The Caretaker |
Ivanka Fear is a former teacher now pursuing her passion for writing. She lives in midwestern Ontario, Canada, with her family and cats. Her poems and short stories appear in Spadina Literary Review, Montreal Writes, Adelaide Literary, October Hill, Scarlet Leaf Review, The Sirens Call, The Literary Hatchet, Understorey, Aphelion, Muddy River Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She has written six mystery/suspense novels and is looking for a publisher. You can read more about her at https://ivankafear.wixsite.com/mysite |
I’ve Heard That Sound Before
As the thunder roared with increasing urgency, Ivy felt a few drops splatter on her screen and decided to head indoors. She entered the front door of her small bungalow and felt the wind suddenly become more violent as she pulled the door closed behind her. Making her way slowly to the couch, Ivy sat down and looked across through the front bow window to see her hanging baskets dance back and forth above the porch rail. Then the sky mysteriously brightened as the rain began to come down in earnest. The sun started to shine once again and Ivy noticed the drops glistening like diamonds on the blades of tall grass on the front lawn.
Then just as suddenly, the sky grew dark again. A weather warning flashed across Ivy's iPad screen: Weather Alert - Richtown - Severe thunderstorm warning. She clicked on the warning and saw that there was a potential for heavy hail and possible tornadoes in the area. It reminded her of the tornado that went through town in July, and of the nightmare that her life had become when she found herself involved in a murder last summer. Ivy opened the front door and poked her head outside. She felt the sudden change in the humidity level and noted how still everything
had become. That was when she heard it. It was a sound Ivy recognized immediately. She had heard that sound before.
Another followed the first. Then one more. Pop. Pop. Pop. The sounds were loud, crisp, and clearly the sounds of a gun being fired.
Ivy closed and locked the door and picked up her cell phone off the entrance table. There were only four people listed under favourites in her contact list. One of them was Alex Reed. He picked up on the second ring.
“Ivy,” he said. “How are you?”
“I’m fine, thanks.” Ivy skipped the pleasantries and got right to the point. “I’m calling because I just heard gunshots. I was watching the approaching storm and then it got really quiet, and the next thing I heard was the shots -- three of them. I didn’t know whether to report it to the local police or to call you…”
“Hold on a minute, Ivy. Are you sure that’s what you heard?” Alex asked.
“Yes, they were definitely gunshots. I’m not sure which direction they came from. It could have been from the lake area or the woods or maybe the farm. I don’t imagine it was from in town. But you never know…” Ivy trailed off and waited for Alex’s response.
“There’s probably a simpler explanation for what you heard,” Alex assured her. “You said you were watching the storm. Maybe you’re confusing the sound of thunder with gunshots.”
“No, no…it wasn’t the thunder. It was a loud popping sound -- the sound of a gun being fired,” Ivy insisted.
“You know, fireworks sound a lot like a gunshot, Ivy. With it being the Labour Day weekend, someone may just be testing out their fireworks. Or maybe someone is hunting in the woods next
to the farm. Why don’t you check with your neighbours? See if they heard it and if they know what caused the noise,” Alex suggested, trying to calm her down. He knew Ivy suffered from anxiety and was always on edge, ever alert, looking over her shoulder for possible dangers.
“It’s not fireworks. And it’s not the sound of a hunting rifle. That’s not what I heard. This was different. I know what a handgun sounds like.”
Alex doubted she did. What middle-aged retired school teacher is familiar with handguns? Then again, thought Alex, this is Ivy Rose, not your typical matronly fifty-something retiree who sits at home and knits. Alex had met Ivy a couple of months ago during a murder investigation on a beachfront property near the lakeside town of Richtown. She had been the prime suspect. Alex Reed had been called in from the nearby city where he worked as a homicide detective to assist the local police. From the first time he met Ivy, Alex suspected there was more to her than meets the eye.
They had met again a few weeks ago when Ivy came to the local police station where Alex had once more been assigned to assist with a missing persons case. She had offered evidence that had been crucial to the solving of the case, which turned out to be a murder on the beach. It seemed that dead bodies near bodies of water seemed to turn up fairly frequently around Ivy.
Since the latest murder on the beach incident, Alex had been seeing Ivy personally, meeting for coffee or lunch fairly frequently. Although Alex wanted more from their relationship, Ivy made it clear that she wasn’t ready for anything beyond friendship. She was currently going through an identity crisis and needed time to herself, time to immerse herself in her writing, she had told him. Ivy’s writing seemed to revolve around murder. She was the author of a new series of mystery novels. Alex wondered about Ivy’s affinity for murder, both in her fictional life and in
her real life. It seemed to follow her. Alex wondered whether she found murder or murder found her. She had told him once that she used events from her own life in her writing. He knew for a fact that she had already been involved in several suspicious deaths. Coincidence? Bad luck? Or something more deliberate?
Based on his past experiences with Ivy, Alex decided to take her concerns about the possible gunshots seriously. “Let me talk to Meg and Dan at the station. I’ll notify them that there have been gunshots reported in your area and ask them to be on the alert for any suspicious activity,” he told Ivy, hoping to allay her fears. “I’ll tell them to get in touch with me if anyone reports anything even remotely out of the ordinary.”
“Okay, thanks, Alex. I appreciate it,” Ivy said. She hesitated a moment, then said, “I know I worry too much, but really, well… you just can’t be too careful, especially with…”
“I know, Ivy, I know,” Alex responded understandingly. “I’ll look into it and give you a call later. But you can’t be on the lookout for death around every corner just because you’ve had a few bad experiences in life. You need to get on with living.”
After hanging up the phone, Ivy considered her options. She could take her car and drive down to the beach herself and have a look around. There wouldn’t likely be many people down there with this rain and wind, not to mention the ominous-looking sky. If there was something strange going on at the lake, Ivy thought she might be able to spot the clues. Maybe she could don her raincoat and walk through the neighbouring wooded area. Or she could… Ivy suddenly stopped her train of thought when she realized whoever had fired the shots could still be a danger. She had put herself in dangerous situations before and lived to tell the story. It made her a better writer. It also made her a nervous wreck, afraid to live in the real world.
No, Ivy thought, I need to let this go. The police can handle it, if there is anything there to handle, that is. Maybe I have just let my imagination get the best of me.
Ivy decided to settle down on the sofa with a good book while the storm outside raged. She was just into the second chapter when she noticed a movement out of the corner of her eye. Looking up and glancing at the window, Ivy saw a black SUV slowly move down the street, make the turn on her deadend street, and drive back past her house. Normally, she wouldn’t think anything of it. People often came down past her house, parked across from it at the park overlooking the lake, and got out to enjoy the view from the cliff. In the last few hours, though, Ivy hadn’t seen many vehicles on her backstreet. The weather wasn’t conducive to viewing the lake or having a picnic. The SUV continued slowly past her house and off towards the main section of town.
A sudden blast of wind blew into the house as the back door flung open. Ivy jumped to her feet and headed towards the door to secure it, then stopped in her tracks. Standing just inside the back entrance was a bearded man, probably in his forties. He was dressed casually in jeans and a t-shirt. His right hand was clenched over his bloodied shoulder. When he turned to close and lock the door behind him, Ivy noticed the gun bulging out of his back pocket. She screamed.
“It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you,” he stammered. “I need help.”
Ivy backed away cautiously. “What do you want?”
“I’ve been shot,” he answered, nodding his head towards his shoulder.
“I’ll call an ambulance,” Ivy offered, trying to disguise her fear of the man.
“No!” he shouted. Then he spoke quietly, “I just need my wound cleaned and bandaged, and a place to rest for a while. Then I’ll be on my way.”
Ivy backed away some more and told him she was going to get the first aid kit. The man looked towards the basement stairs at the back entrance and said, “Okay. I’m coming with you. Then we’ll head downstairs.”
Ivy had no intention of heading downstairs with this wounded stranger with a gun in his back pocket. “The first aid kit is in the bathroom,” she said as she slowly walked backwards, with the man following her. His shoes left a trail of mud and water down the hall.
“What happened to you?” she ventured.
“No questions,” he barked. “Just patch me up.”
Ivy took the first aid kit out of the medicine cabinet and removed a towel from the bathroom cupboard. She told the man to sit on the edge of the bathtub and hold his arm over the tub while she cleaned up the wound with soap and water. He flinched when she poured some antiseptic on it.
“I’m not a doctor,” she said. “You need medical attention.”
“I need you to stop the bleeding,” he retorted.
Ivy applied pressure with the washcloth and taped several layers of gauze over the wound. “That’s the best I can do.” When he asked for some pain killers, she took a bottle out of the medicine cupboard and poured water into a plastic tumbler, handing him several pills.
“How did you get shot?” Ivy tried once again to find out what had happened.
“I said no questions!”
“Is there someone after you?” Ivy continued, wondering why he wanted to hide out in the basement. “Are you in trouble?”
He just glared at her.
Ivy took that as a good sign. He wasn’t shouting at her and he wasn’t reaching for his gun. She thought that if she could get him talking, he would forget about the gun and the basement.
“I’ve never had a man with a bullet wound in my house before,” she started. “I thought I heard shots a while ago, but I never imagined this would happen. Why my house?”
The man kept looking at her, but didn’t answer. Ivy was less afraid of him as time passed. He had made no attempt to grab his gun out of his pocket. Ivy considered whether she would be able to defend herself against him if he did turn violent. He was about a decade younger than she was, she figured, and had an average build. Not bad looking, but no Brad Pitt. She wondered how he viewed her. Probably as a middle aged, average looking, slightly overweight woman who could be easily overpowered without a gun, regardless of the shoulder wound. People often underestimated her.
She kept talking. “You don’t seem like a bad guy. How did you get yourself in this mess? What are you going to do?”
He kept staring at Ivy as she spoke and began to tell him about her mystery writing. “Actually though, it’s amazing how real life is so much stranger than fiction.”
About ten minutes later, his eyes began to close, and his tongue began to loosen.
***
After speaking with Ivy, Alex called the Richtown station and reported the possible gunshot sounds. Meghan, an officer that Alex had worked with on his previous cases in Richtown, confirmed that there had been two other calls from Ivy Rose’s neighbourhood reporting shots fired. Also, a woman had called in saying she had seen a man being forcibly led away by two other men from a boat that was anchored at the harbour. Dan, the other officer Alex had worked with, was out patrolling the lake area, and another officer was checking out the streets in Ivy’s neighbourhood, on the cliff above the lake.
Alex grabbed his wallet, keys, his handcuffs, and gun, along with his phone and drove as quickly as the weather allowed towards Richtown, towards Ivy Rose’s house. He had a bad feeling about this. Somehow, Ivy always seemed to end up at the centre of murder investigations. He just hoped he got there in time, before she found herself in danger.
It was less than an hour’s drive in good weather, but with the hail that had begun to hammer the windshield, Alex lowered his speed. Keeping his eyes on the road, he concentrated on getting to his destination. If Ivy heard actual gunshots fired, there was a good chance she would go out looking for the source of the shots. He knew she couldn’t resist -- her inquisitive nature wouldn’t allow her to leave this to the police. She had helped to solve his last two murder cases because of her nosiness. He hoped she wasn’t getting herself involved in something dangerous once again.
As he travelled down the highway away from the city and towards the lake, Alex considered whether there might be a connection between this current situation and a case he had been working on over the last couple of months. In July, the body of a boat captain had been found on
the beach of Ivy’s friend’s country estate, just out of town. At the time, his death had been attributed to the tornado. Later, new evidence showed his boat had been blown up, not simply overturned in the wake of the storm.
Alex called Meghan. “Can you get a hold of Donald Brewster’s partner for me?” Donald was the captain whose body had turned up on the beach two months ago.
Twenty minutes later, Meghan called back. “David Williamson, Donald’s brother-in-law, isn’t available right now, according to his wife. She hasn’t spoken to him since this morning. He’s not answering her texts or her calls. His cargo boat is docked at the harbour, but Dan says there’s no sign of him.”
***
David Williamson was feeling downright mellow, lying back in somebody else’s bathtub, listening to some woman telling him all about her murders. Or her murder stories, as she called them. She asked him about his story, about how he had gotten himself shot. David didn’t see the harm in talking about it. She seemed harmless enough, rather kind actually. And for some reason, he was getting to be more and more relaxed with her.
“It was just the one time. I didn’t think they’d notice,” he drawled.
“Notice what?” she prompted.
“The missing diamonds,” he whispered, as though it were a secret.
“What diamonds?”
“We were helping them to bring in coloured diamonds from Brazil.”
“Helping who?”
“Some guys. Turns out they were bad guys. Worked for some Serbian mafia dude,” David giggled, feeling giddy. Probably from the blood loss, he thought.
David explained how he and his brother-in-law had been hired to smuggle diamonds into the country. They were brought from Brazil to Michigan, then boarded onto their small cargo boat and shipped across Blue Water Lake into the port of Richtown.
“How did they get them past customs?” the woman asked him.
“They were in the false bottoms of cases carrying drill bits for the salt mine in Richtown. The drill bits came from a manufacturing plant in Michigan. The diamonds came from Brazil. You need drill bits to get the diamonds.” He thought that was funny, but suppressed another giggle.
He continued to tell the woman about how his brother-in-law had stolen some of the diamonds. His boat had capsized during the tornado. The insurance money paid for a new boat for David. The smuggling had continued.
“But I made a mistake. I needed the money. So I took some diamonds.”
“And they found out?” the woman prodded.
“They found out. They found out and tried to fucking kill me. But I got away. Fired a couple of shots at them, too. I guess they weren’t expecting me to be carrying a gun,” he laughed.
“And they’re after you now?” the woman asked.
“Driving around looking. Won’t find me in this here bathtub, though,” he snickered.
“Have some more water,” the woman said. David took the tumbler she offered and drank it down. He felt so peaceful.
***
Alex had been trying for the last half hour to call Ivy to warn her that there could be a killer on the loose. She wasn’t answering. By the time Alex arrived outside Ivy’s door, he was convinced something terrible had happened to her. He tried the front door, but it was locked. He knocked and rang the doorbell, but there was no answer. Then he went around to the back door. Although it was almost dark now, Alex used the flashlight app on his phone to guide his way. He saw muddy footprints on the back patio, leading up to the back door. After finding the back door locked, Alex fired his gun and broke through the door. He followed the trail of footprints down the hall into the bathroom.
Cautiously opening the door with one hand and holding his gun drawn with the other, Alex entered the room and saw Ivy sitting on the bathroom counter, with a gun in her hand. Her gaze was fixed on the bathtub.
“Ivy!” he called out. Sprawled out in the bathtub was a bearded man with a bandaged shoulder. He was snoring contentedly.
“Are you okay?” Alex asked Ivy, removing the gun from her hand. “What happened?”
Ivy collapsed into Alex’s arms and started to cry. “It’s him. I know it’s him.”
“Who? What’s going on, Ivy?”
Then Ivy told Alex about the smuggled diamonds and the Serbian mafia. Ivy had dealings in the past with a Serbian mafia family. It brought back bad memories for her, Alex was sure of that.
“No, Ivy. He’s dead. It’s not him. It’ll be his associates,” Alex assured her.. “How did you get David to tell you about it?”
“He needed pain pills. I gave him a handful of my anti-anxiety meds. We had a nice chat once he relaxed a bit. Then I gave him a glass of water with crushed sleeping pills so he could get some rest. He looked like he needed it.”
Alex shook his head in disbelief, then took Ivy back in his arms and hugged her close. “I’m just glad you’re safe,” he said, as he hit the call button, connecting with the local police station.
“I’m fine. And I think I have an idea for my next novel,” Ivy smiled.
THE END
Eric Lawson's work has most recently appeared in Maudlin House, Mad Swirl, and Drunk Monkeys. He is the author of the poetry collection About Fucking Time as well as Medusa Coils: 20 Twisted Monologues. Mr. Lawson is also the screenwriter for the award-winning short film scripts Failing Upwards and Die for a Living. He currently co-hosts a weekly podcast entitled Make Your Own Fun. |
Getting Laid in Laurel Canyon
His friends had told him he was crazy. He didn’t care. They told him he’d get lost and that the roads were treacherous in the Canyon during rainstorms. He waved them off. Sometimes you had to throw caution to the wind and go for broke.
He’d heard from a friend of a friend of some creepy janitor at his office that a guy he knew went a party at the particular mansion he was looking for, didn’t come back quite the same and had some fantastical story to tell. There was something about memory loss, something about potent drinks, and something even more farfetched about witches. That part of the tale had made Rodney laugh out loud. Witches? Nice. It was, after all, a Halloween party.
No great stretch there, clown shoes.
The guy had told him to enter the mansion, should he find it, and he’d have to mention the deranged survivor’s name to gain access. The guy’s name was Gunter. That in and of itself should have been a red flag, but Rodney was a sucker for a good story. Especially the cautionary tales that lead eager horn balls to risky adventures involving dangerous, exotic women.
He took a healthy swig of a Red Bull and slowed the car down. His friend Adam had given him a special cookie laced with who knows what several hours beforehand to give him “a little fun boost” and he was feeling beyond buzzed and weightless. His aunt’s beat up Buick’s breaks creaked and he craned his neck. Lightning flashed and momentarily lit up the entire hillside. Something caught his eye off to the right. What was that? A street sign or something tangled up in a bush? Was the bush growing around the sign or vice versa? He checked his rearview and backed the car up. He squinted and the letters seemed to jump out at him in the flashing light.
667 Tabernacle Ct.
Belated Autumn Solstice Suarez
Hosted by La Damned au Trois
“Now, that’s what I call a party,” Rodney mumbled to himself. He parked the car along the side of the road and put in his plastic vampire teeth. The waistband was far too tight and it severely amplified the fact that he badly needed to take a massive shit. The old Dracula costume bit had never failed him yet. It was always popular and always an easy ice breaker to make small talk with the wasted-beyond-belief ladies in attendance.
He hopped out of the car and used his poor excuse for a cape to cover his head from the rain. He made his way through a tangle of overgrowth to an ancient iron gate. He scanned the high brick wall to the left and the right. A distant lightning flash illuminated a rust-covered intercom box and he made his way over and pushed the button.
“Hello?” asked a sultry and slightly bored female voice.
The quickness of the response startled Rodney, but he recovered. “Hi, there. I’m Rodney. I’m here for the party.”
“Party? What party?” replied the voice, no less interested. “Perhaps you have the wrong address.”
Rodney wiped droplets of water from his face. “No. Wait. I mean, I’m here for the Autumn Solstice Suarez. I’m a friend of Günter.” He had a brief moment of panic when he realized he had no fucking clue what Gunter’s last name was. His fears were assayed when the intercom clicked on again.
Another female voice, this one giggling and energetic came over the intercom. “Did you say ‘Günter’? Well, that’s interesting. So tell us, Rodney, who did you bring along with you? Any other brave companions in your group?”
Now, he was getting somewhere. “Nope. Just me.”
A long pause ensued that made Rodney start to wonder if they’d forgotten about him.
A third female voice, sterner than the others, yet far more seductive purred over the intercom. “Well, any friend of Günter’s is a friend of ours. Tell me, Rodney; do you want to be my friend?”
Rodney grinned from ear to soaked ear. “Lady, I’m all about making friends.”
No sooner had he finished his sentence, the giant iron gates began to creak open.
The second, giggly voice returned. “Follow the path to the house, Rodney. Everyone’s waiting for you.”
“Who’s everyone?” he asked, but no reply came from the intercom. He began the arduous hike up the overgrown driveway as the gate closed behind him.
Twenty minutes up and he was still huffing and puffing. He stopped and undid the waistband on his costume. His weight shifted, his bowels flexed, and he farted loudly three times in quick succession. “Damn,” he sighed. “That’s a first impression I’m glad I didn’t make. Better out than in,” he chuckled in spite of himself and continued on his journey.
