Read Diablerie for Free Online Page B

it should.
    I had a key, but I rang from downstairs. She was at her door waiting, looking worried.
    "Are you all right?" she asked with that exquisite hint of a Russian accent.
    She was wearing the short turquoise dress with the red flecks down the left side. That was my favorite. Her face was made up and I could smell coffee brewing.
    Realizing that she had done all that in response to my mournful tone made me a little teary; this in turn disturbed me more—I was losing control and there seemed to be nowhere I could turn.
    "Oh, darling," Svetlana said, and she put her arms around my neck, thrusting her small breasts against me.
    I stood there, trying to find a way into that embrace, a place that would allow me to yield to an open heart.
    "Lana," I said after coffee and sex.
    "Yes, my darling."
    "What did I say that night?"
    She didn't ask me what night. She knew. Our moments together were more predictable than a timetable. There was only one night that stood out.
    "I don't remember—not exactly. Why?"
    "I don't remember anything," I said, "except that you were asking me something and then I was standing there and you were on the floor."
    "I asked you about when you were a child in California."
    "And what did I say?"
    Svetlana sat up in the bed and hunched over, her large, pointed nipples just touching her slender thighs. As I watched her body, I began to feel nervous, uneasy.
    "You said. . . let me see, you said, 'It was all a long time ago and there's nothing anyone can do about it,' and then you threw me." "I threw you?"
    She nodded, the pain of the fall reflected in her face.
    "I didn't just stand up and send you sprawling out?" I asked.
    "No," she said, shaking her head. "You, how do you say, heav-ed me like a sack of wheat. You went down and came up pushing your arms out."
    Svetlana hit me with the palms of her hands, pushing me over on my side in the bed. Then she crawled up on top of me and licked my face like a friendly cat.
    "I liked it," she said in a deeper voice. "The next night I masturbated four times thinking about how strong you were."
    I was simultaneously aroused and petrified. Svetlana's almost masculine admission, her leaning there on top of me, reminded me of something that, at the same time, I could not remember. It was naked desire with none of the little modesties and lies that I was used to.
    "Fuck me, Ben. Do it right now."
    In the morning Svetlana was already up and dressed in T-shirt and jeans when I roused sleepily.
    "What time is it?" I asked.
    "Go back to sleep. It is early."
    "No, no. I'll go."
    "No," she said. "You don't have to. This is your house. I am your woman. You can stay in my bed. Why not?"
    "You goin' swimming at the gym?" I asked, just to be saying something, trying to feel like I belonged.
    "Yes. Then I go to class. Will you stay again tonight?''
    There was something in her voice, or maybe it was in my mind, something that was asking more out of me. The expectation, hers or mine, exhausted me and I fell back into a troubled slumber.
    In my dream Barbara "Star" Knowland was standing before a medieval room with a thousand tables. There were acrobats and clowns, jugglers and fire-eaters. One man was selling whole, full-feathered ducks; a dozen of them were hanging by their necks from a bloody cutting board that was somehow attached to the man's chest. He had a crazed look in his eye and an evil curved blade in his left hand.
    "That's what you call a dead duck, huh, son?" my fither joked.
    "Dad?"
    He was there at the table and so was my mother, Svetlana, Seela, Mona, a man I had never met before, and Cassius Copeland. The strange man, a white guy wearing a cowboy hat, was looking off toward the back of the room, which was very far away.
    My parents were sitting side by side, deep satisfaction radiating from them. They loved each other. They loved me—they said. I sat there watching them and feeling that I was somehow in that faraway distance that the stranger at our table was