Agnes Among the Gargoyles (34 page)

   Then the next letter arrived.\

Hi!

   Sorry I haven't written, but shopping for Mother's Day has kept me pretty busy. You can imagine the spread I put out for that! I strap on the facial skin and tits of my dead mother and parade around the house singing the score of
Oklahoma!

   Nah. Nothing so weird. I hate show tunes.

   Away we go.

   Two more, or maybe three if you count the fetus. Sorry the job was sloppy, but time was tight in that lift. What I really fancied doing was...never mind. Next time.

   Here's a funny story. I wasn't planning to kill anybody, but a chance comment put me in the mood. I was riding on the subway when I overheard a couple discussing my eksploits. The guy was a real douchebag. He had it all figured out. He thought I was killing off the Muses. Only in New York, right? So far I had tagged Melpomene (muse of tragedy: the actress), Clio (muse of history: the caretaker), and Euterpe (muse of lyric poetry: the singer). It turned out that this guy was actually in a Minotaur pool, and his smug and greasy confidence that he would win ticked me off to no end. So I decided that he would lose. The nurse doesn't fit in at all, unless there's a muse of high colonics. Who knows about the old lady.

   So, to that shit-for-brains on the subway (and you know who you are) this is all your fault. LET THOSE LAST TWO DEATHS BE ON YOUR HEAD, WISE GUY!!!

   Take me more seriously, asshole. And watch what you say. You never know who's listening.

   Fuck you all.

   Sorry. Rotten mood today.

   Regards,

M

   The
Graphic
ran the letter on the front page. A typography expert said that the Minotaur's typewriter was a portable electric model at least ten years old. He drew attention to the specific letters that were the machine's "fingerprint": the bleeding a's and o's, the distressed d's, the broken w.

   After the funeral and the trip to the cemetery, Agnes attends a small reception for the St. Basil's staff and Miss Lenihan's family at Father Clarence's suite at the Waldorf. Father Chris, more gaunt and ravaged-looking than ever, tells Agnes that he likes his new apartment.

   He absently fingers a long scar on the back of his hand. He notices Agnes's looking at it.

   "I put my hand through a window," he explains. "Fourteen stitches, and I never got all the feeling back."

   "Fight scene?"

   "No, this was long after I left Hollywood. In fact, it was a stained glass window."

   He pulls the sleeve of his cassock over his hand. "There was a time when I was ruled by my temper."

   Another teacher joins them, and asks Father Chris about a theology seminar he is attending. Father Chris, thankful for the change in subject, talks about a paper he is writing on biblical textual analysis. The subject of his papers is the various presentations of harlotry in the Gospel of John, the three Synoptics, and certain works of the Apocrypha, notably the Protoevangelium of James (which tells of an encounter between the school-aged Blessed Virgin and a prostitute leper) and the Gospel According to the Egyptians (a virtual how-to for the aspiring whore, including descriptions of appropriate clothing and herbal birth control formulas.)

   Jo Bailey must be removed. She is drunk. Father Clarence is giving her the fish-eye, but she is oblivious. She could lose her job. The stories she tells about Miss Lenihan are coming out all wrong. "...and I think she was trying to tell me that she was still a virgin. Which was great! You really had to respect her. She was a cold woman, but impressive...."

   Agnes hustles her out and takes her back to Washington Heights.

   Jo is dressed and reading the paper when Agnes gets up the next morning. Jo is bright and chipper, and says nothing about the previous night. She follows Agnes into her bedroom. She looks at the pictures on Agnes's bulletin board.

   "Is that your friend Barbara?" Jo asks, pointing to a photograph.

   "Yes."

   Jo taps the picture with her index finger. "I've seen her. She was coming out of St. Basil's School late one night. She stopped to button this long, red coat she was wearing."

   Agnes looks at Jo. "She bought that coat at Saks. She paid a fortune for it. When was this?"

   Jo thinks. "February, maybe."

   Right before Barbara's death. Right before the advent of the Minotaur.

   "Are you sure?" says Agnes.

   "Of course I'm sure," Jo snaps. "I mean, there she was. I took a long look at her."

