Servant of the Bones

  She sat up on the bed, her breasts amazingly firm, and the pink nipples turned up. Her silver-and-black hair made a rumpled mass down her back and displayed a long neck.

  "Splendid," she whispered.

  A rain of doubts descended on me.

  But I had to do it. What was the point of warning her that I might dissolve in the process? I was going to do it.

  I sat down beside her, embracing her. I felt the moist thin silkiness of her skin, not healthy in a woman too thin, yet delicious. Even the bones of her wrists were beautiful.

  She tugged at my hair, and kissed me with her eyes closed, all over my face, and quite suddenly I realized with a shock that my beard and mustache were on my face.

  She drew back, staring at it. I told this hair to go away.

  "No," she said. "Bring it back! It makes your mouth sweeter and damper." I felt the hair return as if it wanted to! I couldn't quite figure this out, why the hair had come of its own, but that was the whole story so far, my body came on its own, and in its own form. One lapse in my will, one drifting into pride in my physical self, and the hair had come.

  Well, she loved it. I took a long breath, feeling the toll of all this changing and magic, but I was as hard as a statue for her. I wanted to pounce on her. Instead I let her bury her face in the hair of my chest, and kiss my nipples, and the pleasure went right to my loins.

  I took her breasts in my hands, enchanted by their smallness, their delicacy. So pink, girlish pink.

  "It's all drugs, my love," she said, as though feeling my wonder. She kissed my beard, kissing it along the bone of my jaw. "It's hormones and modern science; I have a woman's chemicals inside me, that's all. They can make me look young, but they can't save my life."

  I kissed her and held her, my hands free and rough over her thighs and stealing into the secret crevice, to feel there the firmness of a young woman's secret body. Chemicals, was it? Modern science?

  "Those things preserve," I said, "but you make the beauty."

  "Sweet God," she whispered, kissing me all over my face. I had my hands beneath her small backside, and cuddled it.

  "Yes," I said, "God, capricious as He is; he lavished his blessings on you and on your daughter, Esther."

  "And you were the last thing," she breathed into my ear, her hands clawing gently at my back. "You were the last thing she saw. How good that was for her."

  A savage strength rose in me, the realization that I had her completely at my mercy, this precious creature, and that no words from anyone could command me away from her. Only her words would hold sway with me now, and only because I would defer to her.

  It was like fruit between her legs, like peaches or plums, it was just wet enough. I brought my fingers to my nostrils.

  "I can't hold back, my love," I said.

  She parted her legs, and lifted her hips, and this was paradise suddenly, to be inside her, inside this hot throbbing fruit, and to have her mouth at the same time, to have both her mouths, to cover her, with hair and strength. I began the manly rhythm. Alive, alive, alive. I was blinded. Pleasure drenched all my senses.

  "Yes, now, yes, do it," she said. She lifted her hips against me. I rose up on my elbows so as not to hurt her with my weight, and looking down at her, I felt the seed explode inside her. My jerking motions surely hurt her. But then I saw the blush I wanted in her face, I felt the throbbing in her throat, and knew she was as happy as I was. The tight little core of fruit squeezed the last drop out of me, and I fell over on my back, whole and alive, staring at the ceiling of this room, or staling into airy dark.

  Whatever had been my life, spirit or man, I could not recall a pleasure as delicious as this one, as totally humiliating in the way it took over, in the way that it made me feel the slave and the master simultaneously. I didn't ask myself what men felt.

  Her head turned from side to side; she was blood red. "Come to me again, please, now," she said.

  Overjoyed, I rolled back on top of her and entered her. I didn't need a rest. The fruity secret part was more luscious, tighter than before, throbbing more fully. Again I came and her face flooded with blood, and then finally she scratched my back hard with both her hands, she beat on me with fists, and when I lifted up to thrust, she came with me just far enough, and then lay back, to make it ecstasy.

  "Harder," she said. "Harder. Make this a battlefield, make me a boy you've found, a girl, I don't care."

