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- Herausgeber: Black Cat Weekly
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
This issue, we have original mysteries from Eve Fisher (courtesy of Acquiring Editor Michael Bracken), Tony Rothman, and Michael Mallory (courtesy of Acquiring Editor Barb Goffman), plus a classic novel from Arthur B. Reeve (one of his Craig Kennedy scientific detective series). And, of course, we have a solve-it-yourself puzzler from Hal Charles.
On the science fiction side, we 6 tales instead of our usual 5—largely because Robert F. Young’s is a short-short. Classic stories come from William Morrison, F.L. Wallace, Evelyn E. Smith, and Bryce Walton & Al Reynolds (a collaboration). A novella from Grand Master Damon Knight rounds things out.
Here’s the complete lineup—
Mysteries / Suspense / Adventure:
“At the Dig,” by Eve Fisher [Michael Bracken Presents short story]
“A Well-Kept Secret,” by Hal Charles [Solve-It-Yourself Mystery]
“Method for Murder,” by Michael Mallory [Barb Goffman Presents short story]
“Calendar Girl,” by Tony Rothman [novella]
The Adventuress, by Arthur B. Reeve [novel, Craig Kennedy series]
Science Fiction & Fantasy:
“No Star’s Land,” by William Morrison [short story]
“The Space Roc,” by Robert F. Young [short-short story]
“Too Close to the Forest,” by Bryce Walton and Al Reynolds [short story]
“The Deadly Ones,” by F.L. Wallace [short story]
“Woman’s Touch,” by Evelyn E. Smith [short story]
“The Earth Quarter,” by Damon Knight [novella]
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Seitenzahl: 708
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Table of Contents
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
THE CAT’S MEOW
TEAM BLACK CAT
AT THE DIG, by Eve Fisher
DEATH BOOKS A B&B, by Hal Charles
A WELL-KEPT SECRET, by Michael Mallory
CALENDAR GIRL, by Tony Rothman
Chapter I.
Chapter II.
Chapter III.
Chapter IV.
Chapter V.
Chapter VI.
Chapter VII.
Chapter VIII.
Chapter IX.
Chapter X.
THE ADVENTURESS by Arthur B. Reeve
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
NO STAR’S LAND by William Morrison
TOO CLOSE TO THE FOREST, by Bryce Walton and Al Reynolds
THE SPACE ROC, by Robert F. Young
THE DEADLY ONES, by F. L. Wallace
WOMAN’S TOUCH, by Evelyn E. Smith
THE EARTH QUARTER, by Damon Knight
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 2024 by Wildside Press LLC.
Published by Black Cat Weekly.
blackcatweekly.com
*
“At the Dig” is copyright © 2024 by Eve Fisher and appears here for the first time.
“Death Books a B&B” is copyright © 2022 by Hal Blythe and Charlie Sweet. Reprinted by permission of the authors.
“A Well-Kept Secret” is copyright © 2024 by Michael Mallory and appears here for the first time.
“Calendar Girl” is copyright © 2024 by Tony Rothman and appears here for the first time.
The Adventuress, by Arthur B. Reeve, was originally published in 1917.
“No Star’s Land,” by William Morrison, was originally published in Fantastic Universe, July 1954.
“The Space Roc” is copyright © 1978 by Robert F. Young. Originally published in Amazing Stories, January 1978. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate.
“Too Close to the Forest,” by Bryce Walton and Al Reynolds, was originally published in Fantastic Universe, July 1954. Reprinted by permission of Bryce Walton’s estate.
“The Deadly Ones,” by F. L. Wallace was originally published in Fantastic Universe, July 1954.
“Woman’s Touch,” by Evelyn E. Smith, was originally published in Super-Science Fiction, February 1957.
“The Earth Quarter,” by Damon Knight, was originally published in Worlds of If, January 1955.
THE CAT’S MEOW
Welcome to Black Cat Weekly.
This issue, we have original mysteries from Eve Fisher (courtesy of Acquiring Editor Michael Bracken), Tony Rothman, and Michael Mallory (courtesy of Acquiring Editor Barb Goffman), plus a classic novel from Arthur B. Reeve (one of his Craig Kennedy scientific detective series). And, of course, we have a solve-it-yourself puzzler from Hal Charles.
On the science fiction side, we 6 tales instead of our usual 5—largely because Robert F. Young’s is a short-short. Classic stories come from William Morrison, F.L. Wallace, Evelyn E. Smith, and Bryce Walton & Al Reynolds (a collaboration). A novella from Grand Master Damon Knight rounds things out.
Here’s the complete lineup—
Cover art: Tom Miller
Mysteries / Suspense / Adventure:
“At the Dig,” by Eve Fisher [Michael Bracken Presents short story]
“Death Books a B&B,” by Hal Charles [Solve-It-Yourself Mystery]
“A Well-Kept Secret,” by Michael Mallory [Barb Goffman Presents short story]
“Calendar Girl,” by Tony Rothman [novella]
The Adventuress, by Arthur B. Reeve [novel, Craig Kennedy series]
Science Fiction & Fantasy:
“No Star’s Land,” by William Morrison [short story]
“The Space Roc,” by Robert F. Young [short-short story]
“Too Close to the Forest,” by Bryce Walton and Al Reynolds [short story]
“The Deadly Ones,” by F.L. Wallace [short story]
“Woman’s Touch,” by Evelyn E. Smith [short story]
“The Earth Quarter,” by Damon Knight [novella]
Until next time, happy reading!
—John Betancourt
Editor, Black Cat Weekly
TEAM BLACK CAT
EDITOR
John Betancourt
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
Barb Goffman
Michael Bracken
Paul Di Filippo
Darrell Schweitzer
Cynthia M. Ward
PRODUCTION
Sam Hogan
Enid North
Karl Wurf
AT THE DIG,by Eve Fisher
Miriam Aartun, chaperone for the high school field trip, sat in the front seat as the students chattered their way up the steps. The girls sat down almost at once and shared photos and videos on their smartphones, giggling and grossing with equal abandon. The boys clambered and shoved their way into seats, trading insults and grins. Everything she’d missed for so long.
When Owen Jergens, the bus driver got on, she stood up and did a quick count. She nodded, he nodded back, and:
“All right kids!” Owen’s voice boomed. “Sit down, settle down, we’re heading out!”
