Wed, 22 Nov 1995 The typical disclaimers apply: Do not hold close to open flame. Do not ingest. May cause eye irritation. In case of contact, flush thoroughly with spam. If irritation persists, see a listowner. Caution: References to Bernini and speculated history enclosed (Which Lisa will correct the moment this goes out. i have a brainpan like a sieve.) "Turn up the lights; I don't want to go home in the dark." - O. Henry HOLD ME, THRILL ME, KISS ME, KILL ME a response to the FORKNI-L Forever Knight song challenge song and lyrics by U2 c. 1995 by e. m. hall Verse one She was fully awake before she was aware that she'd been asleep. Sleeping, she must have been sleeping; she never passed out - she had an excellent head for liquor. But then why couldn't she remember? Her eyes fluttered open, reluctantly and heavily. She focused immediately on her iced-blond hair swaying in a puddle of melting snow beside her. How dreamy - it moved about like hundreds of dainty feet, dipped in a pool, swinging back and forth. Then, as her gaze followed the smeared, browned line of snow-hillocks and strayed to the asphalt it covered, she realized where she lay. Oh god, she was outside, lying on a street outside, oh... Salome struggled up to a sitting position and gingerly prodded about her nose and lips. Her gums throbbed as if the front teeth had been knocked loose. Had she been hit? Attacked? Robbed and left on the ground until she regained consciousness? She scrambled up as quickly as she could, hanging onto a lamppost until the cityscape ceased rocking and pitching before her. Salome absently ran a hand over the front of her dress. Her clothes seemed intact - she shifted her hips and slid her hand lower - yes, all of it was intact. She still had her coat and shoes. She inspected her legs - not even a nylon run... But she was filthy. Black, frozen mud covered the olive Anna Sui cocktail dress. A splattering dotted her knees, the full-length crushed-velvet coat and the purse peeking out of its pocket. Her purse. She sagged against the lamppost and looked forlornly at the brass clasp, dreading to see a blank silk-lined fold where pressed bills used to be. Despite her burning cheeks and pinched mouth, Salome was business-like as she did inventory, as she picked through the few items in the shimmering, scaled bag, riffling through the stacked cards, the paper clipped note scraps, and then the mint 50 dollar bills. Once again, nothing was missing or even touched. And she would know, wouldn't she? She sighed and, straightening up, trying to lose the stagger from her step, Salome creakily strode out of the empty alleyway that had been her resting place for... (she jiggled her mute watch but it was no use - the city was never this quiet at 10)... that had been her resting place. She rounded the corner, with one pocketed hand gripping a silver-plated pen, half-expecting to step into a post-apocalyptic urban scene straight out of the newscasts. She gasped at the posh shops of Granjon Boulevard wink their hooded windows at her. Her car was where she'd left it, less than a block away, patiently waiting in front of a Massimo's. She must have been attacked while walking from or to her car. Hours ago, from the absence of shoppers and dealers. The clock set into the BMW's dashboard read 3 a.m. She'd been here a while. Salome inspected slim slices of her face in the rearview mirror as she always did. She winced. The garage doorman would never recognize her. She dabbed a tissue onto her tongue and rubbed the mud off. Her skin reddened in streaks where the damp tissue passed over but she dismissed it as sensitivity to whatever was in that grime. She threw the wadded Kleenex out the window and reached for her make-up case. Generous gobs of creamy foundation covered the discolouration and lipstick and eyeliner gave her discernable features once again. Salome pulled out an old scarf from the glove box and covered up her clumped, crusted hair. She pulled the folds of her coat closer together, giving her reflection one last glare, before shocking the cold automobile's engine to life and pulling away. A ring of keys sailed through the doorway and clanged against a chair hiding in the darkness of Salome's flat. She swung the door shut behind her, not truly meaning to slam it. As expensively-framed prints slid to the floor and cracked their glass faces open, she sighed again - this time in resignation. Who cared if it was true? She had stopped trembling and was able to ignore the black, empty feeling in her breast but that ache - whatever it was - still lingered. Anaprox, Toradol, what was the strongest she had? Her face screwed up in pain. How long would it take to mix up a Brompton's cocktail? She was horrendously hungry and had nothing in the fridge but water and probably some wilted, rubbery celery. She groped for the phone on the microwave to dial the deli. The clerk recognized her voice and promised to send it right away, reminding her to notify the front desk about the delivery boy. When Salome slowly placed the phone back on its hook for the second time, she considered whether she should call the police. But what would she say? Nothing was