by Steve Alten
She paid the driver, then grabbed her tote bag and stepped out into a swarm of brown people, all moving toward one destination. Many locals were carrying Saint Death dolls, the four-foot skeleton figurines dolled up in long wigs and color-coded robes — white for protection, red for passion, gold for money, and black for bringing harm to another.
Somewhere up ahead, a mariachi band played.
Number 12 Alfareria Street was a brown brick apartment building with white trim, located across the street from a run-down laundromat. A small storefront featured a six-foot window display that had been converted into a shrine. Situated behind the glass was a life-size figure of La Santa Muerte—Saint Death, dressed in a bridal gown.
Mary followed a procession line, pushing in closer. The path leading to the shrine was adorned with fresh flowers, the ground made luminous from the flames of several hundred burning candles. Worshippers bearing color-coded candles knelt before the shrine, then rubbed themselves with the wax offerings before lighting them. Everyone brought gifts. Cigarettes and alcohol. Candies and apples. One of the owners of the shop placed the lit end of a cigar into his mouth and blew clouds of smoke out the other end at the doll, filling the shrine.
Mary moved closer, sensing the crowd staring at her. She assumed it was because she was an American. Then she heard the whispers, catching a few recognizable words in Spanish.
Pelirrojo? Rojo is red… they’re staring at my hair.
She waited for a Hispanic family to finish their prayer, then knelt before the window, looking up at the female Grim Reaper manikin. The doll’s long wavy hair was scarlet, the color matching her own.
From her bag she removed a stack of hundred-dollar bills, then turned to a short heavyset Mexican woman, her dark hair marked by a white “skunk’s tail.” “I have a request for the Saint. How do I go about asking it?”
“Come with me, Señorita.” Enriqueto Romero led Mary through her store to a supply room out back. “You are American, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Then you have traveled a long way to be here on this holiest of holies. The color of your hair is shared this evening by the skinny one, this is no coincidence. You are about to embark on a very special journey, am I right?”
“The man in my life, I need to know if he really desires me. I’ve been abandoned before—”
“—and you do not wish to be abandoned again. The most Holy Death can help in these regards. For this you must purchase a statue. The statue comes with a string knotted seven times. Cover the string with your beloved’s semen, place it around the skinny girl’s neck within its notch, then recite the ejaculatory prayer for nine consecutive nights. The Saint will make clear the intentions in your man’s heart.”
“And if he is lying to me?
“Then the Saint will be waiting for him… in Hell.”
176 Johnson Street
Brooklyn, New York
8:12 P.M.
Built in 1929, the eight-story, sixty-four-thousand-square-foot building had originally been a toy factory, the company’s big seller being the first electric football game. Today, the Toy Factory Lofts featured eleven-foot ceilings and wall-to-wall eight-foot-high windows.
Doug Nelson begrudgingly followed his wife and the building manager down the fourth-floor hallway to the last door on the right. “Kind of unusual for a landlord to hold an apartment open this long for a soldier.”
Joe Eddy Brown, known to the occupants of the Lofts as “the Brown-Man,” fumbled to find the right key. “Most of these apartments are condos. Mr. Shepherd bought his outright back in 2001.”
“What about his ex-wife? She ever come around?”
Brown paused before inserting the pass key in the lock, running a weathered palm over his cleanly shaved head. “Haven’t seen the missus around here for a while. Damn shame, she was easy on the eyes. Oh, well, you know what I always say, better to have loved and lost than never loved at all.”
“Actually, Tennyson said that,” Doug said. “And the man spent most of his life penniless and ended up in a sanitarium.”
Leigh shot her husband a chastising look.
The loft was small, composed of a six-hundred-square-foot living area, a bathroom, and several large storage closets. A modern kitchen faced a view of the Williamsburg Bridge. The queen-size bed was located in one corner of the room, the mattress on the floor, the blankets and sheets unmade. There were no photos or artwork on the walls, no decorations of any kind… as if the owner occupied the dwelling but never called it home.
“I know what you’re thinking — there’s not much to look at. Mr. Shepherd, he pretty much spent his days walking the streets. He’d come home late at night, oftentimes drunk. Found him on the stoop passed out on more than one occasion. We don’t tolerate that sort of behavior in Brown Town, but him being a war hero, I sort of let it slide. If he’s intending to move back—”
“Mr. Shepherd has no memory that this place even exists,” Leigh clarifies. “I’m only here because I found the address in his military file.”
“And I’m only here because my wife dragged me here on a Saturday night.” Doug met his wife’s glare with his own.
“Ten minutes, Doug. Stop being so selfish.”
“I’m being selfish?” He searches a magazine rack. Grabs an old issue of Sports Illustrated. “Let me know when you’re ready to leave. I’ll be in the bathroom.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Brown. Where’s that closet you mentioned on the phone?”
Leigh followed the building manager to a mirrored wall. Brown tapped it with two fingers, releasing the magnetic clasp. He pulled open the door, revealing a walk-in storage area.
