Christopher Buckley - Wet Work

Metal sounds: the door opening, ball bearings turning, click. He saw her foot. Her toe was tagged. A sheet covered the rest of her and he remembered when she was seven and cut up one of her grandmother's Pratesi sheets to make a Halloween ghost.

The sheet came back. Her skin was bluish and her mouth was open. Don't look at me, she said, I'm a mess. He touched his hand to her cheek and started at the coldness. Charley Junior had still been warm when he reached the hospital.

Then they were in a brightly lit office with the sun streaming in, coffee was being offered and declined. Dr. Bratter was being very courteous, and such a busy man too. Charley had read an article on him in the Times not two weeks ago about some personality thing between him and the mayor-

"How old was she, Mr. Becker?"

– apparently the mayor thought he… what? Sorry. Twenty-two. "Is there a history of coronary disease in your family?"

"No, my wife died of cancer and my son-we die of other things."

"Did your granddaughter use controlled substances?"

"No, her daddy and mother had, they were, they had drinking problems and she-she smoked cigarettes, that was her vice."

The ME looked over at the detective and the detective said that they had found a small container of cocaine at the scene. It was being analyzed. Charley shook his head and said that wouldn't have been hers. Dr. Bratter said-he put it this way-that "a white granular substance was visually observed in her nasal cavities."

A door opened and someone came in with a clear plastic bag. Charley saw white pants like thick leotards, a black cashmere sweater, pearls, panties. The ME was saying he understood how "difficult" this was and that he would try to expedite "things." What things? The autopsy. No, Charley said, I'm taking her with me now, I will not leave her in that place. The detective was explaining that it was necessary under law in these circumstances and then Charley was on the floor and they were loosening his tie and Felix was saying it's going to be all right, boss, it's going to be fine.

Another embarrassing funeral in the private chapel, another sermon on the theme: "It is not for us to judge." "How awful for poor Charley," whispered a friend of the family. He looked so slumped up there all alone in the first pew. The casket came in, covered with a spray of Arabian jasmine sent by the nuns. Felix in sunglasses walked in front as chief pallbearer. Tim, who had broken down and told Charley that they were lovers, walked beside it. You could see what pain he was going through. Bernie and Karen sent a nice wreath on behalf of the cast and crew. The organist played a Bach air as the winter light streamed brilliantly through the Chagall window and Charley's Labrador retriever, Spook, wandered in during the eulogy, wagging his tail, and walked up to Charley and began licking at his hand. It was the saddest thing. Everyone said afterward that the dog coming in was the saddest thing.

But the Chagall window was transcendently beautiful that day, everyone agreed about that too.

Charley had brought the chapel over stone by stone from Italy-after the fashion of self-made Americans desiring some instant background. Charley had been collecting Chagall's work since the late forties and went to him to make a stained-glass window behind the altar, a Crucifixion scene. Chagall told him that only a "vulgar, rich American would ask a Jew to make him a Crucifixion," to which Charley said he wanted someone with experience at crucifying saviors. He hired an astronomer to calculate exactly what day of the year the sun would be brightest through the window so they could dedicate it in its fullest glory; the astronomer mentioned in passing that if the chapel were angled fourteen degrees more to the south the window would receive 45 percent more light. Chagall demanded that the chapel be rotated on its axis. Charley, who had been paying the artist's staggering-and, for that matter, unitemized-bills without a peep, put his foot down and said no, which put Chagall into a work-stoppage funk that lasted almost a month, until Charley said he was going to hire Julian Schnabel to finish the damn thing if he didn't get back to work.

Finally it was completed and Charley bribed the Archbishop of Washington to come and consecrate it (by making a large donation to the renovation fund for St. Matthew's Cathedral). The veil came down precisely at 1028 hours on June 22, and it was a sight to take your breath away. Jesus was suspended in midair, his face a mask of peace and triumph. The Virgin Mary and disciple John were standing together. The centurion whose servant Jesus had healed a few days earlier as a favor was sitting on the ground with his face in his hands. The colors were-the whole thing seemed to move, they were so vibrant. It was Einstein's bent light that shot through it with hallucinatory energy. And the blood, good heavens, the blood. Chagall had used huge, uncut Burmese rubies for the blood that fell from Jesus' wounds. It dripped into a red river that ran across the bottom of the tableau, no calm, Stygian affair but a wild, roaring rush of whitecaps, the kind that shoots through narrow canyons. The banks were lined with calla lilies with snakes for pistils. Underneath the river was the inscription

HIC EST ENIM CALIX SANGUINIS MEI

which means in Latin: "For this is the Cup of My Blood," the words Jesus is said to have spoken to his disciples at the Last Supper. Right above the HIC was a man with bushy eyebrows and Xs for eyes, dipping a beer mug in the river: Charley, drunk on the blood of the lamb. "How 'bout that?" he said, actually flattered, counter to Chagall's intention.

The medical examiner made the call himself; that was decent of him. Charley was embarrassed over the episode in his office and apologized. Dr. Bratter said that was hardly necessary.

"It was a fresh myocardial infarction precipitated by a spasm of the coronary arteries," he said, reading from the report, which made it somewhat easier. "She died of a heart attack, Mr. Becker." He explained about vasoconstriction of the coronary vessels, something like that brought about by a lifetime of gorging on butter, or a thrombosis. Oxygen can't get through to the heart muscle, and it dies. The hard part: "As to the cause of the spasm," he said, "we determined it was due to a prolonged intranasal inhalation of high-potency cocaine, consistent with that analyzed by the police." Time of death was fixed at between eight o'clock and twelve midnight the night before she was found.

Tim was wonderful in the days following, calling Charley often to ask how he was doing, to chat, reminisce, to see if there was anything he could do. Charley was touched by his attentions and saddened to think that here was a young man he wouldn't have minded having as a son-in-law.

Tim phoned one day to say he had just spent over an hour with Detective Mullen going over-again-the messages he'd left on Tasha's answering machine. He called back the next day, sounding harried. Mullen had wanted to go over them again. "It was a little surreal, frankly," he said. "He actually asked me about my 'whereabouts' the night it happened. He actually used the word 'whereabouts.'" Charley said not to take offense, he was just a policeman doing his job.

"The worst part is thinking: Here I was calling her and leaving these pissed-off messages on her machine and she was there dead the whole time."

"You couldn't have known," said Charley.

"I might have known. I should have known. She was so serious about the Work. When that asshole's review came out that morning, I should have known."

"You think that's what it was, the review?"

"Sure it was. The paper was open to the review right there on the table next to the cocaine. That's where they found it. It's obvious, isn't it?"