Wolfe had his lunch in the dining room, but I had mine in the kitchen so that I could use the kitchen extension to make phone calls and eat at the same time.  The arrangement was fine by me.  I was fed up with Wolfe just then, and I knew that there was still more to come.  The short vacation was welcome. 

Using a neat combination of sweet-talk and bribery, I managed to get the glaziers in by three o'clock. After he burned Fradkin's treat in the front room fireplace, Wolfe rearranged his usual schedule and went up to the roof with them, so that he could interfere with their work while making sure they did not interfere with his orchids.  I was about to make a few calls to the Manhattan Orchid Society to check if any decent gardeners were at liberty when the doorbell rang.

When I cracked the front door, I saw a familiar, if bewildered face on the stoop.  It was Jeremy, Hewitt's assistant orchid nurse.  I opened the door wide.

"A sight for sore eyes or, at least, for sore orchids.  Come in."

"Thanks, Mr. Goodwin," he said, his tone doubtful.  There was a battered pigskin suitcase by his feet. He picked it up and carried it with him into the hall, and I helped him off with his coat.  I assumed he would be joining our happy family so I wanted the excuse to check his pockets.

"You made good time in from Long Island."

"Yes, sir."

"How was Mr. Hewitt?'

"Uh, he sounded fine over the telephone, Mr. Goodwin, just kind of far away.  I guess he's on his yacht.  He said to say 'Hello, there' to you, and 'Happy Birthday' to Mr. Wolfe."  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I could see Hewitt's smirk when he had delivered those lines.  What a kidder.

"I'll show you up to your room and help you unpack."  That would let me have a chance to get at his luggage, as well.

Wolfe stopped provoking the workmen long enough to narrow his eyes at us when we went by.  As I was returning in the other direction, he got up from his stool and headed for the quarters, obviously intending to scoop out Jeremy and begin his long martyrdom.

I was surprised to hear the elevator in the hall at six since I had supposed Wolfe might linger on the roof to mourn the dead.  Instead he marched into the office and rang for beer, just as if it had been a normal afternoon.  Fritz's face, when he brought in the silver tray with the two bottles, was grave enough for a wake.  The details had obviously made it downstairs.

Wolfe poured and drank before he spoke.  This time, he licked the foam without glancing in my direction.  "Jeremy is merely adequate, but he will have to suffice in this emergency.  Four, four galeandra, five---"

I let him run on for a while.  In any case, I wasn't really looking forward to the rest of the conversation.  Finally, he came to a halt, probably to fume, and I asked, "What about Theodore?  I don't much miss him since he always reminds me of spoilt milk, but he has worked for you for over twelve years, and he is the best orchid wrangler in town."

"If he is dead---" Wolfe let himself trail off.  He drained about half of his glass of beer and said, "I intend to recover him.  If we find my opponent, we will find Theodore."

"To do that, you'll need your brain working on all cylinders."  I wanted to hesitate but kept going, instead.  "I'm viewing what happened on the roof as a last warning.  When do you want to take care of it?"

"The distracting side-effect of my blood touching you should not be repeated.  It was the first contact since you have changed, which is what made the difference."

"Welcome though that news may be, there are too many of these little surprises cropping up to keep me happy.  Also, that doesn't do anything for you.  When, sir?"

"Archie, don't pester me."  There was a snap in his voice, but I ignored it.  I just stared at him and waited it out.  "Very well, then, this evening."

I nodded, turned around, and reached for a stack of invoices that included the glazier's bill.

Dinner was positively funereal.  Fritz kept giving us both concerned glances and didn't even comment when there were leftovers on the lamb loaf.  I wanted to tell him not to waste his sympathy but didn't bother.  There was nothing going on I could bring myself to discuss with him.

The silence continued in the office afterwards.  Usually, if I'm in for the evening, we talk, but not that night.  I tried to read a magazine, gave up, and pulled out and cleaned Wolfe's revolver.  He finished The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. We both pretended not to watch the clock crawling.  When the big hand finally made it to eight, Wolfe was fed up and I didn't blame him.

