This chariot to hell is a cherry-red ‘68 Caddy convertible, sporting a 390 V-8, with New York plates. Fado bought it on a whim two weeks earlier from a used car dealer outside of Buffalo, opting against the ‘58 Mercury Medalist, passing on the ‘56 Bu ick Roadmaster, sneering at the ‘60 Dart Phoenix convertible, finally settling upon the Cadillac because that was the most American car possible. Fado traded in the rusting Austin Healey he had picked up in Provincetown and paid the dealer the remainder of the Caddy’s price in cash, mostly hundreds with a few twenties sprinkled in like hot peppers in a casserole. The two men drove the Cadillac in a serpentine path through twenty-four states on elaborate errands of compulsion and academia, collecting cha chkies at every stop: a Smokey Robinson air freshener in Detroit and an Al Capone night light in Chicago; vials of holy water shaped like the Virgin; ivory-handled straight razors; shrunken heads; ritual daggers; voodoo dolls. The fuzzy dice were perhaps Senor Fado’s greatest exercise in indiscretion.

Under the front seat the Senor keeps a loaded Czech handgun: He has many enemies, and they do not all possess artistic temperament. Fado’s companion is nineteen, a student at the California Institute of Art. His GPA ranges between 1.9 and 2.6, depen ding on which teacher he’s managed to guilt-trip, seduce, or blackmail. His Chicago family is wealthy, but the boy is outcast from his kin and would be destitute if not for the providence of his great-grandfather’s trust fund, which provides money to a n umbered account by direct-deposit every January — money which the boy then squanders each year before May. Against his families wishes, Andre purchased a one-way courier ticket on KLM in June and made a pilgrimage, straight-razor in hand, to Fado’s loft , where he finally met the Master, whom the boy and his compatriots worship like a god. Now it is September and the boy is accompanying his mentor through the blasted wasteland of the Southwestern United States. The boy has a taste for cocaine and has h ad many lovers. How do I know these things, you ask? Is it a child who asks me this, an infant? This question strikes me as naive; perhaps it is being posed by one who does not watch the evening news. I may be enjoying an avocation, but this is not am ateur hour.

With the radio tuned to Nevada’s only “all-Elvis” station, Fado and the boy ride a 325-horse iron dream-chariot to the land of their destruction, burning rubber on the one-way death trip. Driving through the sandstorm Fado puts his shades on; the boy has never removed his own expensive sunglasses, not even during their stop outside of Mesquite. Andre cuddles up against his lover, softly singing “Just Can’t Help Falling In Love With You” along with the radio. Fado lights an unfiltered Black Lung wit h a death’s-head Zippo and chuckles to himself.

The DJ announces “Viva Las Vegas.” Fado laughs out loud and turns up the radio, singing along as he cruises Las Vegas Boulevard at 15 MPH, the Caddy bathed in the radiant blood and molten gold of the neon lights. Blackjack. Poker. Baccarat. Slots . World’s Most Beautiful Ladies. T-Bone Steak $5.99. Fado bellows incomprehensibly through the parts of the song he can’t remember or can’t properly pronounce; English is, after all, his seventh language.

They find a motel, the Valentine Palace, and Fado arranges for the King’s Suite — which is, luckily, still vacant — at a rate of $499.50 plus local hotel tax. “It is for me and my companion,” Fado says, winking at the desk clerk, a bald man of thir ty or so. The desk clerk returns the wink with a conspiratory laugh, saying “The bed is very large, it has our special vibro-fingers massage, that’s a trademark, you see. And you don’t even have to put in a quarter. The sheets are satin, and the bed and bath are shaped — well, as you would expect them to be in the Valentine Palace.”

Fado and the clerk stare at each other for a frozen, aching, pregnant moment, the clerk’s sweaty upper lip quivering, and then Fado explodes in laughter, cackling maniacally, slapping the desk clerk on the arm. The clerk laughs along nervously with S enor Fado.

“And the room has a stereo?” Fado then asks. “It is not America without rock and roll. My companion and I, we like to play Elvis while we — do it American style!”

Fado is intentionally playing games, as is his idiom. The clerk starts to laugh again, when Andre appears in the doorway. The clerk, his upper lip sweating more than ever, glances back and forth between Fado and his boy. His bald pate turns bright red in a second. Coldly, he says “You’ll find the bed’s massage controls next to the television set.”

“Thank you, Senor,” says Fado unctuously. The clerk hands Fado the key to room 235 and Fado winks at him one last time before leaving, receiving a cold stare as his answer.

The desk clerk has his own secrets to hide. He made his own pilgrimage recently, to Los Angeles, without his young wife’s knowledge or consent. How can I know these things, you ask? How can I track the movements of the reviled Senor Fado — and so many others — with such unflinching attention to detail?

