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Heaven's Rending

By: Adrian Leverkuhn



The man looked out the window as the once foreign landscape reeled away below; he looked down on the browns and greens of India as a scientist might examine an amoeba through a microscope. Mere professional interest held his mind's eye, like looking upon something once a source of intense curiosity, harkening to a world full of countless wonders that might capture the imagination of a twelve year old boy. Now? - all those wonders explored long ago, consigned to memory, the fleeting halo of youth gone – replaced by knowledge and experience, and what was it he felt? Boredom? Anomie? Professional detachment?

He was a diplomat - working in the service of his government – from Denmark, and had been posted to his country's mission in India in the late 90s. His wife had joined him then, those many years ago, and despite years of complaining and recriminations they had endured the heat and the dismal politics and the near wars with Pakistan in a state which might have been confused once upon a time as something approaching that state of grace we like to call normalcy. She hated India, hated her husband's dead-end career in the Diplomatic Corp, hated the grinding poverty that confronted her every move outside their home in the compound, and the endless dissemination that went with the job of chief domestic servant. She had only recently returned home to attend her mother's funeral, and there had met an old friend from happier days and pronounced to one and all that she was through with India, through with her husband, and she requested he ship her belongings home soonest, thank you very much. 

So the man returned home to kill the remnants of the illusions that graced his waking moments like a cobra's strike; when once the lawyers were done with him and his long empty life stretched behind him like a melted Dali landscape he moved away from the tattered bits of his soul as if they were a leper's outstretched hand, and he wandered through the Tivoli and along the razor's edge of his despair thinking what he might do with the time left him, and all he could think of doing was to go fishing.

He had long heard that the submontane waters of the Himalaya were just dandy for all manner of exotic fish, and as long as one avoided the odd tiger or leopard one could have as exotic an experience as one could hope to find in this our brave new world. Why not? the man said to himself. Why the fuck not?

And so now the man sat silently, looking out the window by seat 3A as the airliner began it's descent into the nightmare of his unraveling while the somewhat too cheerful flight attendant walked by again and she smiled at him again and he smiled at her again and wondered what she tasted like down there again before he turned back to the teeming emptiness that drifted by below like a silent admonition. He didn't feel sorry for himself, he kept saying to himself, because he was already dead. Nobody knew it yet, but it was true. He felt oddly amused at this and laughed at his reflection in the plastic window.

He was aware of a lurching twisting sensation, then of falling. Then the world grew dark.

The man whipped the rod back and forth in majestic arcs; once released the dry fly slipped through the air and settled on the steel gray waters of the mountain stream. He watched the yellows and reds of the fly as it drifted across silvered-cobalt ripples, and then he looked up again at the python lying at the water's edge across the river. The snake regarded him coolly, as if the presence of a man should be a matter of concern for one so adept at taking life. What could a man do, after all?

The water rippled and the man tensed, waiting for that perfect moment to set the hook, and when he felt the fly tremble through the arc of line connecting his hand to the world beneath the sun dappled shimmering water, he flicked his wrist and set the hook. The fish exploded through the surface and ran across the river toward rock-strewn rapids, and the man was conscious of the python watching the fish as well - when he heard a voice calling his name, and he turned to see the guide that had been engaged walking his way. The image of the guide was milky white, and it too shimmered as if made from star-stuff. The sight made the man uneasy, yet all he could do was laugh as the fish skipped across the water on the other end of his line.

The guide approached and told the man that a large tiger had been seen in the area, and it was no longer safe to fish along the river. The man smiled, nodded his head to indicate understanding, and turned his attention back to the water. His line lay limp across the dazzling water, the fly on the end of the line lay like a dead thing on the ever-shifting kaleidoscope, and he wondered for a moment what had happened to the fish.

He looked across to the far shore and saw that the snake was gone, and he laughed so hard that he began to feel like the clown he knew in his heart he always had been. He reeled in his line and walked with the guide back to the bungalow tucked away deep in the forest. He laughed all the way. 

It was all so absurd.

Some time later he was standing on the banks of the river, and with his rod in hand he walked along to well worn path by the water's edge until he found a spot clear of trees where he could cast his line again. He was conscious of looking in the grass for the python, and though he took his time he felt preoccupied with catching the fish that had gotten away – was it yesterday? The man stopped, suddenly taken by the idea that he couldn't remember what day it was, or when he had last come to the river, and he became aware that time no longer held any meaning to him. The idea was faintly unsettling, so he laughed.

The man looked at the clearing and decided to try his luck here for a while, so he set his creel and net down on a nearby rock and moved to the water's edge. He bent over and looked down at the water and was amazed to see his reflection there on the calm surface. He looked at himself for a moment and he was calmed by the idea that this was how he had looked for so many millions of years, and he found this realization not at all odd, and though it was daylight he took comfort in the familiar patterns of stars and planets reflected on the waters surface. He looked up at the crystalline sky and at the billions of stars in their stately array and he reached up as if to touch them, then thought better of the idea and began to cast his line onto the still water.

He saw the fish before his fly hit the water; he watched knowing what was about to happen and wondered why it must be so, then the fish broke free of the water and flew through the air before taking the lure. The fish looked at him and smiled before crashing back into the water, then the man felt his line take the energy of the fish and the river exploded. The fish broke through into the starlight again and again as it danced across the water; the water danced in the rhythm of the struggle and the man played out line to give the fish room to run.

He became aware of a stillness in the air, a stillness born of expectation, and he could see the other animals of the forest and the river had all stopped what they were doing to watch the dance of the water and the fish, and he too grew aware of the fantastic beauty that spread across the water as the fish took the line and ran across the universe. An infinite parade of prismatic explosions shook the water as the fish continued its dance of death, and the man looked on with a tear forming in his eye when the water suddenly grew very still.

The man looked at the water, looked at the fish as it gave way to the current . . .

But the fish was not dead.

The man watched the fish swim slowly toward the near bank. He could see now that the fish had turned from silver and brown to a bright pulsing red, and the water around the fish glowed with purpose. The fish approached the water's edge and circled there slowly, waiting. The man turned toward his net and creel and was astonished to see a tiger lying in the sun on the rock next to his gear.

The tiger looked at the fish, then turned to look at the man.

The man stood perfectly still. In fact, he was aware that he was holding his breath, and that his hands were trembling. The fish took the lure from its mouth and swam away, pausing only once to look back at the man.

The tiger was, the man saw, looking again at the fish as it moved back into deeper water. When at last the fish had disappeared from view, the tiger turned to look again at the man. After a time impossible to measure, the tiger laid down and put his head on its outstretched paws while continuing to look at the man. Sometime later the tiger moaned, and the man looked closely at the tiger's face and front paws and saw seven porcupine quills lodged in the animals flesh. The man saw pain in the tiger's eyes, and great suffering.

The man bent down to place his rod on the ground, then stood again and looked at the tiger's eyes. He kept his hands in front so the tiger could see them, and he walked slowly toward the animal. He could feel the animal's pain as he drew nearer, he could feel it in the marrow of his own bones, but he could also see the tiger held no fear of the man; indeed, the tiger seemed to hold the man in his eyes as one might look down upon a promise broken long ago – almost in another lifetime. 

The man walked to the tiger's side and knelt to examine the quills just under the tiger's left eye. The flesh was puffy with vile yellow fluids; these oozed from four of the quills here; when the man looked at the three quills in the tiger's right paw, he saw that fresh blood ran from the wound onto the rock. Still the tiger seemed unconcerned with the man's presence, though the man knew the tiger was more than aware of his every move.

The man reached for his case of flies in the pocket of his vest, and he slowly unzipped the case and took out the forceps he kept there. He knelt beside the tiger and placed his hand behind the tiger's ear and rubbed its head; the tiger responded by flicking its tail and letting out a heavy breath through its nose. It continued to look up at the stars.

The man took the forceps in his hand and moved it to the quill closest to the tiger's eye. He took the quill in the metal grip and tentatively pulled; the barbed lance moved but would not come out. He reached into another pocket and pulled out a small knife, and with this in his hand he leaned back over the tiger's head.

On seeing the knife, the tiger let slip a deep throaty growl that seemed to issue from the earth itself, but it did not move. The man leaned over and with forceps in one hand and his knife in the other; he made a small incision under the quill and with the forceps gently pulled the quill out. A trickle of yellowish fluid ran from the wound onto the tiger's amber fur, and a foul smell filled the air. The man stroked the tiger's forehead, then moved on to the next quill. This one, as well as the next came out easily. The last quill in the tiger's face would not budge so deeply into the bone had it gone, so the man moved down to the tiger's paw.

These three quills had pierced the tiger's pads completely, and two had run all the way through the paws and exited the top of the paw; these two the man simply pulled through, but the amount of blood that welled up from the two wounds was incredible, so the man took out his handkerchief and bound the wounds. The remaining quill had buried itself deeply in one of the calloused pads, and as he leaned forward with his knife and forceps he felt the tiger tremble. He stopped and looked at the tiger and was shocked to find the animal was panting heavily and seemed almost comatose. 

The man decided against cutting the flesh with his knife and pushed this quill through the top of the pad, and it slid freely through the tiger's paw and into the waiting forceps, then yet another astonishing flow of blood sprang forth and ran out onto the rock, and once again the man applied pressure to the wound until the flow stopped.

Now only the last quill still lodged in the bone under the tiger's eye remained, and without hesitating the man leaned over the tiger's face once again and made a larger incision under the quill and pulled at it with his forceps. The man felt something give deep beneath the mottled, puss-filled flesh and as he pulled the quill loose he saw a gray-marbled cyst emerge from the incision; he made another cut so the mass could be expelled. As the glistening orb popped free from the tiger's face, a small river of yellow and green burst forth from the wound and ran down the tiger's face. The smell was overpowering, and the man wretched on the ground next to the rock before returning to the tiger's side. He sat and put his hand down to the rock to steady himself, only to cry out as a sharp stabbing pain tore through his hand. He jerked his hand back in time to see a huge black scorpion scuttling away across the rock. There was a barbed spine sticking out of the bottom of his hand, and he could actually see vile darkness spreading up his arm as the scorpion's venom spread toward his heart

The man had a small first aid kit in his vest, and this he now pulled out. He looked at the meager choice of medicines available, then took out two tubes from the kit. One tube was an anti-biotic, the other a topical anesthetic. He opened both tubes and evenly divided all he had into the tiger's two sets of wounds, then he lay against the tiger's heaving rib-cage and watched as the spreading darkness made its way into his chest. He felt the arrhythmia at first as a subtle tremble, but it soon grew into a massive series of quakes from deep within the core of his being; soon the sky brightened and brightened until all that was left was the fierce and undiluted light of the stars.

The man was aware of voices, some speaking Hindu and others English, and it was plain to him even from within this most remote place that he was dying. A mist of impenetrable brightness washed over him; it was at once hot and cool – and he felt himself swept away within the eddies that roared through this interstitial space. He wanted to reach out and cling to life, but there was nothing within the mists to hold onto save the far distant voices as people fought to save his life.

He heard another voice . . .

"Yes . . . he was sitting in the front, seat 3A I believe . . . no, I was in the galley jumpseat when we went down . . . I remember his smile . . . he seemed so lost . . . almost like a little boy . . ."

The man wanted to reach out to her, wanted to hold on to his humanity for a while longer, but the strong arms of the vortex reached out for him and pulled him back into the maelstrom . . .

He felt the arc of her breathing as his body lifted gently on the swells of her breath, and he felt himself falling just as quickly within the rhythms of her life. He felt her fur on the side of his face, and the putrescent smell of her wounds, and yet he heard strength in the tiger's beating heart. He knew the beat was stronger, knew that life had taken hold again within her battered frame, and his heart was gladdened when he felt her stirring against the cool rock on which they both lay.

He felt a cold stab in his heart as something damp and heavy slid across his legs, and the tiger tried to move but couldn't. The man opened his eyes but all he saw was a milky blur sliding across his body, and he blinked his eyes frantically to clear them. With each blink this world grew into sharper relief, and finally in all its horrid majesty the python resolved before his eyes. 

The python's eyes were level with his, and maybe a foot away. A pinkish-gray forked tongue stabbed the air, and the snake opened its mouth revealing sharp white teeth inside a pink mouth. The man felt the snake beginning to wrap itself around his legs, then pressure began to build over his belly, then his chest, as the snake began to squeeze the air out of his lungs. All the while the man and the snake stared at one another.

The man could also hear the struggle on the other side as physicians and nurses fired defibrillators and plunged needles into his chest, and he felt himself laughing at the temerity of these efforts. What could they hope to accomplish? Couldn't they see darkness coiled up even now choking the light out of his soul? All the man had to do was open his eyes and look into death; death was before him, holding him within its hypnotic grasp . . .

He felt his back give way, felt the tiger spring free of the rock as his head slipped to the cool granite, and he felt the tiger's roar start deep within the earth. The noise came on like a volcano, sharp and hot and full of fire, and the world withered under its furious assault. The man looked up at the snake as concussive waves of noise slammed into its coiled body, and he watched as its body rippled within the hideous blast. He felt the snake's hold on his life slipping, then watched as the tiger swung around and with outstretched paw swat the snakes head. The tiger then took the snake in its mouth and shook it; when the snake grew still the tiger tossed the body into the river, then the man watched the tiger walk to the water's edge and look down into the water. He watched as the tiger reacted to its reflection, and watched as the tiger turned to look at the stars, and he watched as the circle of life grew complete before his eyes.

The man held out his hand, and the tiger came to him. She looked down at him with what once the man might have called love, and she licked first his hand, then his face before she took his vest in her mouth and pulled the man to his feet.

They both heard it now; the sounds of the battle in its final stage as physician and nurse tried all they knew to keep death in abeyance, then they listened to the despair and pain as the healers moved off into the distance. 

The man looked at the tiger, saw the love in her eyes, saw the connection they shared, and he moved to her side. He stroked her fur, then moved to walk by her side down the path by the water's edge.

Heaven's Rending Ch. 02



Chapter 2: Entropy and Sorrow's Kiss

Alan Burnett listened to an oldies radio station, an AM station that had been around since a year longer than forever - and that had a play-list that seemed comfortably lost in the seventies. Steely Dan was still Reelin' In The Years, and the cop sat in the air conditioned Dodge Police Interceptor, his thumbs drumming away on the steering wheel while he cruised down one suburban street after another, looking for something - anything - out of place. A door standing open, an unfamiliar car in a driveway, a shout, a scream, a barking dog, a woman in a bikini . . .

Almost an hour 'til lunch, he thought, yet he wasn't hungry. No calls this morning, no reports to write, yet . . . it seemed quiet - too quiet - for a summer morning. He turned a corner and headed down another street. Autopilot . . . he felt like he was on autopilot. Or maybe drifting, drifting through life. No, that's not quite right, he told himself with more conviction than he felt. He thought of himself within that moment as a sleepwalker might - he had to force himself to concentrate, his eyelids felt heavy, and he felt lost in a haze. But his eyes burned with fatigue. He couldn't sleep anymore; recent letters from Debbie's lawyer simmered in his mind, remnants of a stale marriage gone bad and the consequences reverberating through recent nights like a favorite old song heard too many times, memories good and bad bouncing around in the dark for so long they were no longer truths . . . they were just echoes of a bad dream. 

No, he hadn't had a good night's sleep in weeks, and the dreams he had were simply a parody of love and the silent betrayal of an oath.

Down another street, up another alley, each beige brick house looking like the one next to it, endless in their monotonous acquiescence. Endless broken dreams, they seemed to stand as silent monuments to vapid futility and preening vanity. He thought about the lives that inevitably played out behind all those brick walls, and he imagined the lives inside each as mundane and trivial, full of bad marriages well on their way down the slippery slopes of dissolution. This was the beige life, he thought, dull and meaningless, all walled in little brick containers so nobody could see inside and look at the meaninglessness - be reminded of their own meaningless existence. He shook his head, tried to shake himself out of the blue funk he felt wrapped around his soul like a snake, then thought about talking to the department shrink. Maybe. But what was the point.

He listened as another unit checked out for lunch, and he looked down at his watch. He wanted a break in the monotony more than anything. The Doors wailed away on the radio. The Crystal Ship. An old man out watering his plants waved to him, and he waved back. No; the old guy was motioning him to stop. He pulled the squad car over to the curb and rolled down the window. He turned down the radio and leaned out the window.

"Morning! What's up," Officer Alan Burnett said.

"There's a strange van parked in the driveway out back," the old man said. "Been there about ten minutes. Couple of rough looking customers went in the garage."

"Right. Which one; can you point it out to me?"

"The brown over there," he said, pointing at yet another beige brick delusion. "Just to the left of that big pecan tree, other side of the alley."

"OK. We'll check it out," he said to the man as he reached for the radio mounted under the dashboard. He switched the channel to the primary and turned down Jim Morrison as he drove quickly to the corner. He stopped the car and got out, then paused and reached back into the front seat and removed the Remington 870 pump shotgun from the floor mounted rack. He craned his head a bit and looked at the back of the house in question, saw a beat up Ford Econoline van parked behind 511 Byron Court. "Ah, 2114," he said into the radio.

"Twenty-one fourteen, go ahead," the dispatcher replied.

"Signal 53, possible Signal five at five-one-one Byron Court. Going to move in toward the back of the house. Send back-up." He'd decided to report this incident as a suspicious vehicle with a possible burglary-in-progress. Oh well, he thought, might be an exciting day after all.

"2114 at 1143 hours. 2118, respond to 511 Byron Court, Signal 53, possible five in progress."

"2118, Code five."

"2110, en-route."

"Units in route at 1144 hours."

Burnett moved along a weathered cedar fence until he came to a hedge, and he looked through the foliage at the van behind the house. He watched as a young man carried a television set from the house and put it in the van.

"2114, I think this is a five; one male white 20s with black hair exiting house with a television. Vehicle is a primer and brown Ford van, license 2 Mike Paul 333."

"2118, received. I'm about 2 minutes out."

"2118, received at 1147 hours. Ah, 2114, 2118 is about two minutes out."

"2114, received. Have units take the front of the house."

"2114, 10-4. Units responding to 5-1-1 Byron Court, officer on scene requests units cover front of the residence."

"2118, received."

"2110, received."

Burnett watched and listened. The young man with the television disappeared back into the house, and the old man from the street poked his head out into the alley. Burnett popped up and motioned to the old man, waved him away and he watched as he withdrew. Burnett broke cover and moved closer toward the house, then racked a round into the Remington. He heard the gunning engine of first one squad car then another, then units checking out by radio near the front of the house. Then . . . from inside the house . . .

"Fucking cops, man, let's move!"

Burnett heard running in the house, then one man emerged carrying a stuffed pillow-case in one hand and a rifle in the other. Burnett launched from his concealed position and yelled: "Freeze, Police!" just as a second man appeared in the garage. Burnett watched the first man drop the pillow case and raise the rifle; the second man had a pistol in his hand - and it was coming up, too.

"Drop the gun, NOW!" Burnett yelled. He could clearly see both men now, could make out both weapons. He was reacting now, not thinking, and time seemed to slow to a crawl. His right index finger snapped off the safety then slid to the trigger as he brought the shotgun up to his shoulder. The man with the rifle was the biggest threat, and he moved the sights on the front of the Remington toward him. He could clearly see the other man, see the rifle moving up to his shoulder, and Burnett aimed low, knowing that double-ought buckshot gained elevation when fired from this range, and he squeezed off a round. He racked the spent shell from the Remington and rammed a fresh round into the chamber as he sought out the other man, the man with the pistol.

Burnett heard "Signal 33, shots fired" on his hand radio, then felt the air above his head rippling. He heard the gunshot next, saw the man with the pistol down low in a crouch taking aim, and he covered this man in his sights and squeezed off another round. As the gun roared and recoiled, he racked the shotgun again, readied to fire again, and he looked for the next threat.

Then the smoke cleared.

The first man, the man with the rifle, lay on the garage floor. Motionless. Burnett moved slowly in that direction, his shotgun still up and covering the area. He moved cat-like, slowly on the outside of his feet, toward the garage. Out of the corner of his eye he saw another man in uniform moving down the side of the house toward his position. Burnett moved toward the driveway behind the house, and the man with the pistol emerged from behind some boxes and fired. Burnett fired again and watched as buckshot tore into the man's neck and shoulders; he heard another shot, and another, and turned to see that the other officer had exchanged fire with yet a third man, and each man had hit the other. The third man was raising his weapon to shoot at the other officer, and Burnett racked another round and fired at this man, then he chambered another round as quickly as he could.

Burnett moved quickly into the garage. Three suspects were down and quiet, and he moved to the stricken officer. "2114, officer down in the alley area, need ambulance code three this location." It was Charlie York, an almost sixty year old man, a thirty-plus year veteran of the department. "Fuck, Charlie, you OK?"

"2114 received at 1155 hours."

"Yeah - gasp - think so. Side hurts."

Burnett moved to York's side, it was a bloody mess above his left hip, and the unseen wound was bleeding profusely. Burnett felt another presence; it was the old man from across the alley. He dropped to his knees beside Burnett and ripped open a pack of gauze and slapped it on the wound. Then he heard another set of footsteps running up the driveway.

"You OK, Burnett?" he heard the shift Sargent calling out.

"I haven't checked the house. Or the van. Hang on a second. Hell, I haven't even checked the guys in the garage."

"Yeah, well, not much anyone can do for them, Alan. Three down."

Burnett heard sirens wailing in the distance, then a rough sounding engine drawing near. He turned to see an ambulance stopping behind him in the alley, then stood and ran to the garage. The Sargent was standing next to the door that led into the house from the garage, his pistol drawn. He pointed at his ears, then his eyes, and held up two fingers. He had heard and seen two more people in the house. Burnett took three shotgun shells from the elastic band on the shotgun's stock and slid them into the gun's tube, then he felt the safety to confirm it was still off and moved up to the door. Then he heard it.

The sound of a hammer being pulled back on a firearm.

