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It is close to midnight in Argentina. It is December 31st, and in some twenty minutes or so, the year 2002 will pass into the year 2003. The third year of the new millennium. Clarice Starling reflects that the world has not changed so much as has often been predicted in this science fiction age of the 21st century. There are no hover-cars humming past her windows, there are no tourist resorts on the moon, and the domestic staff that tends to the house she lives in is still comprised entirely of human beings, not space age robots.
She smiles, and looks into the fire burning on the small hearth in the living room, where she sits. It is a cool night, but the windows of the room are open to admit the distant sounds of celebration from the streets outside. It is New Year's Eve, and all of the Avenida Alvear is awash in gaiety, alive with the sounds of festivity. It is New Year's Eve, and all the non-robotic household servants in Clarice's own home have been given the night off to pursue their own celebrations.
Although the new millennium has not yet brought forth all the technological wonders futurists have long foretold, Clarice decides that the world has, nevertheless, turned. She has lived with Hannibal Lecter for five years.
Five years back, on another, earlier New Year's Eve, she would not have dared to look this far into the future. She would not have believed that this much future existed, for them.
Perhaps it was that sense of limited time and impending loss that, paradoxically, had given her the courage to seek and to accept all the forbidden pleasures and dangerous intimacies that first New Year's Eve they'd shared had offered. A sort of half-maddened desperation? The belief that that time, for them, might be all the time there was?
At this same hour, eleven-forty PM, five years ago to the day, the two of them had consummated their ten year journey through the various permutations of desire for a second time. Clarice looks towards the double doors of the living room, graceful polished oak, slightly ajar. He has left the room to go and uncork champagne, with which they will soon toast the new year. She is alone with her thoughts, for the moment. Perhaps this time is what reminds her of that time, and she wonders if he is remembering too.
Their first coupling had been marked by its own tender ferocity, had whirled past her astonished consciousness with the dervish-like speed of need denied far too long. A pitch black room, the intimation of obscure ritual, an incomprehensible welter of emotion and fragmented sensory impressions. She had been too stunned by the depth of her own passion and by the enormity of acting on it at last to remember, in any real detail, all that had passed between them, that first time.
She had been stunned. She believes now that they both had been stunned. She believes that this is a recollection much too intense to ever sit motionless and clearly visible in the memory. She believes this one will resonate just beyond clear recall indefinitely.
But . . . afterward. She can remember that clearly, and does so now, five years later exactly. The four walls of her living room in Buenos Aires shimmer into insubstantial wisps and she sees instead the dark corridors of an old house on the shores of the Chesapeake. She hears the creak of their footfalls in these dark halls, her own and his beside her. They are walking together and the sound the old boards make under their feet is unpleasant, is one of mindless, creaking protest. She should not have liked to hear such sounds had she been walking alone. She wonders how he has been able to stand it during his time here in this house.
They are walking away from a door he has closed behind them. Behind that closed door is a room she never wishes to see again. After they'd stepped through this door, he had taken the latch in both hands and pulled with all his strength while she watched. After a moment, the sound of wood grinding against wood sounded in the dark hall and the door jam splintered in two places.
He has jammed the door. He has sealed the room as she watched, because she wished it. She has never before had anyone, nether friend nor lover, who has been so willing to abide by her wishes without first questioning them. He is interested in what she wants, but he is not interested in whether or not what she wants is valid or reasonable. His utter lack of concern in this matter both pleases and frightens her.
Now they are walking through the hall, and their step is steady. They are not careening drunkenly through space, although they have reason, but she does suspect that neither of them has any clear idea of where they are going. When they reach the stairway that leads up into the second story of the house, it comes as something of a surprise to both of them, she believes. Certainly this stairway is a surprise to her.
"What careless person," she asks aloud. "Left a flight of stairs lying around the hallway like this?"
He is close enough beside her that she feels, rather than hears, the faint chuckle that moves through him.
"Disgraceful," he agrees. "I shall have to speak to the cleaning lady. However, since we're here, we may as well ascend. Unless you can think of a better plan?"
She smiles. She turns her head to him, so that he can see her smiling in the dim hallway. "I don't think I'm much for planning just now. I . . . I can't seem to focus. You plan the agenda for the time being, all right?"
He seems to take this playful request quite seriously. He thinks for a moment.
"How can I plan? I have no frame of reference in this context whatsoever. Up or down? What next? How can I answer any of these questions? I suppose the stairs themselves could lend us some structure, laid out as they are in their orderly progression. Shall we take the stairs, Clarice?"
He has moved very close to her as he has said her name, and it seems natural that her body has turned toward him as he moves, as though they exert gravity on one another. It seems natural that their lips touch, and then that their arms interlock, and then that stairs and decisions of any kind fade out of their combined consciousness. There is only further exploration and a nascent renewal of mutual hunger. She tastes his breath in her mouth and draws it deep, deep into her own lungs.
She does not know how much time passes, and she does not particularly care. This is not a night for sober evaluation. They have decided nothing, but some vague instinct, perhaps some strange revival of the ancient impulse to migrate, moves them up one riser, and then another. And then, since they recognize, dimly, that they are going up the stairs, they continue to climb, still without any particular will or purpose.
After a third and then a fourth step, he turns her around, so that her back is to him and she is facing the flight of steps ahead. She does not know if he does this so that she won't stumble as she climbs, or simply because he prefers, just now, to hold and touch her from behind. She doubts he knows himself. His length is pressed firmly against her, she can feel his breast against her backbone, the long muscles of his thighs move against her buttocks as he clears each riser behind her, and his hands move restlessly at her hips, her waist, over her arms and then under them to her breasts. There is nothing urgent or insistent in his touch. The movements of his hands on her seem almost random, again, like the endless routes of migration. Her body is the unknown land he travels.
On the seventh step, his hands colonize the delta at the juncture of her legs, and she stops, momentarily stilled by the sudden flood of pleasure that has drowned her ability or will to move. She expels her breath in the ghost of a moan as her body arches forward slightly into his hands, thus pressing her backside into him firmly. He surges forward to accept her. She presses her hands over his to encourage him to continue what he is doing there. He accepts this invitation too, and she rocks her hips against his moving touch. Her head falls back against his shoulder and he presses his face into the column of her throat. She can feel his tongue tasting her skin. She can feel his body trembling against hers.
His lips move against the cup of her ear. He is whispering, he is murmuring softly, he is purring like a great black cat, but his passion has robbed him of words.
"Clarice . . ." she hears. Only that. It is all she can make out. "Clarice."
Only her name. Only that.
Orgasm, as sudden as death, overtakes her senses, first stiffens and immobilizes her limbs, then bursts through her and galvanizes her body into shuddering spasms. She is wracked and he holds her as she rocks, and although, not so long ago, she had screamed the first time, now she only sighs. There is too much pleasure in her, this time, to escape via her voice alone. She tosses in his arms and when she has at last begun to subside, he presses sharply inward again and she explodes anew. He is as merciless in love as he is in violence. She has climaxed three more times before he relents. Only his awareness of the law of diminishing returns, she imagines, stills his hungry hands in the end.
All the strength in her limbs has turned to water and all she wants to do is sink, ever so slowly, to the solid stairs beneath her. Only the support of his arms around her, the rigid tension of his body behind hers, keeps her upright. He does not pick her up, though, does not bundle her into his arms and sweep her up the stairs like Scarlett O'Hara. She guesses, somewhat idly, as she leans against him and listens to his ragged breathing against her throat, that he may consider such behavior to be somewhat disrespectful. She is a woman, not an infant. It is strength he admires, not fragility. He will never expect her to pretend to be weak. He will never treat her as though she is a doll.
And so, while he waits patiently and wordlessly, she recruits her strength again and when she is ready, continues to climb the stairs. She does not wish to disappoint him, and senses, as she climbs, that she has not.
When she reaches the top of the flight, she turns back toward him and draws him into her arms once he steps up to stand beside her on the landing. He is willing to come. She is somewhat amused. She has never before known him to be so tractable. She kisses him once and he allows that too.
"I think I'll let you make all our plans from now on," she tells him. "Climbing a flight of stairs, it seems, was a damn fine idea."
He smiles, but must disagree. "Oh, Clarice. You don't truly imagine that I've planned anything, do you? I'm still not entirely certain that any one moment of this evening so far has been real."
He pulls her a bit more tightly into himself and grins wickedly before bending toward her ear.
"You must endeavor to convince me," he whispers to her. She can hear his cattish smile in his voice. "Repeatedly. You must be persuasive . . . "
He is complimenting her, and he is also challenging her. He will never be a comfortable lover, she understands. His emotions are too intense, there is too much of him that she will never really fathom, and his moods will always shift like quicksilver. But he will never bore her, and his desire, though it might often be playful, and may sometimes frighten her, will never be complacent.
She finds that she can be satisfied with that.
They walk a bit further down this new, second story hall, hands companionably clasped, and come to an unplanned stop outside her bedroom door. She has left her door half open and her bedside lamp is lit. Further testimony to the complete spontaneity of the events of this night. Her room looks as though she has only just left it. She looks inside.