This question seems the musings of an adolescent who has not yet learned to respect things it does not understand. Or a lamb, wailing incoherently on its way to the slaughterhouse, howling the requiem of the small-brained mammal.

Obtaining this knowledge is a simple matter: as simple as the look which passes between the boy Andre and Mario Fado as they retire to the room with the heart-shaped bed and complimentary vibro-fingers massage to enact their ancient and forbidden ritu al.

*****

I am the dream you pray you never have. I am your worst nightmare. I can haunt you in the midnight and come after you with an upraised scythe like Death on a pale horse of information exchange and untraceable neurotoxins. I can turn your credit rat ing into a noose made of fiber-optic cable, knotted securely around your throat. I can reach out from Krakow or Tokyo or Djakarta or Bogota and ensure that you die tonight of natural causes at the very moment your dreams take you, whether you are sixteen or ninety, whether you are a schoolteacher or a drug dealer or the President of the United States. I can start a war in a third-world country for economic reasons, perhaps no more compelling than to ensure an unbroken flow of refugees, and therefore con tinued drug traffic, through an adjacent country. Without effort, I can find out what books you read, what porn videos you rent, your favorite brand of liquor, the dosing schedule of your Prozac prescription. I can track down your place of birth and era se you, with the effort you might use to destroy a mosquito. I can wipe you from society, vaporise your existence, destroy your progeny. I’m the God you have convinced yourself does not exist. I am your father and mother, your lover and friend, your wi fe and husband, your doctor, your priest, your boss, your landlord, bookie. I am nobody, and your reflection.

*****

Andre undresses without emotion. Senor Fado has sprawled himself on the heart-shaped bed, sipping at the coagulated remains of his blue-raspberry slush, into which he’s mixed expensive Finnish vodka. He watches as Andre removes his clothes. Andre s tands naked, perhaps thinking about immortality. Smiling to himself, Senor Fado gestures toward his suitcase. Obediently, Andre retrieves it.

*****

I’m the devil. I’m God. I’m the guy who signs the hall passes from Purgatory. I have hammered down vodka tonics with Nikita Kruschev and puffed Havanas with Fidel. I’ve done lines with Noriega, slung back Harvey Wallbangers with Nixon, shaken hand s with four Kennedys. I’ve traded dirty jokes with Jimmy Hoffa. I’ve shared tequilla and lime with top officials in the PRI and ridden in tanks crossing the border into Afghanistan. World leaders eagerly join the line to accept my unholy communion — f or none shall come to to power except through me, or through one such as me. I’ve dropped viruses into the Pentagon computer and killed little old ladies with piano wire. I’ve started wars and police actions and riots and sold fissionable material and k ilos of heroin for sums which in other contexts would be considered ludicrous. I’ve signed the lease on concentration camps, thrown the switch on more executions than I care to total up. I smile a dark smile when you nervously tell your children I am a myth. You, my friend, you are the myth, for I am the only reality. I am the nightmare that walks and talks, because there are no countries any more.

*****

My connection to the bastard artist Mario Fado is perhaps a matter of some complexity, for there are many more superficially important issues for one such as me to deal with in this age of information. But it is my pleasure — my hobby, might I say? — to indulge in certain avocations. My interest in painting started in early childhood, but I was later compelled by circumstance to abandon such artistic concerns. Perhaps the art teacher who kindly informed me I possessed no talent had something to d o with this, but be sure that I have dealt with that matter in my own definitive fashion. I spent my early years in what was fashionably referred to as the “underground,” learning the language of those who reject and refute all national affiliations in f avor of matters artistic. Though I do possess something which resembles a national origin, I consider myself a citizen of the world. And while it could be suggested that I maintain a native tongue, I long ago learned the language of the rootless cosmopo litan, and I now speak it eloquently.

Do not think that my work in intelligence precluded my having personal concerns. I remained quite interested in the work of various artists affiliated with the countercultural underground. I am not beyond admitting that I was vaguely jealous of them , since my own artistic ambitions had been abandoned. But such emotion has no place in this stage of my life. Mario Fado became, to me, something of an obsession. I was both fascinated and repulsed by his work, and I found him an interesting problem of modern history. For Mario Fado was not the usual sort of artist. Within any given art scene, be it in London or Berlin, Paris or Los Angeles, Hong Kong or Osaka or New York, Mario Fado’s name invariably brought a hush over the conversation, and occasio nally a nervous titter. He was considered the outcast of the art world, though his paintings still drew price tags into the hundreds of thousands from collectors of exotic merchandise all over the world. These collectors invariably purchased Fado’s work through anonymous brokers, since to publicly admit a desire to own Mario Fado’s work would have brought the Senor’s outcast status to the purchaser.

