The Sri Lanka Position

Fischbein, a corporate lawyer who specialized in defending companies accused of toxic pollution, was one of those formerly nerdy guys who had come to think of himself as a buccaneer on the highways and byways of life, a swaggering condottiere always searching for strange adventures and new experiences. While at the barbershop one Wednesday morning for his weekly clip, Fischbein saw an ad in the back pages of a magazine that promised the latter and maybe the former, and he was hooked right away:

The Sri Lanka Position

Secrets of Ancient IndianErotic Wisdom Revealed!

Eighty-minute VHS cassette demonstrates unimaginable sexual bliss. Famed Hindu guru will show you how to attain the ultimate in earthly physical fulfillment! The eroto-metaphysical mysteries of the Orient expounded as never before! You will reach Himalayan heights in bodily joy or double your money back! Adults only.

The price was $79.95, major credit cards accepted. Fischbein, by nature and profession a skeptic, cocked an eye at the hyper-prose. But he understood the kind of artistic license that advertising people went in for. What the hell—the worst case was double your money back. Covertly he tore the ad out of the magazine and put it in his pocket while Giuseppe was plugging in the blow-drier.

•

The smart buccaneer treads the path of caution. Fischbein decided to check out the video by himself before suggesting to the woman he was currently seeing that they take a whack at mastering its esoteric wisdom together.

He slipped the cassette into his VCR and heard the twanging of a sitar. Swirling psychedelic colors appeared. Out of them stepped a dark-skinned man, lean, almost gaunt, who might have been anywhere between 30 and 60. He was wearing a turban and a loincloth and nothing else. "I am Swami Shivaram Krishna," he announced, staring straight into the camera. His voice was deep, musical, exquisitely phony, with that crisp, singsongy, not-quite-British intonation that Fischbein associated with people from that part of the world. "I have devoted my life to the study of the Kama Sutra, the Ananga Ranga, the Ratirahasya and the Smara Pradipa—the great classics of Indian erotica—and to the Tantra Rajarata, the supreme work of the early Sri Lankan masters of the art of love. My purpose today is to impart to you of the West some of the cherished secrets of those ancient scholars (continued on page 160)Sri Lanka Position(continued from page 156) of passion."

For the next half hour Swami Shivaram Krishna explained interminably in his mincing guru English how the erotic arts could lead one to a higher spiritual level.

He expounded on the nature of the four classes of women—Padmini, Chitrini, Shankini, Hastini—and enumerated the days of the month when each was at her height of desire. He described the eight embraces—the Embrace of Touch, the Embrace of Penetration, the Embrace of Friction, the Clasp of the Serpent and so on—and the eight types of finger pressure: the Leaf of the Blue Lotus, the Leap of the Hare, the Peacock's Claw. It was all very colorful and esoteric, but Fischbein, his eyes glazing, didn't see what good any of it was going to be to him. He began to wonder if he'd have to call in the postal inspectors to make that double-your-money-back guarantee stand up.

Then, suddenly, almost jerkily—some rough editing there, but Fischbein forgave it—a naked and delectable young woman popped into view next to the swami. She was perhaps 20, slender and sleek, with glistening, dusky skin and jet-black hair that had an almost purple glint. Her arms and legs were long and thin, her breasts were full, her waist was improbably narrow, her hips flared in a truly extraordinary way, her eyes were large and glossy.

"There are 64 basic positions and 572 major variations," the swami intoned. He had shed his loincloth but not his turban. "But mastery of these eight will suffice for the novice who would venture into the outer precincts of the realm of the senses."

He proceeded to demonstrate. That used up the next half hour of the tape.

The swami plainly knew his stuff, and his sultry partner was supple and agile. But what was happening on the screen, elegantly executed though it was, was basically the good old in-and-out, accomplished in ways that Fischbein himself, aided by various young ladies from Brooklyn and Queens and one Italian knockout from Staten Island, had managed to get the hang of by the time he was old enough to vote. Eighty dollars seemed a lot to have paid for a video that showed a nifty chick of overseas extraction getting schtupped this way and that by a bony, turbaned gent of uncertain age. The twanging music began to nibble at Fischbein's nerves. His attention wandered again. The swami's lady was lovely to behold, but there was, after all, only limited sexual pleasure to be had from an arrangement of colored dots flashing across a cathode-ray tube.

