St. Agnes' Eve Read online

  A golden dagger glinted under the light of the street lamp. I had seen something vaguely like it on display with a traveling exhibition at the Saint Louis Art Museum in Forest Park—a Mesopotamian dagger eons old, fashioned by the hand of an unknown artisan who had long since returned to the dust of his forgotten wilderness. The one in my hands was a masterpiece by comparison. A curved black onyx scabbard bore the letters C and S graven with rubies in the loops of an infinity symbol. Filigreed designs appeared to depict a strange race of barbarous armed women. Toward the hilt and watching over them all was an owl with two sky-blue star sapphires for eyes and a snake caught in its beak. The handle was pure, refined gold, smooth as glass.

  The Lilith talisman. Life seemed smaller than legend as I held it in my hands. Remembering Janis’s remark about fingerprints, I took my handkerchief and gently slid the scabbard down perhaps two inches.

  The blade curved like a cutlass, but was thick as a hunting knife. Black dried blood clogged the channels on either side; some of it flaked off onto the cotton lining of the jewel box. This dagger was designed for bloody business as well as for show. Someone had gotten down to business with it and forgotten to clean it afterward. Had Kokker tricked Janis into touching the polished surface of its handle? It looked like the ideal spot to transfer fingerprints to. I slid the knife back into the scabbard. With my handkerchief, I polished the handle over and over again to wipe away any incriminating trace of her. It was the least I could do.

  I had no sooner closed the box and slipped it back into the gift bag when Mad came flouncing out of the house with her armload of textbooks—an Irish Catholic coed from hell. I opened the front passenger door for her, then placed the gift bag on the front seat between us.

  “What’s in the bag, bitch?” Mad rapped as she peeked inside it.

  “Just something I promised to get for your mom,” I said. Immediately Mad’s expression damped down from whimsical to sullen. She stiffly faced forward and crossed her arms, her schoolbooks in her lap.

  The gas gauge read half-full, meaning we were on the brink of empty. Cursing myself for not filling up in Missouri, where prices are lower, I pulled into the first cut-rate gas station we passed. Even our gas credit cards no longer functioned. I pumped my last ten dollars into the tank, then went inside to pay. The sign said the cashier had less than twenty dollars on hand. I knew the feeling.

  By the time we were back on the road, Mad had lightened up enough to want to talk again. “You think I should get my tragus pierced?” she asked me. “You know, lance it to enhance it?”

  I shrugged. I didn’t know the finer points of anatomy, unless you wanted to talk about the neck, the back, the wrist, and the knee, where I knew enough to be dangerous. Did the tragus have something to do with the ear?

  “What about my philtrum? My philtrum’s still cherry,” Mad went on, an evil glint in her eye. “You want me to flash you my philtrum, right here in the car? What will you give me if I show you my bare philtrum?”

  I knew some diehard piercing fanatics went for the labia, the clitoris, and points south. Even though we were stopped at what seemed like one of the longest red lights in the Metro East, I kept my eyes on the road and said nothing.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t tell my mother. I don’t tell that sleaze anything that goes on in my life, and she doesn’t care, either. So how about it, Mr. Galeer? Want a free peep at my barenaked philtrum?”

  “No,” I muttered, shaking my head rapidly. After what seemed like a second too long, I added, “Please.”

  “Too late, Mr. Galeer. It’s already out. Look over here, I’m showing it to you. You can take a picture of it if you like. I won’t tell your wife, either.”

  I turned slowly to face Madeline. My neck cords spasmed with tension and guilty excitement. Whatever I’d expected, she sat there fully clothed and seat-belted. She smiled prettily and twitched her upper lip, then cracked up at my nervousness—a dipsy horselaugh. She reached over and playfully caressed the center seam of my mustache with an index fingertip.

