Kimmi lifted the knocker ring that was held in the mouth of the now familiar dog’s head. A woman barely wearing her dress instantly opened the door. All her body parts seemed to be exploding out of it, yet it miraculously covered all those bits that are not deemed suitable for immature audiences.
     “Kim, darling.” She drew Kimmi into an embrace, peering over the girl’s shoulder at Will. “You’ve brought a friend. That’s lovely.” She let go of Kimmi and extended her hand to Will. “I’m Stephanie.”
     “Will,” he said, shaking her hand. She had a firm business-like grip.
     Kimmi led Will around a corner to the right, to a flight of stairs. As he began to ascend, the clang of pans drew his attention to a brightly-lit kitchen, all chrome and steel. He could see a dark-haired woman in something shimmery and golden, before a turn in the stair cut off his view.
     From above, a jazzy piece began to play. Will didn’t recognize it. But jazz made him feel better. The woman, Stephanie, hadn’t been much older than Kimmi—perhaps there would be someone more mature up here, someone he could relate to.
     The room they entered was large, but its furnishings were arranged in small clusters for intimate socializing. People were casually chatting in groups of two or three or five, sitting on the floor, on the arms of chairs and one or two on the lap of someone else. It looked like a cozy party. The hum of voices underlayed the saxophone; he recognized it now, Joshua Redman. It felt like the average cocktail party at the U with less inebriation. Except for the clothing. There was a distinct tendency here toward leather and latex, black and red dominated and nearly every costume was studded with chrome. There was an excess of shaved heads among the men; more boots than he had seen since the last time he had accidentally stepped into a biker bar. No one seemed threatening or overtly sexual.
     “Well look who’s here. So you decided to grace us with your presence after all.” It was Connie Crage putting his arm around Kimmi. He pulled her up close, possessively and grinned at Will.
     Will felt a hard anger start in his belly.
     “I see you brought a friend,” Connie said and with one arm still around Kimmi, he extended the other hand. “How are you, Will?”
     Will accepted the handshake.
     “You know the professor?” Kimmi seemed puzzled.
     The room shifted. Will felt as if everyone were looking at him. The murmur of conversation continued unabated. If they were looking, it was unfocused, inattentive.
     “Welcome to my home,” Connie said. “I wasn’t aware that you and Kimmi were friends. But what’s mine is yours.” He bowed, theatrically.
     Will raised an eyebrow. He did not trust himself to speak. He looked beyond Connie at the opposite side of the room, at a wall of glass, squares of glass. French doors. One of them opened into a garden. Will could see bamboo waving, moved by a wind.
     Connie appeared to take no offense at Will’s silence. His arm still around Kimmi, he stroked her back with his hand. “What do you teach, Will?”
     It really could have been a faculty party. What are you teaching this term, Will? “I teach history, political history, regional history, class struggle, the basics.”
     “Is that right? I find history fascinating. Particularly Asian history. I’ve built a pretty fair collection of texts on the Orient. Remind me to show you my library before you leave tonight.” Connie extended his hand again. “Enjoy yourself. I have to make sure everyone is taken care of. We’ll get together, later.” He gave Kimie a squeeze and let her go. “Take care of Will, Kimmi.”
     As Connie moved away, Will realized that it was their host the guests had been watching, not him. The room shifted again as everyone noted Connie’s movement. It was not as though the guests were staring at him. Some even stood with their backs turned toward him. It was that each little grouping seemed, unconsciously, to have a lookout, someone who could keep Connie in a direct line of sight, by a glance could know his position in the room.
     There wasn’t anything obviously malevolent about Crage. He was neither too smooth nor too rough in this milieu. He was just a man in his mid-fifties, Will thought, who had taken the time to keep himself trim and fit while he made his millions and, Will imagined, honed his skill with the art of bondage and discipline. Will’s anger was deflated. He wanted to leave, but he’d come this far and he was still too far away from his objective. The reason for his journey here was to find Emmy or not to find her here. To find out if there were an aspect of her that existed here among these people, a side of her that she had never shared with him.
