STORIES

Goran Skrobonja

LOVERS
Copyright © 1992 by G.Skrobonja

The investigator stepped into his office and closed the door.

The man he was supposed to cross-examine had already been seated behind the desk in the center of the room, and the investigator nodded to the guards who left silently. Then he reached for the fan, turned it on and wiped the sweat from his face with a handkerchief.

The man was sitting behind the table, his head bowed and his hands folded in his lap, just like so many others before. Investigator took a flip-top box of cigarettes from his pocket and lighted one.

“Would you like a cigarette, perhaps?” asked the investigator politely. The man looked up and the investigator finally saw his face.

He knew this face; well, it hadn't been this gaunt and long, with black rings around those sunken eyes, but he was able to recognize it. After all, it was on the back cover of the book which was now inside the investigator's briefcase.

The man silently shook his head.

“Let us start, then,” said the investigator and thought he had noticed a faint spark in those haunted eyes.

“All right,” said the prisoner with a grotesque attempt at a smile. “Let us start...”

Adrian met her quite accidentally, one impossibly hot August evening, when he’d suddenly decided to find out what it looked like to visit one of the singles bars. There was a row of small, pleasant places by the river bank with fine, soft music and romantic lights – in utter contrast to all the boat-restaurants on the other side, blaring loud and vulgar country songs through hot summer nights. Later, he tried to explain to himself what had exactly made him do it that evening, and he found out it was all too easy to come up with a handful of reasons that would be nothing more then a well-intended, but shallow rationalization; it had simply crossed his mind that it might be good to spend the evening there over some fine, cold long drink, and perchance meet some interesting person looking for company. He never thought of cheating on his wife. To be quite frank, prior to that evening, he never thought of anything really significant for his marriage.

Sarah was at the coast already for more than a week, with their three daughters – the youngest, Isabelle, was only six months, while the eldest, Megan, was four years old. Recently they had a party for their third daughter's – Helen's – second birthday. Those seven days Adrian spent without any feeling of pressure; peace and quiet was welcome, but his writer's block wasn't showing a bit of good will towards removing itself from his head. It was the very reason for his staying home; the contract with his publisher demanded the manuscript of his next novel at the end of the year, and right then, his next novel existed only as a heap of notes and sketches and a few rough chapters. In July, Adrian resisted panic which was stubbornly trying to surface, and when Sarah finally managed to take some time off, he realized his novel would never be completed if he spent a month with her and kids at the coast. He tried to explain that to her – after all, down payment for that damned book had bought their apartment and Sarah's brand new BMW convertible – but she remained stubborn and tried to persuade him that a month spent at the seaside might exactly be the thing needed to break his writer's block and give him a necessary glimpse of inspiration. In a heated argument, he managed somehow to make her see that everyday visits to the grocery store, beach hours in hellish heat and all the infinite chores of taking care of three small girls, could only definitely bury even the last hope for completing the novel. He even suggested the alternative – let them spend the vacation in a hotel, where they could let the staff do most of the necessary things, but that only provoked Sarah's stinginess, one of her strongest character features: did he want them to waste money on some hotel with such a splendid house on the Riviera? Finally, they parted rather coldly, and that parting at the airport, full-hearted kisses for the children and cursory, formal kiss on the cheek of a woman with whom he had spent last five years, seemed to him like the beginning of the barrier between them. However, obsessed as he was with his imminent task, he could not spend more time brooding over that, and pretty soon he stopped giving much importance to that small incident, filing it away together with all those other small difficulties that exist in any marriage, too insignificant to cause its failure.

When he finally found time enough to think it over, it was too late.

Three weeks later, while trying to explain to the patient investigator how it all happened, he thought that this evening had just been an accident. But he discarded that thought almost immediately: nothing about Them was accidental.

“That evening, I was trying to get my notes in order,” he said, fixing the politely neutral eyes of the investigator with his stare. “At some point, I got sick of it all... I simply had to run away from that place, from my stuffy study, from that silent, empty apartment. I think I'd just started to realize I would never finish that damned book. I didn't know where I was going to; I grabbed my keys and wallet, put my Nikes on and started the car. I'd been driving for some three quarters of the hour before I realized I was terribly thirsty. Then I saw the sign of one of those singles bars – I think the name was The Tender Touch – drove off towards the river and parked in the first free parking space I’d found. And you know what?” He looked up to the investigator's face and smiled. “I think it was already too late. I think I would've eventually met her even if I'd immediately left the parking lot and drove off miles from there. Do you understand? I think everything would have happened the same way.”

