Naked In Xanadu

it was his secret, they were his girls, the whole city was his as far as the eye could see

With a Fluttering whimper that burst into a yell, Sonny Gray battled his way out of sleep, blinking and gasping, greeting the day in the abrupt style that had, of late, become usual with him.

The nightmare, as always, had been distressing, but the act of waking up invariably sponged it from his memory, bringing the customary morning smile to his face.

It was a small smile, but then it was a small face, small and undistinguished and not what you would call attractive. The smile was one of secret knowledge, private joy, the smile of a cat who has swallowed a large number of the fattest, juiciest canaries.

He sat up in bed and, rubbing sleep-clogged eyes, looked out the window. From his quiet home on St. Ives Drive, just above Sunset Strip, he could see a great section of the city, laid out at his feet like an Oriental rug. Here, near, was Hollywood, pungent and vulgar; over there, the beginnings of Beverly Hills, elegant and sedate. The morning was clear; no smog; he could see far. Sonny liked to see far. It made him inordinately happy.

He had not always been happy. As he got out of bed, padded downstairs, and made himself an enormous breakfast, he remembered other, hapless days. Days when time had pressed heavily upon him, crushing him like iron weights; days when boredom and misery had been corrosive acids blackening and diminishing his spirit; days when life had edged him closer and closer to the brink of suicide. Those had been bad days, and worse nights, nights of drinking and desperate tears. Now, after zealously cramming his skinny carcass with scrambled eggs, sausages, buttered toast, jam, milk and coffee (plenty of protein: he had to keep up his strength), he patted his lips with his napkin and sighed contentedly.

In the bathroom, he sang as he showered, hummed as he shaved. By singing and humming, he managed to get through half the bubbly first act of La Traviata. He looked at his face in the mirror, and laughed. "You monkey," he said, affectionately, "you ugly little monkey."

Sonny did, in fact, resemble a monkey. For most of his life, that uncomely face and, later, that balding skull had caused him considerable melancholy. Currently, he didn't give a good god damn what he looked like. Sonny was 43. He felt like a kid. He stood five-five in elevator shoes. He felt like a giant. Switching from Verdi to Rodgers, "Oh what a beautiful morning," he sang, "oh what a beautiful day."

He did not dress, exactly, but put on fresh pajamas and a crisp robe. Then he walked downstairs to his study, unlocked a drawer in his desk and flipped the pages of a fat appointment book, bound in Florentine leather of a tan so light it was almost ivory and of a texture as smooth and sleek as a girl's belly. His fingertips lingered on the leather (he had always liked nice things) as he looked down at the open book. Long-time bachelors frequently talk to themselves: "Saturday," Sonny murmured, "a full schedule."

He replaced the appointment book, locked the drawer, and warmly contemplated the word simplicity. There were other words that came to mind, like flawless and foolproof, but he faithfully returned to the thought that pleased him most—that the single most remarkable aspect of his life, these days, was its simplicity. Its sinewy, spare, sublime simplicity.

He sauntered into the living room and sat down, patiently waiting. He looked at the clock on the fireplace; it was almost ten. He heard a car approach and stop; the slam of its door; then a soft discreet knocking on his front door. It was now exactly ten.

Smiling, Sonny rose to answer the knock. "Right on cue," he observed, somewhat smugly. His day had begun.

Late that afternoon, his phone rang. "Hello?" he said.

He recognized the voice. "This is Millie Van Bustenhalter. I have a 'friend named Sandra Sharnoe who would like to speak to you."

"All right, put her on."

After a pause, an unfamiliar voice said, "Hello? Mr.—uh—"

"Did I understand Millie to say your name is Sandra Sharnoe? I gather you have some kind of problem and you'd like my help?"

"Well, yes, she said you get wild results, and I'm just desperate—"

"I'll tell you what, Miss Sharnoe. There's a delicatessen on the Strip, just west of Doheny. Can you be there in, oh, an hour?"

She was hesitant. "I ... guess so. Sunset and Doheny?"

"North side of the street. I'll be sitting in there, drinking a glass of buttermilk. I'll be wearing a charcoal suit, with a red necktie, and there will be a white carnation in my buttonhole."

Wavering, Sandra Sharnoe said, "I don't really know ..."

"It's entirely up to you. I'll be there in any case. If we happen to run into each other, fine. If not, I couldn't care less. Charcoal suit, red tie, white buttonhole."

"All right, Mr.—wait a minute, what's your—"

"See you soon, then."

He hung up and got dressed for the first time that day, putting on his charcoal suit and a tie of scarlet silk, which he skewered with a garnet stickpin. He remembered, then, that the florist had been all out of white carnations and had apologetically sent white roses instead. Snipping one from the group in the vase on the piano, he inserted it neatly into his lapel. It would serve.