I, however, occupied a different world from other devotees of art — a parallel world, but one illuminated by a darker sun. I did not consider Fado an untouchable — quite the contrary. Through my years of intelligence work, as I learned the languag e of betrayal, I followed Fado’s career in whatever spare time I had. When I left my national agency and went freelance, my powers were vastly increased and my abilities exponentially magnified. This is why I am able to indulge my current obsession. Ma rio Fado is not untouchable. He speaks my language; I speak his. Our hands work identical magics in different realms. Fado and I are the same.

We are brothers.

*****

I get out of the rented black Lincoln, putting my sunglasses on to protect me against the blazing neon of a Las Vegas midnight. I stalk silently down the motel corridor toward Fado’s room. From the pocket of my suit I take a length of piano wire, cu rled luxuriously between two wooden dowels.

*****

I am no longer affiliated with an offical intelligence organization, as you might think. There are methods to get in touch with me, processes by which to seek my services — though I am more selective of my assignments in recent months. But this do es not constitute a bureau or agency as such; more a kaffee klatch. Consider it, then, a federation, an association of friends and acquaintances who share an aesthetic agenda.

*****

Fado’s paintings are like a blight on the art world’s public image. But he has touched the nerve that lies deep inside my soul, and caused my heart to come alive. The fashion in which he creates his nightmare paintings of decay and corruption — it is the same talent with which I paint my works of blood and bone across the canvas of the new world order. But I paint on a bigger canvas than most — bigger, even, than Mario Fado’s. My landscapes are the world you live in.

*****

Fado’s medium, contrary to appearances, is not oil paint, or at least not exclusively. He does not work in acrylic, charcoal, watercolor, pastel. Fado paints in the blood of his victims.

Surely you understand that this is not murder in the traditional sense? For Mario Fado in all cases obtained the explicit consent of his models. And drew their blood with sterile needles and blades, wearing rubber gloves. He took only the blood he needed, mixing it with oil paints, certainly never more than a coffee cup’s worth at a time, usually less. But do you understand what it means to paint with the blood of the living? Fado’s models are invariably young men who worship him — groupies from that same underground of rootless cosmopolitans I used to run with. Is it any surprise, then, that their souls are captured, frozen in the canvas on which Senor Fado paints? And that in that moment when Fado deserts them upon completion of his blood pa inting, their despair is absolute?

*****

Fado has completed twelve in this series, and is at work on the thirteenth — it will be Andre’s portrait. It will be completed in transit, for Fado imagines that such a work will be somehow more aesthetically pleasing — I do not imagine that my ref erence to “rootless cosmopolitans” would elude Senor Fado. There are twelve Fado Blood Paintings, and twelve soulless corpses, each boy a suicide.

*****

Inside the King’s Suite at the Valentine Palace, Fado is hard at work. Andre is sprawled on the heart-shaped bed, his flesh opened and the front of his naked body slick with blood. I pause outside to contemplate the fate of my brother, and to smoke an unfiltered Black Lung.

*****

You can speculate, if you like. I suppose it is quite possible that it is my dalliance with Martin, a twenty-two year old boy who found himself (after his affair with me) one of Fado’s “models,” that drives me to take this action. But it is not cras s revenge that I seek. I am not a jealous lover. Martin’s suicide was a beautiful act in itself, and I can appreciate Fado’s part in it. And likewise, there is a final portrait to be painted, with the blood of a man who has far more talent than I. Do you not understand what it means to paint with the blood of the living?

For one such as Fado, it means the clever theft of the victim’s soul. And for his victims — excuse me, “models” — it means inevitable suicide, for who, even in this age without nations in which I am the only God, can live without a soul?

*****

Perhaps the boy’s ghost does haunt that painting, for it obsesses me, there in the darkness of the hallway, as I contemplate the surgical strike I am about to execute. It is as if the painting is that of a ghost. I can see Martin’s joyless face, wit h the signature across his throat:

“Fado.”

It is time for me to sign my name on another, less willing, throat.

*****

I have killed, and I will kill again. But for your sake, much more than for mine, do not consider me a murderer. I am an art critic.

*****

As I approach the door, I hear a scream. It is Fado. There are three shots. The boy’s scream mingles with Fado’s in a macabre sonata. Pulling the handgun from its place at my belt, I blow the lock, kick the door open through the cloud of smoke. I point the gun at Fado. Do fools never differ? Has someone come to claim Fado’s soul before I can?

The boy, Andre, is cowering in the corner, his front covered in blood. Fado’s oil paints have been splattered across the heart-shaped bed. Fado himself is sprawled on the red velvet bedcover, the vibro-fingers massage suddenly activated, his lifeles s body jiggling obscenely. The pistol hangs limp in his fingers.