A loud cheer filled the air as the bus swayed out of the school parking lot. Miriam’s eyes filmed. They all looked so happy. Who would have thought this would ever happen again?
Well, maybe not Paul Zephier. He’d shot up a whole foot in the last year, and was now all knees and elbows, clumsy and awkward, always stubbing his feet on something, knocking things over with his head or his arms. The twitch didn’t help. But his classmates didn’t make fun of him. Nor at the scar running down his face. That was going to show for a long, long time.
Landon Haines sat next to Paul. Landon might be a huge fan of Roman Reigns and the WWE, but he was also smart as a whip, with an edgy sarcasm that could catch like a fishhook. He was the one who brought up things, things no one wanted to talk about. He was going to go places, probably to Sioux Falls first, then on and up and out. How long could he stand living where he did, where so little changed, no matter what happened?
Most of them had paired off: friends, siblings, cousins, sweethearts. Landon and Paul. Lisa Dwire and Randall. The little Stacy Ueland following her sister Pat like a baby duck. She stumbled on the steps coming up the bus, where Pat caught her, and again coming down the aisle, where Paul’s long gangly arms reached for her, caught her, handed back her cane. She would never recover fully. She and Pat sat behind Don and Paul.
Keepers and minders; lovers and hopers.
Marion turned to look out the window and willed herself to stop the sorrow from sweeping through her like a tsunami, leaving her in tears she would not be able to hide. That helped nothing. She knew that now.
Corn and soybeans. A farmhouse here and there. And now into the grasslands, black Angus glossy in the sun. She could never understand why black Angus didn’t die of heat exhaustion on a hot South Dakota summer day. “Brown fat,” her biology teacher had said. Kept them warm in the winter, cool in the summer. But their ears and tails still froze in blizzards, especially the calves, and the calves sometimes did die of heat. The worst was when you saw their bodies, bloated in the sun, waiting for someone to take them away. No, that was wrong. The smell was the worst.
The smell… The sounds… She started trembling and willed herself to stop. Not here, not now. Someday it would go away. It would, she told herself. It would. It really would.
Owen pulled into a gas station, and the students rushed their way out of the bus and into the convenience store. Miriam got out and stood by the bus with Owen.
“Dwire girl said she needed to go,” Owen said, handing her a cigarette. “So I figured, let ’em all go, get some snacks while they’re at it. It’ll make things go quicker at the Dig.”
“The bus is going to be a wreck. You’re going to have to clean it all up.”
Owen chuckled. “Ah, I remember when I was their age. Junk food road trip. Best thing in the world, you betcha. Only thing better was when I got older, and it was a beer junk food road trip.”
“A carload of young adolescent males in search of adventure.” Miriam’s voice was dreamy as the cigarette smoke on the breeze.
“That’s right. Of course, back then the trip was adventure enough. Now—I don’t know. From what I hear, they expect a lot more out of life than I did. Not these, but you know, the older they get… Not very appreciative.”
“I don’t think we were any more appreciative,” Miriam said. “I think we hoped for more than what we got, but we knew we weren’t going to get it, so we put up with what we did get. And we knew it didn’t do any good to complain.”
The two adults exchanged a grimace.
Owen leaned towards her and whispered, “I think somebody’s brought a gun.” She turned white. “Just a few words I overheard.”
“No,” she pleaded. Not again.
“Don’t worry. I think it’s more for protection than anything else.” He glanced over at Randall, who’d come back out and was pacing up and down outside the store. Probably waiting for Lisa. “It can’t be anything more than a handgun. I’ll keep an eye out.”
Owen stubbed out his cigarette and went to the convenience store, and soon the kids were pouring back out. Miriam was back in the bus before any of them reached the steps.
Miriam closed her eyes for a moment. Oh, God I hope everything goes well. Please God. Please God. Please God. Let it all go well…
Then she opened them and smiled brightly as the bus filled up.
* * * *
Owen was right. No one held things up at the Dig, a/k/a the South Dakota Prehistoric Village site. Miriam handed everyone their ticket as they got off the bus, including Owen, and everyone trooped in like gentle lambs.
God, please keep the wolves away today.
They sat through the introduction film, walked through the recreation of a prehistoric Native American home, and then the docent led them in and up the stairs to the Excavation Dome. The viewing platform all around its edge was wide enough so that two or three could walk abreast, high above the Dig itself, with a waist-high, plexiglass fence. Half a dozen archaeologists, mostly students, were on their hands and knees below, digging and scraping. There were round pits, some steps, some low walls: the docent explained what each was.
It all looked alike to Miriam. Same earth, same color, same, same, same. She looked around at the other visitors who were circling the Dome. Not many. A security guard stood on the other side, watching everybody, but especially her group. Did he recognize any of them? From the school? From the nightly news, over and over and over again?
Miriam kept moving. Ahead of her, she could see that Paul was tense. She heard Pat Ueland say to Lisa, “Don’t you think we should do something, say something?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Lisa replied. “That’d really set him off.”
“I know, but—”
“Leave it, Pat,” Lisa said firmly. “Leave him alone.”
Marion looked over at the security guard, who was close enough to call. What would he do? Nothing. Landon was looking at the guard, too. He glanced back, he saw her looking, and turned to the docent.
“I see you’ve got a security guard here. Is there a lot of trouble?” he asked.
“No. It’s mostly to stop people from tossing trash into the pit,” the docent replied.
“That’s tacky,” Lisa said.
“Anyb-b-body ev-ev-ever fall into the pit?” Randall asked.
“Once. There was a lawsuit.” The docent rolled her eyes. “The board decided to hire a security guard—Officer Olson.”
“That’s good. That’s r-r-real good,” Randall said.
Paul was twitching, but that was only to be expected. Marion was amazed at how well Randall was behaving. It was probably having Lisa there. But there was that look in his eyes. She’d seen it before.
Paul walked towards the guard.
Landon and Randall started horsing around, playing out wrestling moves.
Suddenly Paul said, “I’ve seen you before.”
The officer’s jaw dropped.
Marion felt everything in her go absolutely still.
Randall and Landon exchanged shocked looks.
Paul said, “Two years ago. At our junior high. It was on all the news.”
He’d known.
The officer turned brick red, then purple.
They’d all known. Where he was. They must have looked him up on the internet, too.