   Jo sits down on Agnes's bed. Agnes stares at the photograph for a long time.

"You can't bring her back, you know," says Jo. Agnes barely hears her.

"I wonder what she was doing there?"

   "Interviewing, maybe," says Jo. "That was around the time they were looking at outside directors."

In the new Palace of Versailles diner on West 50th Street, Agnes orders a plain omelets. Ivan has a turkey and bacon club, but the sandwich is only a framework for a free-form construct: his side of the table is cluttered with side orders of bacon and lettuce, additional toast, a saucer of mayonnaise.

   Ivan is in a self-pitying mood. For the love of Sarah Wegeman he has worked at the Feeney Sisters' Outreach. "They work you like a slave. Two minutes after I walked in the door I was ladling stew into bowls. The only nice thing anyone said to me was that I had a good eye for portions. I didn't give out too much."

   He burps and sighs and burps.

   "I made shit-sure I got my button," he says. He lifts his collar to show Agnes. The button reads VOLUNTEER—FEENEY SISTERS OUTREACH. "That's my proof. That's my broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West."

   He pounces on his cole slaw, which has somehow escaped his notice.

   For dessert, Agnes has a piece of strawberry shortcake as tall as a drum major's shako.

   "You're getting fat," Ivan observes.

   "It's your imagination."

   "And it's all in your belly too," says Ivan, wincing. "A fat ass is cute, but you're getting a spare tire."

   Ivan and Agnes walk to Wayne Torrence's stomping ground. Sarah is filming tonight. Ivan, looking to score points with Sarah, has persuaded the Feeney Outreach to bring its roving soup kitchen (a reconditioned ice cream truck) over to 45th Street.

   They find Wayne in a doorway. He wears a bathrobe and fez. He is flanked by two smudge pots of incense.

   "How are you feeling?" Agnes asks him.

   "Much better."

   He had been ill. He had a gallium scan and a bronchoscopy done. His symptoms suggested a fungal infection, possibly cryptococcal meningitis. "When they started talking about giving me Fluconazole, I freaked."

   "What did you do?"

   He lifts one eyebrow. "I listened to the stringless lute. Five days of meditation. I found a spot on the Staten Island Ferry. Now I'm right as rain."

   Ivan grabs a bullhorn from the soup truck and directs the homeless to line up. "No pushing or shoving, please,," he says, smiling for Sarah's camera. "No coughing on each other, either. And no stepping on anyone's imaginary companions."

   Ivan sidles up to Agnes. "Did you notice how Sarah is looking at me? She's eating this shit up. She thinks I'm fantastic."

   Bob Syker shows up, as Agnes knew he would. He looks a wreck.

   "I'm still on Zurich time," he explains. "Wayne, guess what? In my hotel I think I heard the first faint stirrings of
cincin nadam."

   A homeless man wearing a woman's T-shirt and mismatched cowboy boots shambles by. Syker greets him warmly. "Hiya Tex."

   "Hi Bobby. I didn't see you."

   "You're here a lot, I see," Agnes says to Syker.

   Syker takes a seat on a nearby crate. He assumes the lotus position. He meditates for only a minute or so before his driver summons him to the telephone. He shakes his fist at the heavens but takes the call, and afterward asks for a word with Agnes in his limo.

   Agnes sinks into the plush seat. Sitar music plays softly. Syker stands a lit cone of incense in the ashtray.

   "Every Tuesday, for longer than I care to remember, I have had lunch with my mother," he says. "The main topic of conversation at these lunches is why I'm not married yet."

   "Sounds cheery."

   "There are limits to my mother's boorishness, and she lays off that kind of talk if I bring a date. Would you do me the honor?"

   "I am seeing somebody," says Agnes coyly.

   "All I need is a female body," says Syker with great ennui. "You can pick the restaurant."

   Agnes has a weakness for the sort of good food that she can't afford. "Can we go to Emerzian?" she asks, naming the hottest restaurant in town.

   "Done."

   Syker returns to his crate. Agnes joins Sarah, who is examining a boil-like eruption on Wayne's neck that he says is KS. Sarah directs Wu Heung to come in for a few close-ups.