On his face is a look of indescribable terror — and his body appears dessicated, utterly.

The radio is playing “Love Me Tender.” Above the headboard a black velvetKing weeps a single crystal tear. Andre looks up at me, weeping, choking back his sobs, tears mingling with the blood down his front.

It is as I suspected. Someone has beaten me to the punch, has taken the life of Mario Fado. He or she has exacted a more complete form of art criticism from Fado’s helpless body than even I would have been capable of. The walls of the King’s Suite are covered with angled mirrors, reflecting the carnage into a sanguine and pornographic infinity. I lift my pistol, point it at Andre, for he has seen my face.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” I say to no one, or to my reflection. “And Viva Las Vegas.”

I pause.

It is doubtless Fado’s taste in men. He always selects the same sort as lovers and models. But it is stunning — the resemblance between my erstwhile lover Martin and this boy Andre. I would almost think. . . . .

But it is the first rule of wetwork that you do not allow a pretty face to give you pause. I thumb off the safety.

*****

Back in the black Lincoln, taking the onramp to 15, I chain smoke and consider the experience. The things that occurred do not seem possible. I will follow my original plan. I will take Interstate 15 to Salt Lake City, abandon the car, purchase a p lane ticket back to Amsterdam. The events at the Valentine Palace do not affect my plans, but they will doubtless haunt my dreams.

I am not normally inclined toward judgments of fact or fantasy, preferring to leave that sort of deliberation to men with advanced degrees and nothing better to do. But my mind keeps returning to the moment when I first saw Fado on the bed, without a single cut in his flesh, and the moment when I regarded the boy I was about to kill. It is not possible that I saw Martin’s face reflected in that of Andre, and yet I did something I would have thought impossible: I let the boy live.

The face I saw in the hotel room was not that of a ghost. But I cannot shake the feeling that Martin was there with his brothers at the Valentine Palace, wreaking their horrible revenge.

*****

How can I know this thing, you ask? You are a dog, a simpleton, a beast. I am well acquainted with the time it takes to draw blood from the human body in any kind of an organized fashion. It could certainly have been Martin’s — excuse me, Andre’s — blood I saw painting the wall above Mario Fado’s lifeless body on the heart-shaped bed. But some artistic instinct tells me it was not. It was Fado’s.

How else would the aesthete’s desire be satisfied? Fado’s lovers were art students, after all, doomed by Fado’s actions never to become mature artists. Is it not possible that the creative need within their souls matured without bodies, wandering th e corridors of the afterlife? The word painted on that wall makes it clear. This was not an act of corporeal revenge, for who among the living would have such a twisted sense of humor? Present company excepted, of course. Graffiti serves as a tool of dissent or protest, when other tools are unavailable. And this graffiti was certainly a compelling protest. I will repeat that word over and over again in my sleepless nights, as I have done for many years. I will see it written in blood until the end o f my days:

Fado.

*****

Across the heartless desert, Nevada’s only all-Elvis station plays “Hound Dog” and “Jailhouse Rock” and “Blue Hawaii” and “Mystery Train” and “Burning Love” and “Are You Lonesome Tonight.” I listen to the morning news, waiting for a story on the kill ing. Nothing. Perhaps this country is not ready to hear news of the real world. All the better for me.

*****

My talent as an artist has been questioned before. It is therefore appropriate that this most important work was not executed by my hand. With my tools I have drawn the many faces of death, but the final portrait of Mario Fado was left to those who knew him best. For such a thing — I think you will agree — is a work of the greatest possible intimacy.

*****

The desert sands rain upon my car like a plague of locusts. Dawn weeps blood across the morning sky. The radio plays “Don’t Be Cruel.” I light an unfiltered Black Lung and turn on the windshield wipers.

The faceless Southern-California suburb reeked of murdered pine trees. But they could still smell the fat man’s spoor. They could hear the not-so-subtle chinging of bells that spelled the late-night capitalist infiltration of a billion homes across the world.

“I can smell the sonofabitch,” Bruno said. “I think he knows we’re here. He knows we’re still after him.”

Vi lit a cigarette, answering Bruno’s nervousness with a comforting rasp. “Of course he does, baby. He knows we’re after him, just like he’s always known. How could he not know?” She patted Bruno on the knee. “He thinks he’s immortal. He thinks he rules the world. He’s an arrogant son of a bitch — and that’s why we’ll beat him — eventually.”

Bruno nodded. “I hope you’re right, baby. I just hope and pray you’re right.”

“I hope so too,” said Vi under her breath.

Bruno reached down and checked the bag of goodies as Vi parked the Caddy on the street in front of a faceless, grey suburban condo. There had been unspeakable sadness inside. Vi and Bruno were here to change all that.

