of the brain, as Ephram thought of it. There was some capacity left. Some cells not yet wrung out. More than he'd thought. Best use her once more before the doing away. Waste not, wanton. Ha ha.
He first had to unlock her brain. He reached out mentally and undid the partial paralysis. She spasmed like a sick dog and defecated thinly and wetly on herself, then flopped onto her back. Ephram wrinkled his nose at the smell and switched on the bathroom's ventilator fan; he took a little can of air freshener from the glass shelf over the sink and sprayed it around a bit. Honeysuckle.
He put the can away and inspected her. The marks he'd made were scabbing over, but rather badly. Some of them were purulent. This definitely did have to be the last time with Megan.
She tried to speak, managed to croak, ''Listen… just once… listen I can't believe you don't… you can't…'
'You should believe it,' he said, sending a probe into her cerebral punishment receiver. She gave out a cawing sound that was all the scream she could manage anymore and arched her back. Ephram felt his penis harden. It hardened a bit, anyway.
He moved to stand beside the bathtub and said, 'Come over here and get in the tub. Facing me.'
The look on her face. Her eyes going dully to the door. Thinking about pushing past him, running. Not having the strength – and knowing he'd never let her get a step toward the door, anyway.
He savoured the completeness of his triumph over her. She had fought him all the way. She was better than some, who'd capitulate in some kind of role reversal madness, beginning to identify with him, losing their grasp on identity. That was a bore. But Megan fought to the last breath, bless her.
All she could do was say, emptily, 'No.'.
Psychically, he speared her again. She writhed and tried to weep, but the tears were long since dried up. Her lips were cracked from dehydration.
She struggled to her feet. She swayed.
Ephram reached over and turned on the water, started the shower going, lukewarm. He didn't want any steam to obscure his view. Then he said, again, 'Get in the tub.'
She took a wobbly step toward it. She might not make it…
His mental probe encircled her reward receiver; grasped it, almost squeezed it like a sponge. His use of her this past week made the extra exertion necessary.
She struggled, but the pleasure rippled through her, prompted by Ephram's control of the master switch in her brain, the nexus of all biological switchboards…
Raspily sobbing, she struggled across the floor to the tub and, with great effort, climbed over its rim, stood miserably in the shushing water. He waited till her fouled thigh was rinsed, then bent to the portable cassette stereo he kept on the floor – what people called a 'ghetto blaster', ha ha – and Mozart unreeled sweetly from its speakers, the music bouncing tinnily from the tiles in the little room.
Ephram closed his eyes and listened. He took a deep breath, refining his senses, and opened his eyes.
He grabbed Megan by the hair, turned her about in the shower to lubricate her. He unzipped his pants. His psychic probe found the last pleasure receivers that could still be stimulated in her… She wailed and commenced involuntary humping motions with her hips. He put a hand around her throat and forced her to her knees, directed his semi-erect penis into her crusted mouth…
His hand closed slowly around her neck; as the crispy tissues of her throat collapsed under his strong, practiced fingers, his penis briefly hardened to something like complete tumescence.
A minute after the Mozart cassette ended, he withdrew from her, mentally. Withdrawing with excellent timing: just as she died. He dared not experience her death more closely, with the psychic probe. That would set up
