Rosita Diegas sat in the Lima hotel bar, sipping her wine and watching the elevator. Nine o’clock, ding, there they were, right on time. Always the same group, like they were tied together with invisible string.  Paula and Sharon, sisters. Trish and Bill—she must have married him because he never said anything, just sat there and let her talk. Which        she did. Endlessly. In a classic New York whine. Elizabeth and Frank, from Georgia. Diane and Joe, newlyweds. Fully half of the group making its way through a 10-stop tour of Latin America.

        From Mexico City onward, they had joined her for drinks every evening, and Rosita always bought the first round. After that, the group subdivided further into “the drunks” and “the cheapskates”. The drunks were there to drink—they appreciated her generosity but would have been there anyway. Trish and Bill were the leaders of that pack. The       cheapskates would switch to soft drinks, or sit and nurse their free cocktails endlessly, but never order more alcohol that they’d have to pay for. The young newlyweds and the older couple usually stayed true to form.

        Rosita was impressed by the attendance tonight. She had predicted that at least one or two members of the Lounge Rats, as she called them, would have succumbed to elevation sickness by now. Maybe it was the alcohol that kept them going. She’d seen it work for some people.

        “Hey, girl!” Paula greeted her. “I love her!” she said to her sister.  “She’s always here, waiting for us.”

        And she was. Rosita privately considered herself much less of a tour director than a baby-sitter. The kinds of trouble these people could get themselves into was enough to induce a 48-hour migraine. She realized that was the main reason they joined tour groups in the first place. It wasn’t to save money. It was the reassurance that someone with more

experience in foreign countries could take responsibility for them and keep them safe. And so, every morning, she rose an hour before breakfast and waited for them. She took obsessive headcounts whenever they explored a “point of interest,” and paid visits to their hotel rooms to make sure there were no problems. She went to bed only after the last      stalwart had staggered from the bar. She didn’t mind the happy hour ritual; it was the closest she ever came to relaxing with this bunch, but even so, she gave thanks for the more sensible souls who used this down-time to rest, read, and do laundry in their bathtubs.

        Unfortunately, those innocents became the nightly topic of conversation among the Lounge Rats, whose one shared interest appeared to be gossip.  “Just us again,” observed Trish. “It’s probably a good thing the other people in our group stay in their rooms—we’d have nothing to talk about!” She brayed laughter, which was joined by the others, and Rosita grudgingly admired the woman’s honesty. It made it easier to put up with         the mindless chatter that often went on until after one or two in the morning.

        Sharon didn’t even wait to order her nightly Kahlua before she started in. “I’m worried about Lucy. She looked sick during dinner. Have you checked on them?”

        Rosita had. Lucy Grassmore and her husband Walter were the oldest members of their group—she’d seen their passports and noted Lucy’s age at 70 and Walter’s at 75. They were a quiet, dignified couple, who appeared utterly devoted to each other. It was their reserve that seemed to make them the principal object of the Lounge Rats’ curiosity. The evening wouldn’t be complete without at least 15 minutes’ worth of speculation and observation about them. Rosita wondered if the poor old folks’ ears rang each evening as they sat together in their room.

        “Walter came to the door when I knocked and said she’d had a nice hot bath and was sleeping. He looked okay. I asked him if they would be climbing the pyramid at Machu Picchu with us tomorrow. He didn’t really give me a yes or a no—”

        “He just gave you that cold smile of his, didn’t he?” asked Sharon.

        Sharon had a particular fixation on the Grassmores, and after three or four drinks would begin to hold forth her theory that the couple was “traveling in disguise” as she put it. She made it clear that Walter made her nervous, and expressed the suspicion that whatever money he had came from a lifetime of nefarious deeds.

        “Well, he smiled,” said Rosita. “He’s always seemed pretty kind to me.”

        “Patronizing is the word,” responded Sharon, with an exaggerated shiver.  Her sister Paula rolled her eyes. “Sharon, why don’t you just go up to their room and rip his pants off? You know that’s what you really want.”

        The other members of the group laughed politely, coughed, or kept their faces straight. Paula’s remark, they all thought, was right on the money. Sharon clearly had the hots for old Walter Grassmore, but didn’t want to admit it. Her overactive imagination had led her to draw absurd character portraits of people in other tour groups, residents of the countries they had passed through, and various guests in each hotel they’d checked into. Paula told them that her younger sister was a frustrated romance novelist, who had submitted dozens of stories to publishers and been rejected every time. But still, the talk went on, with contributions from each Rat.

        “I don’t care what you think, Diane, SHE’S the sick one,” said Elizabeth. “Now it’s starting to show—all this travel is taking a toll on her, bless her heart.”

        Diane was the romantic of the group. She believed Walter Grassmore was  terminally ill, and that Lucy had given him this tour as a sort of farewell gift. Lucy, in her opinion, was a tower of strength who would bravely carry on after the old man expired. Joe, Diane’s husband, had remarked once, after several beers, that Lucy must have been a very good-looking woman when she was younger. The other men privately agreed, but the women wondered to themselves at the way men’s minds worked. Lucy Grassmore wasn’t exactly ugly, they thought, but those dark spots on her head were probably melanomas, and she had that habit of blinking like an owl. Her mouth sometimes had a twitch to it.