It looks pleasant in there. It is, after all a very pleasant room. He would hardly have given her an uncomfortable one, he is an accomplished host. The bed looks soft and inviting, and she knows, of course, from previous nights as a guest in this house, that the bed is every bit is comfortable as it looks. She realizes that she is tired only as she drifts, without any real volition, over the threshold. Her drifting stops only when she notices that the hand she has clasped in her own resists passing that same threshold.
She watches as he takes a deliberate step backward, and his hand slips out of hers. He is fully outside the borders of her door now, as though there was a tangible line of demarcation between inside and outside. His face is thoughtful and calm, but also quite determined. He will not cross the border.
"What . . ?" she asks.
"It occurs to me, Clarice, that you are still my guest. That you are entitled to some space of your own, some territory. Remember, recently, when we discussed your entitlements? We've put an end to many of our customary patterns of exchange tonight, certainly, but neither of us can know, yet, what new patterns will emerge. I think perhaps it would be best if you had a neutral ground to retreat to. A sanctum of your own to command. A bedroom would do, wouldn't it?"
She moves a bit closer to the door, watching him. She finds she is disproportionately moved by this stricture he appears to be imposing on himself, but she does not yet know why.
"My bedroom," she repeats. "You won't come in?"
He nods gravely in agreement.
"Your bedroom. As long as you are a guest in my home, I will never enter unless invited. Only at your discretion. Does that seem proper?"
He doesn't know, she realizes. He has never been in a completely honest relationship with a woman before, and he doesn't know how he should behave. He's incredibly knowledgeable about human behavior, and he has a good feel for courtesy, but he's winging it, nevertheless.
She moves even closer to the edge of her threshold, and stares at him in fascination. She thinks of other lovers in her life, some who have mistaken one invitation for an unlimited number of invitations. Who have believed that being allowed inside her body once had given them the property rights in perpetuity. Some men, she has learned, do not believe they deserve such intimacy, and will count the woman who grants it a fool. And some men stubbornly persist in the absurd belief that no good woman ever wants sex for its own sake.
She finds Lecter's grave and unembarrassed inexperience appealing. He has been too long outside the world of normal social interaction, and is as free of preconceived notions of "decent" behavior as he is of conscience. He does not slight women out of blind habit, his ego is too monstrous to require shoring through sexual dominion, and he is not a man to harbor delicate illusions about female sexuality, or to need to.
He is a human monster of arrogance and fear, and this, paradoxically, is what makes him the most fair-minded lover Clarice has ever known. Sex, to him, is experience, not politics. She tells herself now that she must never bore him by playing the coquette in the future. She suspects that coyness is a quality that he would loathe.
Which, she thinks with a smile, is a fortunate thing. She is not coy, and never has been good at the pretense. Luckily, she now doubts he will ever require it of of her.
As she moves back across the artificial border of her territory to him, she also begins to understand that this "sanctum" he has given her is a valuable gift. It is not in his nature to respect the space of others. He invades space, minds, bodies, lives, as habitually as another man might cross a street, and with as little thought. Boundaries are virtually meaningless to him, and yet he himself has created one for her comfort, and has refused to cross it. He is acting against his own grain.
She has already begun to perceive that gift giving is an ironclad habit of his, as well as his great pleasure. She estimates that in times to come, he may well give her many gifts.
But she doubts he will often give her any as costly to him as this.
She does not intend to reject such a princely offering. But she does intend to reciprocate with another of equivalent value, and she hopes he will understand her intention.
She thinks there's a good chance he will. He is perceptive, after all.
She moves close to him and now that she is once again outside her own space, he pulls her to himself hungrily and his wiry arms twine around her. He plumbs her with a kiss before he allows her to speak.
Once he has finished his latest exploration of her mouth, he moves his head and begins to toy with her earlobe with his teeth. He does not harm her, although she knows, too well, that he could. But he is listening to her too, she feels that somehow, perhaps only in the attentive quality of his embrace. He is interested in what she will say.
"My bedroom," she repeats.
"Yes," he confirms, around the flesh of her ear in his mouth.
"My discretion."
"Yes. Yours."
He now devotes his attention to the hollow of her throat. When she speaks, her throat vibrates, and he surprises her by licking the vibration, following its subtle path across her throat with his tongue. She gasps. She has never been listened to in such a singular fashion before.
"And you will not enter?" she has asked.
"No," he agrees, head now at the angle between her throat and shoulder, tasting it.
She moves a small space back, far enough that he raises his head to look at her, his own head cocked in a question. She has become familiar with that curious tilt of his head, and the gesture, so characteristic of him, succeeds in raising a slight lump in her throat. Through time and through familiarity, that rather predatory gesture has been transmuted into an endearment. She swallows the lump in her throat and ploughs on.
"Unless I invite you, is that right? You'll never join me in this room unless I ask you to?"
He stares at her, head tilted. He does not know exactly what to expect next , but he clearly knows enough to expect something.
"Never," he agrees, slowly. "Unless you ask . . ."
She grins. "Good. Glad we have that straight. Now come on in here with me. I'm tired. I want to go to bed. I'd like for you to come along. Come along quietly, if you'd feel more comfortable with some you're-under-arrest language."
He laughs, obviously delighted with the sharpness of this sally, if not with the invitation itself.
"None of the arresting officers I remember were anywhere near so eloquent, Clarice. I must commend you. Mostly, as I recall, there were only a few garbled Miranda warnings and a good deal of ill-tempered cursing. The phrase 'you crazy fuck' clings rather insistently to memory, for example. And poor Will, of course, had little more than 'glug-glug-glug' to say. Not that I couldn't extrapolate his meaning from the context. I am certain he would have said 'you're under arrest' too, if only he could have."
She is chilled by his casual remembrance, and by his apparently genuine amusement in it. He is the only criminal she has ever known who can honestly find the humorous side of being arrested for multiple murder. But despite her dismay, she finds the humor in it too, she must admit.
In for a penny, in for a pound, she thinks, perhaps a little grimly.
"I'm probably going to fall into a coma the moment my head hits the pillow," she explains to him. She is not really joking, although she tries to speak as casually as she can. "If you're not there when I wake up, I'm likely to think this whole evening was a dream. Like it never really happened. And I just don't think I can go through this whole thing from scratch all over again. I am just not sure I'm up to that."
"Ground zero?" he asks, because he cannot help but needle her.
"Square one," she replies, allowing herself to flow into his needling, rather than resisting it. She slips out of his arms and moves back toward her door, his scarred left hand grasped lightly in her right. She tugs very gently, more to communicate than to actually pull.
"Come on. I'm inviting you. Come sleep in here with me."
"Traditional vampire mythology, Clarice, suggests that although the creatures do not intrude where they are not invited, once given entry, they are exceedingly difficult to be rid of again. Perhaps we can stretch the superstition far enough to be applicable to our own situation. Are you quite sure it's wise to offer carte blanche to me, Clarice? I am not a man of . . . mild disposition. Are you quite sure you want to?"
She tugs at his hand harder, enough to communicate some of her irritation at his resistance, and, perhaps, some of her disappointment. She knows what kind of man he is. Who knows better? She steps inside the room, past the invisible barrier, and tugs some more.
"Come inside," she says. "I'm asking you to. Sleep next to me, tonight. Christ Almighty, what's the big argument? Does everything have to be a philosophical debate? Is everything always going to be like this with us?"
He smiles again, watching how she pulls at his hand. "I fear it may well be, Clarice," he answers, truthfully. There may be many things that he does not know about himself, but there are also many things that he does.
"Come in," she says once more, unwilling to engage in the rhetoric of formal argument. She lets his hand go. She will not ask again. "Don't you want to?"
He is still in her vision a moment, head still slightly cocked to one side, dark eyes on her, regarding her gravely. He is still.
In the next moment, he is only a blur of rapid motion, and in the next, he is past her door and over her threshold and in her space and all around her, arms and hands and mind and body. His voice is in her ear again, in her head. She can't keep him out. She doesn't want to keep him out.
"I didn't say I didn't want to, Clarice . . ."
After they have celebrated this latest breakthrough with several kisses, she turns her head toward her bed for a moment. He has followed her gaze, and has released her. Now he watches to see what she will do next.
His obviously fascinated scrutiny is making her self-conscious, even though it also gratifies and excites her. She has always seen him as a weird and fabulous creature, half man, half mythological chimera. It occurs to her now that perhaps he sees her in much the same light. Now she is the one who is not certain how she should behave, and her own movements feel a touch awkward to her.
Going to bed, she thinks. Focus on that. I'm going to bed and there is a finite procedure to that familiar and homey activity that I can follow, that we both can follow. Smooth the blankets, turn down the coverlet . . .
Thought transforms itself into action and she neatens the bed that she has napped in earlier on this day. She fluffs the pillows and turns down the spread. She can feel his gaze on her like a weight as she moves, as though he has never before in his life seen anyone perform such utterly amazing feats of housekeeping.
Wait till he sees me vacuum, she thinks. He'll faint!
She is laughing and blushing slightly as she turns away from the bed and looks at him. She notices, for the first time tonight, that his clothes are seriously disarrayed. His trousers are fastened, but his belt has disappeared. His shoes and socks are likewise MIA, and his feet are bare. He is wearing a white shirt, but it is gaping indecently, because most of the buttons are missing. The cuffs, unbuttoned, hang limply around his slender wrists, and the collar is wrinkled and askew.
