One piece drew her more than the others. This didn’t mean it was better, only that it had something special about it that worked particularly well for her. The central element of it had begun life as a spool, shaped like a spool of thread in a sewing cabinet but much larger—precisely thirty-two inches high, with the flanges twenty-one inches in diameter. The core, itself some ten inches thick, was of pine, the flanges of half-inch fir plywood.

Once it had held wire or cable of some sort, wrapped around its core like sewing thread around an inch-long spool. Now it held—

what? The sins of the world, that would be her guess.

He’d mounted it on what must have been the steel base of some sort of low stool, and had driven all manner of objects into the wooden spool. The effect was not unlike that of West African nail fetishes, where an upended log, sometimes but not always carved into a human form, was pierced hundreds upon hundreds of times with nails—or, in one example she’d seen at the Brooklyn Museum, with the blades of knives, all of them rusted.

Like most African tribal pieces, the nail fetishes were art only in the Western viewer’s perception; like the masks and shields and drums that filled museums and important collections, they were purely functional in the eyes of those who made them. She’d long since forgotten the purpose of the nail fetishes, if she’d ever been clear on it in the first place, and she couldn’t hope to guess what had prompted a wild-eyed little black man in Brooklyn to stab knives and forks into the wooden spool, to pound nails and screws and miscellaneous bits of hardware into it, to screw in a brass doorstop here, the wooden knobs from a chest of drawers there.

Why had he done it—and, most mysterious of all, how had he managed in the process to create not a mad jumble, not a discordant conglomeration of junk, but an artifact of surpassing beauty?

The Sins of the World—that’s what she would call it, and it would be on the cover of the exhibition catalog and on the postcards as well. She was positive someone would snatch it up, couldn’t imagine Gregory Schuyler letting it get away from him, but she didn’t know if she could bear to part with it. She might find she needed to hang on to it.

In the meantime, it had migrated from her storage bin to her living room, where it occupied a place of honor. There she was able to confirm that it wasn’t just her, that others responded to it in much the same way she did. You couldn’t just walk past it. It grabbed your lapels, demanding attention.

And it received rather more attention these days than it might have at an earlier time, not because it had changed, not even because the world had changed. It was simply seen by more peo-

ple now, because her apartment was receiving more visitors than it had in the past.

And that, of course, was the result of her second obsession.

H E R S E X L I F E , S H E was quite certain, was sane and manageable.

She had to keep reassuring herself of this, however, because it was without doubt a far cry from what society regarded as either sane or manageable. She was having sex when she wanted, with whomever she wanted, in whatever fashion she desired.

If she were a man, she sometimes thought, what she was doing would be seen as demonstrating no end of good, even wholesome male qualities. The only way a man could engage in sexual behavior that the world would deem excessive was if he forced himself on others, took his pleasure with children, or caught a fatal disease in the course of his adventures. (And even the latter was only punishment for his transgressions if he caught it from another man; if he got it from a woman, it was just the worst kind of bad luck.) On the other hand, it was easier to do it in the first place if you were a woman. If you were reasonably attractive, and if you presented yourself well, you really weren’t going to have a great deal of trouble finding some man who would like nothing better than to go home with you and fuck your brains out. He might not be terribly good at it, and he might never call you again, but if all you were looking for was to get laid, well, how hard was that?

Women knocked themselves out trying to attract men, and all they really had to be was available. A man did not care who made your shoes, or if they matched your bag, and if he even noticed such matters he was probably not in any event going to be the man you wanted to take home. A man did not pay attention to your earrings (unless you were wearing them someplace other than your ears) and had no idea what you paid for your dress. His concerns were more basic. Did you have tits? Did you have an ass?

Did you have a mouth? Did you have a pussy? Were any or all of these available to him? Fine. I love you. Let’s go to bed.

The night with Fran Buckram, a delicious experience in its own right, had given her a sense of her own power. Here was this man, this unquestionably manly man, this leader of men, and he had let her do whatever she wanted with him. Franny she’d called him, and made a girl of him and fucked him like a girl. And made him like it. And afterward, with the rules suspended and her dominance put aside, she’d gone on calling him Franny, and he hadn’t asked her to stop.

“I’ll see you next Friday,” she had told him at the door. “I don’t think we need to meet anywhere, do you? Come here at eight.

And, Franny? Don’t bring flowers.”

T U E S D A Y A F T E R N O O N S H E H A D a call at the gallery. “Susan? This is Jay McGann, we met at Stelli’s the other night.”

“I remember.”

“I’ve been working all day and I need a break. I thought I might come over and look at some art.”

“That would be nice,” she said. “Why don’t you bring your friend?”

