Forty Words for Sorrow

"No one's going to prison," Eric told her. This cop had no connection to them. He aimed the camera at Edie, sending the zoom out to its full length so that her nose and cheekbone filled his entire field of vision. Christ, what a beauty queen. But that's my Edie's hidden strength: She's so disgusted by what she sees in the mirror that it makes her loyal. The complete control of another human being was not to be sneezed at, even if it was only Edie. For cowed acquiescence, push 2. "You're not going to turn into a weakling," he asked casually. "Like all the nobodies out there? I thought you were different, Edie, but maybe I was wrong."

"Oh, don't say that, Eric. You know I'll stick with you. I'll stick with you, no matter what."

"I thought you had guts. Backbone. But I'm beginning to have doubts."

"Please, Eric. Don't lose faith in me. I'm not as strong as you."

"You don't act like you think I'm strong. You think just because I'm forced to live in a dump I'm not different? I am different. I am fucking extraordinary. And you'd better be fucking extraordinary, too, frankly, because I don't have time for nobodies."

"I'll be strong, I promise. It's just sometimes, I forget how-"

They both went still, listening. There was a thudding noise. The old biddy banging her cane.

Edie had gone pale. "I thought it was Keith," she said. "Maybe it's not such a good idea to keep him here. It's dangerous, don't you think?"

"Don't call him by name. How many times do I have to tell you?"

"Our guest, then. Don't you think it's dangerous?"

Eric was tired of reassuring her. He took his camera and went down the basement steps to a door beside the furnace. Taking a key out of his pocket, he snapped open the padlock and went into a small dank bedroom where Keith London lay sleeping.

The room was perfectly square, built by a previous owner of the house who had rented it out to students at the Teachers College nearby. Keith London was sprawled on his back, mouth open, one hand clutching a blanket to his chest, the other hanging over the edge of the bed, like someone dead in a bathtub. A tiny window high in the wall that Eric had boarded over admitted flat blades of light. The walls were cheap pine paneling.

Eric turned on the lights.

The figure in the bed did not stir. Eric checked the edges of the window, the doorjamb, the possible routes of escape, even though it was evident his guest had never left the bed. Even without the party, this one had proved quite a haul. His wallet had contained over three hundred bucks, and they had helped him retrieve a very nice Ovation guitar from the train station.

Eric looked through the camera without running any tape. He slid the zoom out to full length, focusing on the adolescent face. The beginnings of a wispy beard bristled on the chin. A filling gleamed in the back of the open mouth, and under the eyelids the hidden eyes jerked back and forth in a dream.

Humming to himself, Eric reached down and tugged at the corner of blanket clutched in Keith's hand. He pulled the blankets down to the knees and looked through the lens at the hairless chest, the pale smooth belly, zooming in on the small, slack penis. When he heard Edie coming down the steps, he pulled the blankets back up to Keith's chin.

"Still out cold," Edie said. "That stuff is really strong." She leaned over the bed. "Hey, genius! Up and at 'em! Rise and shine!"

Eric handed her the camera. Edie fiddled with the lens, focusing. "He looks so funny," she said. "He looks so stupid."

Later, Edie wrote in her diary: I bet that's how we look to angels and devils. They see everything bad we do, they see all our weaknesses. We lie there totally oblivious, dreaming our sweet dreams, and all the time these supernatural beings are hovering over the bed, laughing at us, waiting for just the right moment to prick our balloons. He doesn't know it yet, but I'm going to see that boy bleed.

21

PERHAPS because he had been raised a Catholic, the idea of having an address on Madonna Road had always appealed to Cardinal; the word held rich associations of mercy, purity, and love. The Madonna was the mother who had survived the sorrow of her Son's murder, the woman who had been received physically into heaven, the saint who interceded for sinners with a God who could be, let's face it, something of a hard-ass.

The associations were muddied now- a pop star had come along and replaced mercy with commerce, purity with camp, and love with lust- but Madonna Road was still a peaceful address, a curved narrow lane along the western edge of Trout Lake, where the birches creaked in the cold, and the snow slipped from their branches in silent clumps.