Both Burnett and the Sargent jumped back away from the door as it exploded. Two men bolted from the shattered door then skidded to a stop as they confronted Burnett and the Sargent. The first man raised his weapon, a sawed off rifle of some sort, while the second started screaming "don't shoot, don't shoot!" Burnett simply said "Stop" to the man with the rifle; the end of the barrel of his Remington was aimed about six inches in front of the armed man's face. Little else needed to be said.

The man with the rifle dropped his weapon, looked at Burnett, and said "OK, Pig, you win."

"On your knees, hands behind your head," the Sargent said.

As Burnett and the Sargent handcuffed the two suspects, Burnett tried to recite the Miranda warning: "You have the right to remain silent . . .the right to a lawyer, blah, blah, blah," but that was as far as he could get. All of the tension and adrenaline of the last ten minutes flooded into his consciousness, and he felt his knees giving way, and he went to stand next to the garage wall.

"You all right, Alan?" the Sargent asked. 

Burnett felt light-headed, and there was the nascent impulse of a burning sensation on his left forearm, and he absent-mindedly reached for it. He felt warm, slippery stuff on his arm and looked down to see a small trickle of deep, red blood running down his arm. "I think I've been shot," Burnett said to no one in particular. "I will be dipped in shit!"

___________

About an hour later detectives from CID and Internal Affairs had finished photographing the entire house, and Burnett looked down at the tightly bound flesh-wound on his arm with a mixture of disbelief and annoyance. He watched a small cluster of detectives laughing and cracking jokes, and he walked over toward them, listening as he approached. 

"Man, that's some weird shit in there. Never seen that kinda crap before," one of the men said as he laughed and shook his head.

"That's a strange-ranger there, that's for sure."

"Wouldn't want to run into that bitch in a dark alley, fuckin'-a!"

"Man, if my wife dressed up like that, I don't know what the shit I'd do!"

"Yeah, you'd cream your jeans, Pencil Dick!" The group laughed as they walked off, leaving Burnett with about two dozen unanswered questions hanging in the air apparent. The burglary was his call, so he was going to have to get the basics for his report, and then he'd head down to the ER at County and get his wound looked at by a doc. It was trivial, that much the Paramedic had said. Interviews with CID and IA would round out his day.

He walked into the house. It was generic, he saw; tan shag carpet, fake oak cabinets in the kitchen and beige wallpaper that looked like it was some kind of grass-textured vinyl. Papers were strewn all over the house, appliances knocked over by the burglars sat at odd angles on the counter-tops and the floor. Drawers stood open everywhere. He had his aluminum clipboard nestled under his good arm, and he walked into the living room. He heard a woman's voice in another part of the house, and he moved in that direction.

The voice he heard was calm - maybe too calm, he thought. There was a crisp edge to it, something vaguely menacing that ran under the surface of her voice like a knife. The woman was talking to an insurance agent; she was asking questions and writing down instructions, asking about options and where to get a clean up crew to help her get the house back in some kind of order. Burnett listened for a moment then knocked on the woman's bedroom door.

"Just a minute," the voice said. "Be right out."

Burnett heard the woman finish up her call, then she came out into the living room. When she entered the room it was all Alan Burnett could do not to stare.

The woman was tall, very tall, and her skin was almost white - pure white. Her hair was obviously colored, but it was an unattractive jet-black hue that made a patently stark contrast to her alabaster skin. Her eyes were electric blue, almost cobalt-blue, and were set off by heavy black and blue eye make-up. Her fingernails were painted black. She was, it seemed, dressed almost entirely in blackest black; an open black leather vest revealed a studded corset underneath, her short black skirt barely hid her black stocking tops, and she walked confidently into the room on shiny black leather high heels that had to be at least five inches tall.

Burnett looked at the delicate black choker around her neck as he bit his lower lip. His eyes went down to her ankles; there he observed a bracelet under her stocking around her right ankle. He suppressed a smirk for a moment as his eyes lingered on the woman's legs and shoes.

"Are you the officer who was shot?" the woman said, looking down at his left arm.

"Not really, Ma'am," he said. "This is just a flesh wound; Officer York was taken to County before you got here."

"How is he?" she asked.

"Haven't heard, Ma'am. Ah, listen, I've got to get some basic information for the burglary report. You'll need our service number for your insurance claim as well. I'll need to move from room to room and get an inventory from you of the stuff these guys tried to take."

"Do we have to do this today?" the woman asked.

"Yeah, 'fraid so. Won't take too long if we get to it. Where do you want to start?"

They made their way from room to room; Burnett wrote on his clipboard and looked furtively at the woman every chance he got while she grew more and more impatient and, it seemed, almost nervous. They came to a locked door off the main hallway.

"Uh, this door was locked; those guys never made it in here," she said.

"I'll still need to take a quick look in there, Ma'am."

"Why? I mean, really, if they didn't . . ."

"I have to, Ma'am. Report has to be completed; this is a four bedroom house, and I'll need four bedrooms accounted for in my report or the DA will roast my tail for supper . . ."

Exasperated, the woman took out a key and unlocked the door. "Help yourself, Officer," the woman said in a voice thick with barely restrained sarcasm.

Burnett entered the room - and he entered another world. The room had stone walls, and leather restraints were set into the stone on one wall at heights for wrists and ankles. A black and red padded-leather crucifix stood against another wall, restraints attached to this as well. A rolling cart stood in the middle of the room; it was stocked with sex toys and equipment to give an enema and electric shocks.

"Everything in this room accounted for, Ma'am?" Burnett asked. His face was a mask.

"I told you; no one came in here."

"Alright, Ma'am. Sorry for the intrusion." He took one last look around the room then walked out and headed back toward the kitchen. "Ah, Ma'am, I'll just need to get some basic information from you, name, date of birth, phone numbers, that kind of stuff."

The woman looked truly pained at this point, anxious for the cop to get out of her house. She walked into the kitchen and sat down at the breakfast room table. "I'd get you some coffee, but I think they took the coffee maker," her voice was still laced with cold sarcasm. Burnett heard her voice as defensive, and he didn't doubt for a moment why. She was a freak.

Burnett looked intently at the woman's face for the first time. Her eyes, he noticed, were pretty in a way, but they seemed cold, almost dead. Black, like a shark's eye, he thought. Cold, empty, the eyes of a dead soul. He caught himself staring at the woman, and after a moment he was aware that she was staring at him with equal intensity. There was no curiosity in the woman's eyes at all, nor shame. Just a cold, black void. He shook himself awake after a moment, feeling almost as though he had been in a trance, like he was looking at infinity - and infinity had looked unblinkingly right back..

"Sorry," he said as he rubbed the bandage on his arm. "I'm feeling pretty weird right now."

The woman looked down at his arm; the compression dressing was soaked in blood. Another little trickle ran down his arm and dropped on the breakfast room table. "You sure that's just a flesh wound? That looks like a lot of blood." She reached over and took his arm in her hand and unwrapped the dressing; a fresh pulse of deep red oozed out of the deep wound. "Whoa," the woman said, "let's get some pressure on that." She placed to dressing back over the wound and put his hand on it, then went into the bathroom off the kitchen and returned with some fresh gauze bandages.

Quietly, calmly, she went about dressing his arm expertly, making soothing little sounds as she cleaned up the wound with Betadine and steri-strips. She seemed a different person as she worked on his arm; the cold wastelands of her soul seemed revisited, her eyes seemed to fill with purpose and conviction, and Alan Burnett felt himself beyond all reason falling for the woman who was suddenly nursing him. At least, he thought as his head swirled on the verge of darkness, that's what love had felt like once, a long time ago. Selfless compassion and sudden desire filled the air around him with hammer pulse sensations and suddenly it felt like the air inside the room was full of beating wings. He watched her hands and her eyes as they worked, and he felt himself slipping into a dream.

Nothing was real anymore. Angels and demons flew in the air beside him, calling to him. The little room was flooded with bursts of light and dark . . .

When she was done she looked up at him, and she saw his face, his eyes, and she quickly looked away, almost - it seemed to Burnett - as if she was embarrassed by what she had done. It was out of character, almost as if she had broken an oath . . .

"Thank you," Alan Burnett said. "I mean it, thanks for doing that, ya know?"

The woman looked back it him, her eyes found his easily, and she seemed to recognize in his look something she hadn't seen in a man's eyes in years. She took his wrist in her hand and gave it a quick little squeeze. "You betcha," she said.

"Ah, listen, just a minute more and I'll be out of here. Can I get your name?"




Heaven's Rending Ch. 02



"Diane. Diane von Ludendorf."

"Could I call you sometime?"

She looked at him for a moment, a cloud of uncertainty crossing her face. "About?" she asked.

"Oh, never mind. I really shouldn't have said that."

"About?" she repeated, her quiet voice filled with natural authority.

"Uh, listen, here's my card, and the incident number is on the front here. Insurance company will need that. You can call the station and get a message to me if there's anything you feel I've missed." He stood and turned to leave.

"Officer Burnett," she said, looking down at the card he had given her, "Alan?" As he turned she held out her right hand. He looked down and took her hand in his. "I didn't mean to be so rude earlier. It took me a minute to get over what's happened, and I forgot just what you did for me today, and I'm grateful to you. I just wanted you to know I appreciate what you did for . . . what you do for us all."

Burnett looked at her for a moment and nodded his head slightly, then turned to leave. But her hand still held his, and not so gently. He stopped and looked at her and the power in her eyes overwhelmed him. Not a cold, empty soul wandering in barren drifts. No, not now. Hot fury bathed in resolute purpose - that was the impression the woman's eyes left deep within him inside that furious moment. His purpose, or hers? He wasn't sure. He continued to look at the woman, at her eyes, then he watched as she drew near and kissed him on the forehead.

He nodded his head again. "Good day, Ma'am." 

Alan Burnett turned and walked out of the woman's house.

____________

A week later Burnett was sitting at one of the tables in the squad briefing room, looking at the little yellow post-it note on his department mail. There on top of subpoena and supplemental reports in need of follow-up was a note that said simply 'call me . . . Diane.' He crumbled the note up and tossed it into a trash can. He sat back and thought about the note, the woman, those eyes. He hadn't been able to sleep at all now, not after seeing those eyes. Letters from divorce lawyers, bills to be paid and bills that he couldn't pay, the pain in his arm - all had kept him up in helpless sleeplessness for a week now, but nothing had inspired his restlessness more than the thought of Diane von Ludendorf and those intolerably blue eyes.

He had run her criminal history; a couple of traffic stops and a minor in possession charge from almost two decades ago. The Ludendorf name was an alias. And IAD had let on that she was a hooker, and a really wild one at that . . . a so-called dominatrix. She specialized in pain, giving pain for kinks. And for money, apparently, according to Internal Affairs, for quite a lot of money. She had pulled in a little over three hundred grand last year in her 'consulting' business; what Alan Burnett had heard about the woman for the past week was enough to turn his stomach, but . . . his mind always came back to those eyes, to the compassion that had rippled through the very fabric of the woman's being - and his, for that matter - as she had worked on his arm. 

He would lie awake at night lost in the ruins of his life and suddenly there she was in the air all around him. He would see her, then he would remember the feeling that had overwhelmed him as she had worked on his arm, and building waves of doubt and confusion rolled over him. He would see her in all of her outrageous - and to him, deeply flawed, sexuality - and he would drift . . . lost and overwhelmed . . . until his desire for her took him down unknown paths of lust and despair.

He would fantasize that she was the proverbial hooker with a heart of gold, that they would fall in love and the purity of their passion for one another would drive all shadows of evil from their path, and in this surreal fantasy-scape they would live happily ever after. He would shower in the morning and wash away the remnants of these musings and in the clear light of day - uniform on and badge shining in the moral certainty of his calling - he would find that the trail of his night's dreaming led only to an ambivalence that crept in and suffocated his desire.

He was lost. Lost between night and day, between truth and desire . . .

And so he sat in the briefing room, the thought of calling her felt like an onrushing tidal stream - it was overwhelming and unstoppable; and just as certainly the thought of - no, the reality of - her 'vocation' became nothing less than a suicidal rip in the fabric of time. 

Burnett went to his locker and pulled out his briefcase. He opened it and pulled out a steno-pad, flipped through pages until he found the one he wanted, then scribbled down her number on a new post-it note, and returned his briefcase to his beaten beige locker. His hands were shaking, and his stomach felt like a burning knot, but he knew he had to call her. He knew it. She was a force of nature, and her gravity was pulling him in. 

Entropy. The word kept wandering through his consciousness. Random change - chaotic transformation, no reason - just random change. Where was this headed? Was that even an appropriate response - a reasonable question - wasn't a state of entropy by definition completely unpredictable.

Was calling her an act with unpredictable consequences? What did he want from this woman? Pain? Love? Transfiguration? Were these consequences not completely unpredictable?

He walked out of the precinct house and drifted to his car. He got in, and sat behind the wheel. His hands rested on the top of the steering wheel, his fingers interlocked and his thumbs resting one on other. He looked at his thumbs, felt them touching, felt the touch of his skin - and he wondered what her touch would be like - what would he feel when his flesh met hers.

He drove to his apartment and parked behind the building. He sat, his eyes closed as he drifted past the event horizon of this new universe; he felt himself caught in the swirling maelstrom of desire that surely must lie at the center of her being. He walked up to his apartment and moved into the living room; he dialed up the air-conditioning and listened to the compressor kick in, felt the air begin to move around him, and everything around him began to spin and swirl. All he could see as he stood there beside the door was black leather, and this world smelled ancient, like it was bathed in musk and incense. He put his hands out and touched the wall, more to stop the nauseating motion that held him in it's grip than for any other sensation he could actually feel. Reason, he thought, reason seemed to have abandoned him now. He was bathed in the mists of instinct; it was more like free-fall, he thought, disconcerted by the reality of this sudden intrusion into a realm so foreign . . .

When the disorienting impulse left, he touched his way to the sofa and sat down. He found the post-it note in his shirt pocket, and turned it over and over in his hand and in his mind as he grappled with the consequences he could see gyrating in the sodden mists that held him. He remembered throwing the original note away, not retrieving it, and he watched it in his hand, wondering why he had fought his way to another pad and written the number down again. Malevolence, he thought, took on many forms, moved in random ways humans had a long ago forgotten. 

Ancient currents moved through the air of his apartment. He fought a crushing pressure in his chest - he fought to breath through the sickening sweetness of the suddenly charged air - and he moved against impossible forces toward the telephone. He felt as if gravity had attacked him, was pulling him down and away from the world he knew and that this movement would send him spiraling toward her, toward a resolution of the chaos that defined this new world.

And there she was - there in the mist, holding his bloody arm in her hand, tending the wounds that bound them to this spinning, primordial universe. He felt the cold fury of her eyes dissolving as his blood swept over her, covering her cold chaos with the pulsing certainty of his blood. She stood there in the mist - covered in his blood - and her arms were outstretched, beckoning him to join with her. Join her in the mist. Swirling green and amber and cobalt mists, diffuse - yet all penetrating. Craving penetrations danced in his mind . . .

He dialed her number; an answering machine asked him to leave a name and number and she would return the call, but he hung up without leaving a message. He walked to the bathroom, dropped his grime soaked uniform into the hamper, and he showered - letting the hot water run on the back of his neck for what felt like an hour. He felt cold inside, though, cold to the point of feeling involuntary shivers run down his spine, and he knew it was because of her. The heat that surrounded him could not penetrate the coldness that radiated from the core of his being now. She possessed him now . . .

Lost. He knew he was lost. He was afraid. Of what, or whom, did he not know?

Could he really be so certain? Or was this new life really an illusion?

Burnett dried himself as he stood before the mirror over the bathroom sink, he stood watching his body shake and he laughed at the incongruity of this world. Her world. He dressed and went into the kitchen, looked at all the nothingness that waited to be eaten, this frozen food microwaved hell, hell that might have nourished him on another night, but not tonight - no, not tonight. Everything about his new world now felt out of place, incongruous, like he no longer belonged to the here and now. He belonged to the mist . . .

He walked out of the little kitchen, walked to the telephone, and called her number again. On the third ring, the answering machine kicked in, recited her message, and he waited.

"Yeah, Diane, this is Alan, uh, Officer Burnett. I wanted to see you. I need to talk to you. Please call me."

"Hello, Alan," her voice said. She had picked up the telephone. Sultry, knowing.

"Hello." Desperate, desiring.

"What do you want, Alan." Soothing, seductive.

"Dinner. Meet me for dinner." Lost in the storm, spinning out of this world's reach.

"When, Alan?" Confident, amused.

"I don't know, now, tonight." The universe aflame, her fires spreading in the dark - lighting his way.

"Can you pick me up about nine?" Ah, keeper of the flames, do you see him?

He looked at his watch: six twenty. "I'll be there." Yes, we see him.

"Bye." He is ours.

He listened as the remnants of her voice echoed in his soul, listened as the line went dead, floated on ancient airs as the swirling uncertainty of this reeling universe he had lived in for the past few hours dissolved, and was replaced with . . . what? What was this he felt inside - in this room he called his home - inside this space he called his body? Was he really here, was he really a part of this universe anymore? What was this choice? He thought of free will, of choices between good and evil, and he wondered again, what is this choice? What have I chosen?

Burnett called and made a reservation at his favorite restaurant, an Austrian place over by the lake, and he went into his little bedroom and changed his clothes. He put on a black suit and a white shirt, and looped a red bow-tie around his neck. He splashed on some cologne, polished his shoes and put them on. All rituals complete, he looked at himself in the mirror and laughed.

He walked down to his car, ran down to the car wash and drove through. He looked at his watch again and again, drove to the airport and watched as big jets landed and took-off in endless progressions of hello and goodbye. The sun kissed the horizon, the sky blazed with reds and oranges then settled comfortably into night, and he sat watching landing lights lined up outward to infinity, each machine waiting it's turn to come home to earth. Each filled with people who longed to love, and be loved. Strung out through infinity, an endless arc of hope and despair. All endless cycle, waiting to repeat in abeyance over and over. These waiting aircraft were part of a vast tidal flow of human emotion, he thought - all hope ebbing and flowing, all love being and becoming.

He drove off, he left that world of lights and dreams behind and drove on into her world.

He drove to her house, to the front of her house, and he switched the motor off and listened as the quiet of the night filled his mind. Quiet in what way, he thought? Expectant? He walked to the door, rang the bell. He listened. Do stars make noise, he thought as he looked up into the infinite?

He heard footsteps, the clicking of heels on tile, as they drew near. He heard locks turning and chains dropping, and he felt his heart pounding in his head. The door opened, and in very subdued light she stood in regal glory, and she looked at him, a smile spreading across her face. She was dressed in a black suit, a white blouse under, and a red choker adorned her neck.

"Well, great minds dress alike, say, Alan?"

He was lost for the briefest flash of time, then he saw her, saw her clothes, and he smiled. "I don't suppose this could have turned out any other way?" he said more than asked.

She looked at him - his question hung in the air - apparent. She smiled understanding. "Shall we go, or would you like to come in for a drink?"

"We've got reservations. Better head on."

She smiled. "Well, then. Lead on, Officer Burnett."

Burnett walked ahead of her as they moved away from her house, and as they reached the car he opened her door, took the hand she offered and helped her in. 

She smiled as he walked around to his door.

____________

He ordered a Peisporter and escargot, and she nodded her head with bemused understanding. He tried not to stare at her eyes, but he wasn't successful and he knew it. Candlelight danced in her eyes, and he paused there, wishing, hoping, dreaming. They ate, courses of exquisite simplicity appeared and were picked at, and their talk was as mellow as the soft jazz that bathed the dark timbered room. The room was thick with the honied hues of Oscar and Ella and moonlight. They danced around the complexities of her life as they sat in their dark corner, ignoring the realities of her darkness as they focused on the flickering lights that he hoped would guide them both through these shadows.

__________

Joan Dickenson looked across the table at the cop, sipping her wine and smiling inside at his nervousness. What a simpleton, she might have said only a few days ago. But her world was different now; her life was taking on new contours even as they spoke. She listened to Alan Burnett with a gracious smile on her face, asking polite questions to guide him toward her secret, but on he soldiered, marching to the beat of his dreams.

Diane von Ludendorf, indeed. She smiled at this inside joke, wondered when she should let him in on her little nom de guerre. A mid-West girl gone bad, she thought. All virtue and goodness turning in chaos, little Joanie spinning lies and whipping the men and women who came to her for absolution. The Benediction of Her Whip, she thought, thinking of what she might have called her life's story. So far.

But all that had changed in the past week.

Shadows on film. Lump in her right breast. The inscrutable pressure of a mammogram, the truth so unwelcome. Probable cancer, in the nodes, mastectomy - radical - now that was a word. She thought of the ruin surgery would visit on her, at least at first. Then she thought of her mother, her only family, and she fought to master the anger and recrimination that had defined their relationship for more than ten years. She remembered how her parents had fought, how her mother had beaten and humiliated her father, how he had loved it when her mother had berated him, slapped him, and then loved him with her whip.

And she remembered how - when her mother was away - he would come to her, beg her to love him sweetly, and how revolted she was of him. More for his weakness, she used to think, than for his inability to take what he needed. She had teased him, taunted the last tattered remnants of this once decent man, and she had learned to control him, abuse him - and she had learned at once that she loved the feelings that broke over her like a wave when she controlled him. 

She had dated in high school, but only those boys who submitted to her flawed humanity knew the sweetness within her tortured desires. A sweetness that too soon turned bitter.

She had taunted and tortured her way through college; English professors were her favored targets. They knew. Knew the beauty of her darkness, the beauty of submission, the beauty of the pain they craved. They had lent her an air of respectability, skewed though it was to a fundamentally twisted view of men and women and love. She had twisted that reality into a well-paying way of life. It was all relative, she thought.

Her father had passed away, and she hadn't even gone home for the services, and her mother had visited weeks later. She had discovered her daughters tastes, fought for her soul with the voice of experience - and lost. They hadn't spoken in years, no Christmas cards, no flowers on birthdays, just a bare wound where love might once have lived.