“My friend?”

“Your editor. Isn’t he your friend as well?”

“Oh, Lowell? Yes, friend and editor, but the poor guy’s got to work for a living. I don’t think he can get away from his desk at this hour.”

“Come this evening,” she said.

“Are you open nights?”

“I could arrange to be,” she said, “but actually I have some of the best work at my apartment. You’d be getting a look at something the public doesn’t get to see.”

“I’d like that,” he said. “And I could get away tonight.”

“Call Lowell. See if he can make it.”

He couldn’t figure it out, and she was in no rush to help him.

After a pause he said, “Uh, actually I’d hoped we could get acquainted.”

“Yes, I feel the same.”

“So it would really be more convenient, you know, if it was just the two of us.”

“It was so nice meeting the two of you the other night,” she said. “The way you interacted was very pleasing.”

“Yes, but—”

“So I think it would be really nice to get intimately acquainted with both of you.”

“Oh. Uh, whew. Uh, would you want one of us to bring a girlfriend?”

“Whatever for?”

“Uh . . .”

“Jay,” she said, “don’t you think I can make you both very happy all by myself?”

She went home and showered and put on the same dress she’d worn Friday night, knowing it looked good with nothing under it.

They showed up together at a quarter to seven, a whiff of Scotch on their breath from the drink each had needed to get that far. She knew they wanted her, knew they couldn’t believe it was really going to happen. And, of course, they had to be possessed by the usual performance anxiety, magnified by the need to perform in front of another male, and a friend in the bargain.

She began by showing them the art, and was pleased by the intelligence and perception evident in their reactions. They didn’t need to be aesthetes, she just wanted to fuck them, but it made things better when there was a mind operating the body. All the standard fantasies about brutish macho studs notwithstanding, bright and sensitive men were almost always better in bed.

Emory Allgood’s piece drew the most interest, and one of them wanted to know the price. She explained that it wasn’t for sale, but that the artist had a show opening in the fall. She’d make sure they got invitations to the opening.

Enough, she thought.

“It’s so nice to see you both,” she said, and brushed the back of her hand across Jay McGann’s crotch, then flung her arms around Lowell Cooke’s neck and gave him a lingering open-mouthed kiss. She thought Jay might grope her while she was kissing Lowell, but no, he was just standing there politely, waiting his turn. She turned from Lowell and kissed Jay, and felt Lowell’s hands on her ass.

In the bedroom, they gaped at her when she got out of the black dress, gaped again at the gold at her nipples and the hairless pubic mound. They stripped without embarrassment, and there was another round of kissing with hands reaching everywhere, and then they were all three in her bed.

Men always wanted a threesome with two women, it was the closest thing they had to a universal fantasy, but what was the sense of it? A man only had one cock, and could only put it in one place at a time. Oh, yes, there were possibilities in foreplay, and then he could eat one girl while he fucked the other, and in the process cheat each out of the benefit of his full attention. It could be interesting for a woman, being with a man and woman at once, but for a man how could the reality ever be a match for the fantasy?

With two men and a woman, on the other hand, the physiology was equal to the fantasy. She had a mouth, she had an ass, she had a cunt—there was more than enough of her to keep them occupied.

It was divine, and utterly different from her night with Buckram. (Sweet Franny!) She’d got things going, then was able to be essentially passive and let them use her as they wished, turning her this way and that, learning her body with their hands, their mouths. Lowell slipping into her, Jay offering himself to her mouth.

In the end, she did manage to fulfill a longstanding fantasy. The night before, alone with herself and her thoughts and her toys, she’d slipped the smallest dildo into her ass, a larger one in her pussy. And now it was happening again, but this time her toys were alive, and she didn’t have to manipulate them, she could give herself up utterly to the pleasure of being taken and used, being fucked fore and aft.

But she couldn’t get them to do anything to each other.

Men were so funny. Caught up in passion and need, still they were careful not to touch one another, careful that each made physical contact with her and only with her.

After they’d finished their sexual sandwich, as she lay on her back between them with their seed oozing out of both her holes, she took one of them in each hand and said, “You know what I would love? I would love to see one of you suck the other. I would absolutely love that.”

God, you’d think she’d suggested they dismember a child, or strangle their mothers with a rolled-up American flag. And it was so silly. Moments before, both of them buried in her flesh, they’d been able to feel each other’s cocks through the thin membrane that separated her two passages. That had contributed to her excitement, and, she felt sure, to theirs as well, could they only acknowledge it.

“It would make me so excited,” she said. “I get wet just thinking about it. If you just did that, you could get me to do anything you wanted, anything you could think of.”