It wasn't hard to do. I work alone
most of the time, and the day she came in was no exception. I knew she was
the one I had been looking for as soon as I saw her.
She was heartbreakingly beautiful. Flawless
pearl-shine skin, hair like a drape of cultured silk, limbs as lithe and
lissome as any Venus of the old masters, and her face. . . oh, her face
was the best of her. It never ceases to amaze me how close true beauty is
to profound ugliness. Her face was scant millimeters away from homely in
every direction, and so it was impossible to look upon her and not be moved
somehow.
The cremation oven had lots of ashes
in it, as usual. Relatives of our clients routinely got an urn full of their
loved one along with leftovers from three or four other people. I fetched
the long-handled wire broom from the utility closet and cleaned the oven
meticulously. The sweepings were more than enough to fill the urn meant
for her.
I started the warmup cycle and undressed
her. Normally I burn the clothes along with the client, but I saw no reason
to have all that burnt fabric mixed in with her remains. I muscled her up
onto the conveyor belt without a cremation tray for the same reason.
Her body was amazing. I spent a long
moment just looking at her, memorizing each line and curve of that glorious
form, and when I was sure I could never, ever forget the pale splendors
of her smooth flesh, I pressed the button that started the conveyor and
opened the oven door.
At 4000 degrees fahrenheit, she didn't
take long to burn. Her bones were delicate and bird-like, but I wanted to
be sure there would be no sharp fragments in the final product, so I gave
her some extra time in the oven before I ran her through the tumblers. I
ground up the last few solid pieces of bone that came out of the tumblers
with a mortar and pestle. Her clothing went into the oven with the next
client in the queue.
I had planned ahead for this day, not
knowing when it would come, when she would come, but knowing that she would.
There were two identical thermoses in my locker, tall silver cylinders with
black plastic caps. I carefully filled them with the fine salt and pepper
ash and put one of them back into the locker. Now and again, on my way out
at the end of the day, I get trapped into a conversation with one of the
black-suited ghouls who work up front. I knew it would look odd if I were
to be seen carrying more than one thermos, so I figured I would go without
coffee for a day and take them home with me one at a time. Trivial, I know,
but I wasn't about to take any chances. Not with her. No one would suspect
a thing.
The thermoses were
fine for getting her home, but they were far too ugly to contain her for
any length of time. I stopped at the mall on my way home and bought a
lovely stoppered carafe of expensive Waterford crystal, a matching stemmed
wine glass and a single silver teaspoon. I told the saleswoman they were
for my girlfriend, and she seemed puzzled that I would want to buy only
one glass and spoon, but I offered her no explanation. Much to my amusement,
she giftwrapped my purchases at no extra charge.
When I got home, I unwrapped the carafe
and weighed it on a small but very accurate digital scale. I was tempted
to go ahead and get started, but I forced myself to wait until I could
retrieve the other thermos from it's hiding place at work.
I did not sleep at all well that night.
My dreams were plagued by thoughts of that second thermos. I wasn't afraid
that it would be found; it just seemed terribly, tragically wrong for
my love to be so cruelly bisected, one half with me where she belonged
and the other all the way across town at the mortuary in a cold and lonely
utility closet. In my dreams I could not see her, but I thought I could
hear her weeping.
The next day passed
like cold blackstrap molasses, but as such days must, it eventually came
to a merciful end. I retrieved the precious second thermos and bolted
for home at last.
I took great care in emptying the twin thermoses into the Waterford carafe,
tapping them gently for long minutes until every mote and flake of ash
lay safe in the confines of that worthier vessel.
When it was done, I sat for a long
while with my face up close to the cool glass of the carafe. The tiny
flecks of white, grey and black pressed against the fine Irish crystal
reminded me of a television screen tuned between channels.
She was whole again. All the tensions
of the night before drained out of me in an ecstatic rush. I contemplated
the future, and great inner vistas of Rembrandt light and Mozart sound
seemed to stand open before me, just out of reach, calling siren-voiced
for me to enter quickly.
I knew I had to be careful.
I weighed the now full carafe again
and jotted down the figure. Subtracting the empty weight gave me the weight
of the ash inside, which I divided by the number of days in a year. The
result was just over a gram.
One gram per day for one year.
I unwrapped the wine glass and filled
it with storebought spring water. Dipping the tip of my index finger into
the clear cold wetness and running it around the rim of the glass, I brought
forth a pure, high tone that sweetly broke the room's stillness like a
young bride's soft 'I do.'
With the silver teaspoon, I weighed
out a gram of ash from the carafe and stirred the delicate salt-and-pepper
flakes into the water. She sparkled in the glass, spinning and dancing
in the soft beams of autumn sunlight that poured through the window. I
toasted her silently and drank the glass down.
The carafe, the glass, the silver spoon
and the scale went into the large bottom drawer of my ancient and scarred
desk, the drawer meant for file folders. The wood of that desk is uniformly
pitted and stained, and the drawers squeak fury when they are opened,
but the desk did and does hold too many memories to be casually gotten
rid of. It exudes a comfortingly familiar sort of stone age warmth, and
what little is left of that mysterious world I inhabited as a child is
bound up within it.