"I am going to check the orchids.  Good night."

"Good night, sir."  I waited for the sound of the elevator in the hall, put away my cleaning tools, and did the office chores.  My mind didn't want to grip and I didn't force it.  But, when I climbed the stairs to the second floor, I went to his door, not my own.

I had been in Wolfe's bedroom maybe seven hundred times or so over the past fourteen years, but that night it was as if I had never seen it before.  I walked in, looked around, decided it was nice if you liked books and the color yellow, and sat in an armchair, not Wolfe's.  Then I got up, thought about taking my shoes off, decided not to, and went into the bathroom to check my teeth in the mirror.  Catching myself, I went back out into the bedroom.  Between that streaky footboard of anselmo, the black headboard, and the puffy black coverlet, the bed dominated the rest of the furnishings like Wolfe dominating a meeting in the D.A.'s office.  It was extra large, to cope with Wolfe's bulk. I sat back down and crossed my legs and then uncrossed them.  This was not going to be easy.

I heard the door open and glanced up.  Wolfe came in and scowled at me.  I frowned back at him.  He went into the bathroom and closed the door, and then came out again and took off his suit jacket and vest, gold cufflinks and silk tie.  He hung up the vest, jacket, and tie, and moved around the room, fussing.  I watched, not speaking, while he picked things up, put them down somewhere else, and repeated.  Nero Wolfe wandering around a room is an alarming sight, like seeing an elephant fretting about in a street bazaar.

Finally, I'd had enough.  "Come on, sir, would you sit down?  You're making me jumpy.  I knew there was some reason I avoid virgins."

"I am not a virgin, Archie."

"No?  Sure, your body isn't, and you may remember what part fits where, but I'd give two to one that nothing has gone on since you moved in."  With one piece of my mind, I wondered what the hell I was doing.  I may avoid the test drive, but I've been with enough new and nervous drivers to know not to crowd them at the wheel.  "Cripes, maybe we should have kept going in that alley."

He grunted and sank into a tapestry armchair across from the one I was dug into.  "No, you were right.  It was too exposed a situation for such an encounter."

I looked him over.  He was sure big.  To tell the truth, he was as large as he was fat, but I'd still have ignored him if I was a woman.  No, not ignored him, because of the personality moving behind the familiar features, but never, not in a million years, would I have invited him out dancing. 

But I knew him.  He wasn't some stranger.  When I looked at him, I knew him well enough to feel---

The brown eyes met my own.  The features, always so still to an outsider, were easy for me to read.  His vanity was taking a beating.  He was tired, and black amusement was battling it out with petulance for control.  The mobile lips that I had kissed last night pulled back and twisted a little.  Irony had won.

I rubbed the back of my neck. "Hell."  I admit that his vanity wasn't the only one suffering.

"You're thinking too much."

"You've got that right."

He sighed hugely, hauled himself up, and sat back down on the ottoman by my feet.

"It'll break."

"All of my bedroom furniture is reinforced.  I am not a witling, no matter how it may appear at this moment."  He sighed again, and put one hand on my knee.

Well, it wasn't a spider.  I didn't want to knock it off of me.  He rubbed, gently.  I felt--- "Okay," I said. "That's good."

He grunted and slid his hand up my thigh.

"Did you---as the kid, I mean---ever do it with another man?"

"Yes, I did.  Middle European military culture at the turn of the century was notorious for such alliances, and I served with the Austrian army for a brief time after finishing at my academy."

"Huh.  I never heard about that."  His fingers were kneading into my thigh.  I wanted him to shift the hand over.  He did.  I spread my legs a little.

"There were a series of scandals, pilloried in the radical presses of both Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  The Kaiser himself was marginally involved in one such affair."  He told me about Viennese blue humor and Montenegrin history, and I pretended to listen.  Then he said, "Stand up."  I did, and it put me right next to him.  He steadied me with one hand on my hip for a moment, until I placed a hand on his shoulder.  "Such arrangements are quite common in warrior cultures that isolate and denigrate their women."  Now his hands were unbuckling my belt, unzipping my fly.