“You stood outside while it happened,” Paul hissed. He leaned in and hissed something else, that Marion couldn’t hear but guessed.
Maybe burn in hell?
And then Paul fell down on the concrete walkway and started to scream. That high pitched scream that none of them had ever forgotten, would never forget. No words, just a long, endless scream that should have shattered the dome.
Marion reached for her handbag, but it was gone.
Olson turned to run away. Again.
He ran into Randall, who’d body-checked Landon, who spun back against Olson, landing him against the rail.
Landon lunged towards Randall and spun him, like a top, so he just missed Olson, but stopped Olson from getting away.
Olson looked at the two boys, wide-eyed.
Randall grabbed Landon, whirling him around, and then both of them collided into Olson.
And Olson was gone. Down into the pits, crumpled like a wad of paper.
Paul had collapsed on the floor, gasping and shuddering.
The little Ueland girl crutched over to him. “Paul! Paul.” She got down on the floor with him and put her arms around him. “It’s okay,” she said. “He won’t find us here. Remember? He can’t find us when we’re together.” Paul was crying. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” Pillowed like puppies. Weeping and shaking. Just like before.
“Here,” Lisa said, handing Miriam’s handbag to her.
Marion fumbled in it. The pistol was still there, under the tissues. She mopped the tears off of her face.
Landon and Randall turned away from the pit, looking fulfilled. Frightened. Amazed.
“Are you okay?” Lisa asked Marion.
“I was just wondering,” Marion said slowly, “How long it took them to rehearse those moves.” Lisa shrugged. “And how they knew he was going to be here.”
“You knew,” Lisa pointed out.
And yes, she had. Miriam had looked it up.
“Why did you take my handbag?”
“So you wouldn’t shoot him,” Lisa said. “We all loved Mr. Aartun. He was the best teacher ever. We all miss him.” Lisa put her arms around Marion. “Mr. Aartun died trying to save us. He wouldn’t want you to get in trouble.”
“Yes. You’re right,” Marion sobbing.
“This was a tragic accident,” Lisa whispered. “We’ll all have to work hard to get over it.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eve Fisher’s stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, Mystery Weekly, Crimeucopia, The Bould Awards, and elsewhere. Three of her AHMM publications have been Honorable Mentions in Best American Mystery Stories (2012 and 2023) and Best American Mystery and Suspense 2023. She blogs biweekly at sleuthsayers.org.
DEATH BOOKS A B&B,by Hal Charles
“I can’t believe this is happening,” said a tearful Marge Tucker, the owner of Shadow Creek’s most popular Bed & Breakfast. “Why would anyone want to harm Mr. Cummings?”
As Detective Dani Harlow followed the diminutive woman to a bedroom on the second floor, she said, “Who found the body?”
“I did,” said Marge, gesturing toward a figure sprawled on the floor next to a small desk. “When Mr. Cummings didn’t come down for breakfast this morning, I got a bit concerned. I checked his room and found him like this. I closed the room immediately and haven’t said a word to any other guests.”
“What can you tell me about Mr. Cummings?” said Dani, noticing the wound on the back of his head and a bloody computer tablet lying nearby.
“Not a lot,” said Marge. “He was very private, even a little secretive. He did say he worked for a newspaper up at the state capital and was taking a few days away to focus on an important story. I offered to let him use my desktop in the study, but he declined.”
After a quick check of the body, Dani called the medical examiner’s office. Closing the room, she headed downstairs, where she identified herself to the B&B’s other three guests, who were gathered in the study.
“What’s this all about?” said a portly man who identified himself as Caleb Buckner, a banker from Capital City. “I escape the bank for a few days of trout fishing, and now that I’m ready to head back to the grind, I’m herded into a room and told I have to talk with the local law.”
“Mr. Buckner,” said Dani, “I’m afraid one of your fellow guests has been murdered, and I need to ask the three of you some questions.”
The three individuals looked at each other, then Buckner said incredulously, “Cummings has been murdered?”
“The way he stuffed his face at every meal, it’s a wonder he hasn’t killed himself before now,” said an athletic young woman, looking up from her cellphone. “I tried to get him to go on a run with me, but he was glued to that tablet of his. We should have known something was wrong when he missed breakfast.”
“Ms. Smithson,” said Marge indignantly, “please show some respect. A man is dead.”
“I’m just saying a little less food and a little more exercise,” sniffed the woman, returning to her cellphone.
“I’m not sure you people fully appreciate your situation,” said the detective. “A man’s been murdered, and it looks like one of you did it.”
“You can’t think that one of us could commit such a crime,” said a bearded man seated near a window.
“And you are?” said Dani.
“Professor Peter Remaley, chair of anthropology at Acedia University. I must tell you, Detective, that I don’t appreciate being accused of such a dastardly deed.”
Hearing what was probably the medical examiner’s team at the front door, Dani said, “Once the M.E. determines the time of death, I’ll need each of you to provide your whereabouts at that time.”
“Does this mean that we’re stuck here while you demonstrate your investigative skills?” said Remaley.
“Look at the bright side, Prof,” said Peg Smithson. “Now you have someone besides Cummings to bicker with. We all got a bit bored with your Lincoln-Douglas debates at dinner.”
“But who can you parade those flimsy running outfits in front of now that Cummings is gone?” snapped Remaley. “You just couldn’t stand that he turned down all those invitations to ‘run’ with you.”
“Cummings seemed like a nice enough fellow,” said Buckner, “but you know what they say about one who lives by the sword.”
“They also say that justice will out,” said Dani, reaching for her handcuffs, “and you can take that to the bank.”
SOLUTION
When Buckner alluded to dying by the sword, Dani realized he knew that the journalist had been murdered with a blow from his weaponized computer tablet, a fact that he could know only if he committed the crime. Arrested, the banker confessed that Cummings was writing a story about Buckner’s shady banking practices, and when he refused to kill the story, Buckner killed him.
The Barb Goffman Presents series showcasesthe best in modern mystery and crime stories,
personally selected by one of the most acclaimed
short stories authors and editors in the mystery
field, Barb Goffman, forBlack Cat Weekly.
A WELL-KEPT SECRET,by Michael Mallory
Terri stared at the five numbers on the library computer screen and then glanced back down at her Lotto Fantasy Five ticket. She held the ticket up to the TV screen. She read the numbers out loud. There was no mistake.
