“I-I’m s-sorry…” Lloyd stuttered.
“No, you’re not,” the dark lady replied. “Come. Here.”
He rose from the trunk as if from the dead, stiff, and yet intensely alert.
“Take off your clothes,” she commanded, and with fumbling sweaty fingers he obeyed.
Perhaps the chanteuse first intended merely to teach him a lesson about spying. But as soon as she saw the boy, naked and aroused beside her bed, something happened in a secret place inside her, and she knew that for herself as much for him this was an opportunity that would never come again.
“You must never speak a word of this to anyone,” she said. “Anyone.”
Lloyd was not sure if he would ever be able to speak again at all.
CHAPTER 5. The Ambassadors from Mars
HEPHAESTUS AND RAPTURE WERE QUICK TO NOTE THE CHANGE IN the boy but were unable to guess the true nature of the cause. For the first time since leaving Zanesville, Lloyd seemed to have regained his inner light and his parents wondered if he might have reestablished his connection with Lodema. Not surprisingly, Lloyd declined to provide details, choosing both for his own sake and for the honor of Miss Viola to keep the matter secret.
St. Ives, in his shrewd read of personality and mood, knew that something was different about the boy, but for reasons of his own did not inquire further. Instead, he slipped back inside his armor of pseudoaristocratic condescension, yielding only upon his farewell.
“Remember our lessons, Monkey,” he said with a world-weary smile.
The boy had been quick to learn the art of card counting and odds estimation, as well as many of the psychological subtleties of gambling.
“I will,” promised Lloyd, and for a moment he longed to disappear with his damaged friend-off into the teeming world in search of money and risk, dark fragrant women, and the grotesque riddles of Junius Rutherford.