“Mr. Knapp? Mr. Adrian Knapp?”

He winced and almost spilled his drink on the polished surface of the bar. He turned around and saw a young woman. She was tall, only a few inches shorter than him, and he realized that fact in a second, because their eyes were almost in the same level. He remained silent for the moment, absorbing her face, the way her hair was done up high on the back of her head, her long, elegant neck and narrow, graceful shoulders; then he found his voice again.

“Yes? How can I help you?”

“Please, forgive me for approaching you this way.” Her big, hazel eyes seemed to light up with some internal flame after his reply. “I usually don't address strange men in places like this, but it seems to me that, in a way, I already know you.”

“Really?” he said, confused. “How so?”

“You wrote Twilight of Time?”

“Yes...”

“And short stories collection, Night Journeys?”

“Yes.”

She smiled, and Adrian felt the flash of her perfect white teeth stab him like a blade in his stomach. Fascinated, he watched her lips move while she was shaping the words.

“I was exhilarated when I read your fiction for the first time. I wished then to find a way and meet you in person some day. I couldn't have imagined that my wish would so suddenly come true. If I may say, you look better then on the book cover photographs.”

“Oh?” he said. Totally unprepared for this kind of conversation, he started to feel embarrassed because it seemed that suddenly he was not able to pronounce anything more complicated than one-syllable sentence.

“Oh, I apologize once again,” she said excitedly and extended her hand. “My name is Claire.”

“Claire? Like Until the End of the World Claire?'

Her smile again, dazzling and fascinating.

“No. Like "The Washington Dream" Claire.”

Suddenly he was helplessly grinning in spite of himself. “The Washington Dream” was one of the stories from his collection Night Journeys, a short piece of prose mostly neglected by readers and critics alike, the story which was, to him, most intimate – and most important – of all the stories he had ever put on paper. The name of one of the main characters in that story was Claire.

“Okay, Claire,” Adrian said, “may I buy you a drink?”

“I'll have what you’re having,” she said and reached into her purse. “But please, would you first do something for me?”

“Sure. Just tell me what it is.”

“Let’s start with you signing this book for me.”

“After just a few minutes of conversation with her I felt as if we were old friends who haven't seen each other for a long time, eager to catch up. The book she was carrying in her purse was the paperback edition of Night Journeys, obviously read more than once. I was amazed to see many markings and exclamation marks on certain places, whole passages underlined by her pen... Until that moment I haven't had any clue as to how people really accepted, and reacted to what I wrote. Claire had obviously found in my stories things which were quite new even for me. It does not suffice to say that I was fascinated. It was just unbelievable.”

“So, that is the book you mentioned earlier?” asked the investigator; his voice was husky, raw from the cigarette smoke.

“The book that had... vanished… from your fingers?”

“It had turned to dust...” Adrian said and looked down on his pale hands in handcuffs. “But that was a lot later.”

“When exactly?”

“Later... when it all ended. When I’d finally realized the truth.”

The evening passed smoothly, in a long and pleasant conversation. Claire kept surprising him with intelligent comments on his work, as if she’d unerringly known about all his hidden motivations and meanings; like any other self-conscious author, Adrian was utterly helpless before such knowledge and understanding of his prose.

“Everyone who creates something with intention to offer that to the rest of the world for judgment”, Adrian said over the second glass of vodka-martini, “is somewhat inclined towards exhibitionism. While I was sending all those manuscripts to my publisher, it never crossed my mind that anyone could find out so much about me there. I have to admit that it's a little... frightening. And I do believe that I am never going to approach writing like I did before.”

“I have already told you that I got to know you in a way,” Claire said, smiling. “Maybe that's the very reason why I feel such an attachment to the things that you write about. It is perfectly clear for anyone who reads your stories that you write mainly for yourself, for that one, ultimate reader in yourself, and that you would continue doing that even had you not become famous, published and respected.”

“Hmmm... I don't know what to say to that. Tell me, Claire, how come that such a young girl like you knows so much about literature and people?”

“Oh, I'm not really that young. I am very close to my thirtieth birthday. But thanks.”

The look of surprise on his face must have been pretty funny, because Claire laughed, loudly and cheerfully, attracting a few glances to their booth.

“Looks can deceive,” she said and her long, delicate fingers gently covered his hand. Her touch struck him like an electric shock. Adrian realized again he was looking in vain for things to say.

Claire slowly moved the tip of her index finger over his wedding ring, and stopped there for a moment.

“I...,” Adrian said.

“Yes?”

