Part 4 (2/2)

His facial fur was a swirling wonder of blond and blue with highlights the orange of a November sun. It covered every inch of his brow and cheeks, the blunt ridge of his nose, even his eyelids. When beset by a bout of overwhelming sympathy, he would twirl the thicket of longer strands that sprouted from the center of his forehead. His bright silver eyes emitted invisible beams that penetrated the most guarded demeanors of his patients and shed light upon the condition of their souls. Discovering the essence of an individual, the Gelreesh would sit quietly, staring, tapping the black enamel nails of his hirsute hands together in an incantatory rhythm that would regulate the heartbeat of his visitor to that of his own blood muscle.

”And when, may I ask, did you perceive the first inklings of your despair?” he would say with a sudden whimper.

Once his question was posed, the subject was no longer distracted by the charm of his prominent incisors. He would lick his lips once, twice, three times, with diminis.h.i.+ng speed, adjusting the initiate's respiration and brain pulse. Then the loveliness of his pointed ears, the grace of his silk fas.h.i.+ons would melt away, and his lucky interlocutor would have no choice but to tell the truth even if in her heart of hearts she believed herself to be lying.

”When my father left us,” might be the answer.

”Let us walk, my dear,” the Gelreesh would suggest.

The woman or man or child, as the case might be, would put a hand into the warm hand of the heart's physician. He would lead them through his antechamber into the hallway and out through a back entrance of his house. To walk with the Gelreesh, matching his languorous stride, was to partake in a slow, stately procession. His gentle direction would guide one down the garden path to the hole in the crumbling brick and mortar wall netted with ivy. Before leaving the confines of the wild garden, he might pluck a lily to be handed to his troubled charge.

The path through the woods snaked in great loops around stands of oak and maple. Although the garden should appear to be at the height of summer life, this adjacent stretch of forest, leading toward the sea, was forever trapped in autumn. Here, just above the murmur of the wind and just below the rustle of red and yellow leaves, the Gelreesh would methodically pose his questions designed to fan the flames of his companion's anguish. With each troubled answer, he would respond with phrases he was certain would keep that melancholic heart drenched in a black sweat. ”Horrible,” he would say in the whine of a dog dreaming. ”My dear, that's ghastly.” ”How can you go on?” ”If I were you I would be weeping,” was one that never failed to turn the trick.

When the tears would begin to flow, he'd reach into the pocket of his loose fitting jacket of paisley design for a handkerchief st.i.tched in vermillion, bearing the symbol of a broken heart. Handing it to his patient, he would again continue walking and the gentle interrogation would resume.

An hour might pa.s.s, even two, but there was no rush. There were so many questions to be asked and answered. Upon finally reaching the edge of the cliff that gave a view outward of the boundless ocean, the Gelreesh would release the hand of his subject and say with tender conviction, ”And so, you see, this ocean must be for you a representation of the overwhelming, intractable dilemma that gnaws at your heart. You know without my telling you that there is really only one solution. You must move toward peace, to a better place.”

”Yes, yes, thank you,” would come the response followed by a fresh torrent of tears. The handkerchief would be employed, and then the Gelreesh would kindly ask for it back.

”The future lies ahead of you and the troubled past bites at your heels, my child.”

Three steps forward and the prescription would be filled. A short flight of freedom, a moment of calm for the tortured soul and then endless rest on the rocks below surrounded by the rib cages and skulls of fellow travelers once pursued by grief and now cured.

The marvelous creature would pause and dab a tear or two from the corners of his own eyes before undressing. Then naked but for the spiral pattern of his body's fur, he would walk ten paces to the east where he kept a long rope tied at one end to the base of a mighty oak, growing at the very edge of the cliff. His descent could only be described as acrobatic, pointing to a history with the circus. When finally down among the rocks, he would find the corpse of the new immigrant to the country without care and tidily devour every trace of flesh.