They matched. Every one.
She had won $413,000.
For anyone else this might have been the end of any existing or foreseeable problem. But Terri wasn’t anyone else. She was Mrs. Jack Macaulay, and she had the bruises to prove it. The most recent one was two days old, a dull blue ring that encircled her upper arm like a barbed-wire tattoo. It had been earned when she wished aloud that they were able to afford the services of a professional house cleaner. Jack had been in a particularly nasty mood. “You too weak to push a vacuum now?” he had roared, grabbing her arm in a viselike grip and shaking her, then pushing her away so hard she had fallen against a wall.
Terri knew better than to try and fight back, or even complain. She didn’t have the strength for either. She was exhausted from working overtime every chance she got, to try and make up for the loss of income from Jack’s latest firing, plus doing all the housework and cooking.
Her sister Meg had tried to warn her. Meg had married a loser too, and she had seen in Jack all the warning signs that were invisible to Terri. But Terri hadn’t listened. Now she was desperate to get away from her husband, though until this moment, she had lacked the wherewithal. She glanced again at the lotto ticket, and darned if 8, 23, 19, 4,and 36 didn’t spell wherewithal. But even now she could not completely relax enough to feel happiness. What if Jack found out about her winnings? She envisioned him smacking her for spending money on a lottery ticket and then taking the winnings and blowing it all on himself. Four hundred thirteen thousand bucks sounded like an impossible amount to lose simply through being a selfish idiot, but if anyone could do it, it was Jack.
Then again, the only way he would ever find out was if she told him about it. This had to remain her well-kept secret.
She carefully tucked the lotto ticket into a side pocket of her purse and logged off the public computer, making certain that she left no trace of her session. Driving home, she noticed that the gas gauge of her aging Corolla was hovering just above empty, but she didn’t stop at a station. Once home she would call Meg, who had come into a fortune after her husband died. Meg would tell her what to do. And this time, she’d listen.
Back at their rented house, Jack’s pickup truck was nowhere to be seen. Like most days, he’d be hanging out at a bar somewhere; that had become his daily activity after having been let go by his most recent trucking company for drinking on the job. Rushing inside, Terri set down her purse and went straight to the phone, punching in the number for her sister, and waiting through the long, detailed outgoing message. When the beep finally came she said, “Hey, Meg, it’s Terri. We need to talk. Something’s happened, a good thing, and I think I might be able to finally—”
She heard the sound of the front door being pushed open so forcefully it slammed against the wall.
“Oh, god, he’s home,” Terri whispered into the phone. “I’ll call you later.” Jack lurched into the living room, his face redder than usual, and a smear of blood across his dirty, untucked shirt.
“God, Jack, what happened?” Terri asked.
“I had to teach some young asshole at the bar a lesson.”
“You were in a fight?”
“And I won it too. I showed the little prick how to French-kiss the floor.” He dragged the knuckles of his right hand down his shirt, leaving another trail of blood, and then went to the bathroom to wash up.
When he returned to the living room, Jack lurched over to her purse and wrenched it open. Terri turned cold.
“What are you looking for?” she asked.
“Money, what d’you think I’m looking for? I ran out. That prick bartender threw me out too, so I have to go somewhere else. Aha.” He pulled out two twenty-dollar bills.
“Jack, that’s all there is until I get my next paycheck,” she said, fighting back tears of gratitude that he had not discovered the lotto ticket.
“But you’ll get another paycheck. If we run out again, ask for an advance.”
“I can’t do that.”
“I can’t do that,” he mimicked. “What fuckin’ good are you then?”
“Jack, we can’t keep living like this!” she screamed.
Terri had not intended to say it so forcefully. In fact, she had not even intended to say it out loud. Jack spun around and lunged at her, brutally shoving her to the floor. She landed painfully on her hip but didn’t cry out.
“I ought to throw your useless ass in the street,” he growled, and then stormed out of the house.
That was when Terri started sobbing in earnest and did not stop until the phone rang. It was Meg. After blubbering out her problems with Jack, as well as the fact that she had won the lotto, she begged her sister, “Tell me what to do.”
And her sister did.
* * * *
When Jack awoke sometime the next morning, he was on the sofa, still wearing yesterday’s clothes. He couldn’t remember when or how he had gotten home the night before, but lurching toward the window and peering out, he saw his truck in the driveway. It was diagonally parked, but there, so he must have driven while blacked out. He yelled for Terri, but there was no answer.
It must have been one of her work days; he couldn’t remember. What he did remember, vaguely, was throwing her across the room yesterday when she’d talked back.
She wouldn’t talk back to him tonight; that was for damn sure.
But when five o’clock hit, and then six, and Terri had not come back, he began to wonder where the hell she was.
Jesus, had the bitch left him?
That damn sister of hers probably talked her into it. That’s where she’d be too, he’d bet.
He’d go looking for the two of them, and god help them both, but not now. He was hungry, and she wasn’t there to cook his damn dinner. He’d have to go out somewhere. Looking through his wallet, Jack saw he had only six bucks, which wouldn’t even buy shit-and-fries at McDonald’s. He knew Terri always managed to squirrel away a little bit somewhere, but he never found out where she hid it.
It had to be someplace he’d never look.
He started by searching through her drawers in the bedroom but found nothing but underwear, socks, and T-shirts.
She used to look great in a T-shirt, a few years ago.
“Someplace I’d never look,” he muttered to himself. Then he got it.
Jack went to the closet where Terri kept all the cleaning supplies. On one shelf was Windex, a box of something called TSP, a bucket with a dry sponge in it... and behind it was a glass jar that radiated green. Pulling the jar out, Jack discovered it was stuffed with bills.
“Fuckin’ A,” he said, counting out $163.
Going into the bathroom to clean up a bit, Jack took the money—all of it—and headed out.
His first stop was the Outback, where he bought himself a big steak dinner and several drinks. From there he drove to his usual watering hole, the Green Room, but then remembered he’d been tossed out the night before. “Fuck ’im,” he growled, raising his middle finger out the side window of the pickup as he drove past. Jack ended up at a place called Eddie’s Five O’Clock, which looked a little more upscale than he was used to, but he had money now.