Joan Dickenson, little Joanie, all alone in the world. She brought to life fear and lust to the men and women who paid her, teaching timid housewives how to tame the torrid flames of warped desire, and here she was, alone. In the hours since - each a lifetime in itself - she had found her life barren and fruitless, and she had found that death seemed a release from this torment. Then she had thought of the cop, the beating blood of his wound on her hands, the wonder in his eyes, the wonder in her heart, and she had called him.

____________

He felt the chaos welling up inside his throat, it was choking him, burying him in dizzy waves of lust and desire. She sat across from him - expectantly - he thought, waiting for him, waiting for him to decide which road to take. He saw waves of tormented passion released when he looked in her eyes, he felt the sting of her whip, obedience to her commands was his heart's desire. He would become her supplicant. He would crawl to her feet and kiss them, worship the very ground she walked on. She was simply so beautiful, he thought. He had never seen anything so utterly, heart-stoppingly beautiful. Where was this night going, he thought? What rules applied in a universe gone mad?

They had talked about his work, life on the streets, the dangers and the boredom - all the usual questions - and he had slipped into the role. The cop thing, more than a little macho, ambivalent boredom his mantra, always the same. He talked about the men in her garage, the training he had endured to handle these situations, and she had looked at him so admiringly, lost - so he thought - to the trivial recitations he offered. He wanted her; he knew she knew. But did she know what he wanted. It was her universe after all . . .

"So, enough of me. Tell me about what you do," he asked without hesitation.

"What do you want to know?" she volleyed back.

"What do you do?"

"What do you know?"

"Internal Affairs and some of the guys in C.I.D. tell me you're a dominatrix, and that you make a lot of money doing it. I was just curious."

"Curious?"

"It's not your usual nine-to-five."

"No, I suppose not."

"So, do I have to beg?"

"Do you want to?"

He looked at her, disconcerted, for a moment not knowing what to say. "It was just a question, an . . . innocent . . ."

"Oh, Alan, hardly innocent. But is this what you really want to talk about?"

"Really, I was just . . ."

"Curious?" she interjected. "Yes, I know." She seemed to recoil inside herself, hide from the scrutiny she knew would come but dreading it none-the-less. "Really, Alan, what would you have me say?"




Heaven's Rending Ch. 02



"Do you enjoy it?" he asked.

"No, not at all," she said, surprise on her face. It was a humorless revelation.

"What? Really? I mean . . ." he stuttered to a halt, suddenly concerned about the dark clouds that raced across her face. Finally: "But why?"

"Habit," she said. "Just a habit, dear man."

"Habit? What do you mean?" He looked at her, his concern growing as he watched a tear form in the corner of her right eye. "I mean, it's really none of my business, but if you want to talk about it, I'm . . . I'd be happy to listen."

"It's a long story, Alan. And probably not one I'm ready to tell right now. Understand?" she said quietly, sweetly.

His eyes were locked on hers, he felt a huge reservoir of pain dammed up behind those tears she fought to control, but he didn't want to push her away. He watched her look away, hide from his eyes and the questions that remained there waiting to be asked. 

"Are you angry with me?" she finally asked. She looked up at him longingly.

"No," he said. "Not at all." He looked down at the table then brought his hand up and took her hand in his.

She didn't pull away from him, neither did she look away. 

Her skin felt cool, dry . . . her hands like polished ivory under a late afternoon sun. "I've wanted to touch you all evening, touch your skin, feel you . . ." he said.

"Who do you want to touch, Alan? Me? Or that other image? Do you think we're one and the same?" She almost sounded hurt, wounded.

He looked up at her face again. There were a million questions racing across the wounds that consumed her. 

"I just don't want to get involved with someone who wants the fantasy, you know? Not in my personal life. That's not what I . . ." She looked at him, saw the torment there, and she knew. Knew he had come for the fantasy her life provided, the leather, the pain. Another man who wanted to lose control, to be controlled for just and hour or an evening, and she felt despair, a despair born of bone-crushing loneliness. 'Oh, well,' she thought, 'another day, another dollar.'

"What do you want, Diane?" he asked.

"I don't know anymore, Alan. Do you want to go back to my place?"

He looked at her, wondered at her ability to shift gears so suddenly, wondered what had happened behind that veil of tears. A veil of tears, that he knew now, he knew that more surely than anything he had ever known. "I think," he started, haltingly, "I think I want to hold you. I know I want to kiss you. I know I want to look into your eyes every chance I can for the rest of my life."

"Wow, Alan, that's quite a line. Is that yours?"

"And I don't want you to hurt me, Diane. I don't need hurt, I've had enough hurt in my life to last a million years." He looked down at her hand in his. He raised her hand to his face, and he kissed it. "I just want to know you, know what we can be."

'Sure you do, little boy,' she thought even as she struggled through suffocating veneers of cynicism and dread. She just smiled at him, doubting not for one moment man's ability to delude himself into all manner of deceit and treachery. She had seen it all, heard it all, lived the horrid consequences of it all - for all of her life. "And I'd like to know you too, Alan."

____________

He was walking her back up the sidewalk to her house. The night had grown cooler, and he felt that other chill all around him again. Something had come over her, some fire he had left unkindled, and he felt dry inside, quiet, defeated. He didn't know what to expect.

"Would you like to come in?" she asked as she slipped the key into the lock. She was direct, almost challenging.

He stood there, dissolving in her mists again. "I - I've got to be in at seven thirty in the morning. I'd better call it a night. But thanks."

"Alan, come in for a minute, OK?" She was growing more calm, as if she had reached some decision.

"Yeah, OK."

They walked inside, to a house that seemed somehow so familiar to him, and so violated to her. She walked into the kitchen, pulled a couple of snifters from a cabinet and filled them with ice cubes.

"What would you like?" she asked.

"How about a Drambuie?" he said as he looked at the bottles arrayed in the cabinet

"Alright." She reached into the cabinet and pulled out the bottle, and filled both glasses with the Scottish liqueur. She walked pensively into the living room and handed Alan his glass, then sat down on an eggplant colored leather sofa. She motioned for him to sit, and he came to her on the sofa. He sat down, took her hand in his again and without pausing he kissed the top of it, then kissed her fingers. With her other hand she ran her fingers through his hair for a moment, then she broke free of his grasp and took his face in her hands and brought him closer, and she kissed him full on the mouth. She slipped her tongue past his lips for a moment and lightly ran it over the inside of his lips, grazing his tongue, teasing him. 

She held him in her talons, and he didn't resist.

She pulled back from him for a moment, looked at his eyes - they were quiet eyes, calming - then she ran her tongue ever-so-lightly over his eye lashes, and she watched him react, felt his trembling through her mouth, and she smiled inside. All her doubts, all the suffocating loneliness of the past week melted away as she felt her control return, as she felt Alan responding to her will. Through force of habit, she bit his upper hip, then pushed him down on the sofa - her manner toward him changed in the briefest flash of time - and soon she was dominating him carefully, controlling him, playing with him as she had so many others for so many years.

It hit fast and hard. She felt sad, alone, and empty even as she felt Alan responding to her, and just as suddenly she collapsed into his arms in sudden defeat. She thought of her father - so weak, so vulnerable - so human, and how they had failed each other. Her mother, so manipulative and cruel, and how they had all conspired to fail each other. All of the men who crawled to her, all the housewives who trailed behind their tormented men - hoping to learn something, anything - that might keep some divine spark alive in their decaying relationships.

She felt disjointed from the reality of her world - it hit her so suddenly and so powerfully it nearly knocked her to the floor - and she felt more than understood that she was crying, that she was gasping for breath between overwhelming sobs. She looked up at Alan and saw confusion, yet she also felt him reaching for her, not rejecting her, and she clung to that, held on to that simple truth. 

Alan had felt the gathering explosion long before it surfaced; it was like a volcano that rumbled slowly to life and reached it's climactic moments only after tremors and flows had seeped to the surface. He had felt her reach out to control him, and he had responded to her - she was a force of nature who could not, he felt, be denied - but something hadn't felt true. It felt like rote behavior, rehearsed - an act - and he had felt almost silly, like a kid playing spin-the-bottle behind the garage after school. It was an act, he realized, we each played a role in her little drama. But it's not real, he said to himself.

'Maybe I wanted that dream,' he thought as he held her, waiting for calm to return. But he knew as he felt her shaking in his arms that something life-altering was happening to him, and, perhaps, to her as well. He knew he wanted to hold this woman in his arms for the rest of his life, wanted to protect her in ways he had never felt with his first wife. Everything he felt was new - and ancient. He was responding to her in the here and now - yet he felt as if he was responding to forces that had been released in another time - another universe - and these spaces were in collision. This woman was the keystone, he thought, to all that was his life. Without her, he couldn't stand, time couldn't stand. Without him, she would collapse before his eyes. They would perish.

She pulled back from him, some force or realization compelled her now, and he watched her as she took off her blazer. She handed it to him, then slowly unbuttoned her blouse, and this too she handed him. She reached behind with both hands and unfastened her brassiere, and he watched it fall away to the floor. She reached out and took his left hand and brought it to her right breast; he watched her lower lip trembling, saw her eyes grow dewy with a sorrow that possessed her completely. His hand fell to the skin of her breast and she laid his hand there with both of hers, forcing his hand into the yielding softness.

It was obvious. He felt it immediately. Like a spongy-hard golf ball - the mass was instantly recognizable as out-of-place and full of malevolent purpose. He felt himself looking at the breast, then up at her face; she was crying quietly now, her eyes closed, her soul bared, and it looked to him as if she was ashamed of her body, that it had failed her - and him - in some crucial way. 

She was waiting for him.

Waiting for the polite goodbyes.

But she felt him bending to her breast, and he kissed her there. Gently. And again.

'I'm so scared,' she thought. She felt him there, felt his lips caressing her with such knowing tenderness. Quiet waves of fear washed over her, building, threatening to consume her if she stood in this silence - alone - too long. 

"I'm so scared!" she cried out loudly, losing herself in the undulating terrain of remorse and fear that dominated this new landscape. She was holding onto him with relentless tension pressing in from every direction; this new - and unfamiliar - feeling was infantile in it's capacity to invoke an infinite regression toward longing for a father's pure love. Life, death, an endless circle of life and death; that's what she felt - she longed to love her father as she never had, simply, purely, innocently - and here was this man, so simple, so pure, so innocent. Emotions cascaded down on this new landscape, and through the thundering mists of her tears she felt him attached to her body as if it was her soul.

This man so simple, pure, and innocent. This circle of life.

She held his head with furious possessiveness etched over the features of her body, and she thought as she felt her muscles tremble that she was as an aspen leaf on a summer breeze. There is life in the time of an aspen's leaves, she thought, the universe allows for even the tiniest miracle of life to dance under the afternoon sun. She dropped her nose to his hair and drew in his scent, and she thought it smelled honest, and somehow decent, almost holy. Like life, she thought, honest, somehow decent if that was what you made of it.

Or darkness, if that was your choice.

__________

She awoke sometime in the very early morning; she heard him on the telephone saying he wouldn't be into work that morning, that he was taking personal time off to be with a friend, and she thought that sounded like a miracle in and of itself. A friend. She could barely see him in the faint light of her bedroom - only a little nightlight in the bathroom was seeping into the room - but she could make out that his clothes were off. She felt more than saw that she was completely naked under the sheets, and she remembered him carrying her to bed after her meltdown, and she felt echoes of him holding her, stroking her head. He had run his fingers through her hair so gently, letting her feelings have free reign, and she had cried as she kissed him, as she had felt him responding to her as a man should respond to a woman. She had taken him in her mouth and taken his need and it had all felt so innocent. She hadn't done that with a man in years, had always thought it debased her, but with him it had felt natural. He hadn't pushed her or demanded anything of her; he had simply enjoyed what she had given him and then held her as she fell asleep - her head nestled by his.

And now he was beside her, making sweet noises about hoping he wouldn't wake her but having to call in, of wanting to cook her breakfast, of needing to talk with her and hold her and kiss her. She nuzzled into him, smelling him, wrapping herself around him, and her mouth found his. His hands roamed her body unashamedly, and he explored the terrain around her neck and shoulders with his mouth, licking here and nibbling there until he felt her trembling again, and then he was down between her thighs, kissing the milky-soft flesh inside her nether lips, giving slight pressure to the hooded flesh when he felt her back arching. He kept at it, probing, caressing, until she was lost in the wonder of life, craving the miracle of release.

And then he was inside her, his weight easy to bare as he slipped up on her, and he had made love so gently, so tenderly, that as they came together she had cried again at the simple beauty of the moment, and he had lowered his face to hers and kissed away her tears, holding her face while he told her how wonderful she was. As they came back to earth she held him again, held his head in the cradle of her neck, and she whispered sweet things in his ear as his breathing grew slower and deeper. 

She drifted between memories of her father and the breath that warmed the side of her neck, and she struggled to perform the calculus that would reconcile these two men. What had happened, she thought, to her father. What had driven him to surrender his soul to the woman he had called his wife, only to seek it's restitution in the arms of his daughter. They had never had sex, he had never been so craven, but his longing for her was a given, though an unspoken lust for his wife was never far removed, and Joan had hated him for the duplicity. She had hated both her parents for their mendacity, for their shallow understanding of the pain they visited on their house, and the coarse, grating words that passed for love.

And this man laying beside her, she thought. What did she know of him? He talked sparingly of his life, his past, but he listened to her. Really listened to her. He noticed things; his eyes had roamed all night long, taking in everything. She had looked at those eyes and instantly trusted them, knew she could depend on them to tell the truth, but slowly she had perceived something terribly unsettling in those eyes. His eyes saw past lies, past deceit, and wounded her when they recognized insincerity. His eyes smiled when they came across a simple truth, or a cherished memory, and she basked in the radiant glow they reflected. But she was wary of them, for she feared her past above all else in this world.

There was, after all, so little she could hold in her heart as truth. The truths of her life had scorched and burned her, and she recoiled from these truths as easily as she breathed. She hid from them, massaged them, and, she thought, buried them with never as much as a prayer and with so little effort that she in fact never thought of her past anymore, never thought of who she was, what she had become. I am a liar, the voice inside said. I am a chameleon. A sycophant. 

When she felt good, when she had a good day, she was an actress.

'Am I acting now?' she thought.

"What was that?" she heard him say.

"Hum? Did I say something?"

"You asked, 'Am I acting now?' I'd offer a penny for your thoughts . . ."

"I was thinking about you, Alan, and of what kind of life I've led. I was feeling so wonderful, you know . . ." and she felt herself drifting into that landscape of tears and betrayal she called her life, and she felt herself falling . . . falling . . .

He leaned into the gales of her despair and held her, kissed her. He gave her what comfort he could, but he could take no measure of her life's torment, he could only guess what betrayals had brought her to this precipice. All he could do was rely on experience, feel his way past her pain to her side.

He felt the anger and anguish that visited him daily on the streets, always the emotions overwhelmed him, always he struggled to build a wall around the violence and pain that lived on the streets of this life. It was easy to put that pain into a little compartment and lock it away at the end of the day, but he knew in the end those walls had killed his marriage just as surely as any infidelity would have. It was a simple matter of control.

But you don't control love.

He could not have her, he knew, if the walls remained. His walls would doom them both to the false judgements of silence, the verdicts rendered would be as hollow as the truths they sought to contain. He felt his way through the realization that, by generalizing human experience - labeling and categorizing human misery to make it's wounding impulses seem more understandable - he had doomed himself to never really understand the misery he dealt with day by day on the streets. He was a bystander, a not-so-innocent bystander. He wondered how many lives he had touched so inadequately, how much torment lay smoldering outside the battlements of his walls. Why was it so hard to let it in, he thought. Why was another soul's wounded misery so hard to accept as a burden, no, he thought, stunned by the realization. No, not a burden. It was a gift. It was a privilege to help another soul find peace. Worth any sacrifice, he thought.

He pulled her deeper into his embrace, and held her there.

___________

He was washing dishes, actually, scrubbing an omelet pan as he whistled, looking out the window over the kitchen sink and listening to her as she made small talk. She was walking around the kitchen, chattering away about Eggs Benedict and which champagne was her favorite, then she came to him, put her arms around him and sunk into his back, her head on his shoulder. She ran her hand under his shirt, twirled her fingers through the hair on his belly while she nibbled at his back through the thin material of his undershirt.

He flipped off the water and turned to face her, and she smiled up at him, then ran her fingernails up his belly. He twisted under the assault, but she held firm, digging her nails in ever-so-gently until he got the message and relaxed. She kissed him, tenderly, slowly, and she felt his hands take her face and he pulled back and looked at her eyes, suddenly very serious.

"Would it be silly to say that I think I'm falling in love with you, Ma'am?"

She leaned into him and kissed him, then pulled back and said, "Not at all, Officer." She thought of all the fears that loomed ahead of her as she looked at him, and she felt somehow - safe.

He watched as shadows crossed her face, saw the happiness in her eyes and the fear he knew that lay under everything. "On the fridge, the card says you have an appointment today at 1:30. Want some company?"

She was suddenly caught between two rather contradictory impulses; first the fear she felt when she thought of the procedure they would do this afternoon made her want to run in panic as if from an advancing storm; second, she felt the need to hold on to this man who offered a refuge from the storms that battered her, gales whose winds threatened to overwhelm her. She felt lonely when she thought of the road ahead, but she no longer felt alone. What a difference that was, she thought. She held on to the feeling, savored it.

"They're going to do a needle biopsy, then schedule surgery, I mean I assume they'll schedule surgery . . ."

"What have they told you so far?"

"Not much, probably a full radical mastectomy." She looked down at the floor as she talked.

"Is that as bad as it sounds?" he asked gently.

She continued to look around the room, wondering when this world was all going to disappear. She shuddered in the silence that held her . . .

"Anything you need to do before we head down?"

"Hum? No. I just . . . maybe take a shower. How about you? You need to run home and change?"




Heaven's Rending Ch. 02



"No, I keep a change in a gym bag in the trunk."

"Wash my back?" she said, a twinkle of mischief passing through her eyes.

"S'pose that might be right fun, Ma'am," he said, looking at her with a grin spreading across his unshaven face, and dropping into his best Southern Redneck accent. "Don't mind if I do." He walked over to her and took her hand. "Mind if I finish the dishes later?"

She took his hand and looked at him, then stood up and walked toward her bedroom - pulling him along behind her.

___________

He was beside her in the recovery room, holding her hand. He looked at her tear-streaked face, knowing that the news must have been very bad indeed, and he leaned forward, wiped a tear off her cheek as it built in her eye and rolled down her face.

"Can you head on home tonight?" he asked finally, not knowing what else to say.

She shook her head. "No, they want to do the procedure in the morning. First thing."

"Is it bad?"

"Think so; about as bad as it gets, or so Dr Dunsworth said."

"Is their anybody I can call for you?"

"Uh, Alan, I don't really know how to say this, but you're basically all I've got. Most of the other people I know . . . well . . . I don't want them here. They are . . . were . . . part of another life; that life's over. All over now."

"What about your parents?" he asked. The transformation was instantaneous and complete, he was shocked at the hatred he saw cross her face. "Are you sure you don't want me to call them?"

"No, I'm not sure," she said finally, resigned to the contradictions that ruled her universe.

"You have the number handy, or do you want to call them?"

"Let me think about it for a while, huh?"

"It's alright, baby. We'll get through this."

"Oh, we will?" she said, her voice full of fear and sarcasm. "This doesn't feel a lot like a we kinda deal, Alan."

He looked at her, measuring her strength, probing her despair. "Well, Diane, you can do this alone. That's a choice you can make. It's your right to make it, if that's what you really want. But could I give you some advice? It's free, so it might not be worth much."

She looked up at him, dark circles already etched under the skin of her eyes.

"We learn from our mistakes, Diane, and hopefully we grow. If we don't learn from our mistakes, we keep making the same mistakes over and over. And I think one of the mistakes we all make is that . . . well, somehow, someway, we've forgotten how to forgive people. We live in this world concerned with our own lives, with our own survival, and we just lose sight of something basic. We've isolated ourselves, lost touch with each other, we've lost our sense of community, lost our ability to help one another, to rely on one another, to see each other through the goods times - and the bad. I get worried sometimes because I see this every day, and I see it everywhere . . . rich, poor, black, white, women, and men. We've become a nation of islands unto ourselves."

She looked at him, a question on her face.

"John Donne, 'No man is an island'. We need each other, Diane. Or we perish. And forgive me, but you're making a big mistake if you think I don't care about you. I want to . . . no, I need to be here with you, Diane. I need you, need you more than anything else in this life. And I think you need me, too."

Her eyes were full of tears, her nose was running, and he leaned over to kiss her. First he kissed her on the forehead, then he kissed her lips. He held her face, felt her trembling, and he pulled the blanket on the bed up over her chest.

"I'd forgotten that, Alan. 'No man is an island.' That was a poem, wasn't it? I can remember reading it in high school, in front of class. I used to think there was something to it, but then I learned the truth. My father taught me the truth."

He looked at her, saw the coldness seeping back into her eyes, and he knew she was leaving him.

"My father taught me," she began, "that love is a fairy-tale sold to women by men . . ."

"And is that all you learned from him, Diane? Or did he hurt you deeper than that?"

She looked up at him, cold fury building in every fiber of her being. "What would you know about that? What gives you the . . ."

"What, the right? You don't think I haven't seen abused children before, Joan?"

She started to think of a reply, but the subterfuge of her name coming into the light of day brought her up short.

"Yeah. You know, I could stand here and tell you that I know all about you, but let me be the first to say, Joan Dickenson, that in truth I don't know the first thing about you, but I've been with you for . . ." he looked down at his watch " . . . about twenty hours, now, and yeah, I've read your files, and yes, I've heard all the stereotypical bullshit, seen it all, been there, done that. But let me tell you something. It doesn't mean shit. I've looked in your eyes, Joan Dickenson, and I've seen the truth. The truth about you. In your eyes. Now, here's my truth. No man is an island. I didn't believe that until last night, I've never believed that before in my life. But I do now . . . right now. But if you want to do this alone, that's your right, that'll be your choice. But I want to be here, now, with you."

