“Adela,” I asked, as we crossed the street together. “Tell me about Joel--the man you killed last month.”
“Joel?” She shot me a puzzled look, which I returned with a deadpan. “Okay, okay--sorry,” she said. “Joel,” she thought back. I wondered if she was playacting, or really struggling to remember him. “No--I remember.”
“Why did you kill him?”
“Let’s find somewhere to talk,” she said. 
I suggested we buy two tickets to a crap film in its sixth week, and sit in the back of the theater alone. Adela liked the idea, so we got the seats and found our deserted theater. In the twentieth row, off in the corner against the wall, she started talking.

“There’s something you don’t know about men like Joel. Until last August, my mother ran what you might call a custom fantasy—well (let's call a spade a spade). they were services—for men with certain needs. She had several woman clients, but it’s true that the majority of the customers were men.”
“What do you mean--certain needs?”
The question was sincere, but Adela looked impatient. “Miniaturized slaves, mostly. What I mean is that all the clients had one thing in common: they wanted to shrink, or be shrunk down—some to the size of a doll, some to the size of a pinky-nail, and some even to the size of a pinhead, a mote of dust. Some even smaller than that." She shook her head, maybe to herself, or maybe to me. "Do you realize how insane men can be, in love? The insanity? The extravagance? All the games and charades? Well, mom took them all in--and satisfied each of them, I think, no matter how insane or extravagant the requests."
I was in disbelief. “How long was this going on? And why?”
“I'll answer the second question at another time. But it was going on for, oh, maybe two years. Joel had waited his whole life to be eaten by Holly, but by mid-September she found herself involved in other work, and asked me to fulfill the request instead. When Joel realized this, he was visibly upset, and started arguing. Holly was hearing none of it. I suppose that’s why he tried to run away. The thought of me devouring him, like a little oyster, revolted him.” She shivered, whether in her own pleasure or in imitation of Joel, pale with fear, I couldn’t say. “But fantasies will never happen in just the way we imagine, or hope. Something always--always--goes wrong.” 

The film seemed to be halfway done. Laughter, and a poorly written joke, briefly interrupted an extended chase scene. Was this a comedy? What were we watching? I didn’t bother to check the listings. We just picked an empty theater.

“Richard was the same?”
Adela smiled. “Oh. Do you want to ask him? He’s in my left shoe.”
“No. God, no.” But my heart skipped a beat, and I shuddered involuntarily.
“Don't worry--it's the other shoe," she said. "But no, he wasn’t the same. Richard was always mine. But I can tell you that story another time.”
Silently, I prayed to myself, “Don’t tell me. Please, please don’t.”
Aloud, I said, "You misled me."
"About Richard? No, he really killed a cat. Thought it was dead, and stuck it in his fridge. Wife couldn't forgive him. So he left."
"No. I mean you didn't tell me."
"I didn't have to tell you. Ask Holly, ask Mom."
I decided I would. Though it wasn't fully clear to me where I had been misled, I felt strangely, obscurely betrayed. 

There was that strange mixture of qualities in Adela’s character which both fascinated and repulsed me. Unlike Holly, she observed not only the responsibility but the right to dominate me and her other slaves. Sometimes she was like the wild daughter of some august ruler, in my mind: though in general she was a competent and fair mistress, she would, from time to time, binge and indulge herself in various cruelties and excesses.

I don’t think these comparisons go overboard: in fact, it’s my opinion that Holly and Adela compare favorably to many of the Roman emperors, strange though that sounds. Adela had the potential to abuse her power, and I wanted to curb—what I considered to be—this wayward tendency in her, as soon as possible, slave though I was.

