At exactly 7pm, a quiet knock came at the door. I typed to Matteo on the laptop, "He's here."

"Protect your neck," he wrote back.

I called to the person knocking and the knocking came again, as quietly.

"Is it you?" I asked, moving to open it.

"May I come in? I have some papers to look over. It is quite overwarm," I heard, from the other side.

I opened it and Dasius stood still, backlit by the cheap track-lighting in the hotel hallway. "Gag me, it is warm out here," I said. "Were you followed? Come in."

His dark hair was cut short and combed into a handsome side part. In the low light, he seemed young to me, but his step betrayed him, revealing him as cautious but self-assured. He pressed his briefcase to the luggage rack by the closet and gestured at the hot water machine by the vanity. "I may have been. I may have been. There may not be much time. Make me a cup of tea, would you?"

"You? Followed? Who would follow you? It was a joke," I said, watching him slip off his coat. It was black and lined with silk damask on the inside, cuffed with small silver buttons. Since taking a lover, he had been looking quite modern to me.

"Gag you? Gladly. Tea, please," he said, rubbing his eyes and striding out onto the balcony.

When he wasn't looking, I picked up his coat and slipped it on. "Oh Jesus Christ," I whispered, at the touch of silk. It was a size too large on my body, and hit too low on the thigh, but it made me feel like a duchess on a winter cruise. I kept the coat on while his tea brewed, and brought the bone china teacup to him on the balcony, where he had crossed his legs at the glass-topped table and unbuttoned his shirt to the collarbones.

"What's that, a linen blend?" I asked, setting down his tea and gesturing to his shirt.

"It is not a blend, you cunt."

"Yeah, you sound just like him," I said.

"Who?" he asked, picking up the teacup and taking a deep breath in of its smell.

"You know exactly who I mean." I stuck up my pinkie finger and affected a nasal purr, headed back inside to get his briefcase, " 'Oh, putain, what are you wearing? Putain, is that a blend? Putain, why is this silver? If it is silver, it should be white gold. Putain, if you do not have the taste to dress yourself, all you had to do was tell me. White shoes? Are you a prostitute? If you needed money you could have asked. ' "

I set the briefcase next to his chair and sat down across from him. He was looking over the view, perhaps admiring the many lights which were just beginning to flicker on over Boston, his home city, as evening deepened. Steam rose from his tea, quickly cooling in the freezing air, and swept up his face. He feigned a sip, touching the scalding water to his already blushing lips.

"No?" I asked.

"I have nothing to say," he said, making a soft sound of approval. "Your impression of our mutual friend is good."

"Laurent was always criticizing my taste. 'Stripes? Are you a horse? Is this Monaco? Rose gold? My darling, with your coloring, it looks like a rash. Turn down the lights. The dark suits him, yes, ca pute. ' "

Dasius smiled behind his teacup, "Are you always on stage, darling? Why are you performing for me? Give me your pages and we will talk about them."

I produced the chapter from a low table near the door, and passed it to him across the table. He swept an errant lock of hair from his forehead and took it, blinking his eyes hard.

"You really do look wonderful," I said, softly.

To this, he did not respond, completely ignoring me.

While he read, I reclined in my chair and listened to the city below, how the sound of many cars and people is not unlike the rushing of the wind on the side of a house without windows, and how if I closed my eyes, the honking of car horns sounded like the cautious bleating of small ships on the sea. The chair beneath me was wrought-iron painted white, and terribly firm. I shifted.

"Are you very charitable to yourself in this?" he asked softly, wondering aloud.

"Naturally," I whispered, gazing elsewhere, anywhere but at him.

"You ask me for honesty and I have given it," he said.

"I promise you that honesty is what is in those pages, though you have reminded me often that I am a coward, I am not a liar."

"Perhaps you are charitable to me as well," he said, rubbing his temple and pushing the papers away. After a pause, he whispered, "Your handwriting is awful. It entirely strains the eyes."

"I don't think you've done anything to be ashamed of," I said, picking a small feather from the sleeve of the coat. The fabric smelled very faintly of woody cologne, with an undertone of musk, and the chemical calling card of hair salons.

