Internationale Erzählungen
Illustration Copyright (c.) by Mahdi Tavajohi.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Martyn Conterio
My Name was François
On that cold winter morning the very soil had frozen. Zero degrees outside. Thin plates of ice coated the Seine. Apartment windows frosted over resembling cataract eyes. In the early light, myself and my assistant made our way to the Eiffel tower. Intended as a temporary exhibition - we Parisians - fell in hatred with the monstrosity. Nevertheless, it would be the site of my infamy.
The typical hubbub of the great metropolis felt eerily silent that morning. As the people of the city slept and dreamed in their warm beds - my own dream and obsession was about to break free from the imagination - and into the real world. There was no lilac dawn or growing amber light - only a deep dark gloom that gave way to pale light and the accursed frost. Vapours lifted and spiralled. Off every surface. From chimneys to mouths.
Along the empty street we shuffled to our automobile. It huffed and puffed along the deserted boulevards. My lungs burned from the intense cold. My mind raced with the task at hand. February, often the cruellest month, would bear witness to my moment of joy.
My name was François.
The press gathered for my demonstration. Pathe cameramen too. What I was about to reveal to the world would aid both aviation safety and become a revolutionary technology. The 20th century would witness many attempts at apotheosis - when man is transfigured into a god. The longing to fly and soar like the angels and the birds was accomplished. However, questions were left unanswered. It was not an even keel we sought. No, we did not seek this. Mastery of our world and the possibilities of creation were the ultimate goal! Some people called me crazy for what I was about to do. “I’ll show you!” I replied, coldly, holding an aloof air for added mystery.
Transporting the gear had been burdensome. Pierre saw to the logistics and itinerary of the task. The special suit required and responded to air flow and a certain amount of aerodynamics. I admit, freely, I was not a physicist. Nor a scientist. I was a man with desire: a destiny to fulfil. In truth and life, I was a tailor. Born in Austria and making a living Paris. I wish I could portray a sense of foreboding regarding the subsequent events. No. There was no such feeling. I ate well that morning. Croissants and coffee. I would not meet my end on an empty stomach.
My assistant, Pierre, had been preparing the suit and making some minor preparations. I talked to a member of the press.
“I have every confidence the demonstration shall lead to great business for me. If things go wrong - which they won’t - nobody shall say “this man failed.”
“Monsieur Reichelt, you could be killed.”
“Not today, friend.”
My confidence in the task at hand began to swell my pride more than usual. I had tested the suit at lower levels and it worked beautifully. The day was calm. Cold, yes. One hundred and ninety-six feet. A long way down. I shall fall gracefully to the earth - like a feather.
The ascent began with Pierre already on the first balcony preparing the suit. Each moment passed and savoured. The gathered press wished me luck and the men from Pathe cranked their cameras. The police said nothing.
And so I reached the platform. Where it would all begin. Getting into the suit, I admit, was cumbersome. Pierre repeatedly asked if I was good to go and reminded me I could always change my mind. The damned fool! This fine suit; dreamed, designed and crafted by the hands of an artist - my own - would show them all. World fame beckoned.
Climbing onto the stool proved difficult. Pierre steadied me. Up top, the magnificent view took hold and my legs became hesitant. The splendid views distracted me momentarly. I gazed upon the white marvel that is the Sacre Coeur on Montmartre and felt the cool hand of fate edging me forward. A journalist asked me if everything was okay. I ignored him. The world began to take on an insouciance that caused my hands to shake. What if I failed? No! The very thought demeans my effort and guile. Underneath the suit - nobody saw my trembling frame. Once again, I peered down at the frost covered ground. Several police officers and cameramen looked back. Waiting for the divine moment. Pathe wished to capture my experiment on many cameras. The intent, I was informed, was to make an international sensation of me. These recorded moments of my life would be shown in halls around the world. From Paris to San Francisco; from Sydney to Shanghai!
Pierre asked me if I was doubting the whole endeavour. To look an idiot in front of the world was too much to bear. The suit would guide me to the ground. Men would shake my hand and say “well done, you genius!” Military officials would offer me contracts. Fame beckoned. A leap of faith was all it needed.
After prolonged hesitation, I made the jump with the courage of a lion. The suit failed me utterly. The downward force simply streamlined the material and did not conflate it. Within seconds the shock forced my heart to seize up. There are no words to describe the terror; the shame; the sadness. I fell like a bag of bricks; like a deadweight. Heaven have mercy. My intentions were honourable. I died an honourable man. Yes.
My name was François.
~
Richard Godwin
The Crucifixion 0f Thomas Waltz
I sleep with a phial of poison beside my pillow, next to the crucifix I will use.
They are coupled in my mind, twin symbols of his allure and deceit. One I keep as a reminder of his hollow toxic heart, the other will serve him well.
They make good bedfellows, these two toxins, the ancient wood gnarled with mystic carvings, the colourless liquid refracting blue when I hold it up to the light. It is strangely prismatic, the phial, standing alone while I take the crucifix in hand and imagine what I am going to do to him.
Beneath its etched and buried symbols, I see snakes and weapons. His hands bleeding on his rosary, their scattered beads spilling like teeth onto the cold flagstones.
Thomas Waltz. I say the name breathlessly, a taste like victory on my palate and wait for his death.
You cannot do what he did and get away with it.
No matter how firm your belief in providence may be.
No matter how many disciples you may have ready and waiting in the wings to bow and scrape and call you master and do your bidding.
Thomas Waltz. Piper and fraudster, snake and charmer. The man I once called friend and who befriended my wife.
It all happened like this.
One perfect summer’s day, when the birdsong tricked me into believing in heaven, when I believed more firmly in his teachings than I did in my own existence, I found something missing.
Call it a sense that something was too good.
I had seen him that morning and left on the usual good terms, a spring in my step and smile upon my face.
I remember his face that day as we spoke, his veiled eyes, his little beard, the sanguine charm which dripped from his fingertips like precious metal. Dapper and elegant, he shook my hand, dressed in his Saville Row suit and expensive shoes.
We had been talking of salvation again and after all those black years, when I thought I would never surface again, when the only solace was the thought of suicide, he had made his breakthrough.
Convincing me of the hidden message of the scriptures and the need for service, he had shown me a hope I hade never known, and transported me back as skilfully as a pickpocket to my unfulfilled childhood yearnings. Explaining who I was, he had handed
me myself, and I tried on his suit of clothes and found I preferred them to my own, however shabby.
‘I can hand you the key, my friend’, he said, the smile shining on his face.
And I believed him.
Imogen was the kind of woman he adored: feminine and elegant, her beauty exceeded her years and she trusted him as she did anyone who had never give her reason not to.
I was helping him with the tasks he set me. Like a trusting dog, I appeared when he summoned me and did as he asked. Always with charm, of course, that was his poison.