His mouth was dry while he was staring in those big, dreamy eyes illuminating her face. He licked his lips unconsciously, suddenly reduced to a high-school student who was trying to ask the girl he likes for a date, full of dread of refusal and sneers. All the years in between had disappeared, along with Sarah and the children, taken by some unexpected vortex inside him, a vortex so fierce  he would, hadn't he been seated, probably wobble on his feet.

“What do you think,” he said finally, “about going somewhere else tonight with me?”

Her smile was unmistakable.

“And that was the first time you visited her house?” investigator asked. “With the address you previously gave us?”

“No...” Adrian said. “Not right away.”

Later, when he tried to remember the details of everything that had happened that evening in his car, he was only able to see blurry and turbulent images, as if some part of him did not allow that filigree box, where he had buried this precious, brilliant memory, to be opened, in fear it might blind him – or, through the simple fact of peeping, rob that treasure of its preciousness. But the thing he was always able to recall about their first body contact was the intensity of feelings, passion that had eclipsed everything else.

They had been kissing fiercely in the silence and darkness of the deserted parking lot, that much he was sure. He was also sure she had responded readily to his touches, because he was able to feel the scent of her juice long after that, in his car. He remembered his own erection, amazingly potent, her lips on him, his own fingers in her; finally, he knew she’d swallowed his semen hungrily and eagerly, and licked him with a satisfied smile on her face. While he was breathing deeply and listening to his beating heart, she had watched him from the darkness on the passenger side of the car. He felt her warm hand down there on him, where he was starting to grow again.

“Shall we go to my place?” Her voice was raw. “I live alone.”

Instead of answering, he drew her to himself and slid his tongue into her mouth, tasting his own sperm for the first time in his life. There was a moment when Sarah's accusing face appeared in his mind, but it didn't last very long.

“Drive,” Claire whispered, and Adrian obeyed.

She lived nearby, in the old part of the city. She was instructing him where to turn while he was driving, caressing him simultaneously, and it was very hard for Adrian to concentrate on driving. When he had finally parked in front of a dark house with facade overgrown with ivy and old-fashioned wrought iron fence, Adrian was trembling with desire to explode again, led by her tireless fingers.

“Wait just a little bit longer,” she told him quietly and led him through a small garden to the massive wooden door. Adrian wasn't thinking of anything anymore. He didn't even bother to get decent and button up his jeans. Claire stopped in front of him, reached out to take him in her tender hand again and went on. He was walking through a dream and it seemed to him that all his senses were suddenly so sharp that the night smelled intoxicating, and gentle breeze rustled the leaves and branches much louder than before. He was absorbing all those sensation and it seemed to him that they had all melted and flowed to the hot and pulsating spot where his whole being was compressed, surrounded by her warm palm and fingers.

Suddenly he knew he couldn't wait for the door to be unlocked, for stairs to be climbed, for preparations to be made... He hastily took her by the hand, turned her around, pushing her back to the wall. Moonlight glinted in her eyes full of lust and Adrian tore her panties off in one quick, brutally short movement. Claire sighed when she heard the fabric tear up; she lifted her leg around his waist, opening for him, and the very next moment Adrian felt he was inside, big and hard like never before, with no one before. He lost track of time. They made love there, in the doorway, and although earlier he had thought that he was going to spill into her at the same moment she let him inside, he miraculously succeeded in postponing his climax while her hips were wildly moving and twisting under his assaults, while she was gradually losing control, moaning, stabbing his back with her fingernails and whipping her head from side to side, her mouth open in a soundless scream of orgasm which had lasted and lasted. Finally, when the effort and trembling in his legs became unbearable, he felt his own orgasm come rolling through his body like distant thunder of the earthquake, closer and closer, inevitable. Then he came, in a series of spastic thrusts, and sagged over her, drenched in sweat.

“You monster,” she was whispering with her fingers in his hair, kissing his eyes, cheeks, lips. “You'll kill me with your cock. How many times do I have to come, huh?”

He grinned in the darkness and waited for her to unlock the door. Then he took her in his arms and carried her inside.

“We made love all night,” Adrian said. “I don't remember how many times exactly. It looked like her sexual hunger was insatiable – at least, until her each new climax. That night I'd finally realized what orgasm really was. But the reason I became so addicted to Claire was the way she surrendered herself to me, the way she let me do to her and the way she did to me things which other girls and women – including Sarah, especially Sarah – couldn't even think of. There wasn't a smallest part of her body which I hadn't tasted that night, and we did things which were twisted, perverse, porno movies stuff for me before I’d met her, and we did them eagerly, with joy, fascinated by their cleanness and absence of anything unnatural.”

