Liquefied
Above Los Angeles, rain from heavy clouds fell to spot hard earth forming damp animated shapes. Soon cascading torrents collected at higher elevations to chisel arroyos before bursting into concrete spillways. Soda cans, eucalyptus bark, shrunken avocado-corks and things living and dead rode the pipeline. The flotsam burst into a drain, the San Gabriel River before it dumped into the Pacific.
At dusk they had risen from the basin. She had clutched his red robe passing sulking clouds that parted to reveal a glowing web of moving vehicles from coast to foothill. Water striking her face was warm and surprisingly drops touching her tongue felt alive. Some power transformed favored drops into crystals and these formed a thin skin on the earth. She knew if she hovered quietly they’d hear the membrane grow thick enough to eventually close Angeles Crest Highway.
An hour later, Justine awoke to shivering in a burgundy colored quilt. She had removed Stephen Malone's latest unwanted message from the answering machine causing swift retribution. The sound of palm fronds beating stucco gave way to roof tiles smashing and moments later a banging shutter had broken glass.
Lights flickered and darkness turned solitude into unnerving dread. The wind whistling over the chimney sounded like intimate moments with Michael. Hands covered ears but she heard—whimpers and deep moans—a mockery of their love making. A fireplace freed hideous shadows that scampered from wall to ceiling.
Fourteen years earlier, just after her twenty-sixth birthday, Stephen had swept her off her feet. Love at first sight, unthinkable now, had rendered them all but inseparable. Now, there was no place in her life for the Stanford graduate who had left Atherton, San Francisco's affluent suburb, to arrive at Los Angeles's top advertising agency armed with his father's buyout overture.
Stephen’s subsequent advertising campaigns, replete with subtle sarcasm aimed at Southern California’s skateboarding beach communities and sun-broiled blondes, had spawned a marketing and public relations empire.
Justine Orman left Pacoima High in the most socially inadequate section of the San Fernando Valley to grace billboards that tempted motorists to join a well-endowed, bikini-clad teenager at a roulette wheel in Las Vegas above the caption "I've got your number."
Beneath strawberry blonde hair a bronzed face held ice-blue eyes, an exquisite nose and full lips. Her face smiled from magazines at a procession of would be suitors. There were assignments in Paris, Rome and other coveted locations but behind that patented grin and sheltered from a controlling soon-to-be-husband, an agent and legions of single females there was the hope of instant motherhood.
Justine had wanted children and marriage; she was nearing thirty and time was running out. They tied the knot in St. Helena and boarded her father-in-law’s jet bound for Hawaii where she boldly sent birth control pills rafting at Akaka Falls.
Weeks later Stephen's uncompromising directive resulted in a devastating abortion. Part of her psyche was destroyed along with that long sought embryo. In the months that followed and despite the best efforts of her psychiatrist, Dr. Marvin Sangler, she continued to replace the loss of a living being with a vision so compelling that a child had crossed the threshold into her consciousness.
An obedient wife swallowed those hated little pills again but by then she had completely dismissed Stephen—friendship had never been a component of the marriage—as a lover. Mutual betrayal unfolded painfully and was punctuated by Justine being thrown from bed-to-carpet. What frightened her most, as his laughter trailed off was his prophecy, “You’ll have a kid when I let you.”
Justine’s marriage continued but sharing time with Stephen wasn’t considered. She retreated into books in an attempt to keep up with Stephen’s intimidating intellect and then at his insistence took drama classes at UCLA. Dr. Sangler’s warning—the inability to expose another failing to public criticism, no matter how well intended or constructive—proved painful.
Face and form, highly prized merchandise, were accepted. However she was judged self-conscious with no ability to transmit honest emotion to an audience. Placated by managing Stephen’s hastily formed casting agency, Justine developed a talent for discovering new faces. She knew this allowed Stephen’s people to keep a tight rein on his “agitated wife”.
Any interest in being photographed vanished when Stephen's latest indiscretion went public. A strikingly beautiful girl of eighteen on a tabloid’s front page peering past Stephen in their bed caused Justine’s psychic decline. She told Sanger about standing naked in front of a full-length mirror very mystified as tears streamed down a face bearing a remarkable resemblance to her own.
“Those tears couldn’t be mine...my face was dry.” Apprehension hid behind a level, relaxed tone. “Might that woman be the vulnerable Justine we talk about?” She was crying again. “Little Justine is grown up?” Sanger’s expression exposed her pathology as her hands went under her blouse to comfort her stomach.