Going to the bar, Jack laid down $30 and told the bow-tied bartender to keep the bourbon coming until that ran out. Halfway through his third one, he noticed the woman at the end of the bar. He noticed her because she was already looking at him. She was probably on the downhill side of thirty-five but attractive and stacked like a brick shithouse. She smiled, and he smiled back.
Within a minute, she was sitting on the stool next to him. “Haven’t seen you in here before.”
“That’s ’cause it’s my first time. I usually go to the Green Room.”
“Why not tonight?”
“Long story.”
“You alone?”
“That’s a short story. Fuckin’ wife took off.”
“I had a feeling.”
“You did? How?”
“I observe a lot of men,” the woman said. “It’s my job. I’m a counselor. I know the look. I’ll bet she doesn’t understand you, does she?”
“Do any of them?” Jack asked.
“I do.”
“You do, huh? Well, who are you?”
“My name’s Dr. Laura Strope, and I am a sex counselor. I’m also researching human behavior for a book I’m writing.”
“What the hell’s that mean?” Jack asked.
“I’m talking to a lot of men with relationship issues,” she said. “My contention is that the function of men in society has subtly changed over the past fifty years. Men aren’t allowed to be men anymore.”
“Got that right.”
“Aren’t you going to tell me who you are?”
“Why, so you can put me in your book?”
“I never mention real names.”
“Okay. I’m Jack... Jack Macaulay.”
The bartender came over to tell Jack that he was on his last bourbon of the thirty. Jack pulled his wallet back out and dropped another twenty. Then turning to Dr. Strope, he asked, “You want something?”
“Thank you,” she said, smiling. “I’ll take a Tom Collins.”
She had a great smile.
When the drinks came, Dr. Laura Strope went on. “My mom was one of the original feminists from the 1970s, but she was so unhappy by the time she died. She felt so unfulfilled. She could never admit to herself that she really needed a man in her life. She pushed everyone who tried to get close away. That’s why I went into this line of work, to help people achieve fulfillment. Tell me about your wife, Jack?”
Jack knocked back the shot. “Always bitching, always complaining, has no idea what I’m going through. I’m the best goddamned trucker on the road, but every asshole I work for gives me shit, so I end up having to quit.”
Or get fired. But he wasn’t going to tell her that.
“Mind if I ask a personal question?”
He grinned. “Eight inches.”
“Not that personal,” she replied. “Not yet, at least. Do you and your wife still have sex?”
“Only when I demand it.”
“Have you ever stepped outside of your marriage?”
“I kind of have to, don’t I? I’m a fuckin’ man.”
After several more shots, Jack seemed primed to prove his point, and Laura Strope didn’t object. Finally, she whispered in his ear, “In all my counseling, I’ve never met someone like you. There’s a motel down the street. Want to go see what kind of cable they offer?” Picking up her purse, she walked to the door.
Staggering out behind her and watching her get into a silver Lexus, Jack followed her in his pickup to the Girard Motel, which wasn’t the worst he had seen, but it was nothing special either. To his surprise, she paid for the room. Once inside, she said, “Let me go clean up a little. Make yourself comfortable.”
Taking her up on her offer, Jack stripped down to nothing and then crawled under the sheets of the king-sized bed. Despite the amount of liquor he’d consumed, he was already getting hard.
* * * *
Laura came out of the bathroom a minute later, wearing nothing but her bra and panties, which she stripped off in front of him.
“Get in the sack, bitch,” Jack moaned.
“You’re very direct, like a real man,” she said, sliding under the covers beside him. Then she reached down to her crotch. When her hand emerged from the covers, it was holding a condom, inside of which was a syringe.
“What... where the hell’d that come from?” Jack demanded.
“You really don’t want to know,” she said, smiling.
Climbing on top of him, she rubbed her ample breasts up and down his chest to distract him as she removed the syringe from its rubber wrapper and quickly uncapped the needle with her teeth. Then she stuck it into his arm and depressed the plunger.
“Hey!” Jack shouted, but within the next few seconds he became dopey... really dopey.
Leaping out of the bed, Dr. Laura Strope put her underwear back on and then barked, “Get up! Get dressed!”
As planned, Jack was unable to object. He rolled out of the bed and got dressed. “Wha... did... you... give... me... ?” he moaned.
“A highly concentrated form of ketamine, if you must know. It’s illegal in this country. I get mine from a friend in Russia. Now shut up, sit on the bed, and wait for me.”
Rushing back to the bathroom, she quickly dressed, flushed the condom, put the spent syringe in her pocket, pulled on gloves, and went back out to the room. “Okay, get up and give me your keys.”
Jack did.
“Let’s go.”
She half supported him to his pickup truck and helped him into the passenger seat. Then she got behind the wheel and drove off.
After a mile or two, she came to a dark pull-off and maneuvered the truck off the road. Once they were stopped, she turned off the ignition and all the lights. “Can I have your wallet?” she asked seductively.
“Yeah,” Jack answered, laboring to pull his wallet out of his hip pocket. Once it was out, he handed it to her. “How ’bout a blow job?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said. “Pull yourself over here first, Mr. Trucker. I’ll move to the shotgun seat. More room to operate that way.”
Laura got out of the truck and walked around to the other side, while Jack slid over behind the wheel. When she got inside, he reached for his zipper.
“Wait,” she said. “Before you do that, I have a better idea. Instead of blowing you down there, how ’bout I blow your brains out?”
The woman who called herself Dr. Laura Strope pulled a ghost gun out of her purse and proceeded to do just that.
After putting the gun back in her purse, she took the truck keys and got out, tossing them as far into the darkness as she could. Then she dug out her cell phone and punched in a number. “Come pick me up,” she said. “Yes, it’s been a long night. I had to follow the bastard from his house to a restaurant, then to a bar.” After describing her location, she hung up and waited for her ride.
* * * *
By the time Terri received her winnings two months later, she was back to being Theresa Cabot, her maiden name. Even with the shark bite that had been taken out of the balance from taxes, and minus the $25,000 she had to repay Meg, who had loaned her the money to take out the contract on Jack, she was still left with more wealth than she’d ever dreamed possible.
Officially Jack’s murder remained unsolved but was thought by the police to have been committed by a transient hitchhiker. One look at her lingering bruises after she had been notified about his death had encouraged the authorities to not break their backs finding the killer.
