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  “Oh, wow.”

  “Yeah, I know, right?” She sighed dramatically and popped the top on a can of diet cola. “Not my most shining moment.”

  “It could’ve been worse, I’m sure.”

  “What would be worse is if instead of never having to see him again I bumped into him all the time at the coffee shop and the grocery store,” Jen said. “Which is why I’m keeping my mouth shut around Johnny Dellasandro.”

  The train—I assumed it was of the damned—let out a shrill whistle and the movie cut to an interior scene of people dressed in the height of late-seventies fashion. A woman in a beige pantsuit and huge hair, gigantic glasses covering half her face, waved a hand heavy with rings at the waiter pouring her a glass of wine. The train shuddered, he spilled it. It was Johnny.

  “Watch what you’re doing, you damned fool!” The woman spoke in a thick accent. Maybe Italian? I couldn’t be sure. “You spilled on my favorite blouse!”

  “Sorry, ma’am.” His voice was dark and thick and rich…and totally out of place in the movie with that New York accent.

  I giggled. Jen shot me a look. “It gets better when he takes her into the sleeping car and bangs her.”

  We both giggled then, and ate popcorn and drank cola, and made fun of the movie. As far as I could tell, the train became damned when it entered a tunnel that had somehow become connected to a portal to hell. There was no explanation for why this happened, at least none that I could figure out, but since at odd times the movie shifted into Italian with badly translated English subtitles—with Johnny’s voice being oddly dubbed in a much higher, swishier voice—I might easily have missed something important.

  It didn’t matter, really. It was entertaining, with lots of blood and gore as Jen had promised. Lots of eye candy, too. Johnny ended up stripping out of his waiter’s uniform to battle foam-and-latex demons. Shirtless and covered in blood, his hair slicked back from his face, he was still breathtaking.

  “I said, ‘Get the hell back to hell!’”

  It was a classic line, delivered in Johnny’s thick accent and accompanied by the blast of his shotgun exploding the demons into tiny, dripping bits. And followed, incongruously, by a long, explicit love scene between him and the woman in the pantsuit, set to bouncy porn music and ending with the woman somehow getting pregnant with a demon baby that tore up her insides and tried to attack its father.

  “So…Johnny was…the devil?”

  Jen laughed and scraped the bottom of the popcorn bowl. “I think so! Or the son of the devil, something like that.”

  The credits rolled. I finished my drink. “Wow. That was something.”

  “Yeah, bad. But the sex scene. Hot, right?”

  It had been. Even with the porny music and stupid special effects, even with the discreetly placed cushions that blocked even a glimpse of Johnny’s cock but left the woman’s hairy bush in full view. He’d kissed her like she was delicious.

  “Good acting,” I said offhandedly.

  Jen snorted and got up to take the DVD out of the player. “I don’t think it’s acting. I mean, I think he’s a much better artist than he ever was an actor. And the way he kisses…he fucks someone in just about every movie he’s in. I don’t think there’s much acting going on. It’s all pure Johnny.”

  “When did he make all these movies, anyway?” I got up to stretch. The movie had been short, only a little over an hour, but watching it had felt like much longer.

  “Dunno.” Jen shrugged. “He made a bunch in the seventies, then stopped for a while. Fell off the face of the earth. Then came back with the art and, so far as I know, only acted in one or two things after that. Mostly guest spots on TV shows. He was on an episode of Family Ties, if you can believe that.”

  “Did he fuck someone?”

  “He did!” Jen laughed. “But I don’t think they showed his cock. For that you have to watch…this.”

  She pulled out a DVD with a plain red-and-black cover, one word on the front. Garbage. She was already putting it in the player as she talked.

  “Okay. I’m not going to tell you anything about this movie in advance. I don’t want to ruin it.”

  “That sounds scarier than Train of the Damned!”

  She shook her head. “No. Just watch. You’ll see.”

  So we watched.

