The Natural Order of Things (9 page)

A German shepherd, teeth bared, bounds toward the cab, a long rope of saliva swinging in a wide arc from its snapping jaws. Another patrol car arrives. Radio scanners
screech and croak and erupt with high, thin whistles. The officer turns his flashlight on de Vere, who is so overcome with dread that he can only sit there like a bewildered toddler, pants around his ankles, a look of drooling incomprehension on his face.

“Whatcha doing in this neighborhood, pal? You like coming to this part of town? You a regular?” Impatient with de Vere’s infantile sputtering, the officer yanks him from the cab and pushes him against the trunk. “Christ almighty, pull up your pants, you animal! Now, put your hands behind your back.” He slaps on the cuffs, reaches into de Vere’s camelhair coat, confiscates his flask, his wallet, the bottle of perfume.

“Wait a minute,” says de Vere, “this isn’t the road to Damascus …”

“Damascus? No, buddy, we’re taking you downtown.”

“You’re making a grave mistake. I know people, important people. They’ll tell you. I’m a reputable businessman, a loving husband and father.”

De Vere’s voice is shrill, manic. He struggles, thrashes his legs, but the officer slings an arm around his neck and squeezes tight until de Vere begins to gasp for air.

“Just cooperate, okay, bud? You don’t want an assault charge tacked on, do ya?”

As chapel bells begin to chime the witching hour, a raucous crowd spills from the gaping double doors of the Zanzibar Towers & Gardens. Apparently the cab has been going in circles, and now de Vere must endure the laughter of priests and pregnant nuns and a bloated Lazarus wrapped in rags. They drink and smoke and dance, some of them grinding violently against each other, feigning copulation. On the sidewalk a man whirls round and round, his dreadlocks rising above his head like the tentacles of some fabled sea creature. Last to emerge from the building is a tall figure in the blood-red robes of a grand inquisitor, a sagacious and unreasonably cruel arbiter of the laws of God and man. With a subtle flick of his wrist he silences the discordant howls and jeers of his grotesque entourage.

De Vere lurches heavily, falls to his knees, and humbly pleads his case before his fellow darkness worshippers. “Listen to me. Would you please
listen
? Tomorrow morning I’ll go straight to the chapel. I’ll light a candle before a statue of the Virgin. I’ll make a vow before the Lord to live a life of celibacy …”

His head starts to spin. The absinthe percolates in the pit of his stomach and suddenly surges up his throat, a hot green sludge that splatters the officer’s polished black shoes and the cuffs of his pants.

“Mother
fucker
!”

The other cops laugh. “Hey, Caddigan, have fun cleaning that shit.”

“Fuck you. I ain’t touching it.”

De Vere gasps and sputters, “I’m sorry, so sorry …”

Then he feels a sharp crack against his spine, a quick spasm of pain that shoots down to the tips of his toes, and things go dark for a little while.

Mumbling piteous oaths, fighting against the cuffs that dig into his wrists, de Vere drifts in and out of consciousness, and for one incredible moment, he feels himself turn to vapor and slip through a small crack at the top of the back window. With a covey of fractious grackles, he flies high above the church spires and spins around the gothic tower of the Jesuit school. Out over the lake a storm rages, and the gathering clouds drape him
in the bruised colors of high autumn—cadmium reds and yellows. A strong gust of wind transports him over the great steel bridge that spans the crooked river and hurtles him along the city streets. He slides down a sparkling glass atrium and lands in a bustling emporium of fashionable restaurants and nightclubs where stunted boys, wearing sandwich boards, blunder among a group of portly men in pinstriped suits and emaciated women in skimpy cocktail dresses.

De Vere’s eyes flutter open. He is pulled from the back of the police cruiser, lifted to his feet, and dragged into headquarters. At the front desk he is made to stand at attention. “Another dirty married man,” someone quips. Boiling white light seeps behind his eye sockets and scalds his brain. He waits there for hours, it seems, but eventually, mercifully, he is booked for indecent exposure, public intoxication, solicitation of prostitution, a long recitation of trumped-up charges. He hears the words, but they do not make any sense to him, and at this point he doesn’t really care what they mean. He is photographed, fingerprinted, his body searched for contraband. Manacled and moaning like an idiot that lurches from some horror movie dungeon, he is led through a series of endless corridors that echo with tortured screams, like someone being stabbed over and over with a penknife.