"Alan?"

"Yes."

"Alan. Grow up. Go home." ___________

Alan Burnett listened to the same oldies radio station he listened to everyday, that AM station that had been around since a year longer than forever and that was still lost in a play-list that seemed planted deep in the seventies. The Moody Blues were still looking for Tuesday Afternoon, and Burnett sat in his squad car, his thumbs drumming away on the steering wheel, cruising down one suburban street after another, looking for something - anything - that would take his mind off Joan Dickenson. But it had been useless. For months he had thought about her, thought about her choice, and he wondered why he was still so confused about her surrender.

"2114," the radio blared.

"2114, go ahead."

"2114, signal 54 at 5-1-1 Byron Court, ambulance en route."

"2114, code five."

"2114 code five at zero nine thirty three."

He made a u-turn and headed back toward Saratoga Estates, jotting down the dispatch time and address on his daily activity report on top of his aluminum clipboard. His mind was reaching, trying to remember why that address sounded so familiar. He was about five minutes from the address, a welfare concern/sick call with an ambulance on the way, when it hit him.

511 Byron Court. That's her address.

He reached down to the center console and flipped on the lights and siren, and he punched the accelerator hard. He took corners hard and deep, pushed the squad car as fast as he dared down straight stretches of road, and soon he saw her house. It looked quiet, just another Tuesday morning in suburbia. He reached for the radio. "2114, code six."

"2114 code six at zero nine forty."

He pulled up in front of the house and jumped out of the car and ran to the door. It stood open a few inches, and he called out her name and knocked on the door before he stepped in. He heard moaning nearby, and he pushed the door open and instantly felt resistance, then more moaning. He looked down, and there she was, lying face up on the floor in a white terrycloth robe in a pool of vomit. There was vomit in her mouth, all over her face, but she was lying there quietly. Her eyes were wide open, almost lifeless.

'She's not breathing,' he thought. 'Fuck, she's drowning in vomit!' He dropped to her side, put two fingers on her carotid artery and felt for a pulse as he watched her chest for signs of breathing. He couldn't feel anything. He checked her neck for obvious trauma, then pulled out his hand radio and yelled: "2114, starting CPR at this location, expedite ambulance!"

"2114 received at zero nine forty one."

He swept the vomit from her mouth carefully, not remembering exactly what to do in this situation other than to clear the airway and start CPR, so when he had all of the liquid out that he could feel he started rescue breathing. He gave two breaths, then moved to her chest to begin compression - and he saw the carnage under her robe. Her breasts were gone, and the skin he saw was blotchy red and yellow. Her arms were bruised, and her hair was almost all gone. He felt for the sternum and placed his hands were he thought he would do the least damage and compressed her chest. He moved back to breath for her, and back to her chest to help her heart move blood, and he continued even as he heard a fire-truck and ambulance wailing in the distance, then coming down the street and stopping in front of her house. He heard voices and footsteps running toward the door, but he kept up his rhythm, not wanting to miss a breath or a compression. 

"In here!" he yelled as he pressed down on her chest, and the door burst open. A paramedic dropped to her head and put a mask with a rubber bag attached to it over her face and began pumping air into her; a fireman pushed him aside and began compressions while another paramedic ripped her robe open and started hooking up EKG leads to her chest. 

"She had a mastectomy several months ago . . ." he blurted out.

"No shit!" the paramedic bagging her said. "You know her?"

"I met her when her house was burglarized, popped a couple of scrotes when they ran out the back . . ."

"Yeah, yeah, I remember . . . that was you, huh? Dave, you got anything there?"

"Yeah, normal sinus rhythm, but its thready and her BP is 72 over 38. I'm gonna call in for orders, we need to get some fluid in her . . ."

Burnett stood and backed away from the medics, let them do their thing. He walked back into the house, checked it for any signs of foul play and found none, then looked for any numbers of friends to call and found none, or doctors to call and he found a discharge order sheet and a number to call if she had a problem. It was dated not quite a week previously. He went to the telephone and called the number. He got a nurse, and explained who he was and what was going on.

"Oh, yeah, Joan Dickenson. Yeah, she's still in chemo. Yeah, can the paramedics bring her to Olsen? Dr Dunsworth is on call there this morning; I'll let him know she's headed in . . ."

"Yeah, I'll let them know. Listen, you have any family or any other contacts to call?"

"Ah, let me look. Uh, just an Officer Alan Burnett with the police department."

The words hit Burnett hard, he seemed to stagger under the weight of them.

"You still there, Officer?"

"Yeah. Well, I gotta go, thanks for the info." He hung up the phone, turned to look at her, and it all snapped into focus. 

She'd been protecting him, didn't want him to go through her sickness and disfiguration.

That's why all the contradictory impulses flew across her face.

He looked at her lying there, vomit all over her robe and in her hair, and he felt like he'd betrayed her.

'Hell,' he thought, 'I have betrayed her.' He turned, looked away, wanted to hide the tears that were welling up in his eyes. 'I was her friend', he thought, 'and I let her push me away. Let her dictate the terms . . . of my surrender . . .'

The paramedics were running an IV, talking to the hospital on their radio, but they didn't seem too worked up. Maybe she would be alright, he thought. He walked off to her bedroom, the memories washed over him when he saw the room again, and he looked around the room. Lot of medications on the bedside table, and then he saw it. Vomit on the carpet, vomit on the bed. He walked into the bathroom, and he could see that she had a least tried to make it to the toilet a number of times. 'God, she must have been living in misery', he thought.

Burnett walked back out to the entryway, told them about the transport request to Olsen, then helped the medics load her on their gurney and walked with them out to the ambulance. He helped lift her into the back, then shut the door behind the paramedics. He walked back to his squad car and sat behind the wheel; he picked up the radio and checked in with central dispatch. "Ah, 2114."

"2114, go ahead."

"2114, show me clear with a report."

"2114, clear at ten twenty two hours. Service number 8739717."

"2114, received." Burnett looked at his steno-pad, started to write some notes down, but his hand started to shake, his eyes filled with tears. He shook his head, tried to clear the fog that had settled over his world, but he seemed to sink deeper into a surreal gloom that had engulfed the world. He tried to write a few words down on the pad, but he quickly gave up the effort. He looked at his hand, looked at the trembling that consumed it, but he still held the pen in his hand like a talisman, and he willed his hand to stop shaking. The ambulance started to pull away from the curb and he watched it with sorrow as it ran down the street. He watched the ambulance like it was a hearse; that his dreams had died and the remains were being taken away. The ambulance continued down the street, then turned a corner and was gone.

His hand began to shake violently as tears fell on it.

___________

Burnett was sitting in the visitors lot outside Olsen Medical Center in his car; he was lost in thought, hesitating on the crest of a wave.

He didn't know what to do, which way to turn. The way seemed clear; she had listed him as her contact information, so she must have still seen him as something important in her life. But her last words to him rattled in his mind, the wound still fresh despite the passage of time.

Finally, he decided. He opened the car door and got out, stretched away the days frustrations, then walked into the hospital. He had kept his uniform on, something he usually didn't do after his shift was over, but he didn't want to answer questions from nurses and the uniform was good at keeping people away. He ignored, as he usually did, the stares from people as he made his way into the lobby, and walked over to the information desk and asked the lady there where he could find Joan Dickenson.

"Is she family?" the woman asked.

"Uh, no, I took the call this morning at her house. I just needed to do some follow up."

"Oh, alright. She's in 417, right up those elevators there to the fourth floor. Just check in with the duty nurse at the Blue desk."

"Thanks, Ma'am," he said as he walked off toward the elevators. He walked into an open one and rode up silently into the tortured world of the sick and the dying. He tried to ignore the medical conversations of some doctors in the back of the elevator and the small talk of a man and a woman talking about Aunt Esther's gall bladder. He looked up at the ceiling, let out a sigh, then exited as the door opened on the fourth floor. He walked to the duty nurses' station.

"Can I help you, Officer?" the nurse asked, looking him over with a hint of suspicion.

"Yeah, I'm doing some follow up on a sick call this morning. Joan Dickenson, I think they said she's in 417. How's she doing?"

"'Bout as good as could be expected?"

"How so?"

"She's pretty sick, Officer. Cancer, in chemotherapy right now; her second round."

"What does that mean?"

"Well, the first try to stop the cancer was surgery, followed up by chemotherapy. It hasn't worked. So they'll try another round of chemo."

"If that doesn't work? Then what?"

"Then we'll try to keep her comfortable," the woman said, avoiding the obvious conclusion.

"So what did y'all do today?"

The nurse took out a chart and looked it over. "Sorry, I just came on. Uh, looks pretty straight forward, just tried to stabilize her, get her fluids stable again, work on the nausea."

"Can I see her?"

"Is this personal, Officer, uh, Burnett?" the woman asked, looking at his name on the little silver badge over his right shirt pocket.

"Little bit of both, Nurse Parker," he said after craning his head to make out the nurses name on her uniform.

"Well, yeah, go ahead. I think she's asleep, so don't wake her."

"Right," he said walking off down the hallway. Burnett hated hospitals; all cops hated hospitals, he thought. Bad karma, he said to himself as he looked in the rooms at the various people laid up in bed after bed. He came to 417 and knocked gently on the door. When he heard no answer he pushed the door open a little bit and looked in; she was sitting up, eyes wide open - looking at life as it played out on the ceiling.

"Hello there," he said, just leaning into the room.

She looked over at the sound, looked at his face and uniform, and lifted her left hand and motioned him in. "Well, well, well," she said, her voice a raspy echo of the seductive music she had made not so long ago. "Look who's here . . ."

"How you feelin', girl. You look a helluva lot better than you did this morning."

She looked confused. "This morning?"

"Yeah, I responded to the call this morning, got there before the paramedics."

"Oh."

"So, how're you feeling?"

"Weak, my throat hurts."

"You mind if I ask some direct questions?"

"Yes, Alan, I do?"

He looked at her, an unasked question hanging in the air between them.

"What, Alan? What do you expect?"

"I thought at least I could be your friend. You know, friends help friends when they're down. I just wanted to help out if I could."

"You do, huh?"

"I can imagine. I'm not sure I would want to share what it is you're going through if I was in your place. But I'm not sure I could turn my back on a friend, either."

"Oh, are you my friend?"

"I wanted . . . I want to be."

"You're just not going to grow up, are you, Alan?"

"Just what the fuck does that mean? I mean, I just don't get it! What strikes you as childish, what is it about needing someone else that strikes you as childish!?"

She looked away; her eyes focused on some nearing eternity. "So, Alan, you want to watch me die. Does that strike you as . . . why can't you understand?"

"You know, Diane . . . Joan . . . I'm really selfish. I don't give a damn if I'm with you for a day, a week, or a lifetime. I just wanted to be with you, hell, maybe I need to be with you. And the thought of you barfing all over yourself, almost drowning in vomit . . . well, nobody should go through this alone, darlin'. It ain't right, and I'm pissed off!"

"Well, at least you know you're selfish!" she said, a smile trying to form on her cracked lips.

"That's not the point. Why are you being so Goddamned selfish?"

"Because I love you."

The words rocked him, left him feeling dizzy. He felt the room spinning, felt light-headed as the words hit him and their meaning sunk in.

"Not what you expected to hear, Alan?"

"No, I guess not," he said in a voice just barely above a whisper.

"Come here," she said, holding out her hand.

He walked over to her, took her hand in his, and looked at her, looked at her eyes. "I just don't get you," he said in matter-of-fact monotone. "I'm just fucking clueless."

"Yes, you do, Alan. You're about the only person who ever has."

He nodded his head. "Uh-huh. Right."

"So you were there? This morning, I mean?"

"Uh-huh."

"I don't remember."

"Not surprised, darlin'. You were about nine-tenths dead. Had to do CPR and all that hero shit. You were a mess . . ."

"CPR? My heart had stopped?"

"I'm not . . . sure. You were choking, on vomit, drowning."

"You did CPR and my mouth was full of garp?"

"Yeah, just part of the service, Ma'am," he said with a grin all over his face.

She was gripping his hand very hard now, looking at him intently. "Thank you, my love."

He looked away for a moment. "You're welcome, darlin'."

"I like it when you call me that."

"Yeah? So, when do I get to spring your ass from this place?"

She looked away, looked out the window into the infinite. "I don't know. They're not telling me too much right now."

"Want me to find out?"




Heaven's Rending Ch. 02



"No, not really. Things will work out as they're meant to."

He looked at her, looked at the serenity on her face.

"Some mistakes, dearest, we never stop paying for," she said.

"Yeah, but I think I said once we can learn from our mistakes. At least I'd like to think we can."

"Maybe so. We're gonna find out. Soon."

"Yeah?"

"I need you to call my mother."

___________

He met Joan's mother at the airport late the next afternoon. He knew just by looking at the woman that she Joan's mother. The same jet black hair, though turning silver in places, the same eyes - though they were brutally cold, and decidedly aloof - she was Joan in pain writ large and stretched to the breaking point. He greeted Mrs Jennifer Dickenson as politely as he could and gave her right hand a firm shake, but the woman remained distant and cold. She remained silent all through the terminal, though once outside in the fading daylight she tried briefly to make small-talk about the flight and the weather - anything, it seemed but the nature of her duty here. They made their way to Alan's car and were soon driving toward downtown, and the hospital. There was a wall in the air between them, and the longer they drove the more ridiculous it became. Finally . . .

"How is she, Alan?"

"I don't mean to be evasive, but I'm not really sure. The nurses seemed kinda optimistic this morning, but Joan was decidedly less so. Maybe she's just depressed, or maybe the docs have told her something the nurses don't know - yet. I don't know, maybe she'll tell you more than she's told me . . ."

"I wouldn't count on that. How did you two meet?"

Alan recounted the burglary, the shooting, taking her to dinner. He told her a condensed version of their brief affair and split-up."

"So, you're a cop?"

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Interesting. Joanie's dad was a cop, though only for a few years, when she was very young. I guess it made an impression . . ."

"I didn't know that. Where's he now?"

"Oh, he passed away several years ago. AIDS. He developed a taste for other things."

"I see," Burnett said as he listened to the coldness underlying the woman's voice. "Have you remarried?"

She tossed out a sharp little cackle. "Not on your life! Never make the same mistake twice."

Burnett flinched at the irony in her words.

"So, when's the last time you saw Joanie? She hasn't really talked much about you, and didn't want to call you at first, actually, she only just yesterday asked that I call you."

"How long has she been ill?" Mrs Dickenson was good at evading painful associations, too, he noted.

"About four months. The initial diagnosis was breast cancer, but it had already spread to some lymph nodes around her right shoulder."

"Did they take her breast?" she asked, and Alan heard a tremble in her voice.

"Yeah, well, they did a full radical mastectomy . . ."

"They took them both! But . . . but why?" The woman seemed angry and surprised.

"You'll have to ask someone else that question, Ma'am. That's a little outta my line."

For the rest of the drive into town Mrs Dickenson remained quiet and defensive, her arms crossed over her breasts as if to ward off dark spirits that had gathered in the air before her worn body. Burnett looked over at her from time to time as he drove, noticed an almost childlike quality that seemed embedded with the air of denial the woman possessed, and he thought she looked as if she might break out in tears at any moment as the car approached the hospital. As he thought about this new woman he saw how fragile life was, and he found the thought crushing. Did we all make bargains.

But of course you know you do.

They rode up to the fourth floor together in silence, and Burnett walked beside the older woman down the pale green hall past the nurse's station to Joan's room. He knocked on the door, and when he heard a faint noise he poked his head in. Joan was with a nurse who held a pink plastic container under her mouth to catch vomit that seemed to issue from nothingness and reach out for solace from the illness within. He felt himself pushed aside as Joan's mother rushed inside. Without saying a word she went to the sink in the bathroom and a moment later came out with a damp washcloth and with that in hand she went to her daughter's side. The mother sat on the side of the bed and held the damp rag on the back of her daughter's neck.

After a few minutes the episode passed, and Joan lay back exhausted, sweat running down her face, the pale blue gown she wore soaked through with sweat and vomit. Mrs Dickenson ran her fingers through her daughter's hair, wiped the sweat away with the washcloth. For a brief moment mother and daughter seemed fused in time - they were one - and in the silence of this infinite confusion each seemed a pale echo of the other. And as such, time passed slowly. Joan was discharged a week later.

__________

Within moments of arriving at Joan's house, mother and daughter found their uncommon ground and were soon making a thorough examination of the ruins each claimed as her own. They each sat unperturbed on thrones of righteousness hurling accusations and recriminations at each other until the wounds were raw with electric hate. Burnett wondered which of them would fold and retreat first. Neither seemed willing to give in, willing to give the other the satisfaction of such an easy victory.

Burnett seemed to flow easily into the role Joan's father must have found cast for him as if in cold stone. He watched as mother and daughter tore into each other and found that if he interfered they both turned on him and attacked him with a fury that he had never imagined women capable of. He returned to work, found comfort in the misery of others, and as each day ground to a close he began to dread returning to Joan's house.

But as days turned to a week, and weeks to a month, he found that his efforts had bourne some modest gains; Joan was stronger, her appetite had returned and she was gaining weight between chemo sessions. Her hair - most of it had fallen out after the first round of chemotherapy - was a constant source of misery to Joan and wonder to him. So much identity was wrapped up in hair, Burnett thought. Curious to cling to vanity, he said to himself, as if that alone in the end was all that mattered. Joan had lost so much weight that none of her clothes fit - they hung like inopportune rags, and the tortured wastelands of her wounded chest screamed like an accusation each time she looked at herself in a mirror, yet she saw herself as whole, felt like the same woman she always had been. When a counselor had asked about prosthetic implants, Joan had very nearly bit the poor woman's head off. So many contradictions.

Her mother seemed to come and go from the house like an errant tide. She would roll in and bring misery and discord with her return, and she would flow away in a rush that left peace and confusion in her wake. Burnett tried to get Joan to talk about her mother - and the life that must have been so utterly chaotic during her childhood - but to no avail - there was just no fire without fuel - and Joan's fire had burned too hotly for too long. He looked at her during these moments and saw the little girl trapped inside, lost and confused and oh so vulnerable, and he understood in a rush that Joan still needed those wounds in order to make sense of her world, that without them she would lose her sense of herself. As pathological as that was, Burnett knew on an instinctual level not to intervene on that vast terrain. That was a battle he would never win.

The weariness that continually assaulted Joan had taken it's toll - she had no will left to fight anyone but her mother, so deep were those wounds - and Burnett wondered if she would have the strength to fight her disease if she tried to do even that. But Joan and Alan grew comfortable with each other, grew to respect one another for this late gift of honesty. During those days and nights that Burnett and Joan had with just each other, they found a love and understanding for each other that neither had expected. He nourished her with his acceptance of her past, and she sustained him with the simple love that only a battered child can share. They touched, and in the touching they comforted one another as storms rolled through their lives after each visit to the chemotherapy suite or the basement warrens that held Radiation Oncology. 

One night, shortly after her mother had left in the wake of a particularly bitter series of assaults, they sat on the patio in the back yard well into the depths of the night. They held each other's hands, talked of simple things and looked up through fast passing clouds at brief starscapes, and they wondered aloud at how things might have been. Only if.

Oh, how he wanted to love her.

Oh, how she had wanted to be loved.

Oh, how the clouds raced by.

____________

He came in from work one afternoon - still in uniform - and they were fighting. Not just yelling and screaming - no, this time it was worse. Joan was pulling her mother's hair, entangled in strands as deep as memory, and her mother had a hairbrush out and was hitting away blindly at her daughter. He stood in the kitchen mutely watching these two children wailing away at each other, undecided, lost. He watched as Joan pulled at her mother's hair, then her clothing, then he winced as the hairbrush swung through the air and connected on the right side of Joan's face.

Instinct took over, and Burnett ran into the living room and grabbed Joan's mother by the arm and he flung her away, but he held onto her wrist, twisted her to the floor and as he did so he jumped to her side and there took out his handcuffs and with practiced ease he bound the woman. Joan watched silently, a twisted, blank look painted on her face like a grotesque mask. As Burnett looked at her he thought she was obviously in shock, but some distant animation in her eyes held him and told him she was more than aware of what was happening. He could never have believed it possible that Joan would have enjoyed watching her mother's torment, but that was all he saw in her eyes. 

The older woman struggled to stand but Burnett pushed her back down with his foot, and this force was followed by a stream of filth that seemed to issue straight from Hell. Burnett looked at Joan's mother with curious detachment written all over his face - like he was examining an insect under a magnifying glass - and he wondered what to do next. She was calling him a worm, a pencil-dicked faggot, an ass-licker . . . there was no end to the practiced assaults that came from the woman's mouth . . . she assumed the weaknesses she had found in the various men she had ritually abused throughout her life were of a kind, that all men would wither under the furious weight of her words. She had buried her humanity under the weight of a million self-deceptions - Burnett feared it was buried far too deeply for a mere mortal's redemption - and the words she hurled around the room seemed to mirror the struggle for dominion her demons must have taunted her with for all the woman's life. As her words grew meaner, their ferocity seemed to weaken with the realization that she had ventured too deeply into uncharted depths of exploiting human weakness. Surely she knew that there never could be any redemption, only a withered reckoning.

Suddenly the older woman shivered and turned on her back, then grew still. Her eyes were wide open, fixed, unseeing, held perhaps by some distant memory, then her breath came in ragged little gulps that soon became the only sound in the room. Burnett watched her for a moment, then bent down to undo the handcuffs shackling her wrists, and though he stepped back as soon as he had done so, ready to dodge the next assault, it never came. She turned onto her side again and brought her knees to her chin and presently she began to rock herself. Her eyes grew wider still, haunted perhaps by a vision of the future that was like an unchecked fire waiting, watching, ready and willing to consume her tortured soul. Just what had this woman done, Burnett wondered as he watched tears run down the old woman's face. Just what bargain had she made?