     Kimmi was taking him by the elbow guiding him into the long room. She stopped at each island of people, introduced him to couples, to groups of three and four. “The professor…Professor Will…Alex, Luther, Harvey…Ginger, Mary, Hope, Crystal…” Names he would never remember. Faces he’d forget before morning. They appraised him, teased him with their eyes, flirted.
     Kimmi was proud, she was beautiful in her pride. She held his arm for his protection, her possession for a little while, for an hour or two he was her friend–her date, this educated man. He had never felt so much a part of the established social order as he did now locked in Kimmi’s point of view.
     Aside from their clothing there was nothing extraordinary about the people he met. They seemed mostly a little over thirty, a little under forty, a few gray heads. Aside from the ubiquity of leather, they were any office crowd, any group of friends sprinkled with strangers that made up the average party. No more interesting than that. The sort of people who would have flat-out bored Emmy. Will couldn’t completely suppress the laughter of relief, it shook his shoulders and made his face red.
     “Hey, Professor, you look funny. Are you choking or something?”
     “I’m fine, Kimmi.” Will cleared his throat.
     They arrived at the end of the room. At a large stone fireplace. The hearth had been swept clean and an arrangement of flowers, of orchids and lilies, stood in the center.
     Five or six people stood and sat near the fireplace as if they sought to be warmed by the flames of lilies, by the hot stamen tongues. As if it were not a warm summer evening, warm enough that the breeze, which occasionally entered through the open French doors, was more welcome than an actual fire would have been.
     “I like privacy. Privacy is very important, don’t you think? I get distracted so easily.” She was about thirty-five, ordinary European mix. Her hair, medium brown with the usual red highlights, touched her bare shoulders. Her concern for privacy did not extend as far as her costume. She was covered only so much as would have kept her from getting arrested on a California beach. A strategic strap of leather across her breasts allowed them to move with absolute freedom. She saw Will looking at her and raised a hand to her mouth. A lavender scarf was threaded through the steel ring of her leather wrist cuff. She drew the scarf across her lips.
     The man she was with leaned over and whispered something in her ear that made her smile.
     Will turned to Kimmi. “What about safe sex? Do these people know about AIDS?”
     “Of course,” Kimmi said. “Everyone uses condoms.”
     That’s not good enough for me, Will thought. Condoms break and then every person either partner has had sex with enters the room. What they were doing seemed so careless.
     “Besides,” Kimmi said, “most of the people here are couples who’ve been together for awhile. Like Joan and Matthew.” Kimmi indicated a couple in the corner. The woman was on her knees with her back to the room. Her partner held the end of her leash and was brushing it against his cheek while he conversed with another couple.
     Will was about to tell Kimmi that he was ready to leave, that he had gotten what he came for, when Kimmi’s attention was drawn across the room back in the direction from which they had come. Connie stood at the bottom of the stairs leading to the third floor. Kimmi seemed riveted by his gaze.
     “What’s on the third floor?” Will asked, trying to divert her.
     “Rooms,” she said. “You’ll be ok.” And she left him standing alone in a field of strangers wearing his boredom and anxiety like a shield. As he watched Kimmi ascend the stairs with Connie Crage, the man she had been so certain was going to kill her, Will felt helpless. He doubted that Kimmi was in any immediate physical danger. It wasn’t that. It was her absolute docility, her complicity in her own destruction that baffled him. He was amazed at himself. A few days ago, he had despised this girl. Now he grieved for her. She was dying, scattering pieces of herself, giving away her right to self-definition. If she managed somehow to live beyond the next few years into a time when the irrepressible beauty of her youth was gone, when the middle-aged men like Connie stopped paying her bills, what would be left of Kimmi to find her way in her new world? How many were there like her, damaged, wandering in a narrowing world?
     It made him think of Zoe.