Then Fischbein heard the swami saying, "You are ready for the supreme position, the summit of the erotic arts, what we of Sri Lanka call the Opening of the Gateway. For this you must clear your mind of all earthly distractions. Strive to ascend by means of kama and artha to the attainment of the moksha that the practice of dharma brings. Yield yourself to Shiva and Gauri, to Lakshmi and Vishnu; surrender yourself to Brahma the Mighty."

As he spoke, the swami and his splendid companion were entangling themselves in the most intricate fashion, turning over and over, weaving themselves into a fantastic knot. It was hard to tell which legs were whose, or who was on top. To the baffled Fischbein it seemed that they both were. Was it possible for pelvises to twist quite so far? Could knees really bend in that direction? And how, he wondered, were they ever going to manage the essential act of insertion when they were wrapped around each other at an angle like that?

But they did. The camera swooped in mercilessly and made that absolutely clear. Lingam had met yoni, indeed. And then—the dazzling insectoid ballet of bizarre movement, the obvious rising arc of incredible excitement, the long, gasping moan of unendurable pleasure indefinitely prolonged—my God, my God, the look on her face!

Wait a minute, Fischbein thought. No way. That simply can't be done.

He rolled the tape back half a minute and watched it again. And again. And again. And went farther back, to the first moments of their pretzeling coition.

"Now you are ready," the swami said once more, "for the supreme position, the summit of the erotic arts."

Fischbein put the VCR on frame-by-frame advance. He watched closely, frowning, trying to mimic the actions on the screen. Your left leg goes here and your right arm comes up there, your chin gets hooked under there, and then——

No. He ran the tape in reverse, frame by bewildering frame. Under there, schmuck! She puts her left thigh across your right elbow, with the tip of her foot angled into the crook of your——

Impossible. Incredible.

He ran the tape back yet again. And again and again and again.

•

"You won't believe this," Fischbein said. "Just watch."

"Jesus, Barry. Not a porno tape!"

"Not in the least. Just watch it, Gwen. Watch."

"Is it all just a lecture?" she asked after a time.

"We can fast-forward this part of it, if you like."

"I think that's a good idea."

The naked woman appeared. Swami Shivaram Krishna's loincloth disappeared. "There are 64 basic positions," the swami said, beginning to stroke the woman's notable breasts, "and 572 major variations."

"It is a porno tape," Gwen said in disgust.

"It's instructional TV. Channel 13 would be smart to show it during pledge week."

"Things are that bad with us?" she asked. "You think we need to pick up some pointers from a Hindu swami?"

"Wait," he said. "Watch."

"She has a very nice bosom, yes, for such a skinny woman."

"That's not the point. She isn't skinny, anyway. Slim. He's skinny."

"But very impressively hung. Barry, why are we watching this?"

"Please. Wait." He fast-forwarded through the position of Embracing as the Creeper Twines About the Tree and the position of the Bamboo Cleft.

"Now you are ready," the swami said, "for the supreme position, the summit of the erotic arts."

"Will you look at that?" Fischbein asked. "Have you ever seen anything like it?"

"Contortionists," said Gwen with some disdain. "So what?"

"Look at her face."

"All pulled out of shape, yes."

"She's having a good time, wouldn't you say?"

"Maybe. Or maybe that's a look of pain."

"I don't think so," Fischbein said.

This wasn't working out well. He found himself beginning to have doubts about the whole Gwen relationship. They had known each other six months and were in the critical period. Negative aspects of Gwen were starting to emerge that he hadn't noticed before—a certain closed-mindedness, a (continued on page 166)Sri Lanka Position(continued from page 160) certain prosaic unwillingness to make ontological leaps. Bad signs, these: The buccaneer on the highways and byways of life, the swaggering condottiere, must take care not to saddle himself with an unimaginative, unadventurous woman.

"My God!" Gwen cried suddenly. She grasped Fischbein's right wrist tensely. "Play that part again, Barry."

Fischbein rewound and played the tape back left-handed.

"I don't believe it," Gwen muttered. "Fantastic! Absolutely fantastic! Barry, where did you get this thing?"

He shrugged. "My usual scholarly sources." The tape was coming to an end. The swami offered his final, incomprehensible thoughts on the erotic path to enlightenment. "Really something, nezpah?"

"Incredible. Could ordinary human beings possibly do things like that, though?" Gwen said after a moment.

"What do you say we give it a shot?" Fischbein asked.