The Red Bull was coursing through his veins with each lumbering step. His heart was working overtime as a result. This was going to be a night to remember, he surmised. He could feel it. He was wide awake now, which was good when arriving to a secret party at two in the morning. If the party was starting to wane, he’d be the shot in the arm in needed. He belched loudly and massaged his stiff neck. The secret ingredients of the special cookie made him a little woozy.
Pausing, to wipe the rain from his eyes, a sound caught his attention. He looked sharply off to his left but saw only shrubs and trees swaying in the breeze. He though he’d heard giggling and light footsteps. He gazed into the darkness and saw only darkness gazing back at him. He shrugged it off and lifted his cape up over his head and splashed his way onto a stone patio.
The mansion was a mere football field away now. The patio narrowed down into a well maintained walkway that lead right to the front door. From the walkway, Rodney could see lights and faintly hear music. Loud, throbbing, trance-like techno music.
“Okay,” he muttered, gaining a second wind. “So far, so good.”
Two immense oak doors met him as he ascended the final steps to the mansion. He was about to pull on the enormous cast-iron knocker, when one of the doors opened without as much as a creak or gust of wind.
A beautiful woman, dressed in a flowing black gown with stark brunette hair was there to greet him. “Rodney, I presume? I’m Mara. Welcome.”
Rodney tried to hide his glee. “Hi, Mara. You’re a witch, I see. My make up washed off. I’m Dracula, obviously.”
Mara smiled as he sloshed past her inside. “Yes, of course you are, dear.”
He stopped a few feet inside as the foyer was pitch-black. He turned around to face Mara, but she wasn’t there. He turned away from the door and several candles were lit and revealed a hallway, several doors, and a grand spiraling staircase to the second floor.
“Rodney, over here,” Mara said, playfully.
He turned to see to Mara about twenty feet away from him. She was standing to the left of two other, equally ravishing women dressed in similar garb. The one in the middle looked slightly older and was also maybe an inch taller with the same flowing black hair. The one on the right was smiling like a kid in a candy store and had the most amazing, curly red hair down to her waist that he had ever seen.
“I’m Eloise,” said the redhead. “My sister here is Sateen. You’ve already met Mara.”
Sisters! His mind raced gleefully. Damn, that’s hot!
Something in Sateen’s face changed and she eyed him warily. “Yes, indeed it is hot in here. This is a drafty place and the wind seems to find a way in no matter how tight we close the shutters. But it never wants for heat. We’ll burn at the stake before we ever let any of our precious guests freeze to death.”
He instantly identified the sultry, yet stern voice from the intercom.
Seconds melted away and they appeared to study each other. He broke the trance first. “That’s some storm out there, huh? So anyways, I thought I heard music on the way in. This is a party, right?”
Eloise giggled and Sateen shushed her.
“Oh, yes. It’s a party, all right,” Mara stated. “The biggest one of the year and you’re just in time.”
Rodney’s eye was drawn to her hand which was hoisting a candle holder. He was certain she hadn’t had one when he came in…or had she? The light seemed to play tricks inside this place.
“It’s a fucking candle, Rodney. We use it so as we can see our way,” she teased.
“Right. Of course,” he sputtered. “Lead on.”
She turned to go and he followed her down the hallway. She opened the third door on the right and they entered an enormous ballroom.
“Wow,” he breathed. “You weren’t kidding.”
Mara chuckled in spite of herself. “I know, right?”
He turned to say something to the other sisters but they were alone. He turned to face Mara, but she had disappeared as well.
“Ha-ha. Very funny,” he said to no one. “I thought this was a goddamn party!”
Out of the darkness, he heard Eloise’s girlish voice yell: “DJ Lycan! Spin that shit!”
With that, the entire room erupted in light and stationary shapes became dozens of costumed dancers, gyrating to the throbbing techno he’d heard earlier.
There was a balcony on the far side of the room and the three sisters were now wearing pointed witches hats and eyeing Rodney intently, all smiling.
My hosts like to keep to themselves, he deduced. He didn’t fret over it long. There were several gorgeous women dancing all by their lonesome on the floor and he was here to mingle.
The first girl he approached who was seemingly by herself, didn’t even meet his gaze when
he began to dance in her personal space. She was wearing a nineteen-fifties space alien costume complete with the bouncing eyeball hair braid attachment.
“Some party, huh?” he offered. “That’s a crazy retro getup.”
No response.
“I’m Rodney. I really dig your costume,” he said and stepped directly in front of her. “Aliens never go out of style.”
Still, no response.
He decided to test his luck and moved in closer. She didn’t resist so he began to ever-so-gently grind on the side of her hip. She didn’t flinch in the slightest.
“You’re shy, I get it,” he whispered in her ear. “No worries. I gotta say, I saw you from across the room and I felt, like, an instant connection, you know?”
She continued to dance at the same pace. He started to get annoyed at her indifference. He stopped dancing and took a step back. Something smelled off-putting. He felt some wetness on his pant leg. He rubbed it with his hand and brought it up to his face. He smelled it clearly from a foot away: piss.
He leaned in and whispered in the alien girl’s ear. “Honey, I think you need to take a potty break.”
She ignored him and kept on dancing.
“Okay, fair enough.” He turned away. “You’ll be sorry when the Meth wears off, hot stuff.”
The next song was more of a ballad tempo and people began to pair off.
He approached another girl who was dancing alone. She had the same distant stare but her face boasted the most inviting grin Rodney had ever seen. She was dressed as stereo-typical hippie with a tie-dyed shirt, fringe vest, denim skirt, and knee high “fuck me” boots.
Rodney spun her around and dipped her down a mere foot from the floor. When a flashing strobe grazed her face, he saw with much horror that the woman was pushing seventy years in age. He nearly dropped her in revulsion. He regained his composure long enough to put her upright and mumble a weak “sorry” before stumbling away. The entranced woman never stopped smiling.
His fake plastic fangs felt like a steel trap in his mouth. He removed them and stuck them in his pocket. He lumbered over to the wall and breathed heavily. He scanned the room for a refreshment table but only saw the horde of living marionettes on the dance floor.
He was about to ask one of them where the bathroom was, when Eloise put a hand on his shoulder, startling him.
“A little jumpy, I see,” she beamed. “Everything going all right, Rodney?”
He opened his mouth to ask for some water, when she put a glass in his hand.
“You look a little parched, cutie,” she brushed his sweaty hair from his brow. “This one’s on me.” She lifted his hand with the glass in it up to his mouth.
He wanted to ask what was in it but he was positively parched. He tossed it quickly down the hatch and swallowed. Some kind of fruit-flavored mixed drink, heavy on the alcohol, his taste buds declared.
“These people—“ he started.
“Bunch of killjoys, huh?” she interjected. “Everybody’s always full of life when they get here. Bunch of shallow fakers, I think.”
“I mean, nobody says anything when I—“ he began again.
She cut him off again. “Not making any friends, are we?”
He was temporarily tongue-tied and all he could think to do was shake his head.
“I’ll tell you what, Rodney,” she offered. “I’ll be your friend. Would you like that?”
Again, his mouth failed him and he nodded in agreement, like an obedient chimp.
She took the glass from his hand, drank it down like a shot and sighed with relish.
Didn’t I just drink the entire glass? He wondered to himself.
Before he could ask about the glass, she tossed it carelessly behind them. There was no sound of it breaking, much less landing and bouncing. She grabbed the hand which had previously held the glass and placed it firmly on her right breast. “There we are. Now, squeeze, Rodney.”
Rodney was taken aback, but dutifully complied. “Um, that’s exquisite, Eloise. Thank you.”
“You’re damn right, it’s exquisite. And it’s real, too,” she giggled and pulled him into a passionate kiss. Between long, slow smooches, Eloise mumbled: “You’re so warm, so alive…”
Rodney broke away and gasped for air. “Sorry, sweetheart, I need some air.” He turned to go and walked right into Mara’s waiting arms.
The music tempo had sped up again and Mara and Eloise were now grinding on him and were surprisingly strong. Strong enough, in fact, that he couldn’t actually get out from between them.
“Okay, ladies,” he panted. “Rodney needs to use the little boys’ room.”
Eloise reached from behind him and cupped his crotch. “Liar,” she purred into his ear.
“Tell me, Rodney,” Mara breathed. “You don’t need Viagra, do you?”
Rodney laughed in spite of himself. If I did have some right now, maybe I’d take it so I could use it as a weapon to get away from you smothering bitches. He laughed again, but it was a pained, joyless whine.
“Enough!” Sateen bellowed and the other sisters parted. “Have you given him the potion?”
“Yes, sister,” replied Eloise.
Sateen turned to face Mara, hands on hips. “I trust your powers of seduction have not left you, sister?”
Mara pointed towards Rodney’s crotch with both hands. “Behold, sister. He is young, ripe, fertile and very willing.”
Rodney began to feel uber woozy again. He looked down at his crotch and was astonished to see his wang standing at full attention, practically tearing out of his trousers. “Hello, soldier” was all he could muster.
“May I have him when you’re through, sister?” Eloise pined. “He’s such a cutie pie. He has the eyes of a dreamer.”
Sateen rolled her eyes. “If you must, Eloise. But we must hurry, the dawn is approaching. Come, Rodney. Come to me.”
Rodney was utterly helpless. His feet felt like cinder blocks, but he shuffled over to Sateen’s waiting embrace. His motor skills were unresponsive, but when Sateen kissed him he felt safe, warm, and loved. Like a baby being held to a mother’s breast.
“I’ve been waiting for you, Rodney,” she cooed. “The one who seeks me out. You’re so special. You came to me. That doesn’t happen to us every day. Do you understand?”
Rodney mumbled incoherently.
“There, there, dear,” Sateen whispered. “Sateen is here. She’ll take good care of you. I’ll give you what you came here for, darling. I’ll give you what you need.” She ran her fingers through his hair, kissed his neck tenderly, and he lost feeling in his limbs.
Mara signaled the DJ. “DJ Lycan, a lullaby, if you please!”
Rodney’s gaze drifted over to the DJ. What had she called him? DJ Lycan? Well, if he boasted a muted beard earlier, he was wolfing it out hardcore now. His eyes glowed red and his fangs looked lethal. “Great makeup,” he mumbled.
The music slowed to a recognizable lullaby. Rodney remembered the soothing melody from childhood. Before he passed out, all of the other dancers fell onto the floor as if the strings holding them up had been severed by invisible scissors.
He felt the vague sensation of being laid onto a bed. His clothes were delicately removed. Smooth, yet eager hands began to massage his numb limbs. From what seemed like an impossible gulf, Eloise whined “It’s been twenty years, save some for me, you greedy crones.”
Sleep, mercifully overcame him.
II
Harsh, unfiltered sunlight awoke him the next morning. He sat upright in the bed and tried to scream but nothing came out. The sheet that was covering his naked frame was soaked with sweat. “What the hell,” he croaked and massaged his temples.
He wrapped the sheet around him and shuffled towards the bathroom at the other end of the room. He stood at the toilet and quickly realized his urine stream was shooting sharply to the left and into the air. “Oh, come on!” He got his rogue wang under control and stumbled back into the bedroom.
Confused, he looked out the window. No horror movie storm awaited him. It was a perfectly sunny day. He cautiously opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. There on nearby chair were his clothes from the previous evening. Everything had been washed and neatly folded. He grabbed them quickly, slipped back into the room, hurriedly put everything on and was walking down the hallways with slightly less trepidation minutes later.
He came to the end of the hall as it opened up to reveal the enormous wooden banister and spiral staircase leading down to the first floor, foyer, and front door beyond. Not wasting any time, he rushed down the stairs and tried the door, certain it would be locked by key or so other unearthly means. It opened with ease and was not nearly as heavy to move as he thought the night before.
He closed it gingerly behind him so as not to call attention to himself. He looked around at the sun-soaked grounds and there was not another soul in sight. In fact, he heard no sounds at all. No birds, no breeze, no traffic. Nothing. He took the stone steps two at a time and speed walked down the narrow walkway towards the path at the end of the clearing.
Rodney paused around the first bend of the forest path, leaned over and farted loudly three times. His bowels clenched fiercely as if his stomach was pissed off at whatever he’d forced down his drunken gullet during the party. “Nice to see some things still work,” he muttered to himself and smiled.
He glanced quickly over his shoulder into the woods. Nothing moved but trees swaying in the breeze. He could have sworn he heard the familiar giggling from the night before. He was not in his right mind, clearly. Maybe he wanted to hear it to justify his experiences.
Paranoia was not what he needed at this particular moment in time.
When he had regained his composure, he huffed and puffed all the way back down the hill. The giant iron gates were open to the street and his car was still parked a few hundred feet beyond them.
His shaking hand put his key in the door and he climbed inside and immediately locked the doors. It felt like the safest cocoon ever. He leaned back against the seat and sighed for what felt like a thousand years. He opened his eyes, farted again, and saw something under his driver’s side wiper. It appeared to be a post it note. He rolled the window down, grabbed it, and held it to his face. It read:
Dear Rodney,
Thanks for being a trooper at our party last night.
Sorry if the booze and dancing got the better of you.
Glad you were able to sleep it off. Come back any time!
All our best,
Sateen, Mara, Eloise
He crumpled the note up and tossed it against the windshield. “Bitches!” he roared. “What did you do to me? I know you did something?” An acute pain made his temples throb. “Get out of my head!” he screamed to no one. He fired up the engine and pulled away from the curb. He would indeed be back, oh yes. And when he did, he was bringing company to vindicate his story. The lawful, arresting kind of company. He wouldn’t be another Gunter. No way. No how. This was war!
III
The quaint aroma of piss lodged itself in Rodney’s nostrils as he set his laundry basket on the countertop. It had been two days since his ordeal at the Halloween party at the mansion in Laurel Canyon and he still wasn’t fully recovered. The day he got home he had pretty much slept away the afternoon and night. The following day was a blur of stuffing himself with any and all fast food within walking distance. He was flat out ravenous. What the hell had those bitches (he refused to concede they were anything supernatural) done to him?
The ancient Chinese woman who ran the Laundromat eyed him warily as she lit up her thousandth cigarette of the day. “You not look so good, party boy.”
Rodney ambled past her to the change machine. “Good morning to you, too, lady.”
She seemed distracted by something out the window and then mumbled under her breath. “White boy look like shit,” she breathed, flicking ash onto the faded linoleum.
After making change, he divvied up his clothes into separate washers and dumped in the detergent. He closed the lids and pressed start and leaned against the counter. Within seconds, he was staring out the window, daydreaming.
He faintly heard the old Chinese woman laughing in his direction but quickly tuned it out.
He closed his eyes and he was lying on a luxurious bed with red satin sheets and pillows. He turned his head to see Eloise and her tangles of fire-red hair dangling over his shoulder. He opened his mouth to speak, but she put a finger over his lips and kissed him instead.
Her tongue probed the inside of his mouth as if looking for buried treasure. He became short of breath and instinctively pushed her mouth off of his and gasped for air. She giggled and pushed him back down with surprising force. “Not so fast, mister,” she cooed.
He tried to focus his eyes and take in his surroundings but beyond the bedposts, all was darkness. How in the world were there lights above and near the bed without any bulbs or lamps to be seen?
“Somebody’s ready to make friends, I see,” Eloise purred while taking his boxers down with her teeth. She ran her eager tongue up and down the sides of his throbbing erection.
Without warning, a deep moan escaped from deep in his throat and he felt his eyes roll back in his head. He was powerless to resist and his heart was beating loudly in his ears. The overwhelming wetness of her mouth had overtaken him and there was no going back now. He felt hands all over him. They were gentle at first, but quickly became rougher and grabbed at him painfully, causing him to yell out in pain.
The fantasy was rapidly turning to nightmare, and he forced himself to open his eyes. To his horror, he realized he was on the floor of the Laundromat, three grown men were forcefully holding him down and his pants were around his ankles. Oh God, please no, he pleaded with himself, but he already knew what had happened.
The old Chinese woman stood over him and laughed in his face. “Pervert white boy like to make sex with detergent bottle!”
Rodney knew without looking that the wetness on his crotch was, in fact, detergent and that his fantasy had gotten the better of him the worst way possible.
“You’re a sick bastard,” said a heavy-set black man who was holding him down.
“Can’t be doing that in front of my damn kids, asshole,” a redneck in a baseball cap said, also with a good grip.
“I’m sorry,” was all Rodney could manage.
The Chinese woman tossed his wet clothes out onto the bushes outside the front door. “You not sorry. Pervert never sorry. You can’t come back here no more, okay? Take his sorry ass outside!”
The two men dutifully picked Rodney up and dragged him out the front door. In seconds, he was feverishly rapping himself up in a sheet and making a b-line for his car, dragging his clothes basket all the way.
“What the hell, man?” he repeated several times to himself as he fumbled for the keys. “What the hell happened at that goddamn party? This is not good. Nope. Not good at all.”
IV
The next night, Rodney made his way down to Slick Rick’s, his favorite low key dive bar. It was hole in the wall dive bar with a tiny parking lot and no TVs. It was perfect place for him to down a few drinks in the company of strangers who wanted absolutely nothing to do with him.
He ambled into the place and bellied up to the bar. “Heineken,” he called down to the bartender, who nodded and placed the bottle in front of him seconds later.
An ancient jukebox in the corner was playing “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” and it seemed to alternate between being too loud and too quiet.
Three haggard looking older women were playing pool in the corner. When the chorus of the some came around, they each held their pool cues like microphones and pretended to sing together like a trio.
A grizzled Kenny Rogers-looking guy was face down on a nearby table, mumbling about aliens and tinfoil hats.
Lastly, there was a cute girl in glasses, maybe mid-twenties, quietly reading a book, and nursing a mixed drink.
Why not? He reasoned, took a swig of his beer, and made his way over to her table. Not all women are psychos. She seems harmless enough. But what the hell is she doing, reading of all things, in a place like this? He stopped about three feet short of her table. “Hi there,” he offered a small reassuring smile. “They sure do play this song a lot, huh?”
The girl looked up from her book. “I’m sorry?” she asked as the three old ladies belted out the chorus yet again.
“Do you mind?” He asked as he pointed to the other empty chair.
“Oh, sure,” she said and closed her book and set it down. “Have a seat.”
“I’m Rodney,” he said and smiled.
“Aram,” the girl said and took a sip of her drink.
“What are you reading?” he said and gestured towards her book with his bottle.
“The Witching Hour by Anne Rice,” she said flatly.
Rodney’s blood ran cold. “Oh, you don’t say. Is it a…scary book?” He tried to regain his composure and smiled meekly.
“I guess,” Aram said and shrugged. “I’ve seen scarier things in real life.” She smiled for the first time. “In fact, it’s way funnier than I thought it’d be.” She took another drink. “In fact, it doesn’t seem like Anne really did her research. I mean, all that my heart bleeds for New Orleans and old world Caribbean voodoo crap…” She trailed off and laughed to herself.
“Right, right,” Rodney heard himself say in agreement. He lifted his bottle for another drink, but was slightly horrified to see that he had already drained it. He suddenly didn’t want to talk to Aram anymore or hear about her funny, creepy book. He wanted out of there. “I think I’m going to get another beer. You want anything?”
“I want you to look at me when you address me, Rodney,” Aram said and heavily accented his name.
He looked up from his empty bottle directly into her eyes. Something had changed. Was it her face or her demeanor or was he losing it?
He blinked and looked around the room. The bartender was frozen in place while pouring himself a drink. The jukebox had stopped and the three old ladies were standing directly behind him.
“See anything you like, Rodney?” asked one, who slowly morphed into Eloise.
“This is a tacky place. Even for you,” said another and she morphed in Sateen.
Rodney was aware that he was gasping for air. “What…what the hell?” he wheezed.
The last old lady walked around the table and sat on Aram’s lap and merged with her body, becoming Mara. “I think you mean ‘who the hell,’” she said and laughed. “You only had the one beer. You seriously couldn’t put it together that Aram was just Mara spelled backwards. I’m disappointed.”
