Then he found the gun.
He had thrust his hand under his pillow accidentally during a moment of passion to find a pearl-handled revolver there. He whipped it out to study it. It was an automatic, manufactured in Japan, an exact copy of one of the Colt.38 models. On checking it he found it loaded. A magazine of twenty-seven rounds. Having been a sergeant in the army, he knew how to use it. Its presence in the room gave him concern.
“What’s it doing here?” he demanded to know. “Why?”
“Sometimes in the past we have had robbers,” she explained. “It is for your own protection, in case we are attacked.”
“Are we likely to be?” he questioned, alarmed, thinking of Chinese triads, or Burmese bandits, or even Indonesian pirates. He did not know where he was. It could be any of them. Perhaps even Cambodian rebels looking for hostages? “I don’t like this — where are my clothes?”
Slim long-nailed hands restrained him, pressed against his hairy chest, forcing him back down on the bed with their sheer daintiness.
“You must not worry. It is all in the past.”
“Are you positive?”
“Yes.”
Her small buttocks somehow worked themselves underneath his hands. The gun was back under the pillow. He was fondling crevices again, finding his potency amazingly fresh. Never had such energy coursed through his body before this night. Jody would have at first been delighted, men not so delighted, then finally weary of him. He always suspected she pretended a high sex drive in order to humiliate him. He could have used this newly discovered potency to destroy her domination over him.
Where had it been when Jody was at her most demanding? It had not been her fault. It had not been his. It must have been the fault of the time and place. He should have thought of mirrors before. It was, after all, simply narcissism taken to extremes. It was fun to watch.
He found, after a while, that he enjoyed her mirror image better than the flesh and blood. If she was lovely in life, she was superlative in glass. They tried many different positions and he adored the reflections which tumbled away from him in all directions. Superb forms, equal to those produced by any sculptor he cared to name. Poetry in moving images. He preferred the silence to words or music. This was art. This was profound. This was the sport of angels …
“Hey!” Alarmed, he sat up quickly. “Did you see that?”
“What? What have you seen?”
He stared into the right hand wall. He could have sworn … but it was impossible. He was surely drugged by that heavy narcotic called sex.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, resuming what he had been doing, what she had been doing to him. “I’m seeing things.”
But then it happened again and he was sure this time.
“I did see it,” he cried, pushing her away. “That — that …”
It was the hundredth, no, perhaps even farther back than that, about the hundred-and-fiftieth reflection of himself and the girl. This distant set of reflections had been doing something different. Walt and the woman had actually been in one position, and this particular couple, out of the thousands before and after them, had been in another! Surely that was impossible. Unless there was some sort of flaw in the mirror. But wouldn’t that affect all the images? He tried to decide whether it worried him or whether he was merely intrigued by this strange phenomenon. Eventually he decided on the latter. Maybe it was because he was sated. Overload? His mind was playing tricks on his eyes. Yes, he was seeing things. It might be interesting to go with it, allow himself to be swept along with the illusion.
He lay back again and she eased herself on top of him.
Walt’s eyes scanned the mirrors, watching for the one rebel image to appear. All around him were couples locked in the shape of a reversed T. Wait! Yes, there. One pair on the far wall, way back down the line, had flipped over with the man now on top. Walt stared in fresh amazement as this movement fanned out from this single couple. Forward down the line the images began riffling, running down toward him like a row of dominoes. Flip, flip, flip. It was a fantastic sight. He had seen computer images do this, but these were simply mirrors. Then the line reached him and his consort.
He suddenly felt himself being flipped over. Their sexual roles were instantly reversed. He was now on top of her.
At the same time as this physical miracle took place he had an orgasm that was like a massive jolt of electricity rushing through his loins.
“Jesus!” he yelled. “Arrrggghhhh! Christ!”
The sweat poured from his naked body. He had never felt anything like this before, not even his first time over that gravestone at the back of St. Peter’s church. His head ached from the absolute pure passion of the moment. Semen gushed from him in a torrent. And yet afterward he did not feel drained of desire. There was still a river of raw lust rushing through him. Her hands were all over him still, rousing him again, bringing him to a new and superhuman state of sexual excitement.
“Again!” he cried. “Let’s do it again. Did you feel it too? You must have felt it. I heard you yell. You loved it didn’t you? Christ I feel randy. I’m ready for half-a-dozen of those. I bet it’s better than any drug. What do you say — let’s go for another one, eh?”
She smiled at him with small even teeth. Then she worked her contortions to form the two of them into a new interlocking puzzle. Her body was fantastic. Walt thought she must have bones of rubber the way she was able to arch her back, put her legs under her own arms, bend her waist that way. Eagerly he stared into the mirrors around him, searching for that one set which would herald an unbelievable orgasm.
Yes, there it was, on the ceiling.
“Here it comes,” he yelled in excitement. “Here it co … aaarrrrhhgggg — oh, GOD, GOD, GOD, GOD …”
The small three-letter word was appropriate. He was having the orgasms of a young god. The world was not just moving. It was spinning at ten times its normal speed, hurtling through space a thousand times faster than usual. He held her small naked body to his as if they could fuse together, meld, merge. She let out a high tinkling laugh. Incredibly she was enjoying it as much as he was. Oh, he knew that hookers faked it all the time, that they were good at making the right noises at the right moment, but he could tell she was luxuriating in it — not wildly like himself, but sensitively. It was as if she were enjoying a glass of fine champagne in a hot bubble bath.
“Again?” she said, laughing.
Thrice more they were manipulated by the couples in the mirrors and each time it got better and better. Finally Walt did not think he could stand another one and he suggested they have a cigarette. He went to the box under the bed and found his packet of Camels. He lit one, but she refused, with a little shake of her head. Walt shrugged and lay back on the bed, puffing away contentedly. Four hundred dollars? Christ this had been worth a million. Fantastic experience. Jody would have been proud of him. Or perhaps not? Maybe she would be jealous. That thought was very pleasing to him, since he was the one who had been dumped.
He lay there in a state of bliss, studying a thousand-thousand Walts with lit cigarettes, all in equal states of bliss. He arced his red-ended cigarette through the air, made designs as might a child with a sparkler. The Walts all copied him, faithfully, their lit cigarettes tracing figures of eights, centripetals, and other pretty shapes.
Beside the Walts lay the beautiful oriental women, resting like lilies on black satin sheets. Their arms were by their sides, limp and lovely. Their mouths slightly open, revealing a hint of white teeth between the cupid’s-bow lips, their eyes closed.