The Hellfire Club

along I came. Wasn't any accident, was it?'

'I don't know what it was, but-'

Before she could add I wish it had never happened, the eyes in the mirror charged with an illumination. 'Used to do this with hubby dear, didn't you? Put your heads together and looked at yourselves in the mirror. I know why, too.'

She did not have to tell him he was right; he already knew that. 'Why?'

'Until now, I hadn't seen how much you and Davey resemble each other. Bet there's a nice little erotic charge in that - probably helped Davey get it up. Like making it with who you'd be if you were the opposite sex. But Davey isn't your male self. The biggest risk Davey-poo ever took was getting into bed with Natalie Weil, and the only reason he did that was his old man made him so insecure about his manhood that he had to prove he could use it.'

Nora clamped her mouth against agreeing, but agree she did.

'I'm your real male self Only difference is, I'm more evolved. Which means that eventually we are going to have tremendous sex.'

The hyena surged into his face once more. 'In fact, Nora-boo, didn't you have a bit of an orgasm that time?'

'Maybe,' she said, thinking it was what he wanted to hear.

He slapped her hard enough to snap her head back. A broad, hand-shaped red mark emerged on her cheek. 'I know you didn't come, and so do you. Goddamn it, when I make you come, they'll hear you howling in the next county. Shit.'

He slammed his fist against the bathroom door, then turned around and pointed at her face in the mirror 'I bust you out of jail, I buy you clothes, I'm going to give you the best haircut you ever had in your life, after that I'm going to do what your mother should have done and teach you about makeup, and you lie to me?'

She trembled.

'I have to keep remembering what women are like. No matter how much a man does for them, they stab you in the back first chance they get.'

'I shouldn't have lied,' she said.

'Forget it. Just don't do it again unless you want to hold your guts in your hands.' He wiped his face with a towel, then draped it over her shoulders. 'Stop shaking.'

Nora's eyes were closed, and in some world where the demons did not exist she felt a comb running through her hair. This is going to be an inch or two shorter all over, but it'll look completely different. For one thing, I cut hair a lot better than the last guy who did this. Also, I know how you ought to look, and you don't have the faintest idea. It's too bad we have to turn you into a blonde, but that'll be okay too, believe me. You'll look ten years younger.'

He positioned her head and started cutting with small precise movements of the scissors. Dark hair fell onto the towel and drifted down to her breasts. He said, 'Hold still. I'll get the hair off you later.' Wisps of hair landed on her forearms, her stomach, her back. Dart was humming 'There'll Be Some Changes Made.'

'Good hair,' he said. 'Nice full texture, good body.'

She opened her eyes and beheld exactly what he had promised, the best cut of her life. It was too bad that she should be given such a cut when she was a corpse being prepared for the coffin. His hands flew about her head, fluffing, cutting.

'Pretty good, if I do say so myself.' He snapped the towel away from her shoulders and brushed hair from her body. 'Well?'

Nora snatched the towel and wrapped it around her chest. Dart grinned at her in the mirror. She ran her lingers through her short, lively hair and watched it fall perfectly back into place. Apart from the fading red mark on her cheek, the only problem with the woman in the mirror was that beneath the cap of beautifully cut hair her face was dead.

Dart opened the box of hair coloring and removed a white plastic bottle with a nozzle and a cylinder of amber liquid. He snipped off the tip of the nozzle. 'You won't be as blond as the picture, but you'll be blond, anyhow.' He wiggled his hands into the transparent plastic gloves from the inner side of the instruction sheet. After pouring in the amber liquid, Dart shook the bottle.

'Bend forward.' She leaned over the sink, and Dart squeezed golden liquid into her hair and worked it in with his fingers. 'That's it for twenty-five minutes.' He looked at his watch. 'Sit here so I can use the mirror.' She dragged her chair in front of her as she backed toward the toilet.

Dart leaned forward and began cutting his own hair. He did a better job with the back of his head than Nora had expected, missing only a few sections where long hair fanned over the rest. 'How's it look?'

'Fine.'

'In the back?'

'Fine.'

He snorted. 'Guess that means close enough for jazz.' He opened the box of black hair color and mixed the ingredients. 'I'm going to have to close my eyes, so I want you to put your hand on me. If you take it off, I'll smash your head open on the bathtub.'

'Put my hand where?'

'Grab anything you like.'

She hitched herself forward and, shivering with revulsion, placed her hand on his hip.

Dart squeezed the fluid into his hair. 'I wish I were a woman, so I could have me do this for myself. Without doing it like this, I mean.'

'You wish you were a woman,' Nora said.

He stopped massaging the lather into his hair. 'I didn't say that.'

Goose bumps rose on Nora's arms.

'I didn't say I wanted to be a woman. That's not what I said.'

'No.'

Violence congealed about Dart's heavy body and sparkled in the air. He lowered his hands and faced her.

'I mean, I would enjoy having these things done to me by me. The women who get my special treatment are extremely lucky people. I think it would be nice to be pampered, like I pamper you. Anything strange about that?'

'No,' she said.

He turned back to the sink and shot her a simmering glance. She settled her hand on his hip. 'You're tied down by the crappy little conventions that inhibit melon-heads like your husband. The truth is, there are two kinds of people, sheep and wolves. If anyone should understand this, it's you.'

He peeled off the smeary gloves. 'That's that.' She lowered her hand and looked at the door. 'Nope, we're staying in here. Sit on the side of the tub.'

Nora moved. Dart frowned, tossed the gloves into the basket, checked himself in the mirror, and sat on the toilet. 'We have some time to kill. Ask me something, and try not to make it too stupid.'

She tried to think of a question that would not infuriate him. 'I was wondering why you live in the Harbor Arms.'

He held up his finger like an exclamation point. 'Very good! First of all, my parents will never come there - the place gives them hives. Secondly, nobody gives a shit what you do.' For fifteen minutes, he described the advantages of living in a place where the fellow residents willingly supplied drugs, sex, and gossip - the members of the Yacht Club universally assumed that their waiters and busboys, Dart's confidants, chose not to overhear their private conversations.

If she were alive, Nora thought, most of what she would feel about this vain, destructive, self-important man would be contempt. Then she realized that what she was now feeling actually was contempt. Maybe she was not entirely dead after all.

'Anyhow,' Dart said, 'time to wash that gunk out of your hair and do the conditioner.'

'I'd like to do it by myself.'

He held up his hands. 'Fine. Use a little warm water, lather up, and rinse. Then take that tube on the side of