"Cadmus-"

"-I just hope he appreciates how much of my money you've spent getting your tits tucked and your ass tucked and that belly of yours all stapled up-"

"Stop that!"

"Did you get a pussy tuck while you were at it?" he remarked, his tone not once wavering from the lightly conversational. "You must be sloppy down there after all these years."

"Don't be disgusting," Loretta said.

"Do I take that as a yes?"

"If you don't stop this-"

"What will you do?" he said, a tiny smile coming onto his parchment lips. "Throw me over your lap and spank me? Remember how I used to do that to you, love? Remember that lacquered hairbrush you used to present me with when you were in need of a little discipline?" Loretta was having no more of this. She walked smartly to the door, her heels clicking on the hardwood floor. "Don't you ever wonder how much of it I told people about?" he said.

She stopped a yard short of the door. "You didn't," she said.

"Don't be ridiculous," he said. "Of course I told people. Just a select little group. Cecil of course. Some members of your family."

"Oh you are a filthy, disgusting old man-"

"That's it, sweet pea. Let it out. It may be your last chance."

"You never had any shame-"

"If I had I daresay I wouldn't have married you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nobody else would have had you. Not with your reputation. I thought when I first got you naked: there isn't anywhere on this body that's still virgin territory. Every inch of it's been licked and pinched and screwed and smacked. I found that quite arousing at the time. And when people said, why her, she's a whore, she's slept with half of Washington, I used to tell them, I can still show her a few tricks she hasn't seen." He paused for a moment. Loretta was quietly weeping. "What the fuck are you ay-ing for?" Cadmus said. "When I'm dead you can tell everyone what a brute I was. You can write a book about what a dirty-minded, decadent old goat I was. I don't care. I won't be listening. I'll be too busy paying for my sins." At last, having not taken his eyes off the screen throughout this exchange, he slowly, painfully, turned his head to look back at her. "There's a special hell for people who die as rich as us," he said. "So say a few prayers for me, will you?" She looked at him blankly. "What are you thinking?"

"I was wondering… if you ever loved me."

"Oh sweet pea," he said. "Isn't it a little late to be sentimental?"

She left without another word. There was no purpose arguing with him; clearly his medication was disordering his thoughts. She'd have to talk to Waxman; perhaps the doses were too strong. She went upstairs and put on a dress she'd had made for her the previous season, but had then never been in the mood to wear. It was white, and rather plain, and when she'd first tried it on she'd thought it made her look pallid. But now, seeing herself in the mirror, she approved of its severity; and of the somewhat frigid quality it conferred.

He'd called her whore, and that wasn't just. She'd had her high times, to be sure: what he'd said about there not being a piece of her body untouched was true. But so what? She'd made the best of what God had given her; taken her pleasures where, when and with whom she could. There was nothing shameful in that. Indeed, Cadmus had been perversely proud of her wild reputation at the beginning. He'd liked nothing better than to know that their courtship was the subject of gossip and tittle-tattle. And yes, she'd succumbed to the demands of vanity several times, and gone under the knife. But again: so what? She looked ten years her own junior; fifteen in a flattering light. But she had no wish to use her beauty the way Cadmus had implied. Once she'd taken his name, she'd had one lover only besides Cadmus, and even that had barely lasted a week. It would have been nice to think she'd broken his heart, but she harbored no such illusions. He'd been immune to love, that other one. He'd sailed away when he had finished with her, and nearly broken her heart.

So out she went, dressed in white, leaving Cadmus sitting on the sofa in front of his beloved baseball. Of course, he saw none of it. He hadn't actually watched a game in months. There was something about sitting there that helped him remove his thoughts from his present condition-from its pain and humiliation-and talk himself into the past. He had work to do there; things to put in order before death took him and he found himself removed into that special hell made for the rich.

Catholic atheist that he was, he half-believed in that hell; half believed he would suffer-if not eternally at least for a long, long time-in a barren spot where every comfort wealth and power could bestow was denied him. He'd never really cared about luxury so he wouldn't miss the silk pajamas and the Italian shoes and the thousand-bucks-a-bottle champagne. He'd miss control. He'd miss knowing he could get any politician, to the very highest, on the phone in five minutes, whatever their affiliations. He'd miss knowing every word he uttered was scrutinized for a clue to his desires. He'd miss being idolized. He'd miss being hated. He'd miss having a purpose. That was the real hell waiting for him: the wasteland where his will meant nothing, because he had nothing to work it upon.

Yesterday he'd cried quietly to himself at the prospect. Today, he had no tears left. His head was just a cesspool, filled with dirty little words that he had no use for now that his bitch-wife had gone. Gone to get herself fucked, no doubt; gone to spread her cunt for some stinking donkey-dick-

He was saying the words aloud, he vaguely realized; talking filth to himself while he sat in his own caked shit. And in his head there were pictures to accompany the monologue; too blurred for him to know if they were excremental or erotic.

Somewhere in the midst of all this confusion there were other concerns he knew he should address. Business unfinished, good-byes unsaid. But he couldn't pin his thoughts down long enough to name them; the dirt kept distracting him.

At one point the nurse came in and asked him how he was doing. It took the greatest effort of will not to let out a flood of filth, but he used the last remnants of his self-control to order her out of the room. She told him she'd be back in ten minutes with his noon medication, and then left.

As he listened to her footsteps receding across the hall he heard a whirring sound in his head. It seemed to be coming from the back of his skull; an irritating little din that rose in volume by degrees. He tried to shake it out-like a dog with a flea in its ear-but it wouldn't go. It simply got louder, and more shrill. He grabbed hold of the arm of the sofa so as to pull himself to his feet. He needed help. A head awash with dirty words was one thing, but this was too vile to be endured. He got to his feet, but his legs weren't strong enough to support him. His hand slipped out from under him and he fell sideways. He cried out as he went down, but he heard no sound. The whine had become so loud it overwhelmed everything else: the crack of his brittle bones as he hit the floor, the din of the table lamp as it came smashing down, caught by his out-flung hand.

For a few moments, when he hit the ground, he lost consciousness, and in a kinder world than this he might never have found it again. But fate hadn't finished with him yet. After a period of blissful darkness his eyes flickered open again. He was lying on his side where he'd fallen, the whine now so loud he felt certain it would shake his skull apart.

No; not even that excruciating luxury was granted him. He lay there alive, and deafened, until somebody came and found him.

His thoughts, if such they could be called, were chaotic. There were still fragments of filth in the stew, but they were no longer complete words. They were just syllables, thrown against the wall of his skull by the relentless whine.