I did that, she thinks, and her blush deepens while he returns her regard with a small, amused smile. I'm the one who tore the fucking shirt right off his back, and not that long ago, either. I have not behaved in a perfectly ladylike fashion tonight, I'm afraid.
Her flushed cheeks redden still further when she realizes that she too must present an equally disreputable appearance.
She remembers her high school dating years, for a moment, remembers the quick, guilty fumbling with her clothes after a heavy back seat session. How she would set herself to rights in her steady's car, straightening her clothes and combing her hair in the rearview mirror before he would drive her back to the Lutheran Home after a date. How she would occasionally reach over to her boyfriend, whichever boyfriend it might be, and would kindly straighten his collar for him, or wipe a smudge of her lipstick off his mouth.
The man who is with her now has once posited the theory that these sessions of her youth had been sticky and tedious. And, in many ways, he had been right. But he has overlooked the gentle and foolish pleasure in them, the natural camaraderie of young people experimenting with the explosive substance of love. Perhaps his own memory lacks such innocent adolescent landmarks, and he is unable to fully understand them.
Her blush fades as she comes to him and straightens his collar. The shirt is ruined, and there are no figures of authority to question their moral rectitude here, but the friendliness in the action pleases her, and she believes it pleases him.
"You know you're embarrassing me, staring at me? You're making me nervous," she chides gently as she straightens. "I know I look a mess. You do too."
'And who, might I ask, is responsible for my current state of dishabille, Clarice? What thoughtless malefactor has messed me up? Shall I ask you to make an effort at an answer? And I don't think you look a mess, incidentally. I think you look supernally beautiful. I can't imagine how you could look any more beautiful than you do right now. I expect the stars in the heavens must be weeping with bitter envy. So I won't apologize for staring. But I'd advise you to abandon your efforts with my collar, as much as I appreciate the thought. The shirt is a lost cause."
He is teasing her. And he is also praising her, the kind of madly extravagant praise that she has begun to suspect he means every word of. He is, after all, crazy.
She gives the wilted shirt collar a final, comically neat crease and then goes to sit on the bed. It has occurred to her that without these absurdly skewed and abused clothes, both of them might look a good bit neater. She is a little unnerved by the thought of mutual nudity, but she doesn't think anything could possibly make them look more as though they've spent the evening fucking like minks than the ragged wardrobe they are currently wearing.
Besides, she reminds herself as she pulls off her own ruin of a blouse, we have spent the evening fucking like minks. Rabid minks. And the evening is not yet over.
He observes her undressing herself for a time, just long enough to cause another flush of color to rise in her cheeks. She knows perfectly well that it is purely deliberate on his part. Then he shows her another wicked smile and begins, slowly, to follow the example she has set. She notices that he is slightly hesitant as he casts off his elegant rags, yet she senses clearly that there is no embarrassment in him. He seems as oblivious to the vulnerability of nudity as a shark might be.
Once she is down to skin herself, she slips beneath the bedclothes and watches him. As more of his body is revealed to her sight, she begins to understand his vague reluctance to fully reveal himself. There is not a single superfluous particle of flesh on him. He is streamlined, roped with with sleek muscle, and there is a suggestion of torque in the way the muscles mesh as he moves. He looks as manifestly designed for speed as a jaguar does. His skin is pale, and gleams palely in the amber light of her bedside lamp. It seems to her more like a coat of smooth fur than like the bald skin of a human being, but he is not a particularly hirsute man. And there is something in the sharp angularity of his structure, or in the tricky surface of his skin, or perhaps in the brutal economy of his flesh, that baffles the eye. His body, in some odd way, resists being seen.
He wears clothing not to protect himself, she realizes, but to disguise himself. Clarice remembers that he has spent many years playing the social role of a privileged, upper-class professional. He has sat on boards with well-fed yuppies, he has feted the wealthy and the accomplished and the socially prominent in his own home, he was once accepted in the most rarefied circles of Baltimore society at face value.
But no one who had seen him in the nude could ever have fully believed in his public identity as the prominent and possibly slightly stuffy Baltimore head-shrinker again. The more his expensive and beautiful threads come off, the more fully he is clothed. He is clothed in his true nature.
There is a kind of harsh beauty in his born predator's body, and perhaps she can only see it because she no longer feels he poses a physical threat to her. Although he may pose other, far more arcane threats. She knows that many of the forensic psychiatric community who have interviewed him have come to the peculiar conclusion that he is not entirely human. Previously, she has always believed this to be a thoroughly unprofessional finding. Looking at him now, she is no longer as certain.
But what she feels is not fear. It is lust. It is that strange and strangely sophisticated sexual craving for a unique partner that has fueled myths of mermaids, of gods and angels mating with human women, of romantic vampires and seductive sorceresses, of lustful serpents and lovelorn great apes, of incubi and succubi, and a thousand similar mass fantasies throughout time. There is something in the human psyche that is repelled by whatever is alien. And there is something else, some darker and less discussed something, that is inflamed by it.
He is as richly exotic and rare as a golden-eyed ram or a blue-eyed lion. It is the humanity in him that compels her love, but it is his strangeness, his alieness, that ignites her desire. She will want him again before she sleeps.
She wants him now. Her body shakes with her wanting.
When he is completely innocent of clothing, he appears to think for a moment, then moves toward the bed she occupies. He is still unsure how to proceed, she sees, still formulating his actions one step in advance of taking them. He has decided that lying down in the bed beside her must be the next logical step, and once he is swathed in the same bedclothes that she now wears, she will no longer be able to see him as she does now. She wants him near her, she wants to touch him, but she is not quite ready to stop looking at him. She has, after all, never seen him like this before. She realizes, with a sharp emotional thump, that not only has she never before seen him unclothed, she has never seen him, outside of a prison cell, demonstrably unarmed.
She sits up in her blankets as he approaches, and makes a vague warding gesture with the palm of her hand.
"Wait," she asks, without any pretense or social nicety. "Stop a moment. Let me look at you."
He complies with her request without demurral. He has no self-consciousness about his nakedness, and he understands that she is curious about him He understands curiosity better than most. He returns her scrutiny calmly, waiting until she will have gazed her fill. He watches her watching.
Her vision makes a leisurely circuit of his body. She locates a small teardrop shaped scar near the bicep of one arm, and she makes a mental note to ask him about it later. He has one tiny red birthmark on the arch of his right hipbone, but otherwise, his skin lacks any natural mark. He does, however, bear unnatural marks, souvenirs from his stay at Muskrat Farm. His left side is bruised blackly along his ribs, and there is a bad burn around his right nipple. His sex is not completely quiescent, a legacy, no doubt, of their erotic activities on the seventh riser of the stairs. In this respect, he is still just slightly rigid.
But we can improve on that, she thinks. The thought makes her smile, a slow, almost greedy smile.
"All right?" he asks, having detected the change in her mood from the expression on her face.
"Enough for now," she agrees, still smiling.
"Good," he says, and swiftly comes to the bed and slides under the covers. "I'm glad you're satisfied. I'm freezing."
She is tempted to giggle but manages to resist the temptation. "Take a pitchah," she quips in a comic Bronx accent. "It'll last longer . . ."
He is making something of a production out of arranging himself comfortably in the bed, and as he moves, one of his feet touches her ankle. She can feel how icy it is to the touch. He doesn't immediately answer her. But he does find the time to roll his eyes toward heaven at her comment.
"Oh, Agent Starling. Surely you can understand by now that I prefer not to be photographed?"
She can play too. "Damn," she says. "That's right! I forgot. And I was thinking of having one of those photo calendars made!"
He likes it when she teases back. She can see it in his pleased grin, and in the red glints in his eyes. She can see it in the way his posture relaxes a touch. But she also sees that he is still uneasy, still somewhat unsure how to proceed. Has he never been a guest in a woman's bed before? She can't believe this could be true. No psych student alive could ever hope to get through basic Freud without at least a little practical experience to fall back on. Besides, he has already amply demonstrated that he clearly knows how to fuck. It's not the sex that's bothering him, she is certain. It is something else.
His uneasiness communicates itself to her, and though she would like to touch him now, she is no longer sure that she should, so she hesitates.
He burrows under the covers, trying to get warm, as he laughs at the notion of posing for beefcake shots for some serial-killer-of-the-month calendar.
"Patent flattery, Clarice," he comments airily, and allows his head to fall back into his pillow. There is a kind of deliberation in this action, as though simply relaxing, for him, requires an effort of conscious will. Once he is satisfactorily swathed in blankets, he allows his gaze to drift upward, towards the ceiling. He murmurs absently, as though musing to himself. "I hate to be cold."
She feels a sudden coldness at her own center at this offhanded remark. He has told her only a very little about his early life, but she has learned enough to guess why he might hate to be cold, even if he does not.
She is across the small gap of mattress between them and has thrown her arms around his shoulders in the tiny space of time between one beat of her heart and the next. This is not a night for cool caution and hesitation. She has twined her legs around his and has pressed the length of her body against him and has flattened her hands on his back, fingers splayed, before thought can catch up with action. She touches as much of him as she can reach at once. She doesn't want him to be cold. She would loan him every last degree of warmth in her body, if she could.
He is somewhat surprised by the tension he can feel in her touch, she sees, somewhat puzzled. He turns his face to her, and his eyes look into hers from only an inch or two away. But he does not respond to her sudden clinging with any touch of his own.