Little did I know.
Returning home that day, I found them.
There in the bedroom, lights dimmed, at first I did not see what it was. The shapes against the bed like some forgotten clothes reminding me of myself. Or my mind initially refused to accept what I was seeing.
He lay there in my bed and she next to him, her arm against the pillow. He was lying on his back and rubbing his belly.
I turned and ran.
Into the black streets.
And then, hours later, drenched in sweat, I returned.
He was gone of course.
But there lay Imogen.
And as I approached our bed, I knew something was amiss.
I took her hand in mine to remonstrate with her, to plead, to ask her why, to hope she would say it was not so.
And as soon as I lifted it, I felt the ice in her palm. Her cheeks were pale blue, like the shimmering edge of the phial of poison which has become my friend.
He had broken her neck, and it lay as limp as a chicken’s when it has been wrung.
Her eyes stared back at me from the hell he had made and I knew then what I would do.
I ran from the room straight into the arms of a police officer.
Of course, I failed to give any reasonable defence.
I was tried and sentenced.
And there in my cell, I started to plot his downfall.
Meanwhile Thomas Waltz continued to exercise his particular charms on every woman who came his way, and I waited.
The money I had saved over the years and put aside I now used.
I hired a detective to keep track of Waltz, to find out his movements, habits, change of address, anything useful to my enterprise.
He would report to me at the strange hotel I learned to think of as home.
It came as little surprise when I learned that he was gaining status and influence all the time.
A change of address would do nothing to shake me off, and I knew he would have forgotten me.
You see, Waltz was a man of infinite charm. Extremely good-looking, he had the ability to forge sincerity like a masterpiece.
Eloquent and persuasive, he would work a target round, feeling his way to their weakness, inching through the doorway, his voice soft as tearing silk, unhallowed and invasive.
But I knew the real Waltz. The hater of women, the rapist, the thief, the poisoner of men’s souls.
When freedom finally wrapped its warm arms around me again, I wasted no time.
I found the address I had for Waltz, and spotting him walking arm in arm with a beautiful young woman, sought and found lodging nearby in a rundown bearding house.
There, in the grime and the dust, watching the rats scuttle across the bare floorboards whenever I came in unannounced, I waited for him.
It was in a nearby shop that I found the crucifix that seemed so fitting for him. Strangely sharpened a little at the end, like some relic from a sect, I took it home at once.
The plan fell into place as easily as a broken bone.
I watched him and saw how he worked.
And then one day, I overheard the conversation which gave what I wanted.
I was sitting at the little café when he passed by with one of his acolytes. A young man who looked spellbound was listening wrapt in what he said.
I can hear it now.
‘You see’, Waltz said, ‘we must ensure all our flock are ready. We live in dangerous times. The devil walks amongst us, and we must be on our guard. But with this to defend us, with this’, thumping the Bible he carried everywhere with him, ‘on our side, we need fear no evil.’
‘Yes, indeed.’
‘So, we arrange for the mystery play, and we raise the money accordingly, and we put it in the church coffer and we prepare for Armageddon, because when the four trumpets sound, we will not be caught unaware like all the sinners. The purpose of our play is to show the inner mystery and drama of the crucifixion, why our Lord and Saviour sacrificed himself for our sins. And so, we need a life size cross.’
‘In the church, Thomas?’
‘In the church. By Sunday. Raise it high so all can see the majesty of our Lord, and the actor can be placed up there. We will show the true meaning of the crucifixion.’
‘Very well.’
‘Who amongst us would do as he did, would put themselves up on the cross? If you believe, if you truly believe, that is what it takes, and as your pastor I would do it.’
The young man nodded his head gravely.
‘I will have everything ready’, he said.
They turned and moved away and the rest of their conversation was lost in the sound of traffic.
But I had heard all I needed to.
The church was a little way away and that night I broke in by a back window. The latch was loose and no one would notice.
I looked around and saw the perfect place to hide: to the rear of the stage was a storage room to which I found and kept the key.
I returned to my shabby little room and spoke to my wife’s picture for a while.
The next day I watched from across the street while a ten foot crucifix was delivered to the church.
I bought some nine inch nails and a hammer that felt heavy enough in my hand to do the job. Easy to grip and solid, it would drive Waltz back to hell.
I got what I needed ready and waited.
And the next day I turned up at the church.
The fake beard and tramp’s clothes fooled him completely. The great Waltz dismissed me to the back and let one of his acolytes bore me with the finer details of his deluded trash.
He gave his best sermon and then the play was performed, ending with the actor raising himself on the cross and staying up there while the lights were dimmed.
In the darkness I went into the storage room.
Some hours later, when the sound of voices had died down, the church fell silent.
I knew he was still in there, since I could see a light beneath the door.
He always locked up himself, trusting no one with the money.
He ended his sermons with a little cash count before going out to meet one of his women.
I inched my way across the rear of the stage and spotted him, back bent over the notes he lovingly counted off.
Just as he licked his thumb to turn the final few over, I reached round and popped the chloroform under his nose.
He stood up as if jolted and turning with bulging eyes, collapsed in a heap on the floor.
He had not hurt himself, and the effects would soon wear off, so, reaching into his pocket I found the key to the door and locked us in.
I then dragged him over to the foot of the crucifix which loomed down at him like an angry schoolteacher.
Removing the rope from my bag, I hoisted one end over the arms and caught the other.
I then tied it round his waist, threading it through his legs and back up where I fastened it around his arms. Swaddled like that he slept as I prepared his crucifixion.
I had spotted a ladder at the back of the church and now fetched it.
It reached to the top, and so I pulled him up, knotting the rope when he was up there.
It was hard work, but rewarding.
Waltz awoke just as he came level with the arms of the crucifix.
At first he just opened his eyes and stared about in groggy confusion.
Then, looking at me he shouted:
‘What are you doing?’
I said nothing and watched his panic rise in him.
Climbing the ladder with my nails and hammer I watched him descend into fear, his charm and good looks unveiling to the ugly monster he was.
When I had finished with him he didn’t even look human.
‘Who are you? What do you want?’, he said.
Again I said nothing.
‘Is it money? I have money.’
I measured him up for the nails which I now lined up on the nearest arm of the crucifix.
‘In the name of God stop!’, he said.
I looked at him.
‘Don’t you remember me?’, I said.
‘No. Who are you?’
I mentioned my wife’s name, and watched his pause and the sharp intake of breath.
The great Waltz was lost for words.
‘Now I’m going to crucify you’, I said.
‘What happened was terrible, terrible’, he said, ‘but you must believe me, it was an accident.’
‘Accident? No. You killed her. You raped her first, like you do to women who say no to you.’
‘That is not what happened, that is not what happened.’
‘I know what you do, I know who you are, and now I’m going to drive these nails into your hands.’
I showed him one of them.
