Her hand went up to say, Enough, I get the point. He went on anyway. And so began Mallory’s first lecture on the other language, the metaphor of subject, the symbolism of object, the poetry evoked by color and shape, by texture and line, what was said by the immediacy of a single violent stroke of a brush or the subtle shading of a pencil.
And then she asked, “So where’s my metaphor in the garbage and the vandalism?”
“All right, you win.” He sensed that winning was the main thing with her, the very key to her. “You’re still planning on attending the ball tomorrow night?”
“Yes, and I still need an interview with Gregor Gilette. You’ve got that covered, right? He’ll keep it quiet?”
He smiled and let her take that for a positive response. “But you must let me help you with something else. The opening for the next Dean Starr show is by invitation only. I could have Koozeman invite you.”
“I don’t need an invitation-I’m the police. Riker says you weren’t planning to review the first Dean Starr show. So I have to wonder why you were there that night.”
Like Riker, she had saved her best cut for last. Her style, however, was a departure from her partner’s-not a blunt and clumsy accusation, but a trap. She only stared at him now, defying him to lie to her and try to get away with it.
“Riker was right, I never review hacks. A bad review is counterproductive. Repetition of the name is fame in New York City. I only went to the opening for the food and wine. It’s so rare to find hors d’oeuvres served in galleries anymore.”
“Seriously.”
“Seriously, Mallory, you can hardly believe I went there to appreciate art.”
The woman ceased to drag her rolling wire cart, which was partially covered by a tarp. Tired, she leaned on the cart handle as she watched the art critic leaving the Bleecker Street cafe with the young blond woman. Quinn held open the door of a small tan car. The young woman disappeared into it and drove off. Now he crossed Bleecker Street and approached the woman with the wire cart. He looked into her eyes, where it was winter of weak iris skies and clouding cataracts. He nodded to her, and a bit of paper passed from his hand to hers as he passed her by.
Her palsied hand jolted the cart. Trembling fingers pulled back the tarp as the woman peered inside it, eyes fixing on a tea tin, believing she had heard a thought. Snow drifted through her mind and she lost the threads to where she was and why she was. The dead child’s brains gently remembered for her. “Move on,” urged the voice from the tin. The woman nodded and moved on down Bleecker Street.
She seemed a collection of things found and put together. Her four skirts were a concert, whispers of dead leaves shushing along toward Lafayette and turning south on that street. Her head of iron-gray hair wobbled on a slender bird’s neck. She crossed wide Houston with her free hand tucked in, giving one arm the appearance of a useless wing, atrophied or broken.
She tripped on the curb and lurched suddenly, upsetting the cart. The tea tin went tumbling as the cart settled in a gutter. The tin was rearranged among the other contents layered over and around it. A crusted knapsack spilled a shiny stream of bottle caps, broken pins, tin silverware and other small found things-pretty only, good for nothing.
The woman righted her cart and veered east on Houston. Forgetting, minutes later, that the dead child’s brains had ever spoken, she turned a corner onto Essex Street. Trash cans seemed to grow there in abundance. She looked over her newfound wealth with the eye of a connoisseur. A flash of metal caught her eye with a ricochet of sunlight. There, on one trash can, was a knife. It was crack-toothed and broken-handled, but still good for cutting meat. She stared at it until the voice from the tea tin cautioned, “Forget.”
But the mad persistence of memory won out. She began to shake. A cold miasma of fear settled about her shoulders and forced her to her knees and to ground. She clawed at her hair, eyes bulging at what memory was showing her, sobbing, shuddering, screaming, screams quieting now to moans as the dead child’s brains called up the blessed snow of forgetfulness.
Emma Sue Hollaran was sedated when her body was being transferred to the operating table. The nurse partially draped her in a green sheet. Her exposed legs were marked in sections with black crayon lines like the diagram of a cow in a butcher shop.
Her eyes slowly roved the small operating theater and the familiar gowned figures of the surgeon and the nurse. Another familiar person was the anesthesiologist. Since this man spoke not one word of English, she was certain that he was not certified to practice medicine in this country. So she could assume he worked cheap, and she never complained.
The plastic surgeon’s face hovered over her for a moment before her eyes closed, and her mind was swept away in the anesthetic whirlpool. She was well beyond feeling the first stroke of the scalpel as it cut into her body.
A long hose was inserted into a bloody hole in her left thigh. The music of youth and beauty began with squishy suction noises, the siphoning of fat sucking to the steady beat of the motor which powered the wildly upscale vacuum cleaner. What came out of her was the color and texture of yellow chicken fat, grease and blood. Another hole was made on the inside thigh, and the ugly bits of her body collected in a glass jar at the end of the hose. Another hole was cut in her skin, and another for the next leg-more globules slopped into the jar.
In a dream state she heard a voice say, “Time to roll the meat.”
More holes were made in the back of her knees. The long rod was moving under her skin, minding the black marks of the butcher shop diagram. The vacuum cleaner was slurping up fat, ripping away pieces of her body with its greedy incessant sucking.
Two hours later, her eyes were open again. The surgeon was standing over her, saying a polite variation of You’re nuts-totally insane! His exact words were, “At your insistence, I removed more fat than I should have. You’re going to need rest for at least three days, if not longer. No lifting, no bending, no stairs. Going to a dress ball is absolutely out of the question.”
“Bullshit.”
The Manhattan Charities Ball was a networker’s dream. Every power figure in the city would be there. But best of all, Gregor Gilette would be there. She was nearly ready for him. Her triple chin had been suctioned away to a mere double roll of flesh. And her legs would be svelte beneath the tight wrap of a ball gown that was not designed for dancing, and most certainly not designed to be worn by the likes of Emma Sue Hollaran.
“So how’s Doris?”
Dr. Edward Slope pushed back the Plexiglas face guard and looked up at her with a quizzical eye.
Kathy Mallory was one of few cops who could make idle conversation over the open chest of a dead man. The only thing that bothered him was that she never made small talk.
Now he left his assistant the chore of bagging the body parts and replacing them in the open cavity. He removed his gloves and gown as he walked Mallory to the door of the autopsy room. “Doris is just fine.” He tossed the bloody garments into a disposal bin. “She wonders why you never come by for dinner.”
“And Fay?”
“Oh, you know kids. Last week she wanted to be a veterinarian, and now she’s decided to be a musician. I can see the tuition bills rolling in from Juilliard now.”
“Is she giving you any problems?”
“We’re working it out.”
“So you’re going to keep her?”
“She’s a little girl. It’s not quite the same as returning an unsatisfactory pet to the Puppyland Kennels. And Doris is already planning on grandchildren. You could say it’s a done deal. So now you’re doing civilized small talk. Helen would be proud of you, Kathy.”
“Mallory,” she corrected him. “So, can we talk body parts now?”