        “Aren’t they the same age? Seventy, seventy-five? Do you think either of them has been married before?”

        “I’d bet on it,” replied Sharon.

        “Yeah, you probably think he killed off his first five or six wives, and she’s next!” her sister teased.

        “Do they have children?” asked Bill.

        The women in the group looked at him with forced patience. “No, Bill, they don’t” answered his wife, as she would address someone hopelessly out of the loop on a favorite soap opera.

        Diane said, “I asked her that once, and she said no, but gave me kind of a funny look. Maybe they had kids, and they died.”

        “In Vietnam? Or maybe Desert Storm. They’d still be trying to get over that,” guessed Elizabeth.

        “If Walter was in World War II, he would have gotten into the service just under the wire,” said Joe.

        “What was she? A nurse?” asked Trish.

        “She worked for the telephone company,” said Elizabeth.

        “Oh,” said Trish, disappointed. “He was what, a book publisher?”

        “That’s what he told me,” said Rosita. “He ran a small company that published textbooks, and they got bought out by McGraw-Hill or something.”

        “Borringg,” said Paula.

        “I’d still like to know whose Depends those were,” said Trish, and the remark was met with some snickers. In the airport at Bogotá, the group had encountered some unusually draconian security officials, who had insisted that all suitcases be opened and thoroughly searched. They had all seen Lucy Grassmore’s distressed reaction when the guard took out a box of incontinence supplies and questioned the couple. That incident,

more than anything, had endeared the other tourists to her. They felt protective of her, and this attitude extended even to her vaguely mysterious husband.

        “Sorry,” said Sharon, returning to her favorite topic. “Maybe he’s just really tough and brave and all that, but you expect nice people to get sick. The mean ones never do. I wonder how he treated his employees when he ran that company.”

        “I can’t believe you’re spooked by a little old man,” said Trish.

        “He’s just so…remote,” said Sharon, stirring her drink. “Like if you get within a few yards of him, he’ll give you the evil eye. HER, you can talk to.” She licked the swizzle stick, and said “Can’t imagine what she sees in him. Yuk.”

        “You never know what brings two people together,” Rosita said, and then  decided to shift the subject. “Say—I think we need to be up an hour earlier than we planned tomorrow. There are going to be a lot of groups at the pyramid, from what I hear.”

        “Are there any good shops there, or is it the usual rip-off junk?” asked Trish, the souvenir queen.

        “Shop till you drop,” her husband muttered into his beer, and Frank grunted sympathetically.

        “Damn right,” replied Trish.

 

        The room assigned to Walter and Lucy Grassmore bore a “No Molesta” door      hanger. The drapes were drawn and the only light in the room came dimly from the adjoining bathroom.  On the modest double bed, the woman lay naked on her back. Her

companion, covered loosely in a terrycloth hotel bathrobe, sat propped, with her feet on his lap. On the nightstand was a small bowl of water; beside it he placed a straight razor and a towel. The gentleman opened a bottle of lotion and began applying it to the woman’s legs.

“Warm enough?” asked Hannibal Lecter.

“Mm-hmm,” replied Clarice Starling. She stretched luxuriantly and parted her legs a bit, while she held his gaze. He smiled gently in response, and ran his left hand slowly over her abdomen, which was noticeably less flat than it had been four months ago, when she first arrived at his Maryland home.

“As much as I’d hate to cover you, we don’t want you getting chilled,” he said.

“It’s warm in here, Hannibal,” she said. “My nipples aren’t even hard yet.”

“Wait until I get farther north—and call me Walter,” he said, reaching for the razor.

Clarice lifted her right foot and caressed his face with it. She smiled. “You still like shaving my legs?”

He shrugged innocently. “You were the one who said it needed to be done two or three times a week, and you were also the one who admitted she didn’t much enjoy doing it.”

“Well, thank you for volunteering…”

He made no reply, but bent his knee, making a platform to hold up her leg. He worked very slowly, rinsing the razor after every three strokes.  He checked his work with his finger, then proceeded, and very softly began to sing the Enrique Iglesias hit “Bailamos.”

        Clarice recognized the tune and drew in her breath. Lecter heard it and glanced at her, amused. “Has it suddenly turned cold in here, love?”

“You’d better stop singing that if you really expect me to hold still,” she admonished.

“You’re right. I was teasing you. A shame a song has the power to force us from a room, though.”

The “Grassmores” had left the dinner table abruptly, and everyone else in the group had assumed that one or the other was taken ill. Their sudden exit had actually come as a result of the song being played loudly on the barroom jukebox, and the commencement of some very sensual dancing by other patrons in the lounge. Clarice had first heard it on the car radio coming back from Philadelphia, where she and Lecter had gone to make some minor arrangements with regard to their identities and passports. The song had made her frantic, and Lecter had found it necessary to pull off the highway onto a dark service road and take her on the leather upholstery of the Jaguar’s back seat, while the radio station obliged them with a seven-minute “extra-long dance version.” He had purchased the CD for her, and they enjoyed it nightly for their after-dinner dancing.