‘No!’
‘This might just save you’, I said. ‘Do you believe in your preachings?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you are going to enjoy this. Don’t you say you would be crucified for the sins of mankind? Well, I’m going to crucify you for your own sins. I’m going to nail you to this cross for my wife and for every woman you have raped, for every lost soul you have cheated, for every man whose life you have used like a fairground attraction. And every time I drive a nail into your flesh I will enjoy it. You claim great things for yourself, Thomas Waltz.’
I tied his arms into place, adjusting the rope as I did so.
He struggled, of course, but every time he did, I gave the rope a jerk so that it tightened against his groin, until he was choking and retching against the wood.
By the time I had finished and he was ready for his crucifixion, he looked nothing like Thomas Waltz. The handsome charmer had died on the ropes.
‘Please let me go’, he said.
‘Why?’
‘You can’t do this!’
‘But you can rape and murder my wife and let me go to prison, you can rip off the gullible, and prey on women, lining your pockets with the proceeds of your lies?’
He started to say something, but I silenced him with the first nail.
I drove it straight through his lying hand.
And how he screamed.
It was like a girl’s cry, really. High-pitched, no manliness in it, shameful to hear.
Then, I leant across him and drove the other nail in.
Another scream.
‘This is a good hammer’, I said.
I moved down a few rungs and removing his expensive shoes, I nailed his feet there and then took a pew and watched for a while.
He was groaning and trying to persuade me to let him down and when he saw that he was wasting his breath, he said;
‘This won’t kill me, of course’, you know that. ‘My people will come in the morning, they will get me down, and you will be arrested and this time you won’t get out of prison.’
‘But I haven’t finished with you yet’, I said. ‘This is just an hors d’hoeuvre. The main course follows.’
He glared at me from his cross.
‘I am Thomas Waltz. Get me down!’
‘You are a rapist and a killer’, I said.
I watched the blood flow from his hands, splashing the stage below.
Then I climbed back up the ladder and took my crucifix out of my pocket.
He was shaking and his throat had dried up.
Every time he tried to speak, his voice failed him.
‘I remember you rubbing your belly after you raped her. Lying in my bed next to her, preparing your lies, preparing your poison.’
‘You cannot do this.’
I opened his shirt so that his belly was visible.
‘Every time you open your mouth a new lie pops out. I’m sick of your preaching, you are now going to pay for what you did to my wife.’
That was when he made his final attempt.
‘Let me go and I’ll give you all my money, I have a fortune, you can have it, let me go. I am Thomas Waltz.’
I looked at him for a moment and wondered if he really believed any of this, whether his own self-love convinced him he was right, and as I did, the image of my wife lying in that bed swept over my like a wave of nausea and I drove the sharpened end of my crucifix so hard into his flesh that his guts began to spill onto the stage, splashing it like vomit at a party that has turned ugly.
He opened his mouth in mute horror, staring at me in disbelief.
He looked down.
The rent in his flesh was as wide as a grin. The sharpened wood had sliced him apart like a steak. He struggled to move, raped by the crucifix.
I left him there like that for his acolytes to find him, the cross buried so deep in his belly that only an inch of wood jutted out, the note I’d written pinned to his head.
From the stage you could just about read it:
‘Behold the king of liars, rapist and murderer.’
‘Thomas Waltz’, I said as I made to leave. ‘A waltz is something elegant and enjoyable. You are neither. Even your name is a lie.’
He looked at me, finally believing in something.
And I locked the door on him and stepped out into the beautiful evening.
~
Robert J. Gregg
Twice Dead is Once Enough
I closed my eyes and took ten steps up the path toward 59th and the horse-drawn buggies there these sunny days. Forcing myself into blind, ten-step, quick-paced, test runs is the field battle I wage against big city life and push-button humdrum. What more could happen then that I end up on wet grass or in bushes that line the walk. Such was my routine, mornings, first through Central Park, then several blocks crosstown to Madison, where open eyes for heart and soul things, ears tuned to grunts people make and a taste for the average are part of the job. Without it, go out and sell encyclopedias or become a banker. Here in Central Park, the blindfold is a test of what’s really beneath the surface. The power to feel reality I call Mono Orientation Intelligence, M.O.I., a seventh and eighth sense sonar system, theoretically a quick reaction alignment to the magnetic, geographic, socio-audio, north-south lines of force in the middle of New York’s clogged traffic system.
This was my morning reprieve from stress, my flight from modern windmill nostalgia, the 50’s, from the dissipation of all remaining Quixotic elan, the physical challenge of my desk work „in“ box, and the human compromise necessary to live relatively untainted alongside it, all damned good reasons for closing one’s eyes.
Nicely said, I thought, loving the sound of words chirping, rubbing against each other, a habit of mine when measuring their impact.
I was actually mildly satisfied with my life. The complaints served as a cover for an inherited curiosity preoccupied with watching what other people do with their lives, actually my job in a way though lately often resulting in ostrich-like evasive action, eyes closed. After six steps I became uncertain and might have weakened in resolve except that today was Thursday and I had managed the ten-step test three consecutive days running, read that walking, and was shooting for a full week. Steps seven and eight passed as enlightening as could be expected, but number nine got me in trouble, deep trouble and made my day end rather poorly. My left foot hit some sort of pothole which put me off kilter and jarred my sonar steering, which I might mention in passing is just another of the orientation mechanisms God in His omniscience hid in us free from Satan’s grasp, autopsy and spendthrift habit, hidden remnants of cavemen instinct, the M.O.I. in us from time immemorial prior to knowledge, the tree, the apple and other forms of cultural domestication.
It all sounds like water gurgling bubbly out of a bottle especially if the people you’re speaking to don’t like long sentences.
I’d busied myself recovering bits and pieces of lost sonar capacity years now, a prerequisite should we return to the dark caves pessimists predict our due or should we mutate into some sort of postmodern fundamentalism that doesn’t accept electric light as God-given unless free of charge, reasonable enough to a certain extent, I, too, thought, but much more of a problem than the ten-step system I exercized daily for thrills or shall we say, just in case.
The pothole sent me reeling; I tripped, tried to catch myself, lurched forward, tripped again on a curb, moving fast now, out of control, fast, very fast and slammed headlong into a park bench, the gift of a certain Mr. and Mrs. M. Goodman to the City of New York, anchored in concrete and meant to be there till their grandchildren return from California, i.e. as indestructible as is most New York these days.
For all I know, you might be describing a mountain cataract or a Best Seller sexual act, poetry, rhythm and blues.
