St. Agnes' Eve Read online

  Old One, wear my soul;

  Horned One, show no mercy,

  Ricky’s in my hole;

  Make my pussy an open grave,

  Hell’s my final goal.”

  The voices began to bleed through like an unmentionable stain. Wild, disturbed voices of lost souls, all speaking at once, in contrapuntal layers of sound, complementing Sandra’s litany like recording tracks mixed together.

  When Sandra spoke to me again, it was in a voice I hadn’t heard in twenty years outside of my nightmares: the voice of Pete Weegers. I could see the emaciated outline of his skull showing through Sandra’s complexion and smell his acrid body odor that always made me want to hawk and spit. Mandrill cheek creases eroded his skin from his nostrils to his chin.

  “What’s a case like mine usually worth, Ricky?” Pete asked. “Worth enough to hang around for?” Then a wheezing mirthless laugh, followed by a violent cough. A sound like the snap of a stick wrapped in wet towels breaking in two. It took me a moment to realize what that sound had been. It brought Sandra back into focus beneath me quick as a snap of magician’s fingers.

  “Ever channel the dead, Dick? Anybody can do it with a little practice.”

  I shuddered violently; Sandra’s body suddenly felt chilled and clammy under mine. Then I realized I was sweating profusely. Was it from fear? Or a tweak freakout complete with visual and auditory hallucinations courtesy of Artie’s Crankenstein? “It’s way too radical for me.”

  “Don’t knock it. It’s kind of a jumped-up virtual reality kick.”

  “What if I ran into trouble evicting one of them?”

  “Doesn’t happen that way, Dick. Don’t believe everything you see in the movies. These aren’t souls that like being tied down. Kind of like most of the men I’ve known. Hold on, here comes another one.” Sandra’s body went into spasms as though climaxing. I bent to suck on one of her mammoth breasts. As soon as my tongue touched her nipple, the taste brought back a sensory phantasm more than twenty years old.

  Lurid neon. A smell in the place like a musty basement. Price list spelled out on the wall in glitter. Rock music playing somewhere in the back. Carla didn’t smoke, but the taste of her dugs was sour spittle and nicotine from whatever trick she’d been with last.

  I looked up into the face of Carla Tremayne. “It weren’t no fun for me neither, Ricky,” she said in that lilting Kentucky drawl of hers, “you worrying my breasts the way you always done. Made my flesh crawl, truth be told, my own lawyer messing with me the way you always done.”

  No one but Carla and I could have known any of it: my secret shamefaced visits to the Salome Spa.

  “Who murdered you, Carla? Who mutilated your body and took your life?” I asked.

  “Why, you did, Ricky.”

  “A demon would know all about Carla and me,” I said.

  “Look who’s calling cases,” she smirked. “You weren’t so high and mighty when I had you laid out on the table asking you powder or lotion. I reckon if you’d gone ahead and wrote up my divorce papers all nice and proper, I wouldn’t of had to’ve been workin’ in no massage parlor and gettin’ myself murdered and that. So what say you go ahead an’ let me come inside you for a spell? It ain’t much to ask, after all the messin’ you done with me.”

  But whatever was running the show chose that instant to treat me to a strobe-flash glimpse of a rotted corpse, her putrid flesh staining the ivory satin lining of a coffin big enough for both of us.

  Suddenly Carla was gone. The voices fell silent.

  “You must have cum so hard you scared her away,” Sandra chided. “Too bad. She was a fun one. You gave me what I needed, though. Thanks, Dick. Oh, and if Kirk asks, lie and tell him me and you used a rubber, okay? See, I quit taking my pill months ago.”

  “You mean you aren’t using birth control? Why not?”

  “I don’t know. Kind of a daredevil thing, I guess you could call it. Get knocked up, piss Kirk off, get attention. Go figure. And you’re obviously the logical choice because you’re fertile. I mean, four healthy kids. Wow!”