•

They made charts first, laying it all out on Fischbein's computer. Gwen was an art director for one of the big agencies; she knew all the tricks of the graphics software. He ran the video, frame by frame, and she blocked things out. It took hours, and by then it was past midnight, much too late to run any actual experiments. Fischbein was due at the office at half past eight to take depositions in an effluents-getting-into-the-town-marina thing.

The next night they arranged the printouts in sequence on the floor and walked through them in a kind of pantomime, acting out the fundamental twists and turns.

At first it all seemed impossible to do for anyone who wasn't double-jointed or hadn't been trained for it from childhood. But gradually they began to see that it just might be doable. They were both highly motivated people, and athletic, besides: Gwen was an aerobics fanatic, Fischbein put in an hour or two of racquetball just about every day. And she was as eager to make things happen here as he was. He liked that. Maybe his initial high evaluation of her hadn't been a mistake after all.

Pushing back the living-room furniture, they stripped and then settled down on his thick Kirghiz rug for a few trial runs.

Slowly and carefully they maneuvered themselves into the preliminary postures, carefully twisting leg A around hip B and bending arm C to interlock with thigh D. Fischbein was surprised to discover that, though their naked bodies were in contact in some unusual places, it wasn't sexy. What was going on seemed austere and intellectual, not erotic in the least.

The sexy part will come later, Fischbein told himself, when we stop being so self-conscious about whether we are bending at the proper angles and can just relax and get into the artha and dharma and moksha of it all. This is just rehearsal, putz!

"Are we on the right track, do you think?" Gwen asked a strenuous hour later.

"Unquestionably," Fischbein replied. They had run through the moves a dozen times, reaching higher levels of complexity on each round.

"Shall we go for it, then?" She sprawled out on the carpet, grinning wickedly, and assumed the position of initial receptivity.

Fischbein was certain then that he loved her.

He dropped down beside her and slid his left arm along her shoulder blade, twisting it so that his hand reached to her hip. She raised her right leg until it pointed ceilingward and deftly brought it down across his waist. He turned, then, presenting his left shoulder to her right armpit, and she flexed her body to bring the all-important yoni area within reach of his lingam. Everything depended now on the final series of pivots, a grueling chain of gestures that, if executed properly, would throw their bodies into a double-hoop configuration that would make it possible for him, with a single glorious lunge, to unite their flesh and send them both into a paroxysm of——

"Yes!" Gwen cried throatily. "Do it, love! Do it!"

Fischbein closed his eyes and put the full intensity of his soul into the Thrust of Oneness.

Yes! Yes! Connection was achieved! Triumph was theirs! The sensation of supreme ecstasy would soon——

But Fischbein, bent double or even triple on his living-room floor, felt nothing but savage pain running along his spine from the nape of his neck to his calves. Desperately he struggled to untangle his coiled body from itself before he died of sheer agony. Something else felt strange. Gwen wasn't there. He was all alone, grasping only empty air. She had disappeared, somehow. And then, a moment later, he realized that he was no longer on his living-room floor or anywhere else in his apartment. He became aware that he had disappeared, too.

•

He was stark naked on some darkling plain. The sky was green, with shining streaks of blood-red light spurting across it. An unrelenting wind blew. Giant ribbed columns, black and glossy, rose above him, bending and meeting far up in the sky. Thick, loathsome strips of puckered yellow flesh, like the rubbery skin of an enormous bird from which the feathers had been plucked, dangled down from the columns to form a hideous tent.

"You bastards!" Fischbein bellowed. "Where am I? What have you done to me? I'll sue your fucking asses from here to Calcutta!"

Struggling against the wind, he approached the tent and gingerly peered through its flaps. A bulging green eye peered back at him. Fischbein saw spidery tendrils moving behind it, and a mesh of fine bristly coils glowing like fire. He closed the flap fast.

I've gone out of my mind, he thought. Maybe taking those positions put too much strain on my spinal column and I had a stroke or something, and now I'm lost in my hallucinations.

After a moment he lifted the tent flap again. The eye was still there. The tendrils stirred unpleasantly.

Fischbein trembled. He was tough, a buccaneer and a condottiere and all that, but he depended on his mind in order to make his way through the harsh and brutal world, and if his mind was gone, he was in deep shit, indeed.

"Gwen?" he muttered. "Gwen, can you hear me? Everything looks crazy to me, Gwen. Help me. Help me, Gwen!"