He paused to look up at me.  There was something faintly melancholy about his expression; that may be why I nodded.  His hands freed me from my boxers, and he saw what we both already knew, that I was ready for him.  It seemed like I should look away, but I watched, instead, as he wrapped me up in one big paw and went to work.

"You, talking about denigrating women?  That's a horse laugh."  I found that I was moving in rhythm with him.

"Archie, I have never denied that---" he caught my slow grin and snorted.  "Yes, I admit that my views in such matters may be unduly influenced by my place of mortal origin."  I let the grin grow wider.  What happened next only goes to show how much Wolfe hates losing an argument.  His eyes narrowed, he leaned down, his lips parted, and he took me in.

My hand clamped hard on his shoulder.  He grunted around me in inquiry.  To be frank, he was awkward, but I didn't give a damn.  I put my free hand on his other shoulder.  A little later, I moved it to the back of his head and closed my eyes as I tangled my fingers into the thick, soft hair.  He was polishing his performance fast, picking up the clues from my body the same way I'd seen him read faces and interpret words down through the years.  It seemed like his mouth and tongue were everywhere, tasting me, touching me, encircling me in warmth.

"Damn it!"  Abruptly I pulled away from him and tilted his chin up.  "You are not getting out of this so easily."

He glared at me.  "What are you badgering me about now?  I am hardly uninvolved."

"Yeah, but I'm the only one falling to pieces."  I glanced down and gritted my teeth.  "Stand up.  Come on, stand up."  I'm still not sure if it was more a matter of him standing or me hauling, but I got him up.  "All right."  I told my hand to move, and was vaguely surprised that it had the idea already.

His eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched.  Now it was my turn to unbuckle and unbutton.  He started to open his mouth.  I saw that his lips were as moist and as full as I was.  At some point he put his arms around me, but that didn't even slow me down.  I had him in my grip, and I let him know what it was like to have someone else dictate your pleasures.  When I unbuttoned his shirt with my free hand, he made a protesting noise, but I could feel what his pulse and his breath were doing and ignored it.  I didn't complain when he took matters back in hand himself.

It was all too much.  It was all too good.  I wanted more and the wanting made me flush hot and cold with edgy desire.  When I closed my mouth over my panting, my teeth clattered, rather than clicked, together.  His free arm was looped around my back like an iron band, and he was taking in and letting out great gusts of air, his head resting against my shoulder again.  I pushed back from him, he turned his head, and I saw my own desperation mirrored on his face. His hand stilled at the same moment as mine did.  But when he started to remove it, my hips thrust once, and he left it where it was.

He said, his voice all sand and velvet, "How does one bear it?"

"It's not supposed to be like this.  It's only sex."  I knew that I could figure out what the problem was if I let myself, and that was the scariest thought of all.

Yeah, we were both fighting it, panicking a little.  Maybe that's what opened us up to the attack.

Heat flashed all across my torso, heat burned in my hand, heat pooled, tight and angry, in my groin.  The great, black wings swept up and around me, wrapping me in flames.  I screamed and couldn't tell if it was in terror or ecstasy.  I twisted against the huge hands that felt like fire, like red-hot tongs gripping me, and almost fought free.  Then I caught a glimpse of the face: strange, sharp, the eyes like black infernos, the mouth-twisted a little at one corner. 

Scissoring with my legs, I managed to catch hold of the lowest limbs, and then grabbed at the waist and got that as well.  It was a good thing I did, too.  We tumbled over and around in the clutches of the blazing wind, and I saw that it was a long way down to the glowing brass mountains below.

I squeezed my eyes shut.  In case you weren't sure, I hate this a lot.

As do I.

Under my arms, I felt things moving, changing.  Not the Old Man of the Sea routine again, goddamn it.  I don't think I can stand it, under the circumstances. Can a mental voice sound ragged?

I would suggest that you do not look, then.

Of course, after that I looked.  Scales: it had to be scales.  Crap.  I think I'm slipping.

Arms wrapped tight around me.  The strange musculature was trembling a little.