There were a few collared shirts on hangers and a navy suit. The rest of Patrick Shepherd’s wardrobe was set in piles of dirty laundry. A whiff of alcohol-soaked denim, marinated with body odor before being aged, gravitated up from the polished wood floor.
The stacks of cardboard boxes appeared more enticing.
“Mr. Brown, I need a few minutes to go through my patient’s belongings.”
“Just pull the door closed when you leave. I’ll come back later to lock the dead bolt.”
“Thank you.” She waited until he left before rummaging through the first few boxes. Baseball gear. Grass-stained cleats and jerseys. Bundles of never-worn tee shirts with the words, boston strangler printed across the chest. She sorted through three more boxes, then found the foot locker buried beneath a pile of jackets.
Going down on one knee, she popped open the steel clasps and raised the lid.
Aged air, musky and filled with discarded memories escaped from the long-sealed container. She removed a woman’s hooded pink Rutgers University sweatshirt, then two toddler outfits, one a Yankees uniform, the larger one a Red Sox shirt. The three college textbooks, all dealing with European literature, were marked up and highlighted, the curvy penmanship clearly a woman’s handwriting. She searched in vain for a name, then saw the framed photo, the picture taken outside a college dormitory.
The girl was barely twenty, blond, and model-gorgeous, her long hair wavy and bowed. Her boyfriend was hugging her from behind. Boyishly handsome, he wore a cocky smile. Leigh stared at the image of Patrick Shepherd in his youth. Look at you. You had the world by the balls, and you walked away… just so you could crawl through hell.
“Leigh? You need to see this.”
Picture in hand, she joined her husband in the bathroom.
Doug pointed to the medicine cabinet. “I’d say your boy has some serious demons.”
The handwritten note, yellowed with age, is taped to the mirror.
Shep:
The voice telling you to kill yourself is Satan. Suicide is a mortal sin. For your family’s sake, suck it up and accept your punishment. Live today for them.
He’s worse than I thought… She opened the medicine cabinet, its narrow shelves filled with expired prescriptions. “Amoxapine. Thorazine, Haldol. Trifluoperazine, Triavil, Moban. There’s enough anti
depressants and tranquilizers here to medicate the entire building.”
“Looks like he was suicidal long before he lost his arm. Bet you dinner he keeps a loaded gun beneath his pillow.” Doug left the bathroom and walked over to the bed, tossing the goose-down pillows aside. “What’s this?”
Leigh joins him. “Did you find a weapon?”
“Not exactly.” He held up the leather-bound book.
Dante’s Inferno.
* * *
Doug headed west on 34th Street, guiding the Range Rover into one of the three lanes heading to New Jersey via the Lincoln Tunnel. “You want to know why I’m mad? It’s because you spend more time with your soldier pal than you do with your own family.”
“That’s not true.”
“Why him, Leigh? What’s so special about this vet? Is it because he played baseball?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know.” She stared out the window, consciously trying not to breathe the carbon-monoxide fumes as their vehicle raced through the brightly lit tunnel. “At first, I was just afraid that he’d try to kill himself again. Then, when I saw how much he missed his wife, I was afraid he’d try to get back together with her too soon.”
“Thomas Stansbury again? Leigh, we’ve been through this a million times. He had a night terror. It was out of your control.”
“He strangled his wife, then he killed himself. I’m the one who released him.”
Night reappeared, the tunnel delivering them into New Jersey. Doug remained silent, contemplating a course of action. “Invite him over for dinner.”
“Who? Shep? What for?”
“At some point you’re going to have to discharge him, right? Why not ease his transition with a little normalcy? We’ll make him a home-cooked meal, he can play with the kids. Maybe you can even invite your sister over.”
“My sister?”
“Why not? I’m not suggesting you make this a blind date, I just think it would be good for him. Plus, you know how lonely Bridgett has been lately.”
“She’s going through a rough divorce.”
“Exactly my point.”
“No, it would be too weird. Plus, Shep might be offended. He’s still head over heels in love with his wife.”
“So just call it dinner and see what happens.”
“Okay. I can do that.”
“Now answer my original question: Why Shepherd?”
Leaning over, the brunette laid her head on her husband’s shoulder. “Have you ever met someone who just seemed so needy, so lost, yet at the same time had a personality you couldn’t help but gravitate to. This will sound strange, but being around Shep, it’s like hanging around with an old soul who’s lost on an important journey, and it’s my job to help him as much as I can before he moves on. Does that make any sense?”
“Old soul or new, guys like Shepherd who fought in combat have a tendency to want to self-destruct. I know you’re his doctor, Leigh, but some people just don’t want to be saved.”
December
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
— President Dwight D. Eisenhower
VA Hospital
New York City
3:37 P.M.
The funny thing was, he had never liked running. Not in high school when Coach Segal had required it of all his pitchers. Not at Rutgers, when his fiancée was in training for the field hockey team and insisted he join her on those four-mile jaunts around the university golf course. And certainly not when he pitched in the minors.
So why did he like it now?
The Beatles’ “Help!” blasted over the classic rock radio station as the treadmill’s built-in odometer approached the two-mile mark.