     He wanted to call her, to hear her push at him, to know that Zoe didn’t let anyone define her. Not even, and especially not, her father. Zoe’s anger was her salvation and he wanted to feel it burn away this sadness.
     There would be a telephone or two or three in this house. Connie was rich. He could afford to pay for a father’s transcontinental call. Will circled the room with his eyes. To his right an open door led to a slate paved walkway covered over by an upper level wing of the house. Nothing to his left but windows full of transparent people mingling and moving and disappearing into the wall. He didn’t want to use a phone in this room, even if he could find it. He wanted privacy. In front of him, across the room, the stairway leading up to “rooms”, up to where Kimmi and Connie and a number of others were coupling or thripling. No doubt there were telephones up there. But there was no reason to go there. He would find one here on this level and hope for privacy and that no one would catch him in the act of stealing long distance time.
     At the opposite end of the room an opening in the wall beckoned. There were considerably fewer people in the living room now than when he and Kimmi had meandered across it, and he was halfway to the other side before he was detained.
     “Hi. I’m Faith. Are you looking for something?”
     He barely noted her costume. Except that like the others, there wasn’t much of it and she sagged in it a little. There were faint lines struggling against the makeup around her eyes.
     “Yes. I’m looking for a telephone. I need to call someone.”
     “And after?”
     “Quiet time. I think I’ll be looking for some quiet time,” he said.
     “There’s one upstairs,” Faith said. “What’s your name?”
     “Will. I assume there is at least one on this floor as well.”
     “Will and Faith. Almost cosmic, wouldn’t you say?” Faith began to look irritated. “Look, I know I’m not some young thing, but neither are you and you look like you might appreciate some experience. Or did you just come here to gawk?”
     Will stared at her. “I came her to find someone.”
     “In general, or in particular?”
     “Particular. Emmy. Did you know her?” Will asked.
     “Emmy? What does she look like?”
     What did she look like in ten words or less? He could describe her if he had enough time, but how did one choose, among all the possibilities, just those few attributes that would make Emmy appear recognizable to Faith? “Brown hair,” he said. “Short, thin. She had big eyes. She was extraordinary.”
     “You’re looking for your lover?” Faith frowned. “You’ve never been to one of these have you?” She tilted her head back appraising him. “All this past tense. Is this lover-girl dead?” She jabbed a finger into his chest. “Well, I can tell you right now. No one here is into that shit.”
     Faith left him alone, mouth agape, in the middle of the room.
     A little rattled, Will continued on toward the far end, to the narrow opening. Arriving, he found that the narrowness of the opening was an optical illusion created by the maze-like offset of two walls. A stainless steel ring was attached to the second wall. There was no scarf in the ring.
     Beyond the opening was a formal dining room with an oblong table large enough to easily seat twelve. The room was lit only by overflow light from the living room and at first he did not see the woman who sat quietly at the far end of the table. It startled him when she spoke.
     “Have you ever seen so much cherry and maple and oak? I told Connie it wouldn’t work.” She was dressed so thoroughly in black that her pale white face floated unanchored above her hands.
     Mimery, Will thought. “I like the wood.”
     “I’m La’Tris,” she said as if he should recognize her name. “Pale American wood just isn’t right for rooms like these.”
     Will offered no comment.
     “I can understand a lack of taste, but when you’re exposed to quality, and believe me I exposed him, you should be able to recognize the difference. Do you know what he said? He said he wasn’t willing to have the Amazon in his home. Now, I suppose that was some kind of environmental comment. But I’m an artist. I have my reputation to protect.”
     Will was surprised. Connie Crage, developer and environmentalist. “Does he use these woods in the apartments and offices he builds?”
     “Who cares? Only the riffraff see those places. Important people come here.”
     Will wondered what all the lawyers and the upper middle class condo dwellers would think of being portrayed as riffraff.
     As if she had become bored with her subject, La’Tris abruptly rose and came directly to Will. She stood so close in front of him that he stepped back.
