Katerina Cheplik

KATERINA CHEPLIK

by

Victor Allen

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2004

All rights reserved

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Table of Contents

#The White Queen

#The Black Queen

#Reign of the Black Queen

#The Great Bastard

#Rain from a Blue Sky

Excerpts from other Books by Victor Allen

#Essex

#A-Sides

#The Lost Village

#Wandil Land

#We Are the Dead

#Xeno Sapiens

THE WHITE QUEEN AND THE BLACK CASTLE

1

He got to her dormitory at just past five on that September afternoon, parking the black, 1965 Rambler Classic she had never seen before in the library parking lot across the road. The paint and chrome gleamed beneath a heroic number of coats of wax and polish. There was nary a trace of the yellow, visitor's parking passes required for non-campus vehicles displayed in the rear window, but, instead, a hand lettered sign that read: The Rockies in my Rear View Mirror. Pretty much par for the course for Bernie.

Sharon watched from her second story window as he got out of the car and walked by the green and white Colorado license plate. He wore khaki colored pants held up by suspenders and a shirt with thin, brown and yellow vertical stripes. Autumn sunlight flashed off of his sunglasses as he looked up at her window, but she didn't think he saw her. He looked as if he had stepped whole and slightly manufactured out of GQ magazine.

He crossed the street and entered the building. Two co-eds with books held before them and papers fluttering their margins in the breeze looked after him, then went on. It was something of a wonder to Sharon that Bernie didn't slip his shades down and wink at them. He had never been able to keep his hands off a good-looking woman for more than five seconds, or an ugly one more than ten. She waited for the intercom to rattle out Gentleman caller for Sharon Hurley, but that had to wait.

He reappeared on the front lawn a moment later with one of the yellow parking passes fluttering in his grasp like a trapped butterfly. She smiled helplessly with pleasant frustration as he taped the pass to his rear window, just above the green hard hat with PF-6 stickered on it.

That's right, Bernie. Get your shit together first.

She left the window and took a quick look in the mirror. She had worn her blue, brushed cotton overalls with the big, white buttons and thin bib. It was his favorite and he had often told her it made her look like a snow bunny, or, perhaps, a Playboy bunny. A pin that proclaimed Kiss me, I'm Irish was fastened to her left suspender, rising up over the swell of her generous bosom.

The mirror was dotted with school photos wedged into the bottom, but it still showed the same old Sharon. So round, so firm, so fully packed. Built like a shit-brick-house was the idiom she heard most frequently from the young men that happened by her and thought she was out of earshot. Her hair had been styled only last week and it was still a little stiff and obstinate, as if she had used the Marquis de Sade home perm kit. She'd always been a little unhappy with her puggy nose, but the eyes were still good; a fine, jade green.

She impatiently brushed through the springy curls and left the room. She passed by the elevator without a second glance in favor of the stairs, which would be quicker.

She hurried down the risers with the pace and energy that belongs only to twenty- one-year-old college women going to meet their fella. The steps fell behind her two at a time. She reached the first floor landing and was greeted by the elderly black security guard, Roberta Hunter. Roberta smiled at her.

That your man just come in?

That's him.

Roberta put her thumb and forefinger together in an okay sign and winked approvingly at Sharon.

Lookin' good, she said. You look like a kid again, honey. Enjoy it.

And, truth be known, Sharon did feel like a kid. It was a crystalline, Autumn day, tinted with subtle shades of frost and gold. She had heard or read somewhere that being in love caused the brain to produce strange chemicals that made one uncommonly happy. And whether she loved him or not was no longer a riddle begging for an answer. It was a fact in her life.

She walked into the lobby where the usual crowd of students lazed around in the lounge between classes, watching the afternoon soaps on an old color TV that had seen its glory days long before. Amy was on the Hall Monitor's desk today from five to eleven. She knew Sharon had been expecting Bernie and had been waiting for her to come bouncing (pun somewhat intended) down the stairs.

Amy had known Bernie from his previous relationship with Sharon three years before, when she and Sharon had both been know-nothing freshman co-eds, and she genuinely liked him, as most people did. There was a blush on Sharon's face, a tilt of her head, as if it were held a little higher, a little happier. She felt her own soft jab of exasperated longing that she couldn't feel as Sharon did now. Her own boyfriend, Brian, was in the Air Force, where Amy herself planned to join him after Spring commencement.

Amy smiled. Straight out the door, Sharon.

What did he say, Sharon asked.

He said, ‘Hi, Amy.’ Simple as that. Waltzed right in as if he had never been gone.

How do I look, she asked nervously. I mean, I've added a curve here and there since the last time I saw him.

Amy raised a hand with a pencil curled inside of it and pointed at the door.

"You look fine. Now get out of here. There's a man out there been waiting to see you for three years." Her eyes were bright but imperious. She jerked her head sideways. Listening students giggled.