Eloise giggled. “No brownie points for you, Rodney. Want to come back to the house and…dance some more with me?” She took a step towards him.
“No way!” Rodney yelled. He found his footing and started backing away from the table.
“Maybe we can start a book club together,” Mara said.
“He will come to us of our own free will, sisters,” Sateen said calmly, and used her magic to refill Mara’s glass and took a drink.
Rodney was nearly to the door but didn’t dare take his eyes off the sisters. “Stay away from me…” It was meant to be forceful but was uttered more as a whine.
Eloise snapped her fingers and a little black book appeared in her hands. “We can schedule a playdate if you want. I’m free on Saturday,” she giggled as a pencil scribbled in the book on its own.
“Your face! The cops. I’ll bring the police!” Rodney screamed for lack of anything better and ran out the door and into the night.
“The more the merrier,” Eloise called after him. “Cops are so cute. Bang, bang,” she mock shot the air.
“Let him go, sisters,” Sateen said and took another drink.
Mara patted the sides of her face. “My face? But I used the anti-wrinkle spell just like you guys.”
Sateen snapped her fingers and the jukebox began playing the same song again.
“Oh, I love this one,” Eloise said, snapping her black book to disappear, and began dancing in place.
“Of course you do,” Mara said and rolled her eyes.
The three sisters began to leave the bar.
“Witchcraft!” muttered the Kenny Rogers-looking drunk. “I knew if I stuck around this place long enough, I’d see it again…”
Eloise took a tinfoil hat out of her pocket and placed it gently on his head. “Shh…” she whispered, placed her hand on his forehead, and he passed out again.
“Goddamn hippie witches,” the bartender said and took a picture with his phone. “I got proof now. I’ll sell my story and they’ll make a movie.”
Sateen turned and said: “You need to read more!”
Mara’s hardback book shot across the room, smashed the bartender’s phone to pieces, and then smacked him in the face until he was unconscious.
Eloise sighed as the sisters left the bar. “These guys are no fun anymore. I miss Rodney.”
“All in good time, sisters,” Sateen said and smiled. “All in good time.”
V
Officer Vargas slowed the cruiser down and craned his neck to read the addresses. “This overgrowth is unreal, even for Laurel Canyon. What the hell? You seeing all this, Sampson?”
The other policeman, Sampson, turned off the CB and rolled down his window. “We need to wrap this up, dude. My shift’s almost done. Kickoff is in an hour. What’s that address again, sir?” He looked back over the seat at Rodney.
Rodney rolled his eyes. “It’s six, six, seven Tabernacle.” They had been up and down the street for almost an hour and hadn’t seen any such side street.
“I hate to cry bullshit, sir,” Vargas sighed, “but I’ve been up and down this street a million times on my watch and I’ve never heard of it.”
Sampson tapped on the dashboard. “Okay, one more pass and then we double back so I can take a leak at that 7-11 down the hill. Sorry, sir.”
Rodney rolled his eyes and sighed. “Rodney. Just call me Rodney.”
“Okay, fine,” Sampson retorted and opened a mini bag of Cheetos. “Do you mind if I take a minute out of this stupid-ass witch hunt to take a piss, Rodney?”
Vargas laughed his ass off. “I honestly doubt he gives a shit, man.” He took a swig of an enormous energy drink can. The cruiser started to pick up speed.
Rodney suddenly felt an acute pain in his stomach and he doubled over. Within seconds, he was sweating and breathing in quick shallow breaths. “Pull over!” he whined.
Sampson turned and looked back at him, fingers covered in Cheetos cheese dust . “What’s up, little man?” He hungrily licked the cheese from his fingers. “You see something?” Sampson’s demeanor changed when he saw Rodney clutching himself. “Hey man,” he said to Vargas. “Pull over here. Dude doesn’t look so hot.”
The very instant the car came to a halt, Rodney unleashed one hell of an ass bomb. The heinous fart made the entire back seat vibrate. It lasted for several seconds and he strained, grunted, and tried to breathe the best he could.
“Damn!” Sampson and Vargas cried together. They both exited the car and held their hands up to their faces.
“What the hell did you eat, boy?” Sampson was laughing but visibly distraught.
Vargas held a handkerchief over his nose and mouth. “That is not natural!”
Rodney leaned back against the seat and caught his breath. He closed his eyes and tried to regain his composure. When he opened them again, his eyes focused and he saw the sign, clear as day, about ten feet off the road from where the officers were standing. It was the same sign he’d seen the previous weekend, minus the party information. He climbed out of the car and began to stumble forward.
Vargas removed his handkerchief and tested the air.
Sampson watched Rodney leave the car and shuffle towards them. “Aw, now what?”
Rodney paused and pointed up the hill towards the unseen mansion. “Now, we walk.” He
brushed aside a tree branch, exposing the giant iron gate and brick wall. The gate was open and Rodney walked through it, not even bothering with the intercom.
“The kid’s got an eye like a hawk,” Sampson muttered.
“Come on,” Vargas said. “Let’s get this shit over with and go grab a beer.”
Sampson fell in line behind him up the drive. “Don’t have to tell me twice.”
VI
They were resting near the top of the hill, just around the bend from the walkway to the mansion.
Sampson came stumbling out of the bushes. “Whew! Thanks, fellas. I don’t think I could’ve waited another minute. My back teeth were floating.”
Vargas looked to Rodney. “Anybody else need a piss break?”
Rodney sighed impatiently. “I’m good. I just want to get this over with. These witches are gonna pay for what they did to me.” He punched his fist into his palm in his best fake tough guy mode.
Sampson zipped up his fly. “Witches, huh? Well, if it’s more than just alcohol mixed with some local Goth girls pulling pranks while their parents are out of town, I’ll buy you a beer, sir. Even a Heineken if they have it.”
Rodney started up the walkway, and then turned back towards them for dramatic effect. “For the last time, my name is Rodney.”
“Let’s go, Rodney,” Vargas said and the three of them moved quickly down the walkway to the front door of the mansion.
Rodney was about to knock when Vargas grabbed his hand. “Let us do the talking here, okay, Rodney?”
Rodney nodded, somewhat relieved.
Sampson raised his hand to knock, when it suddenly opened and Eloise was standing in the doorway, eating an apple. “Hey, officers. What can I do ya for?” She turned and saw Rodney and her face lit up. “Rodney? Hey! Welcome back!” She moved to give him a hug but he took a reflexive step back.
Vargas took off his sunglasses. “We’d like to ask you and your sisters a few questions, Miss. Are they home?”
Eloise nodded and tossed her apple core into the nearby rose garden. “Come on in. I just made some Raspberry iced tea.” She turned and the others followed her inside.
“See, she knows me,” Rodney muttered to Sampson.
“Shut up,” came the whispered reply.
Sateen and Mara came from a room down the hall and meet them at the foyer. They were both wearing overalls; their hair was neatly pulled back into pony tails, and had paint smears all over their clothes.
Sateen stepped forward. “Hi, I’m Sateen. I’d shake your hand but we’re repainting our ballroom. I’m a mess. This is my sister Mara.”
“Hey, delicious,” Mara said to Rodney.
“What seems to be the trouble?” Sateen undid her pony tail and her long, luxurious, brunette hair tumbled down over her shoulders, like some kind of slow-motion film noir close up. Morticia from The Addams Family’s much more attractive sister, maybe.
The officers were momentarily taken aback. Vargas spoke first. “First things first; do you three know this man?” He pointed at Rodney.
“How could we ever forget Rodney,” Sateen offered.
Mara smirked and Eloise giggled and left the room.
“Okay, good,” Sampson interjected. “Was Rodney here at a party you held last Saturday night?”
Mara undid her pony tail as well. “Rodney? Oh, he was here, all right. In fact, you could say he was the life of the party.”
That made Sateen chuckle, but she quickly recovered. “Yes, he was here at our Halloween party. He got really drunk and passed out. We let him sleep it off in a guest room and the next morning, he left. What’s going on?”
Vargas jotted some notes down on a pad. “Rodney here claims that you three drugged him, held him here against his will, and withdrew a pint of his blood as well.”
Eloise returned with a pitcher of iced tea and some cups. “Well, we made out if that’s what you want to call it. But I wasn’t the only one. Rodney just has…that special something. He really knew how to work a room. Tea anyone?”
Everyone took a cup and she poured some for all.
Sampson took a drink and sighed. “None of you slipped Rodney any hallucinogens or narcotics? Not in his drinks while he was dancing or while he slept?”
Mara drained her cup in one long sip. “Look, if he was on anything, he got it way before he came here. I mean, the dude did stumble in here at, like, two A.M.”
Vargas jotted more notes. “And the party was still going on at this time?”
Sateen eyed him carefully. “It was winding down. Look, we have a lot of work to do. This place is ours but it’s quite the fixer-upper. The lighting is poor during the evening and we try to cover as much as we can in the daylight hours. Are we being accused of anything?”
Sampson looked at Vargas and then nodded at Rodney. “Our boy here seems to think that
you three are witches and you sapped his precious bodily fluids to prolong your unnatural
lives. As crazy as it sounds, that’s the statement we have. Any response to these, uh, allegations, ladies?”
This made the three sisters howl with laughter.
Mara took a step towards Rodney and he recoiled. “It was a Halloween party! They were costumes, you dill weed.”
“No, no, it was a setup—“ Rodney started.
Sateen cut him off and looked right into Vargas’s eyes. “Okay, fine. Look, for the record, we are not witches. We’re not Wiccan, we don’t have a Necronomican we worship in our basement, and we don’t ride brooms, officer.” She took a drink and glared at Rodney, smiling all the while.
Mara looked right into Sampson’s eyes. “I think somebody’s having wet dreams after watching too many episodes of Charmed at night.”
This made everyone laugh. Everyone except for Rodney, who scowled in frustration.
Eloise drank the remaining tea straight from the pitcher. “I can’t even stand the wannabe Goth chicks that clog the Galleria every weekend. They dress all in black with black eyeliner and black nail polish and have lame fantasies about having Robert Smith’s babies. It’s like, get over yourself, already, you know? They mostly hang out a night because their parents can’t be bothered to be included in their children’s lives anymore. Tell me, Rodney; are they witches, too?” She winked at him.
Everyone chuckled again.
Vargas closed his notepad. “Well, I think we’ve got everything we need here. Sorry to waste your time, ladies.” He paused to make eye contact with Rodney. “Let’s go.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble at all, officers,” Sateen smiled. “We’re always happy to help.”
Mara reached into her overalls pocket and pulled out a business card. “We do party planning on the side, if you guys ever need such a thing.” She handed the card over to Vargas. “That’s the website. You can find the link from there.”
“Oh, hey, thanks,” he replied. He held the card up to read it. The card had a cartoonish illustration depicting a drooling dog, eagerly gaping at a computer monitor. Underneath, was the website address followed by the all-important slogan:
Pavlov’s Blog
Once you come inside, you’ll beg for more
Vargas smiled widely. “That’s a hell of a tagline you have there. What kind of parties do you arrange?”
“Anything you want,” Eloise cooed.
Rodney rolled his eyes at the obvious come on. “Oh, please…”
This seemed to ruin the moment sufficiently and Mara took a step backwards, implying she was going back to work.
Sampson handed his cup to Eloise and gave her a quick wink for the effort. “Thanks for the tea.”
Eloise grinned like a wide-eyed school girl and curtseyed. “Raspberry is the bomb, right?”
“’The bomb’? Oh, come on!” Rodney took a step forward but Sampson grabbed his arm. “You guys can’t be buying this! They’re lying! You’re under their spell! Can’t you see what they’re doing to you?”
Mara put her hair back up in a pony tail. “Don’t be jealous, Rodney. If you want my number, all you have to do is ask.” She smiled at him and raised a mischievous eyebrow.
Both police officers chuckled at this.
Eloise clapped her hands in excitement. “You can be my boyfriend, Rodney. You can move in tomorrow, if you want. This place is old and empty.” She gestured with her hands, emphasizing the vast foyer. “You can fill it up with your joyous warmth. I know you’re an idea man, sweetie. Whatever you want to do, I’m game.” She took a half step towards him and he flinched.
“Damn it!” Rodney roared. His chest felt tight and he needed fresh air like it was going out of style. “Leave me the fuck alone!” He pulled free of Sampson’s grasp and walked back out the front door.
“Come back any time, Rodney,” Sateen offered and smiled.
“Ladies,” Vargas said and tipped his hat. Sampson smiled, waved and followed Vargas back out the door.
VII
The officers caught up with Rodney halfway down the winding driveway. He was doubled over again and was sweating and panting, obviously fighting for each pained breath. He was beat red and was waving them off, as if to warn them of something.
“There’s our boy,” Sampson wheezed. “You’re lucky those fine ass ladies don’t sue you for libel, man. From the looks of it, they’re super wealthy and can afford a team of very vicious lawyers.” He smiled and rubbed his neck in deep thought. “Some serious eye candy up in these hills, for real. Every last motherfucker’s getting laid in Laurel Canyon these days but Latrell Sampson. It just ain’t right. Why can’t there be more domestic disputes up in here?”
“Tell me about it.” Vargas pointed in Rodney’s general direction. “Hey, is this asshole gonna gas us out again?” Vargas got his handkerchief out as a reflex.
Both men took a cautionary step back.
Rodney stood upright and clutched at his crotch. “Oh God, it fucking hurts!” he moaned in agony.
The officers took a step forward.
“Stay back!” Rodney warned. “I don’t know what they’re doing but it’s bending my cock!”
He seemed to be working over his penis through his jeans and wouldn’t let them inspect it.
“So now they spiked your tea, chief?” Sampson shook his head. “It’s over, Rodney. Give it up, okay?”
The pain became unbearable. Rodney stripped his clothes off. When he took his boxers off, his penis began rotating rapidly in a propeller-like motion. He tried grabbing onto it, but he
couldn’t hold on for very long and it would begin to violently twirl again. “Oh, fuck me! Make it stop! Oh God! Why? Jesus, it hurts!”
The officers were horrified, baffled, and frozen to their spots.
A disheveled man with a Rip Van Winkle beard down to his knees and torn clothing appeared from the woods and approached Rodney. “Only one thing seems to work with this,” he bellowed and slammed his knee into his pin-wheeling groin.
Rodney fell in a heap on the ground breathing and holding his overworked wammer-jammer. Almost a full minute passed before he was able to speak. “Who…who are you?”
“I’m the gardener,” the man stated in a hushed tone. “My name is Gunter. Please be on your way before nightfall. The hills in these parts become…treacherous after sundown. I can say no more. Good day.” With that he disappeared quickly back into the forest.
Rodney screamed at the top of his lungs as another powerful seizure overtook him until he went hoarse and from then on, could only moan.
The officers tried to cover him with his jacket but he wouldn’t be consoled.
Sampson called after Gunter and stepped off the drive to question him. “Where’d you run off to, old man?”
Vargas raised his walkie-talkie to call something in to his dispatch but his mouth wouldn’t work and he just stared at Rodney in astonishment. His eyes glazed over and he turned back in the direction of the mansion. “I hear you, Mistress, Sateen. I will bring the stag boy back to you at sundown to work in your stable as it pleases you…” He drifted off and then he slowly turned, mouth agape, to watch the sunset.
In the nearby forest, a wolf growled.
That would be DJ Lycan, Rodney surmised.
Sampson screamed in fear and pain. It sounded like he was running in circles. His scream was abruptly cut off and then all was silent.
Rodney’s situation was a total loss. He could only lie on the ground, and stare at the setting sun. Was he completely crazy? Would anyone ever wander into this place to rescue him? Was his propeller penis still in working order or was it now merely a parlor trick for three bored witches? And lastly, the sixty-four-thousand dollar question: What in the bright, blue fuck were in those cookies, Adam?
Expansion Bridge
What with the comings and goings of nurses - blood pressure, temperature, wound and catheter bag checks - the ward was always hopping; I wouldn’t have noticed any sort of transformation anyway. Mabel and I visited last just before Eloise’s discharge. We told her the bridge news - there wasn’t any good gossip – and we each read her a chapter from my murder mystery. Mabel read slow on account of her bad eyes; she drifted off to sleep, mid-chapter. So did Eloise.
When Eloise came to bridge her flushed cheeks and clear eyes sparkled good health and well-being. How lucky she’d been to be selected for a transplant at her ripe old age, she said. ‘Only got it ‘cause I’m healthy everywhere else.’ She sat up straight to and punctuated her comments with a girlish laugh I didn’t recognize. There was a light inside her - all around her. Crotchety parts were plumb gone; out came funny jokes accompanied by deft wrist flicks and outrageous winks. And her good mood was contagious; I couldn’t stop smiling. We were at Sadie’s that day. Before we went to the cards, we sat ‘round the table for a scrummy lunch, served by Sadie’s housekeeper, a fat Polish lady named Hanna. It was a special welcome back for Eloise: shrimp tails fanned on a bed of lettuce with a spicy tomato relish in crystal champagne glasses, baked, breaded crab in garlic roué, then, my favorite: Hanna’s chocolate cake.
During coffee I popped my handful of pills. Most of the others followed suit - I mean the pill popping: we hadn’t dealt the cards yet. Anti-inflamms, blood slow downers, anti-aches, tummy tamers, bowel binders or looseners. I watched Mabel’s wrinkly fist open to drop her pills on the tablecloth; blue, yellow, green, pink. My jellybeans (ha!) were supposed to sort out my kidneys.
‘Mary Lou, your kidneys are kaput,’ my doctor informed me last time I saw him. ‘You can’t manage without ‘em - they filter the water you take in and send it to where it’s needed. I’m goin’ put you down for dialysis here - there’s a waitlist an’ you need to git on it. Don’t want you driving to kingdom come for treatment.’ No way, dialysis, I thought. I just took my pills. Mabel’s pills were for eye troubles. Sadie and Eloise had arrhythmia, tachycardia and hypertension - heart troubles.
After lunch we made our way to the conservatory. Mabel leaned on her cane; Sadie used one, too. I pressed my hands into my lower back and followed them around the corner. It was better when I’d been able to eat real jellybeans. Last time I did that I’d dislodged half a molar. Pretty soon I’d be reduced to hoovering in baby food. Mabel had dentures; so did Sadie. Aging is the pits. First, you can’t thread a needle, then you forget what you’re supposed to be sewing. You have to turn up the volume on the TV and the adverts, already too loud, get louder. Your hair falls out and skin flaps sprout from your neck like nursing tadpoles. Foot-long eyebrow hairs grow overnight. Then your eyebrows disappear so you pencil them on, Mr Spock-fashion. Your purse bulges with ‘Night-safe’ incontinence pads.
In Sadie’s conservatory we took our places at two card tables. Sadie’s house was my favorite of all our eight bridge venues. It was a grand old mansion that sat on its own hill. A circular drive took you up to the front door, heavy and impressive, between white marble columns and below an ornate, wrought-iron lantern. You entered the 1800s once inside. You expected a Confederate general to be smoking cigars in the Library. ‘Course Sadie’s husband, Charles, might as well be one. We were all widows except Sadie, who whispered she wished she were one, too, like widowhood was a club you could aspire to. Charles was 15 years her senior: he must have been about 93. The mansion, passed down through her parents, was once the only house on the surrounding land. Charles had been a clever investor so it was money marrying money and all the kit and caboodle that went with it. Chippendale this, Persian that, a Richelieu-patterned silver service and a solemn grandfather clock that cleared its throat with whirs and clicks before bonging the hour. Not that Charles would notice; he was stone deaf. He always waved hello as we filed in, head waggling up and down on a long neck. Half tortoise and almost as old.