The winding downhill walk to the deli was short and pleasant, taking him past Stravinsky's house, the sight of which always afforded him a glow of moderate wattage, seeming almost to link him, Sonny Gray, with the brilliant distant Paris of Picasso and Nijinsky, of the furor over Le Sacre, of the famous promenade through the Place de la Concorde that night when Diaghilev, adjusting his monocle, said to Cocteau: "Etonne-moi." (Ah, cher Diaghilev, smiled Sonny as he strolled, how I would have astonished you, if I had been there to tell you my secret!)

A long-legged thoroughbred with chocolate eyes and sable hair entered the deli as Sonny was enjoying his buttermilk. She glanced about nervously, took note of his suit, his tie and his boutonniere, and click-clacked over to his table, her lustrous dark coif bouncing. Her face was drawn tight by tension, the brown eyes dulled, probably by pain or lack of sleep or both, and she had not bothered with cosmetics; she was, nonetheless, a knockout.

Before she could open her mouth, Sonny said, "Miss Sharnoe?"

"Yes."

"I'm Halsted Gray. Please sit down. Would you like a cup of coffee? No? Nothing? Well, then. Let's get two things straight right away. First, I am not a doctor nor do I pretend to he one. Second, I do not accept money. What I do, I do only as a favor for my friends, like Millie. Or friends of my friends, like you. Understood?" Sandra Sharnoe nodded. "Fine. Then let's get to it." He drained his glass. "Is your car outside?"

She drove the short trip to Sonny's house, following his directions. To make conversation, she asked, "If you don't take money for this, Mr. Gray, what do you do for a living?"

"Nothing at all," he said promptly.

"Which does not mean I'm idle, however. I'm kept extremely busy by my avocations. No, my father—Halsted Gray, Senior—was the worker in our family. He was kind enough to set up a small trust for me. It's not an awful lot, as those things go, but it keeps me comfortable and free from financial worry." It was a set piece; he knew it by heart. It had the advantage of being perfectly true.

As they entered his living room, he offered her a comfortable chair and suggested she remove her shoes, which she did. He slipped a Delius recording on the phonograph. "Now," he said, drawing a chair up close to her. "The trouble is?"

She pressed long, lacquer-tipped fingers to her temples. "These headaches," she said. "Like an ax in my skull. And I have an audition tomorrow. I always get them before an audition."

"You're an actress, Sandra?"

"A dancer. I have a chance at this wild TV spot, and—

"I see. You've been to doctors, of course."

She sighed. "Of course. They tell me it's nerves, tension. I know that! They give me pills. The pills either do me no good or make me woozy."

Sonny nodded. "All right. We'll give it a try. How old are you, by the way?"

"Twenty."

"You don't know my method?" Sandra shook her head. "No, Millie just said you were great ..."

"It's hypnosis," he explained. "Nothing more than that. I can take away this headache and you'll feel fine tomorrow, for your audition. I can't—I won't—do anything permanent for you, because that can be dangerous. I can only remove the symptom, I can't remove the cause. I'm saying all this because I want to be completely open and aboveboard."

Sandra nodded. Sonny went on: "I need your complete cooperation, that goes without saying. Don't resist. Are you comfortable? Good. Just relax now and listen to the music. I find it very restful music. Very drifting, floating music. Do you see this stickpin I'm wearing in my tie? The stone is a garnet; a beautiful garnet, I think, soothing to look at, limpid, liquid, with depths beyond depths, and beyond those, more depths. Look at it. As you look at the garnet, you are going deep, deep asleep." He paused. "Your body is relaxing, deeply relaxing." He paused. "Your legs are growing heavy, very, very heavy." He paused. "Your arms are growing heavy, very, very heavy . . ." Before long, he was saying, "Your eyes are growing very heavy. Your eyes are growing very tired. Your eyes are beginning to close. Your eyes are closing, closing, closing, closing, closing, closing ... Close your eyes and sleep."

She did just that, her breathing becoming slow and even.

He induced depth: "With each and every breath you take, your sleep is growing deeper ... deeper ... and deeper."

He established control: "Nothing will awaken you, until I awaken you. Nothing will disturb you. You will hear no sound except my voice."

He tested: "Your eyes are closed tight, so tight you cannot open them. The harder you try, the tighter they stick. Try to open them." Her eyes remained shut. "Try! But you can't!" Her eyes did not open. "Now stop trying. You can't do it."

He made a few other tests. Her response to them all was satisfactory. With a light step, he trotted into his study, and returned in a moment with the appointment book and a pencil. Flipping its pages, he said, "What is your name?"

Her voice came from a great distance: "Sandra ... Sartelli ..."

"And you are how old?"

"Twenty ... two ..."