Bruno looked at her. She was a package, all right. Bruno and Vi wore identical skintight black turtlenecks and black fatigues, padded-sole combat boots, web belts. But the shape of Vi’s body under all that black still stirred Bruno and made his head swim. He leaned over and kissed Vi passionately on the lips. She responded with tongue and teeth and a faint stiffening of her nipples beneath the cotton turtleneck where Bruno’s hands touched her affectionately.

“Night’s almost over,” said Bruno. “We’ll be home soon, baby. Home at last.”

“You know it,” said Vi, her full, inviting lips parting in a gentle pant of excitement. “All the way in the hay.”

They looked at each other once more, longingly, their eyes meeting in a tender expression of passion and love and devotion and desire. There was no longer any fear, for this was a moment of action.

They popped the doors and rolled out of the Caddy. They headed out, each of them in a crouch, their black clothes hiding them from any watchers, moving fast for the front door of the condo. Vi clutched her crowbar close, slipped the lockpick out of belt pouch. Bruno hung back, cradling his big black bag.

In a minute Vi had the lock opened. The alarm system was no problem. The fat man had been sloppy; he’d left the alarm off when he’d left. The sonofabitch had no respect.

They were in the door and down the hall in moments. Vi checked the doorway to the living room, waved Bruno past. Bruno did a quick roll into the shag carpet, then came onto one knee just before the fireplace. He halted.

There they were. His heart filled with anger.

There in the still-warm ash of the fireplace. Those big motherfucking footprints. The bastard had been here, all right.

Bruno couldn’t suppress a growl. His hand went to the knife at his belt.

“Just once,” he growled. “Just one fucking Christmas Eve, if I could start a fire in every fucking fireplace in the goddamn world — from Detroit to Canoga Park to Timbuck-fucking-too — ”

“Easy, man,” said Vi, putting her hand on Bruno’s shoulder. “Don’t let the sonofabitch get the best of you.”

Bruno nodded, coming to his senses. He put the knife away, patted Vi’s hand.

“Thanks, baby,” he said, and opened the sack.

*****

Bruno had faced down the fat man once. It had been years ago, in the days when he had gone about his business armed like a NYC cab driver. Before he’d found Vi, when all he wanted to do was catch the fat man in the act and put some slugs in the fucker’s chest.

It was in another faceless suburban condo, might have been Ohio, maybe Wisconsin, possibly Illinois. Didn’t matter. Bruno had made it in the front door before the fat man had gone back up the chimney. He had found the fucker lounging in a recliner, reading the Dad’s Hustlers and jerking himself off.

Bruno had felt all the rage well up inside his body. His hand had come up holding his prized weapon, a .44 automag, eight-round clip — just like the kind Dirty Harry used. He chambered a round as the fat man got to his feet.

The fat man stood there, hands on hips, a jolly fucking grin on his face.

He swept the furry tail of his hat out of his face, tucked his schlong back in the red fuzzy pants, and sized up Bruno. The fat man stared down the barrell of the .44 automag, the grin on his face untouched.

Then he threw back his head and laughed.

“Ho — Ho — Ho –!”

It was a sinister sound, one with all the evil Bruno had ever feared or hated, and it sent chills through Bruno’s body, made his asshole cinch tight and his balls crawl up into his body. He leveled the automag at the fat man’s face.

Then the fucker had spoken, and Bruno was riveted.

“Put the gun down, puss-boy,” said the fat man. “You know you can’t harm me. Nobody can kill Christmas. Nobody. The spirit of Christmas lives on, prickwad.”

Bruno looked at the fat man’s forehead, lined up in the sights of the .44 automag. Bruno’s hands were shaking. He thought it horribly undignified for the fat man to be hurling insults like that, but that’s not why his hands had started shaking. The reason he was freaking out was because he knew the fat man was right.

He couldn’t solve this problem by putting a bullet in it. Even eight bullets wouldn’t do the trick. Sixteen or maybe twenty-four would be a start — but that wasn’t the point. From violence comes violence — from nothing, nothing. Ex nihilo nihil fit.

Bruno lowered the .44 and motioned toward the chimney.

The fat man just laughed again, “Ho ho ho, fuck you — ho ho ho –” and took his time getting out of there. He seemed to be contemplating whether he should finish what he’d been doing with the magazine. But part of him must have thought better of it — and that’s what told Bruno that in some part of the fat man’s mind, some tucked-away corner, there was fear.

Once the fat man had disappeared up the chimney. Bruno collapsed to the carpet sobbing. But it was in those tragic moments that he knew what needed to be done. He worked hard all year, and in June in a cafe in Amsterdam he had met Vi. She was ex-SAS, turned sour on the whole capitalism/imperialism thing and the duality of the cultural gender-model. She was a founding member of an obscure transgender activist group called Kill the Pigs. She was just a few weeks away from the operation, and he realized in a flash that he’d never love any woman this much. When Christmas came, Bruno was ready, and he had the perfect partner. Armed with love and their sack of toys, the .44 automag sitting at home on the dresser, Bruno and Vi had set out on their Christmas-Eve travels.