  Garbage had even less of a plot than Train of the Damned. From what I could tell, it was about a group of misfits living in an apartment complex a lot like the one on the TV show Melrose Place. The kind seen in so many movies shot in California—a few buildings painted teal or green surrounding a pool. In this movie, the complex was called the Cove. Run by an office manager who I was pretty sure was a three-hundred-pound man in drag, the Cove’s other residents included the slutty heroin addict Sheila, mentally disturbed porcelain figurine collector Henry, unwed mother Becky and a bunch of other random characters who didn’t seem to have names but came and went in the background no matter what else was going on.

  And, of course, Johnny.

  He played…Johnny. Male prostitute. The tattoo on his arm had been crudely drawn, probably inked with a homemade tool: Johnny.

  “I wonder if his name’s Johnny in every movie?” I said, and was promptly shushed.

  It wasn’t a good movie, if I were going to judge by the acting or writing. In fact, I couldn’t be sure there was any writing at all. It seemed mostly ad-libbed, which meant there wasn’t much acting, either. It looked more like a group of friends had gotten together one Saturday afternoon with a camera and a bunch of weed and decided to make a movie.

  “I think that’s basically what happened,” Jen said when I told her my theory. “But fuck me, look at that epic ass.”

  Johnny was naked for most of the movie. Something happened with a trick gone wrong, a drug overdose, a miscarriage. A body in the pool and then put into the garbage. I couldn’t have told you what happened if you’d held me down and threatened me with a live tarantula.

  All I could see was Johnny Dellasandro. His ass. His abs. His pecs. His delicious nipples. He was built like an Adonis, muscular and lean…and golden. God. He was naked and sun-burnished, with just enough hair to make him manly and not so much it looked like you’d have to get a Weedwacker to get at his cock.

  And he really did fuck everyone in the movie.

  “Look at that,” Jen murmured. “I swear he’s really fucking her.”

  I tilted my head to get a better angle. “I think…wow. That’s… Is he hard? Omigod. He’s got a hard-on! Look at that!”

  “I know, right?” Jen squealed, clutching at me.

  I hadn’t been this excited about an erection since my first boy-girl party in eighth grade, when I got to go in the closet for Seven Minutes in Heaven with Kent Zimmerman. My stomach dropped the way it does just before that first hill on a roller coaster. Heat stole up my chest and throat, into my cheeks.

  “Wow,” I said. “That is…just whoa.”

  “Girl. I know. Can you believe it? And just wait…there! Yesssss,” Jen said, falling back onto the cushions. “Full frontal.”

  Just briefly, but there it was. Johnny’s cock in all its glory. He was talking as he walked and I couldn’t decide if I wanted to try and listen to what he was saying or just accept my utter, complete perviness and stare at his dick. The penis won out.

  “That is some peen,” I said, my voice filled with admiration.

  “You know it.” Jen sighed happily. “That man is fucking beautiful.”

  I tore my gaze from the TV to look at her. “I can’t believe you’re so into him and you’ve never talked to him. Word vomit or not. It has to be worth a try.”

  Jen shook her head. Johnny wasn’t on-screen at the moment, so we weren’t missing anything important. She gestured toward it.

  “What would I say? ‘Hi, Johnny, I’m Jen, and by the way, I love your cock so much I put it on my Christmas list’?”

  I laughed. “What, you think he’d mind?”

  She gave me
a look.

  “Is he married?” I asked the more practical question.

  “No. I don’t think so. Honestly, aside from the movies I don’t really know all that much about him, personally.” Jen made a frowny face.

  I laughed again, harder this time. “Some stalker you are.”

  “I’m not—” she hit me with a pillow “—a stalker. I just appreciate a nice body, is that so wrong? And I do like his art a lot. I bought one of his pieces,” she added, like she was sharing a secret.

  “Yeah?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. His gallery is really cool. Lots of neat little pieces, nothing too expensive. And in the back room he has different collections. A couple years ago he was showing his stuff. He doesn’t always. I mean, he usually has his stuff included among all the other pieces, and he never displays it like it’s a big deal, you know?”

  I’d never been in an art gallery, so I had no clue, but I nodded, anyway. “Can I see it?”

