10:25 P.M.
T
hey had their dinner on the garden's cozy terrace, in a I gazebo overlooking the hot tub. Cold yellow tomato soup, sautéed scampi, and broiled lobster tail for Charmaine; an avocado salad and a New York strip medium rare for Gruvver.
He knew he was drinking too much wine, and didn't care. Charmaine's face kept going in and out of focus, and their conversation didn't make a lot of sense to him. He smiled and smiled. While Sven and a maid were cleaning up in the kitchen Gruvver and Charmaine played pool in the rec room, listening to Aretha Franklin. Gruvver was all thumbs and missed easy shots. They were waiting for Sven to leave for the night so they could skinny-dip outside, although the sunken bath in the master suite was big enough to paddle around in.
Charmaine had to guide him across what seemed like an acre of glass floor in the master suite, beneath which tropical fish lurked around an artificial reef. He lay down on the spacious hammock—just for a minute, to get the feel of it, he said. Don't want to go to sleep, night's young, I'll get plenty of sleep when I'm dead. Charmaine kissed him twice but he never felt the second kiss. The waterfall murmured in his brain, and he was riding a long sunset wave to dreamland.
Charmaine, who had drunk only half a glass of white Bordeaux at dinner while Gruvver lit into the red with a vengeance, wasn't sleepy yet. She removed Gruvver's shoes and all of her clothes, gave him a parting kiss, and after dialing down the lights throughout the villa she went outside to slip into the deliciously warm pool. There was music in the air, programmed by Sven before he left. All guys, the great saloon singers from the desert-deco Vegas era, when the mob guys were a saturnine presence around their watering holes. Frank, Vic, Tony, Dino. And the other Tony.
Not a lot of room for swimming in the pool. Charmaine settled into a genteel sidestroke to keep her hair from getting too wet. After about fifteen minutes of this moderate exercise she lifted herself out of the water and, wrapped up in a terry towel, lay down on one of the colorful mats lining the apron of the pool. She used a smaller towel on the edges of her hair, then brushed. Some water had gotten into an ear, which was the main thing she disliked about swimming. She tilted her head toward her left shoulder and gave it a couple of shakes.
That's when she noticed she wasn't alone.
The black dog watching her from one of the gazebo steps was of the cuddly type that Charmaine's aunt Livonia had always owned, six of them running around Livonia's house at last count. A mixed bag of Cocker, shih tzu, and Lhasa apso, a breed which Charmaine's little sister called a "lapsed abscess." Anyway, they were darling.
Charmaine whistled softly. "Hey, there. Where did you come from, stranger?"
The little dog trembled all over from the excitement of being spoken to, but he didn't budge from the step he was on. Charmaine looked around the garden to see if there was a gate he could have crawled under. No way he could have leaped over the seven-foot surrounding wall. Possibly he'd come in under the wall; some of these little dogs were ferocious diggers.
She whistled again; more agitation from the dog, but no real movement. He was, she noticed now, wearing a fancy collar that flashed like gold when he wiggled.
So, if he didn't want to come to her—
Charmaine got up and walked around one end of the kidney-shaped pool to the gazebo on the terrace. The fluffy dog's eyes sparked at her approach; he whined ecstatically but backed off a few feet when she sat on the top step.
"You're okay; I like pooches," Charmaine assured this one, looking him—or her—over. The links of the chain around its neck, from what she could see of it, looked like eighteen-karat gold. Obviously a pampered little darling that belonged to one of the resort's guests, but Charmaine didn't see ID tags on the chain. "So what do I call you?" she said.
The little dog was momentarily still, head tilted to one side, moist dark eyes inquisitive. Charmaine held out a hand, palm down, fingers wiggling invitingly.
"Come on; I won't hurt you, little foo-foo dog."