*****

The fat man had been here, all right. They could see his footprints in the ash. There was a boy and a girl in this house, and each had their own kind of atrocities offered in the stockings which hung from the mantle. The boy had a Killer Jack army doll and a Green Beret dagger. The girl had gotten Beverly Hills Sue with six glamorous outfits, a Golf Club Dan and a pair of pot holders. Vi sneered.

Bruno went to work quickly as Vi kept a lookout. Lily-white Beverly Hills Sue was replaced with the racially ambiguous fat-chick model Bruno had put together in his own workshop. Instead of her frilly pink clothes, Sue was clad in a leather harness, a leather jacket and combat boots. The T-shirt bore a SILENCE = DEATH sign, and across the back of the leather jacket was “DON’T FUCK WITH ME.” And of course this model was anatomically correct. In one of her little hands there was bullwhip. There was also a pamphlet on the importance of consensuality in all matters and extensive diagrams showing the location of the clitoris and the G-spot. Golf Club Dan was replaced with another anatomically correct doll, this one in a black lace teddy and spike-heeled shoes, with an accompanying pamphlet on gender roles and their utilization by imperialist forces in an oppressive capitalist society. The pot holders went in the fucking fireplace.

Killer Jack was replaced with Vegetarian Activist Jack, with a couple of furry friends, a pet chicken and a cow. The accompanying pamphlet, with unsavory details on factory farming and a number of mouthwatering vegetarian recipies, spelled it all out. The Green Beret dagger turned in to a pocket calculator and a biography of Ghandi. Let’s see the fat man do better than that, thought Bruno.

“The brats are coming,” hissed Vi as Bruno finished up. “We gotta hit the fucking high-road!”

Vi and Bruno slipped out the back door as they heard the shrieking pleasure of the boy and the girl opening their presents. It was followed with a confused silence — and as Vi and Bruno knew, there would be many confused silences to come as the seeds they had planted grew.

They rounded the condo and climbed into the Caddy. This time Bruno drove, firing the car up and peeling out as they raced down the street to the onramp.

*****

It made Bruno sad sometimes. They couldn’t win; Vi had to know that. They couldn’t hit every house in the world on a single night. The most they could manage was ten or twenty. They didn’t have an army of vertically-challenged non-unionized workers to do their dirty work and support their enterprize, the way the fat man did. They could never show up in every store as a symbol of the season.

But they could fight, on the battlefield they knew. And they could take down that fucker in every place they found him.

Vi, her exhaustion showing, slumped into the passenger seat. She looked up at Bruno with love in her eyes.

“We’ll be home soon, baby,” he said comfortingly, patting her knee. “We’ll be home real soon.”

“Bubble bath?” murmered Vi, her full lips twisting into a smile.

Bruno chuckled. “There’s two pints of Ben & Jerry’s in the freezer with a couple of foot soldiers’ names on them, baby.”

A shudder of pleasure went through Vi’s body. “Oooooh, I love it when you talk dirty,” she said. She leaned over and kissed Bruno’s neck hungrily, and as she whispered sweet nothings into his ear, her hand slipped into his lap.

“But why wait?” whispered Vi.

Bruno leaned back into the seat and rolled the window down. His face went slack as he heard it. Outside, directly overhead. Ching-ching-ching-ching.

The sound of fucking sleighbells.

They he saw it: outlined against the moon. Fuck, someone ought to get those poor reindeer some union propaganda.

A smile spread across Bruno’s face.

“Till next time, fat man,” growled Bruno. “Merry fucking Christmas to you, motherfucker. And pleasant dreams.”

Bruno heard it. Vi paused in her affectionate ministrations: she heard it too. Echoing over the faceless suburb. Ominous and terrifying.

“HO. HO. HO.”

Bruno chuckled, flipped the fat man the finger.

“That’s right, old man. We’re coming for you with both barrels. We’re coming after you and after all your lies. Ho. Ho. Ho. Season’s Greetings, motherfucker. And to all a fucking good night.”

“What the fuck’s a Mercury Retrograde?” I asked him. “Sounds like something that happens to your prostate if you don’t jerk off enough, haw haw haw haw.”

Mike was not amused. He disdainfully informed me that a Mercury Retrograde is where the planet Mercury, as viewed from Earth, appears to “go retrograde,” or travel backward in its orbit. It does this to return all the shitty gifts its annoying Republ ican relatives Saturn and Venus bought it during the compulsory Holiday Conjunction at Alpha Centauri. Ha ha ha.