  “Sure. I, um, have it in the bedroom.”

  I laughed yet again. “Why? Is it dirty?”

  I hadn’t known Jen all that long, just for the few months since I’d moved to Second Street. I had not, as yet, seen her look embarrassed about anything, or shy. She was pretty up front with everything, which was why I adored her. So when she couldn’t meet my eyes and gave that little, shameful giggle, I almost told her I didn’t need to see what had made her feel like she couldn’t share it with me.

  “No, it’s not dirty,” she said.

  “Okay.” I got up and followed her down the short hallway to her bedroom.

  Jen’s apartment had been decorated in IKEA chic. Lots of spare, modern pieces that all matched and maximized the small space. Her bedroom was the same, painted white with matching teal and lime-green accents on the bed and curtains. Her apartment was in an old building, with walls that weren’t always quite straight. One, in fact, was curved, with big-paned windows reaching from floor to ceiling and overlooking the street. On one wall she’d hung several of her own paintings. On the opposite wall she’d hung several framed posters of prints even I, the art idiot, recognized—Starry Night, The Scream.

  In the center of those was a black-and-white photograph, maybe an eight-by-ten, in a thin red frame. The artist had painted over the photo with thick, three-dimensional strokes, highlighting the lines of the building I recognized as the John Harris Mansion from down on Front Street. I’d spent time looking at a lot of what people had determined art and wondered why on earth they thought so, but I didn’t have to spend a second pondering it about this picture.

  “Wow.”

  “I know, right?” Jen walked to the wall to stand in front of it. “Pretty cool, huh? I mean, you look at it, and it’s not like it’s anything special. But there’s just something about it….”

  “Yeah.” There definitely was. “And it’s not even dirty.”

  She laughed. “No. I just like having it in here where I can look at it first thing in the morning. Does that sound lame? Oh, God, that sounds totally lame.”

  “No, it doesn’t. Is this the only piece you have by him?”

  “Yeah. Original art’s expensive, even though he’d priced this pretty reasonably.”

  I had no idea how much pretty reasonable was and it seemed a little nosy to ask. “It’s nice, Jen. He’s really good.”

  “He is. So you see…that’s another reason why I don’t talk to him.”

  I looked at her with a smile. “Why? Because you like his art and not just his ass?”

  Jen snickered. “Well, yeah.”

  “I don’t get it. You think he’s superhot, you’re a big fan…why not just say something?”

  “Because I guess I’d rather have him take a look at something I’ve done and think it’s good without me gushing all over him. I’d like him to respect me as an artist, and that’s not going to happen.”

  I walked to the wall featuring her paintings. “Why not? You’re good, too.”

  “And you don’t know anything about art, remember?” She said it without malice, following me to look at the pictures. “They’ll never hang in a museum. I don’t think anyone will ever make a Wikipedia entry about me.”

  “You never know,” I told her. “Do you think Johnny Dellasandro knew when he was making those movies that one day he’d be famous for showing off his ass?”

  “It’s a pretty epic ass.”

  “Let’s go watch another movie,” I said.

  By two in the morning we’d only made it through one more because we’d paused and rewound so many scenes so many times.

  “Why didn’t you start with this one?” I demanded after the third time we’d watched Johnny slide down a naked woman’s body with his mouth.

  Jen shook the remote at me. “Girl, you have to build up to this shit. You can’t just go in full force on this stuff, you might give yourself an aneurysm.”

  I laughed, though the fact I probably did have an aneurysm that could kill me at any time, no matter what the doctors said, made the joke a little less funny. “Play it again.”

  She reversed the DVD half a minute and played it again. Johnny called the woman a dirty whore, and in his accent it came out sounding like “duty hooah.” It should’ve made me laugh.

  “So fucking wrong,” I said, rapt as Johnny-on-the-screen moved his mouth down her naked body again, over her thigh, then moved up to grab a handful of her hair and turn her around. “I should not like that, right?”

  “Girl, just give in to it,” Jen said dreamily.