taken, she hadn't been raped. She could have fainted for all she knew though Salome had never done that in her life. She automatically punched the answering machine on her way to the bathroom, knowing her flat well enough to leave the lights off. She was afraid that the lights - even dimmed - would give her a worse headache, if that was possible. Besides, she could see everything well enough. There were no messages. Salome headed straight-away to the vanity mirror - again, as she always did - dropping clothing behind her as quickly as she could slough it off her body. The coat collapsed to the floor with a crunch. She'd bought it in a tiny, mould-smelling boutique in Edinburgh - a place that she'd probably never be able to find again. Add shopping to her list of chores for tomorrow. Bargaining with the dealer to steam-clean the car, getting a facial to counteract that rash... The city's wakened windows, marquee signs, and spot-beams drowned out the moon's lamplight, brightening the bathroom as well any bulbs. Salome double checked the latches to make sure the windows were fastened. She always feared leaving an open window or door. Her father taught her that well. Salome turned to the mirror and gasped as she saw her reflection. The 'mud' looked deeply gorged into her neck and collarbone. She examined the stains across the breast of the fallen dress, realizing that what she had mistaken for frozen mud was dried blood. She gathered up her clothes frantically, examining the the tough, black plates that had once been puddles in fabric, unable to believe that *all that* had come from her. Salome pricked her finger on the coat's lapel pin, smearing fresh redness onto the silver. The slender pin flashed with the distant lights - ...slender, silver like a dagger, a flash of silver, the slash of a dagger, bright like his smile when she asked him... "Would you like to share a drink?" She tried hard not to look coy. She was so good at it, had done it so much, that she was out-of-practice for anything else. Men still liked a coy girl - the kind who didn't seem know just how sexy she was, who sauntered down the street distractedly despite her demureness, hair haphazardly piled on the head and skirt-line the slightest bit crooked so that one pink knee brazenly gazed you while the other just shyly peeked out. Calculatingly oblivious women... who were all the more desirable for it. But this man, he was unusual. Very different from Stephen, Alex, Stan... everyone, really. Not that he was her first 'celebrity'. He wasn't even as recognizable as that flabby politician - Fred, was it? - she had seen briefly or as well-known as Simon, the Incorrigable Rock Star with the sensuous mouth and greedy eyes. What simpletons. And how easy to control. Strutting about - yes, like farm cocks guiding a neophyte hen. It was fun, being that, at first. Simon, in particular, rewarded her for playing such a sweet, proud, flighty, fickle, hungry, violent, demure, thoroughly loyal lover. How many different people did she play for Simon, anyway? A girl for every port, she supposed. He didn't know how else to keep interest in just one, she supposed, unless she played many. What a headache. How did Sybil Vane do it? Salome smiled dryly into her compact of bitter face powder as she and her companion waited for their drinks. As if she cared for them all. All "her ornamen", as if she were the trollop in a fairy tale, collecting men with a wish. They were pretty investments and she had done well. She must have sighed out loud for he said suddenly, "Boring you, am I?" She glanced up, dropping the compact into her purse of tiny, segmented mother-of-pearl tiles, like the skin of an other-wordly snake. "No, of course not." Her shrug and grin was genuine. He was truly fascinating, he was. But as she first watched him speak - followed the wize, biding crinklings around his eyes, the elusive twisting of his mouth - and listened to his smooth, metallic viol-voice, she had forgotten herself and thought of those others. And how different he was. How aware. Aware of her? No, more like immune. And then she had felt very conscious of herself and instinctively reached for her makeup bag... Salome chided him gently. "I was listening attentively, you know that." "I'm just impatient." She glanced about for the waiter. "You look extraordinarily thirsty." She smiled broadly. "Impatient." They seemed to be sharing an inside joke - only Salome hadn't heard the punch line yet. He seemed to punctuate each phrase with a hidden meaning. Fascinating. He liked to play as much as she used to. "Just need my caffeine infusion." His ice blue eyes now lay where they unsettled her the most - upon the appetizer menu and not her carefully painted face. Get his attention. "I'm surprised you agreed to appear for a signing, or anything, for that matter. I'm delighted, of course, being an admirer of you and your show. But I've heard that you're a hard man to see in person." She tapped her fingers on the tablecloth. "You seem like... " "Go on. It takes alot to surprise or embarrass me." She laughed, "I can imagine!" He waited. "So which were you about to do?" "Well, I was going to say that you sounded