     “Get your butt upstairs,” she said.
     Will thought of Kimmi’s loose cannons, and how a loose man was not safe around here. Unless, of course, he is loose. “I’m just looking for a telephone.”
     “Oh, hell.” La’Tris stomped away into the light behind Will. He turned his head to watch her go. Stiletto heels on thigh-high boots, skin-emulating latex. Beyond her, scattered around the living room like leftover mannequins, were a few lone figures. There were no couples left in that big lonely room.
     He turned back to the dining room. Perhaps there was a way out that didn’t involve going backward. No point in going left. That was the front of the house. He put his hand on the wall to the right of him and let the wall guide him while his eyes adjusted to the dimness. It didn’t seem likely to him that there would be a phone here and he didn’t really feel that it was a private enough space for conversation with Zoe.
     He found another opening similar to the one he had come through. This one was completely disguised because the wall behind it extended beyond the end of the first wall. The opening was formed by the offset. There was no ring on this wall. Will entered a narrow hall lit by bulbs recessed in the ceiling high above. The polished oak floor glowed in the soft light. On one end of the hall was an elevator. In front of him and off a little to the side the opposite wall ended. He rounded it and paused briefly to be sure the ring on this wall held no scarf, then passed the rest of the way through the maze gate and into the library.
     One wall was made entirely of French doors just like the living room, and like that room, the doors here faced the garden. Soft blue light cast long sensuous shadows across the landscape. He could see a sliver of the living room through the bamboo and other vegetation. Aside from the blue ambience of the garden, a single lamp on a single desk gave off the only light in the room, making deep shadows. Will ran his hand over the spines of books. There must be hundreds of books here, he thought.
     Next to the lamp on the desk was a telephone. Now that he had found it, Will hesitated. What had given him purpose before, gave him anxiety now. He turned away from the phone, away from Zoe and back to the room. He walked across the library, to where another truncated wall revealed a passage. A green silk scarf hanging at the entryway stopped him. He remembered Kimmi telling him about the scarf code, but he couldn’t recall what the color green meant. Light from the garden cast it’s shadow against the wall, around which the chi of the library flowed into this other mysterious place. The curves of the shadow were like the curves of a woman’s back. Its fingers, the fingers of her lover. As he watched, he realized that he was watching the shadow of real lovers, caressing and groping in the other room. The shadow play transfixed him, and a vague desire, which had teased at him over the course of the evening, grew into a troubled yearning; it felt like a betrayal of Emmy, and of himself.
     He couldn’t take his eyes away, even when he sensed someone behind him. His skin prickled with an electrical charge and his nostrils detected the scent of a woman nearby.
     “Do you like to watch?” Her voice was smooth and complex with a trace of an accent. He could almost feel her breath on him. He turned and was drawn into a pair of dark intense eyes. Much too close. He pulled back bringing her into focus. She was a very attractive woman in her forties. Southeast Asian, he thought. She must be Connie’s wife. It was her dress he had seen as a flash of gold in the kitchen as he mounted the steps when they first arrived. It was a delicate chainmail that molded to her form and was somewhat less dazzling than her warm golden skin.
     “I’m sorry. I didn’t meant to startle you.”
     “Oh, no, ” Will blurted, “not at all.”
     “So, you must be Professor Adlehardt.”
     “And you must be Mrs. Crage,” Will said.
     “Anne,” she smiled warmly. The proper hostess. “I’m sorry about the young woman…Emmy. It is such a terrible tragedy to lose someone so close, and such a young life. But we heal when the sorrow has ripened in our heart.”
     Shantideva. “Are you Buddhist?”
     “No. Roman Catholic. When they met, my mother was a functionary for the French Colonial government in Saigon. My father was a businessman, not religious, so I received education in Catholic school.
     “Do they teach you the words of Buddhist saints in Catholic school?”