"Clarice?" he asks.
"That was thoughtless of me," she answers. "To keep you standing in the cold like that. I'm sorry."
He smiles faintly, clearly a bit relieved to learn that the origin of her apparent distress is a only small matter, after all.
"It's not important," he assures her.
His belief that it is not important for anyone to be kind to him, or to treat him as though he is human, has grown in him over many, many years of experience, she thinks. It has become a sort of prejudice. She resolves now that she will show him as many small considerations and little kindnesses as she can in whatever remaining time they will have together. It is the only method of combating his brutal disregard for his own humanity that she will have.
"But it was thoughtless," she insists, and rubs his cold feet with her own warm ones. "And I am sorry."
He watches her for a moment as he considers the way she is touching him and thinks about what she has said.
"That's nice, what you're doing," he finally decides. "I like that. But I don't agree that you are right to apologize to me," he adds, thoughtfully. "If we are to be lovers, then I think you must feel free to ask me to do the things you want. That makes sense, doesn't it?"
She smiles, amused. He is so deliberate. Perhaps next he'll want to draw up a written contract. Perhaps to be signed in blood.
"We-ell . . ." she agrees provisionally. "Within reason . . ."
Now he really laughs. She can feel his mirth shaking the bed they share.
"Ah. Reason. Very good. By all means, we must ever let reason be our guide in all things."
She laughs too, seeing the joke. Had either of them ever been inclined to reason in the past, they would not be here right now.
He has shifted onto his side to face her and now stares at her again. She notices his nostrils flare slightly as he raises a hand under the covers and suspends it an inch or two above her hip.
"And," he says. "I think that I must feel free to ask you for the things that I want as well. That is . . . reasonable, isn't it?"
She is not certain whether it is the cruel playfulness in the smile that curves his mouth or the real heat in it that makes her shiver as he asks this question.
"I want to touch you now," he says. She feels his forefinger briefly dimple the flesh over the arch of her hipbone, there and then gone. "May I? Here?"
Another game. She guesses now that as long as they are together, there will always be another game. She nods her assent wordlessly and his hand glides along the rounded contour of her hip like silk.
"Here?" he asks next, and touches the tip of her nose.
The bones of her wrist.
The mark on her cheek.
The bedclothes jumble and bunch as he continues to point out portions of her that he proposes to touch. There is no discernible pattern to his choices, no increasing element of intimacy. He chooses her right breast once, and chooses her elbow next. The entire process seems completely random, and, at the same time, seems maddeningly purposeful. The inside of her thigh, the cap of her knee, her navel, a spot at the very center of her forehead. And always, always, he first points, using only the tip of his forefinger to touch, and then awaits permission to touch more fully afterward, sometimes with his hands, sometimes with his lips and tongue.
It is unbelievably erotic. It shortly becomes an erotic torture, waiting to see what he'll choose next. He touches her with a sort of savage pleasure so intense that it almost borders on idolatry, yet always within the strict, formal confines of the game. This weird dichotomy between rule and misrule is utterly typical of him, and it quickly begins to fuel her own lust, fanning it until it blazes. It is utterly typical of him that he has found this singular way to please her so, and it is also typical that he torments her as he inflames her. And that he asks, and is granted, permission to do so.
It is also typical that he torments himself. As he forces himself to enjoy her only in tiny successive portions, his breathing becomes first uneven, then ragged, finally deep and gasping. He takes her scent with each deep breath, drawing it in over his teeth. His eyes widen and light and show red sparks. His hands begin to tremble wherever he touches her, and then she can feel the shuddering of his whole body. She revises her earlier opinion that he is unarmed, since she can occasionally feel the hard pressure of his sex against her, now as rigid and unyielding as any forged weapon.
He is driving her mad. He is driving them both mad. Yet he stubbornly adheres to the impossible rules of the game he has devised, far past the point of reason. Here? Here? Here?
The object of the game now, it seems, is to see which one of them will break first. Clarice plays as hard as she can. She can tell that her opponent is flagging, that his control is slipping. She has as much chance to prevail in this match as he does. He is not one to bore himself with games that offer no real challenge to him.
She suddenly darts her head to his chest and sucks, hard, on his undamaged nipple, while her hands seek and find the hardened weapon at his center, which pulses in her grip. Put plainly, she wins the contest by cheating. She would laugh if she wasn't so insanely aroused.
" Here!" she growls into his chest triumphantly. Her hands massage him without mercy as she listens to his guttural cry of response, chagrin mixed with unearthly pleasure.
"Here, here, here . . ." she chants, and then uses her teeth on the hard, hot nub of flesh she has captured.
He is not a man to accept such a grave breach of etiquette without retaliating in kind. Nor is he a man who denies himself for long. He cheats too, and uses his superior strength to first flatten her body under him, and then to draw her thighs wide apart. He enters her before she can draw breath, and then steals her breath entirely with a long, slow, liquid thrust. Her entire body, inside and out, suspends itself, tight as a drawn fist, every nerve ending frozen in anticipation of the next fluid, piercing movement.
Which he withholds.
Now she does laugh, aloud. He is such a bastard!
"I think I'll just kill you," she tells him, panting like a racehorse. "Right after we're done."
He is panting too, breath passing in uneven bursts over his teeth. He can't stop the trembling of his body, against her and inside her, and his eyes just seem to glow, his gaze burns into her. But he manages to find enough of his voice to answer her.
"We're a long way from done, Clarice . . ."
And so they are. He drives her berserk with a succession of smooth, long, rolling thrusts into her. He drives them both berserk. She bends her knees and braces her feet against the mattress, the better to meet the rhythmic arching of his hips. His body shudders uncontrollably and hers does too. His head dips to her throat and he sucks at the place where her lifeblood throbs closest under her skin. The pace he has set speeds just as her body demands it, as though he can intuit her needs directly through the tissues of her flesh. She can feel her pulse in her head and ears throat like rolling thunder, and imagines that her heart must soon burst. His face is in her breasts now, and he begins to keen, cries that waver on a strange knife's edge between wailing and snarling, both plaintive and savage.
If she were hurting him, he'd never make a sound.
This thought pushes her over the edge and she breaks. Orgasm boils her senses once more, but she retains enough consciousness to be aware that he is right behind her, pushing so far into her that she thinks he might pierce her heart, shaking himself, it must be, she thinks, to pieces, as his body empties itself into her. He is all liquid, her bones melt, his bones melt, surely there can be nothing left of either of them, and again, he wails, the sound that resonates in his throat as he comes might be a death-cry.
She cannot catch her breath as he collapses into her, and she feels his full weight pressing her down into the bed. Only the hitching of his breath informs her that he still lives, although she thinks he may have blacked out, at least momentarily. She thinks she might have blacked out for a moment herself. He is surprisingly heavy, for a slender man, but it is a weight she welcomes. It is a weight she will always welcome, she predicts, a weight she would welcome forever.
In time, he begins to stir, and then he rolls his body a bit, so that he is no longer crushing her. She can breathe easier now that her chest is not so compressed, but she also, illogically, regrets the loss of his full weight. His arms remain clasped around her waist, and his head rests against her breasts. She comforts herself with that lesser weight.
After many silent minutes have passed, and she has begun to think she will soon doze off, he speaks to her.
"Talk to me, please, Clarice," he requests softly. "Tell me things."
She smiles faintly. They are to be lovers. He must feel free to ask her to do the things he wants.
"What things?" she asks.
"Confide secrets. Express opinions. Unfold confessions. Anything."
She thinks for a moment as he waits serenely, head comfortably pillowed in her breasts.
"I was thinking . . ." she begins, and stops for a moment, ordering her thoughts. "I was thinking that if I had been hurting you, a while back, you would never have let me hear a murmur of distress. And I was wondering-"
"Are you so certain that you weren't hurting me, Clarice?" he interrupts.
"No," she answers after a long moment. "No. I have no idea what I'm doing to you. Or what you're doing to me."
She can feel his smile against her skin.
"Time, I suppose, will tell. If there is time. What were you wondering?"
"I was wondering why, earlier, you seemed so uneasy. Unsure of what to do, how to go on. Almost nervous. I was wondering what was bothering you."
He raises his head to look at her, to look into her. There is a small, surprised, pleased smile on his face. But he doesn't answer her question.
He clasps her more securely in his arms and again lowers his head to her chest. She can feel the muscles and sinews of his body relaxing around her, against her, into her. Relaxing, for the first time tonight, completely.
"A question, I think," he murmurs faintly. "That we'll save for another night. Shall we sleep, Clarice? You mentioned, I believe, that you were tired. In fact, if I recall, you expected to fall into a coma in short order. Shall we sleep?"
Sleep. She is tired, yes, more deliciously fatigued now, really, than she can ever remember being before.
It doesn't take long for them both to fall into slumber. Ten minutes, if that. Less. Her last conscious thought, before sleep overtakes her and all waking thoughts are done, is that tonight, if she has counted the days since she last saw a calendar right, is New Year's Eve. The small clock on her bedside table is the last thing she sees before she drifts off.
11:40 PM, it reads . . .
New Year's Eve. By the time midnight comes round at last, both of them are deeply asleep, far removed from any knowledge of the changing year.
