Dies Irae

by Ruby Spinell

  By that time, his mind made up, it was merely a matter of willing his body to quiet down and since will had never gotten him anywhere, he kept his mind on the case. Thinking of the monastery turn and the sisters’ dismay he stood abruptly, “Are you quite sure you don’t want dessert?”

  “Yes.”

  He reached across and pulled her to her feet. “Let’s go then.”

  “Where?”

  “Yours or mine … whichever’s closest.”

  The smile she gave him made him stiffen anew. “I’ll meet you in the car. I have to stop at the ladies’ room.”

  The motor was idling easy when she came out the side door of Pierre’s. He leaned over and thrust the door open for her.

  “How about mine,” she said, “it’s only two blocks.” She laughed like a child opening a present when she slid her warm fingers between his thighs and found him hard.

  Turning the car onto Baily, he asked himself again what he was doing. In the last three years he could not recall a woman who had even warmed him. How often he had encountered the ego’s assault on his spartan, rabbinical life saying, ‘show me desire, I’ll follow!’ Now, in the face of a devouring desire, some part of him was splitting off, quoting Dionysius. Not knowing is the most intimate. Then, a great intimacy is not what I want now, he replied. I lust after this woman!

  At the door to Marion’s apartment, while she turned the keys in two separate locks, he slipped off her coat. Placing his hands under her sweater, he did what he wanted to do back at the restaurant, ease thin lace up over her nipples, fill his hands with the two large, heavy breasts until the nipples were like rock. Tracing her rib cage with a finger and then around to her spine and down the hollow, he unhooked her skirt. It slid to her knees. Slowly, very slowly, Eli pulled the silk slip down over her belly and then down past her hips. He dug his hands in the curly warm fur. She wore no panties, only a garter belt with its snug, black lace elastic running loosely down each thigh.

  She uttered a sigh, sagging backward. Such a lovely sight, he thought, pocketbook, skirt, coat on the floor, her slip down around her ankles, the pink sweater with the bra rolled up inside around her throat like a scarf, exposed, round, erect breasts, naked belly except for the low garter belt and stockings.

  Picking her up, arms cradling perfect smooth buttocks, he slowly opened the door. Holding her exposed out into the hallway for all the world to see, kissing her, he slowly kicked each item of clothing, including the pocketbook, behind them into the apartment.

  She was so wet when he finally entered her that they slid apart laughing repeatedly. But before that, in each pinned position that had leapt uninhibitedly to his inner eye, he brought her to climax after climax. He dared his flesh; how long can you stay hard for this woman and me? How long? How long? He brought her to climax again. How long? And again. And how long? Until their two bodies glistened and shone and he felt like howling.

  She was whispering something; he leaned close to hear. She was whispering ‘please’ over and over again. He crossed her legs then and buried himself deep.

  “Well!” She lay on her left side before the couch on the thick white pile rug; they hadn’t made it to the bedroom. “Well well” eyes wide and serious, no laughter lurking near the corners now. “So they were wrong.”

  “Who? About what?” He rolled over on his back conscious of his limp penis slipping through three inches of wet shag; the fibers of the rug moved their tendrils like underwater weeds.

  Hitting the carpet between them with his palm, “You realize this is going to smell like fish wrappers.” It was not a question.

  She answered both. “It can be washed. Department gossips.” He was silent. “The ‘vine’ says Eliaphus Daniel Janah never plays around.” She knew his whole name.

  “I wasn’t.”

  “What?”

  “Playing around.” He slipped his long fingers in her hot, wet cunt, “I was playing here.” She took a deep breath and he was aware of her vagina shortening and then deepening slowly but surely as she let the air out, drawing his hand in and upward.

  “What caused all that?” She tried to sound light.

  “All what?”

  “All that passion.”

  With his hand within her he screwed up his eyes, seemingly absorbed in the ceiling. “Meaning is more important than cause.” Suddenly, as if to forestall further questioning, not sure what the afternoon had meant, he withdrew his hand, fondling her thigh with wet fingers. “You.”

