then they became Dunja’s breasts, and Naomi became an amalgam of Naomi and Dunja and someone else—was it Sheila, was she making her comeback bid from the distant past?—and he became Arosteguy, terrifying himself, his conception of the man filtered through Naomi and the internet and those photos he had found with the safe filter off, photos you didn’t want to see because they adhered to the inside of your skull and lacerated your brain. And that website called poundofflesh.com devoted to the eating of breasts. Nathan/Arosteguy ate her breasts right off her chest, ripped them off with his teeth, and then he came again so voluptuously that it terrified him.
Naomi pushed him off. “What the fuck was that? You actually bit me!” She pulled at her left breast, looking for bite marks on its underside. “I can’t fucking believe it.”
“It wasn’t me. It was Arosteguy.” Naomi’s dismissive shrug. “Sex theme. I know you think they don’t exist.”
“They don’t for me. I don’t have sex fantasies.”
“A sex theme isn’t exactly a fantasy …”
Soon Nathan had her D300s in his hands and was shooting a series of posed pictures. She was still naked, but he had wrapped the sheets around her lower legs so that only her thighs were visible. “Okay, now, can you guess?” said Nathan, hiding behind the camera. “I’m working on a pitch and you’re one of my subjects. What’s my article about?”
“Hmm. You’ve covered my legs with a sheet.”
“Not just covered.”
“You’ve … hidden them.”
“Not just hidden.” Nathan squeezed off some clattery shots as punctuation.
Naomi’s eyes went wide. “You’ve amputated them.”
“Ah,” said Nathan.
Naomi squirmed a bit, then readjusted the sheet. “It’s that one where people want to amputate parts of their bodies because they just don’t feel that they’re the shape they’re supposed to be?”
“They roam the earth looking for a doctor who will cut off a perfectly good arm or leg. An arm and a leg.”
“Or else they do it themselves with a chainsaw or a shotgun. Yeah. What’s it called?”
“Apotemnophilia.”
“Yeah. Body dysmorphic disorder, on the street.”
“Psychotherapeutic amputation.”
“Amputee identity disorder, with a twist of bioethics. It sounds juicy.”
“Speaking of ethics,” said Nathan, getting very close to her with the camera, “I believe I might be experiencing a touch of acrotomophilia. What should I do about it?”
“Hmm,” said Naomi uneasily, “I got the philia part.”
“A sexual attraction to amputees.” Nathan started to nuzzle her thighs.
Naomi whipped off the sheet and sat up. “I think you just managed to creep me out.” She held out her hand. “Gimme my camera back.”
“Aw.”
“I don’t do medical. You do medical, remember? I do crime. It’s cleaner.”
“Sometimes hard to separate them. But I thought you were giving me your camera. You were going iPhone solo, remember? I could use a backup.”
Naomi snapped her extended hand at him and Nathan gave her the camera. She immediately started to delete the photos.
“I think you’ve just rejected my pitch, and that is a crime,” said Nathan.
Naomi swung off the bed and started fretting the Nikon back into its roller. She spoke into the wall with her back to him. “Hey, aren’t you supposed to be going to Geneva for that … what was it? Worldwide Genital Mutilation Conference? Honestly, I think that’s more interesting than the amputation thing. There were so many articles about it for a while, then it tanked into hotness oblivion. It’s interesting about diseases, how they peak and tank. The politics of genital mutilation, now, that’s endlessly hot.”
“Thanks for the encouragement. I was thinking that my apotemnophilia piece would segue into that exact meditation. But never mind. The Geneva mutilation piece is off. No, I stay here in this hotel and finish the Hungarian thing, just in case there’s something in Europe I missed and have to pick up. I email it to my agent, shamelessly begging him to get me The New Yorker—”
“That’s still Lance, isn’t it?”
“It is the same old Lance. Then maybe I just go home to NYC. To where you aren’t.”
“I hate that part.”
“The New Yorker part?”
“The part where we say goodbye,” said Naomi, now sitting on the floor and playing with her new iPhone, still not looking at him.
Nathan stood up and leaned against the windowsill. “And you leave me alone in yet another hotel room,” he said.
Naomi looked up and flinched, almost startled to see him, as though she had just discovered an exotic bird at the window. Using the High Dynamic Range option, she took his flashless backlit picture with the phone. “I leave you desolate and alone. And I go back to Paris.”
NATHAN WAS FINISHING UP his solitary room-service meal. On a website called mediascandals.com was a page devoted to Dr. Zoltán Molnár. His iPhone quavered and he answered it. “Hi, it’s Nathan.”
A very little female voice: “Nathan?”
“Yes?”
“It’s me. It’s Dunja.”
“Dunja? Where are you?”
“I’m at home. You know. Somewhere in Slovenia.”
“Yeah.” An awkward pause. Her voice was too little for comfort. “How are you?”
Dunja inhaled raggedly, suggesting to Nathan that she had been crying just before she called him. “Nathan, I think I gave you a disease. I’m so sorry.”
“A disease? You mean, literally?”
“Roiphe’s, Nathan. Roiphe’s disease. Dr. Molnár just phoned to tell me. It showed up by accident in some tests …” Her little voice hung there, suspended, weightless.
Almost without thought, or rather exactly like thought involving memory and information, Nathan was googling Roiphe’s disease and within seconds was downloading data into the conversation. Fingers flying and swiping.
“Roiphe’s?” said Nathan, net-borrowed argument tinting his tone. “Nobody’s had Roiphe’s since 1968.”
Dunja’s tone was the flattened tone of unassailable logic. “I’ve been immune-suppressed for a long time, and I have it. And so do you, now, I think. Probably.”
“The Roiphe’s survived all that radiation?”
“Radiation is not a treatment for Roiphe’s.”
“No,” said Nathan, “I see that.”
“You … you see that? On your computer? On the internet?”
A photo of Dr. Barry Roiphe on the cover of Time magazine, May 1968. He looked lanky and shy, a bespectacled Jimmy Stewart. The caption, in screaming yellow, read, “Dr. Barry Roiphe: Sex and Disease.” Dunja began to sob huge, liquid, globular sobs. For a moment, Nathan thought the sobs were coming from Dr. Roiphe himself, his apologetic, twisted grin now morphing into a rictus of grief and shame.
“I wonder whatever happened to him?” said Nathan.
“Who?” said Dunja, amid shudders.