An alarm sounds. A clanking steel door rolls open, and he is shoved into a large holding cell swarming with flies. He collapses beside a mysterious yellow stream that trickles toward a drain. After a few minutes he becomes dimly aware that he is not alone. Other men, dozens of them, each indistinguishable from the other, materialize like shades from the underworld. All suffer the afflictions and burdens of anonymity, their faces transformed into primitive masks, wooden idols with wooden scowls.

The men close in, their eyes unwavering. Unlike the police they do not ask him to cooperate. They taunt him, playfully at first as children sometimes do with a puppy or a kitten to see how it will react, and once they determine he is harmless, they begin to slap him in earnest, jab him in the kidneys, stomp on his fingers, yank him by the hair. He doesn’t struggle for long. They force him to his knees, tell him to open wide, not to bite.

“Gonna get me some slop on my knob.”

“Mmmm, yeah, get my salad tossed, that’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout.”

“You like that, don’t you, bitch?”

“Do a good job now, or they gonna carry your ass out in a body bag.”

With this warning, they line up ten deep, some massaging themselves in preparation, spirits of the dead eager to douse him in ectoplasm. He lifts his head and recognizes the small, feral eyes of the man standing at the front of the line.

“Good evening, my friend,” says the cabdriver. “Life, as you know, consists of little more than the ebb and flow of excessive pleasure and pain, wave upon wave of joy and sorrow. Unfortunately, you have found yourself in a deep trough. But do not fear. It will not always be so for you. Fate is ever-changing. Oblivion alone is imperishable.”

Then the driver unbuckles his belt and, with a smile that reveals those unsightly gray stumps, whispers, “And now, if you please, there are many men waiting …”

Halloween, season of sorcerers and black magic, and once again Elsie has allowed Claude to visit her bed, but first she commands him to chase the dog from the house, mainly because she can’t stomach the animal’s crude pantomime of their monthly romps. It stares at them while they make love, panting to the irregular rhythm of the bedsprings, swabbing its genitalia with a dripping, lolling tongue of magnificent reach and precision, growling and gnashing its teeth whenever Claude clutches the sides of the mattress and unleashes his ridiculous yowls of ecstasy into the luxurious eiderdown pillows. Sensing a conspiracy, Elsie springs cat-like from the bed to lock the door and confides her fear that the Great Dane is not merely playing the part of a voyeur; its real intention is to carefully observe everything that goes on in the house while its master is away on business and then to reenact it all for him upon his return.

“They have a mysterious way of communicating with one another,” Elsie whispers, her voice colored by panic. “I think they may be … 
telepathic
.” Soft indigo notes whistle from her ruby red lips, the captivating aria of a woman, still gorgeous at forty, afraid of being found out. There is a small gap in her teeth that makes her look like the Wife of Bath—saucy, licentious, calculating.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Claude says.

“I swear it. There is an unholy covenant between them. They each know what the other is thinking.”

“Rubbish.”

“That damned animal provides Edward with precise and accurate information. Okay, I’m not sure how it works, but it’s truly disturbing. Maybe Gonzago taps out Morse code with his claws.”

As he listens to these outrageous hypotheses, Claude wonders, not without some exasperation, how the perversions of a dirty old dog and the delusions of a half-mad woman, whose bookshelves are crammed with paperbacks on astrology, ESP, and self-hypnosis, can continually thwart the sad little ritual of a middle-aged man suffering the pangs of disprized love, but at this stage of his life Claude has come to accept the fact that when enormous sums of money are at stake, paranoia becomes an almost palpable thing, a shivering sentinel standing guard outside the door, waiting night and day for signs of a possible invasion.

As if to confirm this point, Gonzago begins to bark under the bedroom window.

Elsie gasps. “Do you hear that? He’s
laughing
at us.”

Despite Claude’s protestations, Elsie sits up in bed and pulls the sheet over the warm treasure trove between her legs that Claude has lovingly christened Graymalkin. A positively criminal act, concealing these things from him. Elsie’s purpose on this earth is to remain forever naked. Nudity suits her, she was born for it. Though the scar from the cesarean has faded, it stands as a stark reminder that she is the mother of a teenaged son, heir apparent to an enviable fortune, scion of a distinguished family.

