“Don’t worry, my darling. It won’t last long,” she said, rising and approaching the bed. Her shoes ground the broken snifter into the floor with a loud noise. She placed a finger in the middle of Stone’s forehead and pushed gently.

Stone fell back onto the bed. It was where he had always wanted to be, here on this bed, staring at the beautifully crafted ceiling of his beautifully crafted cabin.

Dolce lifted his feet onto the bed, untied his robe, then rolled him over and stripped it off his body. She rolled him onto his back again and tucked two pillows under his head.

Stone lay there, naked, indolent to a degree he would not have dreamed possible. He had no wish to do anything except lie there and let this happen.

Dolce went back to her chair, picked up the handbag that had hung on her arm, opened it, took out a wad of something and returned to the bed. She sat down on the edge and shook the little bundle into long lengths. “You know,” she said, smoothing them out, “science has never solved the problem of what to do with old nylon stockings. There’s no recycling of them, and they seem too good to throw away. One little run, and they’re useless.” She smiled again. “Or are they?” She rolled Stone’s limp form through three hundred and sixty degrees, until he was centered on the bed, then she tied one end of a stocking to a wrist and the other end to a bedpost.

Stone watched her do it, unconcerned, and continued to watch as she tied his other hand and both feet to bedposts. He was spread-eagled, naked, on the bed, before a trickle of concern made its way from somewhere in his brain to his forehead, where it manifested itself in beads of sweat that popped out. Wait a minute, he thought. Something is wrong here. He tugged at the bedposts, but the sturdy mahogany bed would not move, and neither could he.

“Well,” Dolce said, “I believe your tiny dose of Thorazine is beginning to wear off. A psychiatric dose would have lasted much longer. It took me several months to learn to control my dosage—without the knowledge of my nurses, of course—to the point where I could manage a clear thought sooner, rather than later.” She drew back a hand and slapped him smartly across the face. “There, feel that?”

“Yes,” he said, and his lips moved better than they had a few minutes before.

“Oh, good, because I want you to be wide awake and feeling everything that is going to happen now.”

“Dolce,” Stone said, “what are you doing?”