like..." She straightened up. "... the reclusive, self-absorbed artist type." He struck a fist to his chest, in jest. "Really? Despite the way I help my listeners? Are you sure you've heard *my* program and not my imitators'?" "Oh, yes." Always the end of the show, however, at the end of her work day in the early hours of the morning. "But I like that... You seem content to be admired from afar, speculated upon, dreamt about. Shunning interviews, avoiding the press... a Warren Beatty." Salome reached for her water glass. "Until recently." He watched her drink with familiar, patient interest. Had Salome's eyes not been focused on the wet lines tunneling towards her, she would have shuddered at his gaze on her contracting, undulating throat. She shook her head as she placed the glass down, taking a moment to swallow. "But that's only because he got married. Funny things happen when you get married. Your habits change, your freedom must be compromised to accommodate another." She shook her head again. "You're changed irrevocably." "And were you married? Thinking of your parents, perhaps?" "My ex-fiance, Stephen, was the most innocent boy, so chivalrous, so old-fashioned... good-intentioned." She laughed, delighted and distrustful. "Oh, no, you're not getting into my head!" "I'll take that as a compliment." "Please do. You're certainly the most skilled interviewer I've ever listened to, with the casual way you sidle into your callers' minds. I can appreciate that. And I'm not an arbitrary judge of such things." "Ah, you're actually trying to flatter me!" He scowled, then, and poised his hand above the table, holding a butter knife like a pen. "Alright, who should I make this one out to?" Salome laughed again, her face flushing as it used to when she was an ignorant girl. He smiled for a moment, waiting for Salome's chuckles to subside, and then, as she fell back into purposeful, studious silence, he glanced about the room. "Still, Ganymede tarries." He waved a hand to the maitre d'hotel whose downcast eyes, scanning over a reservation list, leapt up as if jolted. The gaunt little man clapped lightly over the murmurings of the restaurant's patrons and, comically quickly, a face (possessing ears of incredible hearing) popped into the porthole of the swinging kitchen doors to spy upon the maitre d'. At a single bob towards Salome's table, two penguin-dressed waiters swept into the room and slid around and about the tables until they set their little disk-trays before Salome and her companion. "Lypton Village java?" asked the first. Salome barely had the presence of mind to nod yes. "And Black '47 - as dark as it comes," said the second. The Nightcrawler waved for waiters to place down the cups and vanish from the room as swiftly as they came. Salome whistled quietly. "That was wonderful. I'm taking you to the DMV. I've never seen people move so fast." "Um hm. But they don't yet know me. Once they know my patronage, the service will improve ten-fold." He leaned his temple to his heavily-ringed hand, looking at her, not touching his cup. She smiled enticingly. She noted, however, that no one else, none of the other diners and couples, seemed to appreciate the odd little trick he had just played. This Nightcrawler was an impressive-looking man with, oftentimes, the most compelling presence and unsettling gaze. But until he raised his hand to signal them, no one seemed to notice or barely see him. Nothing registered in their eyes and expressions. How many times did women and men pass by the table without so much as a look? And yet, once or twice, out of the corner of her eye, Salome thought she saw his finger extend to brush their clothes or touch their wrist which trailed behind. But when she turned to look more closely, there was the hand, resting in his lap and the passerby continued to move away, in an unbroken stride. A trick of the candlelight or another trick of his? She mentally licked her lips and gave a little inhale of breath. Salome smiled. Enjoy this. Use this. He smiled back, showing slick white teeth which glinted as his eyes glinted as his lapel pin blinked - ... scintillating, stimulating, shimmering like the watery apparitions you barely see but for their slivers of skin, escaping you, it's slipped away... In the marble sink, leaving a pink film behind it, disappeared the last bits of blood. The wound didn't hurt. It felt like nothing, in fact, because there was no wound. Salome drew away the dead flakes, now like dehydrated syrup, again and again with a washcloth until nothing was left upon the blank slate of her chalk neck. A shadow, a depression in the skin, was left behind but nothing else. Someone knocked at her door, not rang the bell as visitors usually do. She normally wouldn't have heard it but for the general silence in the flat - excepting the final gargle of draining water. She removed the rings from her fingers and watch from her wrist, coasting slowly across the polished floor to the foyer. (continued...) "And I still believe that I cannot be saved..." - Smashing Pumpkins HOLD ME, THRILL ME, KISS ME, KILL ME a response to the FORKNI-L Forever Knight song challenge song and lyrics by U2 