Burnett recoiled as Joan's laughter danced around the ruins, then he helped the older woman to her feet and carried her to the spare bedroom. He placed her on the bed and ran his fingers through her hair, then he left the room, turning out the light as he closed the door.

____________

He carried Joan back to the hospital a few days later when the vomiting began again, but the mother did not come. The doctors came to her room and talked quietly with her while Burnett waited reluctantly outside the stale room in the waiting area down the hallway, and no words were needed when he came back into the room. Joan was looking out a window at the branches of a barren tree as they danced in the eddies on the other side, the other side . . . What was on the other side? Burnett thought as he watched her face. What waited for us there? Would it be a barren landscape like this?

He came to her and sat by her and held her hand, yet for the longest time she hardly knew he was in the room. She seemed content to focus on the branches, on the stale remnants of this life, so caught up was she still in the echoes of her mother's despair.

A nurse came in and moved to change the IV in Joan's arm, but Joan turned to her and whispered "no point . . . no point . . ." - but even so the nurse smiled and bent to her task. Joan had neither the will nor the strength to resist, so she turned back to the window and resumed watching the withered tree as one needle replaced another; she seemed not to react even to the pain as the new one was driven into her dying veins. To Burnett it seemed as though she was gathering what strength she had left for one final battle, and he tried to place his reserve of feelings away from view for a little longer.

He hated death, feared death, saw no point in death, and ultimately, wanted nothing to do with death. He had long ago stopped attending funerals; he no longer went to memorial services, and turned his head when he came by a church or temple these days. The very idea of death left him feeling cold and empty; death made the contours of life feel hollow and delusional - purposeless. And the religious impulse had never struck him as fundamentally sound. Those poor souls, he maintained, were so consumed with their pernicious fear of dying that they forgot to live - they banished reality in favor of mysticism and explicit hypocrisy. But now, when he looked down at Joan he felt an unbearable emptiness. A repudiation.

A bargain met, as you can plainly see.

Did I not tell you it would be so?

__________

"Just hold me, Alan. I'm cold."

Those were the last words she would say to him, they were the last words he heard her say. He lay beside her on the hospital bed, her broken body reaching out once again for the comfort of existence, for the promise of memory. He put his arms around her and held her to his breast. He listened to her breathing for a while, comforted himself with these simple manifestations of life, and he had told her that he loved her again and again as her breathing grew weary - then stopped. He remained there by her side for a time, then walked from the room.

"Is she gone, Alan?" Joan's mother asked when she saw him walk out of the room.

He had ignored her and walked by her and would have walked on forever, but he stopped when he heard the woman laughing and he turned to face the extremity of her need.

Tears were running down her face, black streaks of cosmetic tears that convulsed in the echos of her laughter.

"So you think you loved her, do you?" the woman said as she fought to restrain the terror that welled up inside her tortured soul. "Just what makes you think she could love you, that she could have ever loved anyone but herself? You fool!"

Burnett stopped short of the woman and looked at her with an undeclared mix of hate and pity on his face. He didn't know what to say . . . what to think about a despair so absolute. 

He stepped closer, then knelt before the woman and kissed her on the forehead, then stood. The woman stood too, and she stood up on her toes and kissed Burnett once on the lips.

"Thank you for loving my daughter," Joan Dickenson's mother said. Burnett took her offered hand and they walked from the hospital.



Heaven's Rending Ch. 02a Interlude 01



 Interlude I: The Promise of Sand

Sand lies underfoot, silent, unknowing, windswept. Sun streams down on vast reaches of sand, it's journey complete. Silent sand, caressed by sun, warmed by the indifference of chaos, sand drifts along the boundary between land and sea. Between what was, and what is.

Between being and becoming.

Sand drifts just in silence, it's passage measured in heartbeats; it drifts on wind-borne currents. Rhythms of an ancient dance define the random thoughts of drifting sand. Hearts dance to this time, to this other music, as you might say hearts dance to the music of stars. This much we know, but do we really understand?

Do we really understand being and becoming?

So, from on high - as if we were gods - we watch as shadows cross sand, shadows lost in the music of chance, dancing in the measured light of an autumn afternoon. Movement so random, so full of purpose, so ancient, so new - two shadows drift in careless flight, drifting on airs so light that time cannot - would not even if it dared - measure the passing of shadows across these blowing sands. Time, yes, time is patient. This is our truth. 

If you were above such a scene, if perhaps you were a seagull, if you were a god, you would see shadowed footsteps advancing across this windswept scene behind two people, a man and a woman, two forms joined - as one, moving - as one, silent - windswept, warmed by the certainty of the music in their hearts. You would wonder what purpose lies waiting for these shadows, but you would smile, for without knowing why - you understand. Purpose. There is purpose in life, even in shadow.

There is purpose in movement, even undefined, even in chance dancing. Movement toward purpose, movement in obedience to ancient music. You watch footsteps advance across windswept sands, watch purpose unfold in the sharp light of day, and in the music of sand's endless passage you see that these two shadows have been measured by your light. Measured by the passage of time. You would obey if you could - if you were anything but a god. This is life. What are you but a god?

You watch from on high as tall grass bends in the breeze, yields to the measure of the music, and you smile as grass shadows dance in discordant harmony across advancing footsteps, wandering in concert across time to a shadow on the sand, where the two - the man and the woman - have found rest under the sheltering sky. You watch as hand seeks hand, face meets face, as two become one again and again. What music is this?

If you flew higher, toward the sun where stronger winds blow, perhaps you would see other people walking on drifting sands. But why does your eye come back to the man and the woman, to those who lie on drifting sands warmed by this distant sun. Beings not unlike yourself: lost to time, lost in shadowed recesses within ever-shifting dunes, lost to their past and beholden only to a vague future. Would you see these people as something set apart, would they seem as eternal as the soothing currents that wipe the sands of their patterns? Oh! Do they so obey?

So calm the man and the woman seem from where you stay - stay on high in the music of spheres. It is almost as if they have been cut off from the rest of the world, and still you would understand. You see the timelessness these two offer the world around them - timelessness as a measure of redemption - for in their passage across the sand you would find the gift offered to you, to every god. What would surprise you? Your redemption?

A God in need of redemption?

Oh, no, you think. Not redemption. Evil lies not here in my heart. Evil has no place here.

What purpose, then, carves it's place on these drifting dunes. That in human love lies true peace? Do you, God, claim to know such peace? 

That in the gift men and women give to one another in the sharing of souls, the union of one life with another, the meaning of all life becomes clear even as the measure of one life becomes self-evident. When one hand enfolds another's, when the potential of one hand to change the very sinew and synapse of life when holding another's hand in it's soft grasp, time becomes irrelevant. Space becomes meaningless. Hate becomes an illusion. And the force of destiny lies mute in the shadow of it's creation. 

Evil, indeed!

If, from the vantage point you have reached while oh so high among the clouds, you could still see the man and the woman in the dunes, what would you feel? Among all the beings who walk this earth, do any live - really live - who do not share their love with another? What would you think if you, God, could not love? What of this life if you could only be loved? Could you even think at all if you could not love? How could you be loved if you couldn't feel love?

From on high?

But what if just as suddenly you were as one with the sand, down within the blowing grains of your creation, you are flowing through grass and over dune. You are there, pulled by long forgotten gravity toward the man and the woman as they lie upon the shifting sand. What would you feel? Could you feel their love all around you? Would you envy that love? Could you cherish their love as they cherish you?

Could you become lost in a sigh if you could not hear it?

Could you taste the limits of human experience in the shadow of a kiss?

Could you recognize the very meaning of eternity by looking at a clock? And feel your life ebbing away in the echoes of your love?

Could you find in your mind the meaning of love if all you could see when you look at the stars that surround you was your reflection? 

Could you watch unashamedly as man looks into woman's eyes and the meaning of his existence becomes clear? What? If you but chanced to dance alone? 

Could you feel the electric warmth as one hand finds another - as one heart reaches out for another - as two souls become one in the recesses of the dunes? Are you afraid, God? Afraid of your own creation?

What would you find within yourself - within your heart - when you watched two smiles become one? Would you smile? Or would you choose to turn away in shame?

Would you turn and walk away from us? Is chaos your home? Is the German guilty of the Jew's blood on his hands? Is the Israeli guilty of the Palestinian blood on his? 

Why did you make this thing called Love? Why is it that in the drifting sand we find love, and when we lift our eyes to the stars we feel you and feel love? How could you have made us so blind?

Why did you? Why did you turn away from the beauty of your creation? Why did you leave us to bathe in our brother's blood?

What is this? This joining, this fusion?

Is there really purpose in the circles you marked out for us?

Oh? Free Will?

And just as suddenly you are adrift in the black reaches of space. You are winging through vast clouds of matter where hot young stars burn all around you. Everywhere you look matter seethes and burns in coalescing fury, knotted proto-stars coil and ignite in glowing nebulae, planets form in myriad accretion disks, and the overwhelming vastness of the universe is laid before your wings. Creation and death surround you, purpose not yet fathomed claws for your voice. 

And now you are winging at impossible speeds toward unimaginable worlds, and as you race above molten landscapes, as you dive through primordial seascapes you are crushed under the weight of a devastating realization. In all this universe, in all of this vast terror of loneliness, the universe has kept your secrets, and you and you and you alone have known the truth of love.

In all of this vastness, in all of this inchoate matter, how rare is life?

Yet even more burdensome, how rare is that swirling matter which becomes aware? Aware of it's self and it's existence? Aware of it's life, and it's death? Aware of the possibilities that define a life apart from chaos?

So, what is this awareness?

Aware of love? Of the music in a sigh? Of the warmth of one body touching another?

All of the matter in the universe, all silent, unspeaking, unknowing, and we ask you how this came to be? How could this be? Why is love so rare?

You find the vast cold reaches of space have vanished, and once again you are above the sands, looking down on the man and the woman. You are looking down on the miracle of life, the simple truth of love. And you know that in the vast, cold reaches of your universe few things could match the beauty of this moment, the absolute truth in this touching.

You find that here, now, lying under the warmth of a distant, burning star, matter has found matter in this vast chance dancing, and for a brief shining moment truth has been born from chaos to flower in this brief light. In all of the chaos this universe you have invited us to see, here on the drifting sands, truth has been born, here truth will live, and here truth will perish.

And here in the shadows, truth will be reborn.

For such is the promise of sand.

We drift towards life in chaos. We choose to pass from chaos. We are born of chaos. We will return to chaos. Is that so?

As sand drifts in random patterns, reality takes shape around us.

The promise of sand.

That in this drifting chaos we inherit from our universe, we take shape and form reality around us. Matter, lost in the indifferent gaze of time takes form, creates reality anew, creates life, and in the outrageous audacity of your plan, finds purpose, and strength, and resolve.

And love.

Born of love, we can only truly live within love's warmth.

As sand drifts, so too do men and women. Chaos, ancient music, purpose, two hands in silent union, birth, life, death, chaos. All being from becoming in a kiss, in a lover's knowing look. As sand drifts in random chaos, so too do lovers, but in the passage from chaos to purpose, the passage from matter to awareness, we come into the light. In the light of our creation, we see stars as sand, random, drifting in chaos, coming together as if in planned union. Coming to the miracle of life.

Being and becoming. Purpose and chaos. Love and chance dancing.

All being coming as to us - as to us in the promise of sand.



Heaven's Rending Ch. 03



Chapter 3: All Dreams Must End

Jonas Carpenter walked down the steps of the old Executive Office Building carrying a tattered leather briefcase; he paused at the bottom and surveyed the chilly landscape before he stepped into the waiting car. He told the driver to go to Senate entrance of the Capital, then sat back on the cold vinyl bench and rubbed his burning eyes. His gut burned, and the fear that had been eating at him for several days clawed at his throat. He put on his glasses and looked out at the noonday traffic, resisting the urge to look and see if he was being followed. After events of the past few days it seemed likely. All bets were off now.

The car pulled up to the stand reserved for government business, and he got out and walked toward the entrance. After his car pulled from view he backtracked and looked at Union Station and started to walk that way. He looked over his shoulder at the Capital Building as he walked away from one life and into another, and he wondered if the clowns cloistered away in their ivory tower had any idea what had just happened to America. And, he asked himself grimly, would they even care if they knew? All that was required now was their silent acquiescence. The pieces had all been moved and yet all were still in play; and the outcome was still far from certain.

He walked inside the station and crossed the huge expanse of travertine and walked up to the New York Central's ticket counter and paid for his sleeper on the one o'clock train to Boston, then puttered across to a newsstand and picked up a New York Times. The headlines were still full of speculation about what had really happened in Dallas; had Oswald really been the lone gunman, and if that was so, what about witness statements about gunmen on what was fast becoming known as the grassy knoll? Smoke behind the fence? Carpenter took in the picture of the President's son saluting as the funeral procession passed, and he bit his trembling lip while he pushed back memories of happier days with the President.

He paid for the paper then walked to the concourse and waited for his train to be called. He turned and looked at the clustered faces, tried to pick out any too inquisitive eyes - there were none - and when his train was called he walked down the ramp to the platform. His train - a long line of gray Pullman cars - was to his left; on the platform to his right was a Seaboard Meteor due to leave for Miami within a minute, and he turned again and looked for a tail - and once again satisfied no one was following - he jumped up on the Meteor and walked back to the lounge car and took a seat as this train began to pull smoothly away from the platform.

Carpenter watched the people on the platform - watched for any sign of confusion, any sign the cutout had been spotted - as the train pulled away from the platform and began to head toward the light of day. He squinted at the hard November light as the train burst into the hard afternoon light, and his chest hurt when he looked out at the White House and the EOB as it drifted by. 

The Conductor walked up and asked for his ticket, and he reached inside his blazer and pulled out the envelope for this train and handed it to the man. The conductor flipped through the tickets and punched one several times, then handed it back to Carpenter.

"That's compartment 2318a; three cars up from here. Dinner begins at five."

"Hmm - oh, thanks." Carpenter took the tickets from the man and looked down as he put the envelope back inside his blazer. When the train began to pick up speed after it crossed the Potomac, Carpenter went to the bar and ordered a Scotch and water, then walked quietly to his compartment. He sat and looked out at the Virginia countryside as it rolled by outside his window, then caught sight of his reflection in the window and looked at the empty eyes he saw there. 

'Hollow,' he said to himself. 'I'm a hollow, empty shell now . . .' he thought as his eyes filled with tears. He watched a tear fill his eye, then roll down his cheek. Through his reflection he saw his the President's head exploding - white pulpy lumps in red mist - and in the echoes of the explosion he knew that America - his beloved America - had just been killed.

He looked across at people who mourned for the man.

Carpenter mourned for his country.

__________

He stepped down from the train into a hot Miami sun and - with his briefcase still in hand - walked to the taxi stand and grabbed the second cab in the line, then headed off for the Fountainbleu Hotel. Now - more out of latent instinct than for any other reason he could name - he looked out the back of the cab as the station receded; only a family with a couple of kids was left now on the sidewalk outside the station, so he turned and relaxed for a moment . . . let out a long repressed sigh. He looked out the window as the cab rolled through an industrial wasteland, then burst out into quaint palm lined suburban streets. The cab turned and crossed the Intra-coastal and it was if he was thrust into a new world in that briefest moment; already, so soon after Castro's ascent, the character of Miami was changing. He could see the deep blue waters of Gulf Stream out his window, and he rolled his window down and took in deep breaths of the warm, salty air that now danced to a deeper rhythm . Shadows of palms danced across his face and for a moment he felt almost happy - happy like a childhood memory had found him unawares- and he smiled as this new sun warmed his chilled face.

The cab turned into the hotel's huge covered drive; Carpenter read the fare on the meter and passed the money to the driver as he pulled his lean, almost lanky body from the back seat, then he walked through the revolving door into the lobby and into an apparel shop off the main lobby. He bought a couple of golf shirts, a pair of Ray Ban sunglasses and some toiletries, put these in his briefcase, then walked to a nearby men's room. He changed his shirt in a stall, then walked out of the lobby and hailed a taxi, then told the driver to take him to Miami International. As the cab made it's way through the heavy afternoon traffic he took out his purchases and carefully rolled up the shirts and slipped them back into his briefcase. He took the shirt he'd been wearing since Washington and shoved it under the driver's seat.

The ticketing concourse at MIA was almost empty when he walked in, and though the blast of air conditioning that hit him felt good after the sweltering Florida heat inside the unairconditioned cab, he felt on edge again. He made his way to the BOAC counter and bought an economy ticket to Heathrow, then made his was to a coffee shop and ordered a pastrami sandwich and an iced-coffee. He looked at newspaper headlines that expressed shock and dismay at Oswald's murder, and this revelation tore into him like a hurricane. So the third phase of the operation was already in high gear, he thought. All those loose ends were going to be taken care of now. His stomach began to burn again, and he regretted ordering coffee. 

The BOAC flight was called, and Carpenter walked down the concourse toward the gate. He ducked into the men's room across from the boarding area and changed shirts again, put on the sunglasses and a maroon ball cap with a white H embroidered on it, and walked out of the restroom and onto a Mexicana 707 that was in the final phases of boarding for Mexico City. He watched the passenger's eyes as we walked on-board, and made his way to the back of the plane and took his seat. 

In Mexico City he walked across the terminal, checked in for a Braniff flight to San Antoniio, then made his way to a Varig flight leaving for Rio de Janeiro, and only when he felt this jet rotate and climb into the sky did he feel some of the tension he had felt during this long, frantic evening lift from chest. He picked at his meal on the little plastic tray and tossed off a scotch, then closed his eyes and went to sleep.

__________

He woke with a start as he felt the gears slam down on the runway, and watched as the 707 taxied to the ramp and stairways were rolled up to the doorways at both ends of the plane. He felt the blast of warm air flood the aircraft as the doorways opened, and he made his way quickly down the stairs and crossed the still cool tarmac to the terminal. He turned and watched as passengers from his flight walked in behind him, and so satisfied that no one was tailing him he walked across the terminal and bought a ticket on TAP to Lisbon for that evening. With nothing to do for almost twelve hours, he grabbed a cab and rode into the city.

He walked into a bar later that morning when he heard music through the open door, and he sat there while three men made their way through some of the most amazing music Carpenter had ever heard. After an hour of this a ravishing woman came in and sat nearby, and she ordered lunch; Carpenter was intrigued by the woman - she seemed a cut above the locals he had seen so far. Maybe it was the jewelry; it looked like Bulgari stuff, and the suit she wore had Givenchy written all over it. She spoke Portuguese, but for some reason Carpenter was sure that wasn't her native tongue. He continued to look at her surreptitiously for a moment longer, then let himself be pulled back into the music.

He could feel the smooth easy beat in his soul, and he felt a sudden soaring release from the misery of the past week as he listened to the discordant chromaticism. He felt the music, felt it wash away the deepest hell that had been chasing his soul, and it made him want to laugh at all the mendacity and subterfuge of this life, and the tragedy of this now so suddenly shattered dream that - was and would forever be - his life. He caught movement in his eye and time wavered; it was the woman's foot keeping time to the music, and he looked at her once again. She was lighting a cigarette; her face was veiled in blue smoke and her neck was the most perfect thing he had ever seen. Abruptly, she turned and looked at him; she caught his eyes looking wistfully at hers and she held him there for a moment - like he had been swept in by her searchlight - then she turned away, satisfied.

Carpenter thought he saw the faintest smile on her face, and he took an inventory of her features: blond-streaked hair, color originally very dark brunette; height about five foot one- maybe- and not more than one-twenty dripping wet; grey-green eyes; mid-thirties, maybe forty; no wedding ring - a not too delicate Rolex on one wrist and a circle of gold and stone on the other. She wasn't a pretender, he said to himself, unlike so many of the has-been's and never-were's that populated political life at the federal level. He reached for his briefcase on the seat by his side and, reassured by it's presence, looked at his watch. A little after one in the afternoon, five hours 'til check-in.

He looked at the woman once again and shrugged, then took his briefcase and walked out into bright afternoon sunlight toward the beach. He crossed the street and made his way to a small stand renting cabanas "by the hour or by the day" and turned to look back at the bar. Nothing. He knew he couldn't let up his guard - not for one minute - but there was a part of him that wished this would all be over soon. He couldn't run for the rest of his life, and he was so close now he could almost feel it! Two more flights, then an hours ride into the hills, and maybe, just maybe he would live to see another day. He knew Morales - by reputation - was a thorough tactician, but Campbell and Joannides were known pythons. It would, he knew, take a miracle to outrun those two Dobermans.

He tensed as the woman came out of the bar; without hesitating she turned and walked up the street - away from Carpenter's position - and he breathed a little easier.

__________

Carpenter was tense and on-guard as the Portuguese airliner turned onto the active runway and began it's dash into the sky; the woman - the woman from the bar - was sitting in seat 3a, and everything about her now screamed danger. Carpenter was in his now habitual aisle seat in the very last row in coach, and he was upset. He hadn't provided for a cutout on any of the remaining legs of his escape; he had figured that once in South America it would be pointless, and now he was feeling the effects of this sloppy field-craft in his gut. He wasn't a spook, he wasn't military, and now he felt outclassed, out of his element, and very exposed.

The 707 thundered down the runway and clawed it's way into the sky, and Carpenter kept his eye on the curtain separating the two compartments - as if the woman would come barreling down the aisle at any moment with guns drawn and fire in her eyes. As soon as the 'Fasten Seat Belt' light went off, he walked back to the head and wiped the sweat off his forehead and took yet another quick leak. He ducked into the galley and asked one of the hostesses for an aspirin; while the girl turned and bent down to rummage through the drawer, Carpenter scanned the passenger manifest hanging on a clipboard on the wall by the aisle. 3a: Benevides, Maria L. Spanish, thought Carpenter, not Portuguese, and just as easily Mexican, or more dangerously, Cuban. He took the aspirin from the girl who smiled at him and asked - in broken English - if he needed a glass of water. He took the proffered paper cup and tossed the pill in his mouth, then the water. He tossed the cup into the trash, wadding it up to conceal the pill he had slipped back inside it. He smiled at the girl, looked down quickly at her legs and wondered what she might taste like after a night of lovemaking, then fumbled his way back to his seat and flipped through yesterdays International Herald Tribune.

