by Daniel Quinn
Howard nodded.
“As it happens, a young woman has been waiting for several weeks for someone else to join her. I should be able to set something in train for the two of you within a week. Is there any night that is not convenient for you?”
“No. I’m free anytime.”
He handed Howard a business card. “Dr. Holland examines all new candidates. I’m sure you understand the precaution. We have to be careful.”
“I understand.”
“Upon entering the postulancy, a donation of one thousand dollars is usual. Thereafter attendance at any rite is usually accompanied by a donation of two hundred dollars. You can mail a check to the address on Commercial. All donations—for the moment at least—are tax-deductible.” He stabbed out his cigarette and favored Howard with a twisted smile, as if he didn’t expect to be believed. “Many have told me they’ve spent more on psychotherapy with less satisfactory results.”
“Uh huh,” Howard said.
Later that afternoon Aaron called to ask if Howard had abandoned the club.
“No, not exactly. I guess I haven’t been feeling very sociable.”
“I hope that’s not my fault,” Aaron said.
It was, but Howard saw no point in saying so. “As a matter of fact, I was thinking of dropping in tonight.”
“Good.”
“But, Aaron … I don’t want to talk about this thing yet, okay? I’m not ready to give you a progress report. I’m making progress, but it’ll be a week or two.”
“Howard, you should know me better. Did I tell you to hustle?”
“No.”
“Don’t worry about it then. We’ll talk when you’re ready.”
Howard went to the club but found he couldn’t really relax with Aaron there hovering in the background. He drank a little too much and decided that, when this was over, he’d never again accept a fellow member as a client.
Later, changing into his pajamas, he realized he was in a very bleak mood. It had nothing to do with Aaron, the club, or the job he was doing, and it took him a few minutes to figure out what it was: He didn’t want to go to sleep.
On the verge of unconsciousness, he was nevertheless reluctant to commit his head to the pillow. A strange state of affairs, because, for Howard, sleeping wasn’t just something he did when he was too tired to go on; he took an active pleasure in it—looked forward to it. But he wasn’t looking forward to it tonight.
Because of that goddamned dog.
For the past three or four nights his sleeping hours had been haunted by an enormous black dog that padded endlessly through the dark streets of Chicago. Not exactly a dog: a dog with the face of a bull.
It was sniffing him out.
There was something obscene about the thing. Its inky sleekness wasn’t that of fur but of slime. It was mindless, relentless, unstoppable. It didn’t frighten him; it sickened him, exhausted him. He hoped it would leave him alone tonight.
But it didn’t.
CHAPTER 10
The elevator doors opened at the sixth floor of the Commercial Street building, and Howard stepped out into a dimly lit, high-ceilinged room twice the size of his apartment.
“Good evening. Thanks so much for being prompt.”
Howard scanned the ceiling but was unable to spot the speaker from which Joel Bailey’s voice issued.
“Please proceed to the black door and go in.”
Following these instructions, he entered a long corridor lined with doors on either side. This was even more dimly lit, though a single green light glowed some twenty yards down the hallway.
“Please proceed to the door indicated by the green light and go in.”
The voice seemed to be directly overhead and stayed with him as he walked. “You may, by the way, speak at any time, Mr. Scheim. I will hear you.”
Opening the door under the green light, Howard found himself in a dressing room about ten feet square. One wall was paneled in mirrors. Along the other ran a counter with four chairs facing large makeup mirrors. The counter was cluttered with powders, scents, “There’s a coat rack beside the door. Sit down and let’s talk for a moment.
“My name in these rooms is Verdelet. I shall address you as Howard unless there is some other name you’d prefer.”
“That’s fine,” Howard muttered.
“Behind the mirrored wall you’ll find a closet with a selection of costumes, most of them simply loose-fitting gowns and caftans. You’ll be much more comfortable tonight without the constraints Western fashion imposes on us.”
“I can’t just wear my street clothes?”
“You can, of course, Howard. Every choice is yours. But I should point out that your partner for the evening has chosen a sumptuous gown of embroidered green silk. If you join her in ordinary street clothes, you will both feel awkward, and this would be distracting for you.”
“True.”
“In the bathroom you’ll find a disposable razor and toothbrush, should you wish to use them. Shave, shower, make yourself feel your best—if you so choose. The makeup is there for your use, if that strikes your fancy. All the areas you’ll be visiting are carpeted and warm. There are slippers and sandals, or you may prefer to go barefoot. There’s no rush. I believe your partner is bathing now. You are, by the way, completely alone there, completely private. There are no hidden video cameras, no peepholes, no see-through mirrors. Be at ease. Prepare yourself for a sensually and spiritually fulfilling experience.”
Three quarters of an hour later, Howard was dressed in sandals and a midnight-blue cashmere caftan that he thought suited him very well. Following Bailey’s directions, he left the dressing room and followed a trail of orange ceiling lights that led him to a pair of red-lacquered doors. At a touch, these swung open onto a scene from the Arabian Nights. Gauzy drapes in opalescent pastels floated down from the ceiling through colored spotlights and the reflections from several mirrored revolving balls. The drapes served to divide the room into intimate areas carpeted with oriental rugs piled four or five deep and mounded with cushions around low, candle-lit tables. The air had an unidentifiable earthy scent, a cross between new-mown grass and burning leaves. It pulsed with a low beat of exotic music just at the threshold of hearing.