Eloise and I were partners that day, which had always vexed me before. She never concentrated on the cards as much as on the talk. She opened with one heart - well, she had a new ticker, so why not pay tribute? Janice passed and I offered two hearts. Eloise waggled her eyebrows at me. My own eyebrows went up in surprise; verboten to signal like that and Eloise knew it. She announced ‘three hearts’ which made her the declarer. And she made our nine tricks, no nonsense, slapping down the ace and the queen, her gaze zipping between her hand and the board like she was Charles H. Goren. My dummy role seemed apt; slack-jawed I sat, flabbergasted by her speedy progress. Maybe they’d given her a new brain instead of a new heart.
Eloise and I cleaned up that day, three hearts, two spades, three no trump. Then and there I decided I always wanted to be her partner. Since we played twice a week, I might learn a few tricks off her. We were collecting handbags and shuffling out the front door when I remembered that she’d turned down Hanna’s chocolate cake. Eloise usually asked for seconds. She was a short roly-poly because the cake she ate went straight to her middle.
As I drove her home that day, I asked about her diet.. Her appetite was same as before but she ate different, she told me. Skipped desserts and had cravings for rabbit food - lettuce, carrots, nuts and seeds. She’d lost five pounds. That was good; there were plenty to spare, she chuckled. Eloise had more energy, her eyesight was better and her reflexes faster. The transplant had given her good balance; she walked faster and without her stick she said.
One day Eloise asked me to come to her new yoga class. The teacher was a grey-haired skinny chicken man, Shandi, who took us through poses, all connected with Darth Vader breathing and swooping up from down dog. In my velour stretch pants and an old t-shirt, I struggled with stiffness; no pretzel twists from this tub-a-lard. More like the Tin Man in need of Dorothy’s oilcan. Eloise could have been Toto; up dog, down dog, executed with canine friskiness. I clean forgot to move several times, watching her. After class we put on our street clothes in the ladies’. I’d never seen Eloise in the buff before; she looked pretty good for 77. Maybe they’d whip-stitched a tummy tuck when they changed her heart. Roly poly was trimming down. That’s what got my detective mind ticking about her new heart. Over lunch I asked my burning question:
‘Who was your donor?’ I bit into my Danish and looked at her expectantly.
‘A young woman,’ she answered. ‘I’m not supposed to know - family protection - but my file was at Reception when I went in for a checkup. I peeked - Melanie something - there was a photo - looked about 35.’ Eloise sucked on her straw to inhale her lunch: a witchy seaweed. The light bulb that had snapped on in my brain glowed brighter.
‘You’re different now – green drinks, yoga, energy, focus – soon you’ll be earning bridge master points,’ I said. ‘You’re a regular workout walnut. Maybe Melanie rubbed off. Aren’t you curious? Who was she?’
‘‘Course I am, but -’
I leaned forward. ‘When’s the next appointment?’
‘Friday, after bridge.’
‘Lemme drive you.’
‘Mary Lou, I don’t know.’ Eloise shook her head. Her fingers were laced, like she was kneeling at a pew. ‘First, there’s confidentiality. The family has to sign a release, and they didn’t. And then, do I want to know? Melanie doesn’t need her heart ‘cause she’s dead - there was some, some accident, must’ve killed her. I only have the heart ‘cause Melanie’s cold in the ground.’
I sipped my latté. After a minute or two, I patted my lips with my napkin and said: ‘The heart’s like another brain, pumping blood. The blood goes through all the organs, distributing and carrying information. Seems like more than the pump was transplanted. You can decide -’
Eloise thought about it. Curiosity won.
Friday at the doctor’s office Eloise asked for information about a transplant support group. The receptionist went into the next room. My detective self took charge; I grabbed the pink folder with Eloise’s name on it while she kept a look out. In a little notepad, I jotted down name, DOB, profession - my eyes widened - Melanie had been a yoga and meditation teacher. Then Eloise hissed and I put the folder back just before the receptionist came into the room. A spark of victory zipped through me; I was like the gumshoes in my Whodunits.
Back at my house we sat in front of the computer screen googling ‘Melanie Sekovsky’. Her website still existed – why? She and her family had moved to California from Latvia a decade ago, all of them troubled with illnesses. In LA she’d discovered healthy eating. She’d cured her husband of diabetes, her daughters of chronic eczema and ME - was that what happened to youngsters who got hypnotized by social media? Through the same healthy diet, Melanie herself lost over a hundred pounds - before and after photos proved it. We read on. The family ate mostly raw food and drank - you guessed it - green smoothies! Eloise and I stared at each other. We clinked glasses. Inside hers was a thick sludge of pear and spinach. Yuck.
‘So it’s her heart in you,’ I said, ‘knowing what it wants to eat and what exercise it likes. Melanie’s in charge.’ I sipped my Diet Coke. Eloise smiled. A green fuzzy caterpillar coated her upper lip. I smiled back, on account of the moustache.
On another website a short obit told us Melanie had died in a car accident and was survived by her family. She was 42.
‘That’s exactly why I didn’t want to do this,’ said Eloise, placing her hand over her chest and inhaling, yoga-style. ‘-cause she’s dead. I have her heart.’
‘Yeah, but ‘cause you have her heart, you can live better and longer than you would have with yours,’ I protested, stifling a burp. ‘Melanie didn’t die so she could give you her heart. First she died, nothing to do with you.’ I watched Eloise’s face. ‘Complete luck, you received her heart and not someone else’s. And if you had received someone else’s heart, they didn’t choose to die for you -.’
Eloise’s shoulders straightened as she interrupted me; ‘If I knew who she was, if I could see what her heart wanted to do - I could do it for her, for us.’ Her eyes had widened and her hands were opening like she was catching a beachball. She stood and left the room. I found her in the living room, executing a salute to sun. I curled up on the sofa and watched her go through the ‘asanas’, as Chicken man called them, squatting, arms pointed skyward, hands in prayer, leg lunges, up and down dogs, sky point, squat. A warrior in training - body and breath. ‘Feel better now,’ she announced,
I had to go see my specialist, Doc Renal, I’d nicknamed him, the next day. He took me to the dialysis unit to show me it how worked. My name was top of the list - they could fit me in soon, he told me as we entered the ward. Eight patients, four on the left, four on the right, were hooked up to giant machines. Four hours of blood cleaning: tubes siphoned it out, machine filtered it, tubes funneled it back in. That old biddy was talking to herself in slo-mo? I remarked as we left. Patients’ speech can be slow and slurred at the start but strong and sure at the end, said Doc. Like a wind-up gramophone record? I asked. Their faces probably morphed from grey to white to pink, too, courtesy of this biology experiment. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday: one group, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday: the other. Half of each week, snatched away. I imagined days off feeling dizzy. And dreading days on. Top of the list, I thought. So when somebody dies I could be next in their dialysis chair.
We were at Sadie’s, eating lunch before bridge the next time I saw Eloise. She swept in, all starry-eyed, back from a week-long yoga retreat in the Smoky Mountains with Chicken man. She’d lost more weight. Now she was the perfect proportions for her height, all firm, toned muscle, not a wobble, even under her chin. When I complimented her Wonder Woman looks, she told me she’d learned Turtle pose. I remembered the lady in her yoga class who did Turtle standing up, forward-folded. Wove her arms though her legs, hands clasped behind her back, head poking up between her legs. She staggered up and down her mat[LR1] , examining her bum. I could look in a hand mirror for the same effect, I figured.
Eloise was full of beans that day. She jumped up to clear the lunch dishes with Hanna and crouched down find Mabel’s card under the table. It was after she’d won us a three no-trump bid and we were getting ready to leave that I asked about her new necklace.
‘From Shandi,’ she glowed, running a finger back and forth along the delicate silver chain.
‘Shandi?’ asked Sadie.
‘My yoga instructor,’ Eloise said blushing, then beaming. My eyes near popped out of my head. Chicken man!? We leaned close. A silver character shaped like a delicate number three with a zigzag coming out its backside.
‘Swahili?’ Sadie asked.
‘No, Sanskrit, for “Om”,’ Eloise breathed. ‘The beginning and the end, all rolled into one. That’s the word we end the chant with, you remember, Mary Lou,’ she turned to me.
‘Ummm.’ I nodded. I remembered they’d intoned a long, dentist chair ‘ahhh’ that ended in a hum - where I’d joined in. Maybe Shanti had given her the necklace as an aide-memoire.
‘How come Mr Yoga is giving his disciple a gift?’ I asked.
Eloise crossed her arms around her new trim waist and rocked her head this way and that. Above a big smile her eyes were diamonds. My nostrils flared; something was up.
‘He’s asked me to marry him.’ Now she was blinking back tears and we were all hugging her.
‘Wha-’
‘When?’
‘Well, well, wha’d'ya know!’
‘You look just peachy,’ Sadie purred.
Mabel just stood there, eyebrows at her hairline, mouth opening and closing like a landed fish. Her hearing was fine, even if her eyes couldn’t make out the new necklace so well.
I didn’t ask what I really wanted to know. Sure, Eloise was a frisky 77-year old, slimmed down, smartened up - but Shandi? He must be in his 50s, young enough to be her son. Had they been in the sack together? Had he yoga-ed her waterworks? Were there special exercises for rewiring the sex socket? And Chicken man - maybe he’d had a plug refit? I couldn’t help but compare Shandi to Eloise’s old Entwhistle, godresthissoul, a be-spectacled walrus with rubbery grey skin and a broom bristle over flaccid lips. He’d died twenty years ago of a heart attack.
Eloise and Shandi held their wedding in her garden in late May. We made offerings of flowers and sweets to a potbellied, elephant-headed statue named Ganesha. The bride and groom stood under her pergola, white jasmine perfuming the air. Flower-covered vines wove in and out of the wrought iron legs and made a feathery thatch across the top. On a raised platform to one side sat sitar and tabla players. We sat across from them, shaded by an awning. A humanist gave a New Age talk about ‘being here now’, celebrating ‘the miracle of the moment, permanence in a world of impermanence’.
Since Eloise was Jewish and Shandi was Hindi, it was a mixed service. The humanist lit a small fire in a metal bowl and the couple, who had tied their garments together at the hems, circled the flames seven times, making vows. Then a crunch as Shandi stamped on a glass wrapped in a linen napkin. After he lifted the veil and kissed the bride, they turned to face us. I stared. Had Eloise secretly opted for another transplant? A small jewel glinted in the space above her eyebrows like a third eye. Later she explained it was a stick-on from the Indian shop downtown - a ‘bhindi’ to give her ‘spiritual insight,’ It was then that some fixed part of me burst into tiny pieces: I needed me a transplant, too. Shandi and Eloise smiling the sun at each other - no denying it - her new heart was a secret elixir that had turned back the clock. She wished she’d done it years ago, she’d said. My turn, I thought. With a kidney transplant, I’d get a second wind, be as close to eternal youth as I was going to get in this go-round. The more I’d thought about it, the more anti-dialysis I’d become. It didn’t buy enough time – it was too hard on the body. Kidney-tubers died quick, maybe of boredom. And anyway, what about that blood cleaning machine? It filtered the blood of lots of patients. Wouldn’t some of the old blood be hiding in the machine parts? I got the heebee jeebies thinking about it. Different patients with germs from their blood - and whose blood was already in the machine? Arab or Chink. Or from a serial offender! Someone with Tourette’s. You wouldn’t know what was being filtered into you.
I told Doc Renal I wanted a transplant instead of dialysis. He tried to dissuade me. Doctors were paid to dissuade elderly patients from organs transplants, I figured. We would die before a matching donor could be found. It could take a year. So no dough for the doctors. If the patient signed up for dialysis, doctors would be guaranteed payment because the patient could start right away. She would die, of course, but slowly, from the effects of dialysis, probably. But not before her money disappeared into medical men’s pockets.
‘You might have to wait a long time for a match,’ Doc Renal told me, right on cue. OK, I’d read that demand exceeded supply. Too many people in need, not only the elderly but the young, who had misbehaving organs. Donors: thin on the ground. I could die waiting. I could die on dialysis, too, I thought. Doc said: ‘Lots of folks feel funny about having a part removed after they are dead. Catholics, for instance, want to go in the ground, all in one piece.’ He was probably right. I imagined a stiff, minus a few organs, at his own wake. Would a taxidermist have been hired to stuff his empty cavities with cotton batting? No. Catholics -and lots of non-Catholics - condemned organ transplants as a demonic business that lined the pockets of opportunists. Amoral ambulance chasers, who benefitted from untimely accidents. Meantime, Doc Renal had shifted gears.
‘Mary Lou, you’d have to take drugs to support your body. And it would cost you to have a transplant - organ procurement is a thriving business.’ And finally: ‘the operation is a risk. At your age,’ he added for good measure.
‘Uh huh, that’s fine,’ I greeted each new negative with a happy nod. I didn’t mind the wait. I was already snarfing handfuls of pills to balance this and suppress that; no problem with taking them longer. I had plenty of money stashed away and decent medical insurance to boot. And I promised not to die. And why not take the risk? Wasn’t he the best renal man in the land - shouldn’t I have faith in his operating skills? The last point clinched it, of course. Stroke a frog: he puffs out his chest and hangs there, paralyzed. Renal inhaled, said he’d get things organized for a transplant, eyes all glassy with my compliment. What a pushover.
‘Where do I sign?’ I asked, smiling hugely.
When I did sign, I told Doc Renal I’d like to know who the donor was. He said what I thought he’d say: against the law, I’d need to trust him. When the right kidney came along, it would be mine. They wouldn’t know who the donor was either. Privacy, protection of family, blah blah. When I started arguing he walked me to the door and shooed me out.
I drove home taking deep breaths. I’d been thinking about this for weeks. What if my donor was a slug-a-bed who had a worse addiction to chocolate than I did? Who died because she weighed four hundred pounds and got stuck in her bedroom doorway? Or a gambler? Or a popcorn addict? I coasted down the hill and turned into my driveway. I couldn’t order a kidney from Amazon after scrolling to find a donor with healthy credentials. Nor could I plan in advance. Are you dying soon so’s I could have your kidney, please? If a kidney came along, I couldn’t reject it ’cause it didn’t measure up. But dialysis sounded worse. What choice did I have? My water filters were packing up, moving out. I’d have to hope for a good donor. I could always investigate afterwards.
While I waited for my new lease on life, I read lots of bumpf, put a dent in my bank account paying hospital bills, and signed ominous papers that began: ‘If I should die…’. I got the call late on a Tuesday night: next morning would be the op. I was excited. Eloise picked me up in Shandi’s Prius.
‘Here’s to stop the nausea after anesthesia.’ She patted a bag of peppermint candies in her purse. Ganesha would look after me, she added, nodding at the top of the dashboard. I prayed to the small orange blob that was Shandi’s god, until the sun reduced him to lump of wax.
Ganesha’s power as remover of obstacles didn’t seem to work. Maybe because the statue in her car had melted. After my op, both ends were blocked: my head was fuzzy and my bum was bunged up, bad. All I did was sleep and strain to poo. I tried the Christian God instead. Give me a bowel movement, even a fart, I prayed, reckoning I might get lucky; most folk wouldn’t ask for such basic needs. The bridge group came to see me. Eloise had master points now. She was thinking about entering a Duplicate competition. Her diamond glinted on a happy finger. I sighed.
Two weeks after I got home from the op my pee was colored. Probably all the pills. Maybe chemicals do that on purpose so that you know you remembered to take them. But I noticed that the pee changed color even though I took the same pills every day. One day it had a blue tinge, the next, it was almost green. Once
the fuzziness was finally gone and I could poo - with the help of the Prune God - I started to pay attention to the pee. In the morning it was usually blue. In the late afternoons: grey. The color varied mid-mornings and evenings, depending on what I was doing or who I was with. I drank more water so I could see it more often. At bridge club I peed blue, usually. One morning, when Eloise and I made a grand slam, it was gold, and I don’t mean the gold color of urine, I mean liquid gold. I wanted to call them all into Sadie’s bathroom to see they had a Queen Midas in their midst. What would a bowel movement have looked like then, I wondered. I’d never noticed a change in color there. Another morning, after Eloise and I were set and went down, my urine was grey. Mabel had declared five clubs - and had made all her tricks.
During coffee I popped my usual handful of pills, as did most of the others. But did I need them all? I had noticed another thing. When Eloise and Shandi invited me to dinner earlier that week, I had felt a surge of energy. Maybe it was because I was in their house. Or from the sandalwood incense, or the prayer they said before we ate - Sanskrit chanting, hands before hearts, eyes at half-mast. Or the food - got a full blown head rush, the minute I sipped the tart apple and ginger brew that Shandi handed me. It was the first time I had ever sampled one of Eloise’s concoctions. Shandi’s meal was restaurant perfect: Onion bhajis, Brinjal Bharta - eggplant in garlicky tomato - and a slow-fired lentil stew with cardamom and ginger. Everything sprinkled with fresh herbs. I savored every mouthful. I felt brighter, clearer thinking. Asked them, what they had put in the food? Could my new kidney have made it taste better?
‘Be open to whatever comes,’ Shandi said in his yoga preaching tone; ‘tune all your senses, not just taste and smell.’
Then I noticed that colors were brighter and had textures. I don’t mean pee colors, I was itching to do something about it. One day, I used the pencil I’d finished the crossword with to make a huge sketch, right on my dining room wall. A scene with a lake, fringed by trees and topped by a few clouds above. I bought paint and began creating a fresco. I became obsessed, skipping the crossword and my TV soaps. I didn’t skip bridge club, but when I got there, all I talked about was green and pink and azure and shades of white for clouds. Sadie came over to see my progress. A big smile bloomed on her face.
‘Since when d’you know how to paint?’
‘Since my new kidney,’ I beamed, holding my palette before me like a waiter’s tray.
When she heard about my fresco, Mabel wanted to come to my next doctor’s visit. You guessed it: she wanted a transplant, too. She could ask the doctor about a possible eye transplant - her thick glasses magnified her eyes to three times their size. She read large print books and wrote herself notes in huge letters. She hadn’t come to see my fresco because she wouldn’t have been able to see it anyway. She also figured a new eye might help her look around to find a boyfriend. This wasn’t guaranteed in the purchase price, I took pains to explain; I didn’t have a chicken man like Eloise did. On the way to the hospital, she asked if I noticed men looking at me. No, I declared. I only saw them in the supermarket, where they fetched and carried to their wives’ commands. A boyfriend wasn’t happening to me, I told her. I was wrong about that, I found out later.
It suited me fine, Mabel coming to the hospital with me. I needed an accomplice for my new plan. As we rode up in the elevator, I asked Mabel to play interference - she’d be the decoy so I could see who my kidney donor was. Once Doc Renal had finished taking blood and quizzing me about meds, respiration, and elimination (no, I didn’t mention the colored pee) my appointment was finished. Mabel batted her magnified, larger-than-life peepers and asked Doc to escort her to Ophthalmology. I said I’d catch them up and slipped into the ladies’. Once they’d turned the corner, I whisked back into his office. I was about to grab the file from his desk when a nurse walked in. With one hand on the file, I bent down and pretended to tie my shoe. In the end, I had to wait another two weeks, until my next appointment, to proceed with my investigations. Doc Renal left the room for a few minutes when Reception called to say his next patient had arrived early. While he was gone I flicked through my file. My kidney donor was a Jacob Langendijk, originally from Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Later, on Google, I learned that Langendijk was a descendent of a lesser-known Dutch painter by the same name. A painter! Still lifes and landscapes. He’d immigrated to the US and had originally lived in upstate New York before moving to Maryland. My, oh my - a moment of discovery. Move over, Eloise masterpoints: I had me some Dutch Master genes!
I enrolled in two art classes, one drawing, one painting. And though I wasn’t looking for him, I got a boyfriend. Bud’s easel was next to mine. His dry sense of humor made me laugh - deadpan observations about how a for-shortened torso distorts the male reproductive anatomy - good thing women don’t normally see men from below. He wore shorts even though it was October and a cotton trilby, which announced: ‘let’s pretend I have hair on my head’. Train track scars from operations crossed his tanned brown knees. There was a patch of white skin on his brown thigh where they’d harvested a top layer for some patch up job. And, eureka! Bud was a fresco specialist. I invited him over to see my etchings - hee hee - and that was the beginning of our relationship.