  “The philtrum is that little crease right under your nose,” she teasingly explained. “It means ‘love charm’ in Greek or something. God, you have such a dirty mind. Don’t bother to deny it. Remember that I’m psychic, just like your wife. Man, I wish she’d teach me, though.”

  “Not much chance of that,” I said. “She considers it a curse. You heard her.”

  “Your wife’s really hot,” Mad said. “You’re hella lucky, dude.”

  “I guess I am at that.”

  “Like, how many times a night do you two guys do it?”

  “That’s an awfully personal question, Mad. You should maybe save questions like that for your mother.”

  “My mother and I have issues.”

  “Your mother loves you. She’s told me how concerned she’s been about you lately.”

  “She’s a cunt.”

  “You shouldn’t use language like that about your mother.”

  “Well, then how about this: she’s a sleaze, a skeeze, and a slut, with Teflon tits and a goddamn bear trap for a beaver. Oh, fuck! Speak of the devil.”

  As we rounded the corner before Janis’s house, Mad had spotted Janis standing on her doorstep, clinched in Diaz’s arms, her face uptilted for his goodnight kiss. The sight tortured me with a smoldering, twisting fire in my loins.

  “Looks like skank’s night out,” Mad said.

  “Why would you want to pierce your philtrum?” I asked to change the subject. I drove past the house and around the block. Then I cruised down Vandalia, waiting for my jealousy to pass. Would Mad pick up on it?

  “Why not?”

  “Doesn’t it hurt?”

  “Not as much as piercing my clit, you dirty-minded man. You think I’d let some man stab my love nubbin?” Mad’s anger seemed to dissipate in proportion to the distance I placed between her mother and us. She was already playing me again.

  “What do you think I’d take, about an eight gauge? After all, we don’t want the fucker to migrate. Or do we? Maybe you ought to take a peek under my hood, Mr. Galeer. We’ve got some time to kill.”

  “We were talking about piercing your philtrum,” I said. “Or not.”

  “No pain, no gain,” she shrugged. “The only thing, I’m afraid if I put like a bee bee-sized barbell in there, it’d look too much like a booger. What do you think?”

  “I’d be afraid it’d get infected.”

  Mad had been down that road. “Surgical stainless post,” she assured me. “Swab it with peroxide now and then to keep it clean. So what do you think? Here, take a closer look.”

  We were passing the high school football practice field. Snow-covered, it gleamed in the moonlight. I pulled in and parked well away from the nearest streetlight. How would I explain myself if I got stuck in the patchy snow covering the gravel drive? Mad didn’t waste any time springing open her passenger restraint. Without saying a word, she lunged and planted a soul kiss on me. It made me think she’d been rehearsing it on a mirror with her eyes open. She kept her spike-pierced tongue stiff yet busy, as if that was something she figured I expected of her. The points of her tongue spike flailed away at me like a mace inside my mouth.

  I felt her hands moving in my lap. Her fingers tapped my front pants pocket. In seconds, she had my wallet out. She leaped away toward the door, laughing maniacally and waving the wallet at me.

  “I did it! I did it! You didn’t even feel it, did you?”

  “Give me that back.” I was afraid I might have to wrestle her for it.

  Her expression became a blank stare, then brightened. “Sandra,” she said.

  “What?”

  “You were with a woman named… Sandra tonight. God, I’m good.” Then a long abashed intake of her breath, followed by a dirty giggle.

  “What is it?”

  “I know everything you did to her, that’s all.”

  Mad turned my wallet inside out, spilling all my worthless credit cards onto the floorb
oard carpet. I switched on the dome light and bent over to pick them up.

  Mad hiked up her skirt and spread her legs. She didn’t believe in wearing panties.

  “Let’s see, you owe me forty dollars for tonight. Little light, aren’t we? Maybe I can take it out in trade.” All I could think about was a passing police cruiser.

  Suddenly everything went dark. Mad had thrown her full Goth skirt over my head like a blanket. She clamped her knees on either side of my head. I heard one of my ears pop. “Let’s see you eat your way out of this one,” she said.