Hold on, boss. More shifting: I felt a silken flesh against mine that burned like ice.  The wind around me as we fell was a liquid too cold to be called slick.

I shall.  This form of attack drains too much power to last for long.  We only need endure.

Was I being clasped by sticks, as we swung in mid-air?  Since when did sticks have fur?  I squeezed my eyes tight shut.  I really didn't want to see this one.

We are both perilously close to sensory surfeit.

What?  I'm doing it too?

If you are referring to seemingly shifting guises, yes, you are.  You will be happy to know that your current form is not only aesthetically and sensually pleasing, but very succulent and quite nutritious, as well.

Nuts. This time it was a relief to feel the alterations, even if I couldn't make out what had hold of me now.  I opened my eyes.  I gawped.

Stop that. You have all too many teeth to place them on display.

I don't even want to know. She---no, he---snorted.  It was quite tasty sounding.  Oh, for---

Blackness stretched all around us and we were falling towards forever, spinning.  I was shredding away into my companion.  It didn't matter.  All that mattered was holding on.  There was a stubbornness that matched my own spiraling to meet me as I was consumed.  There was recognition and a decision.  We both gave way and collapsed inwards, into a tiny place of nothing that contained everything.

I was stretched out on Wolfe's carpet, on Wolfe.  We must have fallen as loosely as drunks do because nothing seemed to be broken.  Beneath me, Wolfe was producing words in his body's native lingo that told me he was angry but okay.  I shifted and my own body informed me that, as far as it was concerned, no time had passed at all.  When I checked Wolfe's expression, he was glaring.  "Archie---"

Oh, to hell with it.  I swooped and got his mouth with mine, shifted to get pressure where it was needed, and began to do what I should have done in the first place.  Beneath me he was making sounds half indignant and half yearning.  We rode against each other hard and then used our fists and our lips.  There was no more nonsense, and it all felt great.  When I fell over the edge, it didn't take much effort to drag him after me.

After it was all over, we lay sprawled out together.  We were a mess, and the smell of sweat and sex multiplied by two was the kind of physical evidence that can't be argued with.  My brain scrambled for something, anything to say.

I came up with, "Please help; I am trapped in a film scripted by perverts."

I felt as much as heard the grunt.  "My congratulations to whichever of your female friends had sufficient attractions to acquaint you with such avant-garde motion pictures.  I don't believe I need to speculate as to a name."

"Well, she wanted you two to be friends.  Little did she know."  I understood why he was bringing her up right now, and I was grateful.

"Jackanapes.  Get off of me."

I rolled off, sat up, and stretched.  "So tell me, why is it so important to the Black Hat to scare me off?"  He didn't answer me.  I looked down and, son-of-a-gun, he was stretched out on the carpet, eyes closed and his lips pushing in and out.

That was a long one.  It was eight and a half minutes by his own clock before his eyes opened again, and he sat up himself.  "I believe I now understand at least part of what our opponent fears."

"Then you're doing better than I am.  I'm going to give up on understanding and run entirely on confusion from now on.  There's so much more of it available."  The yawn caught me by surprise.

"You are tired."  I grinned at him.  He frowned at me.  "Telephone Saul tomorrow morning and ask him to visit me at ten, in the plant rooms."  Now it was my turn to frown.  He ignored me and kept going.  "Also, telephone the others.  It is permissible, now that you have broken bread with them.  Ask them all if the name 'John Smith' has any significance, aside from its usual import."  His eyes met mine.  "We will talk, you and I, when I come down from the plant rooms, tomorrow morning."

I recognize that particular hint when I hear it since I've heard it from sundry and assorted female others over the years.  He was letting me know it was time to depart and leave him alone with his thoughts.  Fine.  I offered him a hand up.  He scowled at it, moved the scowl along to me, and then grunted.  Between the two of us, we managed to get him up and off the floor without breaking anything.

