with a woman like Diana and been just as grateful as, no doubt, the room service guy felt at that very moment.

The noises in the next room reached an initial crescendo, with Diana crying out in a throaty, shuddery orgasm followed almost immediately by the groan of a man stunned by his own good fortune. If last night was any indication, though, Diana would not let it go at that. As soon as the guy had a few minutes’ rest . . .

The groan had not stopped. The man’s voice began to rise and fall, perhaps with each spasm of his own orgasm. It sounded like he was still coming, like she had brought him to the height of ecstasy and somehow managed to keep him there. The guy cried out to God, but even those words were barely more than grunts.

The headboard slammed the wall in quick rhythm, punctuating each spasm. Diana talked to him, urged him on, and Tim wondered what kind of woman this was, what tantric magic she had that could keep a man locked in ecstasy, and suddenly he knew that although he would always know he had done the right thing, he would also forever regret not having felt what the lucky son of a bitch next door was feeling in that moment.

And then the room service guy began to cry.

In the midst of his climactic groaning, he sobbed and began to say “please” every few seconds. The tone alone told Tim that the man wanted it to end. That he had had enough.

Diana laughed.

“Come on, baby,” she said. “Fuck me harder.”

Then it was her turn to moan, sounding the way some lovers did when they were locked in a deep kiss, or during oral sex. Tim’s erection had returned full force even as he listened with growing unease. The room service guy’s cries sounded full of pain now, even fear.

Tim reached out and turned on the light. Sitting up in bed, he stared at the wall, trying to decide what exactly he was hearing.

You’re to blame for what happens, Diana had said.

But what, exactly, was happening? This did not sound like sex anymore, not like ecstasy. And now that he thought about it, some of the groans the previous night had sounded full of pain to him as well. What the hell was the woman doing to this guy?

He picked up the phone and reached out to punch the button for the front desk, but hesitated. What the hell would he say? Instead, he put the phone back in its cradle and climbed from the bed. Tugging on the pants he had worn that day, he ran the whole thing over in his mind. He could bang on the wall or go out into the hall and knock on the door, but if he was wrong . . . if this was just extraordinary sex or some S&M thing he was too naïve to understand, he would feel foolish. And to Diana he would appear jealous and full of regret, and he did not want to give her that satisfaction.

Diana’s muffled moaning grew louder. The headboard kept banging, although if he was correct the rhythm seemed to have slowed. But in the midst of the man’s groaning, Tim felt certain now that he heard sobs and weeping.

That’s not pleasure.

Fully awake now, he went to the slider, unlocked it, and drew it open as quietly as possible. Hesitating only a moment, he went to the railing that separated his balcony from Diana’s and carefully threw his leg over, settling his weight on the railing a moment in order to shift his weight from one balcony to the next.

You’ll be arrested, he thought. Peeping Tom. Pervert. She’ll think you just wanted to see.

But such reservations did not stop him. Something was wrong. He could feel it in the rising of the small hairs on the back of his neck and the icy dread that raced through him as he crept across Diana’s balcony.

Her slider was open halfway. The crash of the surf on Santa Monica Beach, just behind him, covered any noise his bare feet might have made. He paused just outside the slider, hidden from within by the curtain hanging on the other side of the glass. But where the slider was open, the curtain had been drawn back to let moonlight into the room. Tim took a deep breath and held it, then carefully leaned in so that he could get a glimpse