“Did you wonder even then whether such a... relationship you established... had had any future?”

Adrian shook his head.

“No. As far as I remember, I didn't. I wasn't really able to think of anything, except of Claire and her body.”

“Can you give us the detailed description of her, so that we can send an APB out?”

“Unfortunately, I cannot. Isn't that the weirdest thing of all? You would expect detailed perception from a writer, ability to easily describe details to others... But, as days go by since the last time I saw her, it's becoming harder and harder for me to recall her face. Her body... I'm not even sure that someone else would be so fascinated by her body, but I simply felt that it was – at least for me – perfect.”

“You had not been satisfied with sex in your marriage?”

Adrian scowled at the investigator. “Please don't ask me that. I have already been through that routine with the court-appointed shrink. Nothing in my marriage had any importance. Before I met Claire, I might have not existed at all.”

“All right,” the investigator said. “Then please get back to the way events happened chronologically.”

Adrian nodded and sipped some water from the glass. It was a rather complicated task due to awkward handcuffs on his wrists.
“Well... After that first night I felt... I don't know... as if I was on the top of the world, as if I floated high above, untouchable, almighty. You're a man, you will understand. Every muscle, every bone, everything ached in me. I stayed with her and spent the next day there, next night too. I suppose I was like a junky with purest heroin flowing in his veins. But I don't want you to get a wrong impression. It wasn't just sex. Sex was the first step, the thing that had unlocked some doors hidden in me long ago and let out everything which was inaccessible to others, as well as to me. Claire had unlocked my soul. Of course, only at the end I realized she'd done that just in order to be able to take it from me.

“And just as her image grows hazier and hazier in my memories, the same goes for our conversations and things we were doing those first days – in short breaks between making love. I went home only to put on something clean, take some money and listen to the messages on my answering machine. Sarah had called several times. She’d sounded depressed and resigned. She’d sounded like she was from another galaxy. I had no wish nor will to call her. I would spend some ten minutes at home, do what I had to do, and then run back to Claire's bed. I think she's told me where she worked, and that she took some days off in order to be with me all the time. I didn't ask her to tell me about herself, and I didn't want to know anything about her past. She was here and now, and that was the only thing that mattered. As far as I was concerned, Claire might have been a serial killer – I couldn't care less. Of course, the irony is exactly in the fact that, thinking that way, some part of me sensed the truth. But, I also knew that I wouldn't have minded even if I’d caught her with someone's blood on her hands.”

“Well? Was she really?”

“What?” Adrian blinked, confused.

“A killer?”

He stared into the investigator's eyes, looking for signs of sarcasm or mockery.

“Do you think I was her first victim?” he finally replied with a question of his own. “And do you think that I'm going to be the last?”

The investigator stood up, approached the barred window and lighted a new cigarette. “Please, continue,” he said after several seconds of silence.

Adrian sipped the water again and made himself more comfortable in his chair.

“After a few days with Claire, I realized that again, after such a long time, my old ideas started to return, followed by the new ones, flooding me like an underground torrent filling dry well. I was exhilarated, especially since Claire had shared that exhilaration with me... The first thing I did was to burn all my earlier notes and parts of the new book. Then I started from the very beginning. I was writing like I was carrying demons on my back. Eight hours every day, plus three or four hours of rewriting the parts I completed earlier. Never in my life did I write in such fervor – Claire had moved in with me, and I barely felt her presence around while I was working; still, I knew she was there, and that fact was giving me incredible security and strength. The title of the novel was Lovers. Of course... Did you ever think about that word? Lovers! Can you feel how it slides from our tongues lazily, seductively? Does it make you recall an image of some sleazy jazz-club and fascinating legs in high heels descending slowly down the stairs? No... I suppose it doesn't. I don't blame you. Words are not your profession, at least not like mine.”

The investigator took one of the official, plastic police bags, pulled out a stack of paper sheets and showed it to Adrian.

“You are talking about this?”

“Yes. My new novel.” He was silent for a moment before he continued. “It was finished in less than ten days. I don't know how many pencils I'd ruined – I usually work in my words processor, but in this case it seemed like a blasphemy to me, so I did it longhand. Those pages contain everything imprisoned behind that door Claire had unlocked, and I shaped it into a novel using everything I managed to learn about writing. That book is my showcase, my manifesto... To be quite correct, that book is me.”

“Tell me, how did... Claire... react to the unexpected return of your wife and children?”

“We’re already there? Yes... yes, just this last chapter and the whole story will be told. This is how it happened...”