She went. Bernie stood just outside the door. Sharon felt a curious, time-warped sensation as her mind flashed back three years. He saw her and smiled, the same smile he had given her three years before. But at that time she had been unhappy and coldly alone. Her friends had gone to a party that she'd had no desire to attend and she had gone back to her room alone, where she intended to hang around until she felt tired enough to sleep. After an hour of that, she had decided to go to New Jersey pizza and order a pitcher of beer and sulk in self-pity until she felt sleepy.

On her way back to the dorm, her head had been bowed and she had nearly run into him. He had driven up from N.C. State uncalled, unbidden, just suddenly there. She had been shocked but glad at the time, even though they had not been on the best of terms. It was something she would wonder about over time in the close hours of lonely mornings, never knowing whether to chalk it up to blind chance or some kind of telepathy. When she had needed him, he had been there. She recalled how she had looked up, recognized him, and hugged him so fiercely that it had surprised him into staggering backward a little.

Now that same scene replayed itself with a sideways or backwards twist. Where shadow had been there was now light; where sadness and indifference…what? It might have been love, but love was such a dumpy, drippy word. One syllable, easy to say or abuse. But she felt that something as they embraced after the passing of three winters.

She stepped back to look at him, her head characteristically cocked to one side. He hadn't changed much, but there were noticeable differences. His face was thinner, sharper, more masculine, tinged with the dark pigment of a heavy beard that had recently been cropped. There was a bare scent of good cologne on him, understated instead of overwhelming. His forehead, always high, seemed slightly broader. He had always moaned about how fast his hair was coming out and it did seem to be thinner. He was heavier, huskier, fleshed out from the scarecrow he had been then.

There was something about his face, she had decided, that could not be described by words. Each feature was finely chiseled, but the total effect was a handsome visage, but not pretty like so many lacquered and hair sprayed boys. Truth be told, he looked a little thuggish. Not Rondo Hatton thuggish, no, but more like a young Bogie.

Sharon's carefully rehearsed lines vanished into some null and void zone out in hyperspace. It had been a fool's errand in the first place. Nothing ever came out the way it was rehearsed. It was one of the charms of being human.

It's good to see you, Bernie, she finally said. That seemed the safest and most natural thing. Bernie took both her hands and held them. They were rough, the calluses from years of construction work still clinging despite the easier life he now enjoyed.

Glad to hear it, he said amiably. I was afraid you might get one look at me and hand me my walking papers.

She stepped back and smacked him smartly on the rear.

"Ow!" he protested.

She took his hand and marched him toward the dormitory. Come on in. I gotta show you off.

He moaned in mock misery and halfheartedly protested being dragged into the dorm. It was an old and well loved game.

I'm gonna feel like a roach under a glass.

"T-U-F-F," she said. Tough.

They went into the dorm, the sunlight falling behind them on the faded square of carpet just inside. Heads turned, eyes flickered with interest and curiosity. The TV in the lounge rattled on, ignored.

Hi, folks, he said to the gathering at large, speaking in a better than fair imitation of Jack Nicholson. Good to be back. We'll have pictures at eleven.

Sharon's face reddened and she hustled him into the hallway and away from the lounge before he could do any more damage. Once behind the hallway doors, he lowered his head until she could just see his eyes over the top of his sunglasses.

That, Sharon said, is the worst Jack I've ever heard.

2

The band had switched from driving, heavy-metal rock and roll to its closing set of torchy, bluesy numbers. It would soon be closing time, leaving the Rock Shop bar behind locked doors where a few regulars would soak up free beer until morning. Most of the patrons had already trickled out, hurrying off to hastily planned assignations, all night bouts with the alcoholic heaves, or the midnight screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Venus theater on State street.

The bar was dark and filled with stale, blue smoke. The yeasty perfume of beer from polished taps with wooden handles worn smooth by hands that had gripped and pulled them a hundred thousand times over the years hung in the room like the ghost of an old friend. The billiard room on the far side of the bar was the only brightly lit area of the building. Young men in successive states of drunkenness or sobriety, with cigarettes jutting from the corners of their mouths, leaned over the surreal greenery of the pool table velvet and cued their shots. The click of caroming balls was sometimes audible over the sensual wailing of a guitar twanging out a blues riff. Bernie had yet to see a pool shot in the room that could have touched him or Johnny Dunn.

Most of the barroom tables were vacant. Of those still occupied, there were usually two women there. Too homely or too fat to have been picked up earlier in the evening, but willing to stick it out to the bitter end in the hope of being invited out or over by a man who was either too drunk or too horny to care. Loneliness made for strange bedfellows.