That seemed to be all the dog had been waiting for, an invitation to jump into her lap and frolic. Which he did, with a lot of energy that nearly bowled her over. With his paws against her towel-wrapped breasts, he—Charmaine had confirmed he was all boy, had that stiff little dipper and tiny furry testicles—lapped eagerly at her nose and cheeks. Charmaine snuggling him tighter, happy that he had no doggy odor; someone obviously took good care of this little charmer.
Slippery licks on her closed eyelids from a petite pink tongue. Kisses, kisses. Charmaine had the giggles; she had also come unwrapped and lay back loosey-goosey on the floor of the gazebo. Frank Sinatra crooned in her ear from hidden garden speakers:
"Come Fly with Me." She was willing, the doggie all over her face and breasts,
lick lick
. She felt as light as fog, subtly adrift, lost but loving it in a limbo of lassitude and squirmy animal affections. The animal roaming her body with heated breath and insinuating tongue that now rasped, it was nearly enough to give her an orgasm.
Then, abruptly, there were no more touches; she felt alone again, bereft, flat on her back but a foot above the gazebo floor, moored there by another's will. She heard him breathing.
Charmaine's eyelashes felt sticky; with an effort she batted them free of her cheeks and looked at the man squatting Indian fashion nearby, watching her intently. He was dressed all in black, but there was a gold chain snug at the base of his throat.
"You know who I am," he said with a smile.
Charmaine tried to raise her head to see him better. But she knew. She felt awkward and shy but not alarmed. Lifting her eyelids was one thing. The rest of her body was not under her control. It floated as if on a current of air. A not-unpleasant sensation.
"Yes," she said. "I know. But how do you change from a dog to a man?"
"Oh, I can do many fascinating things, Charmaine."
"Is this an illusion?"
"No."
"Are you going to finish making love to me?"
He shook his head regretfully. She felt sad for him. "That I'm unable to do. Although I've often wondered what it must be like."
"Why did you come to me as a dog?"
"Two reasons. A barrier was put into place tonight, before I got here. I suspect one of the Caretakers has moved in on Lewis, and is taking precautions. So in order for us to have this conversation, you had to invite me to appear. I thought the best approach would be to show up as one of the little dogs you're familiar with, so you wouldn't be frightened. You're not scared of me now, are you?"
"No. I don't think you want to hurt me."
"That's right. I don't. I love women, Charmaine. I just can't make love to them. Not in the form I'm assuming now. If you'd like, I can come back to you as—something altogether different. But there's no point to our mating. I'm saving myself for someone else."
"Then—what are you going to do with me?"
He looked up at the stars above the walled garden, and smiled.
"Like Frank says, it's a good night to go flying."
"Can we do that?" she wondered, wide-eyed, nerves jumping.
"Of course, Charmaine. Together you and I can accomplish almost anything."
OCTOBER 25
6:22 A.M.
W
hen Lewis Gruvver woke up with a start after almost eight hours of uninterrupted slumber, the jerking of his body set the unfamiliar hammock in which he lay in a tangle of bedclothes to swaying, which caused his stomach to roll over and expel a jet of soured wine toward his throat. His mouth, as he became more conscious of his body and dizzied heart, was hangover-parched; his eyes felt as if there were grains of gunpowder beneath the lids.
He lay very still for half a minute while the motion of the hammock and his heartbeat settled down. Whose demented idea had that been anyway, to put a hammock instead of a bed in the master suite? Gruvver doubted that many Brazilians slept in hammocks, because, for one thing, the birthrate in that country would be way down. Never mind finessing your stroke, just trying to maintain a workable erection while swaying side to side would be a difficult feat. He tried to imagine himself on his back, as he now was, but with Charmaine astride him, elaborating on a theme from her sonata for meat flute and trying to maintain her balance in spite of the swing and sway of the hammock. The absurdity of the scene he was imagining had him laughing until he choked up a little more of the soured wine. He flung out a hand, discovered that Charmaine wasn't there, asleep with her knees drawn up to her belly, the way he usually found her in the morning.