No answer. Things got even worse. A rain of white radiance descended. The air seemed to palpitate and sob. Beneath him the ground went taut like a blanket pulled from four sides at once. Hairy tendrils began to emerge from the tent.

Fischbein turned and ran for his life. The smart condottiere knows when to retreat.

After a time he looked back. The eye thing didn't seem to be following. He didn't dare stop running, though.

"Sue your asses," he muttered over and over. "Six torts from Sunday, you negligent Hindu cocksuckers."

Finally Fischbein was exhausted. He dropped down on a bed of hot sand, gasping and quivering. Somewhere along the way, he realized, the sun had risen. It was a red sun, a purple sky. He was in a vast, empty desert. The heat was unthinkable and the air seemed aflame. It shimmered and trembled.

Red sun? Purple sky? Had the peculiar contortions of the Sri Lanka Position somehow transported him through hyperspace to an alien world, or was he simply trapped within the ruins of his destroyed mind? Either way, he felt like crying.

The first matter to decide was whether or not this place was real. If he had gone nuts, he had less to worry about. He was probably really under sedation in some hospital right now. But if this place actually happened to exist, he would have to start thinking about finding shelter from the merciless sun, a source of fresh water, something he could eat and so on.

Fischbein knelt and scooped up a handful of sand. It was so hot it stung his skin. That felt real, all right.

But he remembered enough of his college philosophy courses to understand that the illusory perception of hot sand could well seem to burn the illusory perception of the hand that was holding it, without telling you a single useful thing about the actualities of the universe. Still and all, something about the texture of the sand and the clarity with which he was perceiving the red sun, the purple sky, the golden dunes, led him to think that he was really here, that he and Gwen had tied themselves into so extreme a bowknot that they had popped themselves right out of the familiar space-time continuum into—well, God only knew where.

The landscape changed, though only slightly: It was still empty of trees and everything else, but now there was the hint of hills on the horizon. He was starting to get used to the heat. It would have been nice to have some sunscreen, though, naked as he was under that blast-furnace sun.

What about food? Fischbein saw scraggly little vinelike things with air bladders along their stems, something like shore-growing seaweed, clinging to the dunes. He nibbled on one. It tasted like seaweed, too, kind of like iodine, and left a hint of moisture in his mouth. Maybe he could survive on it until he found something better.

"Gwen?" he called now and then. "Gwen, are you here somewhere?"

Of all the miserable shit, he thought.

Was this going to be his life from now on? Slogging in solitude over fiery dunes in his birthday suit, nibbling on iodine-tasting weeds, all on account of the fucking Sri Lanka Position?

Fischbein cursed the day he ever had succumbed to the idea that sex was worth bothering about.

He caught some small sand animal in the dunes, a kind of furry crab, and with a certain degree of effort managed to eat it. Later he found some more of the seaweedish stuff, and still later another crab. The distant hills began to look bigger. The sun went down, finally, and he curled up against a dune and managed a couple of hours of rotten sleep despite the streaks of searing red light that kept coursing across the green night sky.

A couple of days went by and nothing got any better. It all feels realer and realer, Fischbein thought, plodding onward to nowhere in particular. He spent hours composing the texts of sizzling legal documents, filing suit in his mind for negligence, willful physical harm, bodily assault, personal trespass, fraud and misrepresentation, violation of constitutional rights and civil liberties, tortuous marketing of ultrahazardous risks, and sexual harassment. He would file suit in New York, New Delhi, Sri Lanka, in every place on Earth where that video was sold, and here in hyperspace as well, if he could figure out who had jurisdiction. He'd sue the swami, the company that made and sold the cassette, the writer of the ad copy, the magazine that had published the ad, his barber, the manufacturer of his VCR and maybe Gwen. He would——

Suddenly Fischbein spied a figure on the horizon waving to him out of the shimmering heat waves. Frantically, Fischbein waved back.

"Gwen?" he called. His voice was a hoarse, rusty croak. "Gwen, is that you? Oh, thank God, Gwen, Gwen——"

He ran forward in leaps and bounds. Then he came to an abrupt halt, muttering angry curses.

Not Gwen, no. A man. A naked man. He had found the only other human being on this wretched, forlorn planet, and it was a man. With a blue-and-red tattoo on his arm, no less.

•

They sized each other up at a distance of ten yards or so.

"Cal Anderson," the other said. "Los Angeles." He was big and rangy, deeply tanned, with bulgy weight-lifter muscles. Probably a bit-part player in cop shows on television.