Later, in the confines of his office, he would compose a letter in turquoise ink on yellow paper, a.s.suring the loved ones of his most recent patient that she or he, seeking the solace of a warm sun and crystal sea, had booked pa.s.sage for a two-year vacation on the island of Valshavar-a paradisiacal atoll strung like a bead on the necklace of the equator. Let not the price of this journey trouble your minds, for I, understanding the exemplary nature of the individual in question have decided to pay all expenses for their escape from torment. In a year or two, when next you meet them, they will appear younger, and in their laughter you will feel the warmth of the tropical sun. With their touch, your own problems will vanish as if conjured away by island magic. This missive would then be rolled like a scroll, tied fast with a length of green ribbon and given into the talons of a great horned owl to be delivered.

And so it was that the Gelreesh operated, from continent to continent, dispensing his exquisite pity and relieving his patients of their unnecessary mortal coils. When suspicion arose to the point where doubt began to negate his beauty in the eyes of the populace, then, by dark of night, he would flee on all fours, accompanied by the owl, deep into the deepest forest, never to be seen again in that locale. The pile of bones he'd leave behind were undeniable proof of his treachery, but the victims' families preferred to think of their loved ones stretched out beneath a palm frond canopy on the pink beach of Valshavar, being fed peeled grapes by a monkey valet. This daydream in the face of horror would deflate all attempts at organizing a search party to hunt him down.

Although he would invariably move on, setting up a practice in a new locale rich in heavy hearts and haunted minds, something of him would remain behind in the form of a question, namely, ”What was The Beautiful Gelreesh?” Granted, there were no end of accounts of his illusory form-everything from that of a das.h.i.+ng cavalry officer with waxed mustache to the refined blond impertinence of a symphony conductor. He reminded one young woman whom he had danced with at a certain town soiree as being a blend of her father, her boss and her older brother. In fact, when notes were later compared, no two could agree on the precise details of his splendor.

He was finally captured during one of his escapes, found with his leg in a fox trap only a mile from the village he had last bestowed his pity upon. This beast in pain could not fully concentrate on creating the illusion of loveliness, and the incredulous chicken farmer who discovered him writhing in the bite of the steel jaws witnessed him s.h.i.+fting back and forth between suave charm and gnas.h.i.+ng horror. The poor man was certain he had snared the devil. A special investigator was sent to handle the case. Blind and somewhat autistic, the famous detective, Gal de Gui, methodically put the entire legacy together as if it was a child's jigsaw puzzle. Of course, in the moments of interrogation by De Gui, the Gelreesh tried to catch him up with a glamorous illusion. The detective responded to this deception with a yawn. The creature later told his prison guards that De Gui's soul was blank as a white wall and perfect. De Gui's final comment on the Gelreesh was, ”Put down some newspaper and give him a bone. Here is the cla.s.sic case of man's best friend.”

It was when the Gelreesh related his own life story to the court, eliciting pity from a people who previously desired his, that he allowed himself to appear as the hominid-canine ent.i.ty that had always lurked behind his illusion. As the tears filled the eyes of the jury, his handsome visage wavered like a desert mirage and then lifted away to reveal fur and fangs. No longer were his words the mellifluous susurrations of the sympathetic therapist, but now came through as growling dog talk in a spray of spittle. Even the huge owl that sat on his shoulder in the witness stand shrank and darkened to become a grackle.

As he told it, he had been born to an aristocratic family, the name of which everyone present would have known, but he would not mention it for fear of bringing reprisals down upon them for his actions. Because of his frightening aspect at birth, his father accused his mother of b.e.s.t.i.a.lity. The venerable patriarch made plans to do away with his wife, but she saved him the trouble by poisoning herself with small sips of opium and an a.r.s.enic pastry of her own recipe. The strange child was named Rameau after a distant relation on the mother's side and sent to live in a newly constructed barn on the outskirts of the family estate. At the same time that the father ordered the local clergy to try to exorcise the beast out of him, there was a standing order for the caretaker to feed him nothing but raw meat. As the Gelreesh had said on the witness stand, ”My father spent little time thinking about me, but when he did, the fact of my existence twisted his thinking so that it labored pointlessly at cross-purposes.”