  In the movie, he called her a hooah again. Told her she was dirty, filthy. That she deserved to be fucked like that, didn’t she? That she liked it, being fucked that way, by him.

  “God,” I muttered, squirming a little. “That’s…”

  “Hot, right?” Jen sighed. “Even with the funky seventies sideburns.”

  “Definitely.”

  We made it through to the end of the movie and I had no idea what the plot had been, just that Johnny had been naked for over half of it and he’d had sex with most of the other characters, men and women. Oh, and that I was in desperate, urgent need of some “alone time.”

  “Another?” Jen was already getting up, but I stood, too.

  “I need to get home. It’s really late. And if we sleep in too late tomorrow,” I added, “we won’t make it to the coffee shop. We might miss him.”

  “Oh, Emm.” Jen blinked, looking solemn. “I’ve infected you, haven’t I?”

  “If this is a disease,” I told her, “I don’t want to find a cure.”

  Jen lived close enough to me that walking was no problem, at least during the day or in good weather. But in the middle of an oddly frigid Pennsylvania winter and in a neighborhood that was a little dicey, I’d driven the couple blocks. My normal spot was taken when I got home, probably by the girlfriend of the guy who lived across the street. Grumbling, eyes heavy, I drove down to the next block to take someone else’s spot and hoped I didn’t come out to find a nasty note on my windshield. Since there was very little off-street parking, the jockeying for spots could get brutal.

  It was something like serendipity, however, because when I got out of my car I realized I’d parked almost directly in front of Johnny Dellasandro’s house. There was a light on upstairs, the third floor. Most of the houses on this street had the same floorplan, so unless he’d done some major reconstruction inside, that light was shining from a bedroom. In my house, someday, I intended it to be the master bedroom with an attached bath. He’d done enough work to his place that I suspected that’s what his was.

  Johnny Dellasandro in his bedroom. I wondered if he slept naked. I wasn’t quite sure I was up to Jen’s standard of surfing down the street on a wave of my own come, but it was close there for a second. I definitely had a clit pulse. I fantasized happily all the way down the block and into my own house.

  There’s never been any rhyme or reason behind why the fugues come. The things that set off seizures or migraines or bouts o
f narcolepsy in other people are only haphazard triggers for me. This is good because it means I don’t have to avoid intense emotion, or chocolate, or any of a dozen other common triggers. It’s bad, of course, because whatever causes the fugues hits me randomly and without warning, and even if I wanted to avoid whatever caused it, I couldn’t.

  I hadn’t had a fugue in nearly two years, and now the scent of oranges told me I was going to have a third in less than twenty-four hours.

  In the bathroom. Brushing teeth. Staring at my reflection in the mirror but seeing Johnny’s face as he made love to a woman with hair the color of mine. My eyes. My breasts under his hands, my clit beneath his tongue.

  Staring at the mirror and then, like Alice…through…

  “Watch what you’re doing! You spilled my coffee.” I say this in a thick accent, not my own voice, but it doesn’t feel put on. It feels right on my tongue and teeth and lips. It feels sexy.

  “Sorry, ma’am.” The waiter dabs at my thighs with a white towel. His fingers brush too close to my belly, linger too long. “Lemme get that cleaned up for you.”

  “I think you need to compensate me.” I say this with a straight face and flip my thick, dark hair over my shoulder.

  “Ma’am?” He’s not stupid, this young man in the white waiter’s coat.

  The train rocks beneath us.

  “Come to my cabin later tonight and make sure you’re prepared to adequately compensate me for the ruin of my slacks.”

  His only answer is a smile. I finish my meal with my own smile, making it difficult to enjoy the food. I’m not hungry any longer, anyway. Not for dinner.

  In my cabin I wait for the knock at the door, and when I open it, there he is. Not in his waiter’s uniform now, but a pair of dark trousers and a yellowed white poet’s shirt. Peasant wear, but I don’t care. Peasants make great lovers.

  “Just look,” I say, pointing to the dark stain on my white slacks. I’ve deliberately done nothing to clean them. “See what you did, you clumsy man?”

  “I can pay for them, ma’am….”