I know this guy named Jerry. Known him a long time--we were room mates at school. San Jose State, fifteen years ago.

We're not buddies. We're completely opposite in everything we believe. But we know each other. And we do things for each other, important things. The most important thing we do for each other is this:

He asks, and I deliver.

"In the shop, Russ," says Jerry. He has his head and one elbow shoved through the driver's side of my 4X4, right in my face. Through the car's windshield I can see his other hand, waving vaguely in no particular direction. He's trying to look cool. He should look like an ice cube, with the cold bite of the mountain air to help him along, but his face is covered in a thin sheen of sweat, and sweat stains the armpits of his red flannel shirt. It's been a while since I've been here; he's probably had a lot of cleaning to do.

Sure, I think. I can also smell fear, rotten on his breath.

"Okay," I tell Jerry. "Hop in, and I'll drive around back." He peers over my shoulder at the bundle stretched across the back seat. It's wrapped in a green tarp that stinks of new plastic. He swallows and grins a little, his eyes big. I leave the car in neutral and wait.

"Get in," I finally say, and I grin too, to see the dark blood rising in his cheeks. Jerry's always worn his feelings on his face--a sweet baby face he hates but women seem to go for--smooth pink skin, dark eyelashes, blue eyes. With his '49ers cap hiding his hairline and a baggy flannel shirt concealing the spare tire, he looks ten years younger than he is.

I show my age. I show more than my age--gray hairs in the beard, lined face. I don't mind. His baby face and my gray hairs are the price we both pay for our predilictions--a price more than offset by the rewards. For example, many of the ladies with whom I have made a nodding acquaintance say they're first attracted to my aura of power. Fuck that. They're attracted to the Porsche. I have Jerry to thank for that, as well.

Jerry trots around to the passenger side and hoists himself in, still peering over the headrest. As he settles back, his head swivels like it's mounted on gimbals.

I shiver a little and roll up the window. Down in the valley, where I live, my t-shirt would be too heavy for the thick summer heat, but up here in the Santa Cruz Mountains, Jerry's flannel looks pretty cozy. I glance at him, wondering whether I could ask him for a loaner, but he's lost in anticipation and I put the car in gear and drive. Tires bite into gravel. I occupy myself with admiring the scenery.

Jerry's folks are old California money, which means land, and they gave him and his wife Sheila this half-acre for a wedding present. I can't be too envious--he keeps it up beautifully, with a lawn so green it makes my eyes hurt. Down in the valley everything is brown and dry and dead. The drought.

I see rhododendrons, long since finished blooming, but with fine, glossy, dark-green leaves. Bougainvillea gracefully fringe the big ranch-style house. Its cedar shake-tiled roof gleams in the sun. Then I notice. All the windows are closed, all the curtains drawn.

"Where's Sheila?"

He's facing front now, but his voice is distracted. "She's down in Saratoga at the dog groomer's. Marco is up to his nuts in flea dip about now."

Marco is Sheila's dog. Marco Poodle. She thinks it's damn clever. She spoils that little bastard rotten--it's all she's got, since they don't have kids. I doubt if they even sleep together. Jerry has his own ways of letting off steam.

"So you can't go in the house," Jerry continues. He's already out of the car as I'm rolling to a stop. I set the emergency brake and follow more slowly, joining him at the passenger door. "Flea bombs. I stocked the fridge in the shop first, though."

Jerry always insists on going through the motions of host. "Fine," I say. I won't be hungry, but he always gets imported beer. I like the Japanese stuff.

"Sheila thinks I'm spraying the lawn now." Jerry looks out over the expanse of lawn and gives an exaggerated shudder, then winks at me. Sweat is rolling down his cheeks. "Fuck that. Dead girls, you know." He blanches at my expression, then looks down, fumbles with the rim of his cap. "Sorry," he says.

Fifteen years ago Jerry was a spoiled rich kid and I was on a full scholarship, an example of how poor kids could make good. I looked at Jerry and thought "geek" and he looked at me and thought "punk." It's okay. We've talked about this. It hasn't hurt our relationship. In fact, we were both pretty quick to realize the advantages of our arrangement.

His mom had decided he was going to be egalitarian. She stuck him in a dorm, instead of a fraternity where he belonged, and he relied on me to protect him from his equals. I also provided him with girls, since he was too scared to flash his money around in such a slum.

As for me, I got all the pizza and beer I needed, as well as occasional use of the studio apartment he rented in town. I didn't go there very often--only when I was damn sure I had a girl who would put out. He kept magazines there, and sick pictures.

