The whiteness of his condo never failed to strike her—the walls, the furniture, the rugs, the picture frames and most of the canvases within them—white.

"No," she said, stepping in. "Why should there be?"

"Well, it's just that this is so unlike you."

She felt her confidence draining off. "I'm sorry. I should have called."

"Don't be ridiculous. This is great!"

"Are you really glad to see me?"

"Can't you tell?"

She glanced down at his towel and saw how it was tented up in front of him. She smiled, her spirits lifting. That was for her. All for her. Hesitantly, she reached out and loosened the knotted portion of the towel at his hip. It fell away.

Yes. For her. Just for her.

She stroked him ever so gently with her fingernails, then knelt before him.

"I don't deserve this," Lisl murmured.

"Don't deserve what?" Rafe whispered in her ear.

She sighed. She was so happy and at peace now she could almost cry. The exhausted afterglow of their lovemaking was almost as delicious as the lovemaking itself.

"Feeling this good."

"Don't say that," he told her. "Don't ever say that you don't deserve to feel good."

They lay side by side, skin to skin, on his white king-size bed. The waning sun was beaming through the window, suffusing the pallor of the room with red-gold light.

"Want me to pull the shade?" Rafe said.

Lisl laughed. "A little late for that now, don't you think? Whoever's out there looking has already gotten quite an eyeful."

"No worry about that."

Right. Rafe's bedroom was on the second floor. There were no other windows in sight from the bed.

Making love in the day or with a light on had bothered Lisl at first, back when she had been a pudgette. She'd preferred then to cloak the excess fatty baggage on her body in darkness. But now that she had slimmed down some, she didn't mind. In fact, it was kind of exciting to exhibit her new, trimmer proportions for him.

"You've lost more weight," he said, running a hand along her flank.

"You like?"

"I like you any way you want to look. What's more important is how you like the thinner you."

"I love it!"

"Then that's all that matters. I'm for anything that gets you thinking better of yourself."

"And I'm for anything that makes you enjoy looking at me as much as I enjoy looking at you."

Lisl loved looking at Rafe. He'd told her that his mother had been French, his father Spanish. His features favored the Spanish side—his almost-black hair, the thick lashes around his eyes, and the irises of a brown so very dark they, too, seemed almost black. His smooth caf6 au lait skin was utterly flawless. She could have resented that skin. Its perfection was almost feminine. She could have wanted it for herself.

But there was nothing feminine about the way he approached sex. Lisl had only made love to one other man in her life: Brian, who she considered, in her limited experience, to be good a lover. After her first night with Rafe, she had learned just how limited her experience had been. She thought that maybe there was some truth after all to that old cliche about Latin lovers.

He put his face between her breasts.

"You're a Prime. You deserve to feel good about yourself. You've allowed the host of lesser creatures around you to determine what you think of yourself."

Primes—Rafe had called them Creators when he'd broached the subject after Metropolis in the Hidey-hole Tavern, but that had been for simplicity's sake. In private he divided the world into Primes and everyone else. Primes, he'd told her, were unique people, like prime numbers, divisible only by one or by themselves. It was his favorite topic. He never tired of it. Always pointing out examples. After weeks of listening to him, Lisl was beginning to be convinced that it might have some validity.

"I'm not a Prime," she said. "What have I created?"

Rafe was a Prime, no doubt about that—Homo superior in every way. But Lisl? Not a chance.

"Nothing yet, but you will. I sense it in you. But let's get back to what you think you don't deserve. What don't you deserve? And why not?"

"Don't you think…" she began, then paused as Rafe nuzzled one of her nipples and sent new chills up and down that side of her body, "a person should have to do something special to merit feeling so happy and content? It's only fair."

Rafe lifted his head and looked into her eyes.

"You deserve the best of everything," Rafe said. "As I said, you're a Prime. And after the kind of life you've had until now, after what you've put up with, you're long overdue for some good feelings."

"My life hasn't been so bad."

Rafe flopped onto his back and stared at the ceiling.

"Right. Sure. A lifetime of being knocked down and kicked around by the people who should have been supporting you and encouraging you to keep going. That's a long way from 'not so bad.'"

"Since when do you know so much about my life?"

"I know what you've told me. I can guess the rest."

Lisl rose up on one elbow and looked down at him.

"Okay, wiseguy. Tell me all about me."

"All right. How's this? Nothing you ever did really pleased your parents."

"Wrong. They—"

Rafe overrode her. "They were always on your case, weren't they? Even though all through grammar school and high school you got straight A's. Right?"

"Right, but—"

"And I'll bet your project took first place at the science fair, didn't it? Even though you did it all on your own. With no help from your folks—who always seemed to have better things to do—you beat out all those other kids whose fathers and brothers and uncles—who also had better things to do, by the way, but who gave a damn—did most of the work for them. And how did your folks respond when you came home and showed them your blue ribbon? I'll bet it was 'That's nice, dear, but do you have a date for the prom yet?' Am I far off?"

She laughed. "Oh, God! How do you know?"

"And I'll bet your mother never let up on you. 'Put down that book, get up, get out, meet boys!'"

"Yes, she did! She did!" This was uncanny.

"What single phrase during your developing years most typified her attitude toward you?"

"Oh… I don't know."

"How about, 'What's the matter with you?'"

The words pierced her. That was it. God, how many times had she heard that through the years?

She nodded. "How—?"

"Your mother never paid you a single compliment, I'll bet. An insecure bitch who couldn't bring herself to say that you looked nice, couldn't stoop to bolster your confidence. You got the message: 'Sure you're a brainy kid, but so what? Why don't you date more? Why don't you dress more in style? Why don't you have popular friends?'"

Lisl was getting uncomfortable now. This was striking a little too close to home.

"All right, Rafe. That's enough."

But Rafe wasn't finished yet.

"And when it wasn't something they said or did that cut you off at the knees, it was what they didn't say, didn't do. Never went to parents' night to hear your teachers gush about you. I'll bet they never even went to the science fairs to see how your project stacked up against the others."

"That's enough, Rafe."

"But somewhere along the line, late in the game, I'll bet, your father became a believer. Throughout most of your adolescence he was afraid you'd become a spinster schoolmarm and hang around the house forever. Then somebody told him that your SAT scores made you prime scholarship material, that you could qualify for a free ride at one of the state universities. Epiphany! Suddenly he got religion and became Lisl's big booster!"

This was becoming too painful. "Stop it, Rafe. I mean it."

"Suddenly, for the first time in his life, he was bragging about his daughter, how she was going to tap into the state for big bucks and get him back some of the taxes he'd been paying all those years."