Carol O’Connell - Killing Critics

“I’ve got a question for you, Doctor,” said Mallory, with such exaggerated formality, Charles had to wonder what they were feuding about now. It was always something. “How long can a person live on liquids but no solid food?”

“Depends on the liquids,” said Edward. “Not long if all you’ve got is water, maybe ten, twelve days. Some people have fasted for months on fruit juices, and vitamin supplements.”

“Suppose the liquid is wine?”

“You can kiss that idiot goodbye. He’ll be severely weakened after a few days with no food, and probably hallucinating. He might last a few days more before dehydration kills him. Alcohol is a diuretic.”

Robin Duffy put in his quarter and met the last raise. Edward Slope pitched his coins to the center of the table, and raised the bet with a dime.

“Ante up, Charles, and raise him a quarter.”

“But shouldn’t I at least have a look at my cards? I am getting rather low on change.”

“Bad idea, Charles, just let them lie there.”

He did as she told him. Then Robin Duffy folded his cards, eyes fixed on Charles’s ace.

Mallory stood by Edward Slope’s chair now. “Let’s say the fast has been going on for three days, and he has a bottle of water. What would you add to the diet if you only wanted to keep him conscious and functioning?”

“Oh, crackers or bread would be the simplest things for the body to break down and utilize quickly.” Edward pitched his quarter into the pile, and raised by only a nickel this time.

“Meet that and raise him a quarter, Charles.”

“If I raise him another twenty-five cents, I’ll be down to fifteen cents.”

“Do it.”

Charles laid his last quarter down in a raise. And Edward Slope folded his hand. The doctor looked up at Mallory, and something passed between them, part anger, part admiration. Charles looked from Edward to Mallory.

“You knew he was going to fold.”

“Yes, Charles.”

“But how could you possibly know?”

“Dr. Slope is a gentleman of the old school.” Mallory spoke to Charles, but fixed her eyes on the doctor. “That’s what Markowitz called him. The old man always did this to him early in the game, but only when the game was at our house. Markowitz would bet his whole stash and win the pot every damn time.”

Charles knew something was going by him but not what. “Mallory, I don’t see the-”

“Charles, you’re his host, and the night is young. He wouldn’t let you lose everything and then just sit out the rest of the game. Of course, when Markowitz did this to him, the old man always looked at his cards. But you can’t do that. You couldn’t run a bluff if I put a gun to your head-not with that face.”

And now Charles’s face was a signboard advertising all his frustration and incredulity. “But you’ve put me in the position of taking unfair advantage of Edward.”

Three men looked to the ceiling, but held the line at not laughing out loud.

“That’s right,” said Mallory. “Now you’ve got it. Try not to lose that pile, okay?”

Edward Slope pointed to Charles’s cards. “Okay, let’s see ‘em. What were you holding?”

Mallory quickly reached across the table and grabbed the deck of cards. She swept up Charles’s five cards and mingled them into the deck with the waterfall shuffle of a seasoned gambler.

Edward Slope looked down at the hand which held his beer bottle in a death grip. “I know you only did that to drive us nuts.”

Robin Duffy leaned toward the doctor. “And you always said the kid had no sense of humor.”

Mallory settled behind the rabbi’s chair. “I’ve got a religious question.”

Edward dealt the next hand. “Rabbi, if you want to keep my friendship and esteem, you’ll tell her to get lost.”

The rabbi was staring sadly at the deck of cards in the doctor’s tight fist, the deck which contained the insoluble mystery of Charles’s winning hand. “Edward’s right. You do a thing like that, and then you ask for my help?”

“You’re my rabbi, you have to help.”

“All right, you got me twice in one night. What is your question?”

“I need to know what you have to do to get kicked out of a Catholic seminary.”

“Kathy, as I recall, Helen gave you four years of a very expensive Catholic school education. Go and ask Father Brenner. He’s semiretired now, but I believe he’s filling in the vacation schedule at St. Jude’s this week.”

“Father Brenner and I aren’t exactly on friendly terms. Maybe you could ask him.”

“It’s been what, maybe ten years now? He’s not one to hold a grudge. It’s not as if you broke that nun’s leg.”

After Mallory left the room, the other players fixed on the face of the rabbi in dead silence. He cast his sweet smile on each player in turn, which was easy because he was holding the best cards of the evening. But he never said another word about Kathy Mallory and the nun, not even when they withheld his sandwiches and beer for a time. He would not talk.

Gregor Gilette stood in front of the church, hatless in the drizzle.

He began as a pilgrim, climbing the steps vast and gray, leading up to the church doors. He had come here to find his wife. This was Sabra’s church, not his.

As a small boy he had once wandered into a Catholic church, where he was dazzled by the spectacle of flaming candles and stained-glass windows lit with images of heaven and hell. He had stared at the tortured figure on the cross beyond the altar and then looked up and up to the high ceiling with its carved, curving beams. Sky high it was. As a child, he’d had the sense of a magical place. It had frightened him, and filled him with awe.

Gregor had come at the right time in his life. He was only twelve then. The following year he would not believe in anything magical, under pain of ridicule by peers. Then, the boy had put this feeling away with the comic books and the toys, and had forgotten where he left it.

Now the man remembered. He had come back for it.

Unshaven, unbeliever in this holiest of places, he was looking here for Sabra, though she was probably miles away and worlds, sitting somewhere cradling her own mind like a child upon her lap.

It was magic, it seemed, that sent her over, so he lit a candle now to bring her back. But how far and from exactly where? She had begun to leave him on the day Aubry died, growing farther and farther away, killing him as she left him, going away from him, bit by bit of her mind, and then altogether gone and taking her body with her.

Once Sabra’s life had been filled with glorious color. Color had throbbed about her in an electricity of bright scarves, textured stockings and summer dresses of impossible combinations of purples and greens. When she lived alone, her apartment had been alive with color. The rugs and drapes held vibrant, clashing conversations. Each careless thing that lay strewn about the rooms would contradict the thing it lay upon.

This had been a part of the excitement of her, the wild charm of Sabra. After they were married, he began to work his changes on her, maintaining all the while that he loved her as she was. First he changed the shape of her body with their only child. Then he refurnished her environs, save for the rocking chair that had been her mother’s, all that he approved of, good solid wooden thing. But glaring prints of rugs and drapes were cast out with the trash and the multicolored coat.

Standing in the perfect quiet of the church and gazing up at the stained-glass windows, he saw again the wild colors in a jam of rolling rainbows, escaping down Bleecker Street in the junkman’s cart. And he watched Sabra running after the cart, shaking her fists at the junk-man, and returning triumphant with her coat of many colors.