The phone rang and Adrian lifted the receiver mechanically, not thinking about who the caller might be. He was just rewriting the last chapter of Lovers over a cup of hot, strong black coffee with no sugar. Claire was visiting the room from time to time, silent as a ghost, watching him work with appreciation, and then leaving back for the kitchen. He didn't know what she was cooking, but he was sure it would be something he liked, just like every time.

Then he heard the voice in the receiver and froze.

“Hello? Adrian?”

After a second or two of pure panic, he managed to get a hold on himself. “Yeah? Sarah?”

“I am calling from the airport. We are back. You didn't return our calls and messages, and I got worried. Where in the world have you been?”

“Oh... here and there...” Adrian saw Claire in the doorway. She was standing there and staring at him, pale, serious, beautiful.

“Listen, why don't you come and pick us up? I have a mountain of baggage, and kids are terrible. I can't control Meg and Helen.”

“Oh... okay,” he managed. “I'm on my way.”

A sharp click! in his ear.

Fear in Claire's eyes.

Icy numbness in his body.

Silence... Then Claire's words full of dread:

“It was your wife, right?”

He nodded numbly. Claire came to him, sat in his lap and caressed his forehead.

“This is the end, isn't it?”

“No!” Adrian said. “Never!”

“It had to happen some day.” Sadness in her voice stabbed his heart like an ice-pick. “You have to go. That's your family. They have a claim on you.”

'You know I'm yours, forever... until the end of the world!” He gasped that, face buried in her hair.

“I know that, darling... I said the same thing to you, I don't know how many times. The fact that I have to go can change nothing about that.”

“No!”

“Don't worry about me. It's enough for me to know that you do exist, that I didn't make you up, that you're real... Some day, when you're really free, you'll come to me.”

“It all seems so banal now, spoken into investigator's notebook and tape recorder”, Adrian mumbled. The investigator crushed the cigarette butt in the ashtray and sat back in his chair.

“That was the day when it all finally happened,” he stated.

“Yes,” Adrian said.

“Please, try and describe what happened next with as much details as you can.”

Claire hastily picked up what little possessions she had taken to his apartment, stuffed them in her tote-bag and checked out for the last time if she had left any trace of her presence behind. In the meantime, Adrian was stumbling around the apartment like a short-circuited robot, looking for the car keys. When he finally found them, everything was ready and they could go.

He drove in silence, depressed. They soon arrived to her house, and Claire kissed him hesitantly. Adrian looked like someone who was waking up from a long, dark dream. He accepted her kiss, grabbed her arms and said, staring into her eyes:

“Until the end of the world?”

“Until the end of the world.”

“No matter what?”

“No matter what.”

He gently took her by the hand, kissed her and whispered: “Wait for me!”

Claire silently nodded and stepped out of the car. She stood there, holding her bag, staring at him. Her eyes were warm and filled with tears. Gritting his teeth in helpless rage, Adrian worked the gears up and drove off with tires screeching.

That was the last time he ever saw her.

Driving to the airport, he was trying to imagine his reunion with a woman whose presence was the last thing on earth he could now wish for. He couldn't predict his own behavior anymore. When he pulled up beside the curb, he felt as he was climbing up from the cool, clear azure depths to merciless, burning desert sun. Then he saw Sarah and kids surrounded by suitcases and bags, and he forced himself to step out.

“Daddy! Daddy!” Megan and Helen cried out when they saw him, and ran to embrace their father. He crouched and held them both briefly; then he looked up to meet Sarah's eyes. She was still standing in the shade with little Isabelle in her arms, watching him uncertainly, a little frightened, maybe. Adrian took his two little daughters by their hands and walked to her.

“Hello,” Adrian said; his voice was flat, as if he was addressing the wall. “Have you heard the news?”

“No,” managed Sarah, on the verge of tears.

“The book is finished.”

“Oh. Wonderful.”

He started putting the suitcases into the trunk. She knew. Some unerring, inner female sense told her what this was all about. He couldn't care less.

“Did the idea of divorce ever cross your mind?” the investigator asked. “If you had realized that you were forced to live with another woman, why didn't you solve that matter in a less... drastic way?”

“Of course, the idea of divorce did cross my mind,” Adrian said. “But you see, that wouldn't have been enough. My relationship with Claire was so pure, so perfect – I cannot find a better word for it – that it simply couldn't have been dirtied by anything else. I knew that, if I had to give my attention and love even just to the girls, there wouldn't be enough left for Claire. Claire deserved it all, and it was all too easy to surmise that some day, if she didn't get it all from me, Claire would leave me.

