Dies Irae

by Ruby Spinell

  Unspeaking, he took her to the first room off the kitchen. “The bath attached to this connects with mine. I can lock the door between, let you have it. There’s another bath,” he finished lamely.

  Placing her overnight case on the flat, wide surface of the bureau, coat and shoes in the closet, she turned to him waiting in the open doorway, and repeated: “Where’s your room?”

  The mixture of cigar smoke, leather, cologne, and maleness was as heavy as the fresh-ground coffee smell that hit you when you opened the door of the Cheese Emporium. The room was very large. He walked past the big centrally placed bed with its white comforter and pulled the drapes. Then he flicked the light on a shiny, dark wood stand. It held a blond wood box of Hava Yorcas.

  A series of doors took up one wall. A brushwork diorama started working its myth out by the windows, continued the full length of the wall at the head of the bed, and ended at the doors. It appeared to be the story of a metamorphosis. A woodland scene … a waterfall … a hermit sitting in a house hidden partly by cloud, followed by a journey of what looked like Samurai warriors.

  “It’s beautiful!” she repeated. Pensively, she turned around surveying the room. “Do you keep clerical black here?”

  Without opening his mouth, he took her by the hand to the farthest door. Half a dozen black suits hung beside twice as many rabats, four long black cassocks at the far end. She picked up the arm of one of the cassocks and felt the cloth.

  “Please put on the black for me? Not the cassock, the suit … replete with collar.” She felt the heat rising in her face. “I’ll make coffee. Cognac?”

  “Over the microwave,” he said.

  Mir, sitting in the large central room in the wing chair, her bare feet on the Persian rug, looked up when he came to the door. He was just as imposing and as much of an impostor as he had been that first day at Pius.

  Rising from the chair, her glass in her left hand, she came forward holding out his tumbler of cognac. Standing tall before him, she almost reached his mouth. She didn’t kiss him but put her finger in the liquid and spread it over his lower lip.

  “You look extremely distinguished, you know.” His eyes told her that he found that amusing, but also that she was beautiful.

  Her breasts were against his chest as she watched him swallow the cognac. “I cannot decide if you remind me of a thug dressed like a cleric … more robust than most of course … Just cannot decide if churching tempered the lout … or the hood strengthened the prelate.”

  She slid to her knees in front of him. His hand was rough and leathery, callused on fingers and palms. The ring was large and hard against her mouth. After she kissed it, her hand undid his suit jacket. Reverently or irreverently, depending on how one looks at it, she pulled his zipper down and went exploring within the clerical black. The gabardine didn’t hamper her, and the beast wanted out. Very quickly, she had freed what she wanted. Taking half a mouthful of the superior cognac, putting the tumbler aside on the rug, she took Arthur Danley into her mouth.

  The cognac grew salty. She felt her bra snap and fall to either side. He must have put his brandy down for two large violent hands grabbed her breasts and drew them out of her blouse. They rubbed against the roughness of his trousers. She was swallowing oceans, licking the spit of the land for more. Lick, her tongue found the groove. Curl, lick, loop, the pressure on her breasts grew tremendous. She felt a great shudder. The roots of her hair felt as if they were being pulled from her scalp.

  Mir, as if holding onto a mountain, put her arms around the strong thighs. Glued to him, taking as much of him into her mouth as she could, she held the mountain that was struck by lightning while it shook.

  His labored breathing returned part way to normal. He pulled her up, his big hand sliding under the black skirt and curving around back inside her panties. The ring finger caught; they heard the silky fabric tear.

  “You won’d need these,” Arthur Danley murmured. He ripped the panties off completely, and flung them into the corner. “Now, my dear, if you still want to make that confession I’ll be very glad to hear it.” He lifted her up. One finger up her ass, he carried her back to his room.

  Sleepily, she threw the down comforter off her body; the heat was incredible. She imagined she could see the waves rising from her torso into the coolness of the room. Patting the sheet at her side, she realized she was alone in the bed even as she heard the voices.

  A man, not Arthur, was speaking in a decidedly irritated, strangely nasal voice. “Hell, Art, I didn’t expect the guy to pull that. He moved from a sitting position so fast! Never saw anything like it.

