The prop made choking noises, trying to nod. His face was turning blue. Tom flung the man sideways into the sale display, a six foot high pyramid of six packs of Rolling Rock. The pyramid toppled, green bottles exploding. So much for that sale, Tom thought.

He felt more like himself with a cold Spaten in his hand and the cassette deck going; he felt more human. Back on the highway, he opened his smallblock up and hit it. The sister giggled wetly. They traveled the Route into darkness, trees and fields sweeping by, on their way to the old dirt utility road which would take them home—

To the labyrinth.

««—»»

All Lydia knew was that she liked him.

She thought of a mouse in a maze. She felt as though something was expected of her, but she didn’t know what.

The answer, she knew, was in her heart. In her heart she wanted to sleep with Wade St. John. She wanted to physically love him.

But…

Why was it you never knew when to trust a man? Too often, the good ones, the ones who seemed honest and sincere, were the ones who wound up writing your name and number on the bathroom wall, with a list of proficiencies. Then they’d brag to their friends about the latest horny bitch they’d knocked the bottom out of. Jesus, what a nightmare—damned if you did and damned if you didn’t, because if you didn’t, you were frigid or a lesbian. Reading men was like reading foreign magazines. All you saw were the pictures.

Lydia felt jittery. She knew what she wanted—of course! She wanted things to be perfect. Didn’t everybody?

She lit the Marlboro she’d been tapping for the last two days.

“I don’t believe it,” Wade exclaimed. “You finally lit it.”

Lydia smiled moronically. She rested back and caught that beautiful first drag wallop to the upper bronchi.

“You look like you just took a toke of Jamaican.”

“Shit on that garbage,” she said. “This is better.” She dragged again; she was stalling. The exit signs were coming up in their lights. What am I going to do? she pleaded to herself.

“It’s still early,” Wade said. “How about a nightcap?”

“Okay,” but then she looked down at her cutoffs and top. “But I don’t think they’ll let me into the Exham Inn dressed like this.”

“Forget the Exham Inn. We’re going to Wade’s Inn. The selection is limited but the service is outstanding.”

Lydia smoked and nodded. He’d made the decision for her, extending her reprieve. There was nothing like borrowed time.

Wade parked up close in the lot. Lydia got out with her suitcase, as though someone might steal it. She smoked her Marlboro right down to the butt and flicked it. Yes, a glamorous habit, she thought. Wade was scanning the lot and seemed confounded.

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

“Friend’s car, it’s not here. I was just wondering where he is.” He walked around the Vette, toward the path. “Come on, I won’t bite. I had my teeth pulled weeks ago.”

Immediately, he put his arm about her waist. She felt comfortable like that, his hand touching her skin, his pinky stuck in her belt loop. They walked close, bumping hips.

The security guard at the dorm desk was reading Shotgun News. He gave them a quick eye, then reburied his face in the ads. She and Wade rode the elevator up to 8. She could not escape the absurd image of herself: standing in an elevator with a student’s arm around her, badge pinned to her cutoffs, and holding a suitcase full of spectroanalyzed impactation. The perfect “What’s wrong with this picture?” He led her down the silent hall to his room, turned on the light, and said, “There’s a surprise for you in the refrigerator.”

Beside the trash compactor—which she still thought of as the height of indulgence—was a small fridge devoted to extravagant beers. Right up front stood the devil’s face on a bottle of—

“Old Nick!” she exclaimed. “I’ll bet you got it just for me.”

“Actually I didn’t,” Wade confessed. “My friends and I are beer snobs. We keep our refrigerators stocked with a variety of the best brew. In a world of Bud, the true beer connoisseur must maintain vast reserves.”

Lydia took his word for it. He poured two Nicks into good pilsner glasses and proposed a toast. “To spectrophotometry.”

“Cheers,” she said.

But she thought: What now?

««—»»

It had to be a dream. It had to be.

Lois Hartley lay naked beneath smothering, moist heat and orange light, paralyzed. I’m paralyzed, she thought, and felt idiotically compelled to laugh. For she was horny too—very horny— and that’s why she wasn’t afraid. Paralysis plus nudity plus sexual excitation could only mean one thing: nightmare.

I’m having a nightmare, that’s all.

Blobs of voices oozed around her ears. Besmeared faces hovered, inquisitive before the sourceless orange field. They were dream voyeurs, another paradigmatic symptom. Yes, this was a classic nightmare. Sigmund Freud meets Krafft-Ebing in the House of Gustave Dore. The hot light and its confines, of course, symbolized the womb: birth trauma. Paralysis while naked and painfully aroused equaled hidden desires to be dominated, or what her psych prof called the Rape Fantastique. This was a sex nightmare. It was harmless, so she might as well lie back and enjoy it.

“There.”

Good.

Lois could still not see the dream watchers’ faces. They hovered behind orange fog. But she could see the fat hand gripping her arm. Something was stuck in her flesh—more dream symbolism. It was a large hypodermic needle. As the fat hand worked it out of her arm, Lois felt no pain. Penetration/withdrawal. A big bead of blood welled at the puncture. Then a strange warm mouth sucked the blood off. Lois wished she could see. This was straight out of de Sade, the third work of Justine, where Prince Gernande drank blood from his wife’s veins to excite himself before intercourse. Those Libertines sure had class.

“Solubility tests will help us determine optimum doses.”

“She’ll be good and soft.”

Oh, good!

The faces shrank back, their words merging. Lois couldn’t remember going to bed, and during some part of this dream, she recalled being tossed into a car trunk; she recalled a face peering down. And whatever happened to Zyro?

Zyro wasn’t exactly her boyfriend; he was too self disposed to share himself with anyone. He was the classic campus novelist—unpublished. He liked to walk around disgruntled, claiming that his “work” was “too aphoristic to be accepted by the capitalistic hierarchy. Nobody understands me.” He believed he would die young, and then his work would be heralded as the voice of his generation. He wrote “indictment of the times” fiction: deadbeat, fucked up in the head on drugs characters with no social utility or motivation, which was supposed to serve as an astute literary observation. Christ, these days all a person had to do was write a plotless book about homosexual cocaine addicted dropouts and it was an instant best seller. Anyway, Lois had arranged to meet Zyro at the Pickman Gallery. She remembered waiting for him, but that was all…

The voyeurs were gone. Lois’ eyes darted right. A thin black line pulsated on the wall. How did this play into the dream? The black line looked like an incision.

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