I don’t think I like the Goodmans, especially Mr. and Mrs. M. Goodman of New York. The whole family had become a real pain in the neck. I lost consciousness and died two days later as a result of a brain concussion and hemorrhaging that left the doctors helpless, so they said, a hopeless situation right from the start except for the fact that my heart was young and strong and in no way affected by the stupid manner in which I had treated my head. Human sonar capability in the middle of New York was for the birds as was any kind of orientation need in the midst of so much hectic. Besides, I was forced to admit, empirical science would never have revealed such secrets to me, an unscientific, somewhat absent-minded, back-to-the-basics, genial advertising professional in his rather ill-advised ten-step walk-to-work research, not to me.
There you go again.
My will to live, as strong as ever, immediately transferred its effort into the vascular, direction of flow, the heart, the very soul of my existence. The use of the word soul here is purely accidental and not in the least a trick to introduce it at this point or to verify its existence through simple personification in my M.O.I. system, which in spite of its brevity had been herewith proven proven beyond a doubt by exception. As I was saying, my life force essence had fully concentrated itself in the heart at just the moment that it was forcibly taken from me and simply, I say simply for lack of an acceptable four-letter word, given to the next best in line, a likeable chap, I guess, long patient, congenitally in trouble, and especially grateful for both my existence as well as its present lack. Not having been offered much of a choice, I fully accepted, in fact, yes, I would say, approved quite lightheartedly, the alternative being possibly total darkness. Who knows.
Sounds like someone filling a tub and stripping for a long hot bath. I love hot baths.
My memory recall power was fast becoming mere instinct, yet that bothered me little in those first N.M. (New Man and carrier of my heart) days for I soon discovered that much of what N.M. knew and thought specifically was in its own way interesting. I was a computer programmer (quite unrelated to the Madison Avenue top account man I’d been), intelligent, responsible, a bit picayune, perhaps a bit too one-track. I sensed, however, that whatever had been my own O.M. (Old Man) ways, I was not particularly well adapted to N.M.’s mathematical exactness in thought, living and environment.
With my old-fashioned, urge-driven attachment to things, an abstruse, impractical prevalence of feeling and an apparently very intense preoccupation with my physical well-being, I now found it difficult to express myself through N.M. My new-found joie de vivre, the pleasure of simply still being alive made me want to sing. Poetic, pastoral, an echo. He, N.M., couldn’t sing, so we compromised by whistling, soon so perfect and often that it amazed N.M. and most of the people he knew.
N.M.’s wife was no stranger, to N.M. that is, but the rather commonplace passion she aroused in me left me empty and homesick. There was none of the warmth I might have expected, no love in the O.M. sense of the word, no sudden becoming, no stars and no heavenly nights.
Actually, its getting interesting. I won’t interrupt anymore.
In moments of intimacy I faked emotion because it seemed proper and pumped sufficient amounts of blood, but my heart, so to speak, wasn’t in it. Love and passion, to be real must be a combination of thought, feeling and natural desire, or let’s say for the sake of argument, good and evil, assuming the two to be for the moment a reference to things of heaven, the reigning gods there, of the mind, of intellect as opposed to things of the earth, the exiled angels, of the body, of emotion.
I reacted to „good and evil“ with chills up and down my spine especially when they intertwined into knots and snarls and gorgeous configurations. I needed it, perceived it, felt it, and found it absolutely ideal, the gamut of existence.
How’s that for a title? It seems to mean something and it sounds good. Excuse me.
Love and passion, add beauty for spice, danced, joined, up and down my spine and told me in no uncertain manner what it was to be alive, in actuality, one hell of a way to say blood flowed through my veins.
I still remembered exactly what gave me chills. The soprano duet from „Butterfly“ gave me chills. Monet’s water lilies gave me chills. The perfection of steel ball bearings held in my hand, the scent of roses, a good bottle of wine, an overtime win, gave me chills. There were chills, too, from ugliness, fear and pain, high ledges, long loneliness, new dead things, old dead things, recent history to name a few, to tell me I wasn’t stone. A very starry night, a hard crossword puzzle solved, Faust, Hamlet, Casablanca, my daughter’s smile gave me chills. Winged Victory and Audrey Hepburn were guarantees; d’Artagnan never failed me. Naturally, in one form or another we react to what we perceive, consciously or not, and to ills we experience, but N.M.’s reactions never climaxed in much more than a slight itching of the right ear lobe which he thoughtlessly choked to death between his thumb and index finger. As you can imagine, this took getting used to.
Although I hate to admit it, I must say N.M. was trivial. He wasted time on trivia, too much time, his feelings on trivia, too much waste. N.M.’s love, call it that out of courtesy, was unconcentrated and trivial; nothing glowed in his love. Aware that repetition can become boring, I repeat anyway, he was simply trivial, which in turn produced trivia around him, which made him even more trivial, a vicious circle. I needed love, beauty, passion, even pain around me to live in comfort. I sifted what I could as best I could through his unconsciousness but the sparsity of it had me worried, worried I’d recede into myself, give up, shutter up outgoing, out incoming, and spiral off into cold dead space, forgotten, final, forever. I was worried.
As is so often the case, the unexpected occurred that changed everything. By apparent coincidence, O.M.’s widow, Mary, my wife, appeared on the scene, the result of a well-placed bribe which pried out N.M.’s address, bearer of the heart her husband had lost to a certain Mr. and Mrs. Goodman’s concrete park bench. Curiosity or grief, I’m not sure which, prodded her on; seemingly absurd, I’d say, if it were anyone but Mary.
She telephoned one day as a partner of a reputable executive Fifth Avenue headhunter agency, the career position she in fact held. Her job opportunity offer was of little interest to N.M., but her voice on the phone attracted him for some strange reason I won’t go into. Since an occasional outside measure of one’s worth is often interesting, he agreed to a luncheon meeting the following day. A waiter directed N.M. to a discreetly-placed corner table whereupon seeing Mary there, large as life, he did a flip-flop.
The immediate attraction was so strong I pumped three pints of pure oxygenized blood through N.M.’s veins before he could calm me. His face turned red; his right ear lobe exploded, and he tripped over one of his left shoes. How was I to know exactly who Mary was, deprived of O.M.’s old eyes to recognize her questioning look, his nose to scent her sudden fear, his touch to feel her loving hand shaking mine, but, I must say, she bowled me over. It was stronger than I was. I was defenseless. It was you know what at first sight, and N.M. could hardly understand what was happening to him as he landed literally on the floor at her feet, stood up, red he thought from embarrassment and fought to regain his normal composure if not for the interview than because his pounding heart was going wild.
She asked all the usual professional questions as if the meeting were real, totally unfair and extremely one-sided because at no time did she give N.M. or me an inkling who she was, although instinctively I had already guessed. At long last she paused for breath. I saw that also her cheeks were red, that her hand taking notes scribbled nervously, that she, too, was sending and receiving unconscious signals in a manner that increased my own complete loss of balance. Something was taking place in her, in us, which I could feel, between the lines, of course. Later she admitted to me that the intense attraction she felt for N.M. caught her completely off guard. It was a personal attraction her curiosity had not even considered, the circumstances too strange, too bizarre. She felt herself drawn emotionally to a stranger she found uninteresting, and physically to him in a manner she hardly approved.