  It was too inviting. I slammed against her, harshly, over and over, feeling the seed spill again, the sight of her red face filling me with an all-too-human sense of power. Yes, to have her, to make her come, to make her come, yes, again, and again.

  I filled her up. I was so tight inside her, I dragged her hips up off the bed with me, and then in her wetness she let me slide back and forth, and like a brute soldier, I came down, driving her into the silken pillows, and I saw through my half-closed eyes that she smiled.

  "Surrender, that's what I want," I said through my teeth. She could not stop the pleasure coming in her; it came and came as if her heart would break. She was red and tossing, and I wouldn't let her go, slamming again and again against her sweet fruitlike lips, and then she lifted both her arms to cover her face, as if she would hide from me.

  This sublime gesture, this maidenly gesture, this sweet gesture stripped me of the very last control I ever possessed in this or any other body, and I shot forth my seed for the third time, groaning aloud.

  Now I was spent. I was tired. And she grew pale in the light of the moon and the white billowing clouds, and we lay there together. My cock was dripping.

  She turned over and in the tenderest way, like a little girl almost, she kissed my shoulder. She ran her fingers through the hair on my chest.

  "My darling," I said. I spoke to her in old languages, natural to me, Chaldean, Aramaic, I spoke words of love and testaments of fidelity and devotion, and cooed against her ear, and she rippled with delight against me, and tore at my hair again.

  Pillows had tumbled to the side. The air swirled around her, full of the scents of the garden. It stirred beneath the low, white ceiling, and suddenly, as if the wind had changed its direction, there came the song of the sea, the full great sea, relentless, the deceptive song of water, water gurgling in the waterfall that seems to be talking to you when it is saying nothing, has no syllables, and water pounding the beach as if to say I am coming, I am coming. But there was no I.

  "If I could die now, I would do it," she said. "But there are things you have to know."

  I drifted, I dreamed. I felt my fatigue. I shook myself awake. Did I have my body still? I feared sleep. Yet I felt the need of it, the assembled body needed it, as it needed water. I sat up.

  "Don't talk of dying," I said. "It's going to happen soon enough." I turned and looked down at her.

  She looked composed, intelligent, all mind with angular collected limbs, quite incapable of the passion we'd just shared. I blurted out:

  "I have no power to cure, not a disease this far advanced."

  "Have I asked you?"

  "You must want to know, you must wonder."

  "I'll tell you why I didn't ask," she said, reaching up and playfully tugging at the hair on my chest. "I knew if you had the power, you would have helped me the moment you had the chance."

  "You're right, you're absolutely right."

  She closed her eyes, and tightened her lids. It was pain.

  "What can I do?" I said.

  "Nothing. I want these drugs to wear off. I want to die on my own."

  "I'm ready to bring you anything I can," I said. I was shaken to the bone by the sight of her suffering, but it seemed to melt, and her face was waxen again and perfect.

  "You talked about Esther, you said that you wanted to know--"

  "Yes, why do you think your husband killed her?"

  "I don't know! That's just it. They quarreled but I don't know. I can't believe it was on account of the family. Esther and Gregory fought all the time. It was norma
l. I don't know."

  "Tell me everything you remember about Esther and Gregory and this diamond necklace. You said she discovered his brother Nathan when she bought the necklace."

  "She met Nathan in the diamond district. She could see his resemblance to Gregory and when she mentioned it, he confessed he was Gregory's identical twin."

  "Ah, identical."

  "But what could it all mean? He told her he was Gregory's twin. He told her to give Gregory his love. She was amazed. She liked him. She met the other Hasidim who work in the store with him. She liked Nathan very much. She said it was like looking at the man Gregory could have been, all filled up with gentleness and kindness.

  "The day she died, I'm sure she took the necklace back to Nathan. I think I remember her saying that she had to drop it off, because some small thing was wrong and Nathan would fix it, and she said, 'Don't tell the Messiah that I'm going to visit his brother,' and she laughed. I think she dropped it off before those killers got her. Gregory knew she was shopping that day at Henri Bendel. He knew that. But I don't think he knew about the necklace. It wasn't till yesterday that the whole issue of the necklace came up. I didn't even know the necklace was gone. Nobody did. Then Gregory brought it up, that the terrorists had seized her necklace and killed her. Sure enough, the necklace was gone, but I couldn't reach Nathan to find out if he had it. Besides, he would have called. I know Nathan only by voice, but I know him now, through one phone call."