"That's right, Sandra, you must always tell me the truth. Remember that. Always the truth. Are you married?" "No ..."

"Do you usually have ... let me see ... Thursday afternoons free?"

"No ..."

"Why not?"

"Dancing class ..."

"Ah. Then Friday morning between ten and eleven, are you ordinarily free at that time?"

"Yes ..."

He made a notation in the book. "Listen carefully. Next Friday morning, the tenth of this month, you will make every reasonable effort to be here in this house at ten o'clock. Every reasonable effort. That means you will try to keep Friday morning free—to the best of your ability—of routine commitments. However, if anything urgent stands in the way of your being here, you will not feel compelled to come. Instead, you will simply postpone the visit until the following Friday morning at ten o'clock. Repeat instructions."

"Next Friday morning, the tenth of this month ... " As she droned on, Sonny congratulated himself on this particular refinement. Planting a compulsive posthypnotic suggestion could be disastrous. The subject, delayed by snarled traffic, might have a serious accident if under a compulsion to reach the destination by a designated time. Or be on a hospital bed, convalescing from surgery, or in another city, where the impossibility of getting to his house would bring on hysteria. Therefore, he had hit upon the idea of the qualified, conditional suggestion. " ... simply postpone the visit until the following Friday morning at ten o'clock," Sandra concluded. On Friday morning, Sonny would plant the suggestion for the Friday to come, and so on, each week setting up the following week's visit.

"When you leave here," said Sonny, "you will drive directly home. At the first green traffic light you see, you will forget my address. At the second green traffic light you see, you will forget my telephone number. At the third green traffic light you see, you will forget my name. As you get into your bed tonight, you will forget what I look like, you will forget what this house looks like, and you will forget you were here. You will completely forget you were ever here. Repeat those instructions."

She did. If she were to bump into Sonny on the street the next day, she would not recognize him.

"You will suddenly remember the location of this house on Friday morning, the tenth of this month. You will remember the location and you will be able to find it, but you will not remember the actual address, or the phone number, or my name. Repeat those instructions."

She did.

"If anyone wants to know where you're going, you will not tell them. You will not tell them because you will not know. You will, however, make up a story, the most logical, most believable story for the particular person who happens to ask you. Repeat those instructions."

She did. In a couple of months, Sonny would change the day and time of her weekly visits, to avoid their falling into an attention-drawing pattern.

"You will take note of a word. The word is Xanadu. It will mean nothing out of the ordinary to you when most people say it, or when you read it in print. But when I say Xanadu to you, you will immediately sink into deep trance. Deep, deep trance, of the kind you are in now. When I, and only I, say Xanadu. Repeat those instructions."

She did. On Friday morning, when she would return, a long, slow induction would not be necessary. He would open the door for her, and she would enter, with a bemused smile, somewhat apologetic, groping for his forgotten name, not quite knowing why she was here, and he would casually ask her to sit down, and then, just as casually, he would ask her if she happened to know the Coleridge lines that began "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/A stately pleasure dome decree," and even before "pleasure dome" was out of his mouth, her eyes would be closed and her head fallen forward. "Xanadu," he would repeat, and her mind would slip deeper into the trance; "Xanadu, Xanadu, Xanadu," and each repetition of the signal would push her more profoundly and more surely under his control.

"Stand up, Sandra."

She did, and he took her hand. "Just come with me," he said, and led her upstairs.

They sat side by side on his bed. "Sandra," he said, "you must be very honest and answer my next question truthfully. It is extremely important that you he completely honest with yourself, as well as with me ..." He allowed that directive to sink in, then went on. "I want you to remember. I want you to remember all the men you have ever known in the past, shall we say, six years? All the men, let me add, that you have known with more than a nodding acquaintance, and all the men you have thought a great deal about, dreamed about, even if you have not known them personally. Search your memory, Sandra. Let them pass in parade through your mind."

As the parade filed by, Sonny got up and lit a cigarette. It had all been such a stroke of dumb luck, he marveled for by no means the first time; such a beautiful screwy accident. It so easily might never have happened at all, and he felt eternally in debt to Fortune that it had. If he had not been sitting idly at home that evening six months before, watching some awful thing on television, bored to petrifaction; and if that writer fellow, Clayton Horne, had not phoned and invited him to an impromptu party; and if Home, as the evening wore on, had not allowed himself to be coaxed into demonstrating his rumored powers of hypnotism—but, Sonny smiled into the cigarette smoke, all this had happened ...

"Oh, all right, all right," Horne said, "but no wisecracks or catcalls from the audience. And no promises, either. I make no promises. I'm not a wizard. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. There's no mystery in this—just a simple scientific technique."

"Twenty dollars says you can't do it at all," said Sonny.

"No bet. I only bet on sure things, and, like I said, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Who's going to volunteer? You, Sonny?"