     “You might be surprised at what they teach. Thomas Merton was a scholar of Buddhism.”
     “Ah, yes.” Will returned Anne’s smile.
     “So, would you like to go in?” Anne Crage gestured toward the room.
     “Well…” Will really didn’t think he wanted to see more of the lovers than their shadows.
     “Oh,” Anne laughed, “Those two are in the garden. The green scarf means the room is empty. You know, green light.”
     Will expelled a nervous sigh. It wasn’t just the shadows that made him hesitate, but the proximity of this woman. She brushed past him. Touching him more with the air of her passing body than with her self. It was her gentle slipstream that pulled him into the long softly lit room.
     Unlike the hard industrial stone and steel motif of the main house, this east wing seemed more human, filled with wood and earth-toned fabric. Along both walls locked glass cabinets held a variety of treasures: antique books, a small collection of civil war pistols, a liquor cabinet, and a menagerie of leather S&M accoutrements. Will took note of the latter. Whips of several kinds, corsets, a row of hoods displayed over black mannequin heads. Near the end of the row, one shiny plastic head reflected light; its hood was missing. Lost or taken? Will wondered. Could the hood that had covered Emmy’s face belong to this mannequin head?
     “One’s missing,” Will said, gesturing toward the head. “Is it in use?”
     Something flickered across Anne’s face. Was it fear? Confusion? But her voice sounded amused when she spoke. “So, this is your first time. You seem bewildered, perhaps.”
     “I don’t know what to think, really. It all seems a bit cold.”
     “It is about the senses, not the emotions. Many come to these gatherings with loved ones, or close friends. Some are entirely monogamous. But many others choose to abandon these attachments.”
     “Then isn’t it just masturbation, really?”
     “Ah, but masturbation can be delightful, no?”
     Will felt his face flush and Anne lowered her eyes demurely, adding to his discomfort.
     “Perhaps you would like a drink to make you feel more at ease.”
     “Yes, please,” Will turned toward the liquor cabinet. There in the center of it, as if in a place of honor, was a green bottle with faeries and flowers. Beside the bottle was an elegant silver spoon, like a tea infuser, but with slots instead of holes. Next to the spoon were two silver cups and a silver bowl filled with sugar cubes. The bowl and cups were decorated with the same leaf motif as the green bottle.
     “Is this absinthe?” He knew it was.
     “Oh, yes. Connie likes to give it to his friends. This is the real stuff, made from wormwood. Would you like to try it?”
     Will hesitated. It would be wise to stay sober, and absinthe went a little beyond just alcohol didn’t it? But if he was going to follow Emmy, he had to follow precisely. He had to know what it was like, what it had been like for Emmy. He nodded.
     “I must warn you. It is very potent. And too much is not good for the kidneys.”
     “I want to try it,” he said.
     Anne left the room for a short time. Will could hear her in the library opening a drawer. When she came back, she held a set of keys in her hand. She unlocked the cabinet and removed the two silver cups. She opened the wooden doors on the bottom of the cabinet revealing a wet bar, complete with ice machine. Ceremoniously, she opened the absinthe bottle, picked up a sugar cube with the slotted spoon, and covered it with ice, then poured the thick green liquid over the ice and sugar, into the silver cups.
     The drink was syrupy sweet with a slight bitterness. Will tipped it up, like a shot of Tequila, and let it slide down his throat. The bitterness quickly dissipated, leaving a pleasant aftertaste of sweet anise.
     Anne had seated herself on a sofa near the garden window and beckoned him to join her. He sat at what he thought was a safe distance. But the alcohol was already beginning to have an effect, and when he looked at her, he felt much too vulnerable.
     “Did you meet Connie in Vietnam?”
      ”So you want to talk about my husband.” She did not immediately continue. Her statement sank into the cushions of the sofa.
     He looked down at her hand. Smaller than Emmy’s.