c. 1995 by e. m. hall Verse two "Gary's Deli, Miss Theresa," called a nasally falsetto voice. "Leave it by the door, please. Thank you..." "Don't you want to check it? Make sure I got your order right, Miss?" Salome peered into the peephole, pulling her dress back on her, just in case. A slim, youngish man peeked up at her, his slicked brown hair sticking up despite his strokings to the contrary, its colour matching his leather coat, still freshly pressed from the package it was shipped in, a lit cigarette rested behind his ear, his deep-set eyes bugged in the curved glass. "You can't come in." He mercifully dropped the falsetto. "Aow..., got a Hugh in there?" "No... Listen, just leave the bag and I'll talk to you tomorrow. I'll come by the deli." "But you hardly ever go out. I know you, Sally; you never leave this place unless you absolutely have to, like you're imprisoned." He battered the door with his shoulder. "Can't go until you pay me. Boss'll bugger my box if I keep letting people run up their tabs and never honour them." "I'm serious." "So am I. You..." He pointed at the peephole, "... can't go treating me like this. Come awn, Sally!" Salome leaned against the door jamb. She could hear him fiddling with the knob. And he'd found the buzzer. He'd never stop. He was so loaded, he didn't care how much noise he made, how many times he'd ring the bell, how raw he'd make his knuckles from knocking. She unlocked the door and stepped back. "Say nothing and you're in." "Right, right." He butted the door open with his head and squinted into the darkness. "You got the bleeding lights out Salome. You know the lights are out? I can't come in without lights. I might trip on something and kill meself all over your fancy carpet." He flicked up the wall switch. "No - !" Gary dropped his mouth open. He retrieved his cigarette to occupy it, taking a long drag. "Shit, Salome... Mud wrestling? They make you wear your own bloody clothes for that? Not where I go." "Gary. Want to stay or not?" "Sal, my love, you've never looked better. Here's your nutrients." He thrust a crisp, white paper bag at her. She grabbed it greedily but it swung wildly in her hand, much too light to hold food. She thrust it back at Gary and shoved him towards the door. "Meow. Ain't you bloody Sainty Theresa..." "Gary." "It's not what you asked ut when I heard Tim was coming over, I thought you'd appreciate me personally delivering som'ing betta." He dodged away from her and crawled into her couch; leather groaned upon leather. "Come awn, love. It's not your bowels that need filling. It's your soul and this...," he pulled out a tiny ziplock baggie from the sack, "is what'll satisfy." He dug a long manicurist's pouch out from his jacket pocket. Salome strode to the coat rack for a clean trenchcoat, ignoring his presentation. She searched the floor for her wallet. "I'm ravenous. I'd eat you if you weren't so laced." "Salomeeeh." He shook the baggie. "It's calling you. It wants you and you want it. It's the lovah you can't forget nor deny," he wailed in a low British bass. "And you owe him..." The cigarette wagged about in his mouth. He made a sound like a growl but killed it with a mild coughing fit. Gary staggered to the fireplace. "It's so cold in here..." A hidden push button ignited fresh, treated logs, already waiting behind the low glass partition. "Get up, Gary. Let's go. I do not want to get into an obssessor's discussion with you now." She picked her shoes up by their straps. One heel was hinged to the sole by a suede thread, the other heel was completely missing. She flung them aside and hunted in the coat closet for another pair. "Christ, you always get this way when you're high. You aren't reaching a higher consciousness with that crap." "Hey, that crap is my best creation. And your favourite. It's what brought you across." "Doesn't mean I share your delusions about what it does. You do it for the wrong reasons..." Her voice became progressively more muffled. "The wrong reasons. Reasons at all." Gary waved her comment away. "Since you're buried in girlshit in there, I'll help myself first, if you'll pardon my junkie's manners." Salome staggered from the closet, stooped over a pair of coarse slippers. "What?" The orange-red flame from a lighter answered. She paused, midstep towards the couch.She watched Gary wave the flame back and forth under the bright belly of a spoon, waking the white, snowy hill settled in its center. It sizzled and fried, a thin string of smoke twisted away from it, whistled like a scream and then was stifled by the silver point that stirred and stabbed the melting powder and drew it up into the clear tube of a syringe. The spoon laid across the glass coffee table, the syringe spouted air, and Gary, his hands freed, put the needle to the inside crook of his arm. The slightest poke against resistance... and it slid in. A tiny stream of blood crept into the tube, into the drug waiting there, separating, thinning, blending, until the syringe was not clear but white-pink, like blood film upon white marble. The whole action was like a sigh. Gary tilted his head up, eyes half-closed. She stood over him now, the red and yellow