Serpents in the Cold

by Thomas O'Malley

  “Honeydew! Show these fine gentlemen out. I don’t want to offend their delicate sensibilities. We got business to take care of.”

  30

  _________________________

  Massachusetts State House, Beacon Hill

  IN THE WAITING room of the windowless State House office, Dante sat in a chair beneath a bank of flickering, humming fluorescent lights. He squinted against them, felt a headache pressing behind his eyes. Over the last few days he’d measured out the remaining junk from Karl’s, made his doses smaller and smaller, and staggered his fixes so that he might come off it without suffering serious withdrawals. He’d taken his last dose six hours before and knew he couldn’t last much longer.

  In his gabardine pants and stained shirt under an overcoat with only one of its four buttons remaining, he was suddenly self-conscious. He was aware of the stale sweat on his clothes, and how, as they started to warm in the heat of the waiting room, they were beginning to stink. He gripped his damp gloves in his hand, hoping they might lessen the shaking that grew with each minute he waited.

  He’d called ahead and spoken to Mrs. Cushing, Administrator of Personnel, and made an appointment for ten o’clock, but the clock on the wall now showed nearly ten forty-five. Beyond the front desk he could hear the insistent tapping of multiple typewriters, as if in some competition to overtake and outduel the other, the noise pulling through his skull like a rusted steel thread. The door to the office opened again, and two clean-shaven men with rolled-up sleeves squared precisely just below the elbows emerged and walked briskly past—each carrying a leather-bound folder that gave them both an air of urgency.

  A phone rang, followed by another. A woman’s voice answered the first. “State House Employment. Can you hold a moment?” And then another, quickly lifted off its cradle, and as if an automated echo, the same words were repeated. “State House Employment. Can you hold a moment?”

  The pit of his stomach expanded sourly as if he might be sick. There was too much noise and too much purpose. The way everybody seemed to have so much direction and intent made the edges blur even more. He wished he’d avoided the impulse to come here, and silently cursed himself because of it. The hallway door opened again, and a man in a tweed suit and an auburn mustache entered from the main lobby, glanced blindly at Dante as he were not even there. The phones dueled for attention once more. He tried to squeeze out the noise of the office, shut his eyes and lowered his head.

  A woman’s voice, harsh, with a thick townie accent, was calling to him, pulling him back through the black hole and into the office with its loudly thrumming lights and the insistent noise of typewriters and phones and disembodied voices. “Sir, are you okay?” she asked again.

  He opened his eyes and saw a woman in a brown business suit standing before him. The suit was too big for her, hanging off her shoulders and falling wide over her hips. Its color matched the chestnut eyes that looked down at him.

  “I’m sorry,” he managed. “Yes, I’m okay.”

  “Well, you were nodding off there. Would you like a glass of water or something?”

  “No, I’m fine, thank you.”

  He was surprised to find her smiling at him. He noticed that her makeup seemed far too bright. In the harsh light, the pinkish rouge made him think of a young girl sneaking into her mother’s bedroom and using her makeup in hopes of looking more like an adult.

  “Unfortunately, Mrs. Cushing can’t speak with you. She’s been called in to an impromptu, very important meeting.”

  “I won’t take too much of her time. Just a few questions, that’s all.” He stood slowly, pulling himself up from the chair, and only then realizing that he was trembling even worse. He took his hat in his hands, trying to calm himself, ran his fingers and thumb nervously over the worn brim. He felt like a vagrant asking for spare change after a Sunday service.

  “I’m sorry but I’m afraid she has no free time. Today or for the remainder of the week.”

  Dante raised his voice, louder than he wished. “That other woman said she’d be with me in a minute. I’ve been waiting nearly an hour.”

  She sighed and gave him that same childish smile. Her lips curved and exposed large front teeth stained with lipstick. “Again, I’m sorry.”

  “I just wanted to ask about Sheila Anderson.”

  “I’m afraid I have to get back to my desk.” Her voice wavered. “Perhaps you can try to phone the office next week? You have a good day.”