Bernie knew the drill well. It was a scene he had witnessed countless times during his stint as a pipe fitter in wild and woolly Pasa Roja, Colorado, building the NAC shale oil refinery. He had been in this bar a hundred times in a hundred places. The barkeep would be behind the counter moodily washing glasses and drying them with a white towel, or leaning on the bar and looking longingly into the darkness with a jaded eye, as the barkeep here at the Rock Shop was doing now, maybe thinking of another time or place. Out back there would be a gathering of tough guys armed with brass knucks, numchuks, and nightsticks overlaid with uncooked rice and bound with electrical tape. One whack of those sticks would score and shatter a jaw and collarbone into fragments. Someone's tires were being slashed; sugar was poured into gas tanks. A co-ed would wake up in the morning with an unwanted pregnancy that would ruin her life for two months or forever.

In the pool room some poor fish was being chewed up bite by bite by a shark, just as he and Johnny Dunn had used to reel them in with the blood bait of big money out in Pasa Roja. He and Johnny had once played a man and his wife a few games of partners for drinks. He and Johnny had lost the first three games. The man's wife suggested that her husband play Johnny heads up for a hundred dollars a game. The man was dubious, knowing he couldn't beat Johnny one on one, but his wife had swallowed the bait for both of them. Four games later, three of them for double or nothing, the poor slob who had been hooked through the belly and back was eight hundred on the downside of the ledger before hanging it up.

Johnny Dunn was a portly, cigar-smoking, balding and hirsute man with the runaway knack of knowing when someone had reached their limit, but able to squeeze them right up until then. That limit had been reached and Johnny knew it. The pitiful Jack-a-lent was ready to cry or fight.

The jukebox in the FarWest Bar had been loaded up with rock and roll oldies from Jailhouse Rock to Ruby Tuesday and Black Dog. Bernie had gone to the head before the end of the last game and when he returned Boogie with Stu had been thundering from the jukebox. Johnny was nowhere to be seen.

Bernie had gone to pick up his jacket. The poor fish was sitting dejectedly on a bar stool, a long-necked Bud sweating in his fist. He had broken his cue stick down and Bernie should have taken that as a warning. But he had been drinking Rum and Coke and was not quite as up as he should have been. Barroom etiquette behooved him to tell the man he had shot a good game.

Sorry about the money, he said. Johnny's a hell of a shot.

You fished me in, the fellow said. By losing those games. He had the long hair of an iron worker and his red eyes glared with no good will. He spoke in a low, menacing voice. Two burly men sitting at the bar turned knowingly to watch.

No fishing trip, Bernie said. I'm just not the shot Johnny is.

That's right, the fellow said, sliding off his stool. You're a cocksucker.

The man had whipped the heavy end of the pool cue around in a short, speeding arc. Bernie remembered even now the dry whock! sound it had made as it connected with the left side of his head.

He had stumbled backward, his arms spinning for balance. His knees buckled as gracelessly as those of a spavined mare. He had drunk too much and had to fight off the numbing narcotic of unconsciousness. He felt not pain, but the summery flow of blood beginning to mat his hair. Through the haze, he saw the man coming at him, the muscles in his sinewy forearms bulging like coiling serpents as he readied a second swing.

Bernie's only thought had been to get out. He hadn't asked for any of this and he was in no condition to fight. Unconsciousness threatened to submerge him in a deep, cold spring of limbo. The door of the FarWest bar was always open and he reeled over to the rectangle of light that separated the dimness inside from the light outside. He shook his head to clear it. Blood flowed from the laceration in his scalp and streamed warmly through his fingers.

He had made it to the door, his attacker having been subdued by the two men at the bar, though he would never know that. The biting cold of a Western Slope February smacked him like a wet towel and some of the dizziness and nausea backed down. Cold sunlight streamed down from the matchless blue of the Colorado sky, slicing his dilated pupils with daggers of flashing silver. For a moment he was as blind as a man in a Blue Norther.

He'd spied the yellow, Ford Thunder-Chicken Johnny had borrowed from his brother, Rock. It was idling, the exhaust puffing out blue-black clouds. The passenger-side door stood open invitingly. Bernie stumbled to the car and half-fell into the passenger seat.

Johnny had had to reach across him to close the door. It had taken twelve stitches at Rifle City Hospital to close the gash, the attending physician muttering the entire time about goddam drunks and pool sharks as he yanked the catgut through Bernie's scalp a bit harder than Bernie thought necessary. Bernie's clearest memory of the entire event was the ever-present stink of Johnny's cigars and his housewife's shrilling that the blood was going to ruin the interior of his brother's car. Bernie flinched a little at the recollection, hurting Sharon.

Hey, she said softly.

She looked at him, concerned and a little puzzled. He had grabbed her too tightly as he recalled the bar incident, and he was no lightweight anymore. Three years of hard labor had filled him out considerably. He relaxed a little and came back to her, enjoying for the second time the feeling of having her in his arms, the shape of soft curves beneath his hard hands at the small of her back. Brooding tonight could only be bad news.