With a deep sigh, Claude tramps across the room, bare-assed, dong dangling, and slams the window shut. He stands there a moment, watching Gonzago sniff around the flowerbeds and scratch at the last of the wilting columbines and pansies that struggle to
survive the first frost. Though he has his doubts about what Gonzago does and does not know, Claude is certain of one thing: the dog’s telepathic powers do not work on Elsie; if they did, the dumb, slobbering beast would have the good sense to dash into the woods behind the house, never to return. Maybe like Claude (indeed, like many males in general), Gonzago cannot understand the meaning of the heavy, crepuscular clouds rising from the long-dormant volcano that is a woman’s soul, and certainly Elsie’s soul is more inscrutable than most; in fact, it’s the only modest thing about her, veiled from top to bottom like an ashen-faced novitiate—solemn, austere, impenetrable.

“I have an idea,” she says as though in a trance, her voice small and distant. “We’ll poison it. No one ever performs an autopsy on a dog.”

She assumes the pose of a prioress deep in meditation, hands resting on her knees, palms facing up so the energy of the cosmos can filter through her fingertips and seep into the claustrophobic confines of her brain where her thoughts pulse and flicker in an interminable Dark Age. Claude knows her capacities, her limitations. Love has not deluded him that much.

“Why don’t you take Gonzago to the vet?” he suggests, reaching for the pack of cigarettes on the nightstand, grateful as ever for her insatiable oral fixation. “Have him put to sleep. Easy. Done and over with.”

“No, the dog must be buried in the backyard.”

“Just ask the vet for the remains after the job is done.”

A vein pulses on her forehead. “You don’t know anything about animals, do you? The vet won’t hand over the carcass. There’s a city ordinance. It’s illegal for taxpayers to bury pets on their property.”

“Cremation then. Give Edward a decorative urn when he gets back from his trip. He can keep his beloved Gonzago in the study. On the mantel. Below the portrait of your son.”

“Cremation? Never. Edward would consider it a sacrilege. He’s attended elaborate funeral services for animals. Secret rites. Pet cemeteries, fancy caskets hand-carved by Cistercians, enormous marble headstones, string quartets playing a dirge, even a priest to consecrate the grave. Edward would want something solemn and formal for his best friend.”

Claude bristles at the phrase. “Best friend … Well, I hardly think a priest would consent to that sort of thing.”

“You’re wrong. Edward knows important people. He has a lot of pull in the Church. He helped to finance a new chapel at the Jesuit school.”

Now Elsie is being deliberately cruel.

“Yes, our alma mater …” Claude murmurs.

“I think we both know what needs to be done.”

In her voice, he detects something sinister, vindictive, an unspoken command to fulfill her darkest desires. She lowers the sheet, reveals her splendors. Like an enchantress before a bubbling cauldron high in a castle tower, she saunters across the room and sits at her vanity where she consults her dog-eared books of black magic. Using a red pen, she scratches a cryptic formula on a notepad—(CH3)3SiCN—and then, murmuring some mumbo jumbo over an amber vial, she mixes several packets of powder together with a small silver spoon. That she keeps poison on her nightstand doesn’t surprise him much, and he dares not ask how she obtains the stuff—beautiful women
have their ways, he is content to leave it at that—but he is a little concerned for his own safety. What if, prior to a night of passion, she accidentally mistakes the poison for perfume? Should his rapacious lips taste the deadly distilment dabbed behind her ears, between her breasts, and around Graymalkin’s soft coat, he will be sent on a one-way trip to the undiscovered country.

Her work complete, she turns to Claude and asks, “What is the very worst thing you can do to a man?”

Unable to suppress an impudent smile, he reaches down and tries to part her knees.

She pushes him away. “Fool. Kill his dog.”

“I’m not so sure about this, Elsie …” He takes a step back, uncomfortable with the way she dares to thumb her nose at death and danger.

“Darling, just think of it.” She leans forward to kiss his chest, darts her tongue over his ever-expanding stomach and around his hairy navel. “With Gonzago dead and cold in the ground we’ll finally know tranquility, spiritual release.
La petite mort
.”

Eager to pour forth an abundance of his love and adoration, he gently lifts her chin, glides his thumb over her moistened lips and then steps closer until he is fully enveloped in the luxurious warmth of her mouth.