Fraternity of the Stone

by David Morrell

  "God, I hope not. Fixx is dead."

  Drew felt a jolt. "You're kidding."

  She sucked on the joint and shook her head. "Nope. He went out happy. Died on his jog." She looked at him. "Where have you been? If you're into that stuff, you'd know Fixx is dead. He had an inherited heart condition. All that jogging and - "

  Drew tried to recover from his shock. "I guess there aren't any guarantees." He turned to step into the bathtub.

  Abruptly she leaned forward from her chair. "Holy shit!"

  He swung back, ready to grasp for the gun beneath his pile of clothes. "What's wrong?"

  "What's wrong? Good Christ, your back! What happened to you?"

  "Keep your voice down."

  "Sorry, I forgot. My boyfriend."

  "What about my back?"

  "The scars."

  "The what?"

  "It looks like somebody whipped you."

  Drew felt cold. He'd never realized. The years of penance he'd inflicted upon himself. The skipping rope with which he'd lashed his back. "Yeah, I was in Nam. Tortured."

  "It must have been awful."

  "I don't like to talk about it. I don't want to think about it anymore."

  Drew kept his back turned away from her and stepped over the side of the bathtub. He shut off the water and slowly sank down, feeling it rise past his groin, then above his waist, the heat relaxing his aching muscles. Indeed, he hadn't had a hot bath since he'd entered the monastery, and the unaccustomed luxury made him feel vaguely guilty. He inhaled the lilac fragrance of the soap. As if he'd never seen one before, he studied a huge sponge that she'd given him to use as a washcloth, then soaked it and squeezed soapy water over his head.

  She'd taken another drag off the joint and now exhaled the smoke she'd been holding as long as she could in her lungs. "Well, I was wrong. About your being shy."

  "It's only a body."

  "Yeah, I learned that quite a while ago. The shampoo's on that plastic shelf near your head. Talk about dirty. Look at the water. You'll have to drain the tub and start all over. What were you doing, rolling in mud?"

  The irony amused him. "You don't know how right you are."

  He scratched his stubble. "We both agreed that I need a shave."

  "The razor's next to the shampoo on that shelf."

  She didn't have shaving cream, and he had to use hand soap. "I'm sure this'll sound odd," he said. "Who's President?"

  She choked on the smoke she'd inhaled. "You're kidding me."

  "I wish I was."

  "But that's the second time you've... When I mentioned Fixx. Don't you watch television, read the papers?"

  "Not where I've been."

  "Even in jail, they've got television and newspapers."

  "Then that should tell you something."

  "You weren't in jail? But I had the impression... "

  "Believe me, don't ask. The less I tell you... "

  "The better off I am. All right, you claim you're a priest."

  "Almost. What they call a brother."

  "If that's your story, I'll pretend to believe you were in a monastery. Reagan's President."

  Surprised, Drew stopped shaving for a moment. "So Carter didn't get reelected."

  "Not the way he let those Iranians make fools of us."

  "Iranians?"

  "The hostage crisis. Don't you know anything?"

  "I guess that's becoming obvious. Tell me."

  Class was in session, and it distressed him. He learned about the Iranian assault on the American Embassy in Teheran in 1979. He learned that in 1980 the Soviets, claiming to be nervous about the violence in Iran, had invaded Afghanistan to make that country a protective buffer. Both of these crises, he realized with a shudder, had occurred because of him, because of something he'd done, or rather hadn't done. Ripples. Causes and consequences. If he'd completed his last assignment, if he'd killed the man his network had ordered him to, the sequence would probably never have started. Instead, he'd entered the monastery, and his target had risen to power in Iran.

  Was I wrong? Drew thought. How many people have suffered because of me? But how can the decision not to kill be wrong?

  The woman continued. Because of Afghanistan, President Carter had refused to allow American athletes to attend the 1980 Moscow Olympics. The Soviets in turn had refused to allow their athletes to attend the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.

  "The Russians claimed they didn't go to the Olympics because they were worried about terrorists," the woman said. "But everybody knew they were just getting even for what Carter did."

  Terrorists. Inwardly, Drew groaned. He'd hoped never to hear that word again.

  But there was more, much more. As she smoked another joint, free-associating about the major events of the past six years, the sickness in his soul became worse. He learned that Reagan had nearly been assassinated by a love-struck maniac who wanted to attract the attention of a teenage movie star who'd just begun classes at Yale. The Pope had been wounded during a procession in St. Peter's Square by a Turkish religious fanatic supposedly working for the Bulgarian secret police. A South Korean commercial airliner filled with passengers, some American, had intruded on Soviet airspace and been shot down with no survivors, but nothing really had been done about it.

  "Why not?" she asked indignantly. "How come we let them push us around?"

  Drew couldn't bring himself to tell her that nothing in such matters was ever what it seemed, that commercial airliners didn't just happen to stray into hostile airspace.