What were you thinking about, she asked, her mouth at his ear. Don't make it bad tonight. Not after so long.

He nuzzled her neck. I was thinking about another bar. Light years from this one.

The smell of her perfume was like the taste of wine to an oenophile. He had purposely drunk little tonight, just enough to loosen the inhibitions and let the soul wriggle free from the body for a little while. Just her breath on his neck, the smoothness of her skin, that clean smell of scented soap and hard scrubbing was enough to make the alcohol in his brain pound in rhythm with the beat from the band.

The set ended and the band left the stage, meandering over to the bar for drinks on the house. This was the best time of the night. There were only a few people left; those that weren't paired up, and the rest who were friends or lovers gearing down toward a night of rest or romance.

Mike, the bartender, turned the lights up. Bernie and Sharon looked at each other in the new light. Two sets of eyes, both as melted as a chocolate bar in August heat, stared at each other. They both realized how ridiculous they must look to everyone else and giggled in unison. The guitarist at the bar grinned and held a foaming mug of beer up in a silent toast to them. Every eye in the house was watching.

Uhm, I think the dance is over, Bernie said. Did I step on your feet again?

Surprisingly, no. I wore steel toes just in case.

She seemed to debate something for a moment, then stood on tiptoe and whispered in his ear.

The dance isn't over yet. Not tonight. Not if you don't want it to be.

She stepped away from him, her head slightly dipped, eyes turned up in a sexy, wide-eyed invitation. She was half smiling, the paragon of demureness.

I guess I could dance till the sun comes up, lady.

At least you didn't say you could dance all night.

Bernie looked toward the heavens. It crossed my mind.

"Hey!" The guitarist hailed them from the bar. Your lady dances real good, she does. How about a bow?

Everyone at the bar, even the jaded barman, was grinning. Sharon did a half curtsy, managing to pull it off with panache despite being hobbled by the overalls.

You got a fine lady, there, the guitarist said. Treat her so.

Fine as a frog's hair, Bernie agreed, Wouldn't think of treating her anything but right.

Come on, Sharon said. There's someplace we need to go.

She grabbed him by the hand and propelled him toward the door. He hurriedly threw up his free hand in a farewell gesture as he was rushed toward the exit.

Seeya later, folks, he called over his shoulder. Don't take pictures, throw money.

His ears burned as scattered applause broke out behind them. He would have bet somebody slapped their knee, but he didn't see it.

Sharon just laughed. Then she snorted. Then she laughed some more.

3

State Street was strewn with cruising female vampires, hunchbacked, Transylvanian mad-lab assistants, and burly men dressed in black, high-heeled pumps, fishnet stockings, corsets, and silk panties. Faces suppurating sickly rouge, lipstick and powder shone eerily like China Dolls beneath the orange sodium lamps and beacon-like marquee of the Venus theater.

Rocky Horror Party tonight at Midnight, the marquee crowed. A crowd of about a hundred revelers had turned out in force to celebrate the weekend bash immortalizing the ballad of Frank N. Furter, Janet Weiss, and Brad Majors. Bernie took it in with a queasy deja vu.

Oh, no. You won't get me in there again.

I didn't bring you here to see the movie.

You remember what happened the last time, he asked severely.

Oh, yes, she answered airily. But I still think a more prudent TV reporter wouldn't have run a spot with me in my undies. Especially considering I got soaked in the water fight. You would have thought I was advertising for a wet t-shirt contest.

"Janet! Janet!" someone squealed from the crowd, calling her by her Rocky Horror party name. Why aren't you dressed?

A red-haired young woman wearing glasses, dressed as Magenta, slithered out of the crowd. It took a few seconds, but Bernie finally recognized her as Abbey, Sharon's roommate. It was the first time he had seen her since he had got back to town. It was hard to recognize her under all the makeup.

"Bernie," she cried with real affection. She wobbled up to them, her unsteady gait giving truth to the flask of brown liquid lashed to her thigh by a garter.

I was wondering where Sharon had disappeared to all day. She's beat my ears black and blue all week telling me you were coming back. How have you been?

If I was any better I couldn't stand it.

Oh? Abbey's heavily shaded eyebrows moved upwards a fraction. I should have seen that. Are you going to the party?

Sharon moved to Bernie's side and looped her arm through his. We have other plans.

Abbey looked cunningly at Bernie. Is that so? She gave a raised eyebrow to Sharon and a smile to Bernie.

Bernie held up his hands. First I've heard of it. Maybe we're going to play gin rummy.

And maybe Louis Farrakhan will become a rabbi, Sharon mumbled under her breath.

The anguished cries of Lips! began as a few scattered shouts inside the theater, then metamorphosed into a chant as the crowd united into the mob animal. A Hi-Fi had been set up outside the glass doors of the theater. Someone spun a record onto the turntable, a real, vinyl record, and the crackling strains of The Time Warp pealed out and set half of the bedecked and be-boozed Bacchanalians to boogieing in the streets.