  “You tricked me!”

  “I think tonight you hit the bull’s-eye. Something magical happened. A woman can sense these things.”

  I shook my head with disbelief. “You planned all this.”

  “Shall we rejoin the others? Kirk’s probably got her loose as a goose by now.” Sandra reached out and goosed me.

  Until that moment I hadn’t even thought of Diane alone in the hands of a jealous husband. I threw on the robe and ran from the rathskellar, struggled to open the Fox lock, slid back the deadbolts, and pulled open the heavy dungeon door. All the while I heard Sandra’s peals of tinkly, scornful laughter echoing behind me, pursuing and stalking me like hell’s bells.

  I hurried into my clothes and found Diane in the foyer, fully dressed and seated on one of the Victorian divans she’d sold Sandra. I hurried to kiss her. She refused to look at me. Kokker stood by and watched, intensely interested.

  “Where have you been?” she said the way you’d talk to a dog.

  “Sandra wanted to show me the house,” I said. “You know, her things.”

  “We saw the house already. You needed to have a second look? Since when have you developed this intense interest in antiques? I never noticed it anytime I needed help around the shop.”

  Kokker almost shivered with excitement, relishing our argument. “You shouldn’t be too hard on Ricky, Diane. My wife no doubt ‘turned into a tongue’ as the Armenians say.”

  “What could you two possibly find to talk about for over an hour?” Diane persisted.

  “Honey, how’s your back?”

  “Fine. Kirk healed me.” Diane stood effortlessly, took Kokker’s hand in hers, looked into his eyes, and said, “Thank you.”

  “Think nothing of it, my dear. A physician must never ignore pain and suffering when he has the means to heal at his ready disposal. I swore an oath, you see.”

  I burned with curiosity to find out what exactly the treatment had consisted of, but Diane’s silent, smoldering anger filled me with awkwardness. Kokker looked from one of us to the other. Divide and conquer. I felt a totally misplaced and irrational suspicion that my wife had been unfaithful to me with Kokker but couldn’t express it to either one of them. It was probably no more than her gratitude for the successful outcome of the treatment, or my projected guilt. At any rate, when the door chime sounded and Kokker excused himself to greet his arriving guests, I felt relieved.

  “You’re not thinking of staying, are you?” I said under my breath. Almost hoping she’d say yes. A deep, dirty shiver ran through me at the thought that together we might stay and rub elbows, and maybe other body parts, with the reprobates who were even now mingling in couples and groups, eager for the fun to begin—a bunch of silly Midwestern Satanists devoted to the Lifestyle. Sex on Crankenstein was a real eye-opener, all right—everything Artie had claimed it would be, and more. Shaken as I had been by the spectral appearances of Pete Weegers and Carla Tremayne, I still craved the excitement. A little humpety-hump with the dark side.

  “Why? So you can get even drunker?”

  It was then that I realized it was only the alcohol on my breath that had angered her. My body sagged with relief. I almost said a silent prayer of gratitude. Guilt over alcohol I could handle; it was sexual guilt that must not speak its name. “Honey, they practically forced it on me. You heard us both ask for club soda.”

  “How could they force, what, a dozen drinks on you? Your eyes are bloodshot, and you have this lazy smirk on your face, Ricky. I hate seeing you like this, and it makes me angry. It’s selfish. It tells me you think I’m stupid. I want to drive us both home now. Tell Kirk we have baby sitter problems.”

  I agreed at once, encouraged she’d told me the reason for her anger so quickly. That meant it was already passing. We waited for a break when Kokker wasn’t busy with his guests. Sandra was still nowhere in sight. I reassured a reluctant Diane that tonight was a o
ne-time thing with the drinking, an isolated slip. By the time Sandra finally appeared, I almost had us both believing it was all true. Sandra had reattached her wig and carried a red foil gift bag in her hand.