  The gist was clear. These disasters seemed commonplace to her, but after his six peaceful years in the monastery, the effect of her list was devastating to him. He tried to avoid concluding that the unacceptable had become ordinary, that the world had gone insane.

  "D‚tente?" he asked.

  "What's that?"

  "The arms talks. Nuclear treaties."

  "Oh, they keep trying. But do you know what some assholes - they call themselves experts - are claiming? That we can actually win, survive, a nuclear war. They say it's predicted in the Bible. That Christians will defeat the Communists."

  Drew moaned. "Don't tell me any more." He stood, dripping water, preparing to step from the tub.

  She threw him a towel. "Better cover yourself up, love. Otherwise" - she raised an eyebrow - "you never know. I might get interested."

  He'd made the right choice, he decided. She was good for him; she made him laugh. He wrapped the towel around his waist, then glanced at his clothes. "I guess I'd better wash them."

  "I might as well do something for what you paid me. Let me help."

  He wasn't able to stop her in time. With a look of disgust, she picked up his grimy clothes. And stared at the Mauser beneath them.

  She was motionless. "You're full of surprises."

  He regarded her intensely. "So what do we do about this one?"

  "I scream. Then my boyfriend comes running."

  "I hope not."

  She studied his eyes.

  He didn't want to hurt her. What would he do if she did start to scream?

  "All right, I won't."

  He exhaled.

  "Half the people I know pack guns, but they don't mind their manners like you do. I'll grant you this. You sure give a girl an interesting time for two hundred dollars." Still holding the clothes, she wrinkled her nose. "But what's this bundle in your vest pocket? It smells kind of off."

  "I told you, you'd better not ask."

  He took the vest and set in on top of the shelf. Then he drained the tub and washed the socks, underwear, jeans, and wool shirt in fresh water. He asked her for a plastic bag, and while she phoned to find out what was taking their food so long to be delivered, he put the bloated body of Stuart Little into the plastic bag and tied the end in an airtight knot. Next, he set the bag and the Mauser beneath a towel, along with the photographs he'd brought with him from the monastery, and finally washed the vest.

  Later, when she gave him a brown cordur
oy housecoat to wear, he waited until she wasn't looking and transferred the mouse, the photographs, and the gun to its pockets. She noticed the bulges, but by now she'd learned.

  "I know," she said. 'Don't ask."

  8

  The knock made him nervous. Holding the gun in the pocket of the housecoat, he stood on the blind side of the door while she asked, "Who is it?"

  "Speedy's Take-Out. Gina, it's Al."

  She nodded to Drew and opened the door just wide enough to pay with the money Drew had given her and take the food. She closed the door.

  "Gina? Is that your name?"

  "Sort of. My mother called me Regina. I had to shorten it. In my line of work, I didn't need jokes about being a queen."

  He grinned. "If you wouldn't mind, Gina, could we lock the door?"

  "My boyfriend wants to be able to get in here fast if he has to."

  "But we both know he won't have to."

  She studied him. "I'm not sure why I'm taking these chances with you."

  But she did what he asked, and at once, he felt easier. Famished, he sat at the table and ate his sandwiches quickly. The bread was stale, the lettuce and tomatoes soggy, but after his recent diet of peanuts, chocolate bars, and freeze-dried fruit, he didn't care. Even the lukewarm milk tasted delicious.

  The food hit him right away, the sugar making him tired. He hadn't slept in thirty-six hours. His eyes felt raw from the effort of driving all day. He glanced at the bed. "I hate to do this, but I have to ask one more favor."

  She dipped a french fry into ketchup. "I haven't turned you down so far."

  "I'd like to go to sleep now."

  "So?" She chewed the french fry, licking a drop of ketchup off her lip. "Then go to sleep."

  "But I want you with me."

  "What?" Her eyes flashed. "I wish you'd make up your mind. First you make a big deal about giving me the night off, and now... "

  "Next to me in bed. That's all. Nothing else."

  "Just lie there?" She frowned. "Come on. You must want me to do something,"

  "Go to sleep. The same as me."

  She looked baffled.

  He wasn't sure how to explain that he wouldn't be able to sleep if he didn't know where she was and what she was doing. If he told her the truth - that he couldn't trust her with his life while he slept - she might not cooperate. He fidgeted, pretending to be embarrassed. "It's hard to... See... Let me put it this way. I... "

  She tapped her long fingernails on the table.

  "... need someone to hold."

  Her rigid face relaxed. "That's got to be the saddest thing I've ever - " She took his hand.

  He walked with her to the pulled-out sofa and helped her to put a sheet across it and to cover two pillows that she took from a cupboard.

  "It's cold tonight." She shivered and spread two blankets out, but despite her remark about the cold, she started to take off her housecoat.