As it happens, Abbey shouted over the orgiastic din, I have an engagement after the party. She gave each of them a sample of her secret smile. Don't wait up for me.

For the second time that day, Bernie felt like an exhibit under glass. Something to be pointed at and discussed, disparagingly or not. He wondered why Sharon had ushered him to the theater if she had no plans to go to the party.

Abbey said her good-byes and drifted away into the general bedlam, beginning to hop erratically in time to the music.

Sharon was looking for somebody. A moment later her eyes locked and she waved a hearty greeting.

Come on. I want you to meet Kathy. She pointed at a striking young woman leaning against a lamppost across the street. The woman wore the shortest, black leather mini-skirt Bernie had ever seen. Her black, silk blouse was open to the navel, reminding him of Cassandra Peterson as Elvira. Her skin was stark, milk-white, contrasting startlingly with the black, wet-leather, thigh-high pile-driver boots she wore. Standing by the lamppost, she looked more like a hooker than one of the college crowd. She regarded a couple of eager young Lotharios with what looked like weary condescension. The two Romeos strutted and swaggered, grinning with the wolf-like energy that marked a pickup. It was another scene Bernie knew well. The two teenagers might just as well cock their legs up and piss on the road to mark their territory. But he had to admit the woman looked like fair game.

She appears to be busy, Bernie noted.

That won't last long, Sharon said. Come on, I want you to meet her.

I'm not sure I should, he said soberly. That's a big woman, and a lot of them girls are tougher than they look.

As if in answer to his precognition, Bernie saw Kathy laugh softly, her head tilted back, displaying a smooth, unlined throat. She said something to the two would-be studs. The smiles on their faces dissolved like cotton candy in water. Before his very eyes they changed from cocksure gigolos to sulky little boys that had just been trounced by the neighborhood bully.

Very slick, he thought admiringly. Sharon couldn't have done it better herself.

It wouldn't seem like it to see the way she dresses, Sharon explained, but Kathy's actually a very lonely woman. Most of what she does is an act, I think. Her husband died very soon after they were married. I think she still misses him. She doesn't have many friends.

She doesn't look any older than me, Bernie said. She couldn't have been married very long.

She's very mysterious. I showed her your picture once and her jaw just about hit the floor. You look very much like her late husband. I want to see how she'll react. Besides, she's tall.

"Tall..." Bernie said, confused. The observation had come out of thin air.

Kathy turned as they emerged from the crush of gyrating bodies. Even from a distance of twenty yards, Bernie was struck by the fire in Kathy's eyes. She must have had some sort of sixth sense about being sought out, because she looked directly at them. Close up, Kathy was more than attractive. She was the most striking, alluring creature Bernie had ever seen. But it was a frigid beauty, like the emptiness of outer space. For a split second the chill of the September night, the pounding rock and roll thunder, the writhing of the dancers, all slipped into some dark Canaan as his and Kathy's eyes locked in a lightning-charged instant of mutual attraction. He made the look in his eyes die a quick, nasty death before Sharon could see it. He hated it had ever been there at all.

Kathy was about the same height as he. At five-nine he was no great shakes as a man, but Kathy seemed statuesque at that height, with legs that stretched for miles. Her face was slightly heart-shaped, approximately the same width from the highly colored cheekbones to the outer angle of her mandible. Naturally arched eyebrows traced oval eyes of dark brown. Her nose was small and round, not aquiline or Germanic as he would have suspected. Her lips were a soft pink, just a shade above being thin. A mane of dark, chocolate-colored hair flowed down to her shoulders. It was magnificently thick and parted casually to the right where it fell just above her eyebrow. His eyes made a helpless downward cast over her body, from the heavy breasts that pushed against the thin satin of her blouse, to the cinched waist and those incredible legs that seemed to grow all the way to her neck.

You remember me telling you about Bernie, Sharon asked. Here he is, in the flesh. Bernie Peters, meet Katerina Cheplik, foreigner.

Kathy looked at Bernie, eyes wide and thinking, and held out her hand. Like a duchess or something, he thought. Gold, silver and rubies sparkled on the thin, white posts of her fingers. He took her hand in what he intended to be a friendly greeting, but her hand was too warm, proving a lie to the deathly pallor which, though not unattractive, was extreme. He was surprised to note she wore no makeup at all. A guilty thrill of sexual excitement shot through him at her touch, and there didn't seem to be anything he could do about it. She commanded that attention; directed a cold sensuality that could not be denied or averted. Her eyes lingered on his and he looked away at the same time he released her hand. The sensation was gone with the touch, leaving him feeling as if his entire viscera had been scooped out. It was a sickly, churning feeling like he had experienced with Patricia, or the time the barroom roughneck had tried to brain him with a pool cue. He fought to keep from shaking his head as if to clear it from a dream. One look and one touch did not an affair make, but Christ! Those eyes were hungry.

