by David Martin
He starts sobbing.
This attack, hitting with all the severity of the one Sunday afternoon, comes upon Lyon even more unexpectedly. One moment he is walking, the next moment he is doubled over crying so hard he can barely breathe.
Lyon moves in a crouch to the closest building, his hand against the brickwork for support, sobbing. When he glances up and sees a pedestrian heading for him, the man about to speak, Lyon angrily waves him off. Goddamn tourist.
The weeping eventually ebbs away, leaving Lyon with a stuffed nose, wet eyes, and small whimpering aftershocks of inexplicable sadness. Just like Sunday afternoon, except for one addition: a headache, a real blinder.
As he crouches there next to the building, not able to straighten up quite yet, Lyon realizes that he now faces an entirely different situation. The Sunday afternoon outburst obviously was not a once-only phenomenon. Something is wrong with him. If it’s happened a second time, it could happen again, without warning, at any time. He can’t go to the network brass and ask for a reassignment because he might start crying right there in the meeting.
Maybe it’s something organic. A brain tumor — and maybe that’s why he has this headache. Should he catch a cab and go to the hospital? No, never get a cab in this rain, go back to his apartment first. Circle around and slip in the side entrance so he won’t have to face the doorman.
Patting a pocket to make sure he has his keys, Lyon begins walking home, the migraine causing his eyes to wander in and out of focus, Lyon striding faster and faster until he is running the last ten yards to his building’s residents-only side entrance.
As he stands at the door fumbling his keys, the black woman steps from the shadows and rushes Lyon, so startling him that he yelps in surprise and drops the keyring. She still holds that small cardboard box, which is falling apart in the rain, and with her free hand she once again latches onto Lyon’s arm.
The two of them dance circles — Lyon trying to escape and the woman holding him in a powerful grip — away from the door and across the sidewalk.
“Let go, damn it, I don’t need this shit!” He jerks his arm violently but can’t get loose. Although the woman’s fingers are twisted with arthritis, she holds to him like a pit bull, staring wildly into Lyon’s eyes.
“Goddamn it, let go of me you … stupid nigger!”
So shocked is he by what he has just said that Lyon instantly stops struggling, allowing the woman to pull close to him. Lyon has the liberal’s usual horror of that word, having never spoken it in his life except to quote someone else, to prove that the person being quoted is a Neanderthal.
“I’m sorry,” he tells her.
But she’s shaking her head, concerned about something more serious than a word. “They need your help. You’re the one, I know you are, I knew it as soon as I saw you on the TV. You’re the one to bring Mason Quinndell to justice.”
“Who?”
“The monster.”
“Here let me give you a twenty, okay? Get yourself a good meal.”
“I have all the information you’ll need, right here.” She tentatively releases her grip on Lyon’s arm, pausing to see if he’s going to try to run. Then she puts the soggy cardboard box on the sidewalk and takes from it a nine-by-twelve manila envelope. The woman slowly pulls down the zipper of Lyon’s Barbour jacket and places the envelope inside where it will be protected from the rain. She zips him up and pats the jacket gently, like a mother about to send her son out into the weather. “Mason Quinndell is powerful, you’ll have to be careful. Never see him alone or unarmed.”
Unarmed? “I’m sorry,” Lyon tells the woman, “but I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Quinndell operates by discrediting his enemies.”
Lyon stands there looking down at her face. “I’m afraid I’ve already discredited myself.”
“No, no,” she insists, smiling now for the first time. “Sunday when I saw you crying over those children … did you know they’re the ones who made you cry? They did that to lead me to you.”
“Here, let me give you some money, please.”
“I used to be a good nurse, until Quinndell ruined me. Everyone knew what he was doing, behind his back they called him Doctor Death, but when I came forward to file charges against him, that’s when he discredited me. And since then, others have tried to bring him to justice, but the children never talked to those men, not the way they’ve talked to you.”
“I’m afraid I still don’t understand.” Lyon glances behind him, gauging the distance to the door.
“There’s only one way to do it,” she tells him earnestly. “You’ll have to dig up their graves and see for yourself what he did to those eighteen babies.”
“Jesus.”
“You read what’s in that envelope, you’ll understand.” She’s smiling again, the weary and relieved smile of someone who has just completed an onerous duty, happy to be done with it but too tired to feel elated. “Just be careful. Quinndell is a monster. That’s not a figure of speech, Mr. Lyon — he’s a monster.”
Lyon realizes now that in spite of the woman’s appearance and the way she’s accosted him, she is not in fact a raving street person. The woman has been educated and is totally earnest about what she’s telling Lyon.
“I wouldn’t send you after Quinndell without some protection.” She bends down to the ruined cardboard box at her feet and takes out a small white wooden box which she hands to Lyon.
He tries to give it back to her. “I really don’t think I should —”
“As long as you keep this in your possession Quinndell won’t be able to hurt you. And someone will watch over you, I promise.”
Lyon decides that the easiest way to get rid of her is to let her finish whatever she’s come here to say, then he can throw away this stuff she’s given him and —
“In fact,” the woman is saying, “I’ll be there watching over you myself.”
