Russell Andrews - Aphrodite  

Copyright 2004 by Peter Gethers

All rights reserved.

Song lyrics on page 33 are from Useless Beauty by Elvis Costello, copyright 1996 Plangent Visions Music Inc. ASCAP.

Song lyrics on page 41 are from King of the Hill by Roger McGuinn/Tom Petty, copyright 1990 McGuinn Music (BMI)/Gone Gator Music ASCAP. All rights o/b/c Gone Gater Music administered by WB Music Corp.

All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Song lyrics on page 101 are from 15 Feet of Pure White Snow, written by Nicholas Edward Cave, copyright 2001 by Songs of Windswept Pacific (BMI) o/b/o Mute Sont Ltd. All rights administered by Windswept. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Windswept.

Song lyrics on page 158 are from Im Dead (But I Dont Know It) by Randy Newman, copyright 1999 Randy Newman Music.

All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Song lyrics on page 172 are from The Bug by Dire Straits, copyright 1991 Phonogram Ltd London.

Song lyrics on page 224 are from Missing You by Loudon Wainwright III, copyright 2001 Snowden Music Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

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First eBook Edition: January 2004

ISBN: 978-0-446-55006-2

NOVELS WRITTEN UNDER THE NAME RUSSELL ANDREWS

Gideon

Icarus

Aphrodite

NOVELS BY PETER GETHERS

The Dandy

Getting Blue

NONFICTION BY PETER GETHERS

The Cat Who Went to Paris

A Cat Abroad

The Cat Wholl Live Forever

TO ESTHER NEWBERG

I definitely owe you big-time for this one. Oh, okay, I might as well go all the way! Not justfor this one but for a lot of other things, too. Its hard tobe a better friend than you are an agent, and somehowyou even manage that. Thank you. But if anyoneasks me about this, Ill deny everything.

As always, the list is a long one: To Bill Goldman, for the obit, the readings, the guidance, and, as usual, everything else; Hilary Hale, for being a great and supportive editor; Jamie Raab, Sara Ann Freed, Beth DeGuzman, and Larry Kirshbaum for their enthusiasm, support, and savvy; the Zigmeister for putting me in touch, yet again, with the right people; John Boris, for his insight into the pharmaceutical/financial world; Bill Borbidge, for his amazing knowledge of explosives; Ron Malfi, for his inside info; Alicia Goldsmith, Susanna Green, Dina Dillon, and Sonom Wangmo for all things to do with yoga, Buddhism, massages, and fun; Janis, for everything.

To her father white

Came the maiden bright;

But his loving look,

Like the holy book,

All her tender limbs with terror shook.

William Blake, A Little Girl Lost

Washington, D.C.

February 23

She knew there were no monsters.

And yet, when the lights were out, she also knew that there were.

Its why she screamed when she heard the footsteps. There was a quick flurry, someone runningno, darting, thats the way it sounded, definitely dartingand then there was a crash, glass being shattered, a piece of pipe, perhaps, swung against the ugly overhanging fluorescent light. Everything turned shadowy; the whole room was suddenly fifty percent darker than it had been. Then, almost before she could register what was happening, there were more footsteps, on the other side of the garagehow did he get over there so fast? It didnt seem possibleand another crash, another light smashed, and then it was dark. Not just darker this time, but completely dark. She couldnt see her hand right in front of her face.

It was absolutely quiet, too. Black and silent.

And suddenly there it was.

The feeling.

Even under normal circumstances, when things were calm, when she was tucked safely in bed, under the down-filled covers with the lights out, Maura Greer was overwhelmed by the dark. Even in her own room there was nothing she could do to stop her imagination from running wild. To stop her heart from beating madly and her throat from drying up and that thing inside her head from saying: Be afraid. Something bad is coming. Something really is there, inside the blackness.

And now something really was there.

Footsteps again.

She could hear someone breathing.

She thought she was going to faint. Her whole body was shaking and, despite the freezing temperature and dankness of the garage, hot, clammy sweat was starting to drip down the back of her neck.

Maura had lived with this fear for so long. Maybe her whole life. As a child she needed a night-light. When she went away to college, got her very first apartment, she used to leave the light on in the hallway outside her bedroom. She told her roommate it was so she could find the bathroom when she woke up in the middle of the night, but that wasnt true at all. It was because the darkness terrified her. Filled her with numbing, paralyzing dread.

Thats what she was feeling now. She was stuck in the underground garage of her apartment building with some madman who had shattered all the lights and was, she was positive, going to stalk her and catch her and rape her. So the dread was deep in the pit of her stomach. A physical sensation. A pain. As if shed been injected with a drug that was quickly taking effect, moving upward from her feet, through her legs, clenching her stomach, wrapping around her throat, choking her. Its not fair, she thought. Not today. Not now. Not when, in less than an hour, her whole life was about to change. And it was going to change. She knew it. Today he was going to tell her he loved her. He was going to tell her they could be together. Finally. And she was going to comfort him and assure him that everything would be all right, and make him understand hed made the right decision, and

More footsteps!

To her left. He was all the way to her left, maybe thirty feet away. There was a door there, leading up to her apartment building; it was the way shed come in. But there was another way out. An easier way. The driveway. That was maybe fifty or sixty feet to her right. The metal door, the one that rolled slowly down from the tracks on the ceiling and guarded the ramp the cars came up, was shut. It shouldnt have beenit was supposed to stay open until 7 p.m. She didnt have the clicker that opened it, either. She would have, normally, but she hadnt brought her purse. He didnt like her to carry any ID when they met. He didnt want them to be seen together in public, and they always took extra-careful precautions, but he didnt want her to have any identifying papers in case anything happened, so she just took to leaving her purse and her wallet at home when she saw him. She could picture her bag sitting on the kitchen counter. And in it was the goddamn clicker. Shed thought about taking it, decided it wasnt important, she wouldnt need it, not before seven. So she left it. Her ticket to freedom sitting on the god-damn kitchen counter.

But there was still another way out, she realized. Another door that led out to the front of the building. All she had to do was beat him to that door by the driveway and she could make it up to the street. Thered be people there. Someone to help her. Thered be light.

But she didnt know if she could make it. She wasnt dressed for running.

She had wanted today to be so perfect. She wore his favorite blouse, a flowery Donna Karan, very flimsy and practically see-through. She had tried on two different pairs of pants in her apartment, then decided that pants werent right, she really wanted to go sexy, so she wound up with a short black skirt. Straight, no pleats, linen. It came down to the middle of her thighs, and she knew he really liked her thighs; even in public he could barely keep his hands from brushing up against them at dinner, sometimes being as daring as he could be, squeezing them under the table and lingering.