The Hellfire Club

want to do is run away from your problems, and on top of that you want to destroy my relationship with my parents, which I won't let happen.'

'Davey, Westerholm doesn't suit us at all. New York is a lot more interesting, it's more diverse, more exciting, more -'

'More dangerous, more expensive. We hardly need any more excitement in our lives. I go to New York every day, remember? You want to deal with homeless people lying all over the streets and muggers around every corner? You'd go crazier than you already are.'

'You actually think I'm crazy?'

He shook his head and held up his hands. 'Forget about it. We're getting into the serious stuff now. Let's consider the way Natalie Weil reacted to you in the police station. She went nuts. And it wasn't because of me. It wasn't because of that cop. It was because she saw you.'

'Something happened to her. That's why she acted like that.'

'Something happened to her, all right. And where it happened was in the same nursery where you took that kid when you decided to play God. Do you want me to believe that's a coincidence?'

'You think I took her there?' The sheer unreasonableness of this idea made her momentarily forget to breathe.

'There's no other way to explain things. You locked her up in that empty building and kept her there until she managed to get out. Now I'm wondering whether or not you remember doing all this. Because you really did seem startled when Natalie started screaming, and I don't think you're that good an actress, Nora. I think you must have had some kind of psychotic break.'

'I kept her locked up in an empty building. I guess I must have thrown all that blood around her bedroom, too. What else did I do? Torture her? Did I let her starve?'

'You tell me,' Davey said. 'But from the way she acted -the way she looked - I'd say both.'

'You astound me.'

'The feeling is mutual.'

Nora regarded him during the silence which followed this exchange, thinking that he had somehow managed to become a person she did not at all know. 'Would you mind telling me why I would do all this to Natalie Weil, whom I like? And whom I haven't seen, in spite of what you told Holly Fenn, for almost two years?'

For the first time during this confrontation, Davey began to look uncomfortable. He turned some thought over in his mind, and the discomfort moved visibly into anger. 'Dear me, what in the world could it be? Wow, I wonder.'

'Well, I do,' Nora said. 'Apparently it's staring me in the face, but I can't see it.'

'Is this really necessary? At this point, I mean?'

'You bastard,' she said. 'You want me to guess?'

'You don't have to guess, Nora. You just want me to say it.'

'So say it.'

He rolled his head back and looked at her as if she had just asked him to eat a handful of dirt. 'You know about me and Natalie. Satisfied now?'

'You and Natalie Weil?'

Wearily, he nodded.

'You were having an affair with Natalie Weil?'

'Our sex life was hardly wonderful, was it? When we did have sex, you were turned off, Nora. The reason for that is, you started going into the Twilight Zone. I don't know where you went, but wherever it was, there wasn't much room in there for me.'

'No,' she said, battling to contain the waves of rage, nausea, and disbelief rolling through her. 'You cut me out. You were anxious about work, or so I thought, you had all this anxiety, and it began to affect you when we went to bed, and then you started getting even more anxious because of that, which affected you even more.'

'It was all my fault.'

'It was nobody's fault!' Nora shouted. 'You're blaming me because you were sleeping with Natalie, damn her, and you know what that is? Babyish. I didn't tell you to stick your dick into her. You thought that one up all by yourself.'

'You're right,' he said. 'You're not responsible. You hardly know what reality is anymore.'

'I'm beginning to find out. When did this start? Did you drive up to her house one day and say. Gee, Natalie, old Nora and I aren't getting it on very well anymore, how about a tumble?'

'If you want to know how it started, I met her in the Main Street Delicatessen one day, and we started talking, and I invited her to lunch. It just sort of took off from there.'

'How long ago was this wonderful lunch?'

'About two months ago. I'm just wondering how you found out about it, and when you started to hatch your crazy plan.'

'I found out about two seconds ago!' she yelled.

'It's going to be interesting to hear what Natalie says when she's able to talk. Because from what I saw, you scare the shit out of her.'

'I should,' Nora said. 'But because of what she did to me, not the other way around.'

At an impasse, they stared at each other for a moment. Then a recognition came to Nora. 'This is why you wanted to go to her house that day. You wanted to see if you left anything behind. All that stuff you told me last night was just another Davey Chancel fairy tale.'

'Okay, I was afraid I might have left something at her house. If I saw something, I could say I left it behind the last time we visited her.'

'And tell me some lie about how it got there.'

He shrugged.

'How did Paddi Mann's book get into Natalie's house?'

He smiled. 'Dick Dart didn't give it to her, that's for sure.'

Nora felt like throwing every dish in the kitchen at the wall. Then, in a shivering bolt of clarity, she remembered Alden's talking to Davey on the terrace about Dick Dart, saying something like I wonder what Leland's wife thinks about her son romancing the same women her husband seduced forty years ago. Alden had said, It'd be a strange boy who did that, wouldn't you think? Alden had been the man Natalie called 'the Prune.' Alden had probably taken the photographs in Natalie's kitchen. No longer smiling, Davey gave her an uncertain, guilty glance, and she knew she was right. 'Natalie had an affair with your father, didn't she?'

Davey blinked and looked guiltier than ever. 'Ah. Well. She did.' He bit his lower lip and considered her. 'Funny you should know about that.'

'I didn't know. It just sort of hit me.'

'I suppose she could have told you when it was going on. Didn't you meet Natalie in the supermarket a while ago?'

'Alden gave her those Blackbird Books,' she said, having come to another recognition. 'I wondered why they were separate like that on the shelf. They were a gift from a lover, and she kept them together.'

'She never got around to them,' Davey said.

'No wonder, given her active life. Did she cut him off when you turned up? Was it like a trade-in deal, a newer model, like that?'

'Their thing was over by then. It was no big deal in the first place.'

'Unlike your grand passion. Stealing your old man's slut away from him must have perked the old ego right up. Kind of a primal victory.'

'I didn't know about her and my father until later.' Davey's left leg began to jitter, and he chewed on his lip some more.

'Did you get any comparisons? Length? Endurance? The sort of thing you boys worry about so much?'

'Shut up,' he said. 'Of course not. It was no big deal.'

'Nothing is a big deal to you, is it? You have no idea what your feelings are. You just push them aside and