He walked in one day and caught me rifling through his stash. He looked at me, teeth bared in a "fuck you" grimace, and said, "Dead girls can't say no."

Jerry's shop is a squat, square, cinderblock building that looks like a barracks in a concentration camp. The impression is misleading; inside that leftover from a World War II movie set is a complete woodworking shop, with a table saw, a band saw, a drill press, a lathe, and an incredible array of hand tools. All of it is spotless and meticulously arranged. The man's got a lot of free time.

Jerry's shop also boasts a state of the art stereo system, flanked by two cabinets of CDs. Next to this is the fridge.

That's only the first floor, but the first floor is the only floor anyone knows about. Except me.

Jerry trots up the flagstone walk to unlock the front door and prop it open, then hurries back. He's gasping for breath when he reaches me. I don't want to stand too close.

He grabs a handful of tarp, I grab a handful of tarp, and we pull. The plastic crackles in my hands. The bundle slides out and falls into our arms. Easy, just like I thought. But awkward. I can feel the strain in my back as I try to hoist it into a position where I can get a proper grip. Jerry's white face, inches away from mine, says he's feeling it too.

Once we get the weight distributed between us, we're set. I find that my early chill is gone, replace by the heat of working muscles. We waddle over the flagstones up to the shop door, wrestle it through, and hoist it up on Jerry's workbench. It stretches from the vise to the t-square.

I pause to catch my breath and wipe my forehead on the tail of my tee shirt. I'm not hungry, but a beer sounds good. I head for the fridge and pull one out. Jerry hasn't disappointed me. As I'm looking for the opener, I notice a familiar white envelope lying on the receiver. I pick it up and try to fold it in half, but it's too thick, so I stuff it as is into the back pocket of my jeans.

There's a stack of CDs on top of the table saw. I flip through it. Beatles, Beatles, Van Morrison, the Doors, John Lennon. Imagine. I pop open the case and watch the liquid rainbows play over the disk's surface.

Plastic rustles behind me. Jerry is already trying to pull off the tarp.

"Hey. Not up here."

He starts and looks up, his blue eyes bright in a red face. "Nobody's home. I just want to get a look at her."

"You know the rules. And don't call it a her. That drives me nuts. It's an it. It's an inanimate object. Neither it, nor your car, nor your boat is a she."

He stares at me, his eyes narrow, then he steps away from the bundle. "Okay," he says finally. "Then help me get it downstairs."

I look down at the CD in my hand, debate putting it on, then close the case and set it back on the stack. The title is enough.

The downstairs door is hidden behind Jerry's collection of hammers. I help push aside the big pegboard square. Clawhead hammers, balpeen hammers, sledge hammers rattle on their hooks. He fishes through his key ring, flourishing it about like a magician waving a deck of cards.

"Jesus, Jerry." I can't keep the exasperation out of my voice, but he is up again, and grinning.

"It's been a while. I'm anticipating the moment."

"Isn't that what happened when you got Chrissy Belmont in the back seat of your Mustang? Except I heard you anticipated the moment a little too long and came all over her panties."

I hardly ever speak of the past--it's almost always a mistake, and this time is no exception. He stops, key already in the lock, and looks up at me. All his jolliness is gone.

"She was still arguing," he says. "The bitch was nothing but a tease. She was on some sort of power trip." He unlocks the door and we retrieve our bundle. I make him take the stairs backward.

"According to your wife, that's only power women have." I don't know why I mention Sheila; I'm pushing him hard today. Maybe I resent what he's making me do, all because he doesn't have the guts to stand up to a woman. They don't have power over you unless you give it to them. Like he's done with Sheila.

Jerry just grunts.

I hated the phrase, but Jerry kept using it, and for awhile it was in vogue in our dorm. As a matter of fact, some of the seniors (who didn't care) and some of the freshmen (who didn't know any better) actually illustrated the saying and hung the resulting posters in their dorm rooms with pride.

Until, one evening, Sheila came to meet Jerry for a study session. They were both in the same poli sci class, one Jerry's mother had pushed him into. "Women's issues," whatever the hell they were in 1975. Sheila was pretty, but seemed ashamed of the fact. She wore hand-me-down men's dress shirts, baggy jeans, and Birkenstocks. She was also president of the campus chapter of NOW.

When she found the phrase "Dead girls can't say no," immortalized on our lips and in our halls, she brought the wrath of the administration down upon us all. Even worse, she publicized it so well all the women's dorms cancelled their parties with us. We were pariahs for the rest of the term.