By now my dining room wall had transformed into a 20 x 20 shimmering lake, somewhere in fantasy Mediterranea. I’d been working on it for months.
‘Those small waves - they catch the light,’ Bud nodded. ‘It’s a wan sun - a pale disk, good. And your clouds - high and thin, like pulled cotton candy.’ Close up on the right, I’d painted floating lotus in various stages of bloom. A handful boasted layered blooms – pink white petals facing the sky, tapered pink tips. Others were poised to open, like pregnant tulips. Another handful, in post-bloom stage were cone-shaped pods.
‘That’s real good,’ Bud pointed. ‘You got that magic lotus pod pocked with deep holes that have the seeds in ‘em. But the edges of the holes should be puckered.’
My smile faded and I pressed my teeth together. Since when was Bud an expert on lotus pods? He was the first visitor to make critical comments. Harumph! When I saw what he’d done in his own house, I swallowed my offended pride and fixed the holes to make them pucker. A Frank Stella-style crazy quilt collage took up the entire wall of his sitting room. Chagall animals floated in blue heaven on the ceiling of his bathroom. He’d painted Renaissance frescoes of river gods in his bedroom. On the kitchen wall hung a perfect Dutch still life of flowers and insects. In his studio he was working on a commission for the local school - a bright, modern abstract.
Bud took me dancing. Not his forté, but I was tickled anyway: he bobbed up and down and turned us ‘round, grinning like a five-year old: I felt like the pretty princess in a kindergarten play. And we practised bridge, which he was good at. He’d earned red master points. We played Honeymoon Bridge, just the two of us. His bidding tips were improving my game; Eloise crowed in delight when I made our contracts and managed my first grand slam. Bud took Mabel’s place at the bridge table for the weeks she was in hospital and recuperating - first time we’d ever had a man at our club and probably the last time, too, as he and Sadie made every contract and more points than anyone else. Plus, all the gals gushed and giggled over him; he was all smiles and puffed frog. Got me piping jealous.
Mabel’s new eye op happened after Christmas. They had only just learned how to transplant the eyeball and have it talk to the optic nerve - she was a guinea pig. I drove her to her sister’s place when she got out, where she would recuperate for a week. She grumbled about the bandages and the terrible hospital food and a lazy orderly who shirked bedpan duty.
‘Be patient, soon it’ll all be sweetness and light,’ I promised in my best Shandi imitation. Got that wrong. Mabel’s bandages came off and she returned to our group. But when her myopic glasses disappeared, so did her good nature. No sweetness and light. Not a jot on the makeovers me and Eloise had received: our transplants had pumped in positive vibes. Mabel was downright surly.
She wore a permanent frown, and fired it at her cards and her bridge partner, especially. If Sadie didn’t pull off a finesse, Mabel muttered. I even heard the f-word! When Mabel glared, her new eye grew bigger than the other one or maybe it just stuck out. Her foul comments gave me the heebee jeebies. Turned out these problems were small fry.
Eloise rang to tell me a box of silver teaspoons had gone missing. Delicate utensils with an ‘M’ engraved on their handles, for Charles’s family name. Charles wanted to fire Hanna. I protested: Hanna had been with Sadie for over ten years. It wouldn’t have taken her that long to clean out the entire silver service. Or Houdini the row of Faberge eggs that collected as much dust as compliments in the dining room. No, Hanna wouldn’t have filched the spoons. So who did? That got me wondering about Mabel’s bad mood - and her eye donor.
Even though she could have driven herself, I offered to take Mabel to her one-month checkup, in order to do some investigating. I didn’t tell her what I was up to - she’d have bitten my head off. The ophthalmologist never left the room. He put Mabel in a chair that sprouted metal arms ending in eyepieces. He levered multiple lenses in front of her face, clicking one set after another into place. The lenses obscured her from the neck up; she morphed into a grotesque - a human body with a bee’s head, made up of enormous, compound eyes.
‘Now?’ the ophthalmologist was asking, and ‘now?’ A click and another click as he slid one lens behind the last. Mabel’s monosyllabic grunts didn’t seem instructive; how was he supposed to know which lens was better?
The room was dark. I slowly slipped her file into my bag and excused myself to go to the ladies’. I gasped when I opened the file and saw the photograph; a scar-faced, dark-haired donor named Jasper Finns. Close-set eyes above an enormous, jutting jaw. I pulled out Bud’s smart phone and snapped photos of relevant pages. When I went back into the dark doctor’s office I slid the file back across the ophthalmologist’s desk, slow as molasses. Poirot strikes again.
Bud and I entered ‘Jasper Finns’ on the web that night. I felt faint when we read his obit. Mabel’s donor had died in a botched up bank robbery. He was an accomplished criminal, wanted in three states for larceny and grand theft. And now he was dead. Maybe his poor family had sold off his body parts to finance his funeral. I looked at Bud.
‘Did Finns’ eye take over Mabel’s behavior?’ I asked. ‘Like Langendijk’s kidney urged me to paint? Like Eloise’s heart made her a green hippy and found her Shandi? If that’s true, I wished we hadn’t found out who Mabel’s donor was.’
I showed Eloise the copied file. Her eyes got big. She sucked in her breath. It explained Mabel’s odd behavior. We decided to tell Sadie, right quick, so she and Charles wouldn’t fire Hanna. Mabel had stolen her silverware. We were sure of it. That was the easy part. What were we supposed to tell Mabel? We’d known Mabel for thirty years. She was our best buddy. But what if she continued her filching - and got caught? The police would be called; there’d be her fingerprints on the object to confirm the crime. Eloise and Sadie and I knew that the old Mabel would never do such a thing. But her new eye would. She would get arrested. And then what? We couldn’t blame her crimes on donor evidence in a possible trial. They’d laugh us out of the courtroom. And if we called the doctors to support our claim, they wouldn’t corroborate our evidence. An organ transplant worked in a body that needed it, the docs would insist. The new organ had no influence on the behavior of the recipient. Besides, I’d get arrested, too; it was against the law to learn who the donor was.
We decided to take things in our own hands. I watched Mabel like a hawk when we played bridge. Talk about Poirot; I didn’t have time to read my detective stories; I was too busy being one. Two weeks later it was time for the bridge group to play at my place. I told them I was putting on a lunch in honor of finishing my fresco - and the happy news that Bud and I were an item. They needed to dress up, I said; I would pull out all the stops, good china and polished silver service. I said this part nice and loud so Mabel would hear. The ladies were chuffed. Were me and Bud going to tie the knot? I shushed them. All would be revealed at the lunch; could they please gussy themselves up and come on over on Wednesday?
Bud and I hired Hanna and her daughter to help us prepare and serve on the day. He brought over his slide projector and a big screen and set it up in my dining room. On the wall over the cadenza my fresco was now complete. For a few days before the party Bud had been shuttling around the town on a special errand; on Tuesday he flashed me the thumbs up sign. Wednesday the ladies arrived, all combed and perfumed and bejeweled. Bud waggled his eyebrows at me when he took Mabel’s coat. Her velvet jacket had enormous, deep pockets: a thief’s perfect accomplice.
We all entered the dining room, my heart going a hundred miles an hour. Time for my fresco to make its debut. I wished I could have rigged up velvet curtains and whisked them open - ta da! Made my heart sing every time I was in the room. Oohs and aahs from the guests: my lakeside scene transformed the room, said Eloise. She commissioned me on the spot to paint a scene in her house. Sadie asked if Charles could come see - they might want something in the conservatory and would pay handsomely. When we were seated at the table, Hanna and her daughter served lunch. After dessert came the surprise.
I turned off all the lights; just how accommodating can one be for a novice thief? Bud had prepared a 15-minute slide show. We shouldn’t judge, just watch and listen - there was proof in this very room about the truth of what he was going to tell us. I sat quiet, gooseflesh prickling my arms. Up came the first slide: a photograph of Langendijk in his studio, easel in his left hand. The large pocket of his painting smock was bristling with brushes. We could see a corner of his canvas, a pastoral scene with a swathe of green, tiny cows and a few sheep and, in the distance, the white sails of a windmill. More slides of Langendijk’s works including a famous one that hung in the town hall in Amsterdam - a bird’s eye view of gabled buildings lining the canals that made concentric circles around the historic center. Bud told them my new kidney came from Langendijk; it had made me an artist. It was even landing me a few patrons, he smiled at Eloise and Sadie. Langendijk’s kidney had also given me an appetite for the Dutch Speculuus cookies of cinnamon and clove and nutmeg that we were having for dessert.
Then came slides of Melanie, Eloise’s donor: health goddess, with her yoga, raw food and smoothies, who had moved to Virginia from California a few years ago. Most of the ladies were staring at the slides open-mouthed by that time. Bud concluded by saying that it was my detective work that had discovered the link between donors and recipients; he was just putting the evidence on show. We didn’t know much about Mabel’s eye donor as yet, he then noted. OK, not exactly true but sensitive to Mabel, anyway. This whole organ transplant scene needed careful investigation. How lucky Eloise and I had been with our donors. Everything depended on who the part came from and we couldn’t know in advance if we were thinking about replacement parts, he said.
I was watching Mabel slide my big fish knife and fork serving utensils into her lap. Was it just luck that placed them on the empty platter right next to her right hand? Her shoulders were moving now - must be wiping them off in her napkin.
Now it was time for another surprise. Bud cleared his throat and said my detective work had inspired him. He turned and flicked on the lights. He said he and I had been troubled about the loss of Eloise’s silver. One day he happened to pass a pawnshop on 26th and Lexington. He was so glad he did because - he reached into the breast pocket of his sports jacket - look what he’d found. ‘All aces!’ He held up the six small spoons, engraved with the letter M, arranged like a hand of cards. Eloise gasped and stood up.
‘How on earth? However? Oh, you dear man!’ she was saying as she walked toward him. ‘Course I was watching Mabel, who’ d begun to stand up as well, eyebrows at her hairline, and had then sat downright quick. Was it my imagination or did I hear the rattle of my silver fish knife and fork in her pockets? Meantime Eloise was hugging and kissing Bud. He’d combed every pawnshop in the county. He turned to me and handed me a little box. ‘Found this for you there,’ he said, his face beet red. I swallowed hard and took the box. A diamond glinted on a silver band. Another band, delicately filigreed, lay beneath it. I brushed a tear away so my trembling lips wouldn’t show. I slipped the rings onto my fourth finger and smiled at him. ‘How do?’ he asked.
‘I do,’ I said quietly.
‘Me, too,’ said Bud.
The audience burst into applause and everyone stood up: hugs and kisses.
Then it was time for bridge. We played only two hands, on account of the time and as usual, Eloise and I cleaned up. We took honours with five hearts and I’ll bet her new one was babooming with pride beneath her silver Om pendent. Then the ladies put on coats and hats and filed out, chattering about donors and recipients. Mabel stood frowning and fidgeting in the hallway. ‘Where’s my coat?’ she snapped. I motioned for her to stay calm; Bud had probably put it in somewhere.
When everyone but Mabel had left, Bud and I both pretended to look for the missing coat. We returned empty handed.
‘Oh, that’s right, I put it in this coat cupboard,’ he said, opening the closet door. ‘Here it is!’ He pretended to misplace his foot and leaned heavily onto the door, which swung wide and bumped into Mabel’s right side. An unmistakable clink rang out and we both stopped moving and looked at her.
‘What have you got there?’ Bud asked, patting her pocket, all feigned innocence.
Mabel stepped forward to get her coat but Bud held it tight and, waited. After a moment she looked at him and at me. She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out my white linen napkin with the fish knife and fork. She handed them to me and stood blinking. Then a tear rolled down her cheek. The tear was from her old eye. The new eye probably had no tears to shed, being from a convicted criminal.
I took Mabel’s hand and led her back into the living room. We two sat on the sofa and Bud sat opposite in the armchair. Mabel was mumbling how she wasn’t herself. Out came the confession that she’d filched Eloise’s spoons and taken them to the pawnshop on 26th and Lex.
Then she was blowing her nose and saying ‘sorry’. Bud opened a drawer and pulled out a folder. He took out several photos of the scar-faced Jasper Finns and handed them to Mabel. This was her donor, he explained. Her hands trembled as they held the photos. Finns, wanted for grand larceny before he’d died in the bank robbery said the print.
‘Why would a criminal donate his organs?’ Mabel whispered unsteadily. ‘They’re not altruistic by nature.’
‘I wondered the same thing,’ I told her. After more investigating I’d found a copy of Jasper’s driver’s license and organ donation was ticked. He’d donated a kidney when he was in his thirties. People could manage with one kidney, I explained. It would have been 15 years earlier, about the time he was first caught burglarizing. I told Mabel about the high demand for organs, how desperate the recipients were, how kidneys fetched a good price.
‘So he sold the organs for money!’ she exclaimed. ‘Must have been desperate.’
‘I guess so. And the organ donation box was still ticked when he died, so his eye went to you.’
She was silent. She opened her purse and fished out a bulky wallet. ‘I don’t mean to do it. Something comes over me,’ she said. ‘I get all worried and nervous. I steal something - then I sell it. I bring the money home. Then I get nervous for having taken it.’ She blinked. ‘It’s only happened a few times.’
‘Did you take things from other people?’
‘Just a few other things.’ She had begun extracting ten-dollar bills.
‘And you sold them?’
‘I could see if they’re still at the pawn shop.’ She handed Bud a bundle of bills. ‘That’s for the spoons you bought back for Sadie.’ Bud took the bills and nodded his thanks.
‘Why don’t we go together to look for the other things you took?' I offered. ‘Now.’
Mabel and I drove to the east side where the have-nots live. Townhouses were crammed along the streets, too many teeth in a mean mouth: sagging front porches, boarded up windows, walls in need of paint, roofs in need of repair. Trash dotted the sidewalks. I asked Mabel about her savings and she assured me she had plenty to live on, never wanted for anything, it wasn’t that. It was the feeling that came over her; a ‘devil made me do it’ feeling.
‘That’s Jasper’s eye thinking for you,’ I said.
‘Not anymore it won’t,’ she said.
The first pawnshop she directed me to was on Mulberry Street next to a vacant lot. Chicken wire mesh lined the inside of the window and there was a thick, metal, roll-up shutter at the top for when the shopkeeper went home at night. Inside there was a clutter of cameras and fancy clothes and a whole glass counter of jewelry and pens and silver. She went straight to the counter and pointed at a small Tiffany clock. The shopkeeper, a beanpole with a thin moustache, wanted twice what he’d paid her for it. She protested and pulled the receipt out of her wallet - but he wouldn’t budge, there’d been someone in just yesterday thinking about buying it.
Mabel counted out the bills and put them on the counter. We left with the clock in her bag. Her face wore a little frown.
‘How will I get this back to the owner?’ she asked me.
‘Same way you took it, Light-fingers.’ I said. We went to another shop, where the silver salt and pepper shakers she’d placed with them had already been sold. She took the money and we climbed into my car. She would leave the money in the store she’d taken them from. So she’d robbed from stores as well as private citizens.
‘Mabel, just call me or come on over, if your big eye starts bossing you around’, I said, kissing her goodbye that day. And she did come, once or twice a week, to watch me paint a fresco in Sadie’s conservatory. Maybe watching me stopped her pulling off the grand heist of the century.
Bud and I tied the knot in Sadie’s conservatory with the bridge club ladies and a few relatives as our witnesses. The fresco I’d painted for them made a perfect backdrop, another watery scene with flowers and plants that cousined what bloomed in their garden. I couldn’t stop smiling. We were going on a Rhine river cruise for our honeymoon. There was bridge and dancing on-board. Ooohs and ahhs from the congregation. After the ceremony, Mabel came over to tell me she had discovered a new hobby. A friend of hers owned a booth in a monthly antiques market. She’d started to bring things to sell on commission, her own things, from decades of dust collecting in her house. She paid a percentage for participating and had begun to make a small profit. It felt good to clean out her house, she said. Then she looked at me. She’d caught a would-be thief, taking a china figurine from their stall. Big smile from me when she said that. Her friend was mighty impressed that she had caught him. Last month Mabel became a partner in the stall: she and her sharp eye had been invited into the business.
I’m not sure if any more bridge club ladies are planning a transplant. But if they do, I know they’ll be over at our place, lickety split, to find out just who’s sparking their insides.
It Could Be My Last Night
Look, you appear to be about through. Mind if I pull up a chair? You got one of the few table seats that overlook Chartres.
So I am looking for a woman, a particular woman, and I don’t know her name. I tell this story in the hopes I can find her. We do love our stories in New Orleans.
Ok, so as I said. I’m Phil. Real name, Phillip. Someone long ago called me Phil, not to shorten my name. No one does that in New Orleans. In fact, we add names. He thought maybe I was from Philadelphia and that’s where the deli’s name came from. So, ok, I’ve been Phil for a long time now.
Early morning, one day, I am cooking sirloin roast, cooling it, and slicing it. Ham, turkey and corned beef too. Customers say they “die” for Phil’s Deli food, but I am the one dying. Not contagious, though. You can relax.
So any way, Terrell was a kid when he started helping me. See him over there. Wave to him. He does a lot of my work now.
If today is my last day of life, here in New Orleans, then the deli would all be Terrell’s tomorrow.
So I wake up this morning not long ago, and my heart is beating fast, hurts a little, hurts a lot. My brain tells me and my gut tell me, Phil, this is it. Your last day.
Just panic attacks, some say.
So last week, I am in that bathroom over there. I don’t know why I’ve taken a bread knife with me. I look at the cracked mirror, see my saggy eyes, saggy flesh, and red tired eyes, and I realize I am holding the bread knife. I’m trembling.
I throw the knife toward the sink and it bounces back at me and takes a little slice of my stomach, nothing serious. I dabbed up the blood with an old Times Picayune and then threw the crumbled paper down over the knife.
So Terrell knocks at the door. “You all right, Mr. Phil?”
“Fine,” I say, but I’ve not been fine in years. I shouldn’t have to explain it was my last day on earth.
“Have you seen the bread knife?” he asks.
“What’s with you and the bread knife, Terrell?” I pull it out from the trash can and wash it in the sink, at least to get the blood off. “Man, what’s it doin’ in here? Run it through the scalding hot water.”
So I walk to St. Louis Cathedral after work, over that way, like I always do after work, and get in a back pew, invisible. I pray: “Let this end of my life come.”
Most everyone in the Cathedral has got to be praying for new beginnings. I’m praying for an ending. Different kind of prayer should get some attention from the so-called Good Lord. Of course, I can’t end it myself. Not playing by the rules.
Not in a bad way. I don’t want to hurt anyone.
This day at the Cathedral that I am telling you about is different. A few pews over a lady wearing a black veil prays the rosary, slowly fingering each bead. Maybe she had prayed there a thousand days and I had not noticed, but this day I did notice. She is praying with intensity.
I want to know what she prays for.
That night, I try to sleep. You know deli work starts early, but if this is my last day, I’m thinking. Terrell will be there.
I roll over. I close my eyes until I have to open them again. Why couldn’t I be in heaven where all those fluffy clouds are? I want to look down on New Orleans and see the river flow by that crescent bend, see the spires of St. Louis Cathedral, and look down on Phil’s Deli?
So I get up, write my nightly message, similar but never exactly the same note and here this night it says: “I know this is my last night. Bless Terrell, who will take over Phil’s Deli.—Phil.” So Terrell will know it’s his deli now.
And back in bed a few more hours later, at some point, I lose consciousness and I am struggling to breathe. For some reason, I think I hear the ring of the deli bell.
And finally I dream I am outside my body and standing next to me is Alicia at 15. She was my sweetheart, at least in my mind. I smile at her.
