St. Agnes' Eve

by Malachi Stone

  Long wisps of Diane’s dark hair had escaped from under her old St. Louis Cardinals cap and fallen down over her eyes. I wanted to creep up behind her like Dracula, then see whether I could slip my hands over her shoulders and into the breast pockets of her work shirt before she could stop me. I timed my goat-footed steps to the rhythm of Diane’s elbow grease. Finally, I made it across the bare wood floor. Crouching directly behind her, I plunged four fingers into each of her pockets, wiggled them, and said, “Spare change?”

  She didn’t even flinch. Diane unhaltered in a work shirt is a silken treasure. The twin swells behind her pockets danced for me when she turned to be kissed, her mouth soft and fleshy as peach season’s ripest yield. “Careful,” she said at last. “Wouldn’t want to get anything on you.”

  “How’d you know it was me?”

  “Never sneak up on a psychic,” she said. Then I saw my face in the narrow mirror behind her.

  “I knew it was all done with mirrors,” I said.

  But suddenly something troubled Diane. Her expression and her entire demeanor transformed in an instant. I had witnessed it many times before, but it still disturbed me, Diane’s power when it was on her like this. Was it the harbinger of some unimaginable evolutionary advance? Or the last vestigial throwback to some dark vision the human race was better off abandoning, a curse of discernment atrophied in the rest of us like a pineal eye? Had she read my mind tonight? I tried not to think about Kokker, or Janis, or Sandra. Especially not about video Sandra. It was like trying not to think of a pink elephant.

  “God, Ricky, you’re red as fire,” she said. I stupidly looked in the mirror again, as though I could see my own aura burning there like unbanked flames of lust.

  “Can’t a guy even get the hots for his own wife?” I tried, but she wasn’t having any.

  “I don’t like it, Rick.” But she did let me kiss her again. It was Wolf who saved me by yanking on Diane’s shirttail, vying for her favors until we made him the peanut butter in the sandwich.

  “What time is it, hon?” Diane sighed into my ear, languid as a cat. Diane couldn’t wear a watch. Some mysterious and jealous inner force stopped or broke every watch moments after it touched her wrist.

  “Almost six-thirty,” I said.

  She tensed. “Father Seraphim’s coming at seven for the house blessing, and I’m not even showered!”

  “I like my women funky.” Ricky of the red aura, backpedaling furiously now.

  “This funky woman’s gonna wail on your bee hind, lawyer-man!” Diane chased me down the hall and into the kitchen, snapping a red shop rag at my butt. Wolf brought up the rear, shrieking with delight. The other three monkeys in our zoo sat ranged around the kitchen table tackling their homework. Vlad, our black tomcat, lurked by his food dish. Diane hurried upstairs to shower and change. I gave Teeta’s and Stacie’s homework a once-over, then settled in to help Nick with his math. All the while Wolf swarmed around in a one-preschooler distractathon.

  “What if I never get it?” Nick wailed over the last problem, subtracting one four-digit number from another. It required “regrouping.” In my school days, we’d called it “borrowing” and “carrying.” My grade school teachers surely would have been proud to see how adept I had become at borrowing. And how all my creditors were carrying me. It was the new math.

  “You borrow—I mean regroup—from the tens column. There’s a zero in the tens column, so you borrow—regroup—from the hundreds column. See how easy it is?”

  But Nick still didn’t get it. Before we’d finished, his paper was smudged and torn, the tabletop littered with eraser crumbs mixed with his tears. There would be no excuse for my rage, drug-induced or whatever else its cause, but in fact the only thing keeping my potential screaming fit in check tonight was the prospect of an eavesdropping priest at the door.

  Just as I was about to totally lose control of the situation, I heard Diane’s soothing voice behind me saying, “Good job, Nicky.” Diane in her robe calmly toweled her just-washed hair with the priest due any minute.

  “Hon, it’s five to seven. What about Father Seraphim?”

  “The phone’s about to ring,” she said. It did. Father Seraphim, apologizing that he would be delayed half an hour. Diane went back upstairs to dress.

  I sometimes became annoyed with Diane for her refusal to take advantage of her psychic gifts. Legalized gambling—gaming, to be politically correct and non-pejorative—thrived all over the Metro East. Our money problems could be over in a single night. But Diane’s strict Eastern Orthodox beliefs forbade any resort to psychic powers, especially for gain. She considered such practices sorcery, the work of the devil. She had tried to show me examples of how the Bible condemned such things: the witch of Endor; Leviticus, Chapter Nineteen; St. Paul exorcising the soothsaying slave girl in Macedonia; “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” I found her reticence archaic. Witchcraft hadn’t been a capital crime since the seventeenth century, and the country hadn’t gone to hell yet. Just ask any of the shopkeepers in the little New Age occult stores along East Main.

  My thoughts were of adultery, drugs, and money by the time Father Seraphim knocked at the kitchen door. The homework had all been cleared away from the table and packed into schoolbags. Diane appeared, a vision in an azure turtleneck sweater and black skirt, just as I opened the door to him.