I don't know what happened to Jerry when Sheila found out he had originated the infamous phrase. She arrived on our doorstep, blood on her lips and fire in her eyes. I panicked and left the room. Two months later, they announced their engagement.

Once on the top stair, Jerry uses his shoulder to hit a flat, disk-shaped rheostat, then spins it with his elbow. Lights come on above us and down in the large room just visible below. Jerry huffs his way down the stairs, while I follow, waiting for and dreading my first glimpse of the room below. I am cold again. I have no idea what the temperature is.

I hate this basement. It is nothing but a plain, square room. Display cases line the sweating cement walls, full of the results of Jerry's foraging expeditions to San Francisco and his patronage of all the best mail-order stores. The stuff is clean, in mint condition, smelling of leather, latex, and oil. Jerry never uses it.

In the center of the room is a simple iron cot with a thin, stained mattress. Underneath is spread a threadbare, institutional gray carpet. The light he turned on is a bare bulb hanging from the middle of the ceiling.

We drop our bundle onto the bed, and I back away. "I'll get the door," I tell him, and he nods, not taking his eyes off the shiny tarp. Forest green, I think--that's the color. Like the pines surrounding his house. It's very isolated up here.

"Don't leave yet," he tells me. "I need to check her out."

I focus on the stairs. The display cases are smears of light in my peripheral vision. Finally I'm past them and bounding up two steps at a time, but his voice can still follow me. "Where'd you get this one, anyway?"

"I picked it up at the bus station. Just in from Idaho."

"Idaho? Christ," floats up to me faintly. I hear something rip and I hesitate, wanting to leave, but we have a deal. A business relationship. I lock the door, shoot the deadbolt, lean my forehead against the cool wood panel. I have to go back down.

I compromise by descending half-way, then sitting down on the step. I can just see Jerry, but he pays no attention; I've wrapped the bundle well, and he's working away industriously at the occasional strip of duct tape I used for reinforcement. For some reason I remember the two beers I left upstairs. I haven't popped the tops yet. I should put them back in the fridge.

Jerry goes to one of the cases and opens it. I can just make out the multi-colored splotches inside, each of which I know to be a hank of hair, a swatch of cloth, a ripped nylon stocking. It's a vastly different inventory than the contents of the other cases. They hold pariphernalia, some of which I don't even recognize, too much of which I do--handcuffs and thumbcuffs, ankle, wrist, and elbow restraints, chastity belts, ball gags, hoods, whips. All for show.

He returns to the cot with a flat-backed, antique silver mirror. Must be a family heirloom. He begins to brush the long, blonde hair. He is humming. I can see his erection through his jeans.

He looks up at me suddenly, eyes bright. "God, I've needed this," he says.

"You like it?"

"She's gorgeous."

I manage to smile as I push myself to my feet. "That's it, then. I'll take off now. Don't worry about the upstairs. I'll lock the shop door on my way out." I think of the beer. It should still be cold. "Mind if I take a few brews with me?"

"God, no, help yourself to the whole case if you want it."

Jerry's once more engrossed in his prize; he's pulling back more of the plastic, fumbling with the buttons on the oxford-style shirt. He likes them to still be dressed when he gets them, and I try to oblige.

As I head up the stairs, though, he calls my name.

"Russ. Are you sure you don't want to stay a while? We could share." He giggles a little, nervous as a kid on his first date.

I stare at him. I try to appreciate the offer, I really do. But Jerry and I are complete opposites. Dead bodies repulse me. I like them when they're still alive.

A wave of memories hits--so deep and strong they threaten to unbalance me. They are my body's memories, not mine, and I feel my blood move fast and my own cock stiffen with the strength of them. I shift, trying to ease the pressure, but it increases, delicate, agonizing. I close my eyes--

So many hanks of hair, so many swatches of cloth. They meld together into one long vision of a body moving under me, and eyes, blue-green-gray-brown wide-open eyes, and a soft-shrill-hoarse voice saying something over and over, as I move in rhythmn to the chant, letting it lead me to climax.

After, I think I am finished, but then I realize I am not. I still want to hear the voice, and I do whatever necessary to make it continue. I have that power. Whatever power the voice and body may have, I have more.

The chant continues, and I follow it all the way back to my first time and the moment when I first realized Jerry was there, looking down at what I had left. He looked up at me, his eyes feverish. "Dead girls can't say no," he said, and moved to take my place.

I open my eyes and manage to focus on Jerry. I smile and he looks away. I have explained this many times before, but he cannot seem to accept it.

"No" is precisely what I want to hear.

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