by Rex Baron
“I hope you don't think I'm a jerk for mentioning that to you, but I figured, if you were in the habit of answering the door that way, you ought to know what the mailman sees… so to speak,” Tom explained. “It's certainly not that I object in any way to what I saw.”
Elizabeth entered the room, dressed in a denim skirt and an oversized men's tailored shirt, hoping to counteract the impression of brazenness she had just given.
“Don't make such a fuss about it,” she said, rubbing her damp hair with the towel. “I'm sure it’s not the first, or last time, you've seen a woman's bottom.”
Tom smiled.
“What I really came about was to see if you were interested in doing another show, a spook special for NBC,” he said.
Elizabeth offered him a cup of coffee and settled on the sofa to hear him out.
“We've done a couple of other segments dealing with the paranormal after the Raymond girl, but most of them were just fixed cameras showing kitchen drawers opening and closing by themselves, supposedly at the hands of some ectoplasmic beings. It's pretty boring stuff. What we need is the authenticity you lend to the whole thing with your commentary and the legitimacy of some of your testing.”
Elizabeth shook her head.
“I'd like to Tom, but I can't. Any other time I'd jump at the chance, but at the moment, I'm pretty much involved in a project here at the university, which is going to take all my attention to pull off.”
Tom did not try to hide his disappointment.
“I guess I'm always on the receiving end of ‘No,’ when it comes to you,” he said with a shrug. “But then again, I seldom take ‘No’ for an answer. I'm sure there will be other TV shows and maybe even a lunch one day, if I ask often enough. I'll keep both offers open, just in case your workload lightens up.” He made to leave but stopped and turned back toward Elizabeth. “I hope you know that you can call on me anytime... I mean, if you ever need anything… like the song says… I’ll be there.”
He flashed her his friendly Texas smile, and Elizabeth watched him stride across the courtyard toward the street. He was a nice man, she thought, and truly hoped that one day they might be better friends.
Loretta pulled the dried azaleas from the bush in front of her place and looked up with a faint smile as Tom passed by. They exchanged an impersonal hello, and she glanced in the direction from which he came to see Elizabeth standing at the window. Loretta followed Tom with her eyes as he turned the corner out of view and thought to herself for a moment.
She considered the tarot card in Elizabeth's reading, depicting the LOVERS, and the subtle warning of impending danger. She shook her head.
“He's not the one,” she said to the bush, as she plucked another dry flower from its dying branch.
Chapter Nine
Holly Driscoll’s house, Los Angeles
Marc turned away from the painting he was admiring and carefully positioned himself so that the romantic lighting would catch his features in a way he knew was flattering. He lifted his champagne glass in a toast and smiled over the edge of it at his hostess. Holly Driscoll responded with a clipped little imitation of his salute. She had invited him to what she referred to as a little light supper, so that they could get to know each other better. She knew, of course, that it was a ridiculous and time-worn ploy, but the fact remained that in her experience, subtlety of any kind was so often lost on these creative types. He was a damn good looking man and she had every intention of pushing the intimacy of the situation as far as she could, as far as her money and the expensively maintained good looks she had left would allow.
She was glad that her house had been designed so extravagantly, with its waterfall rising up from the living room, the full two stories to the top of the bedroom balcony. The sound of the cool rushing water lent an air of healthy outdoor vibrancy to the lofty space, and seemed to hide even her murkiest intentions under a layer of bright sparkles.
“I'm glad you could come,” Holly said, arranging herself on the white chenille sofa.
Her raspberry-colored evening skirt, crumpled into a landscape of sharply-peaked mountains and valleys, was illuminated by the bank of soft light thrown by a half-dozen tapering candles on the table next to her. They both had chosen a spot that showed them to their best advantage. Marc posed elegantly against the backdrop of a large De Kooning painting, while Holly had drawn her battle lines and waited, nestled amidst the soft glow of the sofa cushions.
“I'm more than glad to be asked,” Marc answered.
He put down his drink and moved toward her, back-lighted by the luminous colors of the painting. He slipped into the space next to her on the sofa and let his hand lightly touch hers.
Holly regarded the subtle attention with a faint smile.
“I more than enjoyed our last little meeting and thought it might be a good idea to socialize a bit. You realize how important it is when representing an artist that they fit into the style of your gallery... your world really,” Holly barely whispered.
“I understand, of course,” Marc nodded his head.
Holly let her head fall back amongst the cushions and rationalized.
“I mean… it wouldn't do to have some angry punk-rocker turning up at one of my salons, insulting everyone, even if he was a highly saleable genius. Let the New York people have all their grimy little geniuses and their neo-reality. I prefer elegant people, and I'm sure they are quite capable of painting as well as these grotty little ne're-do-wells.” Holly watched the reflection of the candles in Marc's eyes as he moved in closer. “Why, look at Manet. I read once that he painted with gloves on, and never let anyone see him at work because he thought it vulgar and unrefined.”
“And just look how famous he turned out to be,” Marc replied teasingly.
Holly smiled. The game had begun. She slipped her hand out from under his, and touched his cheek with her fingertip.
“I think you're very special,” she whispered.