“Therefore – I hope you are seeing it now – I simply didn't have any choice.”

“We have to talk,” Sarah said after they have tucked the children in their beds.

“No,” he said. “We don't.”

“All right.” Her face was calm, solemn. She sighed then, stood up and went into the bathroom.

Adrian waited in his study for Sarah to finish with the shower. He was caressing the stack of writing paper with his fingers – his new book written in his small, feverish handwriting – and thinking of Claire.

The bathroom door opened and Sarah's steps echoed down the hall, to the bedroom. Even that walk, the loud banging of her slippers, seemed repulsive and vulgar to him compared to the soundless movements of Claire's bare feet on the floor. Adrian put the manuscript back on his desk. In the window pane he saw a silhouette of his own face. He was pale as a wraith. He couldn't see his eyes, they had melted into darkness, but what was below could have belonged to some ghost haunting his earlier books.

After he had heard the bedroom door softly closing, Adrian went outside on the terrace, opened the tool chest and pulled the heavy sledgehammer out. He measured its weight in his hands for a few moments. Then he closed the chest, stepped in from the terrace, and walked down the hall.

Sarah was crying in the dark. He could hear her sniffing, but it seemed to him that her crying had some calm, resigned quality to it, more like a physiological response to some crucial change in her life than an emotional outburst of turbulent feelings.

“Adrian?” he heard her voice from the dark. He supposed she was seeing him now as a silhouette in the rectangle of light. Wordlessly, he came to the bed.

“Adrian, I...” she began, then fell silent. Some traces of light were falling on her face, and a sudden widening of her eyes showed him that she has understood what he intended to do.

“Claire!” he whispered, and swung the sledge hammer in a wide arc towards Sarah's forehead. It was too quick to let her scream, and he noted this small detail with certain pleasure; the only sound that escaped her throat was a thin, barely audible wailing abruptly cut when her skull shattered under the force of the impact. The sound of her facial bones breaking was sickening, a bit like the sound of eggshell being broken. Adrian realized his whole body was shaking, filled with a torrent of unknown, flaming fluids.

“Claire!” he whispered again, and again, and again, while Sarah's body jerked and twitched under his brutal, wild blows. Finally, with a sudden fierce pain in his shoulders and forearms, Adrian let his arms fall by his side, and the hammer slid from his fingers, slick with Sarah's blood. He straightened up and wiped his face, wet with sweat, gore and something yielding, probably pieces of Sarah's brains. Her body lay in the dark room, grotesquely twisted between the soaked pillows and crumpled sheets. Adrian was barely able to take his eyes from what was left of her head.

Slowly, like treading through the mire, he left the room. He felt a wave of dizziness washing over him and stumbled down the hall, leaning on the walls, leaving ugly, bloody palm prints behind.

“My love,” he mumbled, “in a moment or two... in a moment or two I'll be yours, and yours only.”

He stopped in front of the doorway to the kids' bedroom, and tried to get a hold of himself. Mickey and Minnie Mouse were staring at him from the poster on the door, their gazes wicked and accusing. Then he saw warm, compassionate Claire's eyes again, and felt a whiff of her perfume in the air. Adrian raised his bloody hand and gazed at it. It was steady, calm, sure. He silently mouthed her name, opened the door and stepped into the room where his daughters were sleeping.

“It was over very quickly,” Adrian was saying in the monotone. “Only the eldest girl managed to wake up. I think she even called my name while I was pressing the pillow to Helen's face. She put up some fight, but she didn't stand a chance. Against Claire, no one did stand any chance.”

The investigator sighed and tapped his pencil on the notebook.
“Mr. Knapp... That woman... That 'Claire' woman... Did she encourage you in any way, by words or deeds, to do what you did to your family?”