"I'd rather watch."

Home turned to a tall, willowy model. "Mavis, what about you? Girls make good subjects, for some reason." "Don't do it, dear," Mavis' escort, Rudy, said, only half joking. "Once he gets you under, he'll make you perform all sorts of nastiness."

Mavis laughed and retorted, "That's not true, Rudy. I read someplace that a hypnotist can't force a person to do anything against the person's moral code. Isn't that right, Clay?"

Horne smiled. "Actually, there are ways of getting around that ..."

"And besides," said Rudy, "I've yet to discover anything that is against your moral code, old love."

That got a laugh, perhaps too much of a laugh for Mavis' taste, because she balked. Horne turned to a quiet. rather plain girl who'd said practically nothing the whole evening. "Doris? Come on, be a sport."

She hesitated. "I wouldn't mind, except that I feel awful. I really should be home. I have this damn toothache." "Perfect. Dr. Horne will charm it away. Sit over here ..."

Doris moved to an armchair, saying, "You're bluffing."

"Sit down. Take off your shoes. That's it. Comfortable? No, no, don't cross your legs—that interferes with the circulation and might wake you up in the middle of the whole thing. You say I'm bluffing. Not at all. I've done it before, very successfully. I've also failed. When you come right down to it, nobody hypnotizes anybody—people hypnotize themselves. The so-called hypnotist just helps them do it. I can't do it unless you want me to, understand, dear? If you're afraid—"

"I'm not afraid," said Doris, "it just seems a little silly."

"That's perfectly all right. I don't mind your thinking it silly. Natural reaction. Very healthy, as a matter of fact. Helps you relax. Think of it as a game. a silly little game, and you're just playing along, being a good sport, humoring me, all right? Attagirl."

Sonny watched with total fascination, his skepticism peeling away in layers as he saw Doris close her eyes, then go deeper and deeper into trance. Home trotted out all the tricks: told her she was a cat, and she obediently meowed and licked her paws; told her she was watching the funniest comedy ever filmed, and she laughed uproariously; told her she was watching the saddest play ever penned, and she copiously wept. Then, winking at Doris' escort, a man named Joe, he told her it was getting terribly hot in the room—eighty, ninety, ninety-five degrees—and she was all alone, and her clothes were so oppressively uncomfortable ... sure enough, she began to unbutton her blouse.

Joe said, "Wait a minute, Clay!"

"The mercury," Horne told Doris, "is going down now. Eighty, seventy, sixty-five ..." She buttoned up her blouse again. Turning to Mavis, he said, "See what I mean about that moral code stuff? If I hadn't stopped her, she'd have stripped! to the buff. And yet if I'd simply ordered her to take her clothes off, she wouldn't have done it."

Addressing Doris again, Horne said, "When you awaken, you will not remember any of this. And your toothache will be completely gone. Sometime after you awaken, Joe will offer you a cigarette. As you take it from the package, you will sing one chorus of The Star-Spangled Banner. I am going to count to five. At the count of five, you will open your eyes and be completely awake. One, two, three, four, five."

The first thing she noticed was the missing toothache. Horne carefully explained that he had removed the symptom, not the cause, and made her promise to call her dentist first thing in the morning. Half an hour later, behind her back, Home pantomimed the act of smoking to Joe, and Joe offered Doris a cigarette. She took one, and casually began to sing, in a bland, tuneless voice:

"Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light ..."

Sonny was the last guest to leave. He stayed behind, after all the others had dribbled away, expressing his admiration for Horne's great mesmeric powers. "Powers, schmowers," said Horne, "I wasn't kidding when I said I was no wizard. The amazing thing, the appalling thing about hypnotism is that it's so in-credibly easy. A few phrases and rituals that are a cinch to learn, a certain (continued on page 160) Naked In Xanadu (continued form page 86) amount of confidence, a certain amount of susceptibility on the part of the subject, and wham, you're a hypnotist. Remember when you were a kid, those ten-cent books on How to Hypnotize? We always figured they were fakes? The fantastic thing is that they're not. You actually can learn to hypnotize from a ten-cent book. Anyone can. You can."

You can. With those two words, Horne had, unknowingly, changed the whole direction and color of Sonny's life. He'd thoroughly grasped the fundamentals in a few days, had his first small mesmeric success a week later at another party of Horne's, then gone on to a few failures from which he learned much, discovered how to pretest a subject for susceptibility, and then, one clay, saw and grabbed a quite unpremeditated opportunity to use his new talent to his own" distinct advantage.

Crushing out his cigarette in an ashtray, Sonny returned to Sandra Sharnoe and sat next to her again on the bed. "Those men, Sandra," he said, "which one, among all of them, would you want most to make love to you?"

After a moment, she said, "Bob ..."