of some past flame reflecting off her pupil. He smiled, welcoming her to watch as he injected with a slow push. She reached out. "Ah, not yet, love. What about that fee?" He pulled the needle out, unaware of the blood sneaking out onto his white-yellow skin. "How about a freebie, then, hm?" When she parted her lips, as he'd seen her do so many times before, he smiled and generously held his palm out, syringe pointed towards her. The Nightcrawler stood. He held his hand out, pinky ring flashing. Salome extended her own to take it. How warm it seemed. She heard herself suggest, "I know a gloomy, atmospheric place. Lucy's Wedding Bed. You'd enjoy it." Those hands came to either side of her face. They were so soft, how lovely but strange. Men's palms were always calloused and clumsy. "Or we could just go..." She resolved. Those palms slid up to blot out her sight. She closed her eyes willingly and smiled. She'd let herself go, just this once. As a treat. As a fantasy of her own, for once. Pretend... pretend... A moist, heavy drop fell from her eye, to her lip, not yet upon her tongue but she could smell the sweet-sourness. The drop, now drops, thudded from her chin onto her hands. How she loved the rain, how it ran under her clothing and into the folds of skin beneath. "Come out with me..." She let go of his hands, walking outside, any impromptu umbrella or newspaper hood forgotten. "I love this weather!" Heedless of what the Nightcrawler or anyone else would think of such a childish ritual, she turned her face and palms to the sky and opened her mouth. She opened her eyes, most immeasurably, but the blood fell into them anyway. It didn't sting at all. It soothed. She was soothed by the liquid-balmy taste and feel of it in her face, on her face, so that, even when she realized that she milked Gary's heart above her, not disgust but an indifferent observation of the organ deafened her senses to the crash at the window behind her. Taking was everything. She turned to look back at the Nightcrawler and he looked at her blankly, like one who wouldn't occupy his thoughts with a single person for very long. "Come home with me," she repeated. She'd welcome the distraction of sex this time. If she wanted to keep this one (she'd have to learn his real name - this wasn't going to be the night she bedded, *took*, The Nightcrawler), she'd have to snare his interest. "You are home," he said. "Look about." He shook his head. "How lost you are." Salome blinked the blood from her eyes. He stood there, by her gaping-open west window, dressed and coiffed just as he was earlier that night. "What?" "It seems I need to finish something I wasn't aware I'd left unresolved." Had he even spoken? Why, if he was a live form before her, didn't he ever move? She tried to ask again but he interrupted... "I killed you, Salome, but you didn't die. Too accustomed to being the predator yourself, I'd imagine. Just a little too unfortunate again." He tilted his head slightly, startling her. "Perhaps you'd like to stay this way? I could spare you. I've spared many. It's only another way of cleaning up and it makes little difference to me." He walked silently to Gary's body, careful not to step in the widening puddle beside the couch. "Not too badly. This isn't your first blighting the marriage hearse, though, is it?" "I never killed..." "Not their bodies anyway. But some believe that, in the very least, the flesh and soul are complimentary. What you claim won't matter to him or those anonymous other men, will it?" "But -" "This is the higher level." He smiled - it could have been sympathetic. "Congratulations." What was he saying? Salome barely heard his words... Yet she had a sense of what he was speaking? Maybe it was his smile. She dropped Gary's heart from her hands, trying to ignore the too audible reunion with its watery pouch. "Are the stories true?" she asked instinctively, licking her palms. "More or less." "And I may do whatever I want?" "Less than more, nowadays. The world adapts quickly." If it would make her forever like him, what could be the problem? A leaf of a volume on the coffee table (peeled open by Gary's impatiently shaking hands) flapped in the fire's breeze. The Nightcrawler tipped the book on its side. "Wilde? Which one?" She shook her head, not wanting to say. How ironic... how predictable that she'd been trying to read about Dorian Gray. He picked it up and moved about the room, inspecting the collector's edition. "You understand the metaphor." Salome could say nothing. She hadn't finished the story; it hadn't yet been resolved for her. She would say nothing. "That painting allows one to do whatever its likeness wishes without suffering the consequences. Pure aesthetic abandon. The wear and tear upon the body and soul is visited here," He touch the leather, both the book-bound and then the blood-stained leather. "...not upon us. It's his receptacle. He leads the ultimate double life. Wilde appreciated that..." If she hadn't already learned in school about the author himself, she'd just have to guess at the significance of his words. The admissions of Wilde's love whispered in the rushes of LaCroix's blood but he wasn't about