“You imagined you were the woman in the mirror.” Tense seconds ticked away as hands rubbed a belly. “You mean, I imagined she cried for me?” Tension around the eyes and teeth biting his pen went unnoticed.
“Don’t forget we’ve talked about how the unconscious mind protects us.”
“I understand, she grew up quickly in order to help me...of course.”
Sanger knew the mind had gone topsy-turvy; Justine had made room for yet another companion, this time it was an unseen adult offering advice. “Don’t listen to that psychiatrist; Stephen uses him to manipulate you.” There were no more counseling sessions, prescriptions or secrets shared with Dr. Sanger.
Three years passed quickly with separate beds, bank accounts and lives that led to rare encounters and that final bedroom skirmish that rewarded Justin with a court-ordered breakup of Stephen's company. Justine received the new house in Pacific Palisades and became the sole owner of Malone Casting. The woman who had begun a marriage full of promise ended the battle with little regret. It didn’t really matter she had sole custody of the child inside.
2
During the year’s first week, a mere seven weeks ago, a handsome, twenty-three year old Irish face with the requisite dark eyes and brown hair had descended on Malone Casting. Probing questions about his theatrical past were dispensed with a quick wit. Michael Morrison had more than a passing interest in being cast for the role of Eugene O'Neill's alter ego, Edmund Tyrone in Long Day’s Journey Into Night.
Nervous energy would be channeled into a credible younger Tyrone son named Edmund and a life meaningless up to now would be salvaged in the footlights. The distant voice of Edmund Tyrone overpowered the chosen cast at the reading. Justine consumed each word as nourishment. There were very authentic coughing spells and his profile displayed sunken cheeks as required.
Wanting him made perfect sense to Justin, they were meant for each other. Justine was an avid reader just like Edmund even though Stephen had ridiculed her romance paperbacks as mindless retreats from reality? Writers that Edmund sought created conflict, but he hadn’t been led astray and neither had she.
She read the French poets too, maybe not Baudelaire but she had frequented Paris’s museums, art galleries and libraries. Edmund had traveled the world—that changes anybody—and his insights were hers. Both shared a spiritual side, Edmund’s solitary walks by the sea proved that. Only a soul mate knew water harbored supernatural power. Edmund sensed he might disappear in the ocean and wasn’t his consciousness lost in liquor, a liquid laced with energy?
If
final proof were needed, the very week before meeting Michael when reading the
play a second time, an epiphany had occurred. The printed word of a playwright
gave clarity and purpose to her most recurrent dream. In that Hollywood
theater the missing pieces had finally come together.
The play was about Catholics, an unknown commodity, yet refreshingly different from the Jewishness Stephen seemed to exude with conceit. And wasn’t O'Neill a Broadway actor just like Michael. The mystery was solved; Edmund had a brother named Eugene who had died as an infant. Eugene was the cherub who danced above her bed in a red robe when fitful sleep had played tricks on a suffering newlywed.
When Michael finished, he slowly disappeared into the wings as if the clapping was soundless, then he advanced cautiously from behind the curtain wearing an almost visible smile. In the front row Justine gathered the applause as if it was meant for her. She rose on shaky feet feeling inexplicable joy. The applause was thunderous to her ears. It caused the hair on her arms to stand on end and goose pimples to pop out.
Long Day's Journey into Night would open in two months. Michael became the beneficiary of untested sexual interest. Nobody had auditioned in Justine's bed but at dinner she sensed Michael expected an invitation and found that appealing in a man chasing young women. There were rough edges and just like Edmund Tyrone, she saw a dreamer eager to squander money. An uncouth, ill-mannered juvenile lurked near the surface—bravado masked vulnerability, liquor unknown fear—but his grin could thaw granite.
Glaring dissimilarities: financial station, maturity and flirtatious behavior were overlooked. More than lust kept them in sheets, destiny was in control. “I always believed you couldn’t possibly see me just as just a casting professional and so I used to play at kissing you with my husband before we met. Oh! I’ll say it, Michael; I’ve been in love with you forever—preparing for only this.”
New Yorkers knew California was noted for drama. Their kissing hadn’t meant anything as he held her hand the first night. He’d won her but who was this forever young, overly attractive Californian? He found in Justine all that he had heard a Jewish woman was supposed to be: soft, pliable and needy. It was as if this woman had a duty to perform, so he had happily enjoyed their lovemaking.