In Clarice's recollection, one night comes full circle and interlocks with the corresponding night, five years to the day later. The sights and scenes of that earlier night fade, and the fire lit chamber she occupies now solidifies in her sight.
Past and present mesh once more, and return to their accustomed, proper places in her memory.
It is New Year's Eve again, and Clarice suddenly resolves a mystery that has remained unsolved for five long years. The answer comes to her effortlessly, as though she had known it all along.
When Hannibal Lecter comes back through the oaken doors, bearing an opened bottle of Dom Peringion and cut-crystal champagne flutes, he immediately sees the tranced look of revelation in her eyes and sets the wine down on the coffee table. He waits to hear whatever it is that she has discovered.
Match. Match, she thinks, and laughs delightedly.
"You had never slept in a bed with another person before!" she tells him. " That's what was throwing you off, making you uneasy. Five years ago tonight!"
He stands, very still, beside the coffee table. His eyes glitter as he stares at her, watching her intently, as he has always done. He lets some small space of time pass.
"As a small child," he finally answers. "I had my own bedchamber. We were a wealthy family, and it was the custom at the time. Later, for several years after the war, I was on my own and was lucky to find such luxuries as beds and bedrooms at all. And for all the years after that, I was still on my own, although my circumstances had improved greatly. I had become adept, by the time I was old enough to indulge in adult pleasures, at leaving just after any romantic tryst without giving offense. Gifts and extravagant endearments, Clarice, can smooth over many shortcomings, as you yourself might testify."
He interrupts himself to smile, once, a self-mocking, almost bitter smile.
"It had become a habit, you see - solitude. And after that, of course, I was arrested and imprisoned, and made myself comfortable for many years on cots and bunks. Even after I escaped, I still seemed always to choose the most solitary resting places. Although I had long since ceased to think about it."
He takes a single step toward her, and then another. In time, he has come to her side, and lowers his voice as he continues the confession she has earned at last, through her hard-won perception.
"When I first rented the German lobbyist's home, I decided, quite deliberately, that I would take the master bedroom for my own. He had an enormous California king in there, the largest bed there is, and I felt I had slept in cramped places long enough. His bed was huge, a great endless plain of linen. I felt lost and unbearably small in that expanse, and after two impossible nights, gave up and went to sleep thereafter on the couch. That great, gaping desert of a bed had defeated me, Clarice. I couldn't stand it."
He is standing so close to her as she speaks, and it seems natural that her arms close around him. Even after five years have passed, they still exert a sweet gravity upon one another.
"The first night I spent beside you, Clarice, was the first night I had ever spent beside anyone. I confess to you now, it was something of a leap of faith for me."
He is finished with his admission, and to prove it, he kisses her, very, very lightly, on her mouth. His lips only whisper over hers.
"But once there, you never left again . . ." she observes, a bit awestruck. She remembers him standing outside her bedroom door, unwilling to cross the threshold without an explicit invitation. She remembers how he had drawn an ironic parallel to the traditional lore of the vampire as he'd hovered outside her chamber door.
He folds her into his embrace. "Yes. It was a rare invitation, and I was determined to accept it. And to retain it. I did warn you, after all, Clarice."
"Yes. Yes, you did," she agrees, and moves deeper into the circle of his arms.
"How did you know?" he asks, curious. "What made you guess, now, so many years later?"
It is disturbing, she thinks, that, for them, past, present and future seem always to be on the verge of melding into one. That the three finite streams of time should be separated only by the thinnest, most flimsy of membranes in all of their association. That one eve of the changing year can flow so easily into another, and that all of the years in between can either stretch back into eternity or dwindle into a brief moment with equal, elastic ease. It is disturbing, and it is immensely pleasing. It is a dark miracle that together, they habitually undo time.
That time circling into this time, and all circling into the next. A geometric figure without a beginning or an end.
"New Year's Eve," she breathes in explanation, and moves her head to kiss him herself. "It was New Year's Eve then."
He doesn't seem to require any further explanation. He takes her meaning perfectly. He returns the kiss she offers. He completes it.
New Year's Eve then, and New Year's Eve now. Outside, in the streets, midnight comes round at last, as it always does, and then passes a moment later. The old year cycles into the new one to the distant sounds of mass celebration along the Avenida Alvear.
But inside, it might be midnight, or it might be high noon. One new year is virtually indistinguishable from another.
Outside, the world turns. Inside, time is undone.


text:
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
The top 1 percent of patients ranked by their healthcare expenses accounted for 22.7 percent of total healthcare expenditures with an annual mean expenditure of $97,956, according to recent data published by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Overall, the top 50 percent of the population ranked by their expenditures accounted for 97.3 percent of overall healthcare expenditures, while the lower 50 percent accounted for only 2.7 percent of the total.
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text:
Suspected Vancouver gang leader arrested in crackdown
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - Canadian police have arrested an apparent leader of one of the gangs waging an increasingly violent battle over Vancouver's drug trade, officials said on Tuesday.
Police also promised more arrests to stem a recent rash of shootings linked to organized crime that prompted federal officials to dub the Vancouver area as Canada's "gang capital" as it was preparing to host the 2010 Olympics.
Barzan Tilli-Choli, accused by police of being a leader of the U.N. Gang, has been charged with attempted murder last month of a member of a rival gang in a shooting incident that left one person wounded.
The U.N. Gang founded in the late 1990s is said to have taken on that name to reflect the multicultural nature of its membership.
Police hailed the arrest as a high-profile success in a crackdown that began last year as violence increased between gangs fighting over territory in the lucrative trade of "BC Bud" marijuana and imported cocaine.
There have been at least 19 gang-related shootings in the Vancouver area since mid January, but police said the crackdown has helped them prevent as many as 20 other planned shootings or kidnappings.
"The level of violence of these people is astonishing," said Vancouver Police Inspector Mike Porteous.
A police official said the recent spike in violence has resulted from mid-level drug gangs trying to expand their distribution territories.
(Reporting by Allan Dowd; Editing by Frank McGurty)
© Thomson Reuters 2017 All rights reserved.


text:
|Name : Zordaar (DVD) (1996)
|Releaser Info : Movieloverz
|Releasing Date : 11 October 1996
|Genre : Drama | Romance
|Size : 206 MB
|Duration : 02:19
|Starcast : Govinda, Mandakini, Neelam & Gulshan Grover
|Description : Ravi lives in Bombay city with his blind and ailing mother, who cannot withstand any excitement. His dad works out of town, but manages to send them money for their livelihood every month. Then one day the Police come and knock on his door, and inform him that his father has passed away.
|Zordaar-DVD-1.mp4 [102 MB] (1004 Hits)(Generate Movie Preview)
|Zordaar-DVD-2.mp4 [104 MB] (880 Hits)(Generate Movie Preview)
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text:
11 December 2008,
London, South Kensington
Price realised GBP 12,500
Estimate GBP 20,000 - GBP 30,000
Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008)
Plus Fours (from Hoarfrost Editions (G. 573))
signed, numbered and dated 'RAUSCHENBERG, 15/28, 74' (upper left)
offset lithograph and screenprint transfers, on silk chiffon and silk satin
67 x 95in. (170.2 x 241.3cm.)
Executed 1974, this work is number fifteen from an edition of twenty-eight plus ten artist proofs and seven trial proofs
New York +1 212 636 2000
London +44 (0)20 7839 9060
Hong Kong +852 2760 1766
Shanghai +86 21 6355 1766
Special Notice
VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 15% on the buyer's premium
Leo Castelli, New York.
Acquired from the above by the present owner.
Pre-Lot Text
So that ideas of sort of relaxed symmetry have been something for years that I have been concerned with because I think that symmetry is a neutral shape as opposed to a form of design.
Robert Rauschenberg
Aarhus, ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Robert Rauschenberg - On and Off the Wall, May-September 2006 (another version illustrated in colour, p. 15).


text:
Will the Minister regulate MTRs?
In November 2008 the Commerce Commission began an investigation into Mobile Termination Access Services (MTAS), also known as Mobile Termination Rates (MTR) - the wholesale prices mobile providers charge each other to terminate calls on their networks. The goal was to assess "whether the mobile termination access services should be regulated, due to concerns that a combination of mobile termination rates that are significantly above cost, with significant on-net discounting, creates a barrier to competition in the mobile market"
I've had a great interest in the MTAS investigation and have blogged about it on numerous occasions. Last week I wrote a slightly tongue in cheek blog post on Vodafone's newly released Talk plan suggesting that Vodafone now welcomed regulation of rates and it is with some irony that on Monday both the Commerce Commission and Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Steven Joyce, announced that they were investigating this new plan to see whether this should be factor in determining the outcome of his decision to either accept a voluntary industry agreed pricing model, or force Government regulation upon the industry.
Despite my tongue in cheek comments last week my stance on the matter is one of impartiality. I agree that mobile calling costs in New Zealand are too high, however I realise that MTR costs are not the cause of high costs in New Zealand. A lack of competition in the marketplace is the sole cause of high rates, competition from 2degrees and virtual network operators such as Slingshot, TelstraClear and Compass has forced retail prices down. The exception has been regular calling prices for Prepaid users on Vodafone and Telecom which are stick stuck in the last decade at 89c per minute.
