“Lyin‘bitch!” The black suit backhanded the oval of flesh-colored powder, smearing its lipstick into a red scar. “You can’t speak two fuckin’ sentences in a row without sayin‘ his name!Bitch! Who the fuck else told fat boy and his queer sidekick where my sister lives? Who the fuck even told them Ihad a fuckin’ sister? Huh?”

Maureen was weeping. Jules saw that the battered side of the powder oval was swelling like rotten fruit. “It-it wasn’t me, Malice. You gottabelieve me, baby. I never knew where your sister lived. Iswear it! I can’t even remember if you ever told me youhad a sister. I didn’t knife you in the back, baby. I’d never do anything to hurt you, Iswear…”

The black suit moved behind the red satin dress. Maureen’s face jerked backward, as though her hair had been roughly yanked. “Yeah, that’s right, baby,” Malice X said, his voice lower, almost inaudible. “You’ll never do anything to hurt me. That’s ‘cause youcan’t hurt me. I’m way beyond gettin’ hurt by the likes of you. But I can hurtyou, baby. I can hurt youreal good.”

He stepped off-camera for a few seconds. When he returned, he was holding a five-foot-long wooden spear. Carved of an exotic dark hardwood, it was a cross between harpoon and phallus. “This is a Yoruba ceremonial spear, baby,” Malice X said. “I got a whole collection of these. Bought it at auction. I was biddin‘ against three different museums. Thing cost me half as much as my Caddy. Nice, huh?”

Maureen nodded her head weakly.

“Now where you think I oughtta stick this fine thing, huh?”

“Nowhere, Malice-”

“Shut thefuck up!” Maureen’s head snapped back again. “I didn’t ask you to say nothin‘! That was a fuckin’ rhetorical question. You wanna say somethin‘? Say your last sweet honey-words to your fat fuck of a boyfriend.”

Tears turned the mascara around Maureen’s eyes to black rivers that scoured the powder from her face and stained the red satin of her dress. What emerged from her mouth wasn’t words; it was a preverbal cry of despair, torn between a futile plea of innocence and a moan of bottomless regret.

The first word she managed to utter was his name. “Jules… if you can hear this… Jules, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for everything, darling. I can’t-I’m just so very, verysorry, baby.” On the left of the screen, partially off-camera, Malice X raised his spear to strike. Maureen’s empty eye sockets stared directly into the camera. “Jules!Ilove y-”

The spear plunged through the patch of red satin covering her heart. What Jules heard then was only a faint aural shadow of the scream that had rocked the kitchen hours before. No recording instrument on earth could begin to capture the death-shriek of a vampire. Even so, the sound that assaulted him from the TV’s small speakers was enough to make his ears bleed.

He watched, transfixed, as layer after layer of Maureen appeared on camera, only to progressively flake away like crumbs of burned pastry. First her plump white skin shimmered into view; then the thick layer of yellowish fat beneath; then a highway map of veins and arteries and organs; and then her bones. Jules tried to look away from the TV screen. But he couldn’t. Finally, the camera’s cold eye showed just a crumpled red dress and a sagging, empty pair of stockings, held partially erect by yards of drooping duct tape. On the chair’s cushion and on the floor were mounds of sugary white dust.

Malice X returned to the center of the picture. “Now, wasn’t thatfun, kiddies? Special visual effects courtesy of Industrial Light and Tragic Magic. And dig that Dolby Surround Sound! Feel free to rewind the tape and watch that part over again. I’ll wait.” The suit stood unmoving.

Jules felt numb inside. He could name a list of emotions long as his arm he should be feeling right now. Horror. Grief. Anger. Hate. He pictured himself shoving his fist through Malice X’s waiting image. Rending what remained of the set into tiny particles of plastic and metal. But he didn’t do it. He couldn’t move. He asked himself,Didn’t TVs used to have vacuum tubes inside? That’s what was inside him. A big vacuum tube, empty even of air.

Finally the suit on-screen began moving and talking again. “Okay. Now you’ve had enough time to take that bathroom break and get yo’self another beer. Back to business. Way I see things, you don’t have too many friends left to lose, Jules. Who’s left? Lessee… there’s that cabdriver buddy of yours, right? And then there’s that old-timey jazz musician. But I’m not totally unreasonable. Tell you what. I won’t off your two buddies if you agree to do one little thing for me. Meet me in personal combat. One-on-one. Mano a mano. I’ll even be a sport about it. You get to name your spot. Just call the toll-free number at the end of this tape to let me know your preferred place and time. Phone’s in the kitchen, in case you don’t remember. I’ll expect to hear from you no later than midnight, Friday. Otherwise, this town’s gonna be short one cabby and one horn-playin‘ geezer. Remember, that call’s toll-free. So don’t delay! Call now!”

Midnight, Friday.Tonight was Thursday. The screen turned blue, and a local telephone number strobed against the bright background. The large white numerals flashed across the screen like the tag end of a late-night infomercial. Jules didn’t move to write the phone number down. He watched it dance across the glass tube until it was burned into his brain. Then the tape ended. The screen dissolved into static.

A strong breeze blew the coating of dust from the top of the television onto the floor. The sight of Maureen’s last remnants being scattered into the corners of her home, and perhaps lost forever, propelled Jules off the sofa. He focused his battered consciousness solely on the chore of collecting as much of the dust as he could. Like a sleepwalker, he stumbled into the kitchen to search for a whisk broom and dustpan. He found them in a slender broom closet by the refrigerator. He needed something to collect the dust. Something more substantial and respectful than a cardboard box or garbage bag. He spotted a large glass vase filled with silk flowers on the dining room table. Jules emptied the silk flowers into the kitchen sink.

The chair that Maureen had been taped to was still in the center of the kitchen. The crumpled duct tape and empty dress and stockings offered mute testimony to Maureen’s final, agonized seconds. But Jules wouldn’t let himself think about that.

Almost two hours later, he was nearly done. He had scoured the entrance foyer, the front parlor, the music room, the dining room, and the kitchen. He had moved sofas, tilted an upright piano, and whisked out the corners of long-disused closets. He had beaten the dust out of cushions and rugs, gently blown it from between the ruffled pages of beauty magazines, and even whisked it from the narrow grooves in the soles of his boots.

The vase was filled nearly to its top. He had probably mixed Maureen’s remains with a goodly proportion of ordinary household dust; it simply couldn’t be helped. Now the final part of his chore was before him. The most difficult part-the part that would force him to think about Maureen, the woman, instead of Maureen, the sugar trail. The last thing he had to do was to dislodge those particles of his lover that had remained stuck to the duct tape, and collect whatever dust was still hidden within the folds of Maureen’s undergarments.

Brushing the tape with the whisk broom accomplished nothing. The bent straw only got stuck to the glue itself. Jules had better luck using one of Maureen’s nail files to scrape the dust off, but it was still hard going. Fitting, in a way. Maureen had always been a stubborn woman.

He was almost afraid to touch her panties. Afraid her avenging spirit might incinerate the first male to touch her underwear-too many men; that’s what had led her to this. He lifted them gingerly, like he was handling the Shroud of Turin. A thimbleful of dust was cupped in the cotton panel in the crotch. Jules carefully raised the panties over the vase, then tipped the dust in. He felt self-conscious about what he did next, but he did it anyway. He held the red silk against his nostrils and breathed in deeply. Nothing. Even that was gone. Even her scent had crumpled into dust.