I reach to her and she is as beautiful as she had ever been, and then she just evaporates. My heart is racing because in this dream, I have lost her again.
Yeah, that is sad.
Then like acts in a play, the next act is my mother. She sits by me and I try to reach out to her, but my arms are very short because suddenly I am a baby.
My mother turns to me and I see her face, and then her face contracts. She cannot breathe, and she evaporates.
Man, my heart was racing when I woke up. And my heart is in no kind of shape to be racing. It is four in the morning this day. I am alone. And I feel a sharp pain in my chest. Man, is this the answer to my daily prayers? But it is not an answer.
I get up and hold the photos of Alicia and my mother.
So this day, after work, I walk to St. Louis Cathedral, the shadows lengthening as the sun begins to set. I see the three spires of the cathedral and nearby the statue of Andrew Jackson. I see an odd mix of couples, older men and younger women. Women with cropped hair and tattoos with old crusty men with heavy eyebrows. Tall men and short ladies. Tall ladies. Gay couples. Older men and women with high shorts and long stretch socks carrying unfolded maps of the French Quarter. Artist couples displaying caricatures and landscapes. Musicians occupying their turf. One plays a saxophone while another a slide trombone and now and then he sings like Louis Armstrong. Kind of like Armstrong. Nobody is exactly the same. I’ve never noticed so much activity before, but it’s been there, I guess.
The large door of the cathedral closes behind me. I see the lit votive candles. I light two myself, for my mother and for Alicia. I’ve never done this before. Didn’t believe in what those candles could do.
I kneel, toward the back of the cathedral as close to a corner as I can get. People walk the aisles and look at the columns, the statues, and the altar. Across the way, I see the woman with the black veil.
And as I pray, I cannot ask God to end my life. Instead there is a tug on my heart, and I pray that God will tell me what my life is for. I look up and the altar appears to be lit up so bright.
The lady moves. She makes the sign of the cross, and pushes herself up from the pew; she genuflects in the aisle and starts toward the door. I get up and follow her. I just don’t do impulsive things, but here I am doing it. I say, “Ma’am.”
She turns. Surely she has seen me these many days in the Cathedral.
“Ma’am, can I ask you a question?”
A crowd is gathering near the door, just past where they sell mementos and holy items. I open the door and we walk out.
I ask her what she was praying for. Like it was really my business, but I had to know.
She turns it back to me. “Why do you pray?”
We walk away from the door and turn down the street, walking past the array of artists.
“I lost my mother and a girlfriend when I was young,” I tell her.
“And you pray for them or for their memory?”
“I pray for my release. I pray to be taken from this world, as my body tells me over and over that this is my last day.”
“Your body must be telling you wrong because here you are,” she says.
“It would seem,” I answer. “And you, are your prayers being answered?”
“I pray for my husband I lost ten years ago. I pray for my daughter, a young nun, who died at 25, caring for children in an African village.”
“And do you pray for for yourself?”
“I ask that my memory of them stays strong.”
She begins to walk away from me and I tell her my name and ask her to join me for beignets and coffee.
And we talk. At the Café du Monde. In the open air, coffee cups clink and finished plates of beignets are scooped up around the tables, being followed by more beignets and coffee.
That night, no panic attacks, though I feel their absence. It’s like a parasite has been removed from my body, something so real, so expected, something I was so dependent on.
I fall asleep in my easy chair, and the only one woman I see in my dreams is the lady in the black veil. So maybe I am up for something new, or at least I think so.
The next day, I walk to Jackson Square and see the musicians. There are street performers, mimes, gymnasts, and acrobats. Had they always been there too?
I enter the Cathedral and light two votive candles. I look up at tour groups and adults taking kids by the hand to follow the guides.
I don’t know what to pray, but I stumble through.
I look for the lady with the black veil. Could she have come 1,000 days and now not be here the day after I talked with her? I had not asked her for her name. We had made no specific plans, but I had expected to see her.
I get up and follow a tour group and listen in for a few minutes and then I walk back to the small area where they sell religious items.
“There is a lady,” I say to the clerk, “who is always here; she wears a black veil and sits in the back row.”
But the clerk doesn’t remember her and says that she thinks she would remember someone in a black veil who was in the Cathedral every day. She says black veils are not that common any more.
This is a real lady that has disappeared. This is no ghost. She is not like the dreams of Alicia and of my mother, but I am puzzled.
So I leave the cathedral that day, walk through the French Quarter and beyond, talk to the men who sell vegetables, talk to people at the Café du monde. I go down every street. I go down the Riverwalk, stopping in various shops along the way, listening to jazz playing, smelling the jambalaya cooking and shrimp etouffe.
At the riverfront, I see the cruise ship when I hear the calliope. I see The Natchez churn its way up and back down the River.
And I visit the Cathedral at the same time, though now my prayers are very different, and I talk to everyone who will listen. I am looking for the lady in the black veil. I am looking to continue the conversation. If you see her, will you tell her that Phil of Phil’s Deli is looking for her and wants to talk?
Have I told you this story before? I know I have told so many people. Mostly I am looking for a woman, a particular woman, and I tell this story to anyone who might listen, and in New Orleans, people like a story. Maybe you want a beer on the house? Oh, I see you are ready to leave. I understand. Do let me know if you ever might see her. Tell her about Phil and how he wants to see her.
The End
The Girl from the Sweater Factory
The long-abandoned textile factory had been quietly rotting for decades. The faded masonry lettering at the top of the third floor preserved its owner’s legacy, whoever Hosea S. Johnson was but his name preserved in Railroad Gothic style seemed both pathetic, given the decay, and enduring, still defying time’s passage even as the entire structure caved in beneath it.
None of our parents could remember relatives working there. We kids from the neighborhood weren’t the only visitors, however. All the broken glass, rotted floorboards, and Norwegian rats the size of housecats darting in and out among the debris hadn’t deterred generations of post-Depression homeless men and alcoholics from using it as a place to share a bottle of Thunderbird or Mogen David wine. This was a time before junkies and discarded needles, a time before the contemporary political correctness demanded that every shifty-eyed panhandler be declared “a transient” or “homeless” person. To us, the few we encountered lurking in the weeds were called bums and avoided.
Cigarette butts and broken bottles littered the ground beneath the camel humps of creeper vines we had to push through to get to the back of the building out of sight of traffic. A graffiti-scrawled plywood door out front not being the preferred mode of entry. Evidence of nature’s relentless attack on the premises increased yearly as the sumac that sprouted right next to the foundation had, over the years, pushed branches through the empty panes of the upstairs floors—very few were left unbroken for our own missiles to vandalize. In the summer, the foliage gave the upper floors a lurid green cast as the sun moved around the building.
In August, the stultifying heat stuck our tee-shirts to our backs and soaked the brims of our baseball caps. The squalid interior of the upper floors with a row of black mechanical looms for spinning and tufting made an ominous impression at first sight. We always gathered on the second floor to plan whatever games or adventures we had in mind.
The tall, skinny girl who showed up one day in summer said her name was Mallory. She gave no last name. None of us knew her. Johnny O’Kurran, the youngest of our gang, hadn’t reached that stage of puberty that makes boys both obnoxious and curious around girls; he didn’t hesitate to challenge her on her right to be there.
“This is our fort,” Johnny told her. “No girls allowed.”
That led to the challenge.
We had all performed it once, a rite of passage—with the exception of Johnny, who compensated for his size by daring—would show off by creating his own twists on the challenge, which was to enter the factory’s upper floor from a window. The means of access were the sumac trees growing close to the building; you had to pick one, shimmy up it, grab a branch and swing hand-over-hand to a ledge. Position yourself on any ledge, all of which were sloped for runoff—all this while dangling or perched twenty-five feet above the mounds of rubble below: cement blocks, bottles, rusted cans, and other sorts of debris too slimy or jagged to enumerate.
The trick was the “the leap”; you had to swing your body toward the building at an upward angle to catch the ledge with your heels and hope you had enough momentum in your swing as you let go of the branch. Even then, you had to be careful how you crawled through to jump about eight feet to the floor. All the windows on that side were busted out, most with shards of glass that could cut your hands or your flesh if you slipped on the ledge and grabbed the metal frame.
Some panes were better than others. Most resembled the jagged teeth of an old man’s mouth. The slender trunks of the sumac were not the best for climbing and their branches, sodden with gummy sap, not as thick as typical trees like the ash, cottonwood, and maple surrounding the factory. Ironically, the best trees for scaling also had the most dangerous windows opposite them with shards of broken glass that made me think of jack-o’-lantern fangs. Because I was older and heavier than most, I had little choice but to take the biggest tree and the worst window for my challenge. A livid tapeworm of white scar loops my shoulder and stretches across my back to remind me of that day. Washing the blood out of the shirt didn’t fool my mother but I lied and said I slid into second base over a piece of half-buried glass.
Mallory didn’t hesitate to accept her challenge. While she surveyed the sumacs, Johnny picked one out for himself; we knew he planned to embarrass her.
“This’ll be great,” someone said, using a common word that described everything from snow days canceling school to a new episode of Johnny Yuma, the Rebel or The Rifleman.
Mallory was definitely a tomboy, not like our sisters who grew up with Barbie dolls and liked to play house before graduating to make-up and nicer clothes. She was taller than all but my cousin Mike and I. She looked older but she was scrawny, absent the telltale bumps and curves of puberty. My vantage gave me a good view of her long, thin arms taut with ropy muscle encircling a slender sumac too far from the building, one never used before, and before a word was spoken, she was ascending faster than Johnny on his.
She’ll fail at the leap, I thought. I watched her hanging from a branch midway down, swaying, pretending to be a monkey making eee-eee-eee noises and scratching her armpit with one arm while we watched below, our mouths opened in awe. I’ll admit that I secretly wanted her to fall. This was a deep humiliation for all. We stared while she hung there goofing off, kicking her legs out in midair as if she were in no danger at all, shrieking cries of fake distress. A minefield of accumulated glass, shards glittering in the sunlight, chunks of cement, and bricks waited for gravity’s final tug and that slender branch—no thicker than her bicep—to snap.
Tired of performing, not hearing any encouragement, she made her entrance through a window with more panache and daring than we’d ever seen. She tucked her body at the height of her swing and flew through a window without touching the ledge. All this time, Johnny was panting to catch up, still negotiating the last few feet toward a ledge. We all heard the thud of her landing. As if our heads were joined on twin pairs of swivels, we looked at one another in pure amazement.
After that, Mallory didn’t ask to be accepted; she assumed it. We had years of running as a pack and we knew one another’s strengths and weaknesses regardless of age or size. Johnny’s older brother Joe, a lower-ranking hyena in the pack, didn’t possess Johnny’s status when it came to determining sides. Mallory, however, had the physical traits and daring that put her up front in everything going on. Even more impressive to us, she didn’t try to boss anyone. She was accepted without any formal recognition we were “voting” her in.
Each floor held different kinds of machinery: the offices of the first floor were mostly trashed and reeked of urine from the winos who used to congregate there while the massive looms and spinning machines were on the second floor. The third floor was empty except for the broken glass. Depending on what we felt like doing that day, we’d pick a floor to occupy ourselves. Often, no matter where we spent most of our time, we’d head up through a fire escape to the roof where we had a panoramic view of the harbor from the breakwall to the east to the old Finnish section of the harbor in the west. Sometimes my cousin Jimmy brought along his Super 8 camera to film our fantasy or war games.
The first floor was the dirtiest and smelled the worst. Water damage had rotted huge chunks of floorboard we dropped down to crawl through like soldiers tunneling out of our prison camp or commandos sneaking up on an enemy fortress. Oblivious of rats and snakes, we’d crawl along bellowing out names of friends and enemies, obscenities too risky to utter in anywhere else in public, or call out whatever we’d been watching on TV. In those days, Twilight Zone and Outer Limits were favorites. We watched shows like Leave It to Beaver and I Love Lucy with our parents, but no one brought them up unless it was to mock the show’s two brothers.
Mischief was easy to find in the upper floors, such as a five-gallon buckets of some petrified chemical at the bottom to give it weight for rolling down the fire escape or tossing off the roof onto the canopy of sumac trees that surrounded the foundation and had taken over portions of the building where rain and snow had rotted the roof.
The extraordinary thing, to all of us, was that none of us had a parental prohibition to stay away from the place, even though my cousins’ house and my house was at the end of the block and my other cousin Tommy’s and Danny’s houses were right across the street at the top of Hulbert Avenue. Our other friends, like brothers Joe and Johnny, were midway down the block. In those days, kids left the house in the morning after breakfast and didn’t “check in” like today’s kids; we roamed, went fishing, swimming at Walnut Beach, or dove off the Pyramids down by the Norfolk & Southern Railroad yards by the coal docks.
As the summer days shortened into that familiar autumn feeling, Mallory began proposing more of our activities. She was a good enough first baseman we didn’t mind her joining in. She always quarterbacked one of the teams. After one pickup game, she gave my cousin Tom a bloody nose with a stiff arm and Mike wore a black eye home from her churning knees when he tried to wrap his arms around her hips. Mike later told me she had a strong body odor, which I took to mean from her clothing. She always wore the same cut-off jeans, bobby socks, gray tennis shoes with holes. Her baggy sweatshirts often had the names of taverns on the front or back. Only once did she wear a girly blouse—a red-checked kind I associated with Lawrence Welk’s dancers. After a Sunday of drinking at the kitchen table, my parents sat down to watch The Lawrence Welk Show, and I hated it because The Rebel came on at the same time. Mike whispered she was “white-trash” and said she was older than the 14 she claimed.
I was mesmerized by her. I knew her secret. Her real last name was Boone and her father was a cop killer. It was a day stuck in my head forever: blood pooled and dripped off the end of a front porch of a house on Third Street. A cop had been shot in the head when he arrived at the Boone house for a domestic violence call. The Boones were a noisy clan notorious for fights and criminal activity. My father said the words from the Herald-Tribune--“no stranger to the police”—were invented for the Boones. The fight between spouses was over cigarettes. Ray Boone dropped his deer rifle and ran, but he was captured and executed in the state pen in Lucasville a few years later. His mugshot tripped me to Mallory’s real identity; she had those same piercing eyes and razor-lipped scowl. Raymond Boone murdered in a time before death-penalty lawyers grew wealthy filing appeals. His execution was announced in the paper the same day the memorial stone was dedicated to the slain officer in front of the county court house.
But three years ago, on my paper route on Third Street, I had stood in the street along with dozens of other rubberneckers. I saw a small figure looking out an upstairs window when the cops were driving up, sirens blaring—a young girl my age, I thought. I didn’t connect her to Mallory for weeks after she showed up but it was her. She was that little girl in the window.
I kept it to myself. Mike was right: she was getting bossier. And she did smell. Her fingernails were always black. A goatish odor wafted from her skin, not just her clothing. Her stringy blonde hair was always unkempt; in the dog days of August, her head smelled rancid like butter left out too long. Hanks of it were steam-pressed to her neck. Her legs beneath her cutoff Levi’s were scabby, crisscrossed with dirt-streaked cuts. If it weren’t for the mad violence of her energy in everything she did like her reckless dives off the Pyramids into the slip, sailing like an osprey diving for a perch, and just missing the rusted spike of a bolt sticking out from the wooden dockside, she likely would never have confronted water that entire summer.
Mallory’s vocabulary, never genteel, was laced with profanity. She surpassed any of us in cursing and went way beyond our limited vocabularies, all of which were inherited from our parents, a World War II generation that did not embrace the casual obscenities of today. Mallory, I suspected, was privy to some things the rest of us were only aware of in our dreams and nightmares. When Billy LaForge mocked her for mispronouncing a common word, she knocked him to the ground with a leg sweep, blew her nose into her hand and rubbed it into his face until he cried for her to stop.
“Here’s some jism for you, knucklehead!”
I went to my older friend Jerry and got a crash course on the facts of life—insofar as he knew them. No one after that wanted to take her on in a verbal or physical fight.
As August drew down and school became more real to us, Mallory grew more urgent in her demands for our collective obedience. The rough-and-tumble democracy we once enjoyed had devolved into a ruthless matriarchy. More worrisome to us, she upped the risk factor of pour outings. But knowing our time together was also coming to a close, with the prospect of new classmates, teachers, sports, and “important” subjects on the horizon, we weren’t willing to foment a palace revolt with time so short.
When we arrived at the sweater factory that last day in twos and threes, we followed our routine of slinking to the back among the sumac trees. Mallory was there alone—until three others came out from hiding. My heart sank when I realized who they were: Sammy Boone, a boy around sixteen who had spent months in juvenile facilities and was known as one of the worst of the Boone clan. His neighbor Dale Sweeney, who adopted the “hood” look with his duck’s-tail hair, the white tee-shirt, the pack of Winston cigarettes rolled into the sleeve to the shoulder. Worst of all, for me, was Ante Ente, my private nightmare stepping out from behind a thick tree draped in Tarzan vines.
To this day, I don’t know his real name. That’s how Danny said it and he was closer to the public school crowd than the rest of us Catholic boys. I’d seen him once, a few feet away, and he terrified me: a blond-white Finnish boy in a flattop, not that big but crazy in the eyes. If my dog Buster hadn’t been with me, I think Ente would have chucked me into the slip or worse. He carried a knife and cherry bombs that day, which he shoved into the mouths of dead carp and sheepshead rotting on the banks of the slip where I was fishing. Danny told me how Ente would challenge boys in high school to fight after school. Then Danny would act out being Ente, swooping low and springing up with an uppercut. Even the tough Joikiniemi twins from Tivision Avenue, Arnie and Mikko, didn’t mess with Ante Ente.
I was already having a bad week at home. My father had been arrested for hitting a neighbor’s teenaged son because he’d shouted something obscene to my mother. My oldest sister, a high-school senior, had announced her pregnancy. My parents despised her boyfriend. They drank and argued more loudly than ever after drinking a case of Stroh’s beer. The only good thing was that I was ignored and could come and go all day long without being questioned.
I was trying to grapple with the appearance of this trio when I heard a rush of noise behind me, feet clambering through rubble, and then Mallory spoke: “Let ‘em go, Dale, the chickenshits.”
Danny and I remained alone. The others, my cousins, and friends, had abandoned us. I saw Mallory for the first time as something different, something dangerous, not a skinny girl I used to trust in our games.
She saw me glancing behind, guessed I was about to bolt too. I barely saw her move before I felt her hands pinning me where I stood, her fingers digging into my shoulder blades.
“He ain’t afraid, he ain’t no rabbit like them others, are you?”
I stuttered that I wasn’t a rabbit, but I felt very much like one trapped in its hop.
“Better not fuckin’ be,” Ante Ente said. He moved closer to me, approaching sideways like a predator.
“Youse rabbits try to run, I’ll fuckin’ gut you both with this,” Dale said.
He flashed a long-bladed knife in his hand and made a roundhouse, neck-slashing movement in the air.
“Shut up, Dale,” Sammy told him. “They ain’t going nowhere.”
Danny answered for us both: “Hell no, man.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. Danny’s bravado posed its own risks.
With Dale and Sammy walking behind us, Ente in front, we were escorted to the third floor from the rickety fire escape. The place seemed different—no longer mine, safe, but a filthy sty of mold and dirt littered with glass and smashed machinery. Mallory, however, was firmly in control.
She explained the plan. Her deep-set ferret eyes glittered in a column of light pouring through the broken windows and buzzing with insects.
It was all about robbing a family-owned variety store on Bridge Street below Hulbert. We bought our orange and cherry sodas from that place. A surly, acne-scarred teenaged son ran the cashier and drilled us with his eyes every time we entered. He watched us as we moved about, giggling at men’s magazine covers, scowled as we fingered the cheap household goods. Danny went out of his way to mock the boy and draw his ire.
Dale and Sammy would commit the robbery using Dale’s knife to hold the cashier in place while Sammy looted the register. Mallory and Ante Ente would ransack the place for whatever they could scoop up. Danny and I were to be posted outside as lookouts.
