The room was crowded with ornaments and furnishings. There was a large four-poster bed against one wall, ancient-looking wooden caskets with bronze hinges, a huge wooden chair that looked like a medieval throne. Squat candles were set all about the room. Pentacles and other symbols, indistinct in the dim light, were painted in white on the dark purple walls and high domed ceiling.

I glanced at a bookcase close by. Only a few of the authors were familiar: Dennis Wheatley, Aleister Crowley, Anton Szandor LaVey.

“He’s a Satanist?” I asked, mildly curious. I had met stranger types.

“Michael? Oh, no!” She laughed. “I mean, he doesn’t hold black masses or anything like that. At least I don’t think so. Actually, I don’t know what he does up here. Sharon and I stay pretty much on the ground floor.”

I moved in that afternoon.

That evening I ate in the kitchen with Sharon and Karen. I kept expecting to see my third housemate, but he never showed.

After a hard day of moving, I decided to reward myself with an evening out. I checked out a couple of bars and ended up at one of the baths. I stumbled in around four in the morning, trying not to make too much noise on the creaky stairs. I noticed there was a thin edge of light around the trapdoor to the octagonal room.

I woke up hung over and headachy sometime in the late morning. Sunlight was streaming in the room. I got up to close the drapes. One of the windows looked down on the garden. I saw a man there, shoveling.

From the steep angle I couldn’t see much except his head and shoulders. He was wearing dirty white overalls. His hair was long and black, almost to his waist, and pulled back in a ponytail. His untanned shoulders were broad and scalloped with muscles that undulated as he dug the shovel into the earth and scooped it out.

He suddenly stood up straight, turned toward the house, and looked up at me.

He was tall, easily over six feet. The overalls fit tight around his waist, emphasizing the striking width of his chest and shoulders. Sweat made the sunlight glimmer in the smooth, deep cleft between his pectorals. His smooth cheeks and forehead were spotted with dirt. I was struck by how white his skin was, like ivory. He rested one hand on the shovel at his side and raised the other to wipe the sweat from his forehead.

I stood naked at the full-length window as we looked at each other—naked except for the leather band around my left arm, which never comes off. I tried to smile, despite the pain cracking my head. Now, why couldn’t I have run into that at the baths last night, I thought. Then I closed the drapes and stumbled back to bed.