“Okay.” He is smiling falsely as the woman backs away from him and moves toward the street.
“I swear you won’t be alone, Mr. Lyon.”
“Okay,” he says again, smiling and nodding.
The rain turns suddenly heavy, soaking Lyon and the woman, pounding into mush what’s left of the cardboard box. Remembering something, the woman returns to the box and folds back the soggy lid until she finds the object she’s looking for, Lyon doesn’t see what. Then she steps off the curb.
The traffic is running fast in spite of the rain, Lyon pulling his collar tight to his neck, not knowing what to do with the wooden box in his hand, telling the woman, “Hey, be careful.”
She turns her head in his direction, a beatific smile showing through the rain. “I wouldn’t send you after Quinndell alone, I wouldn’t do that to you, Mr. Lyon!” she says, shouting to be heard above what has become a drenching downpour.
Lyon wants to get out of the rain but notices a cab approaching fast in the curb lane. He realizes what the woman is going to do at the precise moment she does it: turning her head toward the cab, gauging its approach, and then taking two quick steps directly into its path.
The right side of the cab’s high bumper hits the woman with such a violent impact that her arms go into a brief, wild windmill motion (Lyon imagining the woman waving him goodbye) before she is slammed to the pavement and seemingly sucked under the cab, its right front tire traveling over her body, directly over her face, the right rear tire following the same path.
Lyon sees the impact in such fine detail that it seems he is watching it on film, frame by frame, but in fact the woman is hit, run over, and dead in the time it takes Lyon to exchange a single lungful of air.
The cab doesn’t manage to get stopped until near the end of the block, Lyon rushing into the street and kneeling at the woman’s body, the driving rain washing away the blood as it pours from her crushed face.
The cabbie comes running, both arms in the air, shouting to Lyon, “Hey, she stepped out right in front of me!”
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Lyon feels suddenly guilty, a predator caught at his bloody prey. He stands, backing away. “I didn’t see it,” he says, speaking too softly for the approaching cabbie to hear. Lyon hurries to the sidewalk.
“Hey buddy, I need a witness!”
“I didn’t see it!” Lyon hollers, turning and rushing for the door to his apartment building.
“Hey asshole!” the cabbie screams, bypassing the woman’s body to pursue Lyon.
Picking up the keyring he had dropped earlier, getting the door unlocked, opening it, Lyon pauses only long enough to shout at the cabdriver one last time. “I didn’t see it!” Then he slips into the building, letting the heavy glass door slam behind him, entering the elevator as the cabbie reaches the locked door, which he beats on in frustration and anger.
It’s not until Lyon is in his apartment that he realizes he’s still holding the little wooden box, which he immediately tosses into the trash. Drenched from the rain, still wearing his wet Barbour, Lyon stands in his kitchen shakily pouring a glass of Scotch. Lifting the drink he sees bloodstains on the glass. Jesus. How’d he get her blood on his hands? Lyon doesn’t even remember touching her. And the way the rain was washing everything away …
After furiously cleaning his hands in the sink and getting another glass, Lyon pours a fresh drink. Sipping from it, he unzips his jacket, the manila envelope falling out and landing at his feet.
CHAPTER 5
Deep into the following Saturday night, June 30, Mary Aurora is rudely awakened by the buzzer located on the wall above her bed. Putting both pillows over her head doesn’t help because she can still hear the buzzer and she knows too that he’ll keep his finger on the button until she makes an appearance. Throwing off the pillows, Mary hollers, “I’m coming, asshole!” — immediately regretting it because if Dr. Quinndell heard her …
Worried now, she quickly gets out of bed, flips up the light switch, pulls on a pair of jeans and a teeshirt, and glances at her image while walking past a mirror. Forty-three years old but clinging to the illusion she can pass for thirty-five, Mary wonders why none of it shows — everything she’s done this past year, you’d think she’d be scarred by it somehow. The buzzer is still squawking. Two more weeks, she tells herself, and I won’t have to listen to that goddamn buzzer ever again. Two more weeks and I get out of hell.
Mary Aurora has lived in a self-imposed hell for exactly fifteen days short of a year — the length of time she’s been working for Dr. Mason Quinndell here in Hameln, West Virginia. And in just fifteen days, on the one-year anniversary of the deal she made with the Devil, Mary will be given two envelopes, one of them containing a cashier’s check for $250,000. In the second envelope will be an address and twelve photographs.
To obtain the contents of these two envelopes, Mary has performed acts of such degradation that had someone described them to her beforehand, she would have denied even being capable of such acts, much less doing them voluntarily, doing them routinely.
The buzzer is incessant.
Mary hurries downstairs and stops at the double doors leading to Dr. Quinndell’s office. She takes a breath, trying to compose herself and trying not to speculate on what the doctor wants her for this time. She raps hesitantly on one of the doors.
“Enter.”
The office is of course completely dark, Mary expected that, but where’s he hiding this time? Is he going to jump out from behind one of the doors and grab —
“Mary?”