        Although privately, he considered it little more than “Latin bubblegum,” it was worthwhile for the effect it had on Clarice. For quieter evenings, their favorite dance tune was “Stardust.”

        Here in South America, disguised as frail septuagenarians, they didn’t have the freedom to respond to the music as they would have. And it was unbearable to sit silently over cold plates, watching others enjoy it.   As he’d observed Clarice during dinner, she had begun to look tired and unhappy, so he’d made excuses and taken her upstairs.

      “Walter” hadn’t lied to their tour director. Clarice had taken a warm bath and a nap that evening. Although her morning sickness and hormone-induced mood swings had persisted only a few weeks, she was now in her third month, and would sometimes tire without warning. He was glad the paperwork had proved to be in order and they’d encountered no obstacles during this tour, which would bring them to Buenos Aires

within a fortnight. The sooner they established a home and settled into a routine, the less he’d have to worry about her pregnancy, the better he’d be able to attend to her. He estimated her due date as approximately October 25, his sixty-second birthday.

        With the frequency and intensity of their couplings, he had been utterly unsurprised at the speed with which she had conceived. His nose began to detect subtle changes in her scent when he nuzzled her between the legs, and it was a simple matter of catching her in the bathroom before she had a chance to flush the commode. He smelled it clearly in her urine, and began planning at once. He gradually eliminated wine and rich foods from the menu, giving her the impression that he was adapting more to her health-conscious habits. Late in the night, as she slept, he organized papers and did some Internet research of available tours. It had been his experience that certain parts of South America were most likely to provide a quiet hiding place without too much difficulty in transit. He pondered alternate identities for himself and Clarice, looking for something suitable for two persons of widely disparate ages, that would enable them to blend with a tour group.

        He didn’t tell her immediately that she was pregnant. He wanted to see if she might figure it out for herself. But within a week or two, the crying spells and anxiety attacks began. Her appetite dwindled to nearly nothing and she complained that the meals he prepared tasted peculiar.  Acidic foods, containing tomatoes or vinegar, were especially

intolerable to her. Baths, naps and sex soothed her temporarily. As the days went on, she spent more time crying quietly and attempting to hide it from him.

        He sat with the Sunday paper one afternoon, watching her pace the library. Finally, she sat down next to him, her chin in her hand, and listlessly scanned the front page of the sports section.

        “Clarice, something is bothering you. What is it?”

        She crossed her arms over her chest, as if cold, and said “I honestly don’t know. I can’t seem to keep my mood on an even keel. I feel like I’m going crazy.”

        He touched a hand to her face, and she leaned against it. “You’ve never felt this way before?” he asked. She shook her head. He watched her face and could see the tears gathering again.

        “PMS?” he asked her.

        She considered. “Feels like it. But that’s pretty rare for me. I’m lucky.”

        He pretended to be absorbed in the paper, waiting. Finally, after a long silence, she rose and went into the bedroom. She returned with a small datebook and thumbed through it. From the corner of his eye, he could see her sitting still, with the book in her lap, lost in thought.

        “Hannibal? Unless I’m wrong, I’ve skipped two periods.” She sat back, looking relieved. “It’s just stress. Sure. All that’s happened lately.  My cycle went off track right after the Jame Gumb thing, and now it’s doing it again. Must be some kind of delayed reaction. Sorry I’ve been such a bitch. Damn that Mason Verger!” She rose, planted a kiss on his cheek, and took the book back to the bedroom dresser, where she kept her      old purse.

        When she returned, the doctor asked, “Clarice, what other reason might you have for missing your period?”

        “Well,” she responded earnestly, “I’ve been feeling sort of sick lately—like the flu is coming on. I hope it isn’t mono, or something absurd like that.”

        “What else can you think of?”

        She pondered, and he could see she was drawing a blank.

        “Clarice, let me put this another way, if I might. If you were 17 years old, living at home with your parents and dating, and you missed a period, what would be your first conclusion?”

        The expression on her face as the answer came to her would later earn a place in his sketch pad. She turned pale, then reddened, and her hand flew to her mouth to stifle an incredulous laugh.

        The mood swings ended as soon as she understood the reason for them, and she handled the nausea with English water biscuits and resigned humor.  Once her condition stabilized, she became an invaluable assistant in the planning of their exit from the United States.

        It was Clarice who seized on the idea of disguising themselves as an elderly couple. They went shopping for cosmetics and wigs and spent hours experimenting with them. Clarice finally let him cut her hair short and color it gray. Lecter was delighted with her ability to transform herself, mainly via such simple devices as permanent-marker   “sarcomas” and distracting facial tics that discouraged polite people from staring at her. During their last week in Maryland, they immersed themselves fully in these new identities, in an effort to become fully conditioned to responding as “Walter and Lucy Grassmore.” They only ran into difficulty in bed, since neither could quite imagine how old people made love. The fact of Clarice’s pregnancy did nothing to dampen their       desire for each other. Quite the contrary, it served as a very real symbol of their sexual relationship, and shot the passion up to new heights.