We ordered lunch, switched the topic from my career to springtime in Europe and fall in New England, subjects which to N.M. were new or at the most worth little more than a moment of awe in direct confrontation, to van Gogh’s wheat fields and Bruegel’s summer. After lunch, which I paid in spite of her argument that it was by rights hers, we walked over to Central Park, spent an hour or two in discussion wandering, then found a bench (thank heavens, not Goodman’s I noted relieved, in spite of a troubled deja vu feeling) to soak up the afternoon sun. I reached over and took her hand in mine as if it were the most natural thing to do, as if I’d known her all my life. I felt I’d known her all my life. Also I felt that something was bothering her but considered it best not to ask for fear she would simply get up and leave me, leave me die.
The sun dipped behind the near skyline and cool evening crept through Central Park. We stood up, her hand still in mine. Walk me home, she said. Its not far. We were silent, silent the way old couples are silent. Time expanded around me like soda water, all my instants fizzing and bursting in my head, tickling my nose, burning my throat until I was drunk from it and I could feel it inside me bubbling, quaking, strange, very strange. I felt time deep in me glow, time without measure, an unending instant of time, almost holy.
Hmm.
We spoke of little things, of meaningless unimportant things, each word a New Years Eve chime, a flickering Halloween pumpkin, a mathematical rhyme, music to some sort of inner ear as if we were dancing together in each other’s arms, an embrace, a kiss, a laugh, a samba twirling and voluptuous, a jitterbug, young and free, near, nearer, retreating.
Nice counterpoint. OK. OK. I’ll be quiet.
We walked up Broadway, then turned left toward Riverside Drive. The street glowed with color; people moved as one, bunched up at street corners then flowed on and it was evening and all was good. On their faces was written life, its phases, its youth, its age, its sorrow and its emptiness, its joy and its fullness. I took it all in with awe, alive, suddenly conscious in a way I’d never been before.
In her apartment house we were greeted with Hello’s and How Are You’s as if we belonged there, belonged together, to the building, the elevator, the floor, and to the apartment I now entered for the first time in my life. She smiled as I took off my tie and jacket to make myself comfortable forgetting I wasn’t at home. How about a good cup of tea, she asked. How strange, I thought, for I’d only lately discovered I liked tea, Jasmin tea. The living room was comfortable, the kind of comfort in old leather easy chairs, pipes, newspapers, books and slippers. I took a pipe in my hand sensing doing so wouldn’t bother her. It seemed to speak to me the way smooth briar does and old favorite pipes do, a beauty to feel that made me wish myself a pipe smoker.
My ear lobe tingled like crazy again as it had been doing all afternoon. I wandered from room to room, the thought not occurring to me that it might be impolite to be so curious, and curiously, seeing myself very much at home here. I rubbed my right ear the way I often do when confronted with a challenging programming problem. I noticed that Mary was watching me carefully while seemingly very occupied with her tea service. A warm feeling came over me mixed with a strange, not unpleasant chill that ran up and down my spine. My ear lobe hardly ceased now to tingle.
That night I did not go home. I called my wife to say I was off to California because of a new machine tooling program gone haywire; two from the Texas office were already there. She was used to such emergencies; in the past, all real.
I don’t believe I’d ever known such happiness. We kissed. I ceased to exist. Wave after wave of feeling tremored through me, the sea, the shore, the wind, I was the sea, I stood watching the sea, I was the shore and I was the wind, a path led me along high cliffs, I shall not want, the surf pounding, the wind wild, thunder rumbling slowly distant, thou art with me, the sudden calm of evening sunset far off reaching out to me, serene now, stars, the immensity of the heavens, sated, the startling powers of the night. My cup runneth over. The wind blew through my hair, gusted, took my breath from me and gave it back hundredfold.
Don’t look at me. I didn’t say anything.
The weekends that followed were spent in luscious wonderful California, the entire program revamped, weekday evenings also, when possible, until finally, reluctantly, late, I would rush home to dinner with my wife, who suspected something afoul perhaps, but to be truthful I no longer cared. The degree of guilt that might have betrayed me was too minimal and could easily be disguised with workload exasperation and a few swearwords, convincing because I seldom used swearwords. My joy was not to be tainted by guilt. My life had become the youth I’d never had, the romance I’d never understood, the soaring flight of dreams, the intimations of beauty I’d never experienced. Deep down I felt I’d lost my self, the very foundation of my being. I was swimming in unknown depths, struggling in the unending darkness of night, the awesome beauty of dawn awakening. I painted passion in wild geometrical forms, to hell with morals and Mother’s warnings, away with caution, I pulled out all the stops, fate swept me off into a thousand and one nights. With heart and soul I threw myself into its arms, relished each new vista, each nuance, each shade, each new high, knew I’d squared the circle.
A bit choppy but it fits.
This could not be happening to me, not to me, one whose life until then had been a logical sequence, clear cause and effect, a path chosen by reason and serious circumstance. Even now a part of me strove to order the emotional chaos that dominated my thoughts, my breath, my every move. Our togetherness was all-encompassing, deep in me each hour dreaded as perhaps the last. It altered step by step the focal point of my consciousness. I changed my life then adapted to it, albeit with one exception, my wife and with her, our usual Wednesday night turn-out-the-light-dear routine hiding though the passion burning inside me.
Months passed. N.M. was oblivious to the reservations Mary had begun to feel. She, too, had noticed his gesture rubbing his ear lobe, joked at first about it, then no more. Along with hers my own anxiety increased and I began to worry, too, worry that I would lose her. She was slipping away from me, slowly at first, then ever more rapidly. I tried to warn N.M. I shouted. I screamed. I shook him up. Perhaps in subconscious thought he noticed, but he didn’t seem to react.
From the depths, my feelings surfaced less and less now. N.M. found words for his love and romanced each thrill with afterthought. Mary was perplexed. She began to question what she felt for N.M., the illogic of it, and what it was that stormed dark clouds across her soul when in his arms. Even for me, the beauty I loved in her face when she smiled, assuring me, when her chin rippled reflecting something hidden inside, when her eyes watching mine softened, faded. I sobered. In vain I searched for what it was I’d felt at first. The aura she cast on everything around her must have been originally mostly mine.
One evening as the time neared to leave for home, Mary told of the circumstances that led to our first meeting, the hospital, the bribe, her telephone call to me, her apprehension. Doubt left me. Deep down I was so touched I fired a barrage of chills that went shooting up and down my spine, pleasant at first but soon, however, rather uncomfortable. My heart opened to her, an unconscious gesture, to grasp her tight to my breast, but something held me back, an inhibition that warned me. I pushed away the tea. Too much Jasmin tea leaves a bad taste in the mouth. I tried to disregard what she should not have waited till now to tell me.