At the center of the room was a stone-lined pit five feet square, filled with kindling and sprinkled with what looked like alfalfa; the exhaust hood that hovered over it had been draped so that it resembled an oriental tent suspended in the air. Beside the pit, a ramp led up to a tall door at the left. At the far end of the room stood a small platform surmounted by a white-draped altar. A pair of doors behind it swung open and, at a distance of some forty feet, Howard watched a slender woman in a green gown step hesitantly into the room.
“Come in, Leslie,” Bailey’s voice purred overhead. “Your companion for the evening is waiting for you.” She looked up at Howard and her eyes widened.
“Howard, go to her. She seems uneasy.”
His mouth went dry as he moved forward.
“My children, let nothing trouble you. You’re both safe. Nothing terrible is going to happen here, I assure you.”
Howard and the woman paused, facing each other across the wood-filled stone pit.
“Come, Howard, summon up your gallantry. Go to her and take her hand. Leslie, my dear, don’t look so thunderstruck. All is well. Lift up your hand and offer it to him. Good, good.”
The look on her face as he approached was one of white terror, and her trembling fingers settled on his like a glitter of butterflies.
Howard lowered his head and whispered, “Don’t worry.”
“Come, come, children. Relax. Be at ease. Howard, take Leslie to one of the tables. Good. All is well. Please make yourselves comfortable.”
They sank awkwardly into the cushions around a table, and he saw that she was barefoot. She drew her legs up under her, covering her feet. To Howard, she seemed very young, perhaps twenty-five. Her face, under loosely-waved auburn hair, was fragile ra
ther than beautiful, with delicate nose and cheekbones, a tiny chin, and the kind of overbite he’d always found endearing. Her makeup was romantic and carefully applied to accentuate her huge dark eyes.
“Speak, Howard. Give tongue.”
He swallowed doubtfully. “You look very lovely, Leslie.”
“Excellent. Well done. Now, Leslie. Your turn.”
She opened her mouth and her lower lip trembled.
“Speak!”
“You … Ah …”
“Look like an escapee from a horror movie,” Howard suggested gently.
She pressed her lips together in a timid smile. “No. You look like … a kind man.”
“I think of myself as a kind man.”
“Splendid!” Bailey intoned. “Délices, you may enter now. These children are finally speaking to each other.”
The doors through which Leslie had entered opened again, and a young woman in a light, almost transparent white gown flowed in carrying a brass tray suspended from three chains that came together in her hand. She served them two cups of tea and two snifters half filled with amber liquid, then straightened and bowed, loose honey-colored hair cascading over her shoulders.
She was easily the most beautiful woman Howard had ever seen in the flesh, her face classically perfect, her lips a velvety red-orange.
“This is Délices,” Bailey said. “She is your servant, your mother, and the priestess of our rite. Please make our children welcome, Délices.”
She knelt beside Leslie, kissed her hand, and then embraced her and delicately kissed her on the mouth.
“I bid you welcome,” she said in a low, silky voice.
She turned to Howard, kissed his hand, and put her lips softly to his. Without moving away, she looked into his eyes with the grave innocence of a cat and murmured, “I bid you welcome.”
His mouth filled with saliva and his member stirred.
She rose gracefully, bowed, and left.
“Do try to relax, my dears. You look like you’re waiting for the hangman.”
Howard and Leslie settled fractionally deeper into their cushions.
“That’s better. Now, to the liquids before you. The cups contain an herbal tea, a mild hallucinogen. It isn’t intended to befuddle you or excite you to visions or to put you into a delusional state but merely to loosen somewhat the censorious grip our culture tells us we must maintain on ourselves at all times. It is of course your choice to accept it or not. Its effects are of brief duration, and of all the hundreds who have sampled it, none has ever reported any disagreeable side effect. If you accept it, I recommend you drink it off all at once.”
He paused. Howard and Leslie exchanged a shrug and picked up the cups.
“Good. We’ve found that the other drink, which is Benedictine, is an effective antidote to the bitterness of the tea. Now I want you to close your eyes and listen to me. Only to me: Don’t listen to the doubts and anxieties that have been distressing you. Make them be still. Give yourselves up to my voice as if it were the voice of your own thoughts.
“Now let me tell you this. When I met with you in the guise of Joel Bailey, I was gruff, unwelcoming, and cold. I displayed no interest in you as persons, asked you nothing about your hopes or desires. This was deliberate. I didn’t want to charm you into pursuing your interest here. I wanted you to wrestle all alone with your misgivings. I wanted you to find entirely within yourselves the courage to risk this step into the unknown, because courage is a thing that pleases our lord above all else.