  I struggled to break free; her thighs were surprisingly hard and muscular. I loosened their grip once, but before I could roll out she clapped them together again. This time, both ears popped. She locked her ankles behind my back. I felt the chunky heels of her patent-leather boots digging into me.

  I said the first thing I could think of: “Let me go. I’m a lawyer.”

  She wouldn’t. The musky closeness of her was beginning to get to me, wearing down my resistance. Mad reached over and flipped off the dome light. I could see bright luminous points like stars showing through her skirt fabric. Soon those stars began to dance.

  Under her breath she said, “Oh, shit. Busted.” She whipped the skirt off my head and modestly tucked it around her, looking away and hugging the door. The interior of the car was filled with moving white light. I sat up and looked to its source: the spotlight on an unmarked car parked on the road. A tall man exited the driver’s door and sauntered toward us, taking his time, silhouetted in the stark glare. I heard every gravel crunch of his footsteps. I thought of the bloody dagger—had I really wiped off all of Janis’s fingerprints? And the pornographic videotapes—in plain sight, as the search-and-seizure cases always say. When he drew closer, I caught sight of the eighteen-inch flashlight he carried. The driver’s side power window hadn’t worked in months, so I opened the car door and stepped out to greet him.

  “Just taking the babysitter home, officer,” I offered, smiling hopefully into his backlit face.

  “We saw you drive by the house,” Diaz said. “Kind of cold out here for stargazing, isn’t it?” He shined the flashlight directly into Mad’s face, then mine.

  “You know you got some black shoe polish on your lip?” he asked me, too loud for conversation. Though his tone seemed to demand an answer, we stood there in silence—me staring down the barrel of his flashlight—for what seemed like a full minute. Then he asked, “How old’re your kids again?” I told him. He nodded. More silence. I felt like asking him if I was under arrest.

  Instead, I tried to affect nonchalance. “Well, better be going,” I said, nodding as if to agree with myself. “Cold out here.” I slapped my ribs a couple of times for realism. But when I moved toward the safety of the car, I heard him say, “Just a minute.” He might as well have said, “Freeze, asshole.” I froze.

  He pulled out the pocket handkerchief from his lapel, handed it to me. “Better wipe that black shit off. Might give somebody the wrong idea.”

  Diaz followed us in the squad car all the way to Janis’s before taking off.

  Janis was still in the suit she’d worn to the office when she let us in close to midnight. “Hello, Ricky,” she said at the door. “I see you’ve managed to return Cinderella before the clock strikes twelve.”

  “Hi, Sleaze,” Mad said. She elbowed her way past Janis. Soon we heard a door slam upstairs. Janis looked at me helplessly and mouthed the word sorry.

  “I’m the one should be sorry, keeping her out so late,” I said, jewel box in hand. On the coffee table, an orange-scented votive candle burned before a picture of Saint Agnes standing in a garden of calla lilies with a Presidio-like building in the background. In her right hand, the saint held a palm frond; her left arm cradled a lamb.

  Janis’s eyes fastened on the jewel box. Mindful of my quest, I handed it to her. She drew the drapes and opened the box. Recognized it in an instant. Closed the box again without touching the dagger. Placed the box on the coffee table and turned to me. “How can I ever repay you?” she whispered.

  “You can start by being friends with me again,” I whispered back. “I didn’t appreciate that little wake-up slap slap at the office tonight. A certain witch of my acquaintance says that everything you do comes back to you three times over.”

  “I never heard that one,” Janis replied in a normal tone of voice.

  My bladder felt like an over-stretched water balloon, what with the Crankenstein, the drinks, and the four coffees large. I asked to use her rest room. To my surprise, Janis shut off the lights, blew out the candle, and then led me up the staircase. I followed her down a dark hallway and into a bathroom where she closed and locked the door behind us. I watched her undress in silence, her back to me. Mad’s room was eight feet down the hall.