He liked it because the challenge made him feel alive again, and any feeling that was different from his usual doom and gloom was a good thing. He liked it because it made him feel less self-destructive, something Dr. Nelson attributed to ‘happy endorphins’ being released in his brain. Most of all, Patrick Shepherd liked to run because running gave his thoughts greater clarity, helping him to remember things. Like that his fiancée forced him to run the golf course back at Rutgers. Like that she, too, was a scholarship athlete. Like…
The song changed. He has not heard the tune in more than a decade, its lyrics prying open yet another sealed memory, the words, sung by the late Jim Morrison, tearing open the fissure in his heart: “Before you slip into unconsciousness, I'd like to have another kiss. Another flashing chance at bliss, another kiss, another kiss…”
The one-arm runner stumbled, his right hand briefly grabbing the support bar before his legs rolled out from under him, and the treadmill spit him out onto the rubber matting.
“The days are bright and filled with pain, enclose me in your gentle rain. The time you ran was too insane, we'll meet again, we'll meet again…”
Patrick rolled over. Nose bleeding, feeling woozy, he leaned against the wall to listen to the rest of The Doors’ song… the painted cinder block identical to the walls in his fiancée’s old college dorm room.
* * *
He’s sitting on the floor, leaning back against the dormitory wall. “The Crystal Ship” is playing on the tape deck, the blond coed in the muddied field hockey uniform staring at him from the bed, her hazel green eyes tinged blue with tears.
“Are you sure?”
“Don’t ask me again. If you ask me again, Patrick, I’m going to shove the dipstick up your ass, then we’ll see if you’re pregnant.”
“Okay, okay. Let’s not panic just yet. How far along are you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a month or two.”
“Shouldn’t you know?”
“Shouldn’t you, Mister ‘We Should Be Safe, You Won’t Be Ovulating for Another Eight Days.’ God, my father’s going to kill me when he finds out.”
“Here’s an idea — let’s not tell him. We take you to the clinic, they do whatever they do, and we get you on the pill.”
She throws one of her field hockey shin pads at his face, hitting him squarely in the nose, drawing blood. “First, abortions cost money, something neither one of us has right now. Second, there’s a baby growing in my belly… our baby. I thought maybe you’d react differently. I thought I was your soul mate?”
“You are. But what about our plans? You wanted to go to grad school, and I still have two more years of eligibility to improve my stock before the amateur draft.”
“I can still finish school.”
“They’ll rescind your scholarship.”
“I’ll redshirt a year.”
“Okay, sure. But seriously… are you really ready to have a kid?”
“I don’t know.” She covers her face, weeping uncontrollably.
Patrick’s dumbfounded, he has never seen her like this. Reaching for her wrist, he guides her down on the tile floor next to him, holding her in his lap as if she were a little girl.
“The Crystal Ship” ends, mockingly yielding to the opening lyrics of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”. And in that singular moment of clarity everything changes for Patrick Ryan Shepherd, the solution suddenly clear, as if his adolescence has just passed the baton of youth into adulthood.
“Okay, here’s another option: You stay in school while I enter next month’s draft. I won’t hire an agent, so I’ll still maintain my amateur status. If I’m drafted, we use the signing bonus to pay for diapers. If I’m not, I finish my junior year and work nights to pay for the kid’s expenses. How’s that sound?”
She stops crying, her face streaked with tears and sweat from the afternoon practice. “You’d really do that?”
“On one condition… marry me.”
* * *
“…that was The Doors. This is your station for Classic Rock, the time now is 3:45.
Coming up after the break we’ll be playing the Beach Boys—”
The radio is turned off. “Shep, are you okay?”
Patrick glanced up at Dr. Nelson, his nostrils streaked with blood. “I never liked running.”
“I told you not to run so fast, your gait is off-balance. You’ll feel a lot more in control when your prosthetic arm arrives.”
“What year will that be?”
“Honestly, I wish I knew. Are you still okay about tonight?”
“You sure this isn’t a blind date?”
“It’s just dinner. But you’ll like my sister, she’s a firecracker.” Leigh opened the leather briefcase hanging from her shoulder strap. “Shep, I have something that belongs to you. I’m going to show it to you because I think it may help you to remember your wife’s name, only I don’t want you to get upset. Do you think you can handle it?”
“What is it?”
“You tell me.” She removes the leather-bound book from her brief.
Shep jolts upright, staring at the object from his past. “Dante’s Inferno. My wife bought it for me while we were at Rutgers. It was her favorite. Where did you get it?”
“From your apartment in Brooklyn.”
“I have an apartment in Brooklyn?”
“Yes. But you haven’t been there since before your last deployment. Shep, tell me about the book. What can you remember? Why was it so important that you kept it under your pillow?”
Shep’s expression darkened. “It meant something to me because it meant something to her.”
“But you still can’t remember her name?”
He shook his head. “It’s there, it’s so close.”
“She wrote a message to you on the title page. Take a look, see if it helps.”
With a trembling hand, Patrick opened the front cover to read the first page:
For the sacrifice you are making for our family.
From your soul mate, eternal love always.