"Barry Fischbein. West 16th Street."

"Is that in New York?"

"New York, yes. How long have you been here?"

A shrug. "Too long. Weeks. Feels like years."

"You were doing that goddamned sex video," Fischbein said, "and suddenly you were here."

Color came to Anderson's cheeks. "How do you know that?"

A dope, Fischbein thought. Just the two of us marooned in this fucking place and I don't even get somebody interesting to talk to.

"Res ipsa loquitur," he said. "The thing is obvious. How else could you have gotten here? One minute you're lying there with your girlfriend, all knotted up together in the Sri Lanka Position, and then poof! You're on Mars. Or wherever we are. Have you seen anyone else since you've been here?"

"You're the third one."

So we will have a class-action suit, Fischbein thought. "Where are the other two now?"

"Gone," Anderson said. "They did the position with each other and vanished. I guess they got back to Earth. I've been all by myself since they went. But at last I have a chance of getting out of here, thank God."

"What do you mean, a chance of getting out of here? I don't see any women around here for you to do the position with."

"There aren't any," Anderson said. "I told you there was no one here but me. But now you're here. It occurs to me that maybe we can work something out." He beckoned Fischbein with upraised fingertips. "Come over here and lie down."

"Wait a second," Fischbein said, horrified. "I don't do that sort of stuff."

"You think I do? But what choice do we have? Do you want to fry in this place forever?"

Fischbein didn't move. "Some set of alternatives."

"For the sake of getting home, you could force yourself to have a little contact with male flesh, couldn't you?" Anderson asked. "I've already thought this thing through and I've reconciled myself to it. You ought to be able to do the same."

"We could wait for more women to show up," Fischbein suggested.

"More women? There haven't been any women here. The other two were guys. Women seem to go to a different place."

So that's what happened to Gwen, Fischbein thought.

He said hopefully, "Maybe one will come here, though. Sooner or later. We just have to wait."

"Fat chance. But if one does show up, let me tell you this: I get her. You can wait for the one after that." Anderson looked like someone who could make that threat stand up, too. "You could wait a long time."

(continued on page 218)Sri Lanka Position(continued from page 168)

"Jesus," Fischbein said. He took a deep breath. "So it's got to be you and me? For Christ's sake, what if somebody were to find out?"

He had never done any sort of gay stuff. Oh, a little innocent fooling around when he was 12 or 13, a bunch of guys jerking off together, but that had ended as soon as he'd figured out the right way to speak to girls. This was an emergency, though. A crisis situation.

"Come on, asshole," Anderson said. "Nobody will ever have to know. Who's going to tell anybody anything? You? Me? And it's our only hope. Stop wasting time and let's get going." Irritably, he again gestured to Fischbein to approach him.

"I suppose," Fischbein said, jogging over and lying down on the broiling sand. "But no funny business, you hear?"

"As if I would. Do I look like a queer to you? Shut up and put your right leg over mine."

"It's the woman who puts her right leg over," said Fischbein.

"I'm bigger than you. I'm the man, you're the woman."

"I don't know the woman's moves."

"Just follow what I do. Everything will fit together with a little practice. Put your right leg over mine."

Fischbein sighed and put his right leg over Anderson's middle. Then Anderson clasped Fischbein with his arm. Fischbein shuddered.

"Not so close," he said.

"Don't be a prick," Anderson said. "Do the thing with the ankle now."

"I can't bend my leg that far."

"Bend it or I'll break it for you."

"You're the pushiest lay I've ever had," said Fischbein.

"This isn't a lay. This is survival. Stretch your leg."

Fischbein stretched, did the ankle thing, hooked his heel where it was supposed to go.

"It'll never work," he muttered.

"You East Coast assholes are natural pessimists, aren't you? Twist on your side now. Raise your arm."

"This is disgusting," Fischbein said.

"I could give you a hundred affidavits that say it isn't."

"From women," said Fischbein. "I'm a man. What do you think this stuff between my legs is?"

"You want me to answer that?" Anderson said. "Raise the arm higher."

Fischbein gave it all he had. It wasn't enough. He and Anderson got as close together as they could, and nothing happened.

"Not bad for a first try," Anderson said as they disentangled. "There's a grove of desert apples growing just back of this dune. Let's go get something to eat and then we can try it again."

"Again?"

"Until we get it right," said Anderson.

"Jesus Christ," Fischbein said.