  Father Seraphim removed the hat from his bald head, laughing when the monkeys vied to wear it. He was seventy-five years old if he was a day. His white, Old World beard nearly covered his clerical collar. The kids lined up for hugs. Diane was next-to-last in line. I shook his hand like a client, not having been brought up to be your hugging type.

  The children, overexcited for the house blessing, watched Father Seraphim open a zippered black bag then remove a crucifix and a small Orthodox icon of Christ. We had one like it hanging on the eastern wall of our bedroom. He asked Diane for a small bowl, set it on the table next to the icon, and from a plastic squeeze bottle marked with an Orthodox cross, squirted out enough holy water to cover the bottom.

  The annual Orthodox tradition of the blessing of homes begins during the early days of the new year. The blessing is believed to renew the sanctity of the homes of Orthodox Christians, calling to mind the baptism of Christ in the Jordan. Some say the blessing also has the effect of driving whatever evil lurks within a house out into the open.

  Although I had witnessed thirteen prior home blessings, this would be the first year Father Seraphim blessed our new house. Facing to the east, the stole of his vestment draped over his shoulders, he laid a large sprig of dried basil in the holy water and began the Trisagion prayer.

  Diane stood at my left. I wrapped my arm about her waist. She whispered an apology for jabbing me in the ribs with her elbow when we all crossed ourselves in the Orthodox manner—right to left, as distinguished from the Catholics—and joined in at the Our Father. Even Wolf repeated some of the words, although he had a little trouble when he got to the part about forgiving those who trespass against us. Who doesn’t?

  Father Seraphim traced the sign of the cross on our foreheads with the holy water. Then, enlisting Nick’s aid to carry the bowl, he passed through the house singing the Tropar of the Cross: “O Lord, save Thy people, and bless Thine inheritance. Grant victories to the Orthodox Christians over their adversaries, and by virtue of Thy Cross, preserve Thy habitation.”

  We all followed behind in a small procession. A peeping tom might have thought he’d wandered into Eastern Europe. As Father Seraphim entered each room, he dipped the basil sprig in holy water, held it above his head, and shook fine drops three times to a room. The two younger children squealed with delight each time the spray touched them.

  After the blessing, while Diane stood at the counter fixing coffee, I sat with the priest at the kitchen table. He said, “So, Ricky, keeping you pretty busy at the office?”

  I recalled one of Mark Kane’s favorite aphorisms: I’d rather be making money than be busy
. I was busier than the devil at work. I was the guy you came to see when you got into a fender bender, arguably not entirely your fault, and thought you were being screwed by the insurance company. I was the guy you actually got to see when you came in thinking that you were going to see Mark Kane, the reassuring, familiar face from the television ads. I was the guy who told you what a money case you had going in while I steered you to Dr. Kokker or someone just like him. Then six or so months later, blaming the bugs in your case, I was also the guy who broke the bad news to you about the system’s unfairness and the death of Santa Claus. I was the one who pressed your short-money, postdated check into your hand while I consoled you all the way out to the waiting room. I didn’t do divorce; I didn’t do wills and trusts; and I didn’t do windows. Aside from that, in my spare office moments, I saw more than my share of hapless misdemeanants, rest-stop Romeos, common railers and brawlers, uncommon railers and brawlers, mopers with intent to gawk, and possessors of rape tools. I was what we in the law game call a non-equity partner. That means that when the bill collectors are beating my door down, I can show them my name on the letterhead. That means straight salary, overwork, long hours, and burnout. That means a wearying close-order drill of court appearances, client interviews, depositions, a constant relay of telephone tag with insurance adjusters, and an endless procession of trials, appeals, and six-and-a-half day work weeks. Dictating and trial prep spread like athlete’s foot into what I laughably referred to as my “free time.”

  “Too busy to go to confession?” Father Seraphim inquired, so softly I wasn’t sure I heard him.

  The kids flipped on the TV in the next room. We heard the familiar theme music: Wilbur Hatch conducting the Desi Arnaz Orchestra. I yelled for them to turn it down.

  “I hope you don’t mind, Father,” Diane was saying. “It’s kind of a tradition after homework on weekdays. We’d rather let them watch those old sitcoms from the fifties on the Christian television station than some violent, smutty show on cable.”

  “You are wise to keep watch. I will go and say goodbye to them and give them my blessing.”

  After he left the room I said to Diane, “You know, it’s kind of creepy when you think about it.”

  “What’s kind of creepy, hon?”

  “Those old shows. The actors have all died, but the show must go on—forever. It’s like being entertained by the dead. They’d have to cast the reunion show from the cemetery.”

  “Oh, Ricky,” Diane sighed, “You’ve just been working too hard.” She loved the old shows, often watching them with the children—although she knew every word—remembering her own childhood. She’d learned English as a child watching I Love Lucy.

  “Not as hard as you have,” I said. She sat on my lap, ever wary of the door leading from the family room. I purloined a kiss, then copped a feel.