  He watched her walk away, her legs moving stiffly, large calves flexing and releasing as her sharp-heeled shoes clacked upon the floor. A run in her stocking stretched down behind her knee toward her ankle.

  He went to the office door and paused there, looked over the front desk to the women working behind the partition and arranged in parallel lines. No woman seemed more than twenty-one or twenty-two. They had either platinum or dirty blond hair. And they were beautiful, a mirror image of one another: startlingly vibrant in the same fluorescent glare that made him look gaunt and emaciated. They kept their posture aligned with the backs of the wooden chairs, some of them with unblinking eyes scanning the documents they worked to transcribe with an effortless determination, others with phones cradled against their slender necks, stained lips forming words that were lost in the thrum of the office but that seemed to him precise and well rehearsed through repetition. For a moment he saw Sheila there, auburn head bent slightly, listening to her Dictaphone, then glancing up to look at the women around her. To have worked here she would have been dying inside; the Sheila he knew would have hated this place and these people. Not one of them looked up at him as he opened the door and let it close behind him.

  IN THE BATHROOM off the State House lobby, Dante stood at one of the porcelain sinks, polished and glimmering white, and ran his hands under the cold water, bent and splashed handfuls of it into his face. When he could no longer feel his hands, he shut off the faucet. Imprints of flames hung behind his eyes, fanned out and disappeared when he opened them. He dried his face and hands with paper towels and looked at himself in the mirror. In the glare of the light above, his features were pitted and stark, even more emaciated than usual, like something carved from shadow and bone. He hacked and spat into the sink, combed his hair with his fingers.

  The main lobby bustled with people bundled in heavy jackets and scarves and hats, and as he attempted to weave through those coming and going, he bumped shoulders with a short, brown-suited man. The man glared at him, and then two women were pushing before him and he was caught in the current sweeping toward the doors. With a sudden surge of panic he pulled himself from the mass of bodies and stood for a moment by the glass windows, waiting for the crowd to dwindle and wondering what to do next. Outside on the street new snow was falling and the winds swept it up off the stairs and the sidewalk in a flurry. He turned back to the lobby and to a vendor who sat on a crate behind a small display of newspapers, candies, cigarettes, and several plastic buckets containing ratty-looking bouquets of flowers.

  “Globe, please.”

  The vendor seemed amused by the sight of Dante; a smirk creased his lips, and Dante tried to ignore it. He reached into his pockets for change but had difficulty even with that, and the vendor shook his head. “This weather is for the birds,” Dante said, in the hope that he might appear more normal.

  Dante shuffled to an empty wooden bench. A security guard with a boozy, heavily veined nose and plum-colored cheeks glared at him as he sat down. Dante did his best to ignore him even though he could feel the man’s bloodshot eyes examining him in the same way an ill-tempered drunk sizes up a man before a fight in a bar.

  Dante’s eyes moved through the front pages of the Globe. He saw the headlines but couldn’t distinguish any of the words below the bold print. He squinted, but still everything appeared blurred and out of focus. There was a story about the Brink’s job, another about the failures of utility companies, the race for the empty Senate seat, and the rise in fatalities due to the
worst winter in history. He tried to read the sports page, but all he could think of was getting another fix, how he would make things up with Karl, how he would apologize and then beg and plead with him if necessary.

  The sound of a woman’s heels came to him across the polished stone floor and echoing up to the vast arched ceiling, and for a moment everything else within the wide lobby disappeared inside a vacuum.

  He looked up. The brunette from the office, the one with the bright makeup and the run in her stocking, stood before him. She wore a lilac coat and matching beret that hung over her right ear, slightly askew. She was chewing gum, and her wide jawline pulsed sharply with each movement as she went at the gum. “Why were you asking about Sheila Anderson?”

  “It’s a bit of a private matter.”

  “I knew her a little. Not like close friends or anything, but we talked about things sometimes. I don’t know if it would help you any.”

  Dante stumbled for words, folded the newspaper and placed it down on the bench, and stood. “Could I ask you a few questions? If you don’t mind.”