After the hostesses served the first meal, Carpenter tried to doze but gave it up after an hour or so, then sat bolt upright when the woman from 3a parted the curtain and walked down the aisle toward his seat. She passed him and walked into the aft head without so much as a pause, and as soon as she had closed the door Carpenter stood and walked aft as if to stretch his legs. After the woman came out she walked back to First Class, and Carpenter could see the "Occupied" light outside the single washroom there, and he relaxed a little. He went into the washroom after the woman and poked around; he half expected to find a note there - something out of an Ian Fleming book, he knew, but he was feeling not just a little paranoid - and when he found nothing he went back to his seat. 

The hostesses served a light breakfast an hour before touchdown, and though Carpenter passed on the food he did drink a little orange juice. He had slept not a wink, and his dry mouth tasted foul with gritty fatigue from the long hours at high altitude. He got up and went to the head again, and sprinkled water on his face. When he opened the door the woman was standing there, and she looked at him a moment before recognizing him - then she smiled at him, a smile full of curiosity - before she made way for him and let him pass. He decided to wait for her in the space opposite the galley, in the aisle by the aft door.

She came out a moment later and seemed pleased to see him, and she walked over to him.

"I should be flattered that you've found me," the woman said in English. "Perhaps you follow me for a reason?"

"Why would a woman as beautiful as you be trying to hide?" he said, clearly wanting see where this brief conversation might lead. He smiled pleasantly with this parry.

"Perhaps a jealous husband? Would that suit you? Or perhaps I am . . . let me see . . . a spy? Would that amuse you?"

"Don't know any beautiful spies, but I suppose there's a first time for everything."

"Oh, so you know many spies? Should I be surprised? So. Why are you following me?"

"Well, I didn't know I was. Where are you headed?"

"Oh . . . Lisbon, then perhaps I'll drive through Galicia. Would you . . ." her voice trailed off for a moment, as if she wanted the tension of the moment to build . . . "would you carry to join me on such a drive?"

Carpenter smiled. "Now that would be something, but I'm afraid I have business in Germany to attend to. Perhaps another time."

"Pity," the woman said. "Well, auf Wiedersehen." Carpenter watched as the woman marched down the sloping aisle to the forward cabin, then took his seat as the Seat Belt light chimed on. 

After the plane landed and taxied to the terminal building, he watched nervously as the stairways were positioned at both ends of the jet, then hurried down and trotted into the terminal building and into a small book-sellers that allowed him to see passengers deplaning from the front door. He watched the woman emerge into the sharp morning air and shield her eyes from the sun, then he craned his head to see her walk down the steps. The woman walked tentatively down the steps, her brown pumps clearly not the best attire for navigating the steep treads, and she descended with her body canted a bit sideways as she held onto the handrail with her brown-gloved hand.

Carpenter felt a presence, a tremor in the air, and looked around the small shop and the adjacent terminal; he saw an old man talking on the telephone - rattling away in animated Portuguese - and a couple kissing near the door he had just entered the building through. He turned and watched the woman walking across the concrete tarmac, saw her stately walk and made a quick mental calculation. She may be on his trail, he thought, and perhaps not. He did not want to take a chance; he had to see if she did anything suspicious, see if she tried to make contact with anyone . . .

She entered the building and walked towards the baggage claim, and he moved to follow her . . .

"Jonesy! Jonesy Carpenter! Is that you?" 

Carpenter heard the voice, knew who it belonged to the moment he heard it. He turned to the sound of the voice and saw Paul Thomas walking his way, his right hand already outstretched in greeting.

"Paul! What are you doing here. I thought you were still posted in Geneva?" Thomas had been working at State with Dean Acheson since the War, though he had been a strong Eisenhower supporter from the old days. Thomas approached quickly and took Carpenter's hand in his; he could see the sadness plainly in the old diplomat's eyes. A million emotions crossed between the two in that brief exchange.

"What are you doing here, Jonesy. Shouldn't you be helping out with the transition?"

"No, Paul, I'm done. I just had to get away."

"You look like crap, son. What's going on back there?"

"Uh, look Paul, I'm in a helluva hurry. Can I call you soon? Where will you be in a couple of days?" Carpenter made to pull away, but Thomas gripped him by the upper arm with surprising strength and held him in place.

"Did you just come in on TAP, from Rio? Jonas? What the hell is going on here?"

"Paul. I can't tell you. You didn't see me. Alright?" The old man looked at him for a second, then at the briefcase Carpenter held.

"Something to do with Dallas?" he asked.

"You don't want to know, Paul, alright?" The old man nodded his head. 

"Contacts? Did you leave any back doors open?"

"Watch for a letter - from an Abbey. All I can say now. You did not see me. Got that, Paul?"

His old friend looked at him and shook his head. "C.I.A., huh? Figures. Yeah, get lost and stay lost. Drop me a line when you can. Geneva. And be careful."

Carpenter pulled away from his friend and walked off toward the baggage claim. Now things were looking really complicated to Carpenter. The woman might be dangerous, but just how probable was it that an old friend might show up here, now, at this place and time, let alone someone so highly placed in the State Department. Let alone someone who had run agents in the O.S.S. during the war. He entered the baggage claim and looked around; the woman was in a small group of people standing by the area where baggage would soon be delivered, and she still appeared to be alone.




Heaven's Rending Ch. 03



Carpenter looked at her again. She was just too well dressed to be a spook, he said to himself. Wasn't it almost a cliche that you sent a friend in to lure out someone you really wanted to bag? Well, he said to himself, decision time.

He walked up beside the woman until he made it into her field of view, then simply stood there beside her, waiting. 

"Following me again?" she said after a moment.

Carpenter looked at her and smiled. "Galicia, you said?"

"Indeed. You've never been, I take it?"

"No. I hear it's lovely in the summer."

"Oh, it's beautiful any time, but never more so than in the weeks just before Christmas."

"Ah."

"Ah? What does this 'ah' mean? I never know what it means."

"Christmas is the best time of year, my favorite."

"Really? I wouldn't have taken you for a sentimentalist. Have you changed your mind about Germany?"

"I was giving it some thought, yes. Would you like some company for a day or two?" He looked at her and smiled; she looked deceptively calm and subtly amused.

"I would not mind that. One condition, however, and non-negotiable."

"I see, and that would be?"

"No names. We shall forever remain a mystery to one another."

Carpenter smiled. "Of course."

__________

She had, it turned out, a Rolls Corniche convertible waiting at a nearby garage, and after putting her luggage in the boot she commented about his traveling with so little of his own. She took the wheel as he walked around to the left side and got in, putting his briefcase on the floor behind his seat.

"I had to leave in a hurry," he told her as he settled in beside her. "Hectic, really, at the office."

"I see. So, what did you do? Kill somebody?" she asked knowingly, but with a smile on her face. 

He answered with a smile of his own, then looked at the car and made an appropriate comment about how well the car looked on her.

She laughed and pulled expertly into traffic, then made her way through the city like a native. The woman proceeded north to a smallish highway that led abruptly to the coast. Though the day was cool and the sun was rapidly fading behind a wall of cloud, she slowed at a turn-out and dropped the car's electric top, then slid back into traffic. Carpenter looked out at this open world above the grey Atlantic, and he took in the scudding clouds that slammed into rocky headlands before running up mountains into deeper gloom. He wondered what it would be like to be as free from the concerns of his life as these clouds were. Free to build on high until release became inevitable under the weight of being - only to reform and begin again anew. Forever becoming . . .

He looked at the woman again; she was elegance itself. Everything about the way she carried herself, even now behind the wheel of the Rolls, told him she was old world, and he would have put money on an aristocratic background. The bracelet danced solidly on her wrist - huge stones shimmered even in the receding sunlight. Her stockings were obviously silk, and it appeared her skin was as well. Too, he knew she had been traveling for almost a day and even now she appeared as fresh and gorgeous as when he had first seen her in Rio. She had been as beautiful then as the music that filled his soul. She was the real deal, he said to himself, but was this meeting really so fortuitous - so innocent. Was he her target? He had yet to convince himself of her role in the unfolding drama, yet her evident sophistication seemed to preclude evil intent.

"And you might tell me what you're thinking," he heard her saying.

"Pardon?"

"You might tell me what is running through your mind. You seem lost in thought one moment, and you're appraising me the next? So. What do you think?"

"I was thinking of the music in the bar yesterday. It was music from the soul, and it made me want to sing. And then I saw you."

"So prosaic. How interesting. Unexpected."

Carpenter turned and looked at the sea, and wondered why these words hurt so. He was now so tired of hurting.

__________

He knew he was asleep when he felt the Rolls turning off the road, and he woke with a start from a landscape of burning dreams. The car was making it's way easily up a steep drive. An immaculate stone wall lined both sides of the cobbled way, and trees heavy with withering vines and sensuous expectation hung over the winding road like a wounded sigh. Mountains loomed over forest in the near distance, though he could hardly make them out through the deep, blue-grey cloud of this enchanted air. It was almost evening, and he wondered how long he had been out, but the question seemed inconsequential in the presence of so much beauty.

A building hove into view; long, low, elegant - it was almost a villa - but much too large to belong to one family. The woman pulled into the porte cochere of the low stone building. Carpenter felt warmed by the amber light coming from inside the elegant lobby; indeed, he felt comforted by the presence of so much money. Magic suffused the air here - the magic of old money - wherever here was. Men - uniformed men - were waiting for the car, but he saw they were - apparently - hotel staff and relaxed. As the car stopped the men opened their doors, and Carpenter heard chamber music in the distance. He pulled himself from the car; the remains of troubled sleep and the tension of the past few days pulled at him like a gravity perverted by the intent to crush the breath from his aching body. He shook himself and followed the woman up a small flight of stone steps and walked into another world.

Carpenter had grown up in a small New England town, and had known a comfortably middle-class existence until making his way to Harvard and into the notice of a professor political science who introduced him to Robert Kennedy one evening. He interned in John Kennedy's Senate office his junior year, and went to work for the Senator after graduating. He had traveled in some pretty rare air ever since, but nothing like this. 

An old man - as well dressed as any corporate chieftain Carpenter had ever come along in his political journey - came and said hello to the woman as if she was family, or at the very least an old friend. He told her that he was glad to see her again - and so soon! - and that her suite by the river was ready. 

"Ah, Arturo," she said warmly to the man, "wonderful!" She turned to look at Carpenter and with broad sweeps of elegant hand asked if perhaps they could provide her flagging companion with oysters and champagne, and Carpenter felt his ears burning bright despite his growing indifference to the woman's tendency to put him down. 'Arturo' sized up Carpenter with imminent disdain and said that he would see to it immediately. The woman took him in tow and walked out onto a broad stone terrace. A distant swimming pool was covered from the coming of winter down a broad, green lawn, while an ornate baroque fountain danced joyfully in the amber glow of the main building. Grey trees stood in ancient wisdom as silent sentinels around the grounds; they stood as if waiting to ward off the coming of night for as long as possible. The woman, apparently oblivious to magic and transcendent beauty, walked across the terrace with practiced ease to a path that led to a deep wood, and here their way was lit by small lamps lost close to the ground in waves of ivied ground cover. They walked in lingering shadow toward the sound of rushing water and came to a cluster of outlying bungalows. The woman took her key and opened the door; soft light revealed a room as elegant as any Carpenter had ever seen. He had hardly taken any of this in when the woman grabbed him and turned him to face her and kissed him.

"You need to bathe, Jonas, before I take you to supper," she said with her arms draped loosely over his shoulders. She turned him and gave his bottom a playful pat. "Now go, and use lots of soap!"

Carpenter made it into the bathroom before he remembered her one precondition: no names. He thought then of his briefcase and remembered he'd left it in the car.

__________

He let the water run on his back for what might have been an hour - had he cared enough to keep track of time. He stood there - feet back, leaning forward on his outstretched arms - with the pulsing warmth beating into the back of his neck like war-drums, and he wondered when it would come, and who it would be.

He was blown. He was dead.

He heard a man's voice in the other room, heard something bump into a wall and he jumped - really jumped - when the sound reached him. The noise echoed in his mind like an accusation, and he went back over his flight from D.C. the past three days and looked hard at where he might have slipped up - where had he missed her? - and he kept coming up with black holes in his memory. Pools of emptiness . . . he could feel them forming in the air around him . . . great pools in an amber glowing river were forming around his legs . . . cool waters . . . soul's ease . . .

He felt like he was adrift in a great natural pool - surrounded by cliffs that rose in the darkness yet seemed lit from within by the fires of creation - and he was hit by the thought that he was living in two worlds within this very moment - the world he had known and a world yet to be. The water was luminous cobalt and the air shimmered with tattered resolve - while fragments of a distant sun danced on the water's surface in kaleidoscopic fury. The water from one world beat on his neck while he looked down into the water of this other place, and he saw fish drifting by on errant currents.

One fish turned into the current and swam back to his leg and circled there, and Carpenter groaned inwardly when he felt the fish brush against the skin of his thigh. The fish pulsated with scarlet intensity, and looked up at Carpenter with soulful eyes full of ancient wisdom as it circled his leg beneath the shimmering water. He jumped at a sound - this sound coming from within this other place - and he turned to see a huge snake running like an electric current through tall grass. He was suddenly very aware of his vulnerably exposed position in the water, but he felt the fish on his thigh and he looked down again into the infinity of this place. The fish was pure scarlet now, he saw, but there were three whitish circles on its back. 

'This means something,' Carpenter said to himself. 'This . . . this . . .' and he jumped again as he heard the grass on the other side of the river give way as something huge came crashing towards the water's edge. He turned in time to see a tiger burst into view by a large, flat rock; the huge cat shuddered to a stop and took the measure of this new place, then walked with it's head down for a moment. After a few steps the tiger stopped. Carpenter stood breathlessly in the water, afraid to even blink an eye. The tiger was staring at a porcupine, wondering - Carpenter thought - whether the small animal would be worth the effort to kill and eat. The porcupine seemed oblivious to it's fate, indeed it hardly took notice of the tiger at all, and he watched as the little animal walked slowly down the path by the water's edge until . . . he felt the tiger's eyes on him. Carpenter stood perfectly still and looked at the tiger, who too stood in majestic if not perfect ease looking him in the eye, and seemed to be waiting - as if - there was a decision to be made. 

Carpenter felt himself on the edge of an immense precipice when he jumped at a new sound . . . 

. . . knocking on a door . . . loud, insistent knocking . . . then a voice . . .

"Are you alright in there?" Pulsing light . . . echoes of time within time . . .

Knock-knock-knock! Receding light, something long and mean in the water, coming for him . . .

"Jonas! Are you alright?!"

The woman's words hit him, they bit into him and pulled him back . . . from . . .

"Jonas!"

"Yes, I'm alright . . . think I dozed off for a moment . . . be right out . . ." He shook his head, shook echoes of the river from his mind's eye as he fought to regain the water on his neck and he could see white tile . . . a drain . . . but a red fish hovered there in the air for a moment, looking at him, wondering with eyes full of ancient wisdom and ready purpose at what was to be . . . and then the fish too was gone . . . and there was only the white steam of the bathroom. The white air of this world . . .

Carpenter turned off the water and stood up; he took a deep breath, then another . . . the steam-filled air felt good inside his lungs as it drifted deep inside him. He opened the glass door and walked to the sink and wiped heat-borne fog from cold glass. He leaned on white marble and looked for a moment - or was it a lifetime? - at the smeared reflection that met his gaze there, looked to see if the reality of this space was his memory of place, and so satisfied he walked to the door and took the plush red robe that hung there and wrapped himself in it.

He walked into the room, into the cool air of her world.

The woman stood with her back to him; there was a rolling cart by the bed loaded with fresh-shucked oysters, some lemons and limes - and there, toast and caviar - as well as bottles of champagne and mineral water, and he smiled inside at the reprieve. He saw his briefcase on the desk by the far wall, and her luggage already half-unpacked. He felt a paranoid fool.

"Sorry about that. Must have dozed . . ."

The woman turned, and he saw the little Walther in her hand almost immediately.

"Oh, that's alright Mr Carpenter. It's no problem at all."

He looked at the little pistol like it was the last thing he would see and know in this life, and he was surprised when it wasn't cold dread that filled his heart - but the subtle relief of release.

"So. This is to be a last supper, is it?"

The woman smiled and indicated with the gun that he should sit.

"Well, why not?" he said as he sat on the bed. He took an oyster an put it on a piece of toast, then squeezed a bit of lime on it and popped it in his mouth. The bottle of champagne was open, so he poured himself a glass, thought better of it and poured one for the woman as well. "Join me?" he said to the black eye of the gun's blunt muzzle.

To his surprise, the woman slipped the TPK into her handbag and came to the bed and took the proffered glass and took a sip, then another.

"How are the oysters?" she asked.

"Not bad really. A little briny, but all in all, not too goddamn bad. Want one?"

"Please, but with just a little lemon; I can't abide the way you Americans drown the poor things in Ketchup."

Carpenter bent to the task filled with barely repressed need to laugh at surreal nature of the exchange, and after he passed her oyster along he fixed another for himself and ate it, then polished off his charge of champagne.

"Yes, a bit strong," she said. "Perhaps the waters were too warm this summer."

He filled his glass and took another strong pull of champagne and looked at her.

"You really are quite beautiful, you know," he said to her as he looked at the line of her neck once again. She looked him in the eye and time shimmered within the arc of his life, and as she held there in her eyes. 

She shrugged after a moment and laughed a little; "Beauty is important to some, I suppose," she said as she plucked thoughts like petals from the air apparent, "but it means nothing if it is unmatched by what you hold in your soul."

"So who sent you? Morales?"

"Now there is a heart of darkness, Mr Carpenter. No, I am not from your CIA."

"So? Cuba?"

"The Mossad, Jonas."

"You're kidding, right?"

She smiled at him. Waiting.

"You killed the President?"

"Don't be absurd, Jonas. You have all the proof the world needs to prove who was behind the assassination. It's our job to get that information into safe hands."

"Where did you pick me up; I mean, I thought my cut-outs were pretty good."

For an amateur, perhaps, Mr Carpenter, but we've been with you since you left your office. So have your people, for that matter."

"Morales?" Carpenter felt his heart lurch in his chest.

"No. He's still in Texas, taking care of, what do you call it? Loose ends? Campbell's men are, I understand, drawing near even now. Like your Mr Thomas, this morning, at the airport."

"Great. That's just great. He's a friend, so just how . . . " The woman looked at Carpenter while this disappointing insight flooded in. Who to trust? Deflect, parry, he said to himself, gain time, seek an advantage . . . "So. You are not, I take it, Maria Benevides?"

She looked at him quickly, and her eyes twinkled at his gambit. "Ah, you have hidden talents after all, Jonas Carpenter. Perhaps you will be reborn, and yes, may it not be sooner than you wish." She looked at him again, slowly, as if making a sudden appraisal. "Have another oyster," she said with a little laugh that concealed a million haunting questions. "Then perhaps we could make love?"

__________

He lay beside her in the moonlight, lost in the afterglow of her touch, wishing the sun would never rise again. She seemed an echo of another age; knowing yet almost unknowable, all touching and yet irresolutely untouchable. Like quicksand. He felt lost next to her, as if she was somehow of a fundamentally different order than he, and the notion struck him as simultaneously fatuous and profound as he grappled with the idea that without her he really would be lost. 

He had been out of college now for seven years, and had been with a fair number of women since coming to work for the Kennedy's, but this woman was different in so many ways he was at a loss to fathom even the context of her being. If he was the tiger in a spotlight, did she wield the whip?

No? Yes?

She was a paradox, and Carpenter's mind had a hard time grasping that very simple idea. She was regal, she was beautiful almost beyond description, and she possessed a type of class that few women knew even existed. And she was - apparently - a spy. An Israeli spy. An Israeli spy shadowing a member of the President's National Security Council laison staff. An American president who had been murdered less than a week ago. 

Beauty. Enigma. Purpose unknown. 

'So what am I?' Carpenter asked himself as sleep paced far away on the fringes of this night. 'What role am I to play, or has the part even been cast?'

She felt him stir and turn to him, felt her hand reach for him, felt the warmth of her mouth coming for him.

No, he did not want this night to end.

__________

But of course it had to.

He woke with this new day to the sounds of voices in the bathroom, another door closing, the shower turning on and the glass door closing. He sat up and slipped on his trousers and shoes, threw his shirt on and grabbed his briefcase, then slipped out the bungalow's front door and walked quickly to the main building. 

"Ah, Mr Carpenter, you're table is ready. Madam said you might come ahead. Please. Her associates are waiting for you."

So suddenly defeated, Carpenter followed Arturo toward the dining room and half expected to find Guido-the-killer-pimp and a couple of goons waiting for him, but instead walked into a small room filled with radio and electronic gear stacked on a table along one wall and an old couple sitting at a small table by a large open window on the far side of the room. Arturo sat Carpenter by the old woman and asked if he wanted coffee this morning, then left the room as silently as the breeze that whispered through the pines outside the window. This cool breeze crossed the table, the scent of burning oak drifted in small eddies through the room as well. The couple seemed familiar to Carpenter, yet they seemed content to wait in silence; the man looked him over as a surgeon might a tumor.

"Ah, there she is!" the old woman finally said as 'Maria' came into the little room. Three other men and a woman followed and sat themselves at the table. Introductions, Carpenter said to himself, would presumably not be needed.




Heaven's Rending Ch. 03



"So Jonas," said the woman he might once have called Maria, "how did you sleep?"

"Perhaps as Julius Caesar did that last night. Guess it depends on who wields the knife."

"Yes, point taken," said the old man in a thick East-European accent. "I can imagine you must have felt yourself almost home. Of course Joannides is already in Ireland. That, I'm afraid, Mr Carpenter, was the fatal weakness in your plan. That, and of course you really should have secured multiple passports. A for effort though. Can't fault you there." Then man smiled ruefully. "By the by, my name is David Ben-Gurion, and this is my foreign minister, Golda Meir."

