clothing and embraced. There was sweet delightful groping and stroking and some vigorous heaving. It seemed to take the usual nice long time, but in reality it took about eight minutes. Which was just as well.
When he was done, she sat up in the bag. The skier’s stolen bag was lined with woven foil and by now it felt like a kitchen toaster. “That was lovely. I feel very happy now.”
“[I’m also delighted,]” Ulrich declared gallantly. He was postcoitally morose, and visibly trying to assemble a state of consciousness that was not hormonally driven. It had been a long time since she had seen this happen to a man in her company, but in its own way it was a touchingly familiar sight. She’d come to terms with the realities of male physiology a very long time ago. It would have been lovely to kiss him some more, but if he ran true to form, he would want to either eat a sandwich or go right to sleep.
“I should get us some nice food to eat,” Ulrich offered, with machinelike behavioral accuracy. “What do you like?”
“Oh, something colloidal. Something very cross-linked and tryptophan-ish.”
“[I’m sorry, what?]”
“Anything but vegetables or dead animals.”
“Okay.” Ulrich climbed methodically into his clothing. He managed a cheery wink. “[I love it when a girl wears nothing but a translation earpiece. A sight like that makes life seem so full of promise.]” He left. She heard him padlocking the door shut behind him, heard his footsteps down the hall.
The thought of being locked within the criminal den did not disturb her in the least. She got up immediately and began compulsively to clean the room. The state of disorder had been driving her crazy.
She stopped her cleaning frenzy when she discovered a little stolen laptop television. Genuine televisions, with their broadcast datastream, lack of keyboards, and miserably unilateral interface, were real oddities. She’d spent years collecting kitschy oddities from the enormous freakish garbage heaps of twentieth-century television culture, before she’d discovered the even odder CD-ROM and software media niches.
She tried turning the television on. There was no battery inside it. She began searching, and quickly discovered that all the electronic devices in the room had been deprived of their batteries. Except, of course, for the newly stolen devices that were still in her bag. She eviscerated the netlink and transplanted its battery into the laptop television. She turned the television on.
A Deutschlander talk show appeared onscreen. The host was a St. Bernard dog. He had an actress with him. Maya methodically cleaned the room as she watched the show and listened through one ear.
“[My problem is with reading,]” the dog confessed in fluent Deutsch. The dog had shaggy St. Bernard genetics, but he was very well dressed. “[Mastering speech is one matter. Any dog can do that, with the proper wiring. But reading is an entirely different level of semantic cognition. The sponsors have done their best for me— you know that as well as I do, Nadja. But I have to admit it, right here, publicly—reading is a very serious challenge for any postcanine].”
“[Poor baby,]” the actress said with genuine sympathy. “[Why fight it? They say it’s a postliterate epoch anyway.]”
“[Anyone who could say that is deeply out of touch,]” the dog said gravely and with dignity. “[Goethe. Rilke. Gunter Grass. Heinrich Boll. That says it all.]”
Maya was fascinated by the actress’s clothing. The actress was wearing diaphanous military gear, greenish see-through combat pajamas, and a paratrooper’s sweater in satin. Her face was like something chiseled in cameo, and her hair was truly awe-inspiring. Her hair deserved a doctorate in fiber engineering.
“[We’re all on our own in this epoch,]” the actress mourned. “[When you think what they can do to us on set nowadays—the weird mental spaces they’re willing to put people into, in pursuit of a decent performance … And then there are the gutter net-freaks, those stinking paparazzi … But you know, Aquinas, and I mean this: You’re a dog. I know you’re a dog. It’s not any secret. But truly—and I mean this from the bottom of my heart—I feel happier on your show than I would on anyone else’s.]”
The audience applauded politely.
“[That’s very sweet of you,]” the dog said, wagging his tail. “[I appreciate that more than I can say. Nadja, tell us a little about this business on-set with Christian Mancuso. What was that all about?]”
“[Well, Aquinas, just for you,]” the actress said. “[It’s certainly not something I would tell to just anyone.… But it happened like this. Christian and I are both in our sixties, we’re not young people. Of course. We’d been working together on this project for the company, Hermes Kino. We’d been within the set together for six weeks. We got along wonderfully—I was used to his company, you know, we’d emerge from the set, decompress, have dinner together, talk about the script.… Then one night, Christian took me in his arms and kissed me! I suppose we were both rather surprised by that. It seemed very sweet, though.]”
“
“[So we both agreed to go on the hormone course, I suppose it was his idea really.]”
The audience applauded politely.
“[So that was what we did. We took a thorough hormone course together. Sex made a lot of difference. Really, it was quite astonishing how intense the experience was. In the long run I have to say it was good for me. It did seem to open me up creatively. I enjoyed it. Quite a bit. I know Christian did, too.]”
“[How do you know that?]” the dog prompted. “[A woman knows, that’s all.… I suppose it was the most profound erotic experience of my whole life! I did things that I never would have done as a younger woman. When you are young, sex means so much to you. You get so serious and formal about it.… ]”
“[Do tell us,]” the dog suggested. “[You might as well tell us now, while you’re still in the mood.]”
“[Well, certain things like—well, we liked to play dress-up. Bed dress-up.]” She smiled radiantly. “[He enjoyed it, too, it was very delightful for both of us. A kind of drunkenness really. A hormonal bender. You can look at my medical records if you don’t believe what I’m telling you.]”
“[Dress-up?]” said the dog skeptically. “[That’s all? That seems very innocent.]”
“[Aquinas, listen. Christian and I are both professionals. You have no idea what professionals can do when we put our minds to dress-up.]”
The audience laughed, apparently on cue. “[Then what happened?]” asked the dog. “[Well,]” said the actress, “[after about eighteen months—I wouldn’t say that we’d tired of it exactly, but we’d certainly settled down. Christian came back from a routine checkup, and he had these bladder cysts. The hormones were responsible. Christian decided that he had to back off. So of course, I did the same. And the moment that happened, all the energy went out of our relationship. We became … well … slightly embarrassed with one another. We no longer tried to live and sleep together.]”
“[That’s a shame,]” the dog said, conventionally.
“[If you’re thirty, maybe it is.]” The actress shrugged. “[Once you’re sixty, you become accustomed to the facts of life.]” There was scattered applause.
The actress sat up briskly, excited. “[I’m still on very good terms with him! Truly! I would work together with Christian Mancuso at any time. Any project. He’s a fine actor! A real professional! I feel no shame or embarrassment about our sordid little carnal tryst. It was helpful to both of us. Artistically.]”
“[Would you do it again?]”
“[Well … Yes! Maybe … Probably not. No, Aquinas. Let me be very frank with you here. No, I’ll never do that again.]”
The door shrieked open. Ulrich appeared, and called out something in Deutsch. The translation earpiece was caught between the jabber of television and Ulrich’s remark. The little machine could not decide where to direct the user’s attention, so it fell into silence.
Maya turned the television off. The translator perked up again with a telltale little squeak.
“I hope you like Chinese food,” Ulrich said.
“I love Chinese.”
“[I thought you would. Little lumps of chopped-up dreck that don’t look like anything. Perfect for a Californian.]” He gave her a carton and chopsticks.
They sat together on the chilly floor, and ate. He gazed about the room. “[You’ve been moving things around.]”
“I’ve been cleaning up the place.”
“What a little treasure you are,” Ulrich said, munching solemnly.
“Why do you keep all this junk anyway? You should have sold all this stuff a long time ago.”