  "Go back now to the earlier part. Esther quarreled with Gregory about his brother, and the brother was an identical twin."

  "She had wanted him to meet with his brother. He had been frantic that she tell no one about the Hasidim, no one. He told her it was a matter of life or death. He tried to frighten her. I know Gregory. I know him when he's weak and not thinking too clearly, when he's caught off guard, and is furious and desperate."

  "I've seen this too," I said, "a glimpse of it."

  "Well, that's how he was with her. 'No, no, no, you didn't meet any brother, I have no brother!' Then he came storming into me and desperately appealed to me in Yiddish to explain to her how the Hasidim would not want to be connected with him. But he was furious about the whole affair. She didn't speak Yiddish, Esther. She came into the room, and I remember he turned and he said, 'You ever tell anyone about Nathan and I'll never forgive you!'

  "She was so confused. I drew her aside, tried to explain how the Observant Jews would not like Jews like us, who didn't pray each day, or observe the laws of the Talmud. She listened but I could see she didn't grasp this. She said, 'But Nathan said he loved Gregory. He said he would love to see his brother. He said that from time to time he tries to call Gregory but he can't get through.'

  "I thought Gregory would go out of his mind. 'I don't want to hear any more of this,' he said. 'If you gave him my private number tell me now! These people hurt me. I left when I was a boy. They hurt me! I made my own church, my own tribe, my own way. I am my Messiah!'

  "I tried to calm him down, I said, 'Gregory, please, we're not in a television pulpit. Sit down. Rest.'

  "Then Esther demanded to know why Gregory had been so kind to Nathan in taking him to the hospital. She said Nathan had told her all about that, this time in the hospital--how Gregory had checked Nathan into the hospital under his own name, and had paid all his expenses, and kept Nathan in a private suite, and didn't want to worry the Rebbe or his wife about it, took care of all of it. She said, 'Nathan said you were so generous.'

  "I swear to you, I thought he would go crazy.

  "I started to see how complex this was. Gregory had something at stake other than mere publicity. In fact, it was perfectly obvious to me that the Hasid connection would be a help to Gregory with his church, a form of...occult status...do you know what I mean?"

  "Yes, I do exactly. Exotic and pure roots had grown this great leader."

  "Yes. So I sat up and tried to ask a few questions, 'Why had Nathan been in the hospital?' And Esther said that Gregory had suggested it, Gregory had told Nathan that they were both at risk for something inherited in their family, and knowing the Rebbe would never agree, he had spirited Nathan away and had all the tests done under Gregory's name. For Nathan it had been a dream, the beautiful hospital suite, kosher food, all the proprieties observed, and the people thinking he was Gregory. He found it amusing. Of course he didn't have the hereditary disease, whatever that was. God, what on earth--"

  "Ah, I see," I said.

  "What does all this amount to?"

  "Keep telling me everything about Nathan and Esther," I said. "What else do you know?"

  "Oh, that first night, we fought for hours about it. Finally she agreed she wouldn't tell anyone, or try to bring the families together, but she would see Nathan from time to time and give him Gregory's good wishes. Gregory began to cry with relief. Gregory can cry on cue, and on camera. He went into how his people had cast him out. The Temple was everything to him, his meaning, his life.

  "Whenever he went into that speech, Esther and I would just roll our eyes. We knew that he had compiled the teachings of the Temple of the Mind with a computer program. He had programmed in all the information he could about other cults, and which commandments had given the members the most comfort, and then he had chosen a list of the most acceptable and likable commandments. Other aspects of the Temple were created the same way, through secret surveys and computer compilation of the most appealing aspects of other religions. It was a joke to Esther and me. But that night he wept and wept. It was his whole life. God had guided him and his computer.

