Neil McMahon - To The Bone

For a time he could not measure, he huddled in the front seat, drifting off into fantastic inner landscapes, getting hints of insights that seemed to have stupendous importance, then snapping back into watchful fear.

At last, he could feel that the drug was wearing off. The moon was near the horizon now. He guessed that four or five hours had passed since he had first arrived at the house. He got out and walked around for a minute to clear his head, then started the engine again. This time, things around him stayed put. He drove carefully, still a little shaky, but all right on the predawn back country roads.

Monks's mind was already filling with doubt. Had any of it really happened? Had she actually tried to drown him – or was that only a drug-induced fantasy, generated by a compounding of his fear, suspicions, and long-buried guilt about Alison? Had he imagined the words he thought she had screamed?

Or was he only being allowed to escape because of a deeper and far more fearsome truth?

It had not only happened, but she was right.

He was hers now.

Gwen Bricknell stalked into the big house through Julia's studio, avoiding the party still going on out front, and quickly climbed the back stairs to her apartment. She had put her skirt and blouse back on, but she was wet, and pale with cold and rage. When she threw open the door, her trembling gaze landed on a vase of a dozen glorious red roses on her vanity. She had brought them up earlier, from the flowers delivered for the party, to celebrate. But now they mocked her.

She yanked off the garments and stuffed them in the trash, then grabbed a pair of scissors and hacked at the scarf, ripping it into shreds. It had failed her. She had had Monks so close. Everyone had seen him stoned. He would have been found in the spring, tomorrow morning, where he had wandered and fallen in. And that would have been the end of the prying.

Then her hands fell to her sides, dropping the scissors and scarf. The truth was, something in her had not wanted him dead. She had failed herself.

But she could not afford that weakness again.

She put on a fluffy terry robe, kept warm on an electrically heated rack, and started hot water running in the Jacuzzi. Then she laid out a long line of finely powdered cocaine on a china plate. She inhaled it sharply, standing quiet while its sweet energy mushroomed in her brain. When the tub was half full, she added a few drops of Rigaud bath oil and stepped in. She sank back, eyes closing, feeling the steaming warmth recharging her cells. There was nothing for that like hot water, but one had to be careful. Water was not friendly to the skin.

She rose and patted herself dry with deliciously soft towels, like the robe, kept electrically warm. She studied herself at her full-length mirror. Most of the flaws – the tiny crow's-feet developing at the corners of her eyes, the slight slackness in her jaw-line, the softening of flesh where no amount of exercise would tighten it – could be artfully concealed. Her skin was supple with the oil. But it was not what it once had been. It was losing elasticity, that smooth tautness over the muscles. There was even evidence of checking, and traces of cellulite on her buttocks and thighs.

In spite of all the exercising, the vitamins, the skin care, she was losing ground at the age of forty-one. There was no longer any denying it.

The days when men with cameras had adored her, when the phone never stopped ringing and all the good things in the world were hers to pick and choose, were long gone. She had stretched them by going to work for D' Anton – becoming the prime example of his art, a living sculpture that women envied and men were still awed by. But she had nearly lost that, too. She shivered, and dressed quickly in jeans and a sweater.

Then she stepped to the vanity and picked up the vase of roses that no admirer had sent, and threw it, with a hnnhh of exploding breath, against the mirror. The vase shattered and the mirror cracked in all directions, like a giant spiderweb with spreading fingers.

Coffee Trenette is alone when you find her, curled up on a couch in a darkened side room, watching the poolside party through the windows. She's high from smoking junk.

You knew where she'd be. You've been watching her tonight, getting all this together in your head.

Monks was here, searching for you. And Coffee was talking to him.

She doesn't say a word as you walk up – just watches you. She's the queen of cool, with a way of looking at you that puts you right down under her shoes. Like the others, she thinks she knows what you are.

You kneel on the floor beside her, like you're nervous about approaching her.

"What you want?" she says, but her tone isn't too tough. She senses that you're here to offer something.

You keep your voice very quiet. "Here it is, straight. I've got a bottle of pharmaceutical Demerol. Hundred-milligram, the strong stuff."

She stays cool, watching you with that heavy-lidded look. But she's already made up her mind. Smoke is fine, but the needle is the real thing, and there are twenty or thirty shots in a bottle.

"You going to just give it to me?" she says.

You smile timidly. "I've always had a thing for you."

Her lips twist, just a little. She nods and rises unsteadily.

"It's out in my car," you say. "Come on."

You lead her out the back way, to where you've parked, in the shadows. She stands beside the car, rubbing her upper arms like she's cold. You reach across and pop open the passenger door.

She hesitates a moment longer, then slides in beside you.

In the hours between midnight and dawn, the world was still and without distractions, even of daylight itself. D' Anton sat in the darkened waiting room of his clinic, surrounded by the images of his women. It was something he did frequently. It soothed him – softened the hard sharp edge he lived on. His mind was usually a clear pool at these times, and his thinking was pure and undisturbed. He had trained himself since childhood not to need more than four or five hours of sleep per night. He had used this predawn time to form himself into a master surgeon – first, for study, then for practice, and ultimately, to envision the creations he would render. To see the potential beauty of a woman, and then to be able to render it – to wield the scalpel as it delicately parted the skin, to reshape precisely her living flesh, to take her down to the bone and bring her back transformed – this was a power to which nothing else compared.

But there was no soothing in it tonight. He had made an appearance at the party, put on a good face. He did not want the world to know what Eden's loss meant to him.

Even worse than that – the grotesque fear that he had managed to bury deep in his mind was coming to the surface.

And he was not alone. Monks had spoken the name, Roberta Massey. How in the hell had he found out about her!

A glow appeared on the room's far wall. It brightened, swung in an arc, then disappeared. He realized that it came from headlights shining through the curtains – a vehicle pulling into the clinic's parking lot. D'Anton looked at his watch. It was 12:43. No one had any business here. He got to his feet and went to a window.

Gwen Bricknell was hurrying up the clinic's steps.

D'Anton strode to the door and jerked it open, anger overcoming his surprise.

"What has gotten into you?" he snapped. "First you invite Monks to our house. Then you show up here, in the middle of the night."

"I'm trying to save you, darling," she said, stalking haughtily past him.

"Save me? What are you talking about?"