"Who is Bob?"

"Bob ... Ritchie ..."

"And who is Bob Ritchie?"

"High school ... basketball ... champion ..."

Sonny smiled. A nobody. How remarkably often it was a nobody. How surprisingly seldom it was a fantasy object like Rock Hudson, John Glenn, Robert Kennedy. So be it: Bob Ritchie.

"How long has it been," he asked, "since you've seen him?"

"Not since ... high school ..."

A long, slow-burning torch. "Bob was —Bob is a very handsome boy, very popular?"

"Yes ..."

"You've dated him?"

"A ... few times ..."

"Has he ever made love to you?"

"Not ... really ..."

"But you want him to?"

"Yes ...

"Very much?"

"Yes ..."

"Then you love Bob with all your heart?"

"Yes ..."

"And you will do anything at all for him, anything he wishes, because you love him so much and want to make him happy?"

"Yes ..."

"Does Bob have a little nickname for you, a pet name?"

"Brownie ..."

"Because of your eyes?"

"Yes ..."

Sonny released a long breath and stood up. Without hurrying, he made himself comfortable by removing his tie, coat and shoes. He sat next to Sandra again, and this time put his arm around her waist, saying, "Hi, Brownie. It's me. Bob."

• • •

Sonny lay in the dark, next to Sandra, thinking.

Many, he realized, would call him an evil man, luring unsuspecting damsels to his lair, tricking them into helplessness by black arts, to ruthlessly cleave them on the sacrificial fascinum of his lust.

If it were evil to magically change himself from a wretched, lonely, unfulfilled creature to a man who awoke eagerly to each new day and sang La Traviata in the shower, then, Sonny reasoned, he was evil.

He turned to Sandra. Even in the dark, he could see the serenity and contentment on her face. If it were evil to make a woman's deepest wish come true, then he was evil. For years, Sandra had harbored a buried, nagging, unrequited love for Bob Ritchie, and today that love had been, in a manner of speaking, returned.

Nothing degenerate had taken place, no vile depravities, no abominations, no foul De Sadean horrors. Where, then, was the evil? Who had been hurt? Sandra? Sonny? Ritchie? None of them had been hurt, and two had brightly benefited.

(Is this what they call rationalization? he wondered. Under all the "logic," mightn't there lurk something infinitely corrupt, something perverted, unnatural, inhuman, something stinking with decay, in the transformation of a girl—even temporarily—into a windup toy, a zombie without will or choice, a corpse in which the blood still flowed? No: sentimentality, puritan cant, romantic rubbish!)

Perhaps, Sonny mased, if he had more pride, if he had not lived so many desperate years of longing and shyness, he would feel shame about being loved not "for himself" but only for the masks of the Bob Ritchies. Sonny was too content to be bothered by such fastidious distinctions. Beggars can't be choosers. Besides, he asked, what man is loved for himself? What does that mean, "himself"? A man is loved for many things: for his good looks, or his charm, or his noble character, or his money, or his power. Sonny felt he had been shortchanged by Fate, since he possessed none of these. So he was loved for being Bob Ritchie, and hedidn't see much of anything wrong in that.

He reached out and turned on a lamp. It cast a soft, low light over the bed. Tenderly, he pulled away the bedclothes from the girl, pulled them all the way clown to her lacquered toetips, uncovering her completely. For several moments he admired her beauty, the art of every swelling hill and shadowed dale, the placid rhythm of her breathing, the buttery smoothness of her skin, the almost unendurable piercing sweetness of the great and gleaming masterpiece she was. He felt grateful, awed, appreciative and good, as he always did at such times.

Then he got up and dressed. Still in the persona of Bob, he gently advised her to put on her clothes. He watched her fondly as she did so, then said, "Brownie, I'll see you again real soon, but right now I'm going to turn you over to Mr. Gray." He took her hand and led her downstairs to the living room.

Her shoes still stood in front of the armchair, her purse was still on the coffee table where she'd left it. "Take your comb from your purse," he said, "and comb your hair." She did. "Sit down." She sat down. "Do you remember my instructions about my address and telephone number? Repeat them."

"When I leave here ... I will drive directly home. At the first green traffic light I see . . . I will forget your address. At the second green traffic light I see ... I will forget your telephone number ..."

"Very good. Now, listen carefully. Under certain conditions, you will remember my telephone number, which is CR 2-3041. Repeat it."

"C ... R ... two ... three oh four one ..."