        Lecter deliberately refused to share all of his plans with Clarice; in the unlikely event that they should be discovered, he wanted to be able to slip away without having her know where he was. In such a case, she’d be unable to disclose the information if she were interrogated, or even drugged. But he had no intention of letting such a disaster take place.

        As he sat on the hotel bed, patiently stroking the razor along the base of her kneecap, he said, “Clarice, I’d like you to memorize a phrase:  ‘Let’s not forget to bring flags home for Jimmy.’”

        She repeated the code, then asked “Who’s going to say it?”

        “I am, but that’s all I’m going to tell you.” He did tell her how much time must elapse from the moment the words were used, and that she needed to be alert and ready to do several things inside of that time frame. He declined to tell her even when she would hear the sentence—he didn’t want anxiety or anticipation communicated to anyone else in the group, especially the ever-attentive Rosita. But since they’d already made stops in Mexico, Costa Rica, the Panama Canal, Colombia and Quito, and were now in Peru, she speculated that their escape would take place in Buenos Aires, or perhaps Montevideo. Rio de Janeiro was probably out; Hannibal had had his hand surgery there; his identity was now known. But maybe… She dismissed the thoughts and decided to simply enjoy the rest of the tour.

        Her right leg was now shaved smooth, and Lecter bent over her, using his teeth to pluck some stray pubic hairs from her inner thighs. This drove her wild, and he knew it. He calmly arranged her left leg over his knee and began shaving, starting at the ankle. Soon, she heard him singing “Bailamos” again—he knew every word by heart—and looked up to see him staring brazenly at her, as if daring her to do something about it.

        She was too aroused even to laugh, and couldn’t stop herself from running her hands fitfully over her breasts, to the nipples, now darker and even more sensitive than usual. Her back arched, and she was dimly aware that the razor had stopped its motion. But she didn’t feel the tiny nick, or sense the blood running in a thin stream over the curve of       her calf. She felt only his hot, full lips and incredible tongue, probing, licking, sucking at her leg, and she began to moan. Her right leg pressed into his lap, and she felt him respond.

        “Wait for it, Clarice,” he urged in a whisper, and maddeningly continued grooming her with the wet razor. She knew he wouldn’t stop until he’d thoroughly shaved both her legs—his self-control was like granite.

        She contented herself with watching his face as he worked, and listening to him sing. When he finished her left leg, he surprised her by cleaning the razor carefully and then applying it to the underside of her pubis.  He had never before indicated a desire to shave her there. He shifted his body, and she settled her legs on his shoulders to give him better access. With her feet, she stroked his gray hair. It was then that she saw the place on her shin where the razor had cut her. The bleeding had ceased, but a tiny line of red trailed from the spot.

        He followed her gaze, and snaked his long tongue out again to lick the blood. He closed his eyes and savored the taste, paused the razor and rested its flat side against her clitoris. She watched him, fascinated, aware of the cold metal and her hot flesh, pulsing to reach it.

        When he opened his eyes, the maroon lightened by blue contact lenses, they stared at each other for some time. Then he slowly lifted the razor and finished shaving her. He never took his eyes from hers.  He teased her then, placing the flat edge of the razor back where it had been, now applying pressure. Her fingers began at her nipples again and       she knew she wouldn’t be able to hold back any more. Her eyes closed on their own.

        She felt him rise from the bed, heard the heavy thump as the robe dropped to the bedcovers. He finally took the razor away and placed it on the nightstand, and all at once, the cold metal was replaced by the wet heat of his lips and tongue.

        “Te quiero, mi amor,” he whispered against her bare, tingling flesh.  She heard him, and the orgasm brought her nearly to fainting.

 

        Eleven days later, the Lounge Rats sat at the bar of their hotel in Buenos Aires, waiting uncertainly—Rosita wasn’t there yet.  Trish and Bill already had drinks in front of them. “Sit down, willya? She’s probably on the phone with somebody, doing disaster prevention. Remember that wonderful fiasco in Chile?”

        A ticketing error had resulted in their group being split between two flights from Lima to Santiago, and Rosita had worried herself half to death about the four couples who had to make the trip on their own.  Everything had turned out all right in the end, but she had vowed that there would be no repeats of the incident. Nowadays she spent more time than usual on the phone, confirming and re-confirming every plane, train and hotel booking. Still, she usually managed to be at the bar in time for the nightly convention.

        The wait ended as Rosita came around the corner and hurried up to the bar. She perched herself on a stool and swiveled so that she could see each person present.

        “Well,” she said, “I have some news. Lucy and Walter Grassmore have left and returned to the United States.”

        There were some gasps, including a particularly loud one from Sharon.  Rosita held up a sheet of paper. In the uncertain light of the lounge, they saw handwriting that appeared quavery.

