2— DECEMBER 16, MONDAY MORNING
Leopards break into the temple and drink to the dregs what was in the sacrificial pitchers; this is repeated over and over again; finally it can be calculated in advance, and becomes a part of the ceremony. — Franz Kafka
At this time of the morning the sun slung its own butter into the pan on the stove, a perfect wedge of yellow light. So much the pity that he didn’t cook for breakfast, a necessary exercise in the slimming routine. The only exercise, really. The solitary concession he was willing to grant, the single pleasure he’d forfeit in this ism for everlasting earthly life. If he ate whole-grained cereal every morning, he reasoned — no, not reason, but believed — he could eat whatever he wanted the rest of the day. It was the matins fiber ablution. The rolled oats rosary to his colon. Blessed poverty of bran. Granola nut virtue.
Stop.
He was sounding sour.
There’s nothing worse than a sour fat man.
Makes you lose your appetite.
Don Irwine stepped out through his front door with a mug of coffee in hand. The sun that spread itself over his stove was also lying on the car park. Irwine would let the light lie on top of him for a minute or two — it got his juices going, although sometimes it made him want to go back to bed. And why not? There wasn’t anything for him to do that wasn’t invented by the staff. They’d only miss him the way you’d miss one guy of many who was supposed to show up and assemble a widget that no one wanted.
Irwine pushed his butt into a plastic deck chair and stuck his feet into the spongy stuff they called grass. He closed his eyes.
What did it matter?
The light under his lids went from white to red, then yellow.
It was almost too much to bear, the matter without meaning.
He reached over blind and pinched off a tiny leaf of lemon thyme growing in a pot, crushing it between his fingers. He inhaled.
Lemon and coffee, lemon and cream. Lemon thyme was nice in eggs too, sautéed quickly in butter. Butter. Butter cookies were scrumptious with morning coffee and sunshine. Sweet, sweet butter cookies with, yes, lemon thyme.
The recipe was simple and he was a simple man.
Not a sour man.
He was a fat man with cool fat fingers like his mother’s. Sugar and the flours of wheat and almond in a bowl, sifted with a fork, then the butter sliced off against its wrapping, not too thin for the key was in the cool. Cool butter, quick cool fingertips dipping and drawing and pressing. A marriage of moist to dry.
The lemon thyme — only a teaspoonful — must be finely chopped — minced is the word — then crushed beneath the blade’s white edge to bring the flavor; the flavor that is a trick of scent.
Irwine put the cookies in a single layer on a blue plate and covered them with a napkin. No buts, taking them to the library was just a gloss on the original pecadillo. And the patrons were no doubt as numb in the tongue as they were in the eyes and ears, and the fingertips too. The sensory input shut out in their ancient age, like a long shadow at sundown.
Or did all the rubbing make a callous in the end — is that what happens?
Does it matter?
Yes. It must. It must matter.
Surely there’s a reason why a woman like Maggie Doyle has a finger that looks like kindling when she extends it to press the auto-open button on the left side of the door. Now, as she thrusts herself into the library, her fingers are knotted to the handlebars of her walker. She hesitates, her magnified milky gray eyeballs agape, and she pats at her hair with those fingers like roots, like sticks, her magnificent shining white hair.
“Good morning, Mister Irwine,” she says with a slight drawl, a vanity of her sense of education. “I’ve brought you two new patrons, Mister and Missus Hanlay of Cleveland, Ohio...”
Irwine squinted through the tinted glass of the automatic door. It didn’t look like anyone was shut out there, and Maggie Doyle was plainly all alone inside with her walker.
Maggie Doyle, sensing that something was amiss, pushed her walker in a half circle.
“Why, where are they, Mister Irwine? Where did they go? They were with me just a moment ago. Are they out there on the landing?”
“I don’t see anyone, Missus Doyle.”
“What was that?”
“I don’t see anyone,” Irwine repeated, loud and clear.
“Open the door,” Maggie Doyle said, jabbing her walker at the glass. “Open the door please.”
Irwine pushed the button and stepped under the infrared eye to keep it open. Maggie Doyle screamed past him, rocketing to the end of the landing where there was another automatic door. She halted, her walker pressed against the glass like a snout. Irwine followed her and pressed that button as well. The door opened, but Maggie Doyle didn’t move.
“Are they out there?”
“No, no one’s there.”
“What?”
“No one there,” he bellowed in her ear.
“I don’t understand. They were right behind me. Missus Hanlay, she’s new. She just moved in two doors down from me. Her husband’s up here on the second floor. He’s got Alzheimer’s and Missus Hanlay likes to take him for a walk along the lake in the morning, even though there’s so much traffic – don’t you think there’s so much traffic? I’m going to have to talk to Maribel about it – there must be something the Pines can do. So, I said to them this morning, ‘Have you ever been to the library?’ and they said, no they hadn’t, and I thought it would be nice to bring them along and introduce them to you, Mister Irwine. Of course I knew today was your day at the desk.”
The electronic glass door tried to blink, but Maggie Doyle was parked, an oblivious irritant.
“You realize that I don’t see very well any more, but I’m sure they were behind me when we got off the elevator. I just don’t know where they could have gotten to. What?”