"You will remember that number only under the following circumstances. From time to time, friends of yours may need my help. They will be troubled by headaches, or insomnia, or fits of depression, or anxiety, or they may just want to give up smoking. At such a time, you will tell your friend about a wonderful man you happen to know about. You will not mention his name—because you will not remember it—and for the same reason you will not mention his phone number or his address. You will go to the nearest telephone. By the act of picking it up, you will remember my number. You will dial it. If you hear a busy signal, you will hang up and try again exactly five minutes later. If there is no answer, you will hang up and take care of it some other time. If I answer, you will say: 'This is Sandra Sharnoe. I have a friend named (and you will tell me your friend's name) who would like to speak to you.' Then you will call your friend to the phone. As you hand the phone to your friend, you will forget my number again. Repeat those instructions."

She did. "Pay close attention now, Sandra," said Sonny, coming to the crucial part of the command. "These friends of yours, the ones who will need my help, they must not ever be men. They must be unmarried ladies." The unmarried requirement was another refinement of which Sonny felt proud. It was not motivated by morality. Married women had less freedom of movement, as well as husbands who could make life hideous for Sonny. "Unmarried ladies," he repeated. "young unmarried ladies, young and pretty. with pretty young faces and pretty young bodies, as pretty and as young as yours. No others. No others at all. Repeat those instructions."

She did. Sonny checked Sandra's clothes, and his own, made sure her purse was in precisely the same place it had been when she went into the trance, and said. "I am going to count to five. At the count of five, you will awaken. You will remember nothing that happened during your trance. Your headache will be gone and will remain gone all day tomorrow. At your audition, you will feel alert and refreshed. One, two, three, four, five."

"Oh!" Sandra said. "It's gone. I feel marvelous!"

Sonny modestly smiled. "I'm glad I was able to help."

"It's just wild, Mr. Gray." She put on her shoes. "I don't know how to thank you."

"There's no need," he assured her. Then, rising, he said, "And now, I'm afraid I must rush you off, because I have a great deal to do." He gallantly ushered her toward the door.

As they passed the telephone, she said, "Do you mind if I write down your number?" and began to reach into her purse for pencil and paper.

"I'll do it," said Sonny, swiftly picking up a note pad and ballpoint pen. He made a quick scribbling motion, tore off the sheet, folded it, and then, with a playful elfin gesture, shoved the piece of paper into her purse, deep among the feminine paraphernalia, and snapped the purse shut again. "There you are," he said. The piece of paper was, of course, blank.

At the door, just before she left, Sandra said, "Thank you again, Mr. Gray." With a straight face, he replied, "The pleasure was mine."

"There she goes," thought Sonny, as the door closed, "another little talent scout, geared to carefully select only the choicest morsels for my private stock." Each morsel, in turn, would be geared to select other morsels, and every morsel would return once a week at her allotted time. After a while, if it should threaten to become too much of a good thing (his appointment book was rapidly becoming jammed), he could easily weed out the morsels of lesser magnitude, eliminating from their minds the command to return the following week. It was an autoerotic fantasy come true: the morsels came to him, on a platter, obedient to his will, requiring no effort or courtship on his part. Yes, Sonny thought with a sigh as he went upstairs and gazed luxuriously out his picture window, the most remarkable part of it all was, indeed, the simplicity.

Night had fallen. The city was a tangle of luminous necklaces on black velvet. The invigorative sting of power buzzed through him, along his veins, quickening his blood. They were all out there, somewhere among those lights, his little puppets, attached to his whims by long, invisible strings. Steadily, their numbers grew with awesome and easy momentum, burgeoning by inexorable mathematic laws. Sonny laughed, softly. It was killingly funny. They were his, ugly little Sonny Gray's. They were all his, the whole city was his, as far as the eye could see it ranged: his select and secret harem; his corps of dancers to a private piping; his limitless warm acres of lushness; his lovely legions; his empire; his Xanadu.

And nobody had a clue. Not even the puppets themselves suspected. There wasn't a soul in all the world who knew.

He was quite tired. Tomorrow was another big day. He yawned, undressed again, fell into bed and was soon asleep. As he began to spiral down toward the waiting shock of the dream, however, he was spared by the faraway buzz of his doorbell. He groaned into wakefulness, got slowly up, and shuffled downstairs, pulling on his robe. The doorbell continued buzzing, with patient, insistent regularity. The living-room clock said 12:40.

"Who is it?" Sonny asked through the door.

"Los Angeles Police, Mr. Gray."

Sonny's heart jumped, jabbed by fear's calloused finger. Then, collecting himself, he opened the door a crack.

"You're not the police," he said when he saw who stood there: a pock-marked vulgarian wearing bad-taste mufti and an indifferently trimmed mustache.

"No." said the night visitor, "hut I think we better have a talk, Mr. Gray."

"Go away or I'll call the police."

"No you won't."

"Who the devil do you think you are?"

"Let's say my name is," and he smiled, showing odious olive-drab teeth, "Mr. Xanadu. How'll that do for openers?"

The earth slid away under Sonny's slippered feet, but only for a moment. "What do you want?"