The family priest taught the young Rameau how to speak and read, so that the strange child could learn the Bible. Through this knowledge of language he was soon able to understand the holy man's philosophy, which, in brief, was that the world was a ball of s.h.i.+t adrift in a sea of sin and the sooner one pa.s.sed to heaven the better. As the Gelreesh confessed, he took these lessons to heart, and so later in life when he helped free his patients' souls from excremental bondage, he felt he was actually doing them a great favor. It was from that bald and jowly man of G.o.d that the creature became acquainted with the power of pity.

On the other hand, the caretaker who daily brought the beef was a man of the world. He was very old and had traveled far and wide. This kindly aged vagabond would tell the young Rameau stories of far off places-islands at the equator and tundra crowded with migrating elk. One day, he told the boy about a fellow he had met in a far-off kingdom that sat along the old Silk Road to China. This remarkable fellow, Ibn Sadi was his name, had the power of persuasion. With subtle movements of his body, certain tricks of respiration in accordance with that of his audience, he could make himself invisible or appear as a beautiful woman. It was an illusion, of course, but to the viewer it seemed as real as the day. ”What was his secret?” asked Rameau. The old man leaned in close to the boy's cage and whispered, ”Listen to the rhythm of life and when you look, do not accept but project. Feel what the other is feeling and make what they have felt what you feel. Speak only their own desire to them in a calm, soft voice, and they will see you as beautiful as they wish themselves to be.”

The Gelreesh had time, days on end, to mull over his formula for control. He worked at it and tried different variations until one day he was able to look into the soul of the priest and discover what it was-a mouse nibbling a wedge of wooden cheese. Soon after, he devised the technique of clicking together his fingernails in order to send out a hypnotic pulse, and with this welded the power of pity to the devices of the adept from the kingdom along the old Silk Road. Imagine the innate intelligence of this boy they considered a beast. A week following, he had escaped. For some reason, the priest had opened the cage and for his trouble was found by the caretaker to have been ushered into the next and better world minus the baggage of his flesh.

The jury heard the story of the Gelreesh's wanderings and the perfection of his art, how he changed his name to that of a certain brand of Mediterranean cigarettes he had enjoyed. ”I wanted to help the emotionally wounded,” he had said to his accusers, and all grew sympathetic, but when they vented their grief for his solitary life and saw his true form, they unanimously voted for his execution. Just prior to accepting, against his will, the thirty bullets from the rifles of the firing squad marksmen, the Gelreesh performed a spectacular display of metamorphosis, becoming, in turn, each of his executioners. Before the captain of the guard could shout the order for the deadly volley, the beautiful one became, again, himself, shouted, ”I feel your pain,” and begged for all in attendance to partic.i.p.ate in devouring him completely once he was dead. This final plea went unheeded. His corpse was left to the dogs and carrion birds. His bones were later gathered and sent to the Museum of Natural Science in the city of Nethit. The grackle was released into the wild.

Once he had been disposed of and the truth had been circulated, it seemed that everyone on all continents wanted to claim some attachment to the Gelreesh. For a five year period there was no international figure more popular. My G.o.d, the stories told about him-women claimed to have had his children, men claimed they were him or his brother or at least the son of the caretaker who gave him his first clues to the protocol of persuasion. Children played Gelreesh, and the lucky tike who got to be his namesake retained for the day ultimate power in the game. An entire branch of psychotherapy had sprung up called Non-Consumptive Gelrees.h.i.+a, meaning that the therapists swamped their patients with pity but had designs not on the consumption of their flesh, merely their bank accounts. There were studies written about him, novels and plays and an epic poem ent.i.tled Monster of Pity. The phenomenon of his popularity had given rise to a philosophical reevaluation of Beauty.