  The foyer was loud with the amiable chatter of well-dressed, immaculately groomed ladies and gentlemen, professional types, mostly older. Hephzibah would have her hands full tonight picking up the dinner jackets and gowns, supp-hose, corsets, and thermal long-johns once the party got going. Some of the men were already casting curious sidelong glances at Diane.

  Sandra approached us and slipped me the gift bag. As soon as its handles passed into my hands, Kokker glanced over his shoulder with a glower of displeasure, but an elderly couple was commanding his attention. The old man was showing his yellowed, vulpine teeth, grinning and shaking his finger in Kokker’s face to make some point. Distracted, Kokker turned back to him.

  I peeked inside the bag. Two black VHS cases, one smaller case, and a larger, rectangular, velvet-covered box—the shape of a box you’d buy a tie in. Eyes on her husband’s back, Sandra leaned against me and whispered, “Give the jewel box to Janis. Tell her now she’s got what she wants. The rest are for your eyes only. Enjoy.”

  In a conversational tone, Sandra added, as though for Kokker’s benefit, “Why don’t you and Di stay for the festivities tonight, Ricky? Everybody’s dying to get to know you better.”

  They all looked like guests at a wedding reception, but I knew a darker revelry was in store as soon as the deadbolts of the rathskellar door slid home. I’d never had group sex. Would some matron’s road map of varicose veins and battleship-gray thatch find me limp and socially unresponsive? Or would the behorned husband’s eyes on a younger man penetrating the old snatch invigorate me with the strangeness of the experience? I was not to find out that night. Sandra interrupted my flight of imagination to add in a whisper: “Whatever you do, don’t look inside the jewel box.”

  “Why not?”

  “Just give it to Janis. She’ll know what to do with it.”

  I dared to touch her hand in a gesture as if to return the gift bag, saying, “You sure you want to do this?”

  She shrugged. “A woman’s got to do what a woman’s got to do, am I right?”

  We said goodbye to her and walked past Kokker into the still night air. I knew he was dying to look inside the bag. I let Diane in the driver’s side, then unlocked the trunk and slipped the bag into the wheel well behind the spare.

  Chapter Eleven

  Skank’s Night Out

  Diane drove with an emotional recklessness. Not making any mistakes, but without the ease of which she was capable, either. We passed a late-model Continental with judicial plates tooling down the lane in the opposite direction toward the house. The number was too obscured by blackened road salt to decipher at night—especially oncoming and behind a dozen stiff shots of Absolut—but it looked familiar.

  “I couldn’t help noticing how you and Kokker seemed inseparable all evening,” I said, breaking the silence. “For two people who’d just met, I mean.”

  “Maybe we should have stayed, like you wanted. Maybe Sandy would have done a strip tease for you. You’d have liked that, wouldn’t you? You’d like anything degrading to women. Too bad you decided to get so drunk instead.”

  Through the years, I had learned the futility of winning an argument over the degree of one’s own sobriety. Instead, I said, “Maybe next time.” In retrospect, it was exactly the wrong thing to say.

  “Maybe next time what? Next time you’ll try and get even drunker, or next time maybe you’ll see Sandy naked?”

  “What? See Sandy naked?”

  “Would you like me to do that in front of a roomful of strangers? You would, wouldn’t you?”

  “How much of this evening do you remember, Diane?”

  “I’m not the one drunk here,” she retorted with the self-righteous dudgeon of every designated driver I’ve ever met. “I remember the house tour. I remember us sitting down to dinner.”

  “Sitting down to dinner?”

  “I remember you having too much to drink and embarrassing me. I remember Sandy taking you somewhere to sober you up while Kirk—Doctor Kokker—worked on my back.”

  “Do you remember picking up a statue and weirding out on us? Those voices?”

  “Ricky,” she asked quietly, “how drunk are you?”

  “I could put away twice what I did tonight—hell, three times—and still make it home alive.”