Of course Carpenter saw it at once, but the shock was immense none-the-less.

"You have our deepest sympathy," Meir said. "A terrible loss."

Arturo arrived with a cart of fruit and cheese and coffee, and one of the men jumped to take charge of serving while another escorted Arturo from the room. Everyone drifted back into silence as they ate, then 'Maria' spoke again.

"Jonas. Time is of the essence this morning. Your Mr Thomas, as I told you last night, reported your location. We eluded him yesterday, but there was a tracking device in your briefcase; this device was set in motion last night, but this diversion will only play out for so long, and perhaps not at all."

"Yes, yes, this is all well and good," Ben-Gurion said impatiently, "but it's the material in the case they want, Mr Carpenter. Anyone who possesses those documents and recordings, even our government, is in danger because of them. Had you turned them over to MI6 you would only have secured the deaths of more innocent observers. The people running this operation are simple madmen, Mr Carpenter, but the people who have unleashed them are very dangerous indeed."

"You have a solution, I assume," Carpenter said.

"Oh yes. By all rights we should turn you and your case over to Campbell, and if we were as unscrupulous as some in your government we might very well do just that. The trick, Mr Carpenter, will be to convince Morales that you are dead and to let them recover the case. Intact."

"Yes, some trick." A goat tethered for the kill, he thought.

"And if you approve, we would like to duplicate all the evidence in your possession. Now. This morning. If you agree, of course."

"And if I were to chose not to?"

"We will leave, all of us. Now."

"And if I agree?"

"The broad strokes only, Mr Carpenter. You are a dead man. If you so choose, you can move to Israel; we'll look after you, perhaps even put you to work. If you choose to turn over the material, the team assembled here will get you to Israel in, perhaps, a month. If all is successful. But again, in any event, Jonas Carpenter is a dead man. Today, tomorrow, maybe a week at the longest."

"And the material in the case? What comes of it?"

Ben-Gurion shrugged. "We will keep it . . . safe."

"Only that? Keep it safe? I want . . ."

"Mr Carpenter, you want what? For Israel, or for that matter any country, to commit suicide? Your Mr Kennedy was our friend too. We grieve for him too. There will be justice, Mr Carpenter. Not God's justice. Mortal justice. In time, in good time."

"Mr Carpenter," Golda Meir enjoined, "we share your grief. We understand your confusion and your reluctance, but without us you will fail. You will die, the material will fall into the hands of the assassins, and you will be vilified. That has, if I'm not mistaken, already begun. The authorities in Ireland are already on the lookout for you. You are compromised, totally."

"And," Maria added, "time is of the essence right now." She looked at the man whom she obviously regarded as her superior and he nodded at her and shrugged. "You must understand that by coming here the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister have conveyed to you the highest level of interest and commitment to your safety. The integrity of the information will be maintained, as will the likelihood of it's use in the future against those who committed this horrible crime. You will live; not as an American hiding in an Irish Abbey, true, but you will live an honorable life, and your service will be remembered. You will have a future."

"One question," Carpenter said to 'Maria'.

"Yes, by all means," said the Prime Minister.

Still looking at Maria, he spoke in quiet terms full of meaning directly to her: "Are you married?"

"No," she said with knowing eyes. "No, I am not. Yet."

"Then I'm in."

__________

[note: this work is, as always and of course, a work of fiction - with perhaps a bit of artistic license thrown in for good measure this time around.. . . ]



Heaven's Rending Ch. 04



The wind was growing stronger, coming over the little skiff's port beam now in gusts over thirty knots, and the old fisherman working the worn wooden tiller looked back over his left shoulder at the wall of black cloud that had been chasing him since noon. He cast a practiced eye on the approaching headland, then looked down to measure the color of the water; with these two pieces of information he knew he had a bit more than a mile to go in order to clear the rocks and make his turn for The village and the small estuary where he hoped to find refuge. But the black wall chasing the little skiff was closing fast now; the man could see the thick white band at the cloud's base where wind and rain was beating the sea's surface to a froth. It would be close, he knew. Perhaps a little too close.

He looked to his right, to the south, at the brilliant white yacht racing him for the headland, and though he desperately wanted to make it into the little harbor before the yacht did, he knew it would be almost impossible. He guessed the other sailboat was ten to twelve meters in length - almost twice again as large as his old wooden boat - and he was amazed that whoever was commanding the boat was driving her so hard into such a cunning storm. The yacht, now less then half a kilometer off his starboard quarter, was shooting off the crests of twelve foot waves and surfing down the faces of foaming swells into troughs so deep that the man lost sight of the white hull from time to time, but after a moment's pause - a pause measured in thundering heartbeats - he would see the yacht blistering up the backside of yet another mountainous wave, the man behind the wheel shouting in triumph. The yacht was, the man saw, being pushed well beyond the limits a sane man might test, for the boat was still under full sail, the rigging stretched to the breaking point, and the wake the boat left was a spectacular white foaming streak that created new waves on the sides of the storm's not much bigger waves. Neither the yacht's mainsail nor the big foresail were reefed, yet the old man could see the man and the woman in the yacht's cockpit as they drew nearer, and he could see that they were enjoying this, indeed, they were taunting the wind to do it's worst to them.

Fools.

The old fisherman brought in the main and pinched into the wind, and his skiff groaned as it bit into the wind and slammed into another wave.

The man behind the yacht's wheel turned and shook his fist at the advancing storm, and even then- with the distance between the two boats now less than a hundred meters - the old fisherman heard the man and the woman laughing and screaming like they were on a thrill ride in Damascus or Beirut. He shook his head at their audacity, and wondered what manner of fool they might be.

The fisherman's skiff rode up a violently cresting wave and the wind on the wave's crest caught the skiff and pushed it well over on it's starboard beam. Green water cascaded into the open hull as the small keel bit into the water; the skiff began to right itself as it slid down the backside of the monstrous wave and the old man remembered to breathe again. 

As the fisherman clung to the skiff's tiller, he saw the yacht rising like a breaching whale off the top of a wave not forty meters away. He gasped as he saw almost the entire form of the hull break free of the water and take to the air, and he heard then man and woman making noises like rodeo cowboys he had once seen in a movie. It was ridiculous, they were lunatics, and they were going to get themselves killed.

The yacht pulled ahead and the old man cursed them; now he might have to find an anchorage in the open, unprotected bay. He pulled in his mainsheet and pinched into the wind a few more degrees, and as the skiff began to climb the next wave he felt a withering gust hit as he came to the crest of this wave and - bam - a shroud on the port side of the mast parted and a millisecond later the entire mast came down in a wilting crash. Without the driving force of his sail to steady his skiff, the boat began to fall off the back of the wave and, with the mast now dangling on the water and the tattered sail streaming off in the sea, the old man clutched the gunwales of the boat as it slid down the wave. He turned to see the next wave - impossibly high and roaring like a train - cresting, and falling down on him.

The old man was torn free of his boat a moment later as it was pushed under the water; he struggled free of a tangled mass of lines in the water that had caught him and were pulling him under. He looked up at the underside of the water's crenellated surface and felt himself drifting, then he pulled as hard as he could for the surface. But there was something else on the water's surface. He could make out the yachts underside, see it's propellor thrashing wildly at the sea as the larger boat fought it's way through the waves to where his own boat had foundered.

The old man pulled hard, his lungs burning, and he felt himself break free of the water and claw at the sky. He fought to catch his breath as waves broke all around him, then felt a line slap across his shoulder and he clutched at it, held it as tightly as his chilled, bleeding hands would allow. The rope pulled him around in the water, and he saw the man on the sailboat hauling in on the line, pulling his withered, water-drenched body closer and closer to the yacht. The woman was, he saw, behind the wheel now - and she had reefed both the huge mainsail and the truly massive headsail while her companion hauled away at the line. 

What manner of people were these, he thought. But what, really, did that matter now. The man on the yacht was pulling him to safety. To life. What else really mattered.

Fifteen meters, ten meters, five, now the man above was walking down onto the yachts stern with line in hand, and timing his reach with a dipping wave, the old man reached for the man's outstretched hand and they connected - and he felt himself pulled free of the sea as if unknown forces commanded by God himself had been there to pull him from death. He slammed into the stern and felt his head hit the side of the yacht and he saw stars but clambered for the railing above. He steadied himself against the slick white hull that lurched around him, and he strained to reach the other hand that reached for him over and over again. He felt the man above holding him, then pulling him up on deck and helping him forward to the cockpit, and he felt his legs buckling and all he could see in this falling world was her face . . .

. . . so beautiful . . . surely the most beautiful woman who had ever lived . . .

. . .Was this woman really on this boat in this storm saving his life? He felt a crushing tightness in his chest, and it became hard to breathe, and he grew very still.

The light came for him, but thought better of it and let the old fisherman go.

__________________________

The local Coast Guard came for the old man and took him to the village clinic, but of the trip back to the village he remembered little; not the rocking patrol boat or the crashing storm. Neither did he remember the first two days he spend in bed recovering from the slight concussion and the cracked ribs he suffered in his rescue. 

On the second third of his recovery the man and the woman from the yacht came to visit him. They told him that local villagers - with a little help - had found the old mans boat in fairly shallow waters near the headland and had - with the help of some men from another village who had a big enough boat - pulled it from the sea. The people in the local village had rallied to the fisherman's fight for life, and were fixing the boat even now; the old fisherman met this news with a trembling lip even as his eyes filled with tears. 

They two came again the next day when he was released and walked with him to the quay at the waters edge, to where his boat was being worked on by many of the towns folk. The mast was still gone, true, but a new one of spruce and cypress had been laid up and laminated and now glistened in the morning's dappled shade, and the old man looked at the wood and rubbed his hands along the length of the mast and smiled with approval. He could still see evidence of his struggle with the sea in the ruins of the boat, but he saw the humanity of that struggle now from a new perspective, and of the little boats resurrection sat defiantly on the beach as proof of not just his mortality but of God's certain justice.

The fisherman lived in the scrub-brush hills above a village on the southeast coast of Cypress; he owned in a small hut near an olive grove on a craggy hill that looked down on the sea. He had built the house for himself and his wife less than twenty years ago, after they had fled their homeland - Palestine - in 1967. The old fisherman lived alone now, he had for several years now; he still sat by the stone on the earth most evenings - the stone that covered his wife - while he said his prayers to Mecca. He continued to fish these days as he continued to breath: it was a habit that was hard to break, and there was - really - no alternative to the suffering of this life.

But now, for the old man, his means of securing a livelihood lay in tattered disarray on the beach. The fisherman had little food in his hut and almost no money, and he looked upon the couple from the yacht with very mixed feelings. Perhaps in the order of the universe he knew and understood he should be dead; he had - after all - challenged the sea and lost. He would be lost to this world if not for the efforts of this man and this woman who had come to visit him - twice - in the clinic.

Now the two people from the yacht waited for him in the shade of a cypress tree; they watched him as he worked his hands along the smooth, freshly laminated mast, then as he paused at the little wooden tiller where he had made his final stand against the sea, and they could only guess what pain the old man felt. They had heard the old man's story from villagers who had known him since he and his wife arrived those many years ago, as well as Coast Guardsmen who had come to take some kind of incident report; they now knew his circumstances as well as any two strangers to Cypress could, and they had talked amongst themselves for two nights wondering what they could do to help the old fisherman get back on his feet. Cash seemed insulting, but rallying the villagers to help rebuild the man's skiff had seemed an easy enough thing to do, and the man and the woman had contributed a little to get the work underway.

Now the man and the woman sat drinking strong coffee as morning breezes stirred distant memories of other confrontations with death, of other close calls and mad escapes. They were spies. They worked a small but very efficient group of agents in Cypress and Syria, and they had come to the east coast of Cypress to help another Syrian make it to the promised land. This Syrian, who against all odds happened to be a jew, had secrets to sell, secrets rumored to be most compromising to Assad and the ruling elite in Damascus. 

They both knew Syrian intelligence would be devoting massive resources to finding this defector and eliminating him, and they knew that by exposing themselves so openly they were themselves confronting great personal danger, but this was their lot in life. They were fighting the good fight, fighting for their just cause; death was only a certain, and they hoped, just reward for services rendered.

The man - who these days went by the name of Jon Benevides - seemed content to play the role of yacht-yuppie, while the woman with him seemed to methodically and continuously scan everyone in view. Hidden behind dark sunglasses, she made her way through the local outdoor market picking at this, examining that, while all the time watching for watchers, and now she was sure there were at least two of immediate concern.

A tall man walking along the beach had stopped and looked at the old man for a while, then at Jonas Carpenter/Jon Benevides, and this man had seemed upset when he recognized Carpenter. This man looked American, or perhaps English, and this troubled her greatly, for Carpenter's past was never too far behind. His enemies were tenacious, relentless, and sure of the final outcome of their back game. In her gut, she knew who this man was, and why he was here.

And then she had watched as two dark, thickset men in a menacing powerboat rumbled into the tiny harbor and made fast to the fuel docks. Their boat was painted dark gray and sprouted too many antennae to be a simple pleasure boat. The two men she could see didn't look like tourists, for that matter. And she could see no registration numbers on the boat, no flag of nationality was flown, and that in and of itself was cause for alarm. They were either smugglers or spooks. The former would be of no interest to her; the latter of immediate concern as she thought she knew all of the local Intel weenies, and these two did not come to mind. So, she deduced, the Syrians were here.

Now, who was the American? With one threat neatly categorized, she focused on the man walking along the water's edge.

For a moment she watched the man's footprints advancing along the sand and wondered how many ancient footsteps had crossed these wet sands. How many dreams had been swept away in the pressing surf, how many dreams were yet to die this very night? 

When would humanity begin to learn from it's mistakes?

Another man - unnoticed by Marsha Benevides - watched all these goings on with seemingly less than a moment's passing interest. This invisible man was sitting at a small table in front of a waterfront café drinking coffee, apparently enjoying the rich morning sunshine and a cool breeze off the Mediterranean. This breeze occasionally wafted through the man's newspaper and rattled the pages of the paper like wet autumn leaves, and he fastidiously pressed the pages flat to keep them quiet. This man did not know these two rich looking westerners on the white yacht, but he had heard the tale of their effort to rescue the old fisherman, and though he most certainly appreciated their mercy, they were keeping him from contacting the old fisherman. This alone bothered the man at the diner, and this alone was of immediate concern to him. He had a job for the old fisherman, a job that would utilize the old man's very special, very ancient skill. 

It was, he knew, time to activate his old agent and bring him back from the dead.

For the Russian's were coming. 

Coming for an old prize now long denied. Now that the Shah was gone, they were coming for Iran, and now there was no one to keep them from taking it.

The Americans were clueless but, more importantly, demoralized from their experience in Vietnam; Israel wouldn't be able to stop a force as devastatingly large as Russia's.

That's what the leaders of his Intel service were counting on. They were counting on the Israelis making the attempt. Then the Arab world would be released to drive the Jews back into the ghettos from which they had come.

The only thing that could stop these plans from falling into place was a document detailing Syria's complicity with the Soviet Union, a document which detailed efforts by Syria to destabilize the very tenuous peace that held the Arab world apart from the Israeli. If the American or British Intel services got this document, his masters reasoned, war between Israel and a Russian backed Syria might be averted, and so justice might be thwarted once again - put off for another generation.

What this man didn't know was that his enemies already had the document; in fact the Mossad had passed along the document months ago to both Whitehall and Langely. Now all that remained to be done by Mossad was to convince the Syrians that they were safe to proceed with their tangled alliance with the Russians. 

The Benevides team was a part of this effort.

The old fisherman had simply been very unlucky that stormy afternoon, unlucky that he had come into contact with one of the Israeli's most efficient covert intel teams. One storm, a real storm, had passed and had very nearly taken his life, but a bigger storm, an as yet unseen storm, was lurking just over the far horizon. Waiting patiently, so like the fisherman, waiting to release its energy, this storm would build for twenty years before it's fury was released.

But every storm has a beginning. 



Heaven's Rending Ch. 05



Part V

Dance On A Volcano

Alan Burnett walked out of the Assistant Chief's office and headed down the dingy hallway towards the Patrol Division briefing room. He stopped at the worn out old water fountain recessed in the hallway and pushed the little round button on top - it's chrome had worn away ages ago and was now just a shiny brass knob that seemed little more than an echo of another time - and as it had for almost fifteen years the old gray box rattled when he pushed the knob and sent an icy stream of water straight up his nose. Burnett cursed as he always did and stepped back, then slurped down the water before it turned warm. He stood and wiped the remains off his mouth with his hand and threw the errant drops to the floor with a careless flick of his wrist, then he looked around, took his bearings, and continued on his way to the briefing room - lost in a cascade of furious emotion and feeling more than a little disoriented.

An hour before shift change and already the room was filling with cops, mainly over-eager rookies wanting to impress their new shift sergeant, but on this, his 'Friday', Burnett could not have cared less. He didn't impress easily anymore these days, not even on a good day, though he could remember wanting to impress any and everyone when he had been a rookie. Those days were long gone; now, most days he felt like he'd seen it all, done it all, and these new kids looked nauseatingly naive to him, just as he must have looked those many years ago to the watch commander who sat at this very same desk. 

And while the world had changed in the intervening years - changed in ways that it hurt to think about - the work hadn't. People still needed Cops as much as they hated them. Houses continued to be broken into, businesses robbed at gunpoint, women raped, kids beaten. Cars kept running red lights and killing people, speeders lost control of their cars and ran off the road and into a tree, kids in trucks tried to beat speeding trains, and occasionally airplanes fell from the sky. Burnett had seen all these things, and more. His soul was numb from all the hate and fear that filled this world, from all the suspicion that met his arrival at the latest outburst of man's inhumanity to man. And this was the world all these rookies wanted to change. They were all - to a person - dedicated to the proposition that they could and would make a difference. 

All these rookies had just come from nine months of Academy, learning - hopefully - everything a kid might possibly need to learn in order to survive long enough on the streets to really begin understanding the real rules of the game. Most did. It was his job to spot the ones who couldn't - and get rid of them, fast. He looked out over the sea of expectant faces, at all the lonely idealism that hovered in the air, apparent to no one but himself and the memories that held him together on days like this . . . and he seemed to . . . drift away . . .

As he drifted in the tidal streams of memory, surrounded by the echoes of another life very much like his own, he suddenly thought of his father, and the incongruity of the thought jolted Burnett. As he sat looking at the sea of tables and chairs peppered with navy blue uniforms, out of the blue he could just make out his father's voice. All the dedicated young faces arrayed before him reminded him of something his father had once told him, and the need to hear his father's voice now startled him. He had forgotten something. Something vital. Something he had forgotten from time to time, only to have it drilled back into his head like a bullet. It was something his father had wanted him to remember, needed him to remember.

Burnett's old man had flown fighters for the Navy in the Second World War and had gone on to fly for American before a heart attack nailed him in his early fifties, and yet to his last day Burnett's father had lived and breathed flying. Flying not simply as a passion, not simply a metaphor, but rather - it had been a calling. He'd trained more than his fair share of pilots - mainly 'Jet-Jocks' transitioning from the military into the more sedate reality of hauling cattle from sea to shining sea - but even with these prima-donnas his father's one true maxim held. And even though Burnett's old man had been gone now for more than ten years, he could still hear that clear voice bouncing around in the shaded vaults of memory.

"Remember this, and remember it well, Alan. There is nothing as dangerous in this world as a pilot with two hundred hours of flight time."

It was a simple lesson, yet a hard one to grasp.

Their was, his father had told him, no one so dangerous as one just out of training, as one who thinks he or she knows everything. These miscreants get cocky, they get over confident, and they fuck up big-time when they do. They get hurt and occasionally they get killed, and sometimes - when they fly jets - they get a bunch of people killed. Burnett had watched rookies come and go long enough to understand that his father's maxim applied to just about any profession, but it applied to cops with a vengeance.

And, Burnett had found, it applied to marriages as well. Just when you thought you were comfortable in your marriage, just when you got to that place where everything felt good and right, you got cocky and fucked up. You said the wrong thing in a flurry of masculine insensitivity at just the wrong moment, you were slow to compliment when you failed to heed the breaking shoals of feminine insecurity, or you saw a pair of legs that drove you wild - and wouldn't you know it - they just were never your your wife's. 

And wouldn't you know it? You chased them. 

Again. Every time. You chased them like a dog chases it's tail.

Cops and pilots seemed to fall off their respective wagons with alarming frequency, too, and Burnett understood that simple fact of life now all too well. He was fast becoming a monument to infidelity in all its wayward guises, and he knew his foundation was crumbling, too. But don't all monuments fall in time?

Burnett had tried the marriage thing twice, he thought glumly as he looked out over the room that seemed to fill with old memories as each new face walked in. Three times really, if he counted those strange platinum-laced days with 'Diane'. 

There was Debbie of those innocent days now long gone - days and nights filled with furtive kisses and truly awful sex, and then there had been Diane. Diane the dominatrix. Diane the victim, the death-stalked whore in search of redemption. Diane, the dark chalice of soul. Then- after Diane passed away - Jennifer of the short skirt and long legs, Jennifer the flight attendant, Jennifer the nymphomaniac. She'd been everything poor Debbie never could have been, and everything he'd wanted Diane to be, and just when things looked like they couldn't get any better, just when he'd found out she had a thing for girls and groups, he'd found out she was still sleeping around with just about everyone in Seattle. She had left him four weeks ago, and it wasn't too long before he'd heard she'd tested positive to just about every STD known to medicine, including the biggie. He'd sweat bullets until his results came back negative, then he'd drifted through the funk of just what that really meant until the divorce papers had flooded into his life last week on yet another errant tide.

So, once again he was moving from the comfortable and the familiar, once again he would be moving into the shadowlands of uncertainty and the endless parade of lonely nights filled with the novacaine of television, and time would resume its deathly march.