  She started to rise, then. “I could use something to drink, how about you?” His hand caught in the black lace garter running down her left buttock. Halfway to her feet, struggling against the pull, he let it snap. Red shot in streaks out from the black. He lunged, caught both black garters again, pulled, and as his weight dropped to the floor, let them fly. She gasped, grabbing for her bottom. In one swift move, he brought her down on the carpet easily.

  She didn’t cry, but struggled, breathing hard and fast, as he draped one thigh over her waist to keep her in place, and pulled the garter straps high, conscious all the while he was hard as a rock, aching like a teenager.

  At each rebound of the elastic she whimpered, and the flush increased until her perfect buttocks were like two smooth, ripe raspberries.

  Sliding his hand down the cleft was like driving in warm jello. He drew it out dripping and put the left one in just as deep, spreading the moisture up and back over the two hot mounds.

  She groaned each time he dipped his hand, first one forefinger, then the other, making loving circles around the winking eye, and when she was thoroughly ready, changing position rapidly, he took her from behind with one hand encircling her groin, fingering her swollen, retracted clitoris.

  The coroner’s offices, along with the City Assessor, Business Permits and Regulatory Assistance, Child Abuse and Maltreatment, Code Enforcement and Dog Control, occupied a large old mansion that looked like it came right off the set of Witches of Eastwick. A low brick structure had been attached to one side; here Eli found Manny Bozeman.

  “It’s almost four. I was about to give up and go home, figured I’d call you tomorrow at the apartment.”

  “Got back to the desk later than expected. Came right over when I saw your note.”

  Bozeman looked at Janah for a long, silent minute. Was there a rare gruff note in his voice? Maybe he was tired, everyone was relieved to have Friday come around. Still, he didn’t look tired; he looked ten years younger. He let it go.

  “Got some interesting tidbits on your hands and feet.”

  Eli, checking first that it was clean and dry, dropped onto the rim of one of the two stainless steel autopsy tables. “Shoot.”

  Bozeman took four steps to the wall of freezer drawers and pulled the last open. More than a drawer, this cubicle at five feet was high enough to enclose a stretcher and Manny wheeled it to Eli’s knees. He looked down on the three hands and three feet as Bozeman heaved himself with no finesse up on the opposite table.

  “First hand, you may wanna take notes.” He waited while Eli drew a notebook from an inside overcoat pocket. “The first hand has been in Formalin for almost two years.” He pointed at this horror, the hand looking like a hook or a crooked claw as if reaching from a grave. “The hand of a seventy-five year old woman. Notice the deformity. It’s characterized by hyper-extension of the metacarpophalangeal joints,” he gestured to the area closest to the severed wrist, “and flexion of interphalangeal articulation,” he pointed to the fingers. “Grabs at ya, huh? Probably caused by a median nerve injury. From the degree of contracture I calculate the woman received the injury in her early fifties.

  “Second hand, woman’s, forty-four years old, was fresh. The lady lost it within the past month. Notice the nails; they look like spoons, that’s why they call them spoonnails. They’re not like normal nails at all, they’re concave. Koilonychia.” He caught Eli looking at him with a blank expression, “koilonychia, he spelled it out. “Bet you my druthers she has iron
deficiency anemia.

  “The third hand was a forty-six year old male’s. He chewed his cuticles, otherwise nothing special. From the degree of cellular breakdown, I’d say it’s been frozen for about a year.

  “This foot … about thirty-three, male, fresh. Very fresh. The guy is still adjusting to life without a right foot. Longitudinal arch flattens out on the floor,” he sounded professorial again, “normal concavity on medial side becomes convex. I’d check his shoes for wear on the inner sides of the soles and heels.

  “Second foot, frozen about a year, seventy-six, male,” he pointed to the magnificence of toe. “First, I thought Haberdens … but I remembered old Cussach poking me in the ribs,” his voice took on a watery, high-pitched quality, “’Come on, Bozeman, what mimics Haberdens … what mimics?’ Professor … anatomy lab in med school,” he explained to Eli’s questioning look.

  “Tophaceous gout!” he crowed. “It’s not osteoarthritic degenerative joint disease. The gentleman has gout.”