The third phone message she had left when electric service returned to Amalfi Drive that Saturday in February breached the limits imposed on self-respect. It ended in muffled sobs and a plea for a return call at 7 P.M. Los Angeles time. Longing intensified in the certainty that although she had loathed it, making love with Michael that last night had been inescapable. Fate ruled both their lives.
During the weeks that followed little, robe-glad Eugene had lost his reassuring smile. At first there was only a mere suggestion of disinterest in her questioning Michael’s leaving, but later Eugene had no answers. Brief encounters in fleeting dreams were unsatisfying. Uncharacteristic silence—little Eugene appeared aloof with a detached stare—replaced laughter and flights but those were only dreams, tonight’s journey above the wet city was real and they had been inseparable.
She pulled the phone’s cord from the wall amid a flood of hot tears and laid the last log to rest in the bedroom fireplace. Alone again in that empty house, Justine had watched Last Tango in Paris and downed two sleeping pills with Chateauneuf du Pape. Michael unpolished, rough-hewn, immature, but a surprisingly astute gifter of fine wine had been Marlon’s understudy.
***
In Manhattan a phone was a necessity and Michael had a ready answer for the missing telephone in his apartment. "The thing’s been banjaxed since I dropped it in the tub." A car in Manhattan was a troublesome luxury so he had taken the subway to the Woodlawn Avenue #4 subway station and then walked to the Bronx’s Monte Fiore Hospital.
His coughs produced scowls but he had moved ahead in the line of patients taking occasional nips from his ever-present NyQuil. After a twenty minute wait, he stood before a brown face framed by corn-rowed hair to retrieve a promised biopsy report. It went unread to his pocket.
Winter was more enjoyable underground; it was crowded with the skin shades and accents New York makes available. Peruvians from Queens wore ancient woolen caps designed by Incan masters that Macy's modern mavens could never improve. Puerto Ricans bounced to rhythm pouring from headsets and one, a statuesque teen, danced slowly past Michael.
Her pink leather coat and matching fur-lined boots momentarily drew his eyes from the folded biopsy report before settling on her smiling mother. She was an exact duplicate of the teen-queen with twenty years added. Her shopping bag proclaimed a boutique patron; an imported handbag and full-length leather boots said high-classed but a red tint in her hair confirmed a hustling Puerto Rican had snared a rich Italian somewhere in Westchester.
Michael opened the report. The news required no white gown or spiritual support. Tumors spread, everyone knew that happens. He crumbled his death sentence tossing it in anger at the third rail. Fingers tore at his neck breaking the necklace’s clasp. Serpentine gold fell across Michael’s boot forcing the girl’s mother back. Glazed eyes brimming with tears created a hushed platform.
He retrieved the necklace staring at the crowd with hollow eyes. A faint rumble grew louder behind shimmering rails in the approaching light. Brakes squealed as blue light sliced through a surging groundswell of foul-smelling air. Turned heads shielded faces as debris completed its journey back onto the tracks.
Michael's eyes clouded over as they fixed on his palm. The tiny man looked back from a small cross that had piercing skin as if to confirm the futility of denial—it was Michael’s turn to die. Life was ending cell by cell—there would be no sacrifice to save souls, no resurrection—below feet and blaring horns.
He stumbled through opening doors squeezing the cross tightly. Watching rusty pillars pass in smudged glass he glimpsed seething anger. Rib-rattling coughs caused two teenagers seated nearby to bolt in disgust. Running the back of his hand over his chin, Michael was shocked to find bright-red blood. The girl brought the back of her hand to her face and looked away.
“Nice gross-out, Dude. You got big balls bringing your disease shit in here.”
An hour later, he stepped from a steaming tub to a carpet littered with paperback books. He fished a marijuana roach from an ashtray and found sleep on a cot in the one-room flat. He awoke to screeching cats in the alley, which brought a welcomed smile.
“Nature
calls—be we two-legged or four. Tis’ best I make another me.”
Michael held the gold-colored, glass-ribbed container under the faucet
waiting for hot water and observed ominous credit card receipts with a wary eye.
“Alfred Dunhill, come out…ya’ bugger.”
Opening
the top drawer of a blistered dresser; he patted beneath socks to the rear right
corner. The fifty-dollar bill would
have to do. Coaxing drops of cologne
to his fingertips, he fought a cough. NyQuil
left a even greener tongue.