Adrian shook his head. “Not directly. She never even suggested such a thing. She simply didn't have to. Here existence was enough. My wish – my desire – to belong completely to her, did the rest. But you see, only when everything was over, when I hurried to her to tell her I was finally free, did I realize what exactly she was. Her house... After I had parked my car and stepped out, I remained standing for God knows how long, staring in disbelief into what only hours earlier was a beautiful fence and carefully kept gate; all that was left were a few of misshapen stones and two or three fragments of rusted wrought iron in dense weeds. Flagstones of the path were missing, while the rest was overgrown with grass. The garden looked like human foot hadn't stepped into it for years, left to wild growth, buzzing of insects and small sounds of lizards. I managed somehow to cross those ten meters to the spot where I took her for the first time, and I kept staring in despair, for some time, into the shapeless holes where earlier there were doors and windows. When I finally stepped over the threshold and entered the building in which we had used to make love, where we’d spent hours and hours talking and fantasizing and doing all those sweet and silly things that lovers hopelessly and totally occupied one with another keep doing all the time, I found an empty shell, naked walls with no roof, floor left to corruption, underbrush and rats. All around I could see obscene graffiti by which young hoodlums usually mark their turf, and somehow, in the moment of shocked recognition, that looked like the greatest sacrilege of all. One second, when I looked up to the place where the staircase should have been, leading upstairs, to her bedroom, the place utterly empty now and washed by pale, exhausted moonlight, I thought I saw reality overlapping with my desire that everything should again be like before; I thought I saw her there, on the last step, watching me from above calmly, with no feelings at all. I think I could bear it more easily if I saw anything in her features – scorn, triumph, malice... anything but that soulless void. Then my vision dispersed and I was left standing alone again, in the ruins of a deserted house. And precisely in that moment I saw the thing which made me realize that Claire hadn't been just a figment of my imagination. There was a book on the ground, misshapen from exposure to hot summer sun and fierce changes of temperature, but still easily recognizable. It was the copy of Night Journeys I'd signed for her when we first met. Exhilarated, I thought it was a sign from her, a sign that I could hope at least to see her once again. I crouched to pick the book up and it simply turned to dust after my first touch. Then I was finally forced to accept the truth... that I had lost her forever.”

Adrian remained silent for a few moments, then looked up to investigator's eyes.

“Maybe I have already mentioned that several times, usually in the moments of that maddening ecstasy of flesh, her features seemed to change, flow and meld, her physiognomy seemed to ripple like a membrane hiding a gallery of images. I used to attribute that to a sexual pleasure so new and weird that it completely shifted limits of my perception. Now I know...”

“What is it that you know now?” the investigator asked. His voice was cold and dry.

“I know,” Adrian said, absorbed in thought, “that all our notions of Them were wrong, produced by petty rationalizations created because the truth was much too simple, and much too terrible. They don't need fangs, or coffins. And they are not afraid of crucifix or garlic. I don't know how many of them there are, but I don't think that Claire is the only one. I might have, given some time, found out more – for how long they are among us, how they really function, how we can protect ourselves from Them. I only know that they are real, just like you or me, at least until they feed. Sometimes they drink blood, but not like they show it in movies or worthless literature; their real food is something more important for life than blood. You can make up for the loss of blood by transfusion. But can you imagine some kind of... soul transfusion... which could make up for what I had lost?'

“So, you do regret what you did?” the investigator said.

“Regret?” Adrian was staring at him in wonder for a few moments. Then he understood the meaning of investigator's words and started to laugh. The sound was stripped of any human quality, laughter mechanical and hollow; the investigator tightened his lips in a thin, angry line and crushed the pencil in his fist like used toothpick. Adrian's laughter stopped abruptly.

“You didn't understand anything after all, did you?” he said to investigator. “I am not dying on my feet like this because I mourn my wife and three kids – my three kids – whom I had killed like a madman. The life is over for me because of her betrayal. Claire had used me and thrown me away. She took what she needed from me and left the empty shell behind. I simply cannot imagine my own existence without her anymore. And, having that in mind, she didn't really lie to me when she said she would stay with me ‘until the end of the world.’ My world has come to its end. With her gone, my world simply ceased to be. Do you understand?”

“The only thing I understand is that you disgust me,” the investigator said.

“Lucky man,” Adrian said. “I envy you. You are still capable of feeling something for others. That's the ability I've lost forever.”
With no further words, the investigator rang for the guards to come and take Adrian Knapp to his padded cell.

“There is something I would like to ask you to do,” Adrian said.

“Not for me, I am beyond any help now. But for what I was... before. If you refuse, I'll understand.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I am talking about that manuscript before you, that courtroom exhibit. Can you send it over to my publisher when the circus of trial and execution is over? After all, it's already paid for. My publisher is entitled to have it.”

The investigator gazed fiercely into his eyes. Then he pushed the stack of papers across his desk.

“Take a look at it, Mr. Knapp.”

Adrian caressed the top page. The title was in the center of the page, written in large letters: LOVERS. And beneath, in smaller print, his own name.

“Take a look,” the investigator repeated.

Adrian looked at him with suspicion, and turned the page. He was staring, frozen, for a few moments at tightly written lines there, before he turned another one; a second later, another one; immediately after that, randomly, a page somewhere near the middle of the huge manuscript. Then he closed his eyes and sagged back in his chair.