“Any adults try to come in, you get in their way, hear me?” Sammy ordered.
“Whistle, you see cops,” Dale added. “You punks know how to whistle.”
Danny put three fingers in his mouth and blew a shrill single note. His father was a dockworker who whistled Danny home the same way from his sloping backyard overlooking the railroad yards. You could barely see him on the hillside but you could hear that whistle all the way to Flat Rocks past the Pyramids.
“We meet back here. You two hang around in the street, act like you’re not with us,” Mallory said. “Come back and let us know what’s going on.”
“They ain’t with us,” Dale mumbled.
I stood with my back to the store, my heart knocking in my chest. Danny seemed to enjoy his role in the heist. He pranced back and forth in front of the store as soon as the others entered, Sam and Dale together, followed a few seconds later by Ante Ente and Mallory. Nobody in disguise, no one except Ente attempting to hide his identity with a Chief Wahoo baseball cap jammed low on his forehead and a red bandanna. He had drawn clumsy tattoos of Navy anchors on his biceps in a ballpoint pen.
Traffic on Bridge Street was heavy. Whenever someone walked past, I held my breath. Time slowed to a molasses crawl. Danny maintained his agitated gait back and forth, speaking nonsense and doing anything but keeping inconspicuous.
Then shouts—Dale’s thick voice. A long minute passed before I heard the sounds of things crashing to the floor, glass breaking.
Danny stopped in his tracks. I couldn’t make myself look. I thought of the pimply-faced boy inside with Dale’s filleting knife against his throat. I imagined gouts of blood spouting from his neck.
Ente was out the door first. I couldn’t see what he held in his hands but sacks of potato chips flew out. Mallory raced out on his heels. She was a blur running past. Dale and Sammy, like two clowns tumbling out of a circus Volkswagen, hit the doorway at the same time—and stuck. Most of what they held scattered to the sidewalk. I remember the grunts, the curses—and they too were racing up the sidewalk toward Hulbert.
Danny and I exchanged a look—and we both took off in the same direction as if we had sparks flying from our shoes.
The cops knew everything in minutes, of course. Even where Danny and I both lived. When the police officers pounded on the door, I was sitting on my bed sobbing.
I gave up everyone including Mallory.
The weeks that followed were ghastly. I was pointed out at school as one of “the robbery kids.” I was punched on the playground by some older boys, ignored by most of my peers. Being new to high school as it was, I felt sick to my stomach every morning getting up to go to school. I had destroyed what little happiness my family had after all that had happened that miserable summer.
A man in a dark suit with greasy hair plastered across the top of his head told me I wouldn’t have to go to jail or even a juvenile detention center. My family’s reputation might not have been sterling but there were many of us in the harbor all related and that was enough to prevent worse consequences. My grades and altar boy past helped, he said, although the parish priest refused to write a letter attesting to my character for the judge. My father was bitter about that. “They take the goddamned money every Sunday fast enough!” he exclaimed to my mother.
Sammy Boone and Dale were rounded up and sent off to an adult prison in Chillicothe, a place I’d never heard of.
Just as things began to settle down, Mallory contacted me at school. A boy in a class ahead of me tossed me a note in the cafeteria. It was written in pencil; some words were misspelled:
You betrayed me. I trusted you! I liked you a lot. I thought you likked me!!!
I saw her outside the school yard near the bus stop behind the cyclone fence a week later. Her fingers gripped the chain links like talons, and I thought immediately of their strength when she dug them into my shoulders.
I ignored her, knowing she was watching me with her deep-set eyes—a rodent feeling the owl’s eyes measuring its back.
“Leave me alone, damn you!” I shouted. I broke into a run.
She could have run me down if she wanted. For all her personal ungainliness, she was a gazelle on the savanna when it came to speed.
When she wasn’t at the fence the next day or the day after, I began to breathe more easily. I felt a glimmer of hope that life would get better. The odd thing is, however, I can remember the sirens wailing down Bridge Street, not an uncommon occurrence considering the number of bars and late-night brawls that occurred there. Instead of a diminishing warble, the sound shifted a decibel higher, and then I knew something had happened on Hulbert. I’d just gotten home from school and was debating whether to do math homework or turn on the TV.
The next day’s paper explained the sirens: Mallory May Boone, aged seventeen, had committed suicide. Her body was found lying on the first floor of the sweater factory, which the paper referred to as “the site of the former Hosea Johnson textile plant midway on Hulbert Avenue.”
I was at that peculiar age where recrimination was difficult but sentimentality came easily. I waited until Thanksgiving week vacation before going there alone. Shreds of yellow crime scene tape still fluttered like Christmas ribbon on the overgrown pricker bushes where we had crawled through.
My intention was to lay wild flowers and cattails gathered from the wetlands near the breakwall on the floor where Mallory had chosen to die. Gossip at school said she committed hara kiri with a knife like Dale’s. I knew she’d hanged herself. The Northtown Trib account said it, for one thing, and included a description of the rope tied off to a ceiling bolt. My flashlight beam lingered on the section of rope where a paramedic or a police officer had sliced through to cut her down. I imagined Mallory’s weasel-slim body dangling from the taut rope, her tongue lolling out of her mouth, just as Danny said happened in hangings.
She’d chosen a spot beside the gaping hole in the floorboards. I shone my light down there and saw a rusted 5-gallon bucket that she might have used before stepping off. I’d gone down into that hole many times on our forays, once with Mallory when we were teamed up. Unafraid of rats, we sat together quietly breathing the rank dust—escaped prisoners, we were—while German soldiers composed of my cousins and Danny searched for us with pellet guns.
I thought it would be the right place to lay my bouquet. I jumped into the hole and got on hands and knees, flowers gripped in one hand, flashlight in the other. I crawled along the tunnel as I had done so often and found what I thought was the place where we had sat together.
I had just placed the flowers on the dirt and was considering a prayer for her soul. Owing to some freakish yearning for forgiveness, I clicked the light off thinking my prayer would rise through the ether all that much faster in pitch dark.
I heard the word as distinctly as any word ever spoken to me in my life. One word: Traitor! Said with a husky malice--
I lost my grip on the flashlight and swept my hands about in the gritty soil to locate it.
Traitor . . . I trusted you . . .
Crying out, bumping my head on the floor above me, I reversed position and scrambled back to the hole, my heart pumping all the blood in my body as every foot of progress in that horrible darkness seemed to be going nowhere at all.
A milky light ahead exposed the hole. I didn’t climb out of it so much as leaped upwards like a fish breaching. I skidded across the floor, kicked out the plywood over the front entrance and ran home. Unseen by my siblings or parents, I made my way upstairs. I looked at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, staring at my shocked, white face. The burning sensation of my inner thighs I was only then aware of had come from the urine stream released in my terror.
For days, I never thought of it. I convinced myself I had created Mallory’s voice in my head out of sheer guilt. The only cure, I thought, was to go back—never again in that hole—but stand there and face my fears, listen to what the dark had to say. Just a need to prove to myself I had only imagined her voice. I chose a time close to supper and slipped out of the house.
Making my way to the back of the sweater factory, I looked above through the dappled canopy where fern-like fronds had already turned a crimson red. Smaller bushes of sumac grew among the taller trees with their rust-red, furry branches covered in hairs.
The image I had suppressed so long since I’d heard of her death, one that cored me, came flooding back. Mallory had leaned over to kiss me in that darkened tunnel. I had never kissed a girl until then. When I reached for her to kiss her back, she giggled and shoved me away. We never spoke of it.
I saw nothing, heard nothing other than the gentle rustle of the sumac fronds overhead.
Returning to the front of the building, I scooped up a handful of dandelions growing in a crevice of broken cement blocks. I was going to redeem my cowardice, if not my betrayal. I stood above the hole looking down into the darkness, smelling that unmistakable odor. I threw the dandelions in and turned to go. When a scuttling behind me sent a ripple of fear up my back. Rodents. I headed toward the plywood covering over the entrance.
Footsteps, slow footsteps. A dragging, not the clicking of rodents this time. A sharp intake of breath—then a measured cadence of footfall, one after the other, a slow gliding across the floorboards from the darkened portion of the building. Coming my way . . .
Mallory—behind me--
Once more, I fled home as fast as I could run.
That winter I caught the flu; it turned into pneumonia. In my fever dreams, I saw Mallory beckoning. I ran, as ever, but she followed and appeared everywhere I went in the crazy logic of my dreams. Her footsteps were a steady smack-drip like the silent saline bag attached to my arm.
I never went back to the sweater factory. By that year, we had outgrown it. No one mentioned the place when we got together to play basketball in Tommy’s backyard. If I happened to be in the car with my parents, I turned my head away as we drove down Hulbert past the factory. I feared seeing Mallory’s shadow moving among the broken windows. The sound of her gliding across the floorboards filled me with an exquisite terror and sadness.
I slept with a light on until I went off to college. Footsteps on the creaking stairs of our house at night would send an icy ripple of fear up my spine. My mother heard me whimpering under the covers once, delirious and soaked in sweat. I went to the college’s health center to get medication for night terrors. The drug left me dopey but it kept Mallory at bay even if my grades and social life suffered.
I’m a grown man now with a wife and kids of my own. My job as a CPA for an international company has involved two out-of-state moves, once to California. Last week, I called my cousin Bill on New Year’s Eve. He told me the city tore down the sweater factory years ago. We never spoke of Mallory Boone.
I’m still waiting for her to call my name again. I listen at night for her footfall wherever I am. Traveling and staying in motels is worse. She sometimes appears before dawn accompanied by the awful odor of that factory of my youth. Like some mythical creature who disappears the moment you try to look at it, she hovers at the edge of my waking and sleeping. It’ll happen in an unfamiliar place when I’m alone and away from my family. I’ll turn around and she’ll be there wearing the severed rope around her neck the way she was when they carted her out of the sweater factory. Those glittering, feral eyes sunk deep in her face will bore through me. I don’t know what I’ll do. I might fall to my knees and ask her forgiveness even while I watch her raise that filleting knife to strike home.
THE END
Bananas Foster
“Well, what do you recommend?” asked one of the ladies at the table. A lovely but stout middle-aged woman, she wore a black evening dress accentuated with several strands of pearls. Her companions were all dressed up for a night on the town. The sounds of classical violins wafted through the air. Heavy red drapes covered sections of the dark, paneled wood.
“I recommend the Bananas Foster, which I prepare tableside,” James replied, “It’s a delightful dish of bananas, brown sugar and vanilla ice cream. I add a little 151-proof rum and flambe the bananas, which makes for a spectacular presentation.”
“What do you think, honey?” asked one of the men at the table to his wife. His black hair was slicked back behind a thin face.
His companion, a petite woman with wavy blonde hair, bubbled with excitement. “Oh yes, I‘ve never tasted Bananas Foster before.”
One of the men patted his ample belly as he looked around at his fellow diners. “Well then, Bananas Foster for the table?” An easygoing fellow who had seen more than his share of large meals, he seemed to be in charge of the group.
James smiled and made a subtle bow to the table. “Excellent. Six Bananas Foster, coming right up.” As he turned to leave, he asked, “Anyone for coffee?” A couple of the patrons raised their hands. “Two, three then. Perfect. I will bring sugar and cream.”
“I would like an espresso, please,” said the large man. “And bring some Sweet’n Low. I’m trying to watch my weight.” He grinned as his comment brought a laugh from everyone at the table.
“Of course, sir. We possess one of the finest espresso machines in town,” James replied as he gestured toward the lavish brass espresso maker on the opposite side of the restaurant. “It belonged to the chef’s father when he ran a restaurant in France. A family heirloom, you might say.” He returned his gaze to his table of excited guests. “I’ll be back in just a moment with everything.”
Six Bananas Foster, James thought. It’s a really good table and a nice-sized check. I should do well tonight.
James rolled the dark wooden serving cart to a stop in front of the table, lit the small gas burner underneath the large sauté pan, and began to slice several bananas into the brown sugar, cinnamon, and butter in front of him.
“Looks delicious,” commented the first lady.
“I can’t wait!” exclaimed the blonde woman
Elliot, another waiter, served the coffee and espresso as James worked the dessert.
“Thank you, Elliot,” James said.
“My pleasure,” replied Elliot with a wink. “Just remember me in your will.” He tossed his straight blond hair to the side to get it out of his eyes.
James chatted with the patrons at his table. “While everything is simmering, I’ll go get your ice cream. When I return, I will add the rum and light it. It will be quite the presentation.”
James and Elliot had worked together for a couple of years at Café du Monde and were good friends. Along with Raphael, another waiter, they became known as ‘The Three Musketeers’. They hung out together and enjoyed working at the restaurant. They also liked to play pranks on each other as well as the other restaurant staff. One of the jokes James played r on his fellow Musketeers involved covertly adding a little extra 151 proof rum to the Bananas Foster orders being prepared by other waiters. James referred to it as ‘juicing the bananas’. He had added extra rum to both Elliot’s and Raphael’s customers’ desserts over the past couple of weeks. The chef could see the dining area from his open kitchen and when he noticed small fireballs in the dining area, he scolded Elliot and Raphael for using too much rum. It was supposed to be entertainment for the table, not a distraction for the dining room, the chef said while chastising them. He would flash a knife or whatever sharp cutlery happened to be lying around at the time at them as he yelled. His temper could be ferocious.
Raphael and Elliot did not turn James in, but they weren’t going to let their fellow Musketeer get away unscathed either. They bided their time, waiting for the right moment to pay him back.
As James left for the kitchen, his customers began to talk excitedly among themselves about the upcoming dessert. Elliot, seeing an opportunity for revenge, made his way to the bubbling sauce and added a good pour of rum. He giggled as he left to check on one of his tables. Time for a little payback. He’ll think twice before screwing with me again, Elliot thought.
While James waited in the kitchen for the bowls of ice cream to be scooped by the pastry chef, Raphael recognized his chance for a little mischief. Raphael was the biggest prankster of them all. A tall lean fellow with wavy black hair, he always came up with a joke or comment to make a table light up. He saw the simmering bananas left unguarded and peered around for James. Not seeing him on the floor, Raphael stepped in between the diners and the serving cart, quickly pouring a couple of shots of rum into the mixture, not knowing that Elliot had just done the same.
Raphael put the bottle down and scampered off just as James exited the kitchen with a tray of ice cream. James nodded to one of the busboys standing nearby who placed a tray stand beside the brimming sauce pan The ice cream rested in six elegant glass bowls with stems, the scoops frozen hard to withstand the heat of the sugary confection. A slight cool mist swirled around the tops of the vanilla spheres.
James glanced down at the sticky sweetness in front of him and then leaned in towards everyone as if he was sharing a secret. “I’ll tell you what I will do tonight. Since you’ve been such a good table, I’ll add just a little more rum than I am supposed to. That not only brings out a little more flavor, but it also adds to the presentation.”
An excited murmur of approval went around the table, all eyes fixed on James as he poured a generous portion of 151 rum into the pan. Elliot and Raphael paused for a moment to see the result of their work.
James smiled at his diners. He ran the wooden match down the side of the matchbox, igniting it. The stick flamed to life. Then he moved the match to the edge of the pan and looked into the expectant faces of everyone at the table. “Everyone ready for a little entertainment? I give you Café du Monde’s Banana Foster!”
Suddenly, the roar of a small jet engine could be heard as the match ignited the fumes encircling the rim. The fire surged down into the pan, engulfing the sauce and bananas. A mushroom cloud of hot blue-and-white light exploded from the pan and raced upwards to the ceiling and sideways toward everyone at the table. Their faces instantly transformed from excited anticipation to astonishment and then downright terror. The blonde lady nearest the saucepan screamed, turned away from the conflagration, and climbed over her dinner companion in an attempt to escape the flames. The man with the thin face fell back and flailed his arms in an attempt to grab onto anything in his panicked attempt to stop his fall. He latched onto his wife’s blonde hair, which promptly came off, revealing a short crop of brown curls. The larger man, sipping straight scotch at that moment, spit out a mouthful in surprise that flew across the table and spilled the rest of it onto the table. The alcohol content of the scotch was high enough that when it reached the flame above the remaining bananas, the fire raced across the table, igniting the tablecloth and yellow rose centerpiece.
Hearing the commotion, the maître d’, an overweight middle-aged man named Jean-Paul, rushed into the dining area from the large oak host stand at the front of the restaurant. The maître d’ noticed the smoldering cart by the table and instantly knew the reason for all the chaos. He had been in the restaurant business a long time and seen just about everything; the lines on his face told of working many long restaurant hours in the past.
Horrified by the events, the maître d’ rushed over to the table as one of the busboys grabbed an ice bucket from a nearby stand and attempted to douse the flaming table with ice water, scattering glasses and silverware into the lap of the overweight man at the head of the table and onto the pants and shoes of the maître d’.
To say that heads turned to watch the chaos was an understatement. As James’ table erupted in pandemonium, diners at several nearby tables leaped up in a panic to rush out of the restaurant.
The determined busboy used his apron to beat the last vestiges of flames out of the once elegant flower arrangement.
James, the epitome of flair and sophistication, stood there comically with a burnt matchstick in his hand, like Wile E. Coyote after one of his Road Runner traps goes wrong. James started to blink. His mustache, eyebrows, and the brown locks on his forehead were singed into tight little curls by the sudden blast of heat. A puff of smoke appeared to come from his ears.
Raphael and Elliot froze, terrified by how the events were unfolding in front of them. They glanced at each other, not quite sure what to do. A look of wide-eyed panic came over their faces.
Somewhere in the corner of the restaurant, a young child wailed. A water glass fell to the floor and shattered. The lady in the black dress wept into the shoulder of the large man, who glared at James. James remained motionless, standing with the blackened match in his fingertips, the corners of his bowtie smoldering. Water dripped off the table onto the floor. The last of the stubborn flames from the Bananas Foster on the cart mercifully went out.
The maître d’ moved his hand through his thin black hair. “Ladies and gentlemen!” He paused for a moment so everyone could turn towards him.
“Please take your seats, the show is over.” He picked up an overturned chair for the formerly blonde woman and gestured for her to sit. “To show you how embarrassed Cafe du Monde is for this…this unforgivable loss of…civility, there will be free desserts for everyone. I hope you will accept my invitation and stay.” He made his way over to James, who still held the burnt-out match in his fingertips.
“Young man, please give me that.” Standing stock-still like a statue, James did as he was told and relinquished the slender piece of charcoal.
The executive chef, a small, wiry spitfire of man, emerged from the kitchen at the opposite end with a cleaver in his hand, not knowing what to expect after hearing all the commotion. Standing in the doorway of the kitchen, he did his best to control his rage over this disturbance in his restaurant as he rotated the massive blade in his hand. He focused first on the cart and James, then Raphael and Elliot. His eyes widened and his jaw dropped as he recognized the look of guilt on Raphael’s and Elliot’s faces. It dawned on him what had happened.
“You! You did this! You damned Three Musketeers!” he hissed at the pair of waiters as he took a couple of steps towards them.
Elliot nervously backed up, stumbling into the table that held the ornate espresso machine, the chef’s pride and joy. With a misplaced elbow, the brass antique crashed to the ground. One of the handles broke away and spun into a corner.
The chef glanced from the waiters to the broken machine on the ground. He slowly raised the butcher knife, pointing it at Raphael and Elliot as he stepped further into the dining room. His face boiled with anger. “I’ll kill you two!”
James still stood there dumbfounded, staring into the saucepan. Elliot was the closest to him and figured that it would be easier to grab James and flee with their lives than to try to disarm a crazy Frenchman attacking with very, very sharp weaponry. Grabbing James by the arm, he turned towards the door, hoping Raphael would assist him with James. Raphael, never one for confrontation, turned tail and rushed towards the front door. Elliot watched the black soles of Raphael’s shoes as he ran to the front door and blasted it open with his shoulder, fleeing outside.