"Look, if I could do the position by myself, don't you think I would? You think I want to hug your hairy body, mister?"

"OK, already. OK. Where are those apples?"

They tasted like burnt pieces of cork with sugar sprinkled on them. But they were better than the seaweed. Afterward he and Anderson tried the position again. And again. And again.

On the millionth try there was a pop in the air, and Fischbein found himself back in his apartment, naked and sunburned, with gritty orange sand sticking to his skin everywhere.

•

He put the ad in the Times, The Wall Street Journal and half a dozen other papers around the country, listing himself as chief counsel for the Sri Lanka Position Claimants Association and asking anyone who'd had a bad experience with the sex-instruction video to get in touch with him. There were three faxes and five phone calls the next day, and that was just the beginning.

Gwen's father called as well, from Sioux Falls.

"She wrote us that if anything ever happened to her, I should contact you," he said. "She calls us almost every Sunday. We haven't heard from her in weeks. I knew this would happen when she moved to New York. Was she hit by a stray bullet? Run over by a taxi?"

"This is very complicated," Fischbein said. "All I can tell you is that she disappeared, and I'm making every effort to locate her. I'm absolutely distraught."

"You're what?"

"Distraught. Distraught. Upset."

"Oh."

"I'm also taking legal steps to punish those responsible for her disappearance. Send me your name and address and I'll see to it that you're included on the list of plaintiffs, as her next of kin. Do you happen to have a fax?"

"A what? And you say you know who kidnapped her?"

"She wasn't kidnapped, exactly. She disappeared."

"But you know who did it."

"I know how it happened to happen," said Fischbein. "As I told you, this is all extremely complicated. But if you'll let me have your name and address...."

•

It was big news, of course. In the past six weeks, people all over the country had vanished as a result of using the Sri Lanka Position video. Only a handful had managed to return. The instructional video had been recalled from sale, naturally, and before long an open-ended indictment on manslaughter charges was brought in against the guru and the producers of the cassette.

The guru insisted that the teachings had been gravely misunderstood and misapplied by careless practitioners. The video company's lawyers pointed to the elaborate liability disclaimer that was included with every video.

"What bullshit!" Fischbein roared. "They think user carelessness is a defense? They think a fine-print disclaimer means anything?"

Just about all of the returned vanishees and most of the next of kin hired Fischbein to represent them on a contingency basis. He had decided that he would leave his barber out of it but was suing everybody else involved. Including Unesco—which, it turned out, had underwritten the swami's spiritual research ten years back—and the government of Sri Lanka, for having failed to warn consumers in the U.S. and Europe that one of its citizens was peddling a highly dangerous sexual aid.

•

One of those who didn't sign up with the Claimants Association was Cal Anderson of Los Angeles. It turned out that he didn't act in television cop shows, he produced them, and he had his own staff of in-house lawyers who would handle the suit for him independently.

"But you'd be better off joining the class action," Fischbein said when Anderson called him from the Coast. "It won't cost you anything up front, and the payback is going to be colossal."

"Maybe so," said Anderson. "But my lawyers are smart and you're a jerk, or so I concluded from our little holiday together. I'd rather use them, if you don't mind. What I want from you is to find out how much you're going to stick me for the rights to our story."

"Our story?" Fischbein repeated leadenly. "What are you saying?"

"Castaways in the Fourth Dimension," Anderson said. "I'm filming it for TV."

"But you told me that nobody would ever know that you and I—that we—how we—what we——"

"That was then. This is now. There's a big story here."

"You're going to slander me as a queer on prime time?" Fischbein asked. "Not for 10 million bucks would I give you a release on that. You try it and I'll sue you into the sixth dimension, you stupid Hollywood bastard. Going to show yourself as a queer, too, are you? Sure, sure you are. I can see it now, the music swelling up, the two of us in a passionate clinch on the hot sand. Look, do whatever you want with your own reputation, but leave me out, OK?"

"We committed no homosexual acts," Anderson said. "We merely had close bodily contact for the sake of saving our lives. Besides, what's so awful about homosexuality? It's not something I would want to practice for pleasure, but this isn't the 19th century, buddy. And some of my best friends are as queer as the day is long, and what of it? But all right, all right, forget I even called. I would have paid you a nice price for the use of your character, Fischbein. But instead of an asshole lawyer from New York as the guy I join forces with to fight my way out of the fourth dimension, it'll be a decent, good-hearted carpenter from Dayton who wants to get back to his wife and kids but first has to transcend his working-class prejudices against coming into close physical proximity with another man, besides which, he was abused by his uncle when he was a kid and that left scars on his psyche, and——"

The call-waiting beeper beeped.