  "No," he whispered.

  "Force of habit. Sorry." She grinned and refastened the robe, then turned off the lights.

  He crawled beneath the blankets with her. In darkness, holding her, feeling her softness, he ignored the temptation of her breasts, her mound, her hips. He hadn't been in bed with a woman since 1979, and the memory of Arlene aroused him again. In his former profession, he hadn't been close to many women, unable to risk a commitment. Only Arlene had been important to him, a member of his former network, the one woman he'd permitted himself to love. His throat ached. Gina squirmed beside him, getting comfortable, and he distracted himself with the practical matter of making sure that the Mauser was under his leg where she couldn't reach it without waking him.

  He snuggled against the mattress - the first he'd lain on since he entered the monastery - and tried to relax.

  "Sweet dreams," she murmured against his ear.

  He hoped. Arid amazingly, it was so.

  Or rather he had no dreams. Terribly, he slept like the dead.

  A flicker of light woke him. He realized that Gina wasn't next to him any longer. Startled, he sat up in the dark, on guard, realizing that the light came from the television set. The images made him think he was still asleep and having a nightmare. He saw wild-eyed young men, their faces as pasty as corpses, dressed as Nazi storm troopers, and - he had to be hallucinating -purple Mohawk hair with rings through their earlobes. Women wearing black leather motorcycle jackets aimed fire hoses at billboards depicting hydrogen bomb-blast mushrooms.

  A shadow stirred in front of the televison.

  He groped for his Mauser. But stopped.

  The shadow was Gina. Turning, she took something out of her ear. The insane images persisted in silence.

  "Sorry," she said. "I didn't think the television would wake you. I figured if I used this earphone... "

  He pointed toward the screen. "What is that?"

  "MTV. It stands for Music Television. These are punkers."

  "What?"

  "Hey, I said I'm sorry. I know you wanted me to sleep, but you've got to understand, my hours aren't the same as yours. I'm used to the night shift. Right now, I'm wide awake. Unless it's eight o'clock in the morning, after I get a doughnut and coffee with some friends down at the... "

  "What time is it?"

  She squinted at her watch. "Almost five-thirty."

  "That late?" In the monastery, he'd have been awake and ready for mass by now. He pulled the blankets off and stepped from the bed. Even in Gina's robe, he felt cold. After using the bathroom, he touched the clothes he'd washed where they hung on towel racks. They were still wet. "Have you got a hair dryer?"

  She laughed. "Now I know you weren't in a monastery."

  "For my clothes."

  She laughed again. "You'd better hope it doesn't make them shrink."

  It didn't, and at breakfast - "Fruit," he said. "Give me any kind of fruit you've got" - he surprised himself by leaning over and kissing her on the cheek.

  She too was surprised. "What was that for?"

  "Just saying thanks."

  "You mean half a thanks."

  He didn't resist when she returned his kiss. Not long, not sensual, but intimate. On his lips.

  In another life, he thought, his nostrils filling with her sweetness. Again he thought about Arlene. But that other life was denied to him.

  Because of my sins.

  9

  At half-past nine, he used a phone booth in a drug store two blocks west of Boston Common. Despite his tattered outdoor clothes, he was shaved and clean and didn't seem to attract attention from the pharmacist

  typing a prescription at the counter next to the phone booth.

  "Good morning. Holy Eucharist Parish," an old man's brittle voice said, as dusty as the better sherry sometimes used for mass wine.

  "Yes, Father Hafer, please."

  "I'm terribly sorry, but Father Hafer won't be available this morning."

  Drew's heart fell. At the airport last night and several times later at Gina's, he'd called the rectory, but no one had answered, or rather a machine had answered, this same dusty brittle voice, prerecorded, explaining that the priests weren't near the phone right now, requesting the caller to leave a name and message. In Drew's case, that wasn't likely. Not the message he was bringing.

  Dear God. Clutching the phone, he debated his options.

  "Hello?" the brittle voice asked uncertainly on the phone. "Are you still - ?"

  Drew swallowed. "Yes, I'm here. Do you know... ? Wait. You said he won't be available this morning? Does that mean you expect him this afternoon?"

  "It's difficult to be sure. Perhaps. But he might not want to be available after his treatment."

  "Treatment?" Drew clutched the phone harder.

  "If it's a priest you need, I can help you. Or any of the other priests here. Is this an emergency? You sound distressed."

  "It's personal. I have to talk to him. I don't understand. What treatment?"

  "I'm sorry. I don't feel at liberty to discuss it. But since you k
now him, no doubt he'd be willing to explain it to you. Why don't you leave your name and number?"

  "I'll call back."

  Drew hung up, opened the door, and stepped from the booth. The pharmacist glanced toward him. Trying to hide his distress, Drew looked at his watch, then walked past shelves and counters, exiting onto the noisy street.