“Come back here! You are not going to get away from me!” The maniacal chef was quickly closing the distance between himself and the two remaining Musketeers.
James, who now appeared to have a minor sunburn on his face to go with his fried hair, startled as his friend pulled on his arm and mumbled, “Where are we going?”
Elliot tugged even harder. “We’re going out for a bit of fresh air, buddy. Can you pick up the pace a little?” The chef was almost upon them. “Like now? Run!” Elliot said in a panic as they careened off tables in an attempt to outrun the chef.
Fortunately, the maître d’, being a big man and not wanting to see any more carnage in his establishment that night, grabbed the chef around the waist with one hand and took the knife from the chef’s hand with his other.
“Let me go! I’m going to kill them, kill them all! Look at what they’ve done to our restaurant!” The chef struggled to get free.
“Ah, Gabriel, let them go. If you kill them, you will go to jail. Who could prepare those fabulous dishes as well as you do? The restaurant will close. Our patrons will be sad. Those three are not worth it.”
The maître d’ and the chef paused as they heard the two waiters force their way to the front entrance.
Gabriel began to calm down, and the maître d’ relaxed his grip.
“Perhaps you are right,” the chef muttered defeatedly. “Maybe I just need a couple of nights off. I’ve been working too hard.”
Elliot burst outside with James in tow. After about fifty feet, Elliot realized they were no longer being chased and stopped. It was a moonless summer night, the stars twinkling above the flare of the streetlights. Raphael emerged from a large clump of boxwoods near the front of the restaurant, partially illuminated by the glowing restaurant signage at the front of the building.
Raphael apologized, his hands in front of him and his head lowered as if in prayer. “Man, I am so sorry! I didn’t know that adding a little rum would cause such a flame!”
Elliot laughed. “You put rum in? I put rum in!”
James came to his senses. “You assholes! You both put rum in? You could’ve burnt me alive!”
Elliot grinned. “Yeah, well, you had it coming. That’s what you get for screwing with both of us.”
“But at the same time?” James protested as he stroked at the curled stubble of what remained of his mustache. “That was going to be the biggest tip I’d have made in a while. Guys, I really worked that table.”
“Sorry, but I didn’t know Elliot did it, too. We didn’t plan to do it together,” Raphael pleaded.
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Maybe we need to quit all of this pranking. It’s getting pretty expensive.” James tried to straighten out the front of his vaporized hair.
“Agreed, no more practical jokes,” said Elliot,” I will sleep better not having to worry about what one of you two idiots might do to me.”
“It’s probably for the best,” lamented Raphael.
“Man, my face burns, “ groaned James as he touched his forehead and cheeks. “I need a beer.”
“Barney’s Tavern then?” asked Elliot. They could see the sign down the street.
James thought for a second. “Fine, but you two morons are buying.”
They walked down the street towards the local tavern.
Elliot laughed. “Man, was that a big flame or what? I can’t believe it didn’t set off the fire sprinklers. I heard this whoosh, and the room was bathed in blue light.”
“Did you see the chef? He went totally psycho,” Raphael said, giggling.
“How could you see the chef?” protested Elliot. “Your ass flew out the door quicker than I’ve ever seen you move before.”
“Ha-ha. Tomorrow we can go down to Maison du Cygne. I hear they’re hiring,” Raphael volunteered.
“I wonder if they do Bananas Foster. It’s one of my favorites,” teased Elliot as he winked at James.
“Oh, you are just soooo funny!” said James as he pushed Elliot down the street towards a cold beer.
MIRANDA MOON
She kept her eyes on the road but looked away just long enough to see tears glistening on his cheeks he was crying...soundlessly...
"Manda, how come people die?"
She swallowed hard and clenched her teeth together, slowed down a little bit as the
tires on the right side of the Toyota plowed through some snow that had drifted off the shoulder on Route 9. Then the pines and spruce closed in on them again and the road was clear, dry white salt patterns cold-etched over the blacktop. The sky was all overcast and grey around them, the sun just a faint promise behind the clouds.
"We just do, honey," she whispered. "We get old or we get sick or we have accidents and that's what happens."
He asked every time, even for animals, and she was never ready with anything more than what she knew was, at best, no explanation at all, because he wasn't asking about the mechanics of Death, the physical end-product-everybody's-doing-it destination of Life. He wanted to know the all-encompassing cosmic fucking why.... and she might just as well have been honest and told him that she didn't have a clue, because that part of it was as much a mystery to her as it had ever been to him.
"I miss Mom and Dad a lot. Paul...and Smoky so much...I miss everybody."
"Me too, Oliver," she said. "Me too."
It felt like yesterday...had started with their older brother...a drunk driver in Tucson running a red light and their older brother thrown a hundred feet from the wreckage of his Harley. Then it was the stroke that killed their mother...and two years after that, grief that got fatal for their father when it made him careless with a chainsaw, taking trees down behind their cottage on the lake. She thought after that maybe they could be safe for just a little while...but three days ago their older sister...Lisa...five weeks after the doctor had found the cancer in her pancreas and it was over. Suddenly...it felt that way... suddenly all the Woodroffes were gone and it was just her and Oliver.
"Don't die, Manda."
"I'm gonna try like hell not to, sweetheart," she said.
"And you're still gonna be my sister?"
"Of course I am, honey," she said, and was grateful the stretch of Route 9 west of Hillsboro in front of them had no curves because she closed her eyes and had to suck the snot back up her nose and pretend her heart wasn't maybe finally breaking beyond repair.
"And you're always gonna be my brother...always...and Uncle Oliver for Lisa's kids..."
Oliver's sweet little brain had stopped growing somewhere around eight or nine years old He still wept for the baby raccoon had died in front of their cottage years ago...and Smoky, their yappy happy Keeshond.
"Manda...?"
"Yeah, honey."
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you cry I'll be quiet okay?"
She nodded. Rubbed her nose with the sleeve of her parka. He got hungry so they stopped in Keene for hamburgers at McDonalds and fifteen miles later picked up I-91 in Brattleboro and headed south. An hour after that they arced round a dogleg in the Connecticut River, took exit 19 onto Bridge Street in Northampton, crawled past the park and playground, and came to rest in the driveway of their small house on Walnut Street.
Miranda said, "Home again home again."
Oliver had already pretty much forgotten the cemetery in Concord, or why they had gone there in the first place.
2.
The next day they went back to the small school she had opened just for him...fighting for accreditation so she could, at the very least, map the potentials of children like her brother...find ways for them to survive once they were grown beyond the safety nets of their childhood.
Oliver was the best thing about her school. Never having surrendered his innocence to cynicism, adulthood, or the harsh realities of Western capitalism, he was the one who most often made the connect with the kids who came to them. He served as the gentle reassuring soul between them and the small staff, managed communication miracles where PhDs and all the clinical studies in the world could find no way to breach the walls of fear, chemical imbalance or physical short-circuiting that came with each new face.
Oliver had been her raison d'etre, the driving force behind her BA at UMass Amherst, the Masters from Clark and the doctorate at NYU, all in search of answers and solutions to the whats and whys of lost children...the cruel twists of Fate and physiology that often brought them into the world already damaged, in places where nothing and no one could ever reach them. Oliver was the soul of her crusade, had become the love of her life, because he needed everything she had to give, and she remembered the awful moment she realised he would never stop being the sweet little boy who had filled up most of her life through high school; that more than anything else in her life, it had become important to her for him to be able to stay that way.
"Miranda...?"
She shook her head, focused on the face leaning past the door of her office--a Saudi refugee she'd met during her post-grad work in New York City. Small and fierce in the freedoms she'd won by leaving Arabia, Rajiya Barakat was a different kind of crusader with degrees in sociology, Middle Eastern studies and business administration, most grateful for American citizenship because it allowed her fiery activism to flourish unchallenged by the societal constraints of her homeland. She wore her short-cropped head of dark hair and her blue jeans proudly, regarded trendy trappings with a sneering disdain, and was utterly fearless when it came to standing up to red tape, racism or intolerance of any kind. She managed the clinic's day-to-day, kept it running smoothly for Miranda and the children.
"I knocked a couple of times are you okay?"
She had a heart-shaped face and almost-black eyes lit with a watchful, protective wariness that never seemed to waver where her friends and responsibilities were concerned. Miranda shuffled some papers in self-defense, mustered a smile.
"Yeah mostly," she said. “Come on in, Jiya.”
“You guys could've taken the rest of the week off, y'know...we can run the place a few days without you.”
She flung herself down into one of the comfy chairs in front of Miranda's desk, and her eyes went a bit softer than their usual ready-for-action brightness. “How's Ollie doing?"
Miranda shrugged, laughed uncomfortably. "Oliver's doing Oliver," she said quietly. "Sometimes it seems like his brain just goes into this savant-like overdrive and he remembers everything. Then he starts to grieve all over again, like the memories are too grown-up for the rest of him. This morning he was fine again."
"So how're you doing, Miranda?”
She mulled that question over a couple of times, taking too long to come up with an answer, to where Rajiya leaned forward and started to look worried.
"I don't know how I'm doing, Jiya," she said. "No idea, really. Numbed out maybe? It doesn't matter. I'm dealing with it, and I can't let losing Lisa get in the way of me being all here for Oliver and everybody else."
Rajiya leaned closer. "You can and you should if you need to. Everyone here knows the drill, and we're all more than capable of making sure it gets done."
"I know that, Jiya, it's not even an issue."
"So...?"
"It's just that this is my life. I loved my parents and my brother and my sister, but I got to take care of Ollie because I was the youngest, and then I made the decision to keep on taking care of him. And after that...I didn't stop loving them when they were alive or after they were gone, but the nature of what I chose to do, by necessity put some kind of distance between us. I'm gonna cry for Lisa and my mom and dad and my brother some other time. Right now is right now, and right now I guess I'm all right."
"You're gonna tell me if that changes though..."
They got up from their chairs together and met beside the desk, arms encircling each other.
"I promise, Jiya. I swear it. Thank you."
Rajiya spoke in Arabic. "Ealaa alrahab walsaeat daymana ya 'ukhti. You are welcome always, my sister..."
3.
There was always paperwork, the clinical kind that Rajiya would have done happily if she had decided to get qualified for it with another couple of post-graduate degrees. Miranda always bitched about having to do it, would have preferred to have had more time working with the kids, but as her office manager had said, the staff she had hand-picked knew the drill, could do the work, and never failed to come to her to discuss every aspect of what they were trying to do.
Mark came through her door with his classroom/session reports for the previous week, forever eleventh-hour on the mid-week deadline they all had agreed upon, but every bit as ferocious about their children as Rajiya was about all of them. Six months before, after she'd told him that sleeping together wasn't the best idea if they were going to work together too, he'd moved on, but his charming smile and genuine warmth had never left their relationship so there had been some extra time spent with her...some Lisa stories...a red-and-white bandanna offered when she finally did let some tears out. When he was gone she was thinking about someone else she'd known who was so much just like him, bandanna and all. After Mark came her Oliver...serious...a frown on his face...
"Hi Manda I can't remember. What's for lunch today?"
"It's Wednesday, right?"
"I think so." He leaned over her desk to look at the big desk-blotter calendar with all of her scrawls and notes on it. "Yeah it's Wednesday...I think..."
"Then it's tuna sandwiches with soup."
"Do we have the potato chips and pickles to go with, like always?"
Miranda started to smile and then she started to laugh.
"C'mere and gimme a hug, Ollie," she said, standing to get wrapped up in one of his
enthusiastic embraces.
"As far as I know we got everything, honey. What's with all the questions?"
He stood away from her, looked out the window. Got real interested in a pair of chickadees wrangling over seeds in the feeder she'd perched on the outdoor sill.
"I just wanted t'make sure," he said, still looking at the birds on the windowsill, but showing signs of relief that making sure had turned out the way it did.
"So are you gonna be the one to pick some music for us today, or should I get Mark or Abby t'do that?"
He gave her one last squeeze and headed for the door.
"Abby picks good stuff," he said. "See ya later..."
* * *
Most of the rest of the morning went by quietly. Phone calls....referrals...parents checking in...after one last call Miranda put the desk phone receiver back in its cradle and eased back from her desk...thinking again...bandannas...a day long gone...
She reached down past her feet for her purse on the floor, suddenly frantic that what she suddenly was looking for wouldn't be there even though the last time it had been there when she hadn't been looking for it at all...
Two sheets of lined paper carefully torn from a pocket notebook, carefully folded and hidden between her Social Security card and a photograph of Mom and Dad and Paul and Lisa all crowded round her and Oliver at their cottage on Newfound Lake. Pencilled poetry from a visitor when she was still an undergraduate at Amherst...
Childhood eyes transparent with innocence
Step lightly sweet child the garden crawls
Each moment in Life another for Death
A sunset for my Life with every breath
Kiss me gently sweet child before sinking
Your teeth in passion it's all guaranteed
I dream to be all the wings you need
Together to fly...together to get high...
No better way in any world to die
The words brought back images...a tall beautiful boy with long black hair and grey eyes flecked with gold...an afternoon spent together...listening to music on the stereo...she had been knitting gloves or a scarf or something for Oliver...he had sat on the floor almost at her feet...told her how pretty she was...seemed sad...the way she had started to feel as they sat in their constrained silences...waiting...
There are no more heroes in this desperate land
When they come to lay waste to our garden
There will be no one between us & them
The flowers will sigh one last time
And then there will be only exile
And sinful night-roaming under the moon
Elysium is there...waiting for us somewhere.
Streams swell into rivers to fuck with the sea
Sunlight is honey...the taste of you in me
She remembered how it had all seemed so familiar, how easy it had been to sit there and confide...say things she'd not had time or courage to say to anyone else...and how the look in his eyes had made her feel that she was something precious to him even though they'd only just met...
What knowledge have I of saints & patriots?
What need for a standard to bear
When Elysium awaits us so wondrously fair...
Sweet child with transparent eyes
Shall we go now across the Bridge of Sighs
To be running free on golden sand
To love and make love hand in hand
Elysium is there...
Waiting...
She folded the papers back into its place in her wallet, and put her wallet back in her purse...
4.
Just before lunchtime Abigail came roaring into her office, all sorts of hippie-chic with bells sewn into the hems of her vintage-store bells and the distinct aura of Aquarius in her waist-length hair.
''You gotta come see this, Miranda," she said...grinning...dodging round the desk to grab her hand.
"Oliver just did it again," she said...laughing...shaking her head like it was something that happened every day where her brother was concerned. She dragged them out into the hall and down towards the common room where they served meals, had all the group sessions and the big screen television on one wall for after supper...
''I was sitting down with the new kid...Jimmy Rossiter...the one come in last Saturday...
right before you...you know... Lisa...?"
She stopped in mid-stride halfway down the hall...turned...Miranda said:
"It's okay Abby what the hell...?"
Abby just said: ''Tiffany Brewer."
Who had been with them since the end of the summer...speechless...cowering in the corner of her room never leaving it without hours of reassurance no one was ever sure she had heard. Abby brought them up short of the common room and pointed... at Oliver... sitting with a thirteen-year old girl...round-faced with big haunted eyes and ragged blonde hair...wrapped up in one of her brother's bear-hugs....
"I was talking with Jimmy...talking to Jimmy... you know, our usual trying to find out where the boundaries are...an idea of where to go...
"And suddenly I'm hearing this voice I've never heard before and I look over and holy shit it's Tiffany...she's crying, 'Randa...she's sobbing and talking to Ollie...!"
"No way!"
"Yes fucking yes, Miranda! She's leaning up against him with his arms around her and she's weeping...crying...wailing...I heard her she said Why do they all go away I hate it when they go away they don't care they just go...
"She's been here for months, Abby. Not a sound. What happened?"
Abigail shook her head. "Oliver. I don't know..."
5.
"Shit," said Miranda. "What have we done to ourselves that loss can turn some things into life-shattering catastrophes?"
Abigail just shook her head. "How long have we been doing this, Randa? D'you think I've figured it out? Good luck."
They sat in Miranda's office, considered the ramifications of retarded...challenged... Oliver doing something they themselves couldn't do, not with years and years of... education...and just sat in Miranda's office, each of them measuring the length and breadth of their own catastrophes. Years and years of them. They'd been best friends for a long long time.
"Abby when we were at Amherst. D'you remember? It was like right about now, the middle of winter. I knocked on your door first thing in the morning and you let me sleep in your dorm room for two days..."
Abby said:
"Never gonna forget. That sonofabitch Dorn dosed you. A big fucking dose of acid..."
Miranda nodded. "It was like somebody was trying to tear me out of my skin and chew me up there was this huge empty place in front of me and I was getting sucked down into it to die in all that horrible emptiness...and there was this guy...his name was Joshua... Dorn had brought him back from some dope sell in upstate New York. He saved me Abby...this beautiful boy who didn't know me from a hole in the wall he saved me...stayed with me out in the snow all night and he held me and talked to me and made me tell him stories about Oliver and in the morning he called me Miranda Moon and made sure that there was nothing to hurt me and nobody to carry me away he handed my life back to me, Abby...in the morning...he did...he gave it back to me so I could go on taking care of my baby brother and do this with you and Mark and Jiya..."
"I remember..."
"Where would Tiffany have gone...who would she have found...where could she have left the hurt if Ollie hadn't been there t'help her leave it behind...?"
"You know I can't tell you that, Randa. I don't have those kind of answers. My parents would have said God was working in mysterious ways."
"We don't need that kind of mystery in our lives."
"Preaching t'the choir, girlfriend."
"I know. It just makes me crazy sometimes...the way it almost always comes down to this hit-or-miss equation..."
"It happened, Miranda. When it did. It's gotta be good for Tiffany."
"I hope so. Oliver doesn't even realise..."
"Maybe he does, Miranda. Maybe it doesn't have t'be something consciously recognised by anybody. What matters is he found a bridge...a way through all the desolation in that girl's heart..."
* * *
Abigail went back out into the world a couple of minutes later. Miranda was sitting at her desk staring at the chickadees still being pissy with each other...kicking up fluffs of snow on the windowsill their squeaks stealing through the double-paned glass she looked up and Oliver was standing in the doorway.
"I'm sorry Manda I was listening," he said apologetically.
"It's okay, honey," she said. "No secrets...never any secrets for us, right? You 're my magic, honey. You're so good. I don't know what me or anybody here could do without you."
Oliver looked embarrassed.
"I remember that guy Dorn. He had blonde curly hair. He made you cry a lot."
Miranda nodded back. "He did, Oliver, he most certainly did..."
"I didn't know he did that bad thing to you, though."
She smiled at him, as hard as she could because he looked worried...because his sense of Time was as off-kilter as everything else in his brain and it seemed like maybe he was thinking the bad thing had been yesterday...or so recent that he needed to be doing something to make up for it.
"It was a long time ago, sweetheart," she said. "Not something you have to worry about. I'm okay. And that guy Joshua took good care of me."
"I woulda took care of you too."
"I know that, baby," she said. "You would have liked Joshua. He would've liked you."
"D'you know where he is now?"
"No, Ollie, I don't...he had to go home the next day and I never saw him again."
"Could you find him maybe...I wanna say thank you."
“Why d'you wanna do that, honey?”
“Because he saved you when you were gonna die, when you were afraid the dark was gonna swallow you up and take you away...”
He stopped...looked up at her with his beautiful innocent face...the eyes of a child...
struggling with the words for one last thought.
“Because if you were ever gone, I don't think I would know enough stuff by myself to be here now.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “I should go see if Tiffany is okay. I told her today we were having tuna fish with soup and potato chips and pickles and if she would come out of her room for lunch I'd sit with her so she wouldn't be scared.”
Miranda watched her fifty-five year old baby brother toddle off to save another soul from the darkness.
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ABE MARGEL
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ALEX ATKINSON
ANGANDEEP KR CHATTERJEE
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ASHLEY MURPHY
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ERIN X. WONG
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