Theresa had moved out of their former residence and taken a small apartment closer to her job. In time she planned to quit her job altogether.“I’ve put a little extra in there for you,” she told Meg, handing over the check for the last installment of the reimbursement. She did not want to put the entire amount on one check, just in case. “Think of it as interest.”
“Oh, that’s not necessary,” her sister said. “Believe me, I’m glad I could help. And I got a new chardonnay I think you’ll like. Let me pour you a glass.”
The wine was excellent and expensive, but Meg could afford it. The life insurance policy on her rotten husband, who had also been removed by Dr. Strope, had been worth more than a million.
“If only I’d listened to you six years ago, none of this would have had to happen,” Theresa said.
“Don’t think about the past,” Meg replied.
“How did you find the good doctor anyway?”
“When I finally got my craw full of Manny sleeping with every woman he saw and racking up gambling debts, I joined this support group for the spouses of horse’s asses. You know how it is, I was convinced it was somehow my fault, which was total BS. The group proved to be a bust, but I made a friend through it, someone I kept in contact with. She’s the one who turned me on to Laura. She accepts only jerk-extermination jobs because she apparently survived a bad experience of her own.”
“It’s too bad her services are such a well-kept secret. If she could advertise she’d be turning down work.”
“Here’s to turning down work,” Meg said, and the two clinked glasses.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Mallory is the author of the “Amelia Watson” and “Dave Beauchamp” mystery series and four stand-alone novels, the most recent of which is The Ambulance. He has also written some 160 short stories, eleven nonfiction books on pop culture, and more than 600 newspaper and magazine articles. A former actor, Mike lives and works in Los Angeles.
CALENDAR GIRL,by Tony Rothman
I perceive you now, beginning of high and turbulent days!
—Aleksandr Blok, 1908
Chapter I.
Two nights before he vanished for the last time, he recounted how he had been a Mongol lord, defeated in battle by Ivan the Terrible with the aid of a miraculous, wonder-working icon, and twelve-hundred cannon. Friends never knew quite what to make of such tales, drenched as they were in the colors of both scholarship and lunacy, and this one was no exception. When he told it in all seriousness at a table surrounded by guests and laden with port wine, they failed to interpret it as symbolic. Instead they assumed a shard of his latest reading had turned up in a nightmare, and to the awkward clearing of throats and scraping of chairs they slowly rose to their feet and said good-night. Only weeks later, after they found the package and the will, did rumors begin to circulate that there might have been more to it. His last words, at the door, were: “Now I’ve told you the story. But be warned, if you steal if from us, time shall steal it from you.”
Yet, he had never completed his story. He’d spun it in pieces from one month to the next beginning on a rainy evening that marked his final return from Russia, and in its telling he became lost. After a year of maddening retracings and digressions, not only did the ending remain missing, but crucial episodes, reactions, thoughts. Sometimes, as if ambushed by amnesia, an event would vanish from one episode, only to surface again in the next one, transfigured. There was always the girl.
The patchwork nature of his account made me hesitant to pass it on, and now it is too late. The rush of history has already consigned the two of them to an epoch deemed transitory and irrelevant. By the time I choose to tell the story the age will no longer exist.
There. Gone. I often imagine them, somewhere, protesting with outstretched arms the slipping of invincible events from the world’s memory. At odd moments I see them looking on emotions that have begun to fade and marveling at their earlier actions, which once appeared untarnished. I hear the story growing in their own retellings and then withering, until they themselves doubt it ever took place. Inevitably, if a pen were to trace them from life onto paper, they would be shorn of dimension. It is wisest to grant them the immortality of the unrecorded. As he had warned, “If you steal this story from us, time shall steal it from you.” Time has stolen it from me.
* * * *
Three years and six months after he vanished once and for all, I contemplated the contents of the package, now hanging silently before me on a gallery wall. His will had stipulated three years, and then the icon, centuries old, had been turned over to the museum with the rest of his collection.
“Iconography is an acquired taste, like coffee,” he would argue in the old days. His fascination with these religious paintings had always escaped his friends. To the careless eye, one icon is barely distinguishable from the next. You look and see an old wooden board covered by the stiff figures of saints, lacking all perspective. The paint, once whole, iridescent, is often faded and chipped, so eroded that the figures are incomplete and even impossible to discern. The arms, severed from their owners, seem to reach out from an age that could never have existed.
Before my thoughts, falling weightlessly, could strike the gallery floor they were intercepted by an auburn beauty whose smile told me she was some years younger than myself. “Do you really find icons interesting?” she asked, the slyness of her voice exposing her for a provocateur. “They are so flat.”
“Icons are meant to be a window between this world and the next. A window you are forbidden to step through. They seem flat because they are painted from the point at which all lines converge from the one world and diverge into the other.”
“You read that in a book,” she replied, in the same half-mocking, half-playful tone.
“A friend told me once. The icon belonged to him.”
She asked how he got it. “I think it is very rare.” I gave her the only answer I could, that I wasn’t entirely sure; the fable had missing pieces. She shrugged. “I’m sure we can fill in the gaps.” But her remark only increased my reluctance.
“It is a story of days gone by. It wouldn’t interest you.”
“Oh, but it would. All stories are of days gone by.” And, she added, it was cold out, bitterly cold.
Chapter II.
We began our stroll. After his final trip to Russia, I told her, he appeared dramatically one night for dinner, like H.G. Wells’ Time Traveler. He’d come directly from the airport, in street clothes, but had no previous reputation for drama. When we caught sight of his pale face, streaked with more than the usual rigors of travel and rain, we all jumped to our feet and asked if he was all right. He waved us down. “Yes, yes, I’m fine…” he said in a way that left every room for doubt, “but Petersburg…”
He fell silent. Those gathered around the table waited for the next word to fall, certain that when it came we would not know what to make of it. You see, this was far from our first gathering. For years friends had met at his place on the first Friday of every month. At the stroke of eight he would appear at the head of the stairs wearing a dinner jacket and announce with gusto, “Ladies, gentlemen, be seated.” Before long the sparkle of the glasses would go to everyone’s head. Once, without prompting, he recounted the story of a woman who upon her divorce had lost her Moscow residency permit and was threatened with deportation to Central Asia. Not long afterwards, while crossing a busy street, she collapsed in an apparent nervous breakdown. The ruse succeeded and the authorities committed her to a mental hospital until the case could be resolved. During her hallucinations he sat at her bedside and as a token of thanks she offered him an icon. He refused it as too valuable but, some time later, it mysteriously turned up in a museum. He often claimed he never collected souvenirs but that they followed him. Whether that particular icon followed him Westward he never said, but enough souvenirs had tracked him down that he had become the victim of a valuable collection.