Irwine hadn’t said anything, and he was saved from having to say anything by the sudden arrival of Nurse Helen. Sudden and suddenly were always the words accompanying Nurse Helen – that is if there wasn’t an actual shriek of alarm. She was a large woman – large in the way he was large. Okay, she was fat. But not all fat’s alike. While Irwine was slow and smooth, like honey, like yoghurt, like heavy syrup, Nurse Helen was an explosion. Her arrival in a room flattened the occupants, or blew them to bits.
“Now Missus Doyle. What have you been up to this morning?”
It was not a question.
Irwine tried to back away.
The electronic door shuddered.
Maggie Doyle stuck out her neck like a tortoise
“What?”
“Good morning, Missus Doyle, it’s Nurse Helen,” Nurse Helen boomed in her ear. “Let’s get you out here where we can talk.”
“I’d love that.” Maggie Doyle beamed and allowed the woman to lead her, scuffing in the pathetic way of old folks.
Nurse Helen put her hand on Maggie Doyle’s shoulder. It hung there like the leaden vest at a dentist’s office. Irwine’s heart sank.
“We just recovered Mister and Missus Hanlay, Maggie. We had to send out two rescue parties when they didn’t arrive home. Missus Hanlay told up that you insisted on bringing them to the library.
Yes, yes, the good neighbor nodded and smiled, her head slightly fallen to one side.
“Maggie, I have to ask you not to devise entertainments for the Tendercare residents.
“What?” The words sudden and alarm were spreading like rictus across her face.
Nurse Helen searched momentarily for another, simpler expression. She found none and repeated, slowly, the original admonishment. “They just can’t keep up with you, honey,” she added, letting her heavy hand slip off the woman’s shoulder and down to her gnarled stick of a wrist. “No one can keep up with you — right, Mister Irwine?”
Irwine thought the time had come to rescue distressed old dame and he did his best to approach her warm and fluffy. Her old eyes only saw more bully bulk however, more misunderstanding, more failure to grasp her pure intentions, and she shied away.
Nurse Helen shot him a look which he ducked. “Come along, Missus Doyle,” she said from great heighth and breadth, like a man with a megaphone, “it’s almost dinnertime ... I’ll help you back to your room and we’ll have a nice chat.”
There were five major sections in the library: one for large-type westerns, one for large-type mysteries, one for history, another for the public-use computer, and one for everything else. Irwine spent the rest of the morning on the computer, reading the New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post, CNN, Google News, he had a whole list of them to click through and scan; a habit like eating potato chips, addictive and unsatisfying. Usually, his snacking was periodically interrupted by readers in search of new material – the same kind of implausible narcotic fodder he was snuffling, only in hard copy – but no one appeared after Maggie Doyle’s tragic exit. No one at all. And soon it was dinnertime and he covered the blue plate of uneaten cookies with the napkin. It wasn’t necessary to lock up; he just hung a sign on the door that said “Attendant Returns After Dinner” and took the elevator to the first floor. It wouldn’t be him returning though, not today.
The twist of loneliness he felt then in his gut reminded him that he was hungry.
What’s for dinner?
It was Tuesday and Tuesdays were for Al’s on Lime Street, behind the courthouse. Pork roast with mango glaze and a hint of smoked chili. Rice cooked the Mexican way – toasted in oil in a sauce pan on the stovetop, then a brothy liquid added until the top layer was moist and nutty and the bottom a savory brown crust.
He stepped off the elevator in a reverie of taste, a gorge suspense – for the feeling of full was almost as important as the ingredients — and straight into a completely irregular throng of agéd citizens. There was barely room for his bulk and he had to hold his plate above his shoulder.
“What’s going on?”
“Murder,” said the man to his right.
“Our first,” said the woman to his right.
“Murder? Who? Who lived there?”
“That’s Marvel’s apartment, but she’s already dead.”
“She means that Marvel died last week; natural causes.”
Irwine had only spoken to the woman fantastically called Marvel once that he recalled. She’d been outside her apartment, scraping in the planters. What had she been looking for? Oh, right, a pearl necklace. South Sea pearls, she said. What were they doing in the bushes, he asked? That’s what I’d like to know, she said.
They didn’t find anything even though he helped her until the dinner bell rang.
“So not Marvel; who then?”
The man to Irwine’s right looked at the woman to his right.
“I don’t know,” the woman said, defensively. “Marvel never talked about relatives ... I think she would’ve talked about them if she’d had them.”
“Everyone else does.”
“But Marvel was nuts. Ever since Harry died.”
“Who’s Harry?”
“Her husband. A real son of a bitch, that guy. Cheated at cards.”
“No, he just beat you.”
“He cheated.”
The dinner bell rang then, and the crowd turned their backs on the crime scene. There wasn’t much to see, as Irwine was now able to discover. The apartment door was cracked a couple of inches, but the curtains were drawn. An officer shuffled outside, looking vague. Yellow tape, wrapped around the tops of several plastic patio chairs, defined the infected space.
South Sea, cream-colored, 14 millimeters, she’d said. Lovely. They’d gotten them in the Philippines on their honeymoon. So lovely. They glowed, she said, just like ... just like ... But he couldn’t remember what she’d said they glowed like, or if she’d said anything at all.
Comments