Barney stretched his neck and leaned forward, trying to kiss her gently anywhere on her face without touching her with his member, but touched her anyway, she pulling away, looked down at the catenary strand of crystal fluid that stretched between him and her flat stomach, and she caught him across his broad chest with a forearm worthy of a middle guard, his feet went out from under him and he sat hard on the shower floor.
“You fucking bastard,” she hissed, “I might have known it. Faggot! Take that thing and stick it up …”
Barney rolled to his feet and was out of the shower, pulling on his clothes wet, and he left the gym without a word.
Barney’s quarters were in a building separate from the house, slate-roofed former stables that were garages now with apartments in the gables. Late at night he sat pecking on his laptop, working on a correspondence course on the Internet. He felt the floor tremble as someone solid came up the stairs.
A light knock at the door. When he opened it, Margot stood there, muffled in heavy sweats and a stocking cap.
“Can I come in a minute?”
Barney looked at his feet for a few seconds before he stood back from the door.
“Barney. Hey, I’m sorry a
bout in there,” she said. “I kind of panicked. I mean, I screwed up and then I panicked. I liked being friends.”
“Me too.”
“I thought we could be like, you know, regular buddies.”
“Margot, come on. I said we’d be friends but I’m not a damn eunuch. You came in the fucking shower with me. You looked good to me, I can’t help that. You come in the shower naked and I see two things together I really like.”
“Me and a pussy,” Margot said.
They were surprised to laugh together.
She came and grabbed him in a hug that might have injured a less powerful man. “Listen, if it was gonna be a guy it would have to be you. But that’s not my thing. It really is not. Not now, never will be.”
Barney nodded. “I know that. It just got away from me.”
They stood quiet a minute with their arms around each other.
“You want to try to be friends?” she said.
He thought about it a minute. “Yeah. But you’ve got to help me a little bit. Here’s the deal: I’m going to make this major effort to forget what I saw in the shower, and you don’t show it to me anymore. And don’t show me any boobs either, while you’re at it. How’s that?”
“I can be a good friend, Barney. Come to the house tomorrow. Judy cooks, I cook.”
“Yeah, but you may not cook any better than I do.”
“Try me,” Margot said.
CHAPTER
62
DR. LECTER held a bottle of Château Pétrus up to the light. He had raised it to the upright position and set it on its bottom a day ago, in case it might have sediment. He looked at his watch and decided it was time to open the wine.
This was what Dr. Lecter considered a serious risk, more of a chance than he liked to take. He did not want to be rash. He wanted to enjoy the wine’s color in a crystal decanter. What if, after drawing the cork too early, he decided there was none of its holy breath to be lost in decanting? The light revealed a bit of sediment.
He removed the cork as carefully as he might trepan a skull, and placed the wine in his pouring device, which was driven by a crank and screw to tilt the bottle by minute increments. Let the salt air do a bit of work and then he would decide.
He lit a fire of shaggy chunk charcoal and made himself a drink, Lillet and a slice of orange over ice, while he considered the fond he had been working on for days. Dr. Lecter followed the inspired lead of Alexandre Dumas in fashioning his stock. Only three days ago, upon his return from the deer-lease woods, he had added to the stockpot a fat crow which had been stuffing itself with juniper berries. Small black feathers swam on the calm waters of the bay. The primary feathers he saved to make plectra for his harpsichord.
Now Dr. Lecter crushed juniper berries of his own and began to sweat shallots in a copper saucepan. With a neat surgical knot, he tied a piece of cotton string around a fresh bouquet garni and ladled stock over it in the saucepan.
The tenderloin Dr. Lecter lifted from his ceramic crock was dark from the marinade, dripping. He patted it dry and turned the pointed end back on itself and tied it to make the diameter constant for the length of the meat.