The more she explained, the less I liked what I heard and the more I rejected what it seemed to mean. The heart is a pump that circulates blood to the brain and to other parts of the body, blood without which the brain dies, and life ends, a heart, no more, no less. Through the long hours of my operation I had been attached to a life-sustaining circulatory apparatus which temporarily carried out the functions of the heart externally. My survival had depended on the operating efficiency of this apparatus, a pump like any other pump, like the heart in me whether original, repaired or replacement. I had no desire to see my actions attributed to medical science or to some sort of pseudometaphysical modern day voodoo.
How about voodoo literature, or voodoo economics, quote, unquote. Sorry. I just had to put in my two cents, you know what I mean.
I was human and as such independent and fully self-sufficient. I think, therefore I am. Mary and I are attracted to each other by what we are and what we enjoy together, the interaction of what we think and feel as individuals. It was stupid if not degrading to think otherwise.
I did in fact go to California that weekend with the express purpose of distancing myself from New York, from Mary and from the irritating dilemma I found myself in, my calm badly shaken. This was no longer a romantic tale of love and discovery, no mere episode. I was at an important crossroad. For my own peace of mind, I would have to determine exactly what I wanted and the life I hoped as a consequence to lead. Except for the state of my health, any factors resulting from the heart transplant operation were irrelevant; I preferred things in black and white, the logic of a well-thought-out course of action, the process it starts, its possible deviations minimized, and the end result with a reasonably calculable margin of error.
Happiness is an effort two must make and means in essence compromise, the burden each carries for the other. My wife and I as a pair were less emotionally spontaneous than were Mary and I, but this was compensated by the continuity of our feelings, an assurance that what is so today will be so tomorrow. However, with Mary the intensity of our happiness outweighed the possibility that it might not last; for me life had never been so worth living. Although it was obvious of course, a decision was not easy and unresolved would keep me nights long awake. I opted for the possibly less secure but happier life. For some strange reason a great sadness seemed to overpower me. It would pass. I resolved this time to discuss neither my feelings nor my reservations with Mary knowing she would be overjoyed.
The weekend in California was so filled with program failure problems that unfortunately I had little time to think of private matters. So, on the evening I returned to New York, I was unprepared for Mary’s call advising there was someone else. With my wife all ears nearby, how could I argue. I knew deep down Mary was lying, but it was better so, I decided, better the beautiful memory we shared not be marred by long drawn-out senseless argument and by the debilitating humiliation having to watch it die.
~
Roberta Lawson
2 am
I swim through ectoplasmic mist, and there are the mountains. Beneath the mountains is a sheer steep drop, like a page end. Far below the drop: an angry sea.
The sea recedes again, and there, once more, are only mountains, verdant as a fairytale. The mists hang amorphous in the air, so cloying they could trap you like amber.
And there in the mountains is a single gargantuan sofa, clad in rolling indigo velvet. And I am on the sofa, and the mists roll over and past me.
Snails roam the sofa, mount its curlicue-d arms and surface: golden snails, mustard-coloured, ink-black. Snails ring my wrists and earlobes, clattering like jewellery.
And there, somewhere in the sway of the mists, he is sitting, on the sofa, far from me.
‘Why are you here?’
I try to ask this, but I have no voice: only throat.
I stretch my hands out to him but my arms don’t traverse the distance. I mean only to reach him but my palms are full of snails. Snails fly from my hands, through the mists, and hover. Snail-shells shatter on the dark, swirling ground. Newly-hatched slugs squirm the forest-floor, crawl my feet, lick my toes with their slimy-smooth feeler-tongues.
He watches, as if he’s waiting for an explanation.
Snails chart my neck, fumble my mouth; line my lips and eyelids.
He reaches an arm to me, the mists suckering and shadowing it.
His lips part for speech.
In place of his tongue, a slug slowly unfurls from the wet red cavity of his mouth.
~
Bobby Parker
Sacred Names
I remember the small shanty town beyond the Rubble. We each had a shack not much bigger than a cubicle knocked together with sheets of corrugated metal, draughty gaps patched up with planks that got so rotten in the rain the wood crumbled like wet biscuits. I didn’t know much about the others. Mostly runaways hiding out to escape the Big Schedule. Everything was temporary. I spent my time filling notebooks with prayers, stooped in my creaky shack near the gate where the grass was flat like greasy hair. Each time I finished a notebook I ran to the river and lobbed it into the burbling ripples. I don’t know why I did that, it wasn’t a magic river or anything. Half submerged automobiles clagged with leaves. Dead fish. Stinky foam.
The day before I left for the coast a girl called Sparrow ran up to me and slapped my face, her hand so sweaty it caught me like a damp towel. She had one of my notebooks in her other hand. Could have sworn I tossed it in the river. It had a red cover. Prayers for the way Sparrow made me want to burn the world in her honour. Her full lips; chestnut hair; eyes like petals. The way she stood, weight shifted onto her left leg, hands on hips, angel face pouting at the sun. My scribbled prayers asking God for help – she made me feel like the Devil.
‘Don’t write to God about me!’ she hissed. ‘If the others found this they would have a fit, they’d piss on you when you’re sleeping, or cast you out like Sammy the Shoe!’
‘Do you want to come to the river with me?’ I asked. ‘I want to show you something, but don’t tell the others.’ My question knocked her off balance, she took a step back and laughed, not a particularly nice laugh, but I could tell she was curious. She gave me the notebook. Our fingers touched. She made me feel like the Devil.
We walked to the river in silence. I could feel her looking at me, trying to figure me out; her stare felt hot as hell. Over the slobbering water we could hear the others banging dustbin lids, Singing, howling.
‘Well, what do you want to show me?’ she asked with a sneer. I leapt at her and kissed the sneer. It was like kissing a keyhole. Then the sneer softened. I was kissing a rose. I was kissing a smile. She stroked my face with her pinkie finger. We watched the mucky water for a while. I told her my secrets. She listened, her small face knotted with concern. I threw the notebook into the river. A crow heckled us and tore through the sick trees.
Back at the camp the others had begun the ritual. I had the giggles. Sparrow slapped me, harder this time. My right cheek burned and I burned and we watched the others goofing around, skinny faces streaked with charcoal and mud, waving torches, chanting the sacred names over a pathetic campfire: Scooby-Doo, Bugs Bunny, Mighty Mouse, Popeye...