“Ah, I see that this surprises you. I say that courage is a thing that pleases our lord above all else—and you wonder what lord I can possibly mean. Surely I don’t mean … Satan? Oh, who can speak his name and call him lord? Satan is the embodiment of evil, of all that is vile and foul and detestable. He is the central malignancy of the universe. And above all, he hates us. His unquenchable passion is to deceive us, pervert us, degrade us, and ultimately to win us for an eternity of torment. His delight is in our weakness—surely not in our courage!
“My children, I tell you these are lies. Lies promulgated through the ages by those who would make us slaves. These slave-masters don’t want us to follow a lord who delights in courage. They tremble at courage, because courage is the virtue of the free. They want us instead to follow a lord who delights in submissiveness, the virtue of slaves. I’m sure you all know what lord I’m talking about—the lord these slave-masters would have us call lord.
“Behold! There he is now!”
They opened their eyes and saw a giant, white-robed mannequin lurch through the door and roll unsteadily down the ramp, flailing its arms and waving a shepherd’s crook.
“Blessed are the meek!” it shrieked. “Blessed are the meek! Slaves, obey your masters! Deny yourselves! Follow me! I am meek and humble of heart!”
Rocking at the bottom of the ramp, the figure thumped the floor with its crook and screeched, “I am the good shepherd, and ye are my sheep! Sheep! Be as sheep! Blessed are the meek! Blessed are the sheep! Blessed are the—”
It shuddered to a halt, its arm raised in mid-thump.
“Ah yes,” Bailey murmured. “This is the lord beloved of the slave-masters. Can you believe that some liar put the words ‘Be as little children’ in this creature’s mouth? How absurd! Children are never meek, unless someone has broken their spirits. They are forever saucy, forever daring, forever testing the limits of their world, forever casting themselves into reckless adventures.
“The Nazarene’s followers have always known that he couldn’t possibly have meant us to be as little children. He meant, ‘Be as the elderly.’ Be cautious, wary, judicious, decorous, grave. Oh yes, above all, be grave! Drain the sap of youth from your spirit. Chastise the flesh. Deny yourself. Stifle impulse. Censor your thoughts. Be on guard against feelings.
“Be as little children? Never! For behold, this is a child.…”
The doors at the end of the room flew open and Délices raced into the room, skipping with delight. She danced wildly around the altar and around the stone pit, then, catching sight of the figure of the Nazarene, stopped abruptly, her mouth falling open.
Gradually her look of astonishment was replaced by a roguish grin. Lifting her feet high in a parody of caution, she began to sneak forward. When she was directly in front of the mannequin, she threw up her hands and shouted “Yah!”
The figure silently lifted an arm to cover its face.
She laughed and began a mad, cavorting dance.
“Délices!” Bailey commanded in a horrified voice. “Stop that this instant!”
She stopped and looked up, stupefied.
“I’ve never seen anything so disgraceful in my life! What the devil has gotten into you? Is that how a lady acts? Behave yourself!”
She rolled her eyes at Howard and Leslie, her lips turned down in mocking contrition. With a shrug, she began trudging around in a circle like a prisoner in an exercise yard. As she walked, she grabbed the sides of her gown and began tugging them forward and backward in time with her strides. Gradually she quickened her pace and narrowed the circle until she was whirling giddily in place, her arms outstretched, her head back. At last she staggered and collapsed in a giggling sprawl.
She lay for a minute gazing up into the air with a foolish smile, then sighed. She hunched her shoulders, and a petulant look crossed her face. Her gown had gotten twisted beneath her when she fell, and she tried unsuccessfully to tug it back into place. She sat up and gave it another tug, but it still wouldn’t come free. Suddenly, with a growl, she pulled it up and over her head and was free of it.
A terrible groan issued from the figure of the Nazarene.
The girl yawned, stretched, and lay down again, moving her shoulders against the carpet as if she were scratching her back. For a while she stared up at the ceiling. Then, as if of its own volition, her right hand pulled free of the left. It performed its own little dance of liberation in the air before coming back to rest on her stomach. The
n it stood up on its fingers and, with a little flourish, began walking. At first it wandered aimlessly, then it paused thoughtfully and with an exaggerated air of stealth began to sneak down her belly.
The figure in white shuddered and moaned.
The hand straightened up, and Délices gave it the accompaniment of a little tuneless whistle as it sauntered, all innocence, down her leg. At mid-thigh it abruptly leaped into the air and seized her crotch.
“Gotcha!” Délices squealed.
“For-bid-den!” the Nazarene groaned.
“Délices!” Bailey gasped. “What are you doing?”
She leaped to her feet, hid the offending hand behind her, realized it was needed elsewhere for modesty’s sake, but found that even two hands weren’t enough for the job. She scrambled back into her gown.
“Wicked, wicked, wicked girl! Oh, truly you are a daughter of Eve!”
The figure of the Nazarene intoned: “If thy hand offends thee, cut it off!”
“Ah, my poor misguided child! Don’t you realize that this touch—even the very thought of this touch—imperils your immortal soul, that it is death itself? Alas, idle hands! Idle hands that are the devil’s playthings!”
Délices hung her head penitently but managed to sneak Howard and Leslie a rueful grin.