His body shuddered at that, and I realized that he was laughing at me.

"Anyway. I've come in person because I want more from you, and there's no getting around it. If you like what you see there I would like to further trade."

"We had a deal, you and I," he said, picking up the teacup again. He slopped its contents against the concrete and settled back in his chair, gazing at me, chin declined. His lips recalled Leechtin's to me, which made me close my eyes and gasp a little. "God in heaven," he murmured, "then tell me what you want."

"I want to know more about 1740. In Paris."

"You've spoken to kitten about this," he said, waving my words away with a straight hand.

"It's 'kitten'?" I laughed, erupting against the tension.

"Miriam, if you will make me feel ridiculous, you will soon regret my company," he murmured, steadily, touched the papers with one finger. "Do not mistake me for the sweet innocent you have created here written."

"Leis's account, as you would expect, is very glancing of you, and I suspect there was far more going on than what he reported. You've heard the tape. Tell me I'm wrong. There was so much 'angel angel' in there that there wasn't room for anything else."

"I will not judge him, darling, if that is what you want me to do. You were lucky to have anything from him at all. He mourns deeply. There are those who would protect him with their lives, who if they heard his crying and his moaning on your tape, would happily dispatch you for the pleasure of it." He looked away from me and unbuttoned his cufflinks, small silver bars, pushed his sleeves up, rolling them with long, gentle fingers. I saw that his fingernails were buffed and pointed, meticulously cared for.

"Fuck me, you are intoxicating," I whispered.

"Miriam," he warned, as softly.

"Come to bed with me."

"Who is sounding like Laurent now?" He met my eyes and took the pages again, flipping through them slowly.

"What's all this for?" I asked him, gesturing to his hair and his clothes. "For your lover? Does he care about all this?"

That straight hand waved me off again, as he busied himself reading. "Well this is not the whole story at all," he said, at length.

"It is. There's not much to say about my going home after that. It is not relevant."

"When he heard what you had done to your parents, it was as if you had stabbed him yourself."

"I wouldn't know that. I wasn't there." I laid my hand on the glass table and then rethought it, took it back.

"But he was always glad of your friends, for reining you in, because without them, you would be dead, surely."

"Thank you," I whispered. When he didn't speak, I added, "He always liked Matteo better than me."

"That is because your gentleman loved to shoot heroin as much as Laurent did. I promise you his affection for you was greater. I did not say he liked your friends."

For a moment, the compliment was so impossible I hadn't heard it. I pulled his coat around me more snugly and flipped up the collar.

"Are you offended?" he asked, uncrossing his legs and crossing them again, leaning in to look more closely at my handwriting.

"I made Matteo because I had been in love with him since childhood. You know that? He did like Matteo."

He waved his hand again. "I will have Marcello read this to me and I will see about your request then. If it is good in our eyes, we will do as you ask."

"Your boyfriend gets to decide? Your boyfriend is the most hateful person I know."

A sudden noise from the hotel room turned my head towards the glass sliding doors, and it drew a laugh from Dasius, which sent a chill through me, in spite of our seemingly warm rapport. "He's got in!" Dasius laughed, "He's convinced the desk to let him into the room!"

"Who is it?" I asked, half-rising in my chair, alarmed.

"Oh he has been prowling below like a cat since we sat down here together," he said, smiling. He wiped his still-wet lips with the back of his hand. "He is after a bird."

The appearance of Nicky at the glass doors drew a long shriek from my throat, as he slammed his fist against them, rattling the doors in their frame. I stumbled from the chair to get away. He pressed his hands against the glass and pushed his forehead against it.

"Call him off, call him off," I choked, gasping, backing to the limit of the balcony, body lit by fear and adrenaline.

"There is little he will not do to taste your blood again. He followed me here from California. He has been lurking to see who I will meet. Look how he slavers over you. He will bat you around like an injured sparrow." Dasius had not startled or altered his features at all.

I choked his name while the slim hand reached for the door latch, but Dasius did not move to help me a single measure.

"Fly," he whispered, cackling at my distress. "Fly, fly."

They have never been friends to me, who were desirous of their master's love.