 

        “‘Dear Rosita,’” she read, “‘Please do not worry about us. When we returned here this afternoon, we had a message from our son. His wife had been quite ill. We were hoping she would rally, but late yesterday she—‘ ” Rosita squinted at the writing. “…Oh, I see what she did here.  She crossed out ‘died’ and wrote ‘passed away.’ Okay—‘passed away, and we are obliged to return to Colorado as soon as possible. We are very lucky to have found a flight, so we will be somewhere over Mexico by the time you read this. We have enjoyed every moment of this wonderful tour, and hope that if we travel through Latin America again, you’ll be our guide. Thank you so much. Lucy and Walter Grassmore.’”

        A crisp sheaf of currency had accompanied the note. Rosita kept that to herself, but she passed the letter around to her faithful companions.  Most of them glanced at the letter and handed it on, but Sharon settled herself on a bar stool, where she donned her reading glasses and scrutinized it like Sherlock Holmes.

        “This looks like a woman’s handwriting,” she said. “I analyze handwriting as a hobby. Okay, let’s see. This person is…” She looked up, her eyes flashing. “This person is disguising their handwriting!!”

        “Sharon, for God’s sake!” Paula exclaimed.

        “Well, call the FBI,” laughed Frank.

        “Really,” insisted Sharon, ignoring the ridicule. “Look at this. After the sentence about the daughter-in-law passing away, she starts making these deep lower loops. Like here, the ‘g’ in ‘flight’ goes way down. Up here, in ‘message,’ it’s a small loop. All her lower loops are big down here but small up there—long lower loops means a person has a strong sex drive. She was hiding that at the beginning of the letter, but when she writes about leaving, she’s all excited and forgetting to disguise the handwriting!”

        “My mama always told me to watch out for women with big loops!” said Frank, and Bill choked on his beer. He kept laughing even when Trish elbowed him in the ribs.

        Elizabeth, who was raised to be polite, ignored her husband and patted Sharon’s arm. “Darlin, we know you mean well, but…well, so what if they are in disguise? Aren’t you glad they’re gone?”

        Diane said “I’ll bet it wasn’t their son’s wife at all. It’s one of them. They had to run back to Colorado to check into the hospital!”

        “Time out,” said Joe, loudly enough to halt the comments. “They’re gone.  We wish them well. Or not,” he amended, nodding at Sharon. “I hope you’ll all excuse Diane and myself. We have some serious work to do.” He grasped his wife’s hand and led her briskly to the dance floor. The jukebox was playing “Bailamos”—the seven-minute dance version.

        “Somebody get me a razor,” droned Trish. “If I hear that song one more time, I’m gonna cut my throat.”

 

        Another hotel room, this one miles away and several notches in quality above the tour group’s accommodations.

        The couple that occupied this room bore no resemblance to Walter and Lucy Grassmore—except in their general avoidance of most other people and their obvious dedication to each other. They had spent the afternoon and evening closeted here, sitting on the floor amidst a scattering of papers and maps, sorting through realtors’ brochures, weaving together the threads that would form the fabric of their new, permanent

identities.  They had taken the first step by registering at the hotel as Sebastién and Esmeralda de Plata y Fierro. Clarice had come up with the surname, and it enchanted Lecter: “de plata y fierro”—Silver and Iron. He remembered well his letter to her less than a year ago—back when a gulf of distance, time and circumstance had separated them. She cherished his recognition of her as “a warrior.” For her, their two-person universe did seem to contain “the most stable elements.”

        Lecter’s new first name came from his paternal grandfather, of whom he had fond early memories. His father had been Augustus, and already they intended their first child to be his namesake, Augustín or Augustina.  She had come close to asking him why he didn’t want the name “Mischa” for a daughter, but held back, convinced he would share it with her one day, if he chose. Clarice had wanted to keep her own first name, modified to “Clarisa,” but he had dissuaded her, suggesting another name that had private meaning for them only. For she always wore his emeralds. To the earrings, he had added a pendant and a tennis bracelet studded with the green stones. The pieces adapted well to whatever

clothing she had on from day to day.  When they had tired of the paperwork, they ordered a light meal from Room Service, then focused on satisfying their greatest hunger…

 

        Fresh from a steaming, patchouli-scented bath, they sat on the bed face to face, she on his lap, their legs intertwined, her hands making warm places on his back, shoulders, midriff, stomach and thighs. He held her face in his hands and kissed her slowly, again, and again. She sensed a sadness in him tonight; the lovemaking was intensely pleasurable, as always, but unusually tentative and reserved.  His eyes held hers and she yearned to see the limits of their depth. “I can’t get enough of you, Clarice,” he whispered huskily.

        “You don’t ever have to,” she responded, and returned his kisses. His fingers found her nipples and squeezed. The sensation shot straight down her body, and the vaginal muscles contracted with great strength around him. Her body writhed; she seized the back of his head and hungrily forced open his mouth with her own. They took turns sucking each other’s tongues, as she rhythmically rose up on her knees and then sat back down         hard, feeling the increase in his skin temperature and pulse rate.