Revenue for mobile operators is a two way system. Revenue is gained from mobile users who make calls, send text messages, use data or access STK (SIM toolkit) based network services. Revenue is also gained from inbound termination rates that are in essence "earned" by that user, and the network as a whole, when inbound calls and text messages are sent to a user of the network. The common argument is that if revenue is lost from one part of the business it will simply have to be recovered from another part of the business, an economic principle known as the "waterbed effect".
The real world reality is that terminating traffic on any telecommunications network, whether it be a mobile network or a fixed line network has an inherent cost, whether this figure is small or large becomes a moot point, the key point is that a cost is incurred. Carriers have two ways of recovering this revenue, by charging the carrier who is terminating traffic on their network using the Calling Party Pays (CPP) billing model or the Receiving Party Pays (RPP) model, also known as Mobile Party Pays (MPP) in some countries. CPP means that the network charges the network terminating the traffic their negotiated MTR cost to terminate traffic and is the common model used by mobile carriers in most parts of the world. RPP/MPP means that the network terminating the traffic pays no cost but the receiving party is charged by the carrier when they answer the call. This is how an 0800 number works in New Zealand and is also how mobile users are typically charged in North America where they normally pay a flat fee per month for incoming calls or have these incoming calls deducted from their included minutes.
In recent years the MTR debate has become a hot topic for regulators around the world as they have had to try and tighten their grip on what they see as a stranglehold on customers that is artificially keeping the prices of calling mobile phones from landlines and mobile calls between networks much higher than they should be. What is clear is that while many see MTRs as the smoking gun, and that by cutting MTRS they will cut the price of calls and text messages, nobody is able to agree on exactly what constitutes a fair price for termination, or even how much terminating a call on a mobile network really does cost. What is clear is that as MTRs have been forced down by European Regulators prices have not necessarily followed suit , and in many cases have increased as operators try to recover lost revenue [1].
If McBiddle's (a global fast food chain focussing on burgers) were regulated forced by a Government body to slash the price of their McBiddle Deluxe burger by 50% it's inevitable that these costs would have to be reclaimed from elsewhere, whether by cost cutting, charging a fee to dine in, cutting free drink refills or making the McBiddle burger only available as part of a combo meal. The mobile market is no different.
In 2005 the New Zealand Commerce Commission took the opinion that the waterbed existed when in it's final report into regulation of MTAS it wrote:
A regulated fall in mobile termination rates is likely to lead to some rise in the price of mobile
services (mobile subscription and mobile-to-mobile calls), relative to the scenario of no
regulation, or alternatively, lesser price reductions than otherwise. To the extent that
regulation leads to a relative increase in mobile prices, and a reduction in mobile
subscription levels, a range of determinants may be generated. Accordingly, this effect has
been factored into the cost-benefit analysis
So what annoyed the the Minister and the Commission yesterday?
200 minutes of calling to any other Vodafone mobile or to any landline phone in New Zealand (on any network) for $12 per month
So what's wrong with that you might ask? Well I raised the issue last week that if those whole 200 minutes were used to call between Vodafone mobiles then it would represent an on-net net MTR rate that is less than Vodafone are willing to offer other carriers to terminate voice traffic. As many people have pointed out not everybody will use all of these minutes or even use them all to call another on-net mobile phone. It is expected that calls to landline phones will make up a significant percentage of these 200 minutes, and Vodafone will be paying approximately 2c per minute to terminate these calls with a fixed line provider. If these 200 minutes were split evenly between mobiles and landlines the net cost of calling another Vodafone mobile would be 12c per minute which is around the same rate that Vodafone and Telecom have proposed to the Minister.
It's worth remembering that deals like this are nothing new. Vodafone have already offered a Your Time 200 You Choose addon for a number of years that offers 200 mins of on-net only calling for $11.95 per month. Telecom offer business customers the ability to make calls to any Telecom mobile phone and speak for up to an hour for $1 + GST. Telecom Favourites also offers the ability to nominate mobile and landline numbers that can be called as much as you want for a flat rate of $6 per number, and likewise Vodafone also offer Best Mate which allows unlimited calling to another on-net Vodafone mobile. Both networks have also had SMS plans that deliver messages both on and off net for significantly less than their current MTR rates.
Cheap on-net calls have become a feature in recent times everywhere in the world. In Australia Vodafone, Virgin and Three all now offer free on net calling and text messaging as a standard feature of many new plans. Vodafone, Optus and Three also offer unlimited plans for $99 offering unlimited calling to landlines and mobile phones on any network in Australia for $99 per month with MTR costs of approximately 9c per minute for mobile calls and fixed price termination rates for calls to landlines.
So the question has to be asked : What issues can the Commission and Minister have with Vodafone's new plan? it does not represent a significant move away from anything that already exists in the marketplace.
And the tougher question: Should the Minister accept voluntary undertakings from the industry or should he regulate?
Those pushing for regulation have to realise that the Minister sending the discussion back to the Commerce Commission could easily face another 18 months worth of delays before any regulation occurs. Are we better to accept the offer that is on the table that will take effect from this October and deliver instant MTR reductions and regular drops down to 6c per minute (billed per second) in 2014 or should we start the entire 18 month long MTAS process again, with no clearcut agenda that will force the Commissioners to accept regulation, while MTR rates stay at at their present levels?
Nobody can say it's not a challenging time ahead for Steven Joyce!
[1] Mobile Regulation and the "waterbed effect" Genakos & Valletti Jan 2010 http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/4448
Other related posts:
Spark Paging network shutdown – the event nobody cares about? Not quite.
UFB voice, power cuts, copper invincibility and mainstream media FUD.
New Zealand's growing BUBA problem (AKA I feel sorry for you if you're on a Conklin)
Comment by juha, on 21-Apr-2010 10:15
2Degrees has an on-net pricing offer as well, with 22c/min and 2c/text, as opposed to 44c/min and 9c/text off-net. Most providers have some sort of incentive plan to keep customers' traffic on-net, which in part is undoubtedly influenced by termination charges.
Comment by Chris, on 21-Apr-2010 10:19
I don't see why anything needs to change. If you just use ya mobile now and then it doesn't cost much, I say just use a landline.
Comment by Chris, on 21-Apr-2010 10:23
@There will be no need to change the MTRs as the competition is starting to heat up now and retail prices are going down already.
Comment by simon14, on 21-Apr-2010 11:57
You state:
"The common argument is that if revenue is lost from one part of the business it will simply have to be recovered from another part of the business, an economic principle known as the "waterbed effect"."
But Vodafone have always claimed that MTR's don't impact on retail prices and that MTR's are pretty much just a wash (VOdafone pays Telecom $50 and Telecom pays Vodafone $50). If MTR's are reduced, the the amounts each party pay each other are less.
Yes, Vodafone for example will receive less revenue from MTR's, but they will also be paying less.
How can Vodafone argue that MTR's have no impact on retail prices and say they are a wash and then turn around and say if you cut them, we are going to have to find the revenue from somewhere else?
The only way i can see lower MTR's impacting on revenue for the Telcos is from landline to mobile calls, not mobile to mobile calls.
Comment by ockel, on 21-Apr-2010 13:04
"There is a need to drop MTRs further. While out MTR rates are not escessive right now on a global scale MTR rates are falling rapidly elsewhere."
Australia's ACCC resolved in 2009 to hold the MTR's at AU9cpm for 3 years. It also noted that the previous round of MTR regulation did not prevent Telstra from lifting its mobile calling tariffs. And it pondered whether Australia would be better served by a negotiated outcome as observed in the NZ mobile market.
This in a market with 4 mobile operators plus MVNO's. Clearly the high degree of competition AND regulated MTR's in Australia did not stop Telstra from raising its rates.
Comment by n4, on 21-Apr-2010 18:22
The waterbed theory ignores the facts that if costs are shifted from an area where there is no competition (MTRs) to an area where there is competition (retail pricing) then the market will become more competitive and the overall costs are likely to drop. Assuming that VF (and Telecom presumably) can simply increase retail pricing to recover termination revenues is unrealistic.
Comment by Paul, on 21-Apr-2010 19:21
@Ockel, well said. The problem with lowering MTRs is that the savings, in general, go to the fixed-line providers and there is NO onus on them to pass any of the savings on to the customers. So, in Australia Telstra has earned an estimated $900m extra over and above its previous earnings simply by pocketing the difference. It's not the customers who benefit, it's the fixed line operators who get a fatter margin. Ironically, in New Zealand we have 100% pass through to customers today. However the Commerce Commission says that's just automatically going to happen anyway, so it has thrown out the existing legally binding Deeds signed by both Telecom and Vodafone which guarantee pass through in favour of regulation that doesn't mention pass through. Despite yesterday's statements, the ComCom doesn't usually look at retail pricing because it has no mandate to set retail prices - only wholesale. cheers Paul
Comment by simon14, on 23-Apr-2010 13:01
First off, i acknowledged that fixed line to mobile would impact on their revenues.
Secondly, i'm only stating what i've been told by people at Vodafone regarding with split of traffic being roughly equal in each direction. Thi information has been pasted several times on the Vodafone blog in the past.