An early acquisition hung before us. My gallery companion examined the piece and slowly passed her hand over it, a fraction of an inch away. It seemed in this way she could sense the rage of the angels who cast down the serpent, setting a seal upon him, the radiance of Christ enthroned and the heat of Satan’s impatience for the liberty awaiting him. “‘The Last Judgement,’” she pronounced. “A popular subject for icons. Your friend had an affinity for Russia?”
“A sickness.”
It was fated from the day of his birth. He’d actually been born in Paris, the grandson of aristocratic emigres, but raised in America from an early age. As he sometimes demonstrated, his parents grew up speaking the archaic Russian of imperial Petersburg with its obsessively trilled “r’s” and an exaggerated distinction between sibilants. Well-meaning if not prescient, they had passed on to him two tarnished gifts. The first was their homegrown Russian. “By adolescence I spoke it fluently, but so many Americanisms and grammatical impossibilities passed my lips that my parents, in corrective desperation, enrolled me in special classes. Emigre children often fall between languages.” As clear as it was to those who knew him, he could never acknowledge the other tarnished gift, which was a secondhand nostalgia for a world which never existed. Along with noblesse oblige went a certain misguided romanticism: convinced women found chivalry attractive, he cultivated the art of opening doors and speaking in complete, if sometimes stodgy sentences. “You don’t think women find chivalry attractive?” my new-found museum companion suddenly asked me. I demurred. But we all knew how on suitable occasions he bowed, with a flourish, and he could dazzle a crowd with a Viennese waltz. When asked what women saw as his best feature he would reply, “My moustache,” but it may have been his unvarying insistence on paying for dinner.
It surprised no one when he began to search for his roots. By the time Russia began to open up, he was already an old hand and, wisely everyone thought, he decided to profit from experience. Within a few years he had joined an important investment firm and became a “facilitator of joint ventures.” In this way he could make money by spending the money of people richer than himself. “It is a good way to make money,” my companion agreed.
* * * *
And so, as the final autumn of the Soviet Union turned dreary but before winter arrived, he set off on the latest journey to his imagined homeland and shortly thereafter stepped onto the cobblestones of Moscow’s Arbat. Things had changed. Most puzzling was the light. Russian light, he always maintained, was heavier than Western light. “It must have been the gravity. I knew the seasons and the position of the sun and there was no question that the day was an hour further along than it should have been.” He recounted this observation moments after his dramatic entrance, when he had fallen silent and inflamed our anticipations. “It seemed as if the sky was falling, ahead of schedule.”
The lines of stalls covered by chessmen and imitation Palekh lacquer were longer than in the past and the sunlight, chained, failed to set them ablaze with color. He was not entirely surprised by the higher prices—four hundred rubles for a bottle of vodka that just five years earlier would have cost ten. He spoke of the sadness the alley walls instilled in him: The nudes with hyperbolic breasts, whose adoration was often directed at a fluorescent heavenly cross, were by then a permanent fixture of the landscape. His eyes inadvertently riveted to the nearest, all tony pink and red, he knew that this penitent girl was not the offspring of Mary Magdalene but of Conan the Barbarian.
He searched for soul. A few years before he had strolled down the Arbat, peering over the shoulders of street artists and mingling with racous crowds as they taunted would-be poets. Those were the days, “fucking perestroika.” Even then he’d sensed absence. He had listened to a swing band belt out “Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy” through trumpet bells dripping with frost and apple pie. “It was more America than America.” On the final trip, the artists and musicians remained. Poets declaimed. The same band, or a perfect replica, blared out “Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy.” One or two people sat for charcoal portraits. A lone figure read verses tacked to the wall.
“I believe now I was looking for my fears to be confirmed. A few blocks down I slid my hand under the flaps of a fur hat and—a fake; the ears could not be undone and taken down. ‘Monsieur,’ I said, losing my temper, ‘if you want customers to return, do you sell them fakes? Is this your idea of capitalism? Swindle the customer?’ The fellow merely shrugged and ground a cigarette butt into the slush.”
* * * *
That was all he told us the first night after his return, before excusing himself as too exhausted to continue. “It is strange,” he remarked, taking his leave, “how difficult it is to remember fresh-fallen events.” That was Friday. On Monday he abruptly quit his job but at our next monthly dinner he refused to explain why, saying only, “I will never go back again.” Instead, he picked up the tale where he’d left off. Ten years earlier, he maintained angrily, no one would have made hats without ears to save a bit of fur, and that this was just another example of civilization’s continued decline. On the Arbat he faced a wall decked out with red silk flags whose gold trim vainly attempted to burst with hoarded light. Hail Communism! Follow the Banner of Marx, Engels and Lenin! The last sale, he knew, had arrived but he was unmoved to buy a banner.
He heard it first. The vendor’s cry, “The photos are Finnish, but the girls are ours!” brought his eyes around. Then he saw it, a pin-up calendar of large size, and moved closer. Even as the skies descended its high quality gloss and stock were apparent. “From the first I felt revolted.” He later acknowledged the cover girl’s beauty and flawless skin and that he was struck by her auburn hair. “Nevertheless…” She did not pose nude or in a swimsuit, nor did she recline cat-like against the hood of an automobile, holding outstretched on her delicate palm a quart of engine fluid. Instead, the producers had dressed her in a suit of chain mail, slightly parted at the breasts; the links from her helmet cascaded with her hair across mailed shoulders; embossed arm guards protected her wrists; she grasped a sword between her hands with a rigidity that showed she had never touched one, and she stared off into a dawn illuminated by the rosy glow of a photographer’s lamp.