        Slowly, he shifted, staying inside her, until she was beneath him. Clarice felt him swell and grow hotter inside her and was unable to hold back a moan. She closed her eyes, knowing that whenever she opened them, he would be there, studying her face, memorizing every nuance of her expression. Upon ditching the tour group, he had purchased several large sketch books and begun committing to paper his marvelously detailed recollections of their times together.

        For the first time she had seen herself in the first days, helpless, unconscious, impeccably arranged in his Maryland bed, safe under the covers, while he expertly restored her to health. She saw herself seated comfortably in a chair, her expression rapt, hands in the air punctuating forgotten vignettes from her childhood. There was one       amusing sketch of her trousered rear end, protruding from her Mustang, as she went about removing the hidden beacon that Mason Verger’s men had used to track her. The collection was vast, and rapidly growing, but her hands-down favorite, the one she kept returning to, was from the point of view of a harpsichordist in formal attire—only his hands on the keys showing—as she approached, serene and expectant, in her flowing silk         dinner gown.

        As she lay beneath him, eyes closed, she recalled the details of that moment—the abrupt silence, breath catching in his throat, and her hunger at the sight of him rising and approaching her. But it was his voice that contained the essence of him, and to which she responded best.  There had been countless times during the past several months, when the       mere sound of his voice close to her ear could induce a fleeting orgasm.

        In her mind, she heard him again: “If I saw you every day, forever, I’d remember this time.”

        Lecter had begun a steady, slow rhythm, keeping it light, holding it back, and she could feel the desire building. She always climaxed before he did, but before he surrendered, he could manage to summon more from her, often just by looking directly into her eyes or speaking to her softly. And when she could induce him to really let fly, the result often brought them both to screams.

        “Hannibal,” she whispered to him raggedly, “would you bang me hard?”  She opened her eyes to him then, and he was regarding her with an exotic sort of fevered amusement. This dialogue of theirs was a familiar ritual.

        He brought his lips to her ear and she placed her hands on his heaving shoulders.

        “You want me to bang you hard?” he asked, and she immediately felt her body respond.

        “Yes, please,” she said in a small, breathless voice. The thrusts immediately became faster and more concentrated. She squealed and raised her legs higher, feeling his muscular outer thighs and taut gluteals.  He continued for some time, and though she struggled to keep her eyes open and hold his gaze, she finally lost control and felt her head sinking back to where his strong hand awaited to cradle it. His other hand cupped her breast, the thumb slowly tracing a narrowing circle around her nipple. Finally, he squeezed, and then she felt him sucking, sucking at her neck, the warm breath near her ear. A detached part of her mind noted that she’d better remember to wear a scarf the next day if they went out.

 

        She was nearly at the brink, and heard a voice cry out, “I love you!” It was her voice, and she could no more control it than she could her tongue, lapping at his temples and cheekbones, or her hands, which reached down to stroke his scrotum and inner thighs.

        “I love you, Clarice,” came the response, his voice, and he crushed her tightly against his chest, making her feel totally safe, far above all harm or judgment or interference, to savor the sweet, singing radiance their bodies produced in concert.

        They quickly fell asleep, under the covers, cradled like spoons. She woke an hour or so later when she felt his body jerk. She moved slightly away from him and lay very still, listening to his accelerated respiration.

        After a moment, he left the bed and spent some time in the bathroom. She         dozed slightly in the quiet, but reawakened as the bathroom light came on, and he returned, seating himself gently on the bedside.  “A dream?” she whispered.

        “A thought,” he replied. “A voice. Clarice,” he said, and she sat up as

he reached toward her. “I feel, intuitively, that you’re fully committed to a life with me, but I wish to hear you say it to me now.”

        She almost reached out to hold him, but thought better of it, opting instead to look him straight in the eyes. “Hannibal. Sebastién. I want to be with you, for all the rest of the years we have.” She hesitated, then followed through. “And I’d very much like for us to be married.”

        He closed his eyes and let out a shaky breath. She had never seen him quite like this, fighting some sort of inner war.

        “Thank you, Clarice,” he said finally. “That is what I was preparing to ask you.” He walked away from the bed again and returned with the small leather case where he kept miscellaneous items. He placed it on the bed next to him.

        “I have several things to say to you tonight,” he said. “Do you remember my words to you one evening, as we stood in the candlelight in front of a large mirror?”

        She remembered how he had persuaded her to look at her reflection, which he called a “delicious vision.” “Yes,” she smiled. “You made me feel so very beautiful that night.”

        “There was more, Clarice.”

        She worked to recall it. “You said I brought…riches to the dinner table.”

        “Yes. And there was one other thing.”

        It eluded her, though she sensed how important it was to him.

        “Entitlements, Clarice,” he answered for her. “I wanted you to know what your entitlements are. Now, you have read my dossier, I’m sure. You know a great deal about my background.”