  “When I woke up, I got myself over to Metropolitan and had it taken care of. Told the doc my girl beat me up and I didn’t want to press charges.”

  There was a long silence then she heard Arthur’s voice. “Recognize him?”

  “No. But if I ever see him again I will, moved like a cat.”

  “You’d better go home and get some rest.”

  “No. Brincussi’s on patrol, I think I should see Savior, get it over with tonight. I wanted you to come with me.”

  “Afraid of the old guy?” There was no answer. Now Arthur sounded annoyed. “Couldn’t it wait ’til daylight?”

  “Hey man, someone’s on your tail. He’s gonna want to see you anyway. Why not come with me and get it over with. He should know about it. Maybe he can lift them.”

  Mir lay with her eyes closed, breathing evenly, as Arthur came into the bedroom, went to the wall of closets, and fumbled in the dark with his clothes. She heard him pick his shoes up and come over to the side of the bed where he stood for a good minute looking down at her. Then he bent and pulled the comforter slowly up over her nakedness.

  Grateful now for the warmth of the comforter, she lay listening to the garage door open, the powerful engine purr its way onto the pre-dawn streets. Someone on guard had encountered a prowler. Someone had replaced him. Brancussi was on prowl now watching the place. Both inside and out?, she wondered.

  The heavy curtains were drawn; she didn’t touch the light-switch. Recalling the layout, she rose and walked to the farthest closet, the one where Arthur’s clerical black hung. The cassocks were too big and too long, but a naked, cold woman in need of a robe cannot be choosy.

  She felt like a nun in a choir habit with the sleeves hanging down past her wrists, or like Dopey, the seventh dwarf. If she encountered this Brancussi character, she would say she was on the way to the bathroom.

  The hall was dimly lit and very quiet. The large centrally placed room where Arthur had torn her panties and thrown them in a corner was dark. She glanced in as she passed along to the room where she left her case.

  She didn’t turn on the light there either. Finding the case on the bureau where she’d left it, she searched through it for her mini mag lite from L. L. Bean. On second thought, she pulled the folder out of the bottom. It held the first draft of the final chapter of the Valery article. She carried it everywhere re-reading, putting in finishing touches … She’d brought it down this evening more out of habit than anything else.

  The flashlight was a necessity. Never again would she be caught in a city power outtage without a light. Holding the skirts of the cassock up, knowing there was no one else within the apartment, she decided to go back to Arthur’s room. She’d seen a reading light on a pull-down suspension cord over his side of the bed.

  But without discussing it with herself at all, she passed his open door and walked toward the last closed door in the corridor. Spending the night in strange surrounding? Rule 1: Familiarize yourself!

  Placing the folder on the rug by her bare toes, she reached for the door knob, the long sleeves of heavy fabric falling over her fingers. It opened. The room seemed to be a reading room or library. The bright tiny beam illuminated a pile of books by a Lazy-boy. The slick cover of Patriot Games by Tom Clancy shone. Beside it, Selous Scouts—Top Secret War by Lt. Col. Reid Daly and Basic Stickfighting for Combat. Mir walked slowly
over to a table covered with newspapers and magazines. Secrets of Underground Organizations was half buried under Soldiers of Fortune magazine and a copy of Knife Self Defense for Combat. An illustrated guide to Modern Elite Forces had a heavy glass ashtray sitting on it.

  Bookcases along the far wall … she let the light play along the spines. Los Banos Raid. The Specialist by Gayle Rivers. The U.S. Armed Forces Survival Manual. Inevitable Revolution by Walter LeFeber. Get Tough, The Special Forces Physical Conditioning Program by Tom Fitzgerald. MaoTseTung on Guerilla Warfare. Military Incompetence, Richard A. Gabriel and The Art of War by Sun Tzu. Military Small Arms of the Twentieth Century, and The Vietnam Weapons Handbook. Survivors by Zalin Grant. Into Laos … the titles went on. A veritable military school library.