Gelreesh mania died out in the year of the great comet, for here was something even more spectacular for people to turn their attention to. With the promise of the end of the world, mankind had learned to pity itself. Fortunately or unfortunately, however one might see it, this spinning ball of s.h.i.+t, this paradisiacal Valshavar of planets, was spared for another millennium in which more startling forms of anomalous humanity might spring up and lend perspective to the mundane herd.

And now, ages hence, recent news from Nethit concerning the Gelreesh. Two years ago, an enterprising graduate student from Nethit University, having been told the legends of the beautiful one when he was a child, went in search through the bas.e.m.e.nt of the museum to try to uncover the box containing the creature's remains. The catacombs that lay beneath the imposing structure are vast and the records kept as to what had been stored where have been eaten by an unusual mite that was believed to have been introduced into the environs of the museum by a mummy brought back from a glacier at the top of the world. Apparently, this termitic flea species awoke in the underground warmth and discovered its taste for paper, so that now the ledgers are filled with sheets of lace, more hole than text.

Still, the conscientious young man continued to search for over a year. His desire was to study the physiological form of this legend. Eventually, after months of exhaustive searching, he came upon a crate marked with grease pencil, GELREESH. Upon prying open the box, he found inside a collection of bones wrapped in a tattered garment of maroon silk. There was also a handkerchief bearing the st.i.tched symbol of a broken heart. When he uncovered the bones, he was shocked to find the skeleton of a very large bird instead of that of a mutant human. A professor of his from the university determined upon inspection that these were indeed the remains of a great horned owl.

SKIN IN THE GAME.

SAMANTHA HENDERSON.

”Hex!” Miranda waved purple fingertips over the white-bone tumble of the dice, which came up one, three, six.

Lydia, her run of fours broken, cursed her eloquently. Miranda, indifferent to charges of being a loose woman, scooped up the dice and promptly buncoed.

”b.i.t.c.h!” cried Lydia, jubilant. ”Give up the Bunco Bear, wh.o.r.e!”

From the head table a child's toy, seized hastily from Ca.s.s's daughter's room before the game began, flew through the air in a fuzzy, bright green arc. Miranda caught it, one-handed and laughing, and tucked it into her cleavage.

Sandy applauded with the rest as Miranda threw one more four and then came up twos and fives.

”Time to bunco,” said Lydia as Sandy grabbed the dice for her turn, and she threw. A four, a two, and one die rolled off the table and landed near her foot: a five. She s.n.a.t.c.hed it up: she could claim it was a four, take the five, or re-roll.

”It was a five,” she said-the single four allowed her to continue and she wanted to seem honest at this point. She'd subbed twice for this bunco group-Ca.s.s worked at the cubicle kitty-corner to her, and started asking to come the month before last-and they needed to replace a regular who'd moved out of state. No pack of bunco b.i.t.c.hes likes being stuck at eleven members, having a ghost at table-one player rolling for an invisible teammate.

She liked this group: you got dinner instead of just coffee and dessert and the stakes of $20 apiece made it worth her while to get creative. She felt like she had skin in this game. She expected that after tonight's game she'd be invited to join, and it was always easy to fix up things so the game got cancelled the month it was your turn to host. Volunteer for June, when the task of juggling kids fresh out of school and planning summer vacation usually resulted in a scrub, or change the date late enough that only nine or fewer could come, two ghosts being the limit of anyone's tolerance. She'd volunteer to help another hostess, bringing the main dish and gaining a reputation for helpfulness while avoiding the expense of the booze.

A single four, and another, and the dice pa.s.sed to Miranda's partner. She rolled one, three, three, and before Lydia could seize the dice there was an exasperated shriek and the clang of a bell from the head table and the round was over.

Miranda's bunco was worth twenty-one points, so Sandy and Lydia stayed in the pit, while Miranda and her ex-partner, a short plump pink creature whose name Sandy couldn't recall-G-something, who sold Avon and left a few catalogs in an un.o.btrusive way on the kitchen table-moved on to the center table and split, finding new partners, the losers from the head table. Lydia grabbed an M&M from the bowl on the pit and waved a c.o.c.ktail-ringed hand at Sandy when she made to move.