        “Yes,” she said, forcing her mind back more than seven years to the thick volume Jack Crawford had handed her before sending her to her destiny at the asylum. As if she were reading backward, she refreshed her recollections regarding Hannibal Lecter: his collaboration with Francis Dolarhyde, the Red Dragon; his stony uncooperativeness with his keepers; his arrogant responses to questions during his emotional trial; the damage he had inflicted upon Will Graham, who had captured him the first time; his professional honors and social conquests throughout the time of his illustrious psychiatric practice; his many dissertations during graduate school…and then the picture clouded. There was scant information about Lecter’s childhood and adolescence. She knew about Mischa, of course, and the deaths of his parents in Lithuania. Lecter had revealed those painful incidents to her early on.

“What is there…that you haven’t told me?” she asked.

“I’ve mentioned my parents only in passing,” he said. “Did you know that my father was a count? His title went back to the tenth century.”

        She hadn’t known, and felt a strange sort of thrill at the thought. There was also the heaviness of sorrow, as she rapidly filled in the blanks. He had lost so much more than “just” his parents and sister. The devastation of war had ripped away his roots, his heritage, and a major part of his future.

        He seemed to read her exact thoughts. “Clarice,” he said, gripping her hands, “just before I woke, a voice said ‘Are you nobody?’ I have been nobody from the age of six, and have done nothing to change that. I’ve resolved to take back my life. I’ve spent over fifty years reacting to an incident that was beyond my control, and—” He tightened his grip painfully, then relaxed. “I finally realize that my reactions have been wrong. I’ve been so…angry…at God, you see. He chose to take away what I most needed in life. I’ve been fighting Him ever since, trying to cause Him some of the pain He gave me.”

        Hannibal’s voice became tight with the strain of his confession. “I was so blinded by pain and fear, I completely ignored any of the blessings I received—extended family that sheltered and raised me as best they could, even as they were trying to put the pieces back together after the war. The advantages of travel and education. Even the natural gifts, such as my own intelligence and talents. I never bothered to think of how much worse things could have been had I not possessed them. I chose to be nobody.

        “Whenever Mischa came to me in a dream, or in a vision…a flashback…a waking nightmare, the anger would return, and the only thing that seemed to relieve it was—” He shook his head, as if trying to clear it, and gave a bitter laugh. His voice dropped to a whisper and he seemed to be conversing with himself. “My comforts. Blood for blood, and material luxuries for reassurance against memories of deprivation. A petty way to

        remind myself of my own entitlements.” He looked past her. “What would my father have thought of the way I’ve lived my life? How thoughtless I’ve been. How foolish.”

        He squeezed her hands and looked into her face. “I have three gifts now. Do you know what they are?”

        “Well,” she ventured, “Me? And the baby…”

        “Yes. You know everything about me, and yet you choose to stay. Why, Clarice?”

        In her imagination, others had asked her that question. Ardelia. Jack Crawford. Having it addressed to her by Hannibal himself was oddly gratifying.

        “I don’t know if love can be fully explained, Hannibal. Not only are you the most honest person I’ve ever known, you’re perhaps the only one who can make me feel safe. But lately I’ve come to understand that I can be strong for you, too.” She thought about it. “There’s something we have with each other that neither of us has alone. And our child represents that. Do you agree?”

        “Yes. Having a child is the second gift, and also links to the third. A future.  A way of rectifying the shambles I’ve made of my life. But,” he leaned closer, and she finally realized he was trembling.

        “Now there’s so much more to consider.  The strength you spoke of—we’re all       going to need it. Because our child will bear the burden of my wrongdoing. I hope you

realize that.  You can leave, Clarice,” he said. “The easiest thing in the world for you now would be to return to the United States. I can give you instructions for finding money that I’ve hidden away in several places. You can put your life back together and do a fine job of raising the baby, if you wish. You could also give it up for adoption and—”

        She shook her head, smiling. “Only if everything you just said was a lie.  In the years to come—well, perhaps many years down the line, you may not be…here, but what you are, the blessings you talked about, our child will have them, and will be able to use them. You can teach him so many things, Hannibal. No matter what…evil you’ve done, this child could quite possibly neutralize it. Can you imagine if he or she achieves something incredible down the line—the Nobel Prize, or even just a happy, shared life with someone he loves, without the anguish you’ve been through? I think that would be enough.”

        Lecter said nothing, but regarded her thoughtfully. After a moment, her face clouded, and she settled back on the pillow. “Let me ask you something. Do you think you can go the distance in terms of a family? Have you given it sufficient thought? Because I think I can deal with anything you might dish out.  I’ve seen you and understand what you’re capable of in terms of everyone else on the planet. But it will be a different story entirely if you betray any children we have. As much as I love you, Hannibal, I won’t let you make a shambles, as you put it, of an innocent life that’s       connected to me. Do you understand that?”

        “I do,” he said softly.

        She continued. “And what if this child is born with a defect? Down’s Syndrome or spina bifida? Hannibal? Are you prepared for that possibility?”

        On his face, she saw a look of sad admiration.

        “Clarice,” he said quietly, “One of the great revelations I’ve had suddenly is the reality that I can no longer be an island unto myself.  I won’t presume to be wholly in control of this situation.  There’s too much at stake.  There is a reason why I made Buenos Aires our jumping-off point.  You see, here in Argentina…I have family. And tomorrow, you’ll meet them.”