So it was with the others. Miss January-February, draped in a suit of mail as suitable for a beach as a battlefield, held a shield in one hand and a sword in the other, and sensuously curled her lips. “A sane man would have fled.” Miss March-April wore the same costume as the cover girl, the same crescent sword, the same princely arm guards, the same iron cross. A smile flickered fugitively across his lips; props were still in short supply. The shock of the unearthly piece of work that accompanied May and June faded slowly: Her prominent breasts parted a halter of mail; she wore nothing more but a steel necklace and a bikini bottom, also forged of mail. She sat with one leg provocatively crooked at the knee, a laminated bow resting by her side and a morgenstern twined casually around her wrist. She stared ferociously at the camera with arched eyebrows and parted lips rouged to the shade of steel. Conan’s bride. If absurdity reached new heights in May and June, it suffered little during the remaining months. The entire production was an advertisement for Sovexportfilm. “In Cinema Everything Must Be Authentic!” They said.
Months after his return he was still trying to explain to me his reaction to the calendar. There was the initial revulsion, a sense of history perverted. But when history has ended, I rejoined, there is no sense and all perversion is possible. We would argue the point over cognac late into the night. To hell with what the world thought. For him history had not ended, despite the universal sensation that the breathtaking events of 1989 had rendered all previous years obsolete, and he could not stand to see it debased so. “This is of course Hollywood’s influence,” we agreed.
He felt no arousal, no erotic attraction. When he compared the female warriors before him to women who had captured his sexual imagination in the past, he experienced only an inexplicable arctic shudder pass over him from the pages of the calendar he was slowly flipping on the Arbat. The answer, he suspected, was simple and crude: he did not find women in armor attractive. “There isn’t much skin.” Most of all, each time he glanced upwards he saw the word “bizarre” written across the sky. Whoever had created the calendar was an alien intelligence. “This disturbed me. As you know, I thought of myself as a native.”
Abruptly, he paid the man $5, rolled up the calendar and tucked it under his arm. On the way back to his hotel he passed the monument to the three men who had been killed during the infamous August coup attempt. Above the murmurings of onlookers and two angels, workmen replaced the wooden cross, which had been broken overnight. At the hotel entrance he and the doorman exchanged smiles but he crossed the lobby without pausing. Its recent magnificence made him uncomfortable. Years earlier he would meet friends or strangers in the mud-streaked foyer and they would depart for evenings of adventure and carousal. Or he would wander down to the bar and be certain of a romantic interlude. Neither the bar nor the old foyer existed now. “My memory is destroyed,” he said and brushed away a raindrop.
Of that night he revealed only how for frozen moments he sat in his room with the calendar on his lap, powerless after it had followed him home. The pages fell heavily backward after he had run his finger over the outline of each model, tracing the helmet, the folds of the mail, the line of the chin, the suggestion of breast, in each case hoping through touch to elicit the secret of the mind who had so corroded beauty and history. It was always so; if the earless fur hats did not prove it, the calendar did. The golden age was followed by the silver, which was perhaps after all a more realistic age in which to live, then by the bronze, until the present, the age of rust. Nevertheless, he found his gaze lingering over the cover girl who, with her classic dignity and tasteful pose, radiated an undeniable if static beauty. The others continued to repel him. “Surrounded by wolves.” No, the judgement was disproportionate. Miss March-April, in the cover girl’s mail, was not so seamless, but she made up for her imperfections with a sly smile, a twinkle in her eye and a lithe hand that slipped enticingly along the sword blade.
My gallery companion paused before “St. George Slaying the Dragon,” one of the most popular of icon subjects, and unexpectedly asked me how I felt about girls in armor. “I saw the calendar only once before he burned it,” I answered, “but I must agree with him. It was surrounded by an aura of perversity.”
“I see,” she said, smiling. It seemed to me that she was about to add a thought but chose instead to remain silent.
During the second dinner after his return he launched into a long digression about how, in the old days, armies carried the most sacred icons into battle at the head of their forces, rendering themselves invincible. Those wonder-working icons were “not created by hand” but painted by the lord Christ himself and one, the Vladimir Mother of God, was responsible for a host of great victories against the Tatars, the Poles, the Turks and Napoleon. The thought of an icon “not created by hand,” but coming into existence in a flash of light and working miracles down the centuries appealed to him. “Unfortunately, to protect us from ourselves requires greater powers.”
Before seeing his guests to the door, he recalled that the flipping ended each time at a phone number. In an act of supreme innocence, Sovexportfilm had published it. Their fantasy was easily divined: A western producer, who just happened to be in Moscow, would catch sight of the Russian warrior princesses and in the heat of passion set the blacksmiths’ authentic hammers pounding.
Chapter III.
His final disappearance stunned those who knew him, for he’d given no hint of his intentions. Of equal concern was that by vanishing he decapitated his own story. The last time anyone saw him was eight months after that rainy night with his dramatic entrance and hollow declaration, “Yes, I’m fine…but Petersburg…” Friends had gathered as usual to exchange tales and hear bits and pieces of his. Yet, when he saw guests to the door with his cryptic prophesy, “Now I’ve told you the story. But be warned, if you steal it from me, time shall steal it from you,” he had yet to mention the northern capital. The final episode had broken off inconclusively in a dacha. “It is strange,” he once remarked early on, “how difficult it is to remember fresh-fallen events. I indict the alcohol more than the passage of time. Circumstances had finally overwhelmed us.” Two days after the final supper he was to have met a friend for lunch but never appeared.
Those of us left behind could find no ironclad reason for the precipitous action. Some assumed he had gone back to Russia, yet only days after his return he had quit his job, declaring “Enough heartbreak,” and had set about trying to find a venture divorced from the East. Some speculated on the worst, that he had taken his own life. The possibility seemed remote, for his was by then a businessman’s personality with embellishments, not given to the deep fits of brooding of his ancestors. He rarely accepted the axiom that “to be a Russian one can be happy only when one is miserable.” There was, always, the girl visible only though the alcoholic haze, but the affair had somehow ended nearly a year earlier, and he was enough of a realist to know the past was past. The will was of no help whatsoever. We found it in his study five days after the last supper. It merely instructed the executors that if he hadn’t reappeared in three years, then his collection should be turned over to the local museum.
“And here,” my gallery companion sighed, “we are.”
To argue was impossible. She asked to see the icon again and we retraced our steps. It was a faded painting of the apostles Peter and Paul. I could find nothing remarkable about the stark portraits, nothing to distinguish it from the other pieces in his collection, but at the same time, as my companion silently examined the work I could not help but be struck by her beauty. “The piece is so decrepit,” I remarked, “I don’t know why he bothered.”