  “Big hero,” was all she said. She drove in silence for at least fifteen minutes. The angry tension between us immobilized me better than an air bag pressed against my chest. Had the voices done a number on Diane’s short-term memory? Was it the dark side doing me a favor on St. Agnes’ Eve? And if so, what would they want in return? Or was Artie’s Crankenstein fitting me for a tinfoil hat?

  Finally Diane pulled off the expressway and wheeled into a McDonald’s drive-through, ordered four large black coffees, and slid the carton across the seat toward me.

  “Start drinking these,” she said curtly. “I don’t want Mad—or, God forbid, the children—to detect the slightest hint of intoxication on you by the time we get home.”

  “If I drink all four of those right now, I’ll spend the rest of the night on the toilet,” I protested.

  “Suits me.”

  So I removed the plastic cover and sipped the first of the four scalding coffees. Like the Bourbon kings, McDonald’s had learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Despite the much-publicized litigation, the coffee was still hot enough to cauterize the tip of my tongue. Mere caffeine made a poor substitute for Artie’s magic flavor crystals.

  Now that she had me drinking coffee, Diane resumed a conversational tone. “Sandy invited me to lunch tomorrow,” she said. “Then we’re going to try out some of that Nautilus equipment she was showing us. Remember? In that downstairs room or whatever? Did you know she has a fully equipped gym and a personal trainer?”

  “Is he fully equipped, too?”

  “I didn’t bother to ask if it’s a he or a she. What’s the difference?”

  “One has a penis. The other doesn’t.”

  “Keep working on that coffee,” she said. “Forgive me, Ricky, but I’m finding out I don’t like you very much when you’ve been drinking. It’s like you’re another person. An ignorant person and kind of a loutish one at that.”

  We passed under the overhead walkway to the Science Center. I seared off another layer of tongue skin before asking a semi-leading deposition question. “So what, if anything, did the renowned Doctor Kokker, chiropractor extraordinaire, do for you? Give you a rubdown?”

  “He made me feel great, actually,” she replied.

  “You looked sleepy when I found you. Did he have you lying down, or what?”

  She took her eyes off Route Forty to look at me. “It’s funny,” she said, “but after he touched the side of my neck to adjust me, I was out like a light. It felt like only seconds, but it was longer than twenty minutes by the clock in his study.”

  Janis had touched my neck the same way. I flashed on a repressed memory of the maneuver that had made me swoon into oblivion.

  “I feel great, actually,” Diane repeated as though programmed. “I’ve never felt more rested or more pain-free.” We passed Union Station, LaClede’s Landing, and Busch Stadium on our left. By the time we’d reached the Illinois side, my hangover had kicked in.

  Diane chatted away, reassured by my coffee consumption, having forgiven me my sins as she understood them to be. Seized with sudden urinary urgency, I prevailed on Diane to stop at another McDonald’s—one of the way stations of the new millennium. As I stood and completed nature’s cycle, my idle mind scanned the eye-level graffiti. Call Brenda for a good blowjob. I tried to imagine a bad one and caught myself committing the Belleville phone number to memory.

  When I got back to the car, Diane said, “Why don’t we bring Mad back a shake or something? She’s sweet to watch the kids for
us.”

  I could think of a lot of adjectives to describe Madeleine. Sweet didn’t come to mind. For only the second time that night, I worried about our children.

  I finished the last of the coffee as we passed the darkened shops along Main Street toward the east end of Belleville. A single blue electric candle, its light magnified through a crystal ball on a wire stand, burned a lonely vigil in the window of Fox & Hare. I hoped Diaz had found the time to contact Liz and begin his search for the missing Gwendace.

  Diane did everything but make me walk a chalk line before agreeing to let me drive Mad home. Something impelled me to deliver the oblong jewel box to Janis that very night. Hurrying before Mad could come running out of the house, I popped the trunk and felt for the gift bag behind the spare. Defying Sandra’s warning, I opened the lid of the jewel box and looked inside.