Church bells echoed in the stillness and for a split second he believed the rare tranquility to be heaven sent. One troubling thought held him in its clutches; had a Guardian Angel been dispatched just for him? If only he could allow himself that one inconsequential illusion. The important priorities: getting laid, being happy and maybe even having one last chance to matter in someone’s life dispersed that feeble hope. “I can’t be saved, tis’ much too late.” He resolutely brushed any likely presence from his right shoulder and ducked into the Pen & Quill.
It was dark, filled with carved wood and beveled-mirrors that bounced the excited voices of a working theatrical company into low-lit booths. Phoenix Park, near Dublin's Trinity College, was nearly visible through fogged windows. The bar's patrons knew Michael from casting calls.
Trish, the barmaid, whose father owned a pawn shop, lived down the street two blocks from Michael. The first drink was prized Jameson 1780 Old Irish Whiskey. It earned Michael's praise. "Uisce beatha”. Irish whiskey was the water of life. He found companions and squeezed into a crowded booth annoyed by Trish’s telling glances towards a girl seated in a corner booth.
Disinterested in the conversation, the girl had shifted her attention to Michael who had captured uncommon allure—devilry in a bewitching face framed in golden-brown hair—in the mirror above the bar. Trish waved him closer.
“That girl’s been asking about you.”
“Well then, it’s time to tell her the truth.”
“What do ya’ think of her?
“Don’t ask till I’ve downed a few.”
“Deirdre’s a set designer with pencils needing blarney…sit with her.”
She made room. Michael was more than close, two became one. Their interplay held center stage for Trish and lonely singles, as the couple moved from the sobriety of eye contact to the intoxication of memorized features.
“That’s a name meant for you. As a boy I heard about a royal storyteller. Tis’ half-truth, half-fancy—but no matter—you live up to the foretelling.”
“Tell me more.”
“A story teller of the King, whose name is lost to my recall, was on his way to fatherhood and a Druid, named Cathbad—can’t misplace that one—forewarned that the baby girl would be beautiful with the hair and eyes that I see before me.”
“Forewarned, I don’t like that.” She felt a knee press hers. “The message, from heaven itself, said kings and faithful lords would war over this one.”
“If my name was Helen; I’d change it for that very part.” His hands framed her face. “Truth be told, the best warriors of Ulster were exiled on your account.” Soon they shared earlier days. Deirdre rode Money Man, an Irish thoroughbred given to her by her father which had been put down with a broken fetlock.
Michael watched hot road-apples drop from a pony he rode over the stones of Connemara, his birthplace in Ireland. A month later, Deirdre would learn the name was derived from the Gaelic, Conmhaicne Mara, meaning descendants of Con Mhac, the sea.
He wished he had a better place to take her. She'd follow without a bridle of his typical lies. He’d tell nurses in the hospice "Jay-sus! I’ll tell ya this and no more, I never saw a more beautiful creature be it woman or beast." His search for a younger, saner Justine—which since the biopsy's edict had become more than a hope—might have been answered. Suppressing a dreaded cough, he left her standing at the booth with a slap of his palm on her bottom that evoked a smirk.
"I'm off to the jacks, mind me drink." He tossed a winking eye at Trish, passed the men’s room and exited through the rear door. Tucking his chin low, he drove into a brisk wind. The Rolex he always ignored showed ten minutes to ten. Justine’s unwanted peace offering was reason enough to propel him toward the phone booth on the corner of Broadway and Forty-Seventh Street.
There would be no apology to Justine, just a simple request for clear thinking. He’d find work through New York casting agents in spite of a hasty exit from a union play. He had left the house in Pacific Palisades dejected with no appetite for closeness, but with Deirdre, he needed every crumb she would offer.
Sex with Justine had been intense. They had stayed in bed for two days with trips from the master bedroom to the Jacuzzi or kitchen. He'd told lies to keep sleeping with her, reveling in liquor-fueled bliss. Trish had said it all. “A California nut believes anything, forget connection…she won’t see any dots.”
Michael frowned at Rolex-hands tickling diamonds at ten and twelve on entering the phone both. A closed door commanded a fan to whirl. It spewed tiny, thin-winged corpses into a cone of diffused light. They fluttered in the eddy of air that brought the stench of stale urine. He fixed his eyes on encrusted vomit near his heel. A dial tone hummed while a finger hovered over the zero that could summoned a collect call. It never made the journey.