I'm not really a foreigner, Kathy smiled. I just married one. You'll forgive me for staring, but Sharon is right. It's uncanny how much you resemble my late husband. And that's a terrible introduction, I know. Will you be visiting long? She smiled again. A perfectly charming, friendly smile.

Just a couple of days for now. Bernie slipped an arm around Sharon's waist. But I could be persuaded to hang around.

He was calmer now that he knew Kathy actually talked and probably had the occasional bout of the barnyard trots just like anybody else. He grinned furtively at the thought of her sitting on the john, reading the newspaper with her eyes squinched up from a smoking cigarette clamped in the corner of her mouth.

I hope you will. Sharon speaks so highly of you. Let me be one of the first to welcome you properly. How does dinner at my house tomorrow night sound?

You could maybe do me a favor tonight, Sharon said. I need some clothes.

Kathy looked curiously at Sharon. I think my clothes are a little large for you.

Sharon smiled slyly. They're not for me.

The puzzled look left Kathy's eyes after a moment and she smiled back at Sharon, a crafty woods fox. Bernie felt he had been left out of some private joke. They looked at him and he understood.

His eyes widened. You've got to be kidding, he said with dawning, but pleasant disbelief. They were looking at him as though he could pull off the world's most sublime joke. You can't be serious, he protested. One more look convinced him they were.

I don't quite know what to do about the mustache, Kathy remarked, but with the party tonight, we might be able to get by with a veil. She looked pointedly at Bernie. Unless you wanted to part with it.

Bernie put his right hand to his mustache, as if to confirm it was still there.

"Do you have a veil," Sharon asked, wide-eyed.

Of course I have a veil. We'll wrap a scarf around his face, Kathy cooed. You'll look just like Annie Oakley, darling.

Bernie felt as if he had been cast aside like an old rag while the two women debated the best way to disguise him.

I don't know about this, he said doubtfully. It seemed like a movie scene to him, maybe even Rocky Horror.

It'll be fun, Sharon laughed. Don't be such a Nimrod. Loosen up and live a little you old stick in the mud. This is the only way I can get you back into the dorm. I've got to sneak you in.

Bernie gave a look to Kathy- who looked perfectly enthralled- and decided she could be trusted in a matter of indiscretion.

Wouldn't a motel be better, he asked Sharon in a low voice. A raft, of raucous laughter rattled by them like dry leaves in a whirlwind.

You're in my world tonight, Sharon said. I mean to keep you there.

There was a simple glow about her, laughing at the chill, an intensification of her normal joie de vivre that had always been the counterweight to Bernie's rather serious nature. His eyes strayed over her shoulder to the theater marquee. The Roman god Janus, with his double face of tragedy and comedy, was displayed on either side of the letters. Janus, laughing on the outside, crying on the inside. It was his choice, laugh or cry.

Sharon looked at him expectantly. He couldn't deny her, never had been able to. It might even be fun.

4

Only two blocks from the madness of State Street, Kathy's house hulked into the darkness like an ominous black castle. It was a sprawling, two-story, antebellum structure strangely situated between the Y.M.C.A. and the buzzing, college atmosphere of State Street. Kathy told Bernie the house had been in the Cheplik family for more than three hundred years and had been declared an historical landmark by the Red River Historical Society. That was the saving grace that had kept it from the bulldozers and backhoes that had ripped up everything around it to make room for the college and its support system of bars, billiard rooms, pizza parlors and music stores. A tasteful sign on the front lawn announced guided tours every weekday.

You don't mind strange people traipsing through your home every day, Bernie asked.

I hardly notice it, Kathy answered. I have a very good lady- Helen Brown- who conducts the tours and keeps the place up. The only time I'm really up and about, so to speak, is at night.

The house was set well back from the road, isolated despite its close proximity to a small college campus. Regal oaks still sporting their summer plumage stood sentinel over the walkway and shaded the moon from the lawn. A stoplight a short distance up the road flared amber, then red, like the eye of a demon. An occasional rumble of music from the bash at the theater drifted up to them. Sharon and Bernie walked up onto the porch together and waited in the chill of the night while Kathy unlocked the door.

She switched on the lights. They walked down a short hallway and into a front room well-appointed with expensive antiques. A badly used Gormander billiard table was pushed almost uncaringly into a corner. Bernie stood by it and ran his hand over the worn and fuzzy felt. It was a real beauty that should be refinished and displayed as a showpiece. A Chippendale china cabinet bulging with Waterford Crystal and Bisque china reared ponderously against the wall opposite the fireplace. The room itself was immaculate, showing the loving touch of the woman who kept it up. A liquor cabinet filled with the finest of costly spirits guarded its charges jealously from the reaching arms of the sofa and chairs. A grand, rococo crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, dripping coruscating rainbows of light into the room. The cubicle was straight out of the eighteenth century except for the electric lights, the Sony color TV, and an expensive looking stereo system. Those things, Bernie was willing to bet, were for Helen, not Kathy.