“Do you want to leave?” she asked me.
I stood up. “Yeah. Let’s go back to your car.”
“My car?” she looked hurt, but stood up beside me, and started walking out.
“I’m ready to go back now.”
“Already? It’s only been an hour—if that!”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’m not used to being out like this.”
“Well, fine. Is there anything I can do—you know, to change your mind?”
“No. Well, yeah, there is," I confessed. "I wish you hadn’t told me about Richard. I can’t get that off my mind, now.”
“Richard? Really?” She stared.
“Yes, Adela, really.”
“Well, I wouldn’t worry about him," she leaned in close to me. "He’s definitely not worrying about you, or anyone. Are you, Richard? Are you?” She tapped her toe against the aisle, and walked on. 
“It isn’t that,” I said, horrified.
“No? Then what is it?” She suddenly turned to me, and challenged me. “What the hell is it, Martin?”
I didn’t know, and said so.
A sly grin spread across Adela’s face, and she leaned in close, “You’re jealous, aren’t you?”
“What?” I tried to push past her. “No. Don't be crazy.”
“No.” She blocked me. “I’m positive this time. You’re jealous. That’s why it makes you uncomfortable.”
“It isn’t,” I said. “I saw what he was like, and I know how you treat him.”
“Hah!” She let me walk by. “You know as well as I do that if Richard isn’t a human being it’s by his own choice--not mine. Isn’t that right Richard?” This time she really stripped off her shoe and sock, and pulled Richard out. “You think I want to kill him? I don’t want to kill him. I’ll leave him here—I’ll leave him right in this theater—and someone will find him again.

She was slightly crazy, but I wasn’t about to ask her to drop the semi-comatose little man back into her sock. My best option was to call her bluff. “Leave him here, then. Give him his old size back, and leave him here.”

Adela looked back and forth between me and Richard, and then turned and strolled down the center aisle to the first row, where she pulled down the first chair on the right and laid the little man on the old, torn, crimson cushion. The next time I blinked, he was six feet tall, naked, and slumped back in the chair. Adela slipped on her sock, retied her sneaker, and darted up the aisle to the front doors.
“Is he okay?” I wondered.
“Oh yes. But we should leave now.”  

Whatever the cause, whether it was because of jealousy, or horror at Adela’s inhumane treatment of Richard, or astonishment that any man could have wished such a fate for himself—my heart was easier after Adela left him there. One man, at least, would live, even after gaining the rare knowledge that his greatest dream was no different from his worst nightmare. Did he have a family? I asked. Adela already said he had a wife. A job? Yes, of course. Who would believe him, if he told? No one. Has he changed? Yes. How deeply? Depths upon depths. His wife would probably not recognize him. Probably not, but she might.

We walked back to the car, and there we sat for half an hour, talking, and making ourselves comfortable. I returned the favor, as she asked, and afterward Adela turned on the car. She told me that she wanted to show me something.
“Something?”
“Something somewhere.”
“How far away?”
“Just up the road. It won’t be long, and then we can drive back.”

She started the car, and drove off.

A new question has occurred to me, a question I’ve avoided asking myself until this point in the narrative, a glaring omission. Did I enjoy being Holly’s slave? Did I enjoy serving Adela? The answer, I’m afraid, is yes.

Fear and awe mingled when I woke up that morning in mid-September inside my teacher’s boot, and it wasn’t long before those mingled feelings combined into something like love. It was the unbelievable power she demonstrated, from day one, which bound me to her service. Holly could control at will the proportions of her, my, and everyone’s body. This was a talent that she wanted to take—for obvious reasons—beyond the circus tent, and even beyond the laboratory. (With a world in chaos, and maybe on the brink of global war and mutually assured destruction, she decided there was some use for these strange gifts. Perhaps she could do something.)

But it wasn’t power, for its own sake, that drew me to them, and finally bound me to Holly. I thought that Holly—if not Adela, exactly—deserved to hold some command over the world’s affairs, by virtue of her power. If I didn’t believe this, in my heart of hearts, Holly could never have made me into her slave. I wasn’t like Richard, Joel, or maybe even Meredith, in that desire and the objectification or fetishization of the beloved never blinded me to the task at hand. I think that is what Holly loved about me, more than anything else: I did the work because I enjoyed pleasing her, and not because it pleased me. But I’m rambling on and on, and thinking too much about the past.

As I was saying before, matter-of-factly, Adela drove me through town, and then up the mountain. For as long as I live—and I think it will be a long, long time—I will never forget what Adela showed me that afternoon, when we were alone.

But I’ve reached the end of another page. That story deserves a separate chapter.