"Got to go," Fischbein said. "There's someone else on the line."

"Just remember, fellow, you can't have it both ways. If I tell our story and leave you out, don't come around here claiming that you're the prototype of the carpenter and are entitled to a gigantic fee for the use of your character. Even a third-rate shyster like you should know that that would not stand up. And furthermore——"

"Excuse me," Fischbein said. He switched to the waiting call. "Barry Fischbein," he said.

"Hello, Barry," a woman's voice said. "Remember me?"

"I'm not sure I——"

"It's Gwen, Barry. Now do you remember? I've come back. And I have the most wonderful things to tell you!"

•

They met for lunch in the café in the Trump Tower lobby. She looked radiant: deeply tanned, as if she'd just spent two weeks in the Virgin Islands. She was brimming with a vitality and joie de vivre that seemed obscene in the middle of Manhattan on a drizzly winter day. It was exhausting just to look at her.

"I can't readily communicate how much guilt I've had over this, Gwen," he said right away. "Once I got back and realized that you hadn't, that you were lost somewhere in an unknown dimension—perhaps suffering unspeakable torments—the sorrow I felt was unbearable, utterly unbearable, to the point where I wished I were a Catholic, Gwen, a Roman Catholic, so I could go to some priest right down the block at St. Patrick's and beg him for absolution, because the guilt I was having was so——"

She was beaming at him. "Oh, Barry, you're being silly. I had a tremendous time."

"You what?"

"It was like being in an Arabian Nights fantasy. I mean, I was a princess and they were all my slaves. They did my bidding. They built a palace for me and brought me wonderful things to eat and drink, and jewelry and perfumes—strange jewelry, you understand, and the perfume was actually a little gross, but I had to make allowances for the differences in the culture. The Euphoria Dimension is what I called it."

"The Euphoria Dimension," Fischbein repeated dully.

"It has to be the most marvelous place in all the universe." The glow of her cheeks deepened. "I have to say, too, that there was physical fulfillment as well, of a kind that—well, that I had simply never experienced before. No offense intended, Barry. Their capabilities go beyond those of humans, that's all. It's simply an anatomical thing. There's no reason in the world for you to feel competitive."

"Competitive? Who with?"

"With the inhabitants of the Euphoria Dimension. Who made love with me all day and all night, until I was dizzy with joy."

"I'm not hearing this," Fischbein said. "Not really. This is all some crappy dream. You're telling me that you landed in a dimension full of Casanovas, and that they all looked like the young Charlton Heston except they were handsome, and they stroked you with peacock feathers and bathed you in asses' milk and screwed you around the clock, and you think I'm glad to hear it?"

"They didn't look anything like Charlton Heston. Or Robert Redford, or Cary Grant, either. They weren't remotely human. It was another dimension." Gwen's eyes were glowing. "They were aliens, Barry!"

"With tentacles and feelers, yes. And six eyes the size of saucers. And three dicks apiece, the size of——"

"Barry!"

"Why, exactly, are you telling me all of this?"

"I want you to go back there with me."

"What?"

"When they sent me home they said, 'Get the man you love and return to us, and we will serve the two of you in bliss and splendor all the days of your lives.'"

A great sadness came over Fischbein. This was a woman that he had actually considered marrying. And he had never seen her look more gorgeous than she did right this moment. But her trip through the dimensions had driven her totally insane. Such a terrific woman. What a waste!

That dumb videocassette. He could kill Swami Shivaram Krishna.

Quietly he said, "How did you get back here, exactly?"

"They showed me the way. It's a variation on the position, but I could do it all by myself. They sent me here to get you and bring you back with me."

"To the Euphoria Dimension?"

"Yes."

"Listen, Gwen, there are brilliant specialists in this city who can help you deal with this. If your insurance doesn't cover it, I'll find a way to shift you onto mine. We'll heal your mind, don't you doubt it. And then—then—I want to marry you, Gwen. I've never said that to a woman in my life. But there. It's out. I want to marry you."

"I'm not crazy, Barry. I was really there."

"You really think you were there, sure. But——"

"No. It actually exists, and it's glorious. Believe me. No, don't take my word for it. We can go there today. Right after lunch, a quick trip, there and back. Just to check it out. See if it isn't everything I said."