You know where everything is, Sharon, Kathy said. Why don't you show Bernie so he can fix himself a drink or a cup of coffee. You do drink coffee don't you?

Only as much as I want, Bernie said.

Do you want anything, Sharon asked.

I'm fine, I guess. I feel like a bull in a china shop.

Then you can come with us, Sharon said.

They went up the stairs. The banister was Mahogany silk under Bernie's hand and there was a slight smell of lemon and vinegar. Framed portraits lined the stairwell like some hierarchical gallery. Bernie saw one that had to be Kathy's late husband. It was an oil painting with the name ‘A. Hurley’ lettered in the lower right hand corner. It wasn't exactly like looking in a mirror- nobody that wasn't half in the bag would ever mistake them for the same person- but there was a startling resemblance,

Pyotr Cheplik appeared to have been a huge man with shoulders like cross ties and hands that looked as if they could crush cold steel. In the portrait he was standing by a fireplace- the same fireplace in the living room- his right elbow propped easily on the brick masonry, a balloon glass of what was probably Brandy cradled in his right palm. His left hand rested on a cane that was positioned slightly away from his body. His hair was darker and thicker than Bernie's, but parted simply to the left like his. That was the only substantial difference. The faces displayed the same long noses, elevated cheekbones and shadowed hollows. But Cheplik's face was harder, colder, as if it had been crafted inch by cutting inch from an Arctic glacier. The eyes were dark, hidden in the supra orbital shadows. Bernie was a little uneasy to realize he apparently was the kind of man to whom Katerina was attracted. Despite her amiability, there was something intangibly cold and carnivorous about her, like a black widow or praying mantis waiting patiently amid the jungles of the city streets for her unwary prey to happen by.

He looked to the top of the stairs where Kathy stood. He tried again to figure why he thought of her the way he did, considering they had met only minutes before. She seemed more natural in the high wattage lighting, but still aloof. She was like her home: historic, perfect, eighteenth century, filled with tight little cubicles and passages. And maybe something worse than a skeleton or two languishing away in some hidden closet. There was a streak of college shenanigans in her, but he felt that was more anomaly than anatomy.

She stared down at him with what he was sure was amused calculation. In case you're wondering, that was my husband, Peter.

We do look a little alike, don't we? How long were you married?

Just a little over a year, she said. Her smile was winsome and slightly sad and Bernie could believe what Sharon had said about Kathy being lonely. He's been dead several years.

You must have married very young.

Too young, she said. But I'd venture to guess that I'm older than you think.

Bernie smiled. I think I hear the dogs of doom howling. I won't ask.

Good man.

Sharon had reached the top of the stairs before Bernie managed to plod the rest of the way up the varnished risers. Not for the first time Bernie thought the best mode of transportation for Sharon would be a pogo stick.

Stay here for a minute, Sharon commanded. We'll call you when we're ready. She and Kathy moved down the carpeted hallway, yapping away at each other. Bernie wondered if they were hatching more plots to burst his ego. But in that regard he had already been done in by Patricia, the master. Anyone else was only second rate.

He stood on the stair landing for perhaps five minutes while Sharon and Kathy bustled around. He had nothing to do but look at the hallway that ran the entire length of the upper floor. There must have been eight or more rooms in the second story, if the number of doors were any indication. He idly wondered what was behind those doors. Old furniture covered with sheets, most likely, looking like ghosts; boxes of Christmas ornaments; old appliances. He turned one of the door knobs. It was locked. He thought of the line in Dracula about locked doors: You may go anywhere in the castle you wish except where the doors are locked where, of course, you will not wish to go.

More realistically, the doors were probably locked because a woman with a houseful of historic treasure wouldn't want it carted off by the many strangers that wandered through every day.

The door at the far end of the hallway opened and Sharon called him.

We're ready for you.

When he got to Kathy's bedroom he saw that they had laid out a white mini skirt, and a billowy, blousey thing with ruffles that was supposed to cover his torso. He saw not a sign of buttons, zippers or hooks. Not even Velcro fasteners. He wondered how they planned to cover his hairy chest. He needn't have worried. Kathy opened a drawer and pulled from it a black, knit pullover.

Sharon, she said sweetly, would you go get us a pair of high heels? There's a shoe tree in the hall closet.

Oh, definitely gotta have high heels. She gave Bernie a quick kiss on the cheek. Back in a minute, laughing boy.

He watched her go, feeling more and more that he had been given the bum's rush with every passing minute. He and Kathy were alone now, and he wondered what would fill the awkward silence. He had only his impressions of her, and they weren't so good. What to talk about? The weather? Quantum mechanics? Embalming practices?