I got back to my own bedroom and decided that the shower could not wait until morning.  As I got my clothes off, I felt a little sore, probably from the fall in the plant rooms.  I emptied my trouser pockets onto the bureau drawers---I'd left my pocketknife on the roof, damn it, and it needed to be cleaned---and stowed the dirty clothes down deep in my hamper. 

When I first moved into the brownstone as a kid, I hung a print of September Morn on my bathroom wall.  Later, I'd learned a name for what lead me to choose that particular picture, and a different name for the kind of amusement with myself that made me leave it there, all these years down the road.  I walked into the john that evening, saw her crouched over her own nakedness, gazing demurely away from me over her shoulder, and grimaced.  Then I turned and craned over my own shoulder, into the mirror over the sink. There would be bruises, all right.  He must have gripped too hard when he caught me.

Not only do I like a shower hot, I needed the help.  As I went to turn on the water, I heard the murmur in the pipes that meant Wolfe was running his own shower, or bath, more likely.  When the temperature of the water was the way I liked it, I stepped in and let the sound of the spray drown out all the thoughts trying to make noises in my head.

It did a good job of relaxing me.  Most of my muscles stopped complaining.  My body was quiet.  For some reason, as I scrubbed, my own arms seemed strange to me.  I stretched them out, flexed them, and frowned at the usual trickles of water slicking the hair down on my forearms, the play of the muscles just below the skin.  It wasn't that I was marked up in front.  My biceps were okay.  My chest wasn't bruised.  I patted my gut.  The slight thickening over my belly argued that I could stand to do some more exercises in the morning, but the Army would take care of that soon enough.  I realized where all this was going and moved my hand up and away, to adjust the temperature.

The pipes clanked a little, and the water heated up.  Wolfe's oversized tub must be full.  He would be getting in.  I closed my eyes and sighed.  It sounded harsh inside my own head, away from the noise of cascading water.

There are reasons I keep away from brooding.  The thoughts rarely seem to make much sense or do much good.  Tonight, for example, they wouldn't stay put.  They took me back to see what had happened, but stupid details of it: that melancholy expression in Wolfe's eyes, what they were like later as he finished.  Why that?  Why not think about Theodore rising through the sky like a marionette being yanked off the stage, or the dark wings on the creature that had carried me?  It, he, had resembled---I scrubbed both hands across my stomach, hard.  Forget it.  Nothing had really changed.  We were still stuck in the middle of a murder case, Wolfe was still being annoying by shutting me out to play some cute little game of his own.  I would still be telephoning a female friend for company, probably the first evening after we wrapped matters up.  I would still be joining the army.  I was still going to war.

The water had cooled down to lukewarm, and I was shuddering, more tired that I had thought.  I turned off the spigots and reached for my towel.  As I dried my hair, I wondered for a moment if Wolfe had glanced at the wall, from inside his extra-large tub, when the mutter in the pipes from my shower had stopped.

Back in my bedroom, I did a few stretches to make sure my muscles had no more surprises in store for me.  Then I polished a last corner or two and slung the towel in my hamper on top of the dirty clothes.  It was cold outside, so I put on pajamas before I cracked open the window. When I was between my own cool, soft sheets, I firmly told my brain to shut up and turned off the bedside lamp.  The dark in my bedroom wasn't perfect: it never is, with the city outside the window.  The dark inside my own head, as I fell into sleep, was complete.

---

XIX---Poetics

---

I dreamt. 

At the banquet hosted by the Greek merchants who had brought the Hermit Prince his seeds and his scrolls from the farthest west, the Master of Revels began the evening with a song from the Tenth Muse:

We know this much

Death is an evil; we have the gods' word for it; they too would die if death were a good thing

The Prince had liked that one.  He liked any poem that included a neat argument.  But now the latest guest who'd been passed the harp was singing:

I confess

I love that which caresses me. I believe

Love has his share in the Sun's brilliance and virtue

Behind me, I heard a dubious grunt.  I leaned back against him on the dinner couch, grinning.  He'd never had much time for certain ideas, even when they applied to him, and it was always good for some entertainment to point that out.  I tilted my head back with easy familiarity, and---

I woke.  My alarm was ringing.