"Gwen——"

"Just a trial visit. You'll love it. You'll never want to come back here. I came back only for you, but it was an effort to leave there. Believe me. Will you make just the trial jump, Barry?"

"We'll get you the finest treatment money can buy."

"I tell you, Barry, I'm not crazy. The Sri Lanka Position sent you to hell, but it sent me to heaven. Now I'm offering you the chance to do it right."

"I think I've had enough visits to other dimensions for one lifetime, OK?" Fischbein said. "Even if this place of yours is real, and I don't mean to insult you by implying that it isn't, how can we be sure that we'd both get there safely? Suppose things get screwed up somehow and we wind up in two different dimensions again? Anyway, I don't want to leave the city I love, Gwen. I genuinely want to live out the rest of my days in New York."

"Chasing ambulances and filing class-action lawsuits."

"Serving my fellow human beings, yes."

"Well, I don't want to live out the rest of my days noodling around with advertising executives and computer graphics. I'm going back, Barry. But I don't want to go alone. They may be the most marvelous lovers in the universe, but I want to go there with someone of my own species, someone I love, someone I can cherish and embrace the way human beings do. Someone I can make babies with. I can't do that with them. But why are we even talking about it, Barry? I should have realized on day one that it was a mistake to get involved with, of all things, a lawyer, a man who hides behind words, a man who's afraid of his own shadow, a man who has no more courage than a tadpole, maybe even less, who has no more sense of adventure than——"

"Please. You're making a scene."

•

"Sorry," Gwen said, getting to her feet. "Here. This should cover my share of lunch."

It was a hundred-dollar bill.

"I won't need these where I'm going," she said, and went storming out.

•

Swami Shivaram Krishna jumped bail and vanished without a trace. Fischbein got a default judgment against him, but there weren't any assets to attach. The manufacturer and distributor of the cassette was able to get his part of the indictment quashed on First Amendment grounds. The rest of Fischbein's case gradually collapsed as well, until Fischbein was left chasing only the government of Sri Lanka for damages, and what good was that? The whole business trailed out into nothing. Fischbein wound up losing about $10,000 in out-of-pocket costs. Eight hundred people stayed permanently in limbo and nobody ever had to pay for the harm thus inflicted, which Fischbein thought was outrageous. So it was a bad scene all around.

As for Gwen, Fischbein never heard from her again, except for a note that he got from her a few days after their lunch.

Dear Barry:

I loved you very much and I think we would have made a wonderful life together in that other world. But I forgive you for not having the courage to make the leap. I was asking a lot, I realize. I'm taking Swami Shivaram with me instead. It's the best way I know of showing my gratitude to him for having—however unintentionally—opened the gateway to bliss for me. He'll be in serious legal trouble if he stays here, and, besides, I have to tell you, he is a magnificent lover and a man of the highest spiritual attainment. I think we'll be very happy together. But I will always think fondly of you, Barry, and regret what might have been and now is never to be. Yours ever in euphoria,

Gwen

•

All that was long ago. Sometimes he thinks of her, even now.

"You're thinking of her again," Elaine will say when a certain look comes into his eyes. "That woman who went to the other dimension. I can tell." Elaine is his wife. Fischbein is married now, with two nice kids and a big house on the North Shore. His buccaneering and swaggering days are far behind him, except where his clients are concerned. Last year, after winning the Sunnyside Playground case, he made full partner in Courtney, Bertolla & Feingold and there are only good things to look forward to.

"Come on, Elaine. She's in another dimension and she isn't coming back, and even if she did——"

"You wish you were there with her, though. Don't you? You wish you had gone over."

"Only a crazy man would have gone," he says to Elaine. "You know what a nightmare the first jump was? You think I'm the kind of guy who'd stick his neck in the noose twice?"

They laugh then. And off they go to bed.

He and Elaine have a very pleasing sex life, considering that they've been married almost seven years, but it is not tremendously adventurous. Usually Fischbein is the one on top, but once in a while, after she's had a glass or two of wine, Elaine will suggest that they do it the other way around. That's about as kinky as they ever get. Elaine has never been one to want to explore the mysterious highways and byways of life. And Fischbein doesn't have the slightest problem with that, none at all.

"The swami plainly knew his stuff, and his sultry partner was supple and agile."

"Fischbein closed his eyes and put the full intensity of his soul into the Thrust of Oneness."