  “The last foot there, eighty-six year old male, more or less, was one of the first gathered. It’s been in Formalin at least two years. Nothing untoward there but age.”

  Eli made rapid shorthand notes by three of the entries, then looked over at Manny, “You’re good!”

  “Ahh … but that’s not the real meat. Something had me by the balls. Couldn’t get rid of this nagging suspicion that I was missing something that would pull all six together.”

  At this point, his face took on the cherubic happiness of a Raphael descending to earth as illustrated for Milton’s Paradise Lost from Hayley.

  “The bones were hacked … nothing neat there … you might well call it vehement action. But! I thought I saw hemostat grooves on one arterial fragment. Well, age creeps up on all of us.” He looked at Eli apologetically. “Could have been my eyes, but just to be sure I took a run down to Columbia. Borrowed some right fine magnification from my friend Gallerie, he’s the neurosurgeon, remember?

  “Hemostat, Eli, d’ya understand?” His excitement mounted. Slowly … pacing each word, “It took me a while but now I’m sure. Severance of every major blood vessel was by surgical … scalpel.” Bozeman waited for Eli to grasp the full measure of his disclosure.

  Eli found his mind racing. “Time obscures,” Manny was almost babbling now, “vessels retract, turn to mush … if I hadn’t seen those two little nips on the brachial on spoonnails there …” He gestured with his pencil and then threw up his hands helplessly.

  “The radials, the ulnars, the deep,” he stressed it, “the deep anterior interosseous in the lower arms. The dorsalis pedis,” the Latin was flowing like a poem, “posterior tibialis … the peroneals! He got the anterior peroneals where they bifurcate.” He slapped the stainless steel at his side and the metal-flesh contact ricocheted around the cold room.

  “Then, Janah, this guy got the veins. He left nothing to bleed. It was a labor of love.” Looking at Eli’s face he tried again, “Hate? He cut the radial and the median in the arm where it joins and before it anastamosises with the anterior ulnar itself. The marks were all there.” There was deep professional pride in his voice.

  “He caught every major branching at the saphenous. Do you know what a networking the internal and external have in the lower leg?!” Eli didn’t know but looked attentive. This was not the time to open his mouth. Manny continued, “You can pull those beauties. When they’re extremely varicosed you just snip and pull them out.” He made little nip and tuck motions that brought a groan to Eli’s lips. “They have so many branchings; the damn ancillary take over.

  “Once I was sure of all this, I went back and re-ran the chemistries looking for traces of anesthesia. Fluothane … nothing. No halothane. No penthrane. Big zeros on chloroform, nitrous oxide, ethyl chloride, ethylene. Couldn’t find the injectables either. Ketalar, brevital, pentothal …? Not a thing. No one lies down for this.”

  “I started thinking of all the anesthetics that have come and gone. Many we don’t use any more; they’re too damn flammable. Tiny spark, boom! Everything blows up. Still … some of them are used in undeveloped countries. Boom is not as bad? Cheap.”

  He was almost talking to himself now, “I tried to ask myself what was cheap and plentiful. Guess what I found.” He smirked.

  “Cocaine! An alkaloid obtained from erthroxylin cocoa. In every single one of those specimens I found traces of cocaine hydrochloride, a local anesthetic.

  “They watched while he cut off their hands and feet. The two eldest had trouble taking it lying down. One stopped breathing. There are traces of epinephrine in the hand of the old woman, clawhand there. And the eighty-six year old gent must have gone into convulsions. I found propanol as well as cocaine.” The two men were silent. A slow drip, drip from one of the scrub sinks was the only sound in the large, tiled, windowless room.

  When Manny spoke again, he had calmed down appreciably. “You’re looking for someone with surgeon’s skills, male or female, and who, with premeditation, cut off three human hands and three human feet. These people,” he waved his had over the surface of the stretcher, “did not die from this. They were not meant to. Great care was taken that they should live.”

  Out on Wind Hollow Road at the Monastery of the Annunciation, a fat heifer moon, silvering the bearberrry along the deserted garden paths of the enclosure, shone on the Way of the Cross, marking twelve stations of indistinct character.