"Like I said, a talk. Come on, let me in, I won't bite." The o.d, smile again.

Apprehensively, Sonny let him in. Was he a husband, boyfriend, father? He was a big man and beefy: would he beat him up? How had he found out? Sonny breathed deeply and took himself in hand. Perhaps it had nothing to do with the girls. But if not, then ...?

The visitor looked about the living room. "Nice," he said, "nice." He sat down, and pulled from a pocket a package of Black Jack chewing gum, which he offered to Sonny, who declined with a shake of his head. The visitor unwrapped two sticks and inserted them in his mouth like letters into a mail slot. Methodically chewing, he said, "I give up cigarettes."

After several dismal moments, Sonny said, "What do you want to talk about, Mr.—"

"Mr. X will do. I'll come right to the point. I'm a private investigator, specializing in divorce work—don't get panicky, nobody's naming you as a corespondent —but a couple of weeks ago, I got a slightly different kind of assignment. From an ex-husband, very jealous, a bit of a nut, who's still hooked on his blonde ex-wife and wants to know where she goes every Tuesday afternoon at three-thirty and who she sees and what she does. Chick's name is Betty Sanderson: ring a bell? I thought it would. Well, it was no sweat to slip a bug into her purse one Tuesday and tail her. She came here, to your place. I parked on the road outside, a few houses down, and listened in (it's a fifty-to-hundred-megacycle bug, a beaut, can send a signal damn near half a mile). I'm sitting there, parked, and as I tune in my receiver I hear a man's voice. Figures. But what doesn't figure is what he's saying. Not the usual stuff—Baby, Sugar, How About A Little Drink—no. Xanadu, Xanadu, Xanadu. What the hell is this, I say to myself. I keep listening. Pretty soon, of course, I'm hip. Well, my client, I told him she went to a headshrinker every Tuesday: what he don't know won't hurt him. But me, I had a hunch about you, so I came back that night while you were out and pounded a spike mike into your front door. I don't like spike mikes, they pull in a lot of garbage, but once in a while you gotta settle for 'em. And, brother, did I pick up a tapeful of stuff front that spike the next dayl And the day after that, and the day after that."

The visitor paused for a breath, while the sickening feeling of this can't be happening but it is crawled over Sonny.

"Yeah, I heard plenty," Mr. X went on. "Enough to be absolutely certain. Before I make a deal, I like to be certain."

"A deal," said Sonny.

"That's right, Mr. Gray. A little deal."

Sonny said, "I see." Then he said, "Look here. Somehow, you seem to have the impression that I'm a rich man. You're wrong. I live a quiet life, I'm (continued on page 166)Naked In Xanadu(continued from page 162) comfortably situated, but I don't have a lot of money."

"Did I ask you for money?"

Sonny said, "Let us not be coy, Mr. X. Do you deny that you are here in my house for purposes of blackmail? And please," he added quickly, "don't use that hackneyed old line about blackmail being an ugly word. You're a little too much like something out of the late late show as it is."

Mr. X laughed. "Sure, I'm blackmailing you," he said. "But there's blackmail and blackmail."

Sonny sighed. "At least twenty minutes ago you said you were coming right to the point. I still don't see ..."

"Keep your money," said Mr. X. "I want in."

"You want what?"

"I want a slice of the cake. All them lovely cakes. Betty Sanderson, Sandra Sharnoe, Millie Van Bustenhalter. All the others. I just want you to share the wealth a little, that's all. With me."

"Are you suggesting ..." Sonny's voice trailed off.

"You know what I'm suggesting, Mr. Gray." The visitor stood up. "Sorry to get you out of bed. I'll go now, it's late. But I'll give you a buzz tomorrow and we'll set up the first cake-slicing."

Mr. X moved out of the living room, toward the door. A blemishing leer twisted his face. "You know that Monday-night one of yours, that redhead, Carolyn?"

Sonny said nothing.

"I got a particular yen for that one, Mr. Gray. We'll start with her. Know what I'd like to do with her? First ..." The gloating wealth of pathological detail, the Hieronymus Bosch landscape he painted with a few lurid strokes, caused Sonny's stomach to tighten into a knot and his face to be bleached by disgust and fear.

Sonny's voice shook with anger. "You filth. You rotten ugly swine. Get out of here! If you seriously think I'm going to be a party to—"

"Oh, you'll be a party, all right," Mr. X assured him. "You'll be a party or else there won't be any more parties, for anyone. You don't want your sweet little setup knocked over. You don't want the wrong people to know what's going on here. You don't want me to pull the plug on you and watch you go down the drain, glug-glug-glug. Not you, Mr. Gray. You'll play ball. You won't like it, but you'll play ball."

