The Coffin Dancer

attraction was and speculated, “Maybe it’s that, you know, he can’t move. He’s a man but he doesn’t have any control over you. Maybe that’s a turn-on.”
    But Sachs knew it was just the opposite. The turn-on was that he was a man who had complete control, despite the fact he couldn’t move.
    Fragments of his words floated past as he spoke about Claire, then about the Dancer. She tilted her head back and looked at his thin lips.
    Her hands started roving.
    He couldn’t feel, of course, but he could see her perfect fingers with their damaged nails slide over his chest, down his smooth body. Thom exercised him daily with a passive range of motion exercises and though Rhyme wasn’t muscular he had a body of ayoung man. It was as if the aging process had stopped the day of the accident.
    “Sachs?”
    Her hand moved lower.
    Her breathing was coming faster now. She tugged the blanket down. Thom had dressed Rhyme in a T-shirt. She tugged it up, moved her hands over his chest. Then she pulled her own shirt off, unhooked her bra, pressed her flushed skin against his pallid. She expected it to be cold but it wasn’t. It was hotter than hers. She rubbed harder.
    She kissed him once on the cheek, then the corner of the mouth, then squarely on the mouth.
    “Sachs, no . . . Listen to me. No.”
    But she didn’t listen.
    She’d never told Rhyme, but some months ago she’d bought a book called The Disabled Lover. Sachs was surprised to learn that even quadriplegics can make love and father children. A man’s perplexing organ literally has a mind of its own and severing the spinal cord eliminates only one type of stimulus. Handicapped men were capable of perfectly normal erections. True, he’d have no sensation, but—for her part—the physical thrill was only a part of the event, often a minor part. It was the closeness that counted; that was a high that a million phony movie orgasms would never approach. She suspected that Rhyme might feel the same way.
    She kissed him again. Harder.
    After a moment’s hesitation he kissed her back. She was not surprised that he was good at it. After his dark eyes, his perfect lips were the first thing she’d noticed about him.
    Then he pulled his face away.
    “No, Sachs, don’t . . . ”
    “Shhh, quiet . . . ” She worked her hand under the blankets, began rubbing, touching.
    “It’s just that . . . ”
    It was what? she wondered. That things might not work out?
    But things were working out fine. She felt him growing hard under her hand, more responsive than some of the most macho lovers she’d had.
    She slid on top of him, kicked the sheets and blanket back, bent down and kissed him again. Oh, how she wanted to be here, face-to-face—as close as they could be. To make him understand that she saw he was her perfect man. He was whole as he was.
    She unpinned her hair, let it fall over him. Leaned down, kissed him again.
    Rhyme kissed back. They pressed their lips together for what seemed like a full minute.
    Then suddenly he shook his head, so violently that she thought he might have been having an attack of dysreflexia.
    “No!” he whispered.
    She’d expected playful, she’d expected passionate, at worst a flirtatious Oh-oh, not a good idea . . . But he sounded weak. The hollow sound of his voice cut into her soul. She rolled off, clutching a pillow to her breasts.
    “No, Amelia. I’m sorry. No.”
    Her face burned with shame. All she could think was how many times she’d been out with a man who was a friend or a casual date and suddenly been horrifiedto feel him start to grope her like a teenager. Her voice had registered the same dismay that she now heard in Rhyme’s.
    So this was all that she was to him, she understood at last.
    A partner. A colleague. A capital F Friend.
    “I’m sorry, Sachs . . . I can’t. There’re complications.”
    Complications? None that she could see, except, of course, for the fact that he didn’t love her.
    “No, I’m sorry,” she said brusquely. “Stupid. Too much of that damn single malt. I never could hold the stuff. You know that.”
    “Sachs.”
    She kept a terse smile on her face as she dressed.
    “Sachs, let me say something.”
    “No.” She didn’t want to hear another word.
    “Sachs . . . ”
    “I should go. I’ll be back early.”
    “I want to say something.”
    But Rhyme never got a chance to say anything, whether it was an explanation or apology or a confession. Or a