Comment by Rhys Smith, on 25-Apr-2010 12:12
@ Paul - good comments - however 100% passthrough? I would dispute that! Sure, Vodafone NZ has been passing through 100% of the saving to fixed line customers. But as MTRs have dropped throughout time from 50c per minute to 15c per minute, the standard mobile to mobile voice call rate on prepay is 89c per minute. As the vast majority of your customers are mobile ones, you have in fact passed through none of the savings! My point - Vodafone won't agree to pass through regulated (or "voluntary") MTR savings to its mobile customers, so why should landline providers guarantee to pass through savings to their fixed line customers?


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- If your home has sustained serious structural damage from snow collapse or falling tree limbs, be extremely cautious about entering the home. Debris may be hazardous and the structure could be unstable.
- Make temporary repairs to protect undamaged property. Save receipts for purchases on repairs until it is determined what expenses your insurance company may reimburse for as part of your homeowners policy.
- Avoid using sharp tools or ice picks to clear gutters or downspouts – they can potentially cause more damage to your property.
- Avoid injuring yourself, don't get on the roof, work on a ladder or work beneath a roof that has accumulated large amounts of snow. There is a danger of falling icicles or avalanching snow.
- Review your auto policy to determine whether you have coverage for falling objects or collisions. Contact your agent or insurance company with any questions.
- Watch inside your home for unexpected water leaks on walls or ceilings. Ice build-up in eaves and gutters following heavy snows can prevent drainage, causing water from melting roof snow to seep under shingles or tiles and into the home. If you suspect damage caused by "ice damming" call your insurance company.
- Report possible claims to your insurance company promptly. Have policy numbers ready when you call.
NORTHBROOK, Ill., Dec. 7, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Winter weather like the ice, snow and freezing temperatures that just hit across much of the country can cause significant damage. Allstate customers whose homes or automobiles have been damaged by this winter storm can contact Allstate by calling 1-800-54-STORM (1-800-547-8676) or visiting Allstate.com. Allstate and the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety offer the following tips when people are checking their home or car for damage caused by a winter storm.


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That is the going rate for celestial weekend breaks yet, despite this huge expense, demand for such trips is growing to a point where even Nasa can no longer resist.
The American space agency has historically done all it can to prevent private individuals getting up among the stars. Last year it fiercely resisted 61-year-old American businessman Dennis Tito when he bought his way on to a Russian space vessel.
The agency wasn't keen on Mark Shuttleworth either: the South African business tycoon has just finished his week's training and is set to become the world's second paying space traveller when he visits the International Space Station aboard a Russian ship in April.
While Nasa can turn away the masses of money people such as Shuttleworth are prepared to pay, not everyone has that luxury. Both the cash-strapped Russian space programme and private companies involved in the space industry are only too willing to take it.
Nasa has realised resistance is futile - if it can't beat the holidaymakers, it might as well regulate them. Consequently, it has published a set of criteria which all potential space travellers must meet before being allowed into a spacecraft.
Those involved in Tito's and Shuttleworth's trips - including American company Space Adventures and Russian rocket company Energia - are delighted by Nasa's move.
They claim there are plenty of other would-be space-passengers and that the new regulations will make it easier to get them to the stars.
Eric Anderson, president and CEO of Space Adventures, said: 'The Shuttleworth flight has certainly been much easier in terms of interagency operations than Mr Tito's was. Because of documents such as this, I'm sure future flights will be even smoother.' But Nasa is not making it possible for anyone to hitch a ride on a space shuttle. The criteria are designed to make sure only the right people get on board.
Nasa's chief astronaut, Charles Precourt, who helped draw up the rules, said: 'We don't want to embarrass our space partners by having [a tourist] who would be so controversial that it would be an insult to the other partners to fly them because of some behavioural background that was considered distasteful.'
Using the guidelines laid down by Nasa, we have prepared a questionnaire to show what a space agency tourist application form could look like - would you pass the test?
Do you have what it takesPersonal ability
Do you have oral and reading fluency in English?
Have you a high moral integrity and a will to succeed?
Can you demonstrate high performance under stress?
Background information. Have you...
Used intoxicating beverages or liquor to excess and/or used narcotics or controlled drugs?
Been charged with misconduct in prior employment or during military service?
Conducted yourself in a notoriously disgraceful manner or gained infamy for your actions?
Made an intentionally false or fraudulent statement while under examination of any description?
Sponsored or been a member of organisations which adversely affect the public confidence in the International Space Station or its partners?
Got a current bank account containing no less than £15million?Reuse content


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Leading judges said today that they are "acutely aware of the desperate situation" of those at the centre of "right-to-die" litigation at the Court of Appeal - but emphasised that the case could not be decided on the basis of "personal sympathy".
The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, sitting with two other judges in London, made the comments at the outset of the latest round of legal action started by Tony Nicklinson, who died at home in Melksham, Wiltshire, a week after he lost a High Court bid in August to end his life with a doctor's help.
His widow Jane vowed to continue the battle in the courts, which she said was "part of Tony's legacy".
Lord Judge, sitting with the Master of the Rolls Lord Dyson and Lord Justice Elias, will hear argument in three cases over the course of several days.
He said: "We are acutely aware of the desperate situation in which the appellants find themselves, and we are very sympathetic."
But he stressed that "we cannot decide this case as a matter of personal sympathy".
It has to be decided on the "basis of principles of law" after the court has heard all sides.
As well as a challenge by Mrs Nicklinson against the High Court's ruling, the judges will hear submissions on behalf of paralysed road accident victim Paul Lamb, 57, from Leeds - who won the right to join the litigation to continue the fight started by Mr Nicklinson.
They will also be hearing a challenge by another man, whose case was rejected at the High Court on the same day as Mr Nicklinson's.
The locked-in syndrome sufferer, who cannot be identified for legal reasons but is referred to as "Martin", suffered a massive stroke in August 2008. He is unable to speak and virtually unable to move, describing his life as "undignified, distressing and intolerable" - and wants to be allowed a "dignified suicide".
Mr Lamb is immobile except for limited movement in his right hand and has been in significant pain since the 1990 tragedy.
The former builder and father-of-two wants a doctor to help him die in a dignified way, preferably by a lethal injection, with his family around him in his own home. He says he feels worn out and fed up with going through the motions of life rather than living it.
Mr Lamb, who is present in court for the hearing, said before it began that he hoped the judges would listen.
He said: "I'm not confident because I've seen the legal system. It's already failed people.
"You can never be confident. I feel the legal system doesn't listen and I think they should listen more."
He added: "They will listen today is what I'm hoping. I'm confident in my solicitor and barrister. I think the public will sympathise. Definitely."
Mrs Nicklinson, who is also in court, commented yesterday: "We are really excited that we are back in court and hopeful that we will win the appeal and have the case heard again.
"We are hoping that the judges will see that we didn't get a fair hearing last time and that we should get the case heard again. We feel that our case wasn't properly heard."
Mr Nicklinson, who was paralysed by a stroke while on a business trip to Athens in 2005, had refused food and contracted pneumonia after he was "devastated" by the decision of Lord Justice Toulson, Mr Justice Royce and Mrs Justice Macur.
He had sought declarations that there should be a defence of necessity available to a doctor assisting him to die, and that the law was incompatible with his right to respect for private and family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which he argued includes a right to autonomy and self determination at the end of life.
Paul Bowen QC, representing Mrs Nicklinson and Mr Lamb in their cases against the Ministry of Justice, told the appeal judges that the High Court had "rejected the claims because, in summary , it considered Parliament, not the courts, should be responsible for changing the law in this area".
He said the High Court "did not decide the substantive issues at the heart of the claims" of whether the current law does "disproportionately interfere" with the appellants' Article 8 rights, nor whether the defence of necessity is available to a doctor providing the assistance to die.
Mr Bowen said: "This appeal is about the constitutional issues, not the substantive issues.
"If the appeal is successful on those constitutional issues, the appellants seek an order setting aside the order of the Divisional Court, ordering a retrial and remitting the matter back for the substantive issues to be determined..."
Law firm Bindmans said Mrs Nicklinson has taken over the Article 8 claims in her own right and as the administrator of the estate of her late husband.
Mr Lamb is pursuing the Article 8 claims in his own right and a claim that the common law defence of necessity should be available to a charge of murder where a doctor assists a person such as himself to end his life.
Leigh Day, the solicitors representing 48-year-old Martin, say that in his case they will argue that there should be a change to the approach taken to prosecution for assisted suicide as, although it is legal to commit suicide, it is a serious criminal offence to assist someone to take their own life.
Leigh Day said current Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) guidance makes it clear that friends or family members would be unlikely to be prosecuted.
But Martin's wife does not wish to be actively involved in the steps necessary to bring about his death and so he needs the assistance of a professional, most likely a doctor, nurse or a carer, to help him to die.
The law firm said that currently the DPP policy does not make it clear that such people are unlikely to be prosecuted.
Giving the background to the case, Mr Bowen said Mr Nicklinson's condition had not been life-threatening and he had a reasonable expectation of living "many more years".
"That was a prospect which he gradually determined was not one he wished to face. He made a competent and rational decision to end his own life," said the QC.
He added: "However, by virtue of his almost total physical disability, he was unable to act upon that wish, other than by refusing all food and liquids and thereby dying of dehydration.
"He required medical assistance to end his life, which would inevitably involve the assister committing the criminal offence either of assisted suicide or murder.