”Stay where you are, Sandy-Candy,” said Lydia, plumping her rather wide b.u.t.t on the seat next to her. ”That chair's bad luck for me.”

”Shall I keep score?” Sandy asked innocuously, reaching for the pad Miranda's partner-Gretta? No, more Brit-had left behind. Lydia nodded vaguely. No one really liked to keep score, it meant you had to concentrate on top of your dinner and a wine cooler, and the uninhibited caterwauling of yourself and your fellows.

But if you were willing to keep score, and were subtle about it, and good at misdirection, keeping score was a good way of making sure you won a few more times, at least on paper, than you really had.

Bunco is a supremely simple game requiring only the skill to toss the dice. Six rounds, sometimes twelve: roll ones, then twos, threes, and so forth. Three of a kind-ones in round one, twos in round two-is a bunco. The only possible strategy is to throw as fast as possible, because the more you roll the more the chance of getting a bunco.

There are modifications, embellishments. Mini-buncos and triple-buncos and one-two-three sequences and extra points at the head table. The buy-in can be five bucks, ten, twenty, sometimes you get dinner, sometimes you get cake. These are flash and fancy icing, the true spine and soul of the game is only this: roll the dice, b.i.t.c.h. All the menfolk and children had fled the premises, here are your girlfriends, and you can do no wrong here-eat and drink as you will, and talk as you will about your brother's ex and your high school friend's divorce and your jewelry business. Talk and roll the dice.

It's a game of chance, not skill, so there's not many ways you can cheat. If the game is going fast and the other three women are chatting and not paying attention you can say you got one or two more points than you did-you pa.s.sed on the dice and the scorekeeper would ask what you got and you said four instead of three. No one would know. And if you were keeping score yourself it was even easier.

Sandy liked winning other people's cash, liked free food, liked even better the idea that she controlled the outcome behind the facade of a pleasant face and manner, without anyone else suspecting. She felt a friendly kind of contempt for Ca.s.s and her friends, their overpriced game, their shrieking and stretch marks. They'd do very well for her, she thought.

Sandy won the round, fair and square, and moved ahead to partner small pink Gretta-no, Gwynne! That was it. It took the head table a long time to score twenty-one; the game was long and Gwynne buncoed, but before she could seize the green bear, Tessa buncoed too, and then Gwynne got three fives, not a bunco but good for five points, and in the hilarity that resulted from that and from everyone overhearing Maggie tell Harriet-called-Harry and Mia about losing her virginity, lo these many years ago, at Disneyland, Sandy claimed six fives when she only rightly had four, winning the round for Gwynne and herself when the bell rang. Dionne tallied her points without demur but Sandy didn't see Gwynne and Lydia glance at the table and then at each other.

Sandy buncoed at the head table, getting the bear and three buncos for the price of one, then Ca.s.s buncoed and sent Sandy back to the pit, her second loss of the night. She moved quickly from pit to center table to head for the final game. She wouldn't win for having most buncos-Tessa had that pretty much in hand, but she might score most wins if she was careful. She took the score pad automatically as she sat, letting the game draw out as it would: another long one. The chatter quieted as the last match, sixes the goal, drew out.

One more win was all she needed. The game was close: n.o.body would notice-Dionne rolled one six, then nothing. Sandy moved the pencil as if to give Dionne her point, but left no mark. Opposite her Miranda rolled and c.r.a.pped out, and Dionne's partner Ca.s.s got one six, bringing their score to twenty. Sandy held her breath and Ca.s.s rolled again: two, five, five. They were tied, at least on paper if not in truth. Sandy rolled, saw two sixes, and whooped. That ended the round and the game and gave her nine wins; she'd won the lion's share of the pool. She grabbed the dice to roll again-might as well try for last bunco and win that pot too.

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