  Janis ran the shower steaming hot. “I hate cold tile.” She shut the water off, stepped into the tub, and reclined, facing up at me. Despite her position and her nudity, her facial expression held a quiet yet challenging dignity as she said, “Go ahead, Ricky. Don’t be bashful. I love golden showers.”

  “I’ve never done this before,” I said. “I mean, not on somebody. Not on purpose.”

  “That’s funny,” Janis said. “I’ve heard you use the expression probably a thousand times around the office.”

  I unzipped and stood there like a dummy for a dramatic pause that seemed like minutes, waiting for the little piss fairies to quit screwing with me and turn on the waterworks. I had a world-class public men’s room stricture going. “This is stupid,” I kept saying, feeling like a kid in kindergarten trying to go with Teacher watching.

  “You think it would help if we put your piddies in some warm water?” We paused for another eternity, listened to the echoing drip of the shower nozzle, and contemplated the amusing paradox of me standing there with a header of piss I couldn’t seem to unload for love or art. I looked like one of those fountain cherubs after somebody forgot to pay the water bill.

  Finally, Janis took pity on me. She reached up and massaged my abdomen with gentle strokes and swirls like she was finger-painting without any paint. I closed my eyes; the dam broke at last. Janis writhed like a vampire sprinkled with holy water from the pure dirty joy of it. She opened her mouth and took in a greedy drinking-fountain stream. Then, so help me, I heard her gargle with it, to the tune of Singing in the Rain.

  Unsure of the proper etiquette in these situations, I shook the last few drops onto her with a symphony conductor’s flourish. There was a hard knock at the door.

  Mad’s muffled voice said quietly, “I know what you’re doing in there, Mother. I know what both of you are doing, and I think it’s disgusting.”

  Only after she had fully showered—with me watching—and washed her hair did Janis, wearing a blue terrycloth robe and a rose towel turban, unlock and open the bathroom door.

  She led me through the silent dark house and down the stairs as though she had night vision. I heard her unlock the front door with a key. She gave me a kiss no different than Diaz had gotten when we reached the front door. I had a million questions to ask her, but knew Diane would have even more than that to ask me when I returned home.

  I had parked in the street so as not to leave my motor oil calling card on Janis’s driveway. The night breeze stiffened my steamy damp hair. My car, already frigid, started after the second attempt. I turned the blower on high and directed the louvers toward my face, hoping my hair would dry on the drive home. I was about to pull away from the curb when I saw Janis running headlong out of the house, her robe flapping and turban undone. She sprinted barefoot across the front lawn, heedless of the snow, banged on my front passenger window, and screamed “Mad’s gone!”

  I killed the engine and circled around the car. Janis, hysterical, implored the sky in a panicked rage. Lights were coming on in nearby homes. I put my arm around her and hurried her back into the house.

  The first thing I noticed was the jewel box, lying open and empty
but for a few flakes of blood on its cotton lining. Janis had beaten me upstairs to Mad’s room. I followed the sound of her cries, animal in their intensity.

  The room was cold. Janis had thrown herself down on the bed and was having some kind of third-act Medea breakdown, pounding her fists into Mad’s pillow. I could see the condensation of her breath in the chill night air. I stuck my head out the open window. One of those old TV aerial towers stood within easy reach of the sill.

  Two sets of footprints began at the base of the tower leading around the house to the street in front. One set was Mad’s chunk-heel boot print stalking away. The other was larger, a work boot perhaps; it was difficult to tell by moonlight. Near where the footprints began was a rectangular swipe in the snow—the size of a suitcase thrown down from a second-story window. Two swerving parallel lines began there and made an uneven trail beside Mad’s footprints on the side opposite the work boot prints: Mad dragging her own suitcase. I closed the window again, sat down on the bed beside Janis, and rubbed her back, trying to console this woman I had so lately pissed on.