with the television. When she read her magazines she did it with the radio or stereo or television playing. Her place was never quiet except when he was there. He was so quiet in everything he did.
She thought of him as “he.” She called him Roger, now, but the name did not fit him somehow. He could no longer be Mr. Dyce, of course; they were too intimate for that, but still she felt that the formal appellation fit him better than Roger. In her mind, he was “he” and “him,” and the two words filled her brain so that she could think of little else.
He had been in the bathroom so long she began to worry. The withdrawal seemed symptomatic of the relationship as a whole. She was losing him, he was pulling away from her. She could sense it but did not know what to do about it. His impotence was part of the problem, she was sure of it. God knows she had tried, she had done everything she could think of she had been positively brazen about it, flaunting herself, pawing him like a whore, but he had managed it only the first time. Of course she didn’t want him to brood about it since that would only make it worse, so she had reassured him constantly that it didn’t matter to her. It did matter, of course. She nearly ground her teeth with frustration as she lay next to him or on him or under him without so much as a suggestion of satisfaction. There were other things he could do to make her happy, but she sensed that even a hint would horrify him. He was so innocent, and so annoying. And yet he was her man, and she would cling to him no matter what. They were intended for each other; she knew that much even if she did not know what was wrong.
He had been gone too long and the apartment seemed to shrink in on her with the silence.
“Are you all right?” she called.
There was no answer. Perhaps he had fallen and hit his head on the tub.
Helen got out of bed. From the doorway to the bedroom she could see across the living room to the bathroom door, which was open a crack.
“Roger?”
If he had wanted privacy he would have closed the door. One of the pillows was in the doorway of the bedroom. Helen hugged it to her for a moment before deciding.
She crossed the living room, a distance of no more than fifteen feet, and stopped in front of the bathroom door. She listened.
At first she heard nothing at all except her own breathing. Holding her breath, she leaned closer. A strange sound, one she could not identify, something being softly patted, something like a swish, then nothing.
Then more, a high moaning, faint but definitely a moaning, like a child holding back a whimper. He was hurt, she knew it. She could picture him lying on the floor, blood on his head where it had struck the bathtub.
“I called but you didn’t answer,” she said even before she opened the door in case he wasn’t hurt.
An apparition stood before her. There was no light on in the bathroom and he shone like a ghost in the gloom. He was chalky white from head to toe. Deathly white. For one irrational moment she thought he was a standing corpse.
His eyes were wide and staring and his lips were peeled back from his teeth. She stood right in front of him and yet she was sure he did not see her. He had been looking at himself in the mirror and his mind was still fixed there, staring at his sepulchral reflection.
He moaned once more, almost a pleading, and it was then that Helen noticed that his penis was hugely erect.
“Roger?” she said, not knowing what world he was in at the moment.
He shook his head as if trying to clear it and powder floated off. Dyce struggled to focus on her, but Helen could not keep her eyes off the pure white of his stiff penis. The powder was smooth and uniform and had not been touched since application.
In the darkness its size was accentuated by its pallor. Helen thought it shined. She took one step toward him and he threw his arms around her, yanking her into his body. She groaned with gratitude as she felt the rigidity ram against her.
Becker sat at the corner of the bar so he could watch the door and see when his man was leaving. He had no need to watch him directly or to keep tabs on him in the mirror; the guy was not about to exit through the toilet window or the kitchen. He had no reason to know that Becker was tailing him, no reason to be suspicious of a thing.
Right now the man was sitting quietly at a table for two in the singles hangout called the Crossroads. Insurance literature was spread out on the table in front of him, and the man was studying it as he sipped a cup of coffee. He had a settled-in look about him as if he were here for the balance of the evening.
Becker had got onto the man initially when Laurie Seeger produced his business card from a desk drawer where Mick had presumably tossed it. Mick had purchased a life-insurance policy just before the birth of their first child three years earlier. Recently, Mick had contacted the insurance agency to increase his policy. The man who had sold him the original policy had since retired, but the new man who was now sipping coffee in the Crossroads had called on Mick and serviced the new requirement. It was, as far as Laurie knew, their only contact.
But it was not the insurance man’s only contact with one of the missing men. Marley of Guileford, mother’s name Cederquist, had taken out a policy from the same man two years earlier. None of the others had, but Vohl of Branford, mother’s name Nordholm, received a brochure from an insurance company the day before Becker’s second visit to Mrs. Vohl. The brochure was still lying on the kitchen counter, unopened, and on the brochure, stamped by hand in the bottom corner, was the name of the man’s agency.
Three of eight was pressing coincidence to the point of probability. Becker had watched the man for two days now in a sporadic pattern, checking in on his activities now and then, never staying long enough to draw attention to himself He did not expect to catch the man in the act; rather he wanted to get a feel of the man, to fill his nostrils with the man’s scent, and to get a sense of his pattern so that any aberrance would send off a warming signal.
The bartender placed another diet soda in front of Becker.
“From the lady,” said the bartender.
Cindi lifted a glass to him from the back of the room and Becker rose to join her. The insurance salesman cast him a casual glance as he passed, but Becker did not look back.
“We’ve been watching you,” Cindi said, “wondering if you’d ever turn around. Most men scope out a place. What’s the matter, not curious?”
“Who’s we?”
“Alan’s in the john. What’s the point of coming to a place like the Crossroads if you don’t check out the action?”
“I had this silly idea about getting something to drink,” said Becker.
“Yeah, I usually come to a singles place if I feel like a Coke, too. A buck and a half seems like a fair price for half a can.”
She was still wearing her spandex climbing outfit, but the front zipper was open far enough to suggest cleavage and her hair was flowing freely over her shoulders. Becker had not realized she had such a full mane of it.
“Are you a detective of some kind?” Becker said.
“I notice things,” she said, then grinned.
It was peculiar, Becker thought, but it seemed that he could see her better in the half light of the bar than in the full sunshine. There was a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose and her cheekbones. Not enough to even qualify as a dusting, a countable number. Her teeth were unnaturally bright when she smiled because of the fluorescent lighting, and her last swallow of beer had left her with a foam mustache just on the corners of her mouth.
“I notice you’ve been climbing again,” said Becker. “Or else you’ve got a very limited wardrobe.”
“Right on both counts. We tried a new face today. It’s about a quarter mile farther north than the last one.”
“How is it?”
“Kind of tough. We missed you.”
She seemed a little older than she had on the rocks, too, for which Becker was grateful. He had trouble finding himself attracted to women who were too young for him. Cindi, if one were liberal enough about these things, was just old enough for a man his age. Her bottom teeth were not quite straight, as if orthodontia had