~
Kenneth Radu
Preventive Measures
What Henry heard on the other side of the fence gave him pause. Despite spraying of insecticidal soap, a heavy infestation of aphids destroyed the perfection of his late-blooming, white Explorer roses and purple coneflowers. Frosty October nights had blackened the ferny leaves of his yarrow, a perennial he admired for its hardiness and fragrance. His neighbours were a nuisance who neither respected his space nor peace of mind. Lovers of noise and disorder, barbarians, really. Henry imagined horrific forms of retribution. The raucous voice of a DJ and his asinine observations, a shock jock, if he remembered rightly, did not trouble him, if that were indeed his neighbour's purpose in turning up the volume. The volume, though, was unusually high to-day, like a form of deliberate assault.
Or a cover. Ordinarily, he didn’t stand on his toes to peer over the six foot high cedar fence, having to part hollyhocks to do so. They, too, would need cutting down before the first snow. Several expletives screamed out. How to distinguish them from the radio talk, the ranting broken by hysterical commercials? The sound that aroused Henry's curiosity, however, was more distinctive than excremental verbiage.
Some of the verbal shots penetrated his imperviousness like bullets through a cloud. He saw a radio under the faded, furled umbrella poking up through the centre of a patio table. Despite the cool weather, the sliding glass door to the house was open, itself an unusual fact along with the radio because he knew both India and Merit Freeway worked during the day. They had no children, nor did they have visitors. Not that he made a habit of paying particular attention to the comings and goings next door.
They had moved in last spring and Henry had not suppressed his reaction upon hearing their names after knocking on their door to welcome them to the neighbourhood. They both appeared carrying beer bottles. India and Merit Freeway, they had said in one voice, although neither had grasped his extended hand.
"You have dogs, I see. I hope you keep them chained."
Three Dobermans sniffed around his legs, although in no way threatening or warning him off the territory.
"Don't worry about our dogs," Merit Freeway barked. Henry stepped back. A grizzled, bushy beard and ponderous belly made Mr. Freeway look older than he was, not more than forty, Henry surmised, and lacking in courtesy, especially to a man mature enough to be his father. India’s transparent blouse failed to button over her expansive bosom. She appeared top heavy in tight red leather pants and stiletto heels. Merit wore khaki army dungarees with pockets bulging on the pant legs and held up by wide red suspenders. His naked chest was covered with patches of grey and black hair looking as if they had been glued on.
"If you need anything," Henry had said, unable to finish the thought. He couldn’t imagine what they'd ever need from him.
"We don't," she had responded. Not a pretty woman, despite the make-up and Princess Diana hairstyle.
"And we won't," Merit had added.
Henry wouldn’t have bothered further with them except for their dogs and the garbage. City by-laws specified that dogs must be leashed on garbage collection days. Every Tuesday morning, Henry placed the securely-lidded can, sometimes two, by the curb side. The sanitation workers were not required to pick up scattered refuse which Henry found just a month after the Freeways had moved in next door. The green pail lay on its side, the lid pried off, the contents littering his small, carefully landscaped front yard. Tomato sauce smeared the beige and grey pebbles raked around the centrally positioned, granite boulder. Whorls of fusili and strands of spaghetti curled among the needles of juniper bushes like bleached worms. The following week he stood behind his bay window and witnessed two Dobermans attack the garbage pail. He opened his front door and, remaining on his veranda, shouted.
"Get away from there, go on, get away."
The dogs cocked their heads to one side as if he were a curiosity. He phoned his neighbours, but received no answer. He wrote a brief note. Please leash your dogs on collection day according to city by-laws. They have already knocked over my garbage can twice and made a mess which I've had to pick up. Thank you. Henry Sedum, your neighbour. As the dogs were still loose, he did not venture to slide the note through the mail slot in their front door.
Preoccupied for most of the day with floral hybridization experiments in his greenhouse, he forgot about the next door nuisances until he heard the radio and loud laughter on the other side of the fence. Having installed a telephone in the garden shed attached to the greenhouse (he refused to walk around with a cell phone), Henry decided against delivering the note, and called.
"Hello?"
"Mrs. Freeway, this is Henry Sedum, your next door neighbour. It's about your dogs. I hope this isn't an awkward time to call."
"It is."
"Oh, I'm so sorry, but you see it's garbage collection day on Tuesday and the city by-law requires that dogs be kept either leashed or indoors. I'm afraid your dogs got into my garbage."
"Like I said, it's an awkward time." She hung up.
He sat down in the green wicker chair next to his table of Mexican pots, many with glazed Aztec designs, purchased over the years on his trips to Mexico. He liked to climb the steps of the pyramid of the plumed serpent in Teotihuacán and imagine what had gone through the minds of the Aztec's sacrificial victims. He hadn't been for a while, not since a minor stroke from which he suffered no lasting effects. Now he canvassed the neighbourhood to raise money for the Heart and Stroke Foundation. The village marketplaces in Mexico contained so much colour and energy, beautifully crafted work jumbled among tacky souvenirs. The people were warm and tolerant of his limited Spanish.
Should he phone the local town hall and report a violation of the by-law? Should he phone the Freeways later at a more convenient time? Should he knock on their doors and respectfully ask them to keep the dogs indoors on Tuesdays? Should he lock up the house and fly to Mexico and tour the Aztec ruins again?
The few close friendships formed over the years had attenuated and withered, some of the friends had died, others had moved. It seemed that everyone he loved lived a great distance away. He missed walking on the high plateau of Teotihuacán, gripped by the intermingling and layering of ancient cultures, the Zapotecs, the Olmecs, the Toltecs, the aggressive Aztecs, and fascinated by the ritual and purpose of human sacrifice, the divine demand for blood, the use of obsidian knives to open the chest cavity and gouge out the heart.
On the third Tuesday the Dobermans scented the bone meal under the roots of his perennials, dug into the soil and devastated his flowers in the back yard. The dogs scurried along the side of his house after he emerged from the cedar-shingled garden shed. Responding to his anger, a clerk from the town hall did telephone and explain to the Freeways the city by-laws. If more complaints were received, they could be charged, the dogs could be placed in a kennel for a time. On Saturday morning, Henry noticed the dogs eating raw red meat from their aluminium bowls on the patio. Liver, possibly, so fresh it appeared to steam as if it had just been cut out of a living body.
Merit Freeway walked out of the house with a fearsome crossbow in his hands and a quiver of arrows slung over a shoulder. The stock across which the bow itself was fixed looked more metallic than wooden. The quiver appeared to Henry to be made from an animal skin with a decorative brown fringe ringing the top, but the arrows themselves glinted like steel. Barefoot, Merit Freeway wore a black bikini at least one size too small as far as Henry could see and, given the man's age and girth, unseemly to say the least. Removing the quiver, he sat in a red-stained Muskoka chair and began testing one arrow after another, aiming towards Henry's house, but not releasing a shaft.
Standing up, the man raised and stiffened his arm holding the bow, and shot an arrow which cracked into the side of the fence, exactly where Henry stood. The tip of the arrowhead split through the cedar at the level of Henry's heart. The fence vibrated, the wood resounded. Dropping his pruning shears, his body quivering like the arrow, Henry fell to his knees.