Minutes later, as Michael’s coughed before the cramped newsstand, a red-dotted apparition wearing a saffron-colored turban and frayed Army jacket took the fifty. He returned a twenty, two fives and a lotto ticket.
“I see a red bindi under the wrapping. Is the cure handy?”
“A cure no, but pacification for the demon breaking your spirit.”
“My spirit can use it; I’m short twenty-four of my dollars.”
Long fingers dropped a brown cube into the hand below. “Hashish meant for a Maharaja with rupees to spare, but offered to a good friend for mere ha’pennies.”
He found Deirdre with pens, paper and a satisfied audience but wasn't allowed to see her drawing. They sought the solitude of a booth where she discreetly offered an expertly rolled joint. Deirdre made a home in his leather coat whose aromatic warmth offered security. The wait for Michael had seemed like an eternity and squeezing him again left her deliciously smug.
Perched on a stool, her fingertip traced the outline of his lips into memory, one fattening moment at a time unaware that hours had become minutes. At closing time, Deirdre tucked her penciled sketch into Michael's jacket while he paused at the bar to retrieve a phone number. Deirdre’s father wintered in Gustavia on St. Barts, so Michael was invited to join her near the park.
They concluded separate lives in a subway car. Yearning grew to a hunger as Deirdre responded to the warm hand cradling the breast beneath the sweater. The first kiss melted her legs and thrust her tongue through parted teeth. Warmth was moving in waves under molded jeans drawn to the apex between her legs.
A chilly draft cascaded down the damp stairs but the flight from iced sidewalks to brass doors had no effect on the couple. The doorman, scratching a stubby pencil over The New York Times crossword puzzle, flashed a grin as the pair plunged into the elevator. The doors opened on a penthouse that sprawled amid mauve-colored walls. Four-legged walnut sentinels burdened with Wedgwood rose from white carpet. French Impressionist art swept up to the cathedral ceiling on lighted pedestals that exhibited Monet, Degas, Bazille and Sisley.
Michael left reality outside the library's beveled glass to fantasize about a life with Deirdre that he’d never have. The books drew him in but she enticed him to the couch with warm brandy. Veiled questions about his income and family were put off. Giving up, Deirdre snatched the brandy decanter from his hand.
“Stop drinking. We’ll enjoy a number, then ourselves. Don’t waste tonight.” He sighed with a boyish grin. “If she only knew.” She left without a word and reappeared with a razor blade to slice shavings from the hashish. Marijuana fell from a small plastic bag containing apple wedges onto cigarette paper.
"What was that 'only knew' all about?"
“Trifles it was.”
Deirdre put his hands on her breasts. “You’re freezing Michael…follow me.”
He suddenly realized she was naked and staring over her shoulder saw a heater’s glow had spread a bronze hue over mahogany shelving and books. She pushed him past the bedroom and turned the thermostat higher. They entered the paneled exercise room where she dimmed the lights as he surveyed a mirrored alcove. Deirdre leaned closer.
"Your lady wants to know everything about you. Are you a Druid, Michael?”
“Not tonight, I’m not high enough to tease their gods.”
“You’re high, you nose nearly touched that heater's coils.”
She was back in his arms before the window high above Central Park. Michael looked into adoring eyes absorbing the incarnation of a pathetic dream. He kissed her and his chin trembled slightly.
"I'm…sorry."
“Sorry for what?”
“For waiting too long to truly love. It seems I’m just a beginner ya’ know.”
Her lips brushed lightly over Michael's eyebrows on their journey to his ear. Her tongue left the ear drawing a thin line down an accommodating neck toward starched cotton. Her left hand pressed his buttocks as her fingers reached the last button, extracting the shirt from the grey waistband of opened trousers.
Her teeth were again at play, this time pulling the lengthening tie's end. He opened the sauna slowly as eager hands withdrew his belt and paused; she slid his trousers down. There was no rush, the ecstasy of nakedness was hers at last.
Tiny beads of sweat shone on Michael's shoulders and chest, while his left hand pressed her ever closer. The gentle restrained pressure of a teasing thumb and forefinger controlled her thrusting pelvis. Feverish toes and fingertips supported rhythmic lunges. Toes found no refuge on blistering wood and the moist valley between Deirdre’s breasts shimmered in amber light.