“And what about my work?'“ Marc asked in a low whisper, close to her diamond necklace. “Do you think my work is up to your standards?”
He tried to plant a kiss on her throat, but she pulled away.
“Let's not mix business with pleasure, as they say,” she answered. “Your portfolio may be very promising, but I deal in investment art. That takes careful packaging to drive the prices up.”
“I'm investing a little something of my own here,” he said, pressing his body against hers.
“That's a whole other game with an entirely different price list,” Holly answered, covering her mouth with her champagne glass to avoid his lips. “I have plenty of clients, and I'm sure there are more than enough of them who could be made to be interested in what you do… your work I mean. I'm quite sure there is a definite possibility of a show in the offing for you.”
“When? Now that you've taken over Raymond's gallery, you can do it whenever you like,” Marc reminded her.
“My, aren't we ambitious, even more so than the architect who built this house.” She laughed, as Marc pressed her back into the sofa cushions. “Look around you,” she whispered, “he got the job done and so will you. The only thing that you have to remember is... I say when, and I say how much.”
Marc looked into her perfectly cosmeticized face, set between two ten-carat stones, glistening at each ear in the reflected candlelight. He hesitated for a moment, then pressed forward, allowing his lips to find their mark.
Chapter Ten
A church off Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles
Elizabeth could not get little Miss Auriel, Lara Raymond’s Art Therapy teacher, out of her mind. She had met her on a professional basis, and only on a few occasions, but the spry old woman seemed to have taken over a part of her consciousness, and she felt as if the bird-like little creature had become an important part of her life. She questioned the reason for this feeling, but could find no plausible answer. Perhaps it was because the experience they had shared in driving the spirit out of the child
had linked them in some way, creating a bond between them. It was as if they shared an unfathomable power… a dubious gift that they could only openly express with each other. She remembered how the teacher had hovered over the girl’s body as she lay on the five-pointed star drawn on the floor. She knew just where to place her hands to facilitate the casting out of the demon spirit, and even appeared to take the dark energy into her own body, as if to purify it, and then send it on its way.
The conversation she had with the old woman about the idea of the battle between good and evil had begun to trouble her, and she started to question her own role in taking on the forces of darkness. The unsettling experience that she and Tom had shared in the Simon Marcellin Gallery had shaken her in ways that she had not realized at first. But now, she knew that she had taken on some part of that evil... and it had remained with her in a way that she found quietly menacing.
Ever since that afternoon, when the gallery owner, who had been possessed by evil, held her by the throat and threatened to choke her life away, she had been plagued by sores that mysteriously appeared and disappeared on her lips and inside her mouth. It was as if her body had been exposed to extreme levels of heat that festered out of her inner core when she so much as turned a single thought to opening up to the realm of the unseen.
Maybe the lesions were nothing more than a symptom of stress, she told herself that morning, as she peered into the mirror to see a dark red swelling at the corner of her mouth. She had tried to make light of it, hoping that, as on the three previous occasions the sores had appeared, they would just as miraculously disappear, within a matter of hours. She sighed and reassured herself that at least with Marc’s mysterious inattentiveness of late, she would not have the embarrassment of having him see her with a discolored lip, swollen to nearly twice its size.
Elizabeth’s state of mind was so troubled that she found herself at a church that she had spotted out the window as she drove down Wilshire. It was the middle of the afternoon and Elizabeth sat alone in the empty nave. She had been compelled to stop and come inside the ornate, pseudo-Gothic little building by a desire to find a safe space… higher ground, so to speak, that would allow her to rise above the degrading low frequencies she had been exposed to in recent days. She relished a moment of peace, and what she might refer to as nothing short of purity. She felt as if she had been contaminated, not only by the restless spirits of the sweatshop/gallery, but in some way by Marc’s relentless ambitions. What troubled her most were the unfamiliar feelings of total and reckless abandonment she felt in her newfound love for him.
She sat and breathed in the faint traces of the ceremonial incense that lingered after the last mass had filled this space with magic and wonder for the congregation of faithful. She stared around at the trappings of the religion that she knew were necessary elements to elicit images of the blessed Saints and raise the frequency of the participants to a level where they might feel a welcoming presence from outside themselves. For a single moment, she longed to be one of the supplicants again, who might hear a calling that lift them up toward their own salvation, to be purified and see the face of their creator. A lovely idea, Elizabeth thought to herself.
As she surveyed the odd and ecclesiastical objects that occupied the lofty space of the church’s nave, she spied the font filled with Holy Water near a rack of red votive candles, blazing with devotion. She considered drinking some of the healing draught, or touching a cloth soaked in the miracle-producing liquid onto her festering lips, as a calming balm that would drive out the evil within, and restore her to a pristine state of what a religious person might call “Grace.”
The building was dark and smelled of wax and lemon oil. She could picture the ladies of the church auxiliary who came in weekly to polish the banks of empty seats, to keep the old wood of the long oaken pews shining and free of the dust that would betray the lack of attendance in the modern world... thereby helping perpetuate the illusion that nothing had changed. She surveyed the landscape of the cavernous room, filled with objects of gold and colored glass, and was happy to be alone.
