Serpent's kiss

tugged on again.

Five… Four… Three…

(Emily closer now. 'It's right down here.')

Two… One…

The pain was blinding.

He could scarcely stop himself from screaming.

He heard and felt rather than saw-the pain kept him blind- the cuff snap away from the bedpost.

And then he was free.

If you could call it that.

Marie Fane.

She was all he could think of.

He ran to the window.

(Emily with her key in the door now, saying to somebody: 'Something's wrong in there.')

And then opening the window and diving through it to the chill but grassy ground below. Free, goddammit, free.

He took off running.

He put his face down near the sink and spent the next two minutes splashing himself with cold water.

He needed to be revived, brought out of his stupor. He was having the thoughts he hated to have and he needed to do something about them.

Then somebody was there: 'Walter?'

'Yeah.'

'Phone. It's Holland.'

'Okay. Thanks.'

Before going out, O'Sullivan picked up the can of Lysol air freshener (pine scent this time around) and sprayed the one-stall john that was just off the news studio. He'd got very uptight about the aroma of his stools since management (ever the trendy ones) had turned the news studio johns unisex. He didn't mind if men knew he'd had Mexican food for lunch, but women were a different matter entirely.

The newsroom had virtually shut down. The early evening news over with, most reporters had scurried away to meet spouses and lovers. Ordinarily, unless there was a critical breaking news story, everybody took an hour and a half for dinner and then came back to grind out the ten o'clock edition.

A lone light flickered on the phone buttons. O'Sullivan picked up.

And spent the next fifteen minutes listening.

He knew that the Lindstrom woman who Holland described was sitting right next to her so he didn't say anything sarcastic. He just said, 'I'd be real leery of this story, Holland.'

'We don't know where Dobyns went.'

'Why don't you call the police?'

'We have.'

'Have you looked for a Marie Fane in the phone book?'

'Of course.'

'And nothing?'

'Nothing. There are seven Fanes. None of the six who answered were or knew of a Marie Fane.'

'I wish I could help you.' O'Sullivan had visions of the small Italian joint around the corner. A little table in the rear with the cliche red-and-white-checkered tablecloth in the back and a green wine bottle with candle drippings running down the neck and a small steady candle glow lighting the really sweet face of Chris Holland across from him. That's how he wanted to spend his break. Not chasing down some stupid story that more properly belonged to the National Enquirer.

'You can help me, Walter.'

'Oh, shit. Here we go.'

'There's a janitor.'

'A janitor.' He couldn't help being sarcastic. At least this one time.

'Yes, Walter. A janitor.'

'What about him?'

'Emily talked to him on several occasions. He worked at Hastings House for forty years before he retired. He knows what's going on there. Dobyns may have contacted him. He may know something about this Marie Fane. Could you go talk to him?'

'I thought we were going to have dinner.'

''We'll have dinner afterward.'

'Afterward. Right.'

'You want his address?'

'Whose address?'

'The janitor's address. God, Walter, you're supposed to be a news director.'

'Yeah. A hungry one.'

'Here's his name and address.' So she gave it to him.

Reluctantly, he wrote it down.

'We're going to keep trying to find Marie Fane,' Chris said.

'I can't believe you're buying all this.'

'I'm not. Not entirely, anyway. But it's a lot more interesting than On the Town.'

He sighed. 'Yeah, I suppose that's true.' He paused. 'Holland, I was going to put the moves on you again tonight.'

'Really?'

'Really.'

'I thought we'd kind of given up on that.'

'Well, no harm in trying again.'

'I'd like that, Walter.'

'I thought I'd buy you some pasta and a nice salad-'

'Come on, Walter. We've got work to do.'

'Thanks for reminding me.'

'Please go see the janitor. All right?'

'All right.'

He hung up.

When he turned around and faced the deserted newsroom, he realised how lonely he felt most of the time. Cynical as he was about human nature, he needed other people around him.

Especially one person in particular named Chris Holland.

He hadn't been kidding about putting the moves on her. Who said a romance couldn't grow out of a friendship? He was already reading about just such relationships in all the magazines (Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping) that the women were leaving in the unisex john.

He was still hoping that someday somebody would leave new copies of Baseball Digest and Sports Illustrated in there as well.

Resigning himself to the fact that dinner tonight was going to be at the McDonald's drive-up window, he tugged on his unlined London Fog and went out the back door to the parking lot.

She had long been a believer in premonitions, Kathleen Fane had.

One day in second grade she'd stared over at the boy across the aisle from her-Bobby Bannock by name-and saw a strange light encircling his head. Years later, she would come to know this curious configuration of sculptured neon as an 'aura' but on that long-ago day all she knew was that the light-even though she had nothing to compare it to-bespoke something terrible that was soon to happen to Bobby Bannock.

Sister Mary Carmelita had caught her staring at Bobby and had harshly chastised Kathleen for doing so. Sister