His right hand pulled the grinding bundle of energy nearer feeling the first shudder of pink skin. He bathed in trickling sweat that merged with his to splatter below. A wave of pleasure happened for her. Below, imprisoned tears spilled out as he sought salvation in silent prayer yet again. “Please, can ya’ take me now.”
Both faces were streaked with tears. The wonder shared by two ended when he reached for a fiery Rolex that revealed four o'clock. Michael's cross went from a shoe to Deirdre's neck. They slipped pass the dozing doorman to run on frosted grass while a silver moon winked through the icy lattice of sheltering branches.
A world away, Justine placed her hands on her stomach and was drawn again to the picture of promising newlyweds. When it was all over she knew Stephen was even a bigger bastard. She opened the attaché case on the bed to look at the triumphant divorce decree and absurd pregnancy report. The sight of the empty wine bottle on the nightstand stirred the anguish of their last night together.
Michael had left Malibu in a taxi returning sullen and remote after their wine-laced quarrel. Edmund was true to form passing a note to an admiring hostess. He had crawled across the wasteland of her bed to invade self-loathing by softly touching her shoulder. They spoke no words. She turned her damp head away and he caught traces of her herbal shampoo. He fondled obstinate skin in an insincere attempt—acknowledged as pointless, tolerated as male weakness and meant to extinguish whatever sentiment remained—at arousing Justine’s interest.
She spread her legs obediently. It was rough, abstract, indifference and thankfully completed quickly. Their eyes meet briefly unwilling to stay. Justine felt more than used, not as soiled as she had felt with Stephen but worse, deliberately violated. Michael ashamed, dropped the unwanted cross into his shoe. Fluttering curtains invaded the gloom carrying the scent of Night Blooming Jasmine. At daybreak, he crossed a soggy lawn to enter a taxi reading Justine's inscription on the back of the Rolex. “Edmund, I give you everlasting love.”
By noon Sunday in that final week of February, all firewood in Pacific Palisades was gone, even the paper-log variety. Lucky opportunists had left blinking yellow lights to hurdle curbside puddles. They entered Brentwood's hidden market in one last search. The lucky ones would retreat to snug bedrooms, music or rented movies. Outside, Interstate 10 mustered an unlikely motorcade.
Bright
plastic platters endured the steady downpour in a crawling Diamond Lane. Truck
beds held soggy beach towels and unconvincing, made-in-China snow shovels
snatched from storefronts. Polyester snowsuits framed the faces of expectant
children who searched the ridges for a glimpse of crystals leaving pink batches
above Riverside.
3
By Monday morning, the weekend's gray sky had evaporated. Precisely at 11 A.M. a brilliant sun poked through as expected. Still air hung over the glistening surface of the marina. Behind the protecting breakwater lethargic sailboats with sagging dock lines cast mirror images down all the numbered basins. The sky turned pristine with white clouds floating in a blue sky over the City of Angels.
Justine's Mercedes eased quietly into the crowded parking lot for her 1 P.M. appointment. A white splatter hit the black hood with a weighty, dull thud. Her eyes followed the trio of pelicans gliding high overhead toward the Marina unable to identify her latest gift giver.
Two weeks earlier, Dr. Gill's lab had confirmed the second pregnancy test. She studiously checked the cellphone again for Michael's missed message and watched several clouds glide together. The infant’s likeness was designed to test wavering will power. Another look verified the anticipated vision overhead.
“Stephen, you have to resort to that…using fucking clouds—shame on you.”
Dr. Gill accepted her verdict with a deferential smile on his side of the stirrups. Marvin Sanger and he were in agreement about the future of Justine's prohibited dream which was now a clump of cells growing a thicker membrane.
In New York, a piece of paper in Michael's coat held the pawnshop’s number. A convulsive, deep-seated cough gave way to gasping and a bloody facial tissue dropped before his finger pressed raised chrome numbers. Justine’s watch guaranteed his funeral expenses would be paid in full.
Michael began to crumple paper, but stopped to look at faint traces of colored lead. Turning it over, Deirdre’s drawing was revealed. A smiling baby boy with dark eyes and brown hair enveloped in a flowing red robe danced on clouds above a vast blue planet.
It was the precise moment Dr. Gil's uterine evacuator began sucking fluid. Inside Justine's a rose-colored mass was liquefied. A red stain ran down the plastic tube passed the vaginal speculum on its way to join others surfing the pipeline that dumped into the Pacific.