"Mr Nicklinson was barred by operation of the criminal law from obtaining assistance to end his life. He brought high-profile proceedings challenging this state of affairs."
Mr Bowen said that following the High Court's decision to dismiss his claims Mr Nicklinson refused nutrition, fluids and medical treatment and died of pneumonia on August 22.
Referring to Mr Lamb, who is divorced with two grown-up children, Mr Bowen said he requires constant care and has carers with him, funded by the local primary care trust, 24 hours a day.
"He spends the whole of every day in his wheelchair. He experiences a significant amount of pain and has done ever since the accident, with the consequence that he is constantly on morphine.
"He feels that he is trapped in his body, that he cannot enjoy or endure a life that is so monotonous and painful and lacking in autonomy.
"He wishes a doctor to end his life and seeks the same declarations originally sought by Tony Nicklinson in the proceedings ..."
The British Humanist Association (BHA) is also a party to the case, as an intervener on the side of assisted dying.
BHA chief executive Andrew Copson said: "The brave individuals bringing these cases are overcoming great personal tragedies in order to advance justice and bring about a more humane society and we are proud to be parties to their cases in support of them.
"When a mentally competent adult is suffering incurably, is permanently incapacitated, and has made a clear and informed decision to end their life but is unable to do so independently, simple compassion calls out to us to give assistance - it's the right thing to do.
"That's what the overwhelming majority of the British public believe, and we think the law should reflect that."
Yogi Amin, of law firm Irwin Mitchell, acting on behalf of the BHA, said: "The law should be certain and reflect modern society.
"Both Parliament and judge-made law should develop to allow for personal autonomy."
Mr Bowen told the court that the case was not just concerned with "autonomy".
He said: "Another fundamental right is in play, namely the right to dignity, specifically the right of an individual not to endure a life of unbearable or intractable suffering against his wishes."
The QC said that "the autonomous choices we make about our death are among the most important ones we make and it is central to our sense of dignity that these choices are respected".
He told the judges: "At present the law protects the right to choose to live, to the extent that a patient may insist on continuing to receive life-sustaining treatment even where his physician considers it to be futile."
The courts are also prepared , he said, to authorise the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment from those who lack capacity, "but who the court considers it would be inhumane to force them to continue living, thereby respecting their right of human dignity".
However, for those who have "made a competent choice to end their lives, but who cannot physically act upon that choice without medical assistance, such as Tony Nicklinson before he died and Paul Lamb, the law of murder and assisted suicide constitute, for practical purposes, an insurmountable obstacle".
He added: "To prevent them from obtaining assistance to end their life infringes not only their right to autonomy but also their right to dignity, as it thereby forced and forces them to endure a life that they consider to be overly burdensome and futile, with an extreme degree of pain, discomfort and indignity."
He said the UK was behind a number of other countries in legalising both euthansia and assisted suicide.
Mr Bowen emphasised: "We do not suggest that the law should create an untrammelled right to suicide, regardless of the vulnerability of the individual."
But the consequences of the law were felt "disproportionately" by people in situations like those of Tony Nicklinson and Paul Lamb.
He said: "Of course many others live with such conditions. There can be no suggestion that simply because a person suffers from such a condition that their life must be unbearable.
"But for many people, like the appellants, that is their experience, and their choice is that they do not wish to continue with that life.
"They have formed a competent and settled wish to end their lives, but are too sick or disabled to do so without assistance.
"As the law currently stands they must suffer in silence or make desperate attempts to kill themselves because any person who assists them - particularly any medical professional - faces prosecution and imprisonment for doing so, either for assisted suicide or murder."
Mr Bowen told the judges: "The common law of defence of necessity is of ancient origin and has been developed by the courts incrementally over time to the point where its extension to the present circumstances would be logical, foreseeable, moral, just and humane, and squarely within the constitutional powers of the courts."
In written argument before the court Philip Havers QC, for Martin, tells the judges that Martin "has never asked the courts to decriminalise assisted suicide", but "seeks clarity about how the DPP's prosecutorial discretion will be exercised".
He said: "Martin loves his family, enjoys spending time with them, and likes to read. But he finds his life and his condition following his stroke to be undignified, distressing and intolerable. He is not going to recover, and does not want to continue living like this. He wants to die."
Mr Havers submitted that "Article 8 requires the DPP to develop his policy so as to remedy a disproportionate interference with Martin's Article 8 right to decide by what means and at what point his life will end".
David Perry QC, for the Ministry of Justice, states in written submissions in relation to Mrs Nicklinson's appeal and that of Mr Lamb, that the "tragic and distressing circumstances" of the late Mr Nicklinson and of Mr Lamb "evoke the deepest sympathy".
But he says that "notwithstanding the distressing facts of their respective situations" the Ministry of Justice submits that the High Court "correctly dismissed" the claim for declarations.
Mr Perry argues: "As it concluded, the law in this area is well-established. There is no defence of necessity to a charge of murder, or assisted suicide, if a doctor were to have terminated, or assisted in the termination of the life of Tony Nicklinson.
"The state of the criminal law in this respect does not violate the right to respect for private life under Article 8 of the Convention."
Mr Perry said it was for Parliament to decide on the existing legal framework "reflecting social and moral policy" - for example the law on assisted suicide.
It was then for the courts to apply that legal framework to the facts of a particular case.
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8 April 2009,
London, King Street
Price realised GBP 37,250
Estimate GBP 30,000 - GBP 40,000
Roy Lichtenstein
Sweet Dreams Baby! from 11 Pop Artists III (C. 39)
screenprint in colours, 1965, on smooth wove paper, signed in pencil, presumably one of approximately five artist's proofs aside from the edition of two hundred (there were also fifty numbered in Roman numerals), published by Original Editions, New York, the full sheet, the colours slightly attenuated, pale mount staining, occasional unobtrusive light scuffs, otherwise in good condition, framed
L. 905 x 647 mm., S. 956 x 701 mm.
New York +1 212 636 2000
London +44 (0)20 7839 9060
Hong Kong +852 2760 1766
Shanghai +86 21 6355 1766
Special Notice
No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 15% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.


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Items in Cart:
Molten Metal Makes Die Cast Models and Toys
Die cast car models are a long-standing favourite on bidorbuy. Scores and scores of them get snatched every day. However, not everyone ¿ except, presumably, the people who collect them ¿ knows what exactly is a die cast.
Die casting is the process of forcing molten, non-ferrous metal into a mould. It was invented in 1838 for use in the print industry. Later on, during the course of the 20th century, it became a primary method used in the production of intricate items such as appliances - and die cast toys and die cast models.
Die Casting and the Car Model Industry
Prior to the Second World War, die cast models were rarely perfect. With time, the quality of die cast products increased greatly and the toy models became more intricate and of a higher quality, because there were fewer impurities in the alloy, and therefore less cracks in the models... As a result, die cast toys and model cars became popular collector¿s items for adults as well as children.
Why is Die Casting so Popular?
With die casting, it is possible to make intricate and detailed products, with a clean surface finish.
Another factor is the flexibility: both small and large items, weighing from as little as 3 grams to as much as 10 kilograms, can be produced by the method of die casting.
As the process of die casting became more refined, it allowed for a high degree of accuracy which is easily reproduced due to the fact that moulds themselves are made using a hardened tool steel.
Rapid production rates of up to 15 cycles per minute ensure that mass production is plausible. In fact, die casting is a manufacturing method better suited to mass production due to large capital investment initially required. After the initial cost, however, die casting is considered a cheap production method for high volumes.
The Traditional Die Cast Process
Now that you are familiar with the die casting process, you can fully appreciate how far die cast car models have come during the course of the 20th century.


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Scituate, MA! Sell Us Your Junk Cars
Sell your junk car in Scituate Massachusetts
Do you have a damaged or junk car in Scituate you're trying to get rid of? Perfect! We want to buy your damaged or junk car. Give us some basic information about your damaged or junk car, and we'll give you an offer instantly. Seriously, you could get cash for that junk car in your driveway! We want to buy all the junk, salvage, scrap, or damaged cars in Scituate, MA.
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RS 1,25,000 To 2,00,000 Hyderabad
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RS 2,00,000 To 2,75,000 Hyderabad
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Exprience Fabricators ( 1 - 6 yrs)
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Senior Dot Net Developer - ASP/C#/SQL ( 5 - 7 yrs)
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Require PDMS Administrator for Hyderabad ( 5 yrs)
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The Soros money and influence doesn't end of with globalist progressive George Soros.
His son, Alex Soros, has been photographed hobnobbing with top leaders in the Democrat party, including President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton, and Valerie Jarrett.
Most recently, Alex Soros posted an Instagram picture of himself and vice-presidential candidate Senator Tim Kaine, indicating they had dinner together Thursday evening.
Soros wrote, "Love this man! Was great to have dinner with a man we need to call one day #vicepresident @timkaine last night! He is definitely the real deal! #clintonkaine2016 #strongertogether ??????"
Breitbart pointed out that George Soros is a huge backer of the transfer of Muslim "refugees" across Europe and the United States, as well as mass amnesty for all illegal aliens in the U.S. – something Hillary Clinton has promised to implement within her first 100 days if elected president.
Alex Soros also had two meetings with Obama on July 4, and June 14, with the latter being when Obama came to his home in New York City.