She finally lets out that breath. He’s at his desk near the back of the office, Mary safe from his touch at least for the moment. “Yes, doctor?”
“I want you to drive me someplace.”
She wonders if that’s all he wants.
“Are you wearing your uniform?” the doctor asks in that soft and cultured voice he’s so proud of.
“No.”
“Would you mind terribly putting it on?”
“Of course not.” Why’s he being so nice to me? Mary doesn’t see the point of wearing her uniform, but if wearing a uniform is all the doctor requires from her tonight, Mary’s grateful. “I’ll go put it on right now.”
“Thank you.”
She turns toward the double doors.
“By the way, Mary.”
She freezes. “Yes?”
“Were you having sexual intercourse when I buzzed you?”
“What? No, of course not.”
“I was just wondering.”
When he says nothing more, Mary continues toward the doors.
“Because I distinctly heard you shout something.”
She freezes again, her palms becoming instantly wet.
“Upon achieving sexual climax — either an authentic climax or a faked one, if indeed you can any longer distinguish between the two — don’t you usually proclaim that you are ‘coming’?” He waits for an answer. “Mary?”
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes, I say that.”
“You say that you’re ‘coming.’ ”
“Yes.”
He pauses a moment before continuing. “Which is why I assumed you had a lover upstairs — because I heard your fishwife voice screeching out that you were ‘coming.’ In fact, you said, ‘I’m coming, asshole.’ Didn’t you?”
She knows better than trying to lie to him. “Yes.”
“You see why I’m confused. If you were announcing a climax, you were also referring to your lover by the rather odd endearment of ‘asshole.’ But now you’re claiming you weren’t having sex. Pray tell, to whom were you addressing that statement — I’m coming, asshole, hmm?”
In contrast to her wet palms, Mary’s mouth is so dry she can’t swallow.
“Mary?”
“I was … it was, uhm, it was sort of an automatic reaction to being suddenly awakened by the buzzer.”
“You mean that statement was addressed to me. You were calling me an asshole.”
Although the doctor loves toying with her like this, Mary knows that the consequences of these games — if she makes the wrong move, utters something to set him off — can be horrifying. “I was still half-asleep, I didn’t know what I was saying.”
“Which wounds me all the more deeply, Mary. Your low opinion of me is apparently so ingrained that even when you’re not fully conscious you immediately brand me with that coarse and most common epithet — is my assessment correct?”
If he’s in the mood for it, this kind of argumentative pedantry can go on for an hour, maneuvering Mary into untenable positions, making her feel increasingly stupid. She tries to cut it short this time by mumbling a simple “I’m sorry.”
And the doctor surprises her by accepting the apology. “Thank you. Now run along and dress, I’ll be waiting for you in the car.”
On her way upstairs, Mary keeps telling herself, two more weeks, just two more weeks and I can go back to being human.
As the car travels the empty and unlighted streets of Hameln, Dr. Quinndell shows off by instructing Mary where to turn at each intersection they come to — instead of simply telling her their destination and letting her find it on her own.
“To punish you for cursing me,” the doctor says once they’ve passed through the gateway to Cemetery Road, “I brought along a rubber glove.”
Her heart squeezes painfully in her chest. Two more weeks, two more weeks.
“But now I realize I don’t need to punish you because I’m already in a good mood, in the best possible mood. You know why I’m happy, don’t you?”
“No, sir.”
He makes a contemptuous sound. “You sleepwalk through life, Mary, you really do. You must not fear death because how could it possibly differ from the way you live your life?”
She doesn’t reply.
“I’m happy because she is in her grave.”
“Oh.” Mary knows who he’s talking about. Her funeral was today.
“And we’re going to visit that grave. Do you think you can find it?”
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“Yes, sir.”
“Excellent.”
Mary drives slowly down the cemetery’s graveled lanes, and on the second turn the car’s headlights find the freshly turned dirt of a new grave. Mary stops, gets out, opens the doctor’s door, and leads him there.
He asks if the headstone is in place, and Mary tells him it is.
“What’s the inscription?” he asks.
Mary shines her flashlight on the stone. “Just her name and the dates of her birth and death.”
“How wonderfully minimalist,” he says, chuckling. “Show me.”
Mary directs him to the stone, Dr. Quinndell leaning down to run his hand over the chiseled letters and numbers. “Get my case from the car.”
When Mary returns carrying a small black zippered case, she finds Quinndell standing on the fresh dirt directly in front of the headstone.
“I’m here.”
“Yes, I know, I can smell you,” the doctor says, removing his suitcoat and handing it to Mary before turning up the sleeve of his shirt.
Mary opens the case, prepares the hypodermic, and injects Quinndell. He pulls his lips back and hisses through clenched teeth. Mary turns away.
When she hears him unzipping his fly, she flashes the light on his face and sees that he is smiling. “You want me to do it here?” she asks, incredulous.
Dr. Quinndell is momentarily confused but then laughs genuinely, pounding his palms together, just the bottoms of his palms hitting so that the applause makes no sound. “Oh my dear, you are so absolutely Pavlovian, it’s beyond belief, it really is.”