But she was habitually an early riser; liked her swim or a mile run to get the day started right.
"Charmaine?"
Gruvver relaxed for a couple of minutes, giving her time to stroll in wearing her faded gold Georgia Tech sweats and her ratty softball cap from Woodward Academy, where she'd gone to high school on a partial scholarship. Carrying a cup of coffee that she'd brewed for her Lewie in the villa's kitchen. Perky as hell and already getting in a sly dig at him for passing out on her so early.
He called again; no answer. And suddenly it was time for him to pee, or way past time; so he scooted woozily across the glass floor with fish scattering colorfully beneath his feet (another dumb idea, Gruvver thought, although you could actually watch the fish, reflected in a mirrored ceiling, while scrunched in the tricky hammock, a pastime possibly of interest only to ichthyologists).
Gruvver relieved himself copiously, then undressed and lurched into a cold shower, multiple showerheads massaging him top to bottom with what felt like cactus needles. Stepped out feeling so fine, almost a whole man again instead of a conglomerate of rusty old parts. He put on one of the courtesy robes hanging in the bathroom and a pair of flip-flops and went in search of Charmaine.
Who wasn't hard to find. She was lying full-naked on the pool apron out there in a cold sunless dawning, knees drawn up as was her habit, with everything he cherished and could never get enough of innocently but lewdly exposed. Sound asleep—he assumed, after his initial shock of seeing her like that faded—because a portion of her slender right thumb was caught between her lips and strong white teeth. That sad little reversal to blissful infancy he'd never seen before, in the months they'd been sleeping together.
When Gruvver picked her up in his arms he was shocked anew. The desert air had him shuddering, it must have been around forty degrees this early, but Charmaine wasn't cold. Her skin felt as warm as if she'd been sunbathing. When he rocked her, gently at first, then more urgently in his arms, she was slow to wake up; not a muscle moved in her smooth slack face. Gruvver carefully pulled her thumb from between her teeth. She apparently had bitten down hard in her sleep and there was blood around the quick of the polished nail. A little smear of blood lay across her front teeth, still with the slightly serrated edges from childhood.
Charmaine's throat muscles bulged as she swallowed. Then she opened her eyes, looked blankly at him for a moment. Recognition came like the light of the sun. She snuggled, touched her lips with the tip of her tongue, smiled.
"Oh, man," she said. "Did I ever have me a dream."
6:48 A.M.
A
limo was waiting for Gulfstream N657GB when it taxied to the corner of McCarran International where private jets were parked during their owners' layovers in Vegas. They had gone through Customs while the jet was refueled in Boston, so there were no formalities to be observed. The drive to Bahla resort took eight minutes in traffic that was beginning to get heavy. It was that hour of the morning that sidles around like a whipped dog after the revels have ended.
They sat close together in the back of the limo with the tingling nerves and taut unsmiling faces of people who had of late spent a lot of time continent-hopping. The sun was rising, revealing more fully to Eden, who had never seen the Las Vegas Strip, the collection of hotels lined up like baubles on the dusty shelf of a curio shop, a slapstick mismatch of entertainment architecture still dripping with light in the blue dawn. Everything else in town looked like an untidy playground. Sand and a dearth of trees.
"Fifty years ago you could have had most of this for eight bucks an acre," the limo driver said.
"Overpriced" Bertie murmured. She had been spoiled since birth by vistas of a grander sort.
"But I understand why my granpap never took the plunge. Granpap was a leery sort of guy."
"That so?" Tom said, and pushed a button to close the blackout divider. They had other, private matters to talk about.
Past the ominous obsidian pyramid of the Luxor at the low end of the Strip, a monument to a culture that didn't know it was doomed—but no culture had ever interpreted the odds correctly—the Lincoln Grayle Theatre, approximately fifteen miles west, was dazzling by first light, a star that refused to dim in spite of the advance of morning.