Words wouldn't come, but something else did. That disturbing, dreamlike aphasia he had felt at the theater crept in again. Kathy had turned her head and caught his eye and that was all it took. She smiled and that smile was far from friendly. It was full of animal predation and secret meanings that begged to be found out and shared.

Kathy (No, she was Katerina now. The devouring princess who had what she wanted or took what she wanted. She would destroy any man who refused her. Even those that didn't) made a great show of bending over to the lowest drawer of her armoire. That was fitting. An armoire instead of a chest of drawers. Her skirt rode up and up over firm muscle until it had pulled taut, exposing the cup of one buttock. He saw a flash of coarse, black pubic hair and a wrenchingly tantalizing glimpse of wetly glistening pink.

He looked away guiltily, shocked and somehow belittled. Kathy pulled out a pair of black leotards and stood up. She turned to face Bernie and took a step forward. She stumbled (quite a graceful stumble, Bernie would later think) and he reached out reflexively to catch her. She reached one hand out as if grasping for support. That hand touched him, tracing him from his torso to his upper thigh. Her touch was fire. Her breasts tumbled out of the practically nonexistent blouse and swayed heavily like ripe fruit ready for the taking. She regained her balance before falling completely and stood upright. She was less than a foot away from him. The white globes of her breasts stood out brazenly, large and round with pale, pinkish brown nipples that were already hard. Her eyes burned steadily into his. Not coy, not ashamed. Just hot.

He thought crazily of the woman from Colorado with whom he had shared a trailer strictly as a tenant. He had been lying on the living room floor when Linda had come in to collect the rent. She had been wearing a décolletage blouse and blue jeans cut off just below her rear. She had leaned over him as she talked about going up to Marble to see the fall colors, giving him, had he wanted it, quite a view of a pretty good set in there. Linda had finished her remarks with a loaded question, sitting down across from him with her legs spread, and sweeping her blond hair back from her forehead.

Do you feel ambitious, she had asked.

Bernie felt like that now, not knowing whether to shit or go blind. Such things happened to him from time to time, but never with such dizzying cheek.

Take it, Kathy whispered. Her voice was husky, dark as cool waters at ocean depths. There was a challenge in those waters, like a murderous undertow. She gave Bernie a self-satisfied smirk that reminded him of a fat old tomcat sleeping after devouring a rat. Her teeth were very white, glowing with a saliva sheen of reflected light. She spread the long fingers of her right hand to their widest extent and traced a short line from her belly to the front of her skirt where she held it flat. She slowly hooked her fingers beneath the hem of her skirt as if to raise it. There was something explosively carnal about the gesture. The room was much too hot.

Don't fight it, she whispered. You were meant for me. Make it easy on yourself. Take me now.

For some reason, those words coming from Kathy didn't sound crazy, but ominous.

He was sweating. This was insane, like something you read about in those kinky letters to the Penthouse Forum, most of which Bernie fastidiously believed were sheer lies and fantasies. This kind of thing happened to college students with capped teeth and Clearasil-clear faces or leather-jacketed bikers with long hair and beards, a deck of Luckies rolled into short sleeves that covered heavy, sunburned biceps. And nowhere in the Forum letters was there the mention of the naked, dangerous plea he heard in Kathy's voice.

Sharon started back up the hallway.

Kathy unhurriedly brought her hands to her shoulders and slipped her fingers into opposite sides of the plunging neckline. Her eyes never left Bernie's as she ran her long, red fingernails down the fabric. Her blouse closed over her breasts like a hungry mouth, hiding her feminine enticements behind staid, black cloth.

She still had that tiny smile, but not even that could cover the angry flash in her eyes at his silent rejection.

Bernie was feverish with a fusion of emotions. Guilt, excitement, and the almost uncontrollable urge to shake the soul out of this darkly enchanting trollop and scream Why are you doing this?

Sharon came into the room, a pair of spiked stilettos dangling from her hand by thin straps.

I hope you've got tough ankles. She tossed the shoes across the room where they landed next to the blouse and skirt. It was as if a spell had been broken and for the second time that night Bernie had to clear the cobwebs and muzziness of a dreamlike stupor from his head.

He felt like guilt was written across his forehead in day-glo letters, yet Sharon seemed to sense nothing amiss. Kathy had backed away a few steps and that aura of predation had whirled away into thin air. Neither impression of Kathy was tenable. She was the consummate actress, able to create or dispel any impression on a caprice.

How are your legs fixed for high heels, big boy, Sharon asked.

He'll make a lovely woman, Kathy said. Those sparkling eyes hinted at secrets hidden away in a magic chest to which she held the only key.

Are you ready to get dressed?

Bernie blinked at Sharon's words. Huh? Oh, yeah. Sure.

Just get me the hell out of here, he thought.

5

Sharon