     “We met in Saigon. He was a handsome American officer. My parents were very happy and very sad. They knew he would take me away from Vietnam. That he would save my life, but that he would take me away and they might never see me again,” She looked directly at him, her mouth trembled slightly. “After all these years, it is yesterday and I see them packing up the family memories in my suitcases. To remember us by, they said. But how could I forget them? That wasn’t it. They were sending these treasures with me so that their grandchildren would know them, because they knew they would never leave.” Anne shook her head a little as if to clear it and said, “But you asked me about Connie.”
     Will nodded. He was feeling warm and gentle and he thought he could listen to Anne’s voice for a very long time.
     “I didn’t fall in love with him right away. He was very unhappy. I did not want to be in love with an unhappy man. He kept telling me about his best friend. His buddy. What a great guy he was. And all the time his friend was already dead. I asked him why he talked about his friend like he was alive and he said he had to bring him back to his family. So, Connie said, he was practicing, he was keeping Wes alive in his head so there would be enough of him left to talk about when he got home.”
     “That was Doug Bartlett’s brother,” Will said. “Doug told me about the promise that Connie made to his brother. That he’d make sure Doug was okay. It appears that he has kept his word. They seem to be very close.”
     “Connie is a man of honor. He will never break his promise. No matter what,” Anne said.
     The room began to shift subtly. The light from the garden pulsed sensually around the delicate lines of Anne Crage’s neck and shoulder. Will pulled his eyes away from her and stared down the length of the room. He said, “It must have been quite a cultural shock, coming to this country. Coming to all this.”
     “Not so much as you might think. My parents were not peasants. Before I met Connie, I had already been to Paris and to Rouen, where my mother is from. Or are you speaking of something else? Something more,” she paused and stroked a finger across her lower lip, “immediate?”
     “I was wondering how a nice Catholic girl from Saigon fits into the whips and chains crowd in America,” He felt the words slip out, so terribly personal, leading.
     “It would be so much easier,” her hand settled on his leg, “to show you.”
      He could see his hand on her shoulder, feel her skin under his fingers. Her lips on his. He was lost in the sensation of their tongues exploring. Perhaps it was a change in the way the light moved across his eyelids, the rhythm of the lovers outside ceasing, their shadows withdrawing, awakened him. He opened his eyes. The lovers stood where the light of the house shone on them, no longer silhouettes on the wall, but bodies with faces. One of the faces, Connie Crage’s returned his gaze, ambiguous in the blue glow.
     “I can’t do this,” Will said, standing. “I’m sorry.” The room was just a little tilted.
     Anne stared up at him for a long moment. “I understand.” On her face, a look of concern punctuated by disappointment. She rose and stood beside him, touched his arm lightly. “You need some air. Come, I’ll give you a tour of the garden.”
     Will followed, obediently. By the time he stepped out into the garden behind Anne Crage, his union with the green faerie was fully consummated. His body ached faintly like a mushroom high. The blue light of the garden intensified until it seemed as though he was looking into the sun.
     Anne led him out of the light into a maze of stone walls. But the light was strong and it seeped through apertures, carved in sensuous curves into the stone walls, and crossed their path with rays of blue. In the recesses, in corners of the walls, under rhododendrons and ever-present ferns, the light glanced off nymphs and satyrs. Beneath their feet, the thick grass was tightly trimmed. Irish moss and wooly thyme crowded the path. The thyme sent up its perfume when he stepped on it.
     They walked without hurrying through the maze. Anne knew the way unerringly. She seemed to be taking him somewhere. The garden itself, not a destination, but a passage. Will was feeling settled into it, at home, when he began to get the sense that the ground was rising and they were going up a slight hill. The light was behind them now. Gradually, the walls became covered with vines, morning glories, at first, and then wild blackberries and the path was steeper. It curved around an occasional cedar tree. The walls ended and the dense forest night barred the last blue finger of light. There was a dampness here, slight, like the memory of a fog.
     “How far from the sea are we?” Will asked.
