Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

'You talk about it a lot.'

'Twice I've mentioned it,' she said. 'But it's been in my mind a little more than that.'

'Why?'

'Don't be coy,' she said, a little sternly. 'Or I'll beat you.'

'I might not like that.'

'Oh, you would.'

'Really . . .' he said, with just a touch of anxiety in his voice. He could not imagine having that thing, her Terror, give him pleasure, however expertly it was wielded.

'It can be gentle, if I want it to be.'

'That?' he said. 'Gentle?'

'Oh yes.' She made a scooping motion with her free hand. 'If I have a man's sex in my palm, here.' He got an instant and uncannily sharp picture of what she had in mind. Her victim on all fours, and that scooping motion of hers; the taking up of his cock and balls, ready for her. Completely vulnerable; completely humiliated. He'd never let a woman do anything like that to him, however much she promised it was to give him pleasure.

'I can see you're not convinced,' she said, 'even when I don't have your face to look at. So you'll just have to take it on trust. I could touch men with this and they'd shoot like sixteen-year-olds. Even Valentino.'

'Valentino?'

'And he was queer.'

'Rudolph Valentino?'

'Yes. You didn't know he was that way?'

'No, it's just. . . he's been dead a long time.'

'Yes, it was sad to lose him so quickly,' she said.

She obviously had no difficulty agreeing with him about how long the Great Lover had been deceased, even though it made nonsense of her story.

'We had a great party for him, out on the lawn, two weeks after he'd been taken from us.' She turned away from him and laid the switch back on the mantelpiece. 'I know you don't believe a word of what I've told you. You've done the mathematics, and none of it's remotely possible.' She leaned on the mantelpiece, her chin on the heel of her hand. 'What have you decided? That I'm some kind of trespasser? A little sexually deranged but essentially harmless?'

'I suppose something like that.'

'Hmm.' She mused on this for a moment. Then she said: 'You'll change your mind, eventually. But there's no hurry. I've waited a long time for this.'

'This?'

'You. Us.'

She left the thought there to puzzle him a moment, then she turned, the dusting of melancholy that had crept into her voice over the course of the last few exchanges brushed away. She was bright again; gleaming with harmless trouble-making.

'Have you ever done it with a man?'

'Oh, Jesus.'

'So you have!'

He was caught. There was no use denying it.

'Only . . . twice. Or three times.'

'You can't remember.'

'Okay, three times.'

'Was it good?'

'I'll never do it again, so I guess that's your answer.'

'Why are you so sure?'

'There's some things you can be that sure of,' he said. Then, a little less confidently, 'Aren't there?'

'Even men who aren't queer imagine other men sometimes. Yes?'

'Well . . .'

'Perhaps you're the exception to the rule. Perhaps you're the one the Canyon isn't going to touch.' She started to walk back toward him. 'But don't be too certain. It takes the pleasure out of things. Maybe you should let a woman take charge for a while.'

'Are we talking about sex?'

'Valentino swore he only liked men, but as soon as I took charge . . .'

'Don't tell me. He was like a naughty schoolboy.'

'No. Like a baby.' Her hand went to her breast, and she squeezed it, catching the nipple in the groove between her thumb and forefinger, as though to proffer it for Todd to suckle.

He knew it wasn't smart to show too much emotion to the woman. If there was some genuine streak of derangement in her, it would only empower her more. But he couldn't help himself. He took half a step backward, aware that the trenches of his mouth were suddenly running with spit at the thought of her nipple in his mouth.

'You shouldn't let your mind get between you and what your body wants,' she said. She took her hand from her breast. The nipple stood hard beneath the light fabric.

'I know what my body wants.'

'Really?' she said, sounding genuinely surprised at the claim. 'You know what it wants deep down? All the way down to the very darkest place?'

He didn't reply.

She reached out and took gentle hold of his hand. Her fingers were cold and dry; his were clammy.

'What are you afraid of?' she said. 'Not me, surely.'

'I'm not afraid,' he said.

'Then come to me,' she told him, softly. 'I'll find out what you want.' He let her draw him closer to her; let her hands move up over his chest toward his face.

'You're a big man,' she murmured.

Her fingers were at his neck now. Whatever she was promising about discovering his desires, he knew what she wanted; she wanted to see his face. And though there was a part of his mind that resisted the idea, there was a greater part that wanted her to see him, for better or worse. He let her hands go up to his jawline; let her fingers rest on the adhesive tape that held the mask of gauze against his wound.

'May I . . . ?' she asked him.

'Is this what you came here to do?'

She made a small, totally ambiguous smile. Then she pulled at the tape. It came away with a gentle tug. He felt the gauze loosen. He stared down into her face, wondering—in this long moment before it was done and beyond saving—if she would reject him when she saw the scars and the swelling. A scene from that same silent horror movie he'd seen in his mind's eye many times since Burrows had done his brutal work flickered in his head: Katya as the appalled heroine, reeling away in disgust at what her curiosity had uncovered. He the monster, enraged at her revulsion and murderous in his self-contempt.

It was too late to stop it now. She was pulling at the gauze, coaxing it away from the hurts it concealed.

He felt the cool air upon his wounds, and cooler still, her scrutiny. The gauze dropped to the floor between them. He stood there before her, more naked than he'd ever been in his life—even in nightmares of nakedness, more naked—awaiting judgment.

She wasn't horrified. She wasn't screaming, wasn't flinching. She simply looked at him, without any interpretable expression on her face.

'Well?' he said.

'He made a mess of you, no doubt about that. But it's healing. And if my opinion is worth anything to you, I'd say you're going to be fine. Better than fine.'

She took a moment to assess him further. To trace the line of his jaw, the curve of his temple.

'But it's never going to be perfect,' she said.