  "I went to sleep. Two days Esther and Gregory didn't speak to each other. But that was nothing unusual. They could have fought over some little political question and scream. It was the way they acted together."

  "What else?"

  "Two nights later, Gregory woke me at four o'clock. He was in one of his rages. He said, 'Take the phone, talk to him, listen to him yourself.' I didn't know what the hell he meant.

  "The voice coming through the phone sounded exactly like Gregory! I mean exactly. I could scarcely believe it was another person, but it was, and he introduced himself as Nathan, Gregory's brother. He asked me kindly to explain to Esther that the families couldn't get together. This breaks my heart, that I must say this to my brother's wife,' he said, 'but our grandfather doesn't have long to live and the Court depends on him. He is the Rebbe. Tell Esther that it can't be, and give her my love, and in time I will see her when she comes to visit me.'

  "I told him I understood perfectly. 'You have my love too, brother-in-law. I too lost my parents in the camps. I wish you only well.'

  "Then in Yiddish he said we were in his prayers and in his thoughts, and if we ever needed him, if Gregory was ever ill or afraid, we must call him.

  "I told him how good it was to hear a Yiddish voice, and to talk with him. He laughed and said something like 'Gregory thinks he has everything, and thank God he has a good wife, but you never know when a brother will need a brother. Gregory has never been sick a day in his life, never been inside a hospital, except to visit me of course and take care of me, but I will come if he ever calls.'

  "I remember thinking about this hospital stay, these tests. Had Gregory himself had such tests? What was this hereditary disease? I knew it was true that Gregory had never been in a hospital. Gregory had a private doctor, hardly what I would call a licensed practitioner of medicine, but he had never to my knowledge been in a hospital. I said to Nathan how kind he was, and I asked how I might reach him, and then Gregory grabbed the phone back.

  "He carried it out of the room with him but I could hear him talking Yiddish in a simple natural way, and intimately, in a way Gregory never spoke to anyone. I was really for the first time hearing him speak to a brother. I had never heard that. I had always been told that all Gregory's people were dead. All of them."

  "How long ago was all this?" I asked.

  "About a month ago. But I didn't even think of it before now, all this. I mea
n, I knew in my heart that he had been responsible for Esther's death, I knew when I heard him make his speech about terrorism and enemies that he'd been lying. He was too prepared for Esther's death! But honestly, frankly, do you think he would kill his own daughter because of all this?"

  "Yes, I do, but I see a large design here," I said. "And the Rebbe. You never met or spoke to the Rebbe?"

  "No," she said. "I wouldn't go over there to be rejected. I have great reverence for those people, my parents were Hasidim from Poland. But no, I know that kind of old man."

  "Well, let me tell you this. That old man also accused Gregory of killing Esther. And he wanted to know the same thing you wanted to know, why."

  "Do you realize what this means?" she said. "If he would kill Esther to protect the family secret, then he might kill Nathan!"

  "Has there been no call from Nathan concerning this necklace?" I asked. "I know how the Hasidim live, but this is news, diamonds, you know, talk of valuable diamonds snatched by terrorists."

  "No, no call that I know of, but you see, I'm cut off, I was surrounded by the Minders. And Gregory himself didn't even come up with the necklace part till the day after the murder. In his first speech, all he did was talk about enemies. Then the next day he...my god, maybe that's when Nathan called him, but then he wouldn't have told such a lie or...Why in the hell did he bring up the necklace?"

  I was quietly absorbing all these words.

  "I think I can figure it out," I said. "One thing is true, I foiled his plan. His plan is big. His design is big. I foiled it by killing those tramps that murdered her. So that blurred his attempt at calling it all terrorism. Those men cannot be traced to terrorists, can they?"

  "No, not at all. Half the world is crying with him, and others are laughing at him. The men were bums out of some town in south Texas, bums. Now Gregory claims his enemies will use any means to hurt him and these bums were part of it and the theft was to give them badly needed wealth to fight his church."

  "Let's leave the necklace for a moment. He still played up the terrorist part, and for some strange reason included the necklace. Now listen, I have to ask you. Why are there laboratories in the Temple of the Mind? Why?"