This particular Mercury Retrograde started on December 7 and lasted through the 27th. It doesn’t happen the same time every year or anything, it just sort of jumps around randomly, like Easter.

Mike informs me that the planet Mercury has a profound affect over things that have to do with the mind. You know, intellectual stuff. Culture. He cautioned me not to write or travel during this period. Every possible connection — physical, spirit ual, and intellectual — is missed during a Mercury Retrograde. During this period, signing contracts = bad. Making major purchases = unbelievably bad.

This all started to make sense to me when Mike reminded me that a mutual acquaintance bought her computer during the last Mercury Retrograde, and the hard drive had to be replaced five times. Another guy we know bought a new car a few MercRet’s ago, a nd shortly thereafter the engine exploded, spontaneously turning the car into some sort of MOMA exhibit.

Mercury Retrograde is (as Mike said in his characteristically soothing tone) the universe’s way of slowing down, letting the soil of existence lie fallow for a while so it can grow new crops, yada yada. It’s a time when you’re supposed to reflect upon your deeds and misdeeds, clean out the top drawer of your mental and spiritual desk, ream out your ears with cotton swabs, etc. etc. Mercury Retrogrades are periods of frustrated creativity and harpooned ambitions.

Let’s just say it’s the cosmos’s way of nailing our collective dicks to the floor for a while.

Creativity being key to the existence of a Necrophilia Guy, I took Mike’s warning to heart, and spent a very productive December sitting around the house drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon and teaching myself to belch harmony on the Green Acres theme song. On deadline on four different stories, none of them involving necrophilia or astrology, I was seized with this passionate desire to clean my apartment — for the first time in recent memory. Not exactly a daily occurrence at Necrophilia Guy Headquarters.

The general public tends to have a rather romantic view of professional writers. I can understand that — it’s plenty romantic (to me, at least) to write novels about cheerleaders boinking and bleach-blonde porno queens blowing well-hung sailors. Shi t, talk about romantic. Lord Byron is probably turning green. If he ain’t already green.

But even the most ill-informed civilian can figure out that no publisher (that I’m aware of) pays hard cold cash for belching the Green Acres theme song, and damn few write checks to me for cleaning my apartment. So, for me, December’s been sort of an unasked-for vacation to Flakeville. Coincidence? I think not!

But that’s not the point. During a Mercury Retrograde, Mike tells me, you shouldn’t even think about doing anything creative. Rather, you should work on cleaning your mental file cabinet, flushing out your spiritual carburetor, enriching the soil of your life so you can grow new cantaloupes. Or something like that.

After I was done with my harmony-belching, I took Mike’s advice and completely alienated my family by giving them human skulls for Christmas. The kids loved it, but Mom was a little less impressed. She was just pissed because she got the one with the eyebrows still on.

But all in all, I felt pretty pleased with myself by the time Mercury, like the rest of us, started going the right direction.

*

One thing that the Mercury Retrograde did NOT interfere with was the imperturbably annoying nature of Christmas. One day in December, I turned on the classical music station — hoping for some Bach, Fauré, Chopin, maybe a little Beethoven — on ly to be subjected to a nauseatingly cheerful rendition of “Deck the Halls.”

“Awright,” I muttered to myself, “Somebody’s gonna get whacked for this.”

Deprived of even the simple pleasure of classical music radio, I was forced to reflect on the triumphs and tragedies of 1997. So I came up with my

Ten Oh-So-Gothic Resolutions for the Fucking New Year

1. Start letter writing campaign to have “Lucretia, My Reflection” named new National Anthem.
2. Create postmodern sculpture out of the bones of the Christmas turkey.
3. Scour family history for signs of madness.
4. Move forward with plan for assassination of Marilyn Manson as soon as The Jackal gets paroled.
5. Get my girlfriend to videotape me while I lie on a bed covered with giblets and recite the lyrics to “Siamese Twins.”
6. Adopt stray Iguanas.
7. Reread my entire serial killer library.
8. Undergo plastic surgery to look more like Poe.
9. Make friends with more dead things.
10. Invent new perversions, preferably involving sharp shiny things, to annoy and delight my friends.

Let’s face it: the wheel in the sky keeps on turnin’. Mercury’s done retrograding and we can now return to our normally shitty lives. So please join me in yanking the spiritual panties out of the crack in our collective ass: a brave new world await s, and its name is ninety-eight. Let’s make it beg for mercy.

It’s no surprise that a person using the moniker Necrophillia Guy has, um, esoteric tastes, or “special needs” as they are sometimes called. My taste in tunes, as in most other things, leans toward the macabre. No big shock there either, I suppose. After all, how appropriate would it be to set the stage for a necrophilliac encounter by playing Barry Manilow or Bad Company at top volume?