  Penetrating the overhang, it fell to the white marble forehead of the statue of the Immaculate Conception where it fired the lowered eyelids. When the intermittent wind moved the boughs, this triangle winked a flickering message to the sky crescent.

  “Miserere mei, Deus secundum magnam misericordiam tuam” … the women’s voices rose and fell reciting Psalm Fifty-one. “Have mercy on me, O God, according to Thy great mercy.”

  In the lightness of the chapel there was no light from the garden or the altar. The shades had been drawn tight to the sill, and the tiny red vigil on guard in the sanctuary was too feeble to throw even the tiniest gleam back upon the gathered community.

  “Et secumdum multitudinem miserationum dele iniquitatem meam.” A steady, papery sound wove through the chanting. A horde of locusts nibbled and crunched their way through young chick peas on an Iowa farm. Hard, waxed knotted cords fell on bare buttocks. “And according to the multitude of Thy tender mercies …” Sister Damian swung harder … “blot out mine iniquity, O God!”

  Chapter Seven

  Sister Damian stretched the fine linen out against the light. She had been staring at it for ten minutes, ever since Detective Janah had called insisting they speak. It was imperative, he declared, when she told him that Saturday was filled with too many activities and there was no time. She recognized the unalterable force, she had been this way once. Ten minutes … fifteen minutes … he bargained and finally kept her there for twenty-five precious minutes. Why the questions about Father Elias, Mrs. Henry, and Del Martin? It was too much.

  She had unplugged the phone and taken it around to the west wing, plugged it into the sacristy knowing Ellen needed the speak, then taken it back again when he hung up. She felt like a dolt; what had she been doing … something hadn’t been quite right with the vestment, but she was having difficulty remembering what it was?

  A thin stream of light shone down at the corners of the alb! She had envisioned the light just above the grape clusters and the chalice. Relieved, she placed the linen on a padded surface at the end of the work table and directed the seventy-five watt bulb on the area in question.

  Snip. A thread was interrupted, followed carefully along its tract, checked and double checked. Sure it was the same thread, it was snipped again. Holding the fabric snugly, this one was drawn firmly, but gently from the rest.

  Standing back, she eyed it and decided two would be better. Removing the second linen thread was easier. She then crooked a foot under a stool and dragged it near. Laying the hand-loomed Irish linen over a raised knee, she started
with tiny invisible stitches to build the windows.

  The alb, part of the new vestments promised Bishop Danley for Christmas, had been just the work needed to completely occupy this morning. It was as good as being alone working opposite Constance. Engrossed in running up the ends of an altar cloth, she never looked up.

  ‘Rorate caeli desuper et nubes pluant justum.’ Drop down dew, ye heavens from above … the words from the morning’s Introit were like balm, a benediction. She let the Mass of the Blessed Virgin wash over her again.

  They were going through some hard times; it never rains but it pours. Was it Teresa, foundress of the shoeless Carmelites, that told her sisters not to blame it on the times? She smiled to herself, you never were one to soften the truth! She thrust that at Teresa and felt better. Even creaking over the Spanish countryside in those go-west wagons you were one strong lady.

  She had wanted to get as much done on the vestment as possible, hoping to be free and unencumbered to help set up for the conference of religious convening that afternoon. Hope was high for some real dialogue. There were those who felt the letter of the law was sacrosanct and those who believed superiors, anointed with the oil of office at election, held the Spirit’s blessing and power of interpretation when it came to the rules and by-laws.

  A vow of obedience, to her way of thinking, was a vow of obedience. You obeyed your superiors no matter what, otherwise why take it? She did not agree with everything Mother Michaels was doing. And she was grateful she had not made habit a matter of obedience. But she could not see this incessant questioning of her pronouncements as anything but disruptive. A lot of ego! They said it was ecumenical. Ecumenical bosh! It wasn’t anything but EGO in capital letters. Holier than God some of them.

  Lord, when will you zap us like you did Augustine? So that we realize what you really think of our very important matters. Turn us around! She found herself moaning this last thought out loud and smiled a quick apology to Constance’s raised eyes.