  Not exactly church material, she thought, letting the beam of light shine on her toes. Absentmindedly, she flexed her bare feet; there was no pile under them here. Everywhere the rugs had been soft and deep except … right … here. Mir shone the mini lite back on the wall, the wall of books. There was a door behind this section; she was sure of it. Back over the books her fingers went, carefully and slowly. Behind the U.S. Army’s Special Forces Medical Handbook she found the button. Startled, she stepped back as the bookshelf swung in away from her.

  She purposefully draped the sleeves over her hands now, making sure she touched nothing as she entered the large walk-in closet.

  A gun rack ran the width and length of the room. Polished wood and burnished steel, she surveyed the extent of it. Six shiny Heckler Kochs rested their new barrels against the maple directly in front of her. Then, two assault rifles. She bent nearer and peered at the heavy Fabric Nationals. Belgium make? She seemed to recall they were used mainly by the United Kingdom Countries. There were three AUGs, three Russian AK-47’s, six M-16’s.

  A shelf underneath was stacked with sealed canisters. Next to these watertight cans lay a long, wooden box with Chinese characters on it. Boxes of 7.62 thirty caliber NATO rounds were piled on the other side of the metal canisters.

  Mir shone light on the far wall, then walked up to it. She’d never seen the Israeli design UZI outside of the movies. Twelve UZI submachine guns rested in their wooden collars beside six Heckler Kochs, boxes of nine millimeter shells stacked up over head. Below the subs, half a dozen colt automatics lay on soft green material, two 357 magnums, King Cobra stamped on their barrels, lay beside four government issue Delta Elites.

  Curiously, she looked at the next four. She’d read about these only recently in a small weapons manual that came through the publishing firm. Made of space age polymers the blurb had spouted, the Glock 17, weighing less than twenty-four ounces, would be the harbinger of a whole new era in handgun manufacturing. Developed for the Austrian military, adopted by NATO. It takes a NATO round then, she thought.

  It was a fucking arsenal! The light from the flashlight swung to a shelf she hadn’t noticed behind the wooden box with the Chinese characters. They weren’t beer cans! They stood like empty soldiers at a party except they were not empty. Concussion grenades.

  She hadn’t touched a thing. God, Arthur must not suspect she had been in here. Firmly, she closed the door behind her with the sleeve over her fingers, the shelves slid into place. Quickly, she walked through the library without dislodging any of the books, again, closing the door carefully. Stooping, she picked up her Valery article and returned to his bed to think.

  There was no sleeping. She sat upright in the middle of the bed, her mind churning. When Arthur returned, she wanted him to find the woman he left. What then to do with the woman who had just found Bluebeard’s den? Put her out to pasture for the remainder of the night came the mocking chorus.

  A hot shower would help. And lights. Brancussi who knew she was here would know she was awake. Good. Reaching up, she pulled the reading light on over the bed.

  An hour later, hearing the garage door open, feeling the low, vibratory silent running of the powerful engine, she was ready.

  Arthur Danley, returning alone, was met by a short, wiry man in black. “All quiet. No further sign of that guy. Your lady-friend woke about an hour ago, showered, made herself something to eat.” The man searched Arthur’s face greedily, but was not rewarded. He gave a husky laugh. “Well, have fun.”

  He stood quietly at the door of his room taking in the sight of her. She sat cross-legged in the middle of his bed with her back to him. Her hair under the light and over the black of his cassock was suddenly deep red. She’d rolled the cassock sleeves and pulled the skirt for freedom of movement, up above her naked thighs. The bed was littered with papers.

  A plate holding the remnants of a roll lay on top the papers and a brandy snifter, half full, sat atop the box of Hava Yorcas. She was bent over the papers in her hand, chewing on a pencil. He swallowed. She heard.

  “Arthur!” She hadn’t buttoned the front of the cassock and as she turned, her right breast fell out. “Do you always go out in the middle of the night to work?”

  “Do you always feel like writing after jumping into bed with a guy?”

  She patted an area of cleared sheet to the side of her, “Come. Come give me an opinion. I’ve been going over the Valery article. What do you think he means by this? ‘Nothing alters or transfigures us more profoundly than the struggle against those of our powers that have turned against us.’” He ran his fingers like a comb through her hair, scooping it to the top of her head. Leaning across him for a sheet of heavily red-penciled script, she seemed unaware that her left breast had come clear.