"Good God, the man's a lunatic."
There had to be a law against using weapons in the city. You couldn't shoot a rifle in your backyard, Henry knew that much. Suppose the man had overshot his mark? Henry's forehead reached just above the top of the fence. Suppose his back had been pressing against the fence to get a good grip on the spade he used to divide clumps of perennial roots? He knew I was there, he must have. Why else would he have shot in my direction?
His neighbour whistled for his dogs. Clutching his heart with one hand, Henry remained still. The Dobermans snarled and sniffed at the base of the fence.
"Hey, India, look what I did. Cracked right through the target board and into the fence."
"I said you shouldn't practice in the yard. There's not enough room and it's dangerous."
"Just itching to try it out."
He began working the arrowhead out of the wood. Still Henry did not move, certain the dogs heard the beating of his heart, the surging of blood and rage to his head.
"Won't that old guy just shit when he sees the split in the wood here?"
"He probably won't even notice it."
"Not notice? Who you kidding?"
To avoid attracting their attention, Henry crawled on his hands and knees to the greenhouse. Once inside he knocked over two shallow Aztec pots as he reached for the telephone. They fell off the wooden table. Imitations of the Aztec cuanhxicallis or eagle vessels, they were carved from stone by a local artisan with pre-Columbian native blood running in his veins, so he had said, and decorated with images of eagle feathers on the sides, human hearts cut into the rims, and symbols indicating blood or "precious water." The complicated hieroglyph etched into the bottoms represented the universe as the Aztecs understood it. Originally designed to hold the hearts of sacrificial victims, Henry had used them in the house to grow paper whites during the winter. The bowls lay in shards on the cement floor.
The dogs barked next door and he heard the Freeways engaged in what he construed as argument, Merit's voice increasing in volume and becoming incomprehensible. Henry had a right to lodge a complaint, to notify the authorities: people like that, suppose a child, the dogs, why put his target on the fence, deliberate provocation, revenge. What did it say about him, though, constantly complaining about his neighbours? How was that going to establish peace and goodwill?
Who knew what malice the Freeways were capable of? If this were war, and he victorious, Henry, clad in the feathery robe of a high priest, would have offered Merit Freeway's heart to the gods. However desirable, that was not a possible course to follow. Instead, develop imperviousness, take preventive measures: place the garbage out just before the truck stopped by the curb; apply a less dog-appealing fertilizer; avoid verbal and visual contact; pretend the Freeways didn’t exist; overlook peccadilloes and provocations.
By the beginning of September Henry managed to spend time outside, his neighbour's radio notwithstanding, and go about his business. Life with Marguerite in the last years of their marriage had prepared him well. He could sit at the breakfast table, smile a good morning, and blissfully eat his toast and three fruit marmalade, or boiled egg and muffin, vaguely hearing her go on about the mess he was making in the house with yet another potted plant, the money spent on costly perennial cultivars and his Mexican obsession.
Not counting one trip to England years ago, he never travelled anywhere except to Mexico and she was sick of Mexico, they never invited anyone over, old before their time, was he paying attention to her? Are you? Are you paying attention to me? She resented his early retirement while she continued teaching in the public school, the kids wilder every year, their attention span no longer than a CNN headline. The Freeways still spent a lot of time shouting at each other.
It required effort to ignore shock jocks, but after that unusual sound which he didn’t think came from the radio, Henry listened this time. No, he couldn't match it with the noxious banter on the air waves. Two sounds: first, a powerful rush through the air like wind forced through a narrow tube; then muffled impact, something hard against something soft. The noises that followed became confused with the cacophony of the program, then silence in the house.
Henry stared over the fence at the open glass door. One dog, head bowed, red liquid dripping from its tongue, sauntered out then lay flat on its side on the terrace stones. A second Doberman appeared, but sat on its haunches in the threshold. Where was the third dog? As the Freeways were both home, it would be an opportune time to request a donation for the Heart and Stroke Foundation. When he walked on to the Freeway's patio, the dog lying down sat up, and the dog on the threshold turned around and retreated into the house. A car seat, its springs poking up out of the cushion, sat in the middle of the yard. Several used tires were piled under the sunburst locust tree..
If he heard one more word from the DJ, he'd have to take an axe to the radio, so he turned it off, but a concatenation of breathy grunts and what he could only describe as bird-like screeches coming from inside drew his attention.
"Hello?"
The dogs sat under the kitchen table. The neatness of the room surprised Henry, nothing out of place, appliances gleaming, a bouquet of white and scarlet chrysanthemums on the Shaker-style table. From the next room came that odd combination of sounds again among which Henry heard an expletive or two and high-pitched bird twitter, then a momentary burst of laughter without a hint of sarcasm.
A wedge of sun slipping in between two panels of drawn draperies provided the only light in the room. Standing naked in motorcycle boots in front of a reclining chair covered with a garishly orange afghan and which had been tilted back to give the equally naked India Freeway sufficient sprawling space, Merit looked over his shoulder. The third Doberman lay by his master=s feet, his front legs resting on the crossbow.
India panted, her pale face luminous and her princess hair disarranged. Trying to avert his glance, not wishing to peruse Merit=s buttocks or embarrass the lady, Henry tried leaving the room but he remained fixed to the spot.
"Please forgive me for intruding, but I thought there was a ruckus ... or ... something untoward ..."
Pinned to the wall by several arrows shot through its head and torso, a giant stuffed panda, the kind men won for their girl friend at a carnival ring toss or duck shooting gallery caught Henry's eye. Perhaps they had indeed fought and in a moment of exasperation, or worse, enraged to a frenzy, Merit had attacked the gift he had once given his to beloved.
"Like what you see, friend?"
Henry failed to find the right words nor did he think it appropriate to ask for a donation. India moaned on the recliner, reaching for her husband. The dog growled and approached Henry who held his breath as he entered the bright kitchen again, raising his own arms as if to prevent a lunge at his throat. All the Dobermans surrounded Henry. He searched their narrow faces for signs of malevolence. My head is full of air, Henry thought, and wanted to speak with the Freeways to explain his purpose. And he wanted to witness those empty arms once again. They wouldn't be empty now, though, would they? Besides, if the dogs didn't attack, he thought it likely that Merit would. Just as he was about to offer a hurried apology, Merit blasted a command to shut the door behind him.
Once outside, he needed to gather his strength and wits which had diminished in the perfect kitchen. He sat on a chaise lounge, his heart leaping. One of the dogs began licking his face and he tried to push it away. Energy had drained out of his body, making it even harder to breathe. Another dog brushed its head under Henry's hand. He shouldn’t linger, but there were no pressing demands on his time, so he lay back on the chaise, the dogs peering at him. Such beautiful creatures, really, when examined closely.