When I was a small boy, the desk belonged
to my father. He always kept the drawers locked against my childish explorations,
and my runaway freight train of an imagination peopled them with any number
of strange and wonderful secrets. I would crane my young neck to peek
in when he brought out his great ring of keys and unlocked the desk drawers,
but I could never quite see just what it was he had in there, and he would
shoo me out of the room as soon as he was settled in and ready to work.
When he worked late, as he usually
did, I could lay in bed and listen to the sound of his chair creaking
when he moved, the angry electric buzz and staccato click attack of his
typewriter, the solid wooden thump and metallic clang when he opened and
shut the desk drawers. I would pull the covers up under my chin and shut
my eyes tight, pressing my thumbs against them hard enough to see weird
bright patterns play themselves out on the insides of my eyelids. I'd
watch my eyelid movies and listen hard to the sounds of my father working
in the next room, and I would try to force that slow twist of magical
sparkling shapes into clearer images of the forbidden secrets in my father's
desk.
Once I tried to pick the lock, but
he caught me and gave me a good lashing for my trouble. He thought I was
trying to steal something, God only knows what, and I was too tongue-tied
to explain myself. I didn't try to look again until my father died and
the desk was passed on to me.
He took his secrets with him.
I dreamed that night of a desk drawer
wedding. My father was there, smiling for once and handsome as he had
been when I was a boy, before the cancer overtook him and wasted him to
nothing. My bride was no longer weeping, no longer hidden from me; she
was reserved and demure, nude but not naked. I kissed her hand and whispered
fervent love-struck promises in the delicate pink shell of her ear as
we marched down the aisle toward the altar.
The winter came,
and spring, and the fat old sun was starting to really feel his oats again
when the effects of my daily tonic began to manifest themselves. The carafe
was half empty, and already I could feel her penetrating my flesh from
the inside out, guts and gray matter, liver and lights all suffused with
the essence of her. My beating heart sent her ebbing and flowing, lub-LUB,
through my veins. She was seeping into every pore of my skin, she was
extruded from my scalp in curly locks, my tongue moved more trippingly
in my mouth, soaked as it was in the natural lilt and grace of her. She
lay across my eyes like a veil, and all that I looked upon was filtered
through her and brought vibrantly to life, translated by her beauty into
new and dazzling forms.
The swollen rosy reds and pinks and
lavenders of sunset, the full swooping flight and sweeping passion of
music, the poignancy of a hint of perfume on a sultry evening breeze,
the cool slippery whispering feel of satin, the sweet sharp tang of purest
honey, these and a thousand other things I had never noticed before were
now fully revealed to me, and I savored them in triumph, reveling in this
new sensitivity that transmuted leaden everyday life into starflung webs
of finest spun gold.
My drab existence had become an endless
priveleged tour through a world-sized garden of sensual delights, and
I wanted more. God help me, but I wanted more.
I increased the dosage to two grams
a day, then three, then four, but the contents of my wine glass turned
darker than Mississippi River water, and the sludgy dregs left at the
bottom disturbed me. I went back to one gram per glass and took it four
times daily.
It still wasn't enough.
I began adding liberal pinches of ash
to my food, sprinkling her like finely ground black pepper over my plate
at each meal. I stirred her into my morning orange juice, my coffee, my
evening beer. In less than six weeks the carafe was empty, and all of
creation seemed to shine from within, just for me. Each day dawned a little
brighter than the last, and I laughed to think what my senses would take
in when I reached the peak at last.
It's dark here in my
bedroom. I nailed a sheet of plywood over the window to keep the light
out. I sleep as much as I can now, which isn't very much at all.
The telephone is ringing beautifully.
I pick it up just to make it stop.
"Hello," I whisper, dreading the reply.
"Alex? Is that you?" My boss's voice
is unbearably rich in tone and texture, and I shiver in helpless ecstasy.
"I can't talk now," I tell him. "I'm.
. . I'm sick."
"Sick? You haven't shown up for work
in three days. I was beginning to think you were dead. You really should
have called, you know." His voice pours warm like molten silver through
the receiver, and I twitch and convulse helplessly in response.
"I'm sorry," I moan, gasping for air.
"Well, if there's anything I can do,"
he begins, and the blood surges to my head.
"Just leave me alone!" I shriek.
The sound of my own voice pushes me
over the edge, sending orgasmic spasms juddering through my starved, exhausted
body like an epileptic fit. I rip the phone out of the wall and hurl it
blindly away from me in the dark, and the thump and clang of it hitting
the wall and the floor is sweeter than the music of angels. My legs turn
to water. I manage to fall on the bed, bucking and thrashing, clutching
and tearing at the sheets with a storm in my brain and a roar in my ears,
lost in a hot black whirl of pounding timeless ego-death.
When I have the strength to move again,
I will crawl to the bathroom and stuff my ears with cotton.