The light filtering in through the stained glass windows fell on the dark red paving stones of the floor, and she glanced up to see an angel, holding a small orb of the sun under her arm, and raising her right hand in a benediction that was worthy of Apollo or Helios, or any of the sun gods she had read about in school.
“That’s Uriel... or Auriel,” she heard a cheerful, booming voice call down the aisle from the back of the church. She turned to see a man, wearing the black cassock of a priest, approaching.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you, but I thought I had better warn you that there is going to be a choir rehearsal here in fifteen minutes, and I didn’t want you blasted out of your reverie by an organ and twenty-five of our local Cherubim.”
Elizabeth responded to the wave of exuberant energy that the priest brought in with a welcoming smile.
“I was just passing by and thought I’d stop in for a moment,” she supplied an unsolicited explanation.
“Always happy to see a bit of devotion these days,” the lean, graying man in black replied. “As you can see, we are not exactly overrun with the faithful.”
Elizabeth watched as he laughed at his own little joke, and understood, at once, that it was not meant as a complaint about the lack of interest in the church, but merely as a simple statement of how things were.
“And what makes you so interested in our Archangel, Auriel, if I might ask?”
Elizabeth looked up at the strength of the fiery figure depicted in glass, and then back into the kind eyes of the middle-aged priest, who seemed sincerely interested in what she thought.
“I don’t know exactly,” she answered. “My eyes were just kind of drawn to her.”
“Technically, archangels are asexual and have no gender.” The priest suddenly burst into a spontaneous laugh. “Not bisexual, as one of my twelve-year-olds in catechism referred to them the other day. They are meant to embody the beauty and strength of both sexes, but, because the church is Patriarchal in nature, we still refer to them as him… I suppose because they are meant to carry messages from God himself and represent Him in the most human-like form possible. We have all four of the major archangels represented here in stained glass, but Auriel there is my favorite.”
“I wasn’t the best Sunday School student. I can’t remember much about her… him,” Elizabeth answered.
“Well, first of all, we Christians have made not only the saints but also some of the angels into kind of superheroes. Each of them is known for a wide range of abilities and accomplishments. Our friend Auriel there is given the dubious distinction of being the last one standing at the end of the world. He is also reputed to be the messenger that brought the news of the great flood to Noah and personally rescued Jesus’s cousin, John the Baptist, and his mother Elizabeth from the Massacre of the Innocents, decreed by King Herod. He conveniently delivered them to Mary and the Holy family, after the flight into Egypt. As a matter of fact, there is a very famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci that depicts this meeting, called Virgin on the Rocks. My school kids get a kick out of that... you know... it sounds like a cocktail.”
Elizabeth returned his good-natured smile at the harmless joke. She could not help but think of the odd coincidence that all of the names he was discussing were important in her own life. But the smiling priest had no way of knowing that her name was Elizabeth and the angel he described, and who appeared to her in fiery colors of glass, somehow fit the description of the spry little Art Therapist, who she had seen transform herself into an agent of retribution, and who might very well be taken for an agent and messenger of the forces of Good.
“Oh... I forgot to mention that the archangel Auriel is known as the patron saint of the Arts... and is graced with the gift of being able to help others make the correct choices and walk in the ways of the Lord. All very heady stuff, but I’m sure, on some small personal level, there is some truth there to
be found.”
Elizabeth nodded her acceptance of the information, bringing a grin of approval to the face of the kindly priest, as if he had made an easy convert and had filled his quota for the day.
“I really must be getting things ready for the choir,” he said, as he placed a gentle hand on Elizabeth’s shoulder, as a kind of subtle act of blessing and absolution. She imagined she felt a purifying energy with his touch that radiated down into her solar plexus and out into the rest of her body. She could not help but hope that it could be that easy... that with the single touch of a man of God, she might be delivered from evil as the Lord’s prayer so easily promised. But Elizabeth knew that redemption would not be so painless for her. She trafficked daily with the polarity of good and evil, and feared that with the new energies she had welcomed into her life, because of Marc, there would be no going back, and as a result, she could have no salvation.
Chapter Eleven
Marc’s studio, Westwood Village
Marc lay on his bed in the studio, dressed all in white, and waited for the hands on the clock to approach seven. He stared at the ceiling, anxious and short-tempered. Holly's intentions preyed on his mind. The firm promise of a show, which he had come away with, after the night spent at her house, had turned into 'soon' or 'perhaps' when he pressed her about it later on the phone. He had hoped for quicker results with Elizabeth, but that too proved disappointing. He had been certain, when he first saw what furies she could unleash with her mind, that she might teach him how to access what powers he might have of his own. He had hoped that if he charmed her into a sexual union, a tantric bond of true sexual energy might be created between them, giving him access to the power that lay dormant, somewhere deep inside himself. But Elizabeth had not turned out to be the conscious inheritor of her illustrious family's power. She was nothing more than a confused woman, nearing middle age, without the slightest idea of how to take the reins of her own destiny. He could wait no longer. He could not allow himself, the only son of Helen Liluth and Kurt Von Kragen, to be the romantic pawn of these silly women without some reward of power in return.