The Loo Sanction

'Well, it's made me reevaluate my aesthetic ranking of Gary, Indiana.'

She took her drink and wandered into the next room, which was less tastefully appointed. 'How did you come by this place? Do you have enemies in real estate?'

'No. It belongs to a film producer who took a twenty-year lease on it years ago to soak up some of the 'funny money' he had made in England, but couldn't take out of the country. He uses it as a pied-a- terre when in London, and he gives keys to friends who might be passing through. When I told him I'd be spending a year in England, he offered to lend it to me.'

'Did he decorate it himself?'

'He used furniture and props from his films. The Doris Day/Rock Hudson sort of things.'

'I see. Where do you stay to get away from the noise?'

'Come along.' He led her through two rooms to one that had been left unfurnished. He had dragged in some of the quieter pieces and had hung his collection of Impressionists around the slate gray walls. It was in this room that he had first found MacTaint drinking his whiskey and admiring his paintings.

The canvases arrested her. She set down her glass and stood before a pointillist Pissarro in silence.

'I have a hobby of collecting the best copies I can find,' he told her.

'Beautiful.'

'Oh, yes. Even copies, they're capable of putting modern painting in its place.'

'All right, sir,' she said in a heavy brogue, 'that will be enough of that altogether.' She crossed to the tall windows and looked out on the pattern of lamplights in the park below. 'Six bedrooms, is it? Choice of room must be an interesting cachet for the women you bring up here.'

'Don't fish.'

'Sorry. You're quite right.'

'In point of fact, it occurs to me that I have never invited a woman up here.'

She looked at him over the top of her glass, her green eyes round with a masque of ingenuousness. 'And I am the very, very first one?'

'You're the first one I've invited.' He told her about waking one morning to find a woman staggering about in his bathroom. Despite her sunken eyes and greenish look of recent dissipation, he had recognized her as a film actress whom cosmetic surgery and breast injections kept employed past her time. She had evidently gotten a key from the producer years before, and had come there drunk after a night on the town with a brace of Greek boys. They had dropped her off after taking what money she had in her purse. She hadn't remembered anything of the night and after Jonathan had given her a breakfast bland enough to keep down, she had tucked a straying breast back into her gown, bestowed a snickering leer upon him through bloodshot eyes, and asked him how they had done.

'And what did you tell her?'

Jonathan shrugged. 'What could I tell her? I said she had been fantastic and it had been a night I would never forget. Then I got her a cab.'

'And she left?'

'After giving me her autograph. It's over there.'

She went to the mantel and unfolded a sheet of paper. 'But it's blank.'

'Yes. The pen was out of ink, but she didn't notice.'

She folded the paper carefully and replaced it 'Poor old dear.'

'She doesn't know that. She thinks she's having a ball.'

'Still, it makes me want to cry.'

'If she ever found that out, she'd leave blank autographs behind her everywhere.'

She returned to the window and looked out in silence, her cheek against the drapery. After a time she said, 'It was nice of you.'

'Just the easiest way out.'

'I suppose so.' She turned and looked at him thoughtfully. 'What's your name?'

'Jonathan Hemlock. And yours?'

'Maggie. Maggie Coyne.'

'Shall we go to bed, Maggie?'

She nodded and hummed. 'Yes, I'd like that. But...' Her eyes crinkled impishly. 'But I'm afraid I have some rather bad news for you.'

He was silent for several seconds.

'You're kidding. This doesn't happen to good guys.'

'I wish I were kidding. I really didn't mean to cheat you. But I didn't have a place to stay, don't you see?'

'I'll be goddamned.'

'Pity we didn't meet a day or two later.'

'Only a day or two?'

'Yes.'

Jonathan rose. 'Madam! It has always been my contention that the more subtle pleasures of lovemaking are reserved for those with daring and abandon. How do you feel about that?'

She grinned. 'I have always felt the same way, sir.'

'Then we're of a mind.'

'We are that'

'En route.'

At the first light of morning he woke hazily and turned to her, fitting her bottom into his lap. She snuggled against him slightly in response, and he wrapped her up in his arms.

'Good morning.' His voice was husky as a result of little sleep and much exercise.

'Good morning,' she whispered.

He rested his forehead against the back of her head and buried his face in her hair. 'Maggie.'

'What?'

'Nothing. Saying your name.'

'Oh. That's nice. It isn't much of a name, though. Not romantic. No vowels to sing. Like Diane, or Alexandra, or Thomasyn. Maggie is a substantial name. Beefy. You may not waste away dreaming of a Maggie, but you can always trust a good old Maggie.'

He smiled at the curling sound of her vowels. Proximity and body heat began to work their effect, apparent almost at once to her because of their postures. 'I think I'll just make a little trip to your WC first, if you can stand the wait.'

He released her. 'Don't come back cold.'

She slipped out of bed, and he slipped back toward sleep.

'Jonathan?'

He was fully awake immediately. She had spoken softly, but there was a brittle tension in her voice that set off alarms in him. He sat up.

'What is it?'

She stood in the doorway, an unlit cigarette dangling between her fingers. With only her brief panties on, she looked frail and vulnerable.

'What is it, Maggie?'

'The bathroom.' Her voice was thin.

'Yes?'

'Jonathan?' Tight terror in her voice.

As he swung out of bed, he took up his robe and handed it to her, then he went quickly down the hall to the open door of the bathroom.

A man sat on the toilet seat, huddled over with his arms wrapped around his stomach. He was dressed in a black suit, and his graying hair was perfectly combed. The scene was denied dark humor by the terrible stench that filled the room and by the thick amoeba of blood that spread over the tile floor, fed by drips from his saturated