Yes I will, thought Sonny, after the visitor left and he walked heavily upstairs again, the spring gone from his step, a decade of age suddenly added to him: I'll play ball, in his ball park, according to his rules.

Right there, on the stairs, he remembered the dream. He had never recalled it when awake, but now it flooded over him in a rush. He was stripped, he was standing stark naked in his pleasure palace and it was made of glass, all glass, and there was a crowd of people outside, looking in and pointing and smirking at his nakedness. All the people he knew were out there, grinning cruelly at his humiliation; all the world seemed to know his secrets; there was nothing they didn't know about him. And then the glass cracked and splintered into bright cold cutting shards, and Xanadu crashed loudly in a million shining pieces to the ground.

Just as it was crashing now.

But no, no, Sonny groaned piteously. He deserved his little private pleasures. He had paid clearly for them, with 43 years of loneliness. He couldn't let this happen to Xanadu, and to himself, and especially he couldn't let it happen to all those lovely, helpless darlings. Could he?

• • •

"Where's the broad?" asked Mr. X, lighting a cigarette.

"Carolyn? She'll be here," said Sonny.

"She better be. Y'know, I've been thinking. Sometime, maybe later this week, you oughta arrange for two or three of them to be here all at the same time. Know what I mean? Could get real interesting."

Sonny smiled. "Would you believe it—I never thought of that?"

"I got a lot more ideas."

"I'll have to be candid with you," Sonny said. "At first, I didn't look forward to this at all. But now I must admit I'm rather, I don't know, stimulated." Sonny leaned toward his guest, his monkey eyes bright. "You see, there's always been something missing. And do you know what that something was? Sharing the experience. Telling somebody. I've always had to keep it a secret, and that secret kept building up inside me like steam until I sometimes felt I had to tell someone or burst. It even gave me nightmares! But now all that's changed, you see. The two of us are ... partners, so to speak."

"Right. Partners."

"We can talk about it, laugh about it, plan things together. Yes, that's something else—I tend to be a fairly conservative person; I never would have thought to bring several of the girls together all at once, for instance; while you, on the other hand, have a very lively imagination ..."

"You know it."

"So, in a sense, I feel you are opening new doors for me, just as I'm doing for you. We each have something to contribute. It's a reciprocal arrangement."

"Reciprocal, yeah."

"Incidentally, I thought you said you'd given up smoking."

"What?" Mr. X looked at his cigarette. "Oh. Damn it." He crushed it out. "Habit. Didn't even know I lit up. Can't seem to kick the damn things."

"I know," Sonny said sympathetically. "I had the same problem at one time. Smoked two packs a clay."

"And you just quit? Like that?"

"Oh yes. No trouble. Self-hypnosis. The same way I remove the girls' head-aches and so on. Speaking of the girls, there is a little thing I've been longing to try with one of them, but I guess I just haven't been adventurous enough. It's—"

"Wait a minute," Mr. X interrupted, "tell me about the smoking. You mean you can just ... hypnotize it away?"

Sonny shrugged modestly. "You might say that. It's ridiculously simple. The hypnotist simply plants the suggestion that cigarettes will have a decidedly unpleasant, even nauseating, flavor to the subject. That's all there is to it, really. You have no idea what can be done. For example, the very act of love can be made immeasurably better by self-hypnosis. The right kind of suggestion can actually—how can I say it without sounding gross?—improve a man's prowess, prolong certain things, do you understand?"

Mr. X understood very well. "Listen, Sonny," he said. "It's all right I call you Sonny, isn't it? This with the smoking, and this other what you call prowess ... could you do the same thing, like, for me?"

"It all depends," said Sonny. "If you're a receptive subject, I think I could. Of course, if you resisted me, even a little, if you weren't completely willing, I couldn't do a thing ..."

"Sure, sure ..."

"But if you helped me ... cooperated ... it wouldn't be difficult at all."

"How would you do it?"

"We. We would do it. Together, cooperating, partners. First, I might just ask you to look at this stickpin I'm wearing in my tie. The stone is a garnet; a beautiful garnet, I think, soothing to look at, limpid, liquid, with depths beyond depths, and beyond those, more depths ..."

Not much later, and bare moments before redheaded Carolyn arrived, Sonny cordially escorted Mr. X to the door, waved goodbye, and watched him drive away.

Mr. X drove directly home. At the first green traffic light he saw, he forgot Sonny's address. At the second green traffic light, he forgot Sonny's telephone number. At the third green traffic light, he forgot Sonny's name. At the first red light, while he sat in the idling car, a girl crossed the street, walking directly in front of him. She was no older than 20, honey-haired, pert-nosed, high-breasted, round-butted, and as she walked quickly on her long, tapering legs, all of her flowed and rippled like the skin of a fine lithe leopard.

The sight of her almost turned his stomach.