   An old man is coughing. For a long time no one notices, until the coughing turns into violent retching, and the man grabs his throat. A hush falls over the homeless. The man staggers backward.

   The man is not as old as he seems, but he is the lowest of the low. He has no teeth, and a brushy beard—he looks like the cook in an old wagon train movie. His hair has fallen out in tufts; those hairless patches are covered with scabs. His nose is a sculpture of snot and he reeks to high heaven. He embodies decay.

   "What's the matter with him?" says Sarah with irritation.

   "I think he's choking," someone answers.

   The man's eyes roll in his head. He is a fine shade of blue.

   Sarah kneels at his side.

   Ivan hands away his bullhorn. He grabs the man by the shoulders and pulls him to his feet. He encircles the waist of the slumping form and administers the Heimlich maneuver. On the third plunge of his fists what look like a whole chicken wing hurtles out of the man's mouth like a tiny boomerang.

   Ivan lays the man down. He isn't breathing.

   There is a collective gasp of revulsion as Ivan puts his ear to the chest of this mound of rotting flesh. Ivan feels for a carotid pulse. He sticks his finger in the man's mouth (the crowd sucks in its breath and winces) and works it around to make sure the breathing passages are clear. When he removes his finger it is brown.

   Agnes gags.

   Ivan administers CPR. Agnes imagines she sees a cloud of head lice fleeing the prostrate form in panic. When Ivan presses his lips to the old man's, Agnes gets the dry heaves. She isn't alone. Many other onlookers are similarly afflicted— doubled over, shoulders shaking. It looks like a new dance craze.

   Sarah watches Ivan. She looks as though someone has punched her.

   The chest heaves with breath. The man lives.

   The fickle crowd cheers. Ivan sits back and wipes his mouth.

   Agnes is at Ivan's side. "Are you all right?"

   He nods dazedly. "I was getting into it. I started to tongue him."

   "Don't make me vomit," says Agnes unsteadily. "God, that was brave! We've got to get you to a hospital."

   "What for?"

   "God knows what the old man has."

   That makes sense to Ivan. "I didn't even think."

   "I hate people like you," says Agnes.

   "Yeah?"

   "I hate people who do the right thing without even thinking."

   Sarah is abashed. "Ivan, that was amazing."

   "Thank you."

   "If he'd waited for me to help him he'd be dead."

   "I just beat you to it."

   "I froze," says Sarah. "I choked."

   "Don't take this the wrong way," Agnes says to Ivan, "but you don't strike me as someone who would know CPR."

   "I didn't set out to learn it, but when I was following Sarah around Clavelle, I used to watch her in her lifesaving class."

   Sarah blanches. "You did?"

   "The janitor's office was right next to the girls' gym. He had a peephole behind his calendar. What a sicko! Anyway, when they taught you CPR, I guess I just picked it up."

   Wayne comes over. He has been to the food truck. He artfully balances a hunk of bread, a bowl of chicken stew, a cup of water and a dish of sliced peaches. Agnes compliments his agility.

   "I've been to lots of cocktail parties," he says.

   Just then Syker, who has not stirred through all the excitement, lets out a joyous whoop.

   "I've got it!" he cries, looking to heaven pathetically. "I'm there!
Cincin
nadam! Cincin nadam!"

   Syker is in a fever of spiritual delirium. He looks like he might fall off the crate, which isn't all that steady anyway, sitting as it is on one of those ventilation gratings in the sidewalk. Hot air shoots upward, blowing Syker's hair back, as the subway roars beneath him.

   "Cincin
nadam,"
says Syker.

   "The A train," says Agnes.

"An unfortunate business," says Father Clarence.

   Agnes and Tommy sit with the priest in his office in the St. Basil School. The office is small, and cluttered with school junk: gym equipment and band uniforms and musical instruments and Braille textbooks. Over the priest's head is a sheet of parchment in a frame. It reads:

                ALWAYS REMEMBER THAT OUR STUDENTS ARE:

                TEENAGERS

                SCHOLARS