     Anne was leaning against a tree, looking back at her home and garden. She seemed to be listening to the faint, unrecognizable music. Above the house, the bone-white moon was nearly full.
     “The sea? Perhaps thirty miles if you were a seagull.” She turned and began to move up the hill.
     He had to follow or risk losing her shape in the darkness. The undergrowth was thickening; he became tangled in a bush. When he freed himself and looked up, Anne had disappeared. Will called out to her, “What’s it all about? I need to understand.”
     She was closer than he thought. Her voice was nearly in his ear. “It’s the romantic impulse. It’s losing yourself completely. Haven’t you ever had the urge to throw yourself into the hands of Fate, to turn your destiny over to the universe?”
     “I want more control than that,” Will answered.
     “Really? How many times have you been married? Once? Twice?” At his nod, she said, “Experience should have taught you caution. And the young woman, did you lose yourself with her?”
     Will knew that Anne was right, “That’s different.”
     “Only by degree,” She said. “It’s like stepping in front of a bullet. Sometimes it’s the only power we have.”
      ”Power in subjugation? I can’t help thinking that you are setting back the cause of women’s rights a century or so,” Will said.
     “My master’s whip does not diminish me. When I embrace the pain, it is not pain. It is sensation. Exquisite,” Anne turned and moved deeper in the forest.
     They crested a rise and went into a bowl of the earth. When they stopped and Will looked back, he could no longer see the house. Fragments of moonlight came to them through giant cedars. The only sounds came from frogs croaking in the creek, and the creek running over rocks, his heart pounding in his chest, his own breath.
     Anne Crage in gold chainmail, her face the moon. The lines of her body touched off an aching in him. He reached to touch her, to bring her into his arms. But she stepped back avoiding his embrace.
     “No, Will. You did not come here for me. You came here for your love.”
     For Emmy. He had come here for Emmy. His throat tightened.
     Anne turned and walked back toward the house. Will followed. For a time, he was silent. He should let it be, locate Kimmi, and go. But he hadn’t found what he needed from this place, yet. He hadn’t discovered the truth about Emmy.
     “So where’s the dungeon?” he asked when they were safely back in the garden. He was only asking to open the conversation, to make light talk. He didn’t expect that there was a dungeon.
     “Ah, the dungeon. You think perhaps you will find her there.” Anne began to lead him again. She brought him to a stairwell, discreetly hidden behind Rhododendrons along the west wing of the house. He followed her down the steps, without hesitation, emboldened by absinthe. At the bottom of the steps, they stood before a thick, weathered, hard wood door. Rusted iron plates were bolted in strips across the surface. Nice touch, he thought. Anne lifted the latch and the door opened stiffly, creaking. Rhythmic, industrial dance music, subwoofer driven, pumping bass jarred his body, head to foot. He stepped into it, and into strobing lights. Blue. Dark. Blue. Flashes of color rolling across the floor, the wall. Touching the woman who was chained to the side wall, arms spread, like a crucifix, wearing only a leather thong and a corset, its stiff leather supported her small bare breasts. As ribbons of light flashed across her, Will could see that her face was turned to the side, covered by her short dark hair. Chin-length, like Emmy’s. Will had an urge to approach her. To touch the familiar locks of hair, brush them back from her face. He stood rooted to the stone floor. In a darkened corner of the room, near the woman, Will thought he saw something, someone, crouching.
     He felt Anne’s hand warm on his shoulder. “I must go,” she said. “I have duties to attend.”
     “Yes.” He felt as though the ground had suddenly jerked and tilted him forward, unbalanced. “I think I’ve seen enough.”
     Anne opened the door and Will stepped past her into the stairwell. The moon was straight overhead. Round and unblinking. He looked back at the woman on the wall. She had turned her head, was looking at him, smiling Emmy’s smile.
     Will froze, gripped by dread. The door closed between them. He would never know the truth about Emmy. Only that she was lost to him forever. There was nothing more he could do or find here.