  She grinned, snapping the chewing gum with her back teeth and exposing the glistening pink of her tongue. “I’d be happy to. But I’m as hungry as a wolf. Why don’t you be a gentleman and take me to lunch.”

  She had her hand extended. He reached out and grabbed hold and shook it gently. He turned to the security guard, who was still watching him, and suddenly felt the urge to leave.

  “Pamela Grubb,” she exclaimed as if he should already know her name, as if she were a person far more important than she really was.

  “Dante Cooper.”

  And as they walked back across the lobby, without his offering, she put her arm through his, turned her face up toward him, and smiled. At the exit, a young doorman opened the door for them and smirked, and once again, a sudden anxiety overcame him. He closed his eyes, focused on the pressure of the woman’s arm in his. Outside on the sidewalk the cold air forced him to breathe naturally again. He raised his arm for a cab and was surprised when it turned toward the curb, slowing down and stopping before them.

  “Are you a cop?” she asked, looking at him intently. Again, she was smiling.

  He shook his head. “Not a cop. Just a relative.”

  “Well, that’s good. My father was a cop, you know…” He stepped toward the cab, held the door open for her. She’d already started in with her life story, where she’d grown up and how her father had treated her and her mother, and Dante put on the vacant grin he gave to people who talked too much, and although she continued to talk throughout the short cab ride, he was thinking of Karl again and of getting another fix and, until they arrived in the Theater District, he didn’t hear a word.

  31

  _________________________

  Poor Clare Sisters, Franciscan Monastery of Saint Clare, Jamaica Plain

  THE MONASTERY OF Saint Clare faced Centre Street, on which, after the recent snow, few cars traveled. A city plow growled past him, and Cal had to veer at the monastery entrance as sand, salt, and gravel thumped and banged against the sides of the car. He sat for a moment in the circular driveway and looked at himself in the rearview mirror, saw that his eyes were red-rimmed and glassy. He got out of the car and closed the door. He turned up his collar, instinctively blessed himself as he limped through the entrance.

  The gardens were covered in snow—a curving hillside of sweeping, glistening white. A column of sisters, dark shapes pressed black against the snow, trudged the far rise into the woods, and their soft chorus—a working prayer song—came to him across the field.

  There were two three-story brick wings flanking the main entrance, and Cal looked up at their small windows in which lights blazed behind drawn curtains, and that offered a sense of warmth. A sister, bundled in a heavy brown overcoat reminiscent of a soldier’s field coat and shoveling the walkway, looked up as he approached. Another nun was spreading cinders from a bucket onto the steps.

  “Hello, Sisters,” he called as he climbed the steps to the door. “Good day for the work.”

  They smiled approvingly. “Thank God,” they chorused. “Bless the work.”

  Beneath a Romanesque arch the door was wide-planked oak with heavy iron hinges and riveted crossbanding. The doorknocker was a bull’s iron nose ring, cold to his hand, and when he let it fall, it reverberated like a hammer in the hallway beyond. He let it fall twice more and, after a moment, heard footsteps upon tile.

  The sister who answered the door had quizzical eyes and rotund bright cheeks in a soft, pale face. A tawny patina of reflected light shimmered about her as if the hallway beyond were made of honeycombs.

  “I’m here to see Sister Bridget.”

  She motioned for him to step into the vestibule and said, “Wait here, please.” He considered the broadness of her, imagined the heft of her thick calves beneath her habit, not a city girl but a farmer’s daughter reared on the prairie or plain, used to rising at dawn and working until the light faded from the sky. He stared after her wide hips for a moment and then glanced about the room.

  In the sister’s absence the sounds and smells of the place brought warmth and a sense of peace: the muted hum of prayer and chanting, the smell of Styrax, sandalwood, beeswax, and polished wood, the light ashy dust of smoke still in the air from extinguished candles and incense, almost as if the priest had passed through the hall with a censer; on the wall to his right the pictures of the saints and priests of the order, the Blessing of Saint Clare: May Almighty God bless you. May He look upon you with the eyes of His mercy, and give you His peace. May He pour forth His graces on you abundantly, and in Heaven may He place you among His Saints.