  Fingering the small, black buttons she said simply, “It’s not organized, just look at this! Oh, by the way, I hope you don’t mind my borrowing your priestly robe. I was cold when I woke.” She was thoughtful again, “You know, P. V. said he needed three eunuch slaves, intelligent, and infinitely compliant, one to read his papers, one to tell him he understood, and the last, a secretary stenographer.” She took a deep breath. The nipples bobbed.

  “You’re a tease. You know that, don’t you.”

  She looked into the fire in his eyes and smiled. “It’s the little girl playing hide and seek again with the neighborhood boy in the dark cellar.”

  He pressed a pink nipple between a thumb and forefinger, “What happened when he caught you?”

  “He never did.”

  Twisting to the side to retrieve something, her nipple pulled out from between his fingers. She bent across, her loose breasts whispering on his arm. The curly golden hairs lay down for the body of the breasts going after the papers, drifting softly to the floor. The hairs, disturbed, pushed hither and thither …

  His breath came heavy and fast. Two brawny arms pulled the all too large cassock down off her shoulders. Standing her, holding her under the arms, he shook her out of it.

  Putting a hand out, he grabbed the comforter and flipped it. The comforter whirled like pizza dough in mid-air. It flew so quickly that the piece of roll stayed on its plate. The brandy was a liquid curtain hurrying to catch up with its departing bowl, unsuccessfully, for when the snifter landed, upright, all but a half an inch had departed. Lazily, papers fluttered and settled across the room.

  She laughed, watching the topaz liquid slosh around in the glass. “You couldn’t do that again if you tried.”

  “Probably not,” he grinned, pulled off his dark sweater and jeans with one hand and grabbed her back against him. One hand successfully took up the whole of both breasts, the other thrust roughly between her legs.

  He withdrew a lubricious hand, making the sign of the cross before anointing her forehead.

  “There are special blessings for women. From time immemorial they seem to have been in need of them … according to the powers that be, that is …” It was the ecclestiac speaking, the Bishop … possible future Cardinal. His fingers trailed langorously down her cheek, her neck.

  He pushed deep into her with his hand, brought his dripping fingers to her lips. “Taste!” Her smell came to her on his hands. His wet finger
s probed her mouth. Sucking opened sluice gates in her pelvis, flooding her upper thighs.

  Thirty years within the confessional had taught him a thing or two … or was it the expert in tactical warfare? Her breasts were fondled tenderly, crossed with the sign and oiled. He progressed to her belly, thighs, knees … feet. The candles were all lit on the altar …

  “Now for those lovely orifices.” There was a requisite priestly gravity to the tone of his voice.

  Daylight was seeping around the corners of the drapes,

  “It’s going to be a busy day.”

  “You said you had to leave town?”

  “Yeah, gotta make an eleven a.m. flight. Couple of things I should do before that too.” His breath forced out in a tidal wave.

  “You never told me what you thought of the Valery quote.”

  “I agree with him, seen it happen.”

  “You actually heard me, I don’t believe it. You were not completely smitten by my state of dishabille,” she smiled teasingly. Then, “Have any of your powers turned against you?”

  “Nope.” He was curling her sticky pubic hair into spirals and peaks. “And as far as the other goes … I’ve never had the slightest need of a eunuch.

  “Will I see you when I get back?” he asked. She looked suddenly thoughtful. When she didn’t answer: “Well?”

  Mir sat up then and swung herself around, straddling his narrow pelvis. She relaxed her weight. Gazing at the bulk of him lying back against the pillows she searched his face, “I think so.”

  “OK. That’s good enough for now.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The graveyard shift at police headquarters was busy making its way home. Walt Bathesday watched Eli. Seldom was he seen here this early—he liked to work out in the morning—and never looking so rumpled. He appeared to have slept in his overcoat.

  Long legs stretched out across the desk-top, chair tilted backwards, head cocked at a neck-breaking angle on the three quarters file. Lost in thought, oblivious of the hubbub, every sixty seconds he moved a bead on the abacus.