However, in this age of digital sound, there’s more to carnal soundtracks than Only Theatre of Pain and The Litanies of Satan (believe it or not). Sometimes we morbid types like to experience a little culture — that is, we like to get horizontal (or , in rare circumstances, vertical) to something that was recorded before 1977. This helps us to pretend that we’re occupying a long-ago, and infinitely cooler, era. So here’s a list of Necrophillia Guy’s five favorite composers who wrote really depressi ng stuff that you can still fuck to.

Johann Sebastian Bach: Bach is always a favorite. Put on the Mass in B Minor or the St. John Passion — or, if you’ve scored a date with a particularly well-preserved guest, Bach’s solo organ works (quit giggling!!). Playing the Tocatta and Fugue in D-Minor whilst reciting Byron will doubtless bring an “Ooooh, baby” from the most listless vampboy or ghoulgirl’s lips. If you’re like me, that’s not really the goal, but just thought I’d mention it. Bach’s sonatas and paritas for solo violin may also h elp you get in touch with that inner despondence, to mourn the passing of Western culture if you’re in to that sort of thing. Bach has the added advantage that his harpsichord concertos can help cheer you up once you’ve hit rock bottom.

Henryk Miroslav Gorecki: His Symphony No. 3 is subtitled the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. And he’s got a string quartet called Already it is Dusk. A symphony entitled Miserere. The first three minutes or so of Symphony No. 3 are played entirely on a string bass. Need I say more?

Sergey Rachmaninov: This man occupies a crypt only below Gorecki and Bach in my personal graveyard of musickal delights. His solo piano works are beautiful and his piano concertos quite affecting. But Rachmaninov’s true masterpiece is a little ditty called Isle of the Dead. It is a symphonic poem based on a truly disturbing painting by Swiss-German artist Arnold Boecklin. Isle of the Dead incorporates fragments of the Dies Irae, a hymn from the Catholic Requiem Mass. The title alone gives me a ha rd-on. Play this one if you’re lucky enough to pick up an actual dead person at Death Guild.

Carl Orff;: Orff’s masterpiece Carmina Burana has been abused by second-rate filmmakers in recent years, and may therefore evoke images of battle scenes in movies made for fifty-year-old straight guys to beat off to (eg Waterworld, Excalibur), but if y ou can get past that association, the piece is really quite phenomenally depressing. The lyrics are in Latin, so of course I can’t be sure, but it’s been hinted to me by one of my musically inclined friends that one of the segments in Carmina Burana is s upposed to be sung by a goose roasting on a spit. I think that pretty much spells it out, nest-ce-pas?

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, or “Wolfie” as some affectionately refer to him: He died young. Extra points. Most of the time, this Austrian’s music is annoyingly perky. But his Requiem is, predictably enough, spooksville. Young Wolfie left the Requiem uncompleted at his death — It was completed by a man named Sussmayr, but you do not have to pronounce the guy’s name in order to enjoy the CD. Sweet Wolfie passed away — at a tragically young age — while composing this very requiem, which is why Sussm ayr got his chance at it. Stay far away from Mozart’s other works — particularly Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (don’t be fooled by the title!) — unless you’re trying to sell your sexual partner a German automobile or a gift-basket of California wine and impor ted goat cheese (not beyond the realm of possibility, I suppose, but . . . .).

Other notes: Anyone who’s seen The Hunger knows that the aria is the perfect accompaniment to the sharing of bodily fluids. Piano sonatas by Beethoven can really create a spooky atmosphere. And Chopin’s Nocturnes can be played any time of day, parti cularly if you turn out the lights, close the curtains and light a bunch of candles.

I have avoided an extended discussion of medieval music, because that goddamn Chant CD is on the shelves in every yuppie home in the Western hemisphere, and the lovely and talented Hildegard von Bingen has been equally colonized. But sacred music from the middle ages can be pretty hot to those of us who suffered through Catholic school. Another note to the clever: anyone who’s worked at a Renaissance Faire may have automatic sexual associations with lute or dulcimer music played after midnight, if y ou’re willing to put up with some person trying to tell you about their last Dungeons & Dragons adventure. And those of us with Celtic blood have been known to grow curiously aroused by the sound of bagpipes in the morning.

A final note to you SM weirdos out there: Not to give you any ideas, but it is not acceptable behavior for a devious top to handcuff and blindfold her/his bottom and then commence the playing of Wagner’s Charge of the Valkries at top volume. That so rt of torture is reserved for captive Republicans and classical-radio DJs who play songs from Broadway musicals.

Postscript: Don’t compose your own Requiem, OK? Take a moment post-Andante and pre-Allegro to protect yerself and yer partner. Please. Necrophilia Guy thanks you.