  I heard the priest’s gentle voice behind me saying, “What did I tell you, Diane?” He must have made an end run through the kitchen. Diane jumped a foot from my embrace, stood, and smoothed invisible wrinkles from her skirt, pretending nonchalance—a teenager caught making out by her parents.

  “When I marry them, they stay married.” Father Seraphim’s severe expression broke into a warm smile.

  Chapter Three

  Big Artie

  The five floors of courthouse windows mirrored the overcast sky. Three years had passed since the out-of-town ACLU lawyers had made them take down the crèche, the cross, and even the Ten Commandments. Now the empty marble tablets—sandblasted blank—hovered like waiting gravestones over the main entrance. When you throw out the Ten Commandments, what takes their place? From my vantage point across the square, I watched the courthouse secretaries taking their first smoke break of the day. They stared with unseeing eyes at the icy sidewalks that formed a pentacle around the fountain. I was so preoccupied I didn’t hear Janis come in.

  “I’m glad some of us have time to stare out the window,” she said. Closing and locking my door, she smiled in that provocative way she had and asked, “How was your date with Kokker last night? Stay for dinner and drinks?”

  “Jealous?”

  She pulled me against her and ran a generous expanse of tongue against my hard palate while her hands groped for my hardening cock. “Not as long as I can feel that welcoming response,” she murmured. “Besides, it’s ridiculous to be jealous of a married man with a twelve-inch penis.”

  “Twelve and a half.”

  “Rounding error, darling.” She’d actually measured once, after I’d accused her of being a size queen.

  “Don’t get me started. I have clients to see.”

  “Better not let them see you like this.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “Just one you might like.”

  Minutes later, Janis showed the two of them in. Cootie Tremayne was carrying himself a bit more stiffly than I remembered but otherwise looked the same as ever: white buzz cut, thick shoulders, and a stocky frame. His complexion, if one looked closely enough, resembled old-fashioned currency paper with its broken strands of red and blue betraying his years of boozing. I knew his whole history from the meetings I used to attend.

  The tic circus with Cootie was another story. He looked like a textbook double-y chromosome specimen on a crystal-meth weight loss program. Shoulder-length crazy-guy hair framed his balding pate like shower curtains. Stringy double-clenching biceps hung from the armholes of a black t-shirt. Neck muscles quivered and spasmed as though trying to escape the sagging crew neck.

  Cootie turned to the younger man and said, “What am I gonna do with you? You know your eyes look like two piss holes in a snow bank?”

  “How’s it going, Artie?” I said.

  He gave me a hearty twelve-step meeting reply. “Hi. I’m Artie, and I’m a substance abuser in denial.”

  “I’m the one being abused around here,” Cootie said. “Well, go on. Tell him why we come to see him.” He leaned forward toward me, obviously a painful effort for him, and advised, “Don’t never have kids. Always wear a rubber.”

  “Too late for that advice, Cootie.”

  Artie Tremayne fished in his pocket and came up with a dog-eared amber citation. He flipped it across the desk. I scanned its contents, expecting to find some drug-related misdemeanor. Instead, Artie had been charged with public indecency.

  “Flashing two old women,” Cootie moaned, shaking his head, then wiping his eyes with the heels of his hands before looking upward as though imploring the ceiling. “Why, Artie? Why them two old ladies?”

  “They were giving me the stink eye,” Artie shrugged.

  “They was giving him the stink eye, so he whips it out and says, ‘If you girls’ hands are cold, whyn’t you come warm ‘em up on this here?’” Cootie shook his head again, looking to me in wonderment and vexation.

  “We could say I was taking a leak,” Artie offered. “Except I went ahead and gave ‘em the batwings, too.”

  “I don’t even wanna know what that means,” Cootie said.

  I didn’t want to hear any more from Artie about what had happened in the parking lot. From all my past dealings with him—drug and otherwise—I knew Artie had to be guilty of whatever was down on paper and then some. Call it intuition. Anyway, the whole point of the initial interview was to get the money. The State’s discovery would tell me all I needed and more than I wanted to know about what had actually happened. Artie and I could always fine-tune the details later.

  “Bet those old bitches felt ten years younger once they sized up Big Artie giving them the evil eye,” Artie said. “Big header of steam rising off him.”

  “Genius here does it standing right next to the truck,” Cootie said. “Then he jumps in and peels out, with Tremayne Construction Company right there on the door. I’m glad your mother ain’t alive to see none of this.”

  Carla Tremayne had filed for divorce from Cootie by the time of her grisly unsolved murder almost twenty years ago. She’d been making ends meet in a massage parlo
r called the Salome Spa in a little strip mall a few miles north, outside of Collinsville. I know because I’d been pegged to handle her divorce. “Hoosier divorces,” I remember Mark Kane saying to me at the time. “Pickup truck worth more than the house. They fight harder over custody of the coon dogs than custody of the kids. Good way for you young associates to get your feet wet without doing too much damage.”