  Cal blessed himself again, stared at his knuckles, red and cracked and swollen, and then Sister Bridget was approaching him from the other end of the hallway, smiling in that way that was at once filled with surprise and sincerity, a happiness in simply greeting the world and all that it had to offer. She was as he remembered her. She greeted him warmly, taking both his hands in her own small, misshapen ones, and then gestured toward a chair in a sitting room directly off the hallway. He waited until she’d settled herself opposite and then sat slowly, extended his bad leg out before him, and placed his hat in his lap.

  She laughed slightly. “I remember,” she said, and brought a small hand, gnarled by arthritis, to her mouth. “The first moment seeing you just now, how you, Dante Cooper, and the Mulligan twins were the bane of my existence, God help me. I spent many hours praying for patience.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “I don’t know how you managed it, Sister Bridget. We were hell on two feet. I think God must have a special place reserved for you in heaven for how you put up with us.”

  “We shall see, we shall see.” She grinned. “Hopefully at the end I will have done more good than bad. Now, come, on the phone you said this was an urgent family matter and that Father Nolan directed you to us?”

  “Yes.” He nodded, tapped his fingers on the top of his hat. “It’s about Sheila Anderson.”

  “Sheila Anderson?”

  “I understood you taught her at Saint Mark’s?”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, what is your interest, Mr. O’Brien?”

  “She was a good friend of mine.”

  She hesitated; confusion flickered in her eyes. “Why, yes, many of the sisters taught Sheila, but I’m afraid I don’t understand. You said ‘was’?”

  “Sheila is dead, Sister. She was killed about a week ago. I’m sorry, I thought you would have heard.”

  Sister Bridget’s eyes widened, and though she tried to hide it, she seemed visibly shaken. She sank down into the chair, clasped her hands together on her lap.

  “How well did you know Sheila?”

  She blinked at him. “I remember her as a younger woman, a sweet girl, but troubled.

  “A troubled girl,” she repeated. It seemed that she couldn’t hide her discomfort. Cal eased forward off his chair. “Are you okay, Sister? D
o you want me to go get you a glass of water?”

  She raised a hand. “No, I’ll be fine.”

  She lifted her eyes to his. “She came to us in labor last month, and was already heavily medicated. It was a difficult situation. Terrible, actually. She was lucky to survive.”

  “Really? I’m afraid I didn’t know that.”

  “We do what we can here, and the rest is in God’s hands. I don’t feel comfortable saying any more, Mr. O’Brien. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Yes, Sister, I do. But the thing is, she was killed, brutally killed. It might have had something to do with this birth.”

  “Birth? Oh, you’re mistaken, Mr. O’Brien. There was no actual birth. The child was stillborn.”

  “Stillborn? Where did they bury it?”

  “Why, out back, in the children’s graveyard. I can take you there, if you like, and show you.”

  “If that’s all right, Sister. I’d like to see.”

  “Of course. I think the fresh air will do me some good.”

  They walked through the main house and into a scullery, where Sister Bridget took a heavy coat from a coatrack. Cal held it for her and she worked her thin arms shakily into its bulk. A clatter of cutlery and plates came to them from the kitchen. Warm, food-scented steam fogged the glass.

  “Take my hand,” Sister Bridget said. “My legs aren’t as strong as they once were.”

  “I hear you, Sister.” Her birdlike hand grasped at his forearm and exerted such a powerful pressure on his arm that it surprised him. He smiled and placed his own hand over hers.

  A loggia in the rear formed a protected walkway, and they followed this between the buildings. Cal looked out over the shoveled pathways and the snow-covered gardens to the ice-topped statues of the Blessed Mother and Child, Saint Anthony, Saint Francis, and Saint Clare.

  They stepped into a sheltered cloister with open archways looking out onto a courtyard. Small snowdrifts had accumulated beneath the windows and arches, and though it was cold, Cal was glad for the momentary reprieve from the wind. As they crossed the courtyard, Cal looked back at the building. Lights were blazing in windows here and there and the sky above formed a low vault of dark cloud.