        Clarice was intrigued to hear that Hannibal Lecter had family in Buenos Aires. She had long thought of him as an orphan, like herself. She started to ask him how many relatives there were and how close, when he reached into his leather traveling case and brought out a small velvet box.

        “This is long overdue,” he said, and gently took her left hand. “Only a generation ago, I would have disgraced my parentage and yours by taking you to my bed without this.” He kissed her hand and flipped open the box. “I hope you will forgive me.”

        A gold ring with a one-carat marquise diamond cast its reflected light from the box. Clarice began to tremble as the ring was lifted out and brought to encircle her finger. It was a perfect fit.

 

        She didn’t shiver because of the diamond’s beauty, or its obvious value. It was the moment—the pledge she had made to him and all it represented, up to and including the life of their unborn baby. The responsibility she had taken on was immense beyond words. She looked away from her hand, into his eyes, and saw the same understanding there.

        She took his face in her hands and slowly kissed each cheek, then his lips. “Thank you so much, Hannibal,” she said. She inched her body toward his, until once again, they sat with legs entwined, but their intercourse this time was not yet of a sexual nature.

        “You bring me peace,” he said in a whisper, stroking her hair. “I’m going to make sure that your trust in me is never misplaced. Tomorrow, I’ll take you to meet someone that…I’ve been avoiding for decades.”

        She didn’t bother to ask him any more questions that night. It was very late. Outside their windows, the usual clatter of street traffic had faded, to be replaced with the chirring of crickets and the soft rustle of wind-blown trees.

        They sat together in bed for a long time, just comforting and warming each other in the quiet. It was a time they both needed, to pause and reflect on the events that had brought them together… the trust they had built with each other, the effort of slipping from the United States, and then from the tour group, in disguise. And now, a new set of challenges awaited. Clarice sensed that the encounter Hannibal had planned for the next day would represent a turning point—an entry into a place perhaps more unknown and frightening for him than for her.

 

        “So, who is it you’re taking me to meet?” she asked him the next morning, as she sat, fully dressed, in a wing chair and watched him pack documents into his flat traveling case. They never rushed, preparing to leave their hotel room. Carelessness with papers and other personal effects could lead to irrevocable consequences.

        He glanced at her. “He’s an uncle, who fled Lithuania the year I was born. My father’s oldest brother. I saw him when I was seventeen, and again at twenty-eight. He’s a cleric, a monk, actually. He had tremendous influence in Europe, even then, and would have been one of the first to be eliminated by Hitler—he was too powerful. So before the      Nazis began invading the Baltic region, he was spirited out of the country and relocated here.”

        “What does he do?” asked Clarice.

        Lecter sighed. “The closest I can come to describing him is to make a comparison to the title character in ‘The Godfather.’ He is, indeed, my godfather. He is also godfather and benefactor to a great many cousins and non-relatives throughout Europe and the Americas.

        “I think of him as the keeper of the flame. Our family is long out of power in Lithuania, but to him, that never mattered. He sees our family name and heritage as a living entity that transcends the life of each member. I’ve mentioned my ‘memory palace’ to you, of course. He is the one who introduced me to the technique, and there is no telling who taught it to him. He left Lithuania empty-handed, but upon arrival here, he began transcribing our family’s history—from memory, and in longhand. I can only imagine the size of what he’s produced. That’s really all he does, other than write letters.” He laughed shortly. “It is said that Uncle Treviaun can stop water flowing and hearts beating with his written words. He must be close to 100 years old.”

        “What kind of relationship have you had with him?” asked Clarice.

        Lecter finished tidying the room and retrieved a bottle of mineral water from the courtesy bar. He poured each of them a glass and sat in the other chair.

        “A strange one. It is as if he saw ahead into my future, because every letter I received from him talked about self-control, compassion and mercy. He was stern in his words to me. He admonished me to abstain from drugs—but he was unfortunately a month too late. And that may only have been due to slow mail service out of South America. It was a bit of a jolt to receive such a warning, just weeks after my first—and      last—experience with hallucinogenics.”

        “You dropped acid?”

        “Psilocybin and mescaline, too. This was shortly before they passed into wide public use and became illegal. Plenty of medical schools were using them for research purposes. I had very easy access, but rather poor judgment.”

        “What made you do something so reckless and self-destructive?”

        He smiled. “Clarice, were you never young?”

        “Maybe not. Jack Daniels is about as adventurous as I’ve ever gotten.”                    

        “Truthfully, I was bored. I received my first undergraduate degree three semesters ahead of my classmates and was running on a kind of autopilot. The work was very easy for me. I had some time off during the summer—no classes available that I hadn’t already taken. Usually I toured Europe and caught up with scattered relatives, but even travel   seemed old hat. I heard from some pharmacy students about these little-known substances and decided to try them out. I thought it might give me some inside material for my Master’s thesis.”

        “And let me guess. You didn’t tell anyone what you were doing, and you went through it alone.”