to let Salome experience such scenes herself. She was there for him to take, not educate. "No, no, wait... Wait... I may have stolen from them..." Salome was far from the subject of historical forbidden affairs. "Instigation, Salome Theresa. You were going to tell me that you could hardly corrupt those who've already entertained the idea. That makes you innocent, I suppose." Salome looked at the book, unconsciously tugging at the edges of her couch. "Does he die?" He placed the book back down, careful to keep her place. "The picture never changes, you know, even after he attempts to do good. His promise wasn't worth very much." "Just tell me. Show me, please. Because I'm still not sure I've woken up yet." "This." He raised his lips from either side of his teeth, then relaxed again. She stared at his mouth, steadied herself on the oft-smeared cream, no, red couch, branding in her mind him - the model of her new existence. She wouldn't know how else to live but to hate and covet more and more. "You've done me a favour, then? I'm grateful." "Despise me or love me. Both is natural and I've learned to expect either." He spoke weary words with such confidence. How old must he be to sound that way? How long until she was just as enduring, how much longer? Salome screamed and tore at her chest, as deeply as she could manage, trying to feel something! "How do I live with this?!" "You simply do or we kill you." "We -" "A troop of cleaners, for when a master can't or won't deal with his own. They're probably watching even now. Can you tell?" That was the consciousness she'd felt? Salome had thought it was him (and maybe it still was) but something watched and waited for her to fail. "You haven't begun the usual way. You'll have to be meticulous from now on." Salome was shaking badly, as if she were fighting a blizzard for the vaudeville stage. "Come." He held his hand out. "Yes, yes..." she moaned, responding to him, surely, but speaking to no one in particular. Salome crossed her arms over her young, aching stomach. "Forever, isn't it? You'll care for me tonight? I'll do whatever you like." She walked, hunched forwards, not towards him but to the fireplace, eyes level with the platter propped atop the mantle - the brass disk Salome's father had given to her. It was scrubbed to shine and scoured to reflect. Wasn't she beautiful? With her dark-red hair and rosy-bronzed skin? Too beautiful to behold. She looked down upon the firey warmth at her legs. It felt too good. "I steal the illusion that we are faithful, controllable, reliable creatures, the security in believing that you know who your husband, lover, sister is. Who we are. What we are, too, now. I mirror them. If you look closely, you don't see me at all." Salome stopped shivering. "Because I have little to do with all of you." She put a bloodied hand to her ear. "I don't if I am speaking of if it's you." "Come," LaCroix tried again, in a voice more agitated than he would have liked. The glow of the sun urged him; dawn was hours away. "I'll show you what to do, I'll teach you. You're mine now." Salome turned more quickly than you or i could see, a poker in her left hand, aimed for LaCroix's belly. She moved slowly enough for him, however, and he knocked the iron away, but was unaware of the pin she'd unfastened from her coat so long ago, now cocked in her right. Its point slid into his neck. She refused to withdraw it. LaCroix, more angry that hurt, pushed her into the fire, held her down; he yelled wordlessly. Whether she grimaced in pain or delight, whether her cries begged him on, he didn't care, his own pain was too engaging. Most of Salome's body lay tucked in its oven, making no other move but the dusty shudder, spasm, and collapse of the dead. LaCroix yanked the pin out and threw it at her ashes. At least it was finished. He wiped his neck with the back of his hand and tucked a black silk kerchief into his collar. He wasn't responsible. Could he help it if Salome were already bound for hell, before they'd met? She would have gone without anybody's help. LaCroix stepped onto the window sill of one of the many open windows. Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ You don't know how you took it You just know what you've got Oh Lordy, you've been stealing From the thieves and you got caught In the headlights of a stretch car You're a star Dressing like your sister Living like a tart They don't know what you're doing Babe, it must be art You're a headache In a suitcase You're a star Don't be shy You don't have to go blind Hold me, thrill me, kiss me, kill me You don't know how you got here You just know you want out Believing in yourself Almost as much as you doubt You're a big smash You wear it like a rash Star Oh don't be shy It's a crime to cry Hold me, thrill me, kiss me, kill me They want you to be Jesus To go down on one knee They want their money back If you're alive at 33 And you're turning tricks With your crucifix You're a star Oh, child Oh, 'cause you've no ties You don't have to deny love Hold me, thrill me, kiss me, kill me - U2, 1995 cousin, diviant erica hall How can you trust someone who bleeds for seven days and doesn't die? - BGW