"How much of Robert Angevin's history do you know?" I asked as I strapped myself in. "And did you choose him not only knowing that he would bring along his son so I could get some exposure to a baby and realize I wasn't going to kill him, but also that his father could share his risky but successful reproductive story?"

"My dear, you wound me to the quick." said Victor, with mock offense. "How could you suggest that I would be capable of such a thing? I know Angevin's life story. He comes from a family almost as tortured as yours." He flipped several switches and prepared the craft for take-off. Ulrike was going to be flying back the way she had come, by commercial airliner, with my clothing. Victor and I were going back via his private craft, which could only accommodate two. "His mother, while not schizophrenic, bordered on schizoid, his oldest brother was a compulsive sexual addict and his second brother is serving fifteen to twenty years for perjury and embezzlement."

"Not to mention that he married his niece. Despite the circumstances, I still think there's something interesting there, psychologically speaking." I observed, as the ground fell away below us, and we headed for the clouds.

"Indeed. She has a certain resemblance to his mother—her grandmother. He was bound to sympathize with you. To return to the question of his child, I also knew that, as the proud father of a healthy baby boy whose wife is out of town, he could not resist the opportunity of showing him off. I have frequently observed that new parents regard holding their baby to be a great privilege which is in their power to bestow on the worthy." Victor adjusted the craft's settings and continued.

"None of this would have proven enough to recommend him as your attorney were Robert Angevin not also one of the finest legal minds of our era and an exceptional lawyer both in the courtroom and in the conference room. As a trial lawyer, he is without peer."

"The Prince of Sharkness," I said, recalling what Jen had said of him.

"He is called that, yes. He has confided in me that he has never yet left the courtroom without the verdict he wanted—which is not to say that he has won every case. Where did you hear that?" Victor asked.

I explained that Jen, Janet, and Sue had each called in turn, and that Reed Richards withdrew his objections and now wished us well.

"Bah! He might have saved his breath." Victor spit out. "The presumption of the man!"

"I don't think it was presumption so much as it was someone twisting his arm—and given his powers, his arm must take a lot of twisting. I rather visualize Ben doing it. Do you mind if I borrow your computer, since you're flying this craft? I have just thought of something that might be your wedding gift, if I can get it. I'm afraid my attention will be taken up for a while—and if you want it to be a surprise, you shouldn't track back through your browser history."

"I do wonder what you might come up with." he admitted. "Yet the pleasure of being surprised upon receiving it will be all the greater for not assuaging my curiosity beforehand. By all means, go ahead."

I opened the internet browser, my mind awhirl. While I had indeed thought of a wedding gift for him, and one which would take some research, I had just had a possibility so startling cross my mind that I doubted I could hold up my end of our conversation with him while I thought it through.

I entered 'Malleus Maleficarium' into the search engine—the infamous, deplorable Hammer of Witches—the papal edict which was responsible for the deaths of who knew how many innocent people. It was difficult to know just what to get Victor, since anything simply expensive he could buy for himself. One of the original copies of that particular document, however, would be a good choice for its historical significance. He could keep it—or destroy it, which would give him a great deal of satisfaction.

My mind was on other things, however. Reed Richards, and whatever it was that he remembered. I had already noticed that he was acting as if he were implicated—as if telling what he knew would expose himself as well. As if the secret were something shameful—and personal.

Might something have happened between Reed and Victor when they were back in college? Something which he could not, would not admit to his wife and his best friend? Something, to put it quite frankly, sexual?

Victor had been very young when he was offered the chance to study in America—so young that he had lied about his age. It was his first time away from his tribe, his first time on his own—If there was anything I knew about Victor, it was that he was very lonely, but he must hardly have ever been more so when he first set foot on American soil.

He was a foreigner, from a country that was full of Communists. He was a Rom in America, a country which even today still has laws in certain states which discriminate against Gypsies—laws which are unconstitutional, and which, if it were any other ethnic group would have been struck down and overturned long ago. There were so many ways in which he just would not have fit in…but the intellectual was not one of them. There he would have been an alpha male.

Reed Richards was almost certainly the first person to whom he could relate on that level—just as Victor was the first person I had ever come across to whom I could relate intellectually. It was one of the strongest attractions which he had for me—that I could talk to him and know he would understand what I was talking about—that I would not break down my concepts into terms which he would be able to comprehend.

That alone might have been enough to make me love him.

So: there Victor was, in America, in a college that concentrated on pre-med, pre-law and the sciences—a preserve with a population that was predominantly male—not quite as much as a prison or a monastery, but close to it. I knew from personal experience that even girls with I.Q.s in the genius range were not actively encouraged to go into the sciences-we were pointed in the direction of the arts and humanities.

Add to the atmosphere the fact that most of the students were in their sexual primes and horny all the time, add beer to the equation…

I had been an innocent until quite recently, but that didn't mean I was ignorant. I was sophisticated enough to know that sexuality isn't divided strictly into gay, straight, and bi. Victor certainly found me sexually attractive, but it wasn't just because I was a woman whose face and body appealed to him. He might have been attracted to Reed Richards.

Some night, after a long conversation, lubricated by alcohol, flushed with the excitement that only comes from the knowledge that there was someone else in the world with a mind that was as keen, Victor might have said—or done—something, something unequivocal, made an advance that Reed rebuffed, either then, or, more hurtful yet, the morning after.

It was possible. That didn't mean it was likely. But it fit how Richards was acting.

This wasn't an insight on my part—it was imagination. I knew the difference.

It certainly gave me something to chew over on the trip home.

A/N: Don't worry, this isn't going to turn into a slash story. The question is, could Joviana be right? Or, rather, where am I, the writer, going to go with it? Heheeheh!