“You see,” the investigator said, with certain joy, “I doubt any publisher would publish a manuscript of eight hundred pages, with just one word written over and over from the beginning to the end.”

The guards stepped into the room and Adrian got up to his feet sluggishly, slowly, like an old man. He looked over his shoulder in the doorway, as if he had wanted to say something, and went out silently. The investigator kept staring after him long after the door was closed; then he put the stack of papers in order. Before putting them back in the plastic bag, he looked once again at the pages filled with feverish handwriting.

CLAIRECLAIRECLAIRECLAIRECLAIRECLAIRECLAIRECLAIRECLAIRE

Then he switched the tape recorder off, closed the notebook and threw the broken pencil in the wastebasket. The job was done.

A few hours later, in the cafeteria used mainly by policemen and court officials, the investigator was indifferently picking his food from the plate and thinking about Adrian Knapp. The man was insane, it was quite obvious. Still, something was very disturbing in his conviction that he had committed the crime because he was fascinated by some “soul vampire.” The investigator had always felt unease when he had to deal with psychopaths. But there was also something else, a thing he rather wouldn't think about. It was something that could give a new angle to Knapp's story.

There had been another woman.

The bartender from The Tender Touch remembered Knapp and the fact that the writer had signed a book to some young woman at the bar. He didn't know then who the writer exactly was, but he heard what they had been talking about before they went to the booth, and he remembered that because he had never met any celebrity before.

Then, the footprint.

After the first hearing, when Adrian told him about the address of his alleged lover, the investigator went there with the police team and he wasn't able to find anything worth mentioning in the ruin, except one clear print of a high heeled woman's shoe, preserved in the dirt dry from intense August heat. He didn't think it had any importance, but he still ordered police photographer to take a picture of that print.

There was nothing on the developed photograph. Just dry, cracked earth and a few blades of burned, yellow grass.

For the investigator, that was a sufficient reason to go there once again, this time alone, after working hours, and make sure there really wasn't any footprint left. But that could not explain the fact that the photographer had undoubtedly remembered what he was ordered to photograph.

Still, all of that wasn't really important. Adrian Knapp might have really had a lover, who knows, maybe her name really was Claire, but she most probably didn't have anything to do with his plan to get rid of his family. On the contrary, she must have run away as if all devils from hell were after her when she heard about Knapp's terrible crime. He will be tried for the first degree murder of his wife and children, and the DA had a clear case there. As for the beautiful vampires able to be everything that a man could ever wish for... well, better leave the story about them where it belongs – in the insane mind of the killer.

“Excuse me,” somebody said over his shoulder, and the investigator turned around. He saw a short, young man with gentle, almost feminine features.

“Yes, can I help you?” he said.

“You work for the DA's office, don't you?” The boy's voice was soft and pleasant. “I have seen you there a few times. You see, I am a law graduate, and I'm spending some time here in my professional training program. I'm sure I could learn a lot from you about my future profession.”

The investigator smiled in spite of himself. “This is the first time I hear that anyone wants to do this lousy work.”

“Oh, but I do assure you,” the boy said eagerly, “I think investigating procedure is such an interesting way to make a living. You must be vastly experienced; you could really help me learn quickly the secrets of the trade. Would you mind if I joined you?”

The investigator opened his mouth to say something and suddenly felt a gentle, warm touch of the boy's hand on his own. Something suddenly flared in his stomach and he looked down on that soft, white hand.

“Well, go ahead,” he finally said, his voice a bit uncertain. “But I just don't think there's that much to talk about.”

The boy gracefully sat on the bar stool beside him and flashed him a dazzling smile. “Oh no, I'm sure we could talk about your job for hours.”

The investigator found out that it was almost impossible for him to take his eyes from that beautiful, vulnerable face. In a second, it seemed that the boy's features shimmered on the verge of changing, but then he saw it was just the reflection of sunlight on the chrome of some car outside, near the window of the shady cafeteria.

Well, why the hell not, he thought. Since Adrian Knapp's case is closed, I am going to have enough free time. In fact, more than enough, since Eve and kids are on vacation.

“What would you like to drink?” investigator asked and the boy smiled again.

“I’ll have what you’re having.”

His touch was still there. The investigator didn't pull his hand, the way he would probably have done in some other situation. On the contrary, close and unobtrusive, strange touch he had been – as he only realized that fact right now – expecting his whole life, was becoming more pleasant with every second. Adrian Knapp was suddenly just another name with no face or meaning, another number lost among others, case finally closed and forgotten.

Something was telling him that this accidental meeting would change his whole life forever.

And, the strangest thing of all: he couldn't care less.