And then came the bombshell the Assistant Chief had just tossed into this well-lubed uncertainty. Life was just one fucked-up adventure after another, Burnett thought. Just one more divorce waiting to happen.

And now this. Spooks. Goddamned spooks. It looked like it was going to happen!

*****************************

He was carrying another box of books up the apartment building's rickety metal stairs when he saw the first one.

Burnett looked across the atrium through the wrought-iron balcony above and saw the pink halter-top and black leather shorts before he noticed anything else, but as he stepped out on the landing he took in the seven-inch spiked silver plastic platform sandals and the sucker in the mouth and he groaned inside. 'Oh crap, not a hooker...' he said under his breath as he smiled at the girl who stood looking at him with insouciant eyes. She was not ten feet away, yet Burnett felt almost repelled by the mere presence of the girl. Surely he couldn't catch anything from her from this distance!

"You the new guy in Two D?" she asked as she tongued her sucker suggestively.

"Well, there's a rumor to that effect," Burnett said as he looked at the flaccid smile on the girl's pockmarked face.

"Heard you was a cop." She licked her lips even more suggestively, as if she was hungry for more.

"Is that a fact? I'll be damned." He ignored the stirring in his groin as he stood on the landing catching his breath; he just looked at the girl and wondered what a piece of ass like hers went for these days. Ten bucks . . . twenty? Whatever the going rate was for a hit of crack or meth. Of that he was certain. The longer he looked at the girl the uglier she became . . . yet even in his revulsion he wanted to fuck her.

The girl looked at him knowingly then turned and walked away, but not before turning to flash him with a too bright smile and to toss off a little doe-like waggle of her almost too fat butt. Burnett walked down the balcony toward his new apartment and tried to stifle the laugh he felt building in his gut - but the box full of books was beginning to feel more than a little too heavy. Then the door next to his opened and a tall, fat woman in a white lab coat stepped out and inserted the key into the deadbolt and double-locked her door. She turned and jumped back when she saw Burnett walking her way, then almost relaxed when she saw the box of books in his arms.

The woman had the perpetually down-turned lips that most unhappy people wear as a defense against having to reveal the least bit about themselves, and this woman's scowl was crowned with suspicious little pig-like eyes that swept across him like razor-sharp searchlights; to Burnett her eyes were full of dread and suspicion, and he watched as these pale gray pin-pricks avoided his. He was left with the feeling that he had just looked into the loneliest place on earth. The woman darted past hurriedly and scuttled down the balcony, then down the stairs before he could as much as say hello. Burnett shook his head as he walked through the wall of too heavy perfume the pear-shaped woman left swirling in her wake.

Not promising, he said to himself as he put the box down beside the door. He fished out the key and opened the door, then picked up the box and walked inside. He dumped the box on the sofa and turned the air conditioning down before walking over to the little 'fridge and taking out a beer. He tossed it down in one long pull and wiped the sweat from his forehead on his shoulder, then got another beer out and took another long pull. His heart hammered in his chest as he walked over to the window that looked out on the balcony, and he pulled the cord to open the flimsy little curtain that covered the dirty window. He stood there for a moment watching a red bird taking seed from a little hanging feeder outside his window. The bird ate contentedly for a while, hopping from perch to perch to snag just the right bit, then Burnett and the bird made eye contact. They stared at one other for God only knows how long, then a cat leapt from its hiding place in a nearby tree and landed on the balcony with the bird's neck in it's mouth. The cat shook the bird once viciously, then trod off down the balcony. 

Shaken by the sight, Burnett put down his beer and walked out of the apartment, heading for his car and one more box. The cat was sitting outside an open door, and as Burnett approached the cat fled into the safety of darkness within. Then he heard it. A man shouting, a woman's scream, breaking glass. Off duty or not, he was a cop - he turned and went back to his apartment and called dispatch, then clipped his badge and holster onto his belt and walked back toward the disturbance.

Another shout, another scream. Other tenants opening doors to check out the commotion. Burnett walked to the open door and looked in. The man was on top of the woman, kissing her passionately while he furiously worked to open his jeans; the woman's legs were wrapped around the man's back and she was clawing at the man, imploring him to hurry. Burnett reached in and shut the door, then walked back to his apartment. He called dispatch and told them what had happened, chuckled into the phone at the obvious rejoinder, then headed back down to his car. 

His head clearing now, all he could think was that nothing on this earth was as it appeared to be anymore.

****************************

Burnett opened his car's trunk and reached in to pick up the last box when a car screeched into the parking lot. It accelerated heavily, then slid to a stop behind him. Burnett heard a window roll down, but he didn't need to turn around to know a patrol car was behind him.

"Hey, Big Al!" Burnett groaned when he heard O'Reilly's voice booming from inside the Ford. "So what's the deal?"

Now obvious that it wasn't going to go away, Burnett turned and looked at the graying red hair and impish face of "Crash" O'Reilly. "Oh, you know, couple up there getting a little boisterous in their hunka-chunka. Knocking shit off the tables, that kind of crap." 

O'Reilly took on a faraway look as he said, "No, I don't. Don't remember that kinda crap happenin', least not to me. No, not in a coon's age, anyway. Can't say it ever did, for that matter. Wouldn't mind giving it a try, though."

Burnett laughed and nodded his head.

"Man, heard you was gettin' another divorce. What's up with that?"

"Irreconcilable differences, Crash. Gets you every time."

"Yeah. So I hear. Lose the house?"

Burnett looked at O'Reilly then looked away, not wanting to talk to the old asshole but not wanting to go upstairs and face the emptiness. The radio inside the patrol car squawked and came to his rescue. . .

"2115, are you 10-8?"

O'Reilly picked up the microphone. "2115, 10-4, go ahead."

Burnett listened with zero interest as O'Reilly wrote down the details of his next call on the little steno-pad strapped to his knee, then he stepped back as O'Reilly dropped the transmission into drive. "Seeya later, pal. Gotta run." Burnett tapped the roof twice and the Ford slipped out of the parking lot and disappeared down the street, leaving Burnett alone with his discordant feelings once again. He turned and reached for the box in the trunk as another car came into the lot and made for the empty space next to his.

An old silver BMW 2002 pulled into the space, and Burnett sucked in his breath when he took in the woman behind the wheel. Red hair, maybe a little blond, nice profile, too. Her sunglasses a little on the exotic side, nice earrings catching the afternoon light. Her door opened and a long stocking-clad leg slid out with assurance; the woman stood and stretched, let out a little sigh, then turned to lock her door.

Burnett was unaware he was staring at the woman until she turned and looked at him.

"Hello," Burnett stammered. He was conscious of sweat still running down his forehead and of the immediate need to take a shower - preferably a cold one, he thought as he took in the totality of the woman before him - but he knew above all he was making a terrible first impression.

"So, you in trouble with the police?" the woman said, confusing Burnett no little bit.

"Pardon?" he said.

"I saw the police car leave as I pulled in."

"Friend of mine. Dropped by to say hi." The woman arched her left eyebrow and looked at Burnett sharply. "I'm with the department."

"The department?" the woman asked.

"I'm sorry, the Police Department. I'm Sergeant Burnett. Uh - Alan." Smooth, Burnett thought. Smooth as an overdose of laxative. 

The woman walked over and held out her hand. "Tracy. Tracy Tomberlin. Nice to meet you, Alan. You moving in?"

"Yes Ma'am. Two-D."

"Ah. Next to Doc Canfield. The quiet quarters."

"How's that?"

"Oh, the Doc won't tolerate any noise after eight. Calls the cops, er, the police."

"Cops is fine, Ma'am. We're used to worse."

"I, uh, yes, I imagine so. Well, got much more to move in?"

"Nope. This is the last box. Good thing, too. My back's not enjoying this anymore."

The woman laughed, seemed to hesitate, then leaned in. "So, how 'bout I cook up a steak or two, toss a salad. You interested?"

"Is that a trick question?" Burnett replied in his most intimidating police sergeant's voice. Then he chuckled. "Ma'am? Name the time and tell me what I can bring, and I'll be there."

"How 'bout eight? Three-A," she said, and before Burnett could answer she turned and walked into the courtyard. Burnett looked after her as she receded into shadow. 'Absolutely glorious legs,' he said to himself as he watched her disappear, 'and the eyes of an angel.' He lifted the box and bounded up the stairs two at a time, and after he was safely in his apartment let a little yip slip free. He jumped in the shower and scrubbed the days sweat off, taking care - as he always did - to run his fingers over the scar on his arm that Diane had patched up oh-so-long-ago, then he toweled himself off and dressed before running down to the car and going to the store for a decent bottle of wine. He was back and knocked on her door promptly at eight.

"It's open! Come on in!"

The smells hit him as he walked in, the broiling steak, the dry wholesomeness of roasting potatoes, the faintest tang of olive oil and tarragon vinegar lingering in the air just under the scent of a fine perfume. It was the most unexpected thing after all the vicissitudes this weird day had presented, and it hit Alan Burnett hard. Hard in the stomach. It took his breathe away.

He walked towards the kitchen and called out "Honey! I'm home!" then heard her laugh and the sound wracked through his body like a cold sob. A warmth washed over him, a feeling he had almost given up hope of ever feeling again. He felt a little like a teenager, and the feeling seemed to penetrate a part of his soul he had long thought dead. He poked his head in the apartment's little cooking space and held out the bottle of wine he'd just bought. "I bring tidings of great joy!" he said as the full brunt of her cooking hit him.

"Splendid!" she said when she saw the proffered bottle. "All I had was a natty old Riesling. Never too good with steak, but I love them nonetheless."

"Can I help with anything?"

"Nope. Just sit you down out there. There's some cheese and stuff on the table. Now, shoo! Out!"

Burnett sat on the sofa and took a cracker, cut a slab of cheese and took a bite. Tracy came in carrying a hi-ball and put it down on the table, then pirouetted and glided sexily from the room, calling out "It's a Mojito, just in case anyone wants to know . . . Rum and the juice of a few precious flowers." Again he watched her drift away into the shadows of memory, again he watched the perfection of her form, again he felt overwhelmed at the sheer feminine presence of this woman. She was unreal, like a dream, and in a flash he saw her walking across wind-swept sands. He watched her feet as they left little marks in the sand as she walked towards him, he saw her arms reach out for him, for him alone, and he felt the soft warmth of a million distant suns falling . . . falling . . . falling . . .

He reached down and took a pull from the Mojito and the cool warmth ran through him until he felt the fire in his belly. She'd made it strong, too strong. Why? Was she unsure of herself? How could anyone so gorgeous be unsure of herself?




Heaven's Rending Ch. 05



Tomberlin? Tracy Tomberlin? He'd heard the name before. Where? Something . . .

"How's your drink?" she asked from the kitchen. "Cold enough for you?"

"Yes, Ma'am, it sure is. Got a little kick to it, too." He heard her laugh, then the oven door opening and closing. The room filled with the smell of baked bread, and his head was swimming - if not from the bread, then the rum.

"You know, Alan," she said - now poking her head around the kitchen wall - "if you call me Ma'am one more time you're going to get to do the dishes tonight!" She was smiling at him, and the warmth of her smile disarmed him completely.

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Oh, pooh!" She laughed again and disappeared back into the kitchen. 

Burnett took another much longer pull at his drink, and the warmth rushed through him like lava. He felt muscles in his shoulder loosening up and he leaned back on the sofa and closed his eyes for a moment. He felt himself drifting . . . drifting . . .

He felt the dream coming on again . . .

. . . a river, a snake, a fish . . . a red fish . . .

"Alan! Alan! Wake up! Are you asleep?"

Burnett bolted upright and shook the cobwebs from his mind. "God, I'm sorry. I . . ."

"I, uh, listen Alan, if you're too tired, we can do this some other time . . ."

He looked up at her. She was hurt, it was written all over her face.

"Tracy. It's not what you think." He stood and put his hands on her shoulder, then looked in her eyes. There were tears there waiting to fall, tears he saw that had been held back for too many years.

"I . . . don't be silly, Alan . . ." He watched a tear crest like a wave and fall down her cheek, and he took a finger and caught it.

"I want you to know one thing, Tracy. I feel so at ease here, at ease like I haven't felt for - well - I can't remember the last time I felt like this. . ."

She put her finger to his lips and quieted him with a simple"Sh-h-h-h," then stood on her toes and kissed him. It was a tentative kiss, a first kiss full of shyness and quiet grace, then she stepped back and returned to her kitchen. 

Burnett tried to calm himself, tried to quell the surprising fire in his groin, and he stood there in her little living room holding her shadow to his soul with all his strength. Soon she emerged carrying plates loaded with steaks and potatoes; salad was already on the table, as were two glasses of deep red wine. He walked over and pulled her chair our for her, then sat across from her. A covey of little purple candles bathed the room in flickering light, and he marveled at the simple beauty of the gesture. She watched him, apparently wanting him to take the first bite, so he cut into the steak and took the meat into his mouth.

The flavors were subtle - lime, butter, salt and pepper, maybe the faintest hint of garlic - the taste was sublime and he knew by the way she reacted as she watched his face that words weren't really necessary, but . . .

"Oh my lucky stars . . . Oh! That's so good . . ." He watched her smile - and only then did she take a bite. They ate silently for a while, though she was clearly enjoying the moment of this small triumph, then she took her wine glass and held it up to him. Burnett held his glass to hers . . .

"To friendships old and new . . ." she said, ". . . may they bring joy to your heart whenever you think of them."

"To friendships old and new," Burnett said, and they clinked glasses in the glowing candlelight. "Particularly the new."

She smiled, yet Burnett sensed she was holding something back. Something important. A troubled frown crossed her face like storm clouds.

"What is it? What is it, Tracy?"

"I think . . . I think you knew my husband, Alan. Everett. He was . . ."

Burnett felt the blood drain from his face, saw her reaction before he could catch himself. 

Of course! That was why the name was so familiar!

So long ago!

Everett Tomberlin. Killed on duty . . . what was it . . . ten, no, twelve years ago. Wife pregnant, miscarried a few weeks later, tried to kill herself a few month after that.

And here she was. His eyes went to her wrists, and he could just make out the faint remains of the scars there. She watched him, followed his eyes as they sought the truth, yet she remained solidly quiet. She hid nothing, for quite obviously she had nothing to hide from this man. From this man - of all men. 

He knew. Knew what she had been through. Knew the burden she carried.

Alan Burnett leaned back in his chair and felt the cares of the world come crashing home.

******************************

He saw her again in the parking lot from time to time. She said little as they passed, for indeed there was little that needed to be said. Burnett had simply felt too awkward that night, too conflicted by his desire for the woman and his understanding of her past, and that conflict had been written all over his face. When he had walked into his barren apartment later that night he had cleaned up for bed. As he had brushed his teeth and stared at himself in the little mirror above the sink, he looked at his eyes staring back and for the first time in his life he questioned his humanity, his inability to fathom the contours of human frailty. And accept what he found there.

But as he had so many times before, he blinked, closed his eyes and walked off to bed, to sleep, to the certainty that with a new day there would come other problems to bury the unpleasantries he ran across from time to time.

******************************

The following weekend he was taking groceries up the stairs to his apartment when Tracy opened her door and leaned out. Burnett made eye contact with her as he stepped onto the second floor landing.

"Alan?" she called out from the floor above, " I've got an extra hamburger cooking. What about it?"

Burnett thought about his empty apartment for a split second, the prospect of another movie to watch after another frozen dinner, and he looked at Tracy standing there, leaning out her doorway, the smells hitting him and a million memories yet to be made called out to him, pleaded with him, to simply say yes.

And he did.

******************************

The last dish washed, Burnett and Tracy sat on the sofa. He sat back and she leaned into him as if it was the most natural thing in the world, then she took his hand in hers and caressed his fingers. She seemed ageless in that moment, ageless in that the weight of her humanity had been stripped away for this brief interlude, and nothing remained but the essence of her soul. She seemed beautiful - beautiful yet fragile - in a way he had never seen or known in another human being. She was ancient and new, touched, yet somehow chaste. She radiated a knowing resolve to carry on, yet he could see her knowledge of the depths of despair as it danced in the darkness around her . . . Hers was a dance, Burnett knew, known only to those who've held death in their hands - and let it go. No one, Burnett knew, can even begin to understand those depths until they've known them in their bones.

And as such - within that ageless moment that so often defines simple choice- he held her, and within the shadow of a sigh - time stopped as it does for lovers. 

He held her precious form within the careful glow of the fading day that seemed to hold time on the far side of the night, and he held her, felt her soul melt into his, held her as the sunlight hesitating in the air seemed to slow, then stop. He turned within this arc of time and held his face to hers; her smell was electric and he felt himself breathing in deeply, he felt himself consciously wanting to know her every scent as revealed within the contours of her body. He kissed her face, felt the tension fall away from her as the wave of his acceptance washed over her, just as he surely as he felt the sun giving away to night. As suddenly, he felt hot sand under his feet, the crashing of distant surf filling this time within time with cool, salt-hewn breezes. He walked on far distant shores within himself, and he was sure she would follow . . .

She looked up at him; he felt the warmth of her eyes lingering on his mouth - and his lips moved to hers. Her hands moved to cup his face, and within this chalice of soul he opened his mouth and drank the essence of that most ancient music. He felt her hand moving up lis leg and he smiled inside at the sound of the surf crashing, the water hissing in retreat, his belt buckle tugged and zipper parting, a start as cool skin encircled his warmth and began to gently caress the seeds of memory until all that remained was the unfettered knowledge of pending release. 

She took him first with her hands, and she kneaded the soft flowing warmth to the threshold of release, then she willed the coming to subside. With her fingernails, she resumed her dance around the circle of his crown until he felt himself trembling - and she willed him to subside again. She kissed him, she bit his face gently, she stroked him again, gently at first but then with more insistence, and he felt himself turning rigid in a way he had never known and yet felt so familiar, so right. Stars danced in his mind, pressure - was it starlight? - built again under the relentless urging of her all-knowing fingers, and he felt a gentle pulse of liquid ooze from the tip of his cock. She spread this taste of things to come around the tip of his cock with her finger, tracing little eddies around the ridges of his mind with her oh-so-sharp nails, then she began again. She worked his shaft with frantic abandon now, and he felt her hair dancing on his skin as her mouth waited above. He tensed again, went rigid as the core of his being turned to fire, and he drifted into the oceanic warmth of his release.

He felt the warmth of her mouth engulf him, felt the waves of release flood into her waiting mouth, and as the tides ebbed he drifted in the afterglow of her dance. She continued to hold him in her mouth, slowly swirling her tongue around and across the hyper-sensitized plains of his release, then she tickled his sack with her fingernails. It was as if she was strumming a tune on his guitar, and the resonant chords in their turn vibrated to her command. She continued to lick and kiss him until he was hard again, then she raised her body over his and mounted him, the fiery warmth of her passion surprising him with it's intensity. With her hands on his shoulders, she pulsed and contracted, her head whipping back - thrusting forward - twisting right - dancing left - as she rode him. He felt the walls of her womb holding him, willing him to give her new life, and in this ever lasting night he came to her.

They lay on sun-kissed sands, tall grass bent to the will of soft sea-breezes, and as rose-hued petals opened to receive the gift of life, deep within this desperate moment new life came to this world. 

Such is the circle of life. 

We can not question the why or the how, we can only bow to the majesty of what is.

****************************

Burnett sat in the Assistant Chief's office a month later, watching the old man as he went over the paperwork in his hands once again, wondering if he was doing the right thing once again, questioning his sanity for the millionth time and coming up blank. 

At his first meeting with the A/C a year ago, the old man had told him the C.I.A. was looking for cops with street smarts and four years of college. The pool of available talent from the armed services was drying up, the old man said, and they were looking to recruit from within well-respected departments around the country. The A/C had joined the D.I.A. after leaving Nam with one leg rent by shrapnel, then mysteriously joined the department - as Assistant Chief, no less - without ever having been a police officer. He worked with the detective bureau, and was rumored to be working on a new counter-terrorism division. Nobody questioned the A/C, Burnett thought as he watched the old man scrawling notes in the margin of the paper in his hands; in fact as far as he knew most people stopped breathing when the old man walked into a room. He routinely made the highest pistol score in the department's annual combat competition, and he could still crank out a mile in a respectable seven minutes.

Burnett hadn't known what to make of the A/Cs first overtures; they were in the beginning vague, tenuous explorations that seemed both preparatory and non-committal, but soon they had taken on a more deliberate, interrogative tenor that had frankly unsettled Burnett. Maybe that was the point, for not long after he was flown to a briefing with other prospective applicants and issued a battery of tests and reasoning appraisals. Background checks followed, then family and next door neighbors from homes long forgotten were interviewed. The A/C was going over these findings now, and he shook his head from time to time, nodded knowingly once in a while, then finally put the paper face down on his desk and turned to face Burnett.

"Well, Alan, the long version is this: you're almost too old, your - uh - marital instability is a concern, and you're about ten pounds heavier than they'd like. On the other hand, you know history - getting that Masters' sure helped, by the way - and not too many cops have a working knowledge of both French and German. You're not currently encumbered, and your evaluations are consistently among the best in the department, and shit, even the shrinks think you're about as emotionally mature as a cop can be." This, Burnett knew, was probably the old man's one attempt at humor for the year, so he smiled and intimated understanding by tossing off a brief chuckle.

"Short version is this, son. They want you. They want you to report to Yorktown in September. And now here's the good part. You're not going to resign from the department right off the bat; instead you'll be on extended leave. Retirement will still accrue, and if you decide to bail out you can come back to work with no questions asked, no loss of seniority or rank. If you make it, if they take you on, well, that's it. We've arranged to have your retirement rolled over into the Agency's, so you won't take a hit on that front. But this life here . . . well . . . that'll soon become ancient history. Five years from now you won't even recognize yourself."

The silence in the room was only broken by the gusting rain that lashed the window. The old man leaned back in his chair and with his hands folded across his lap he simply looked at Burnett. There was no curiosity on the man's face, no wry amused look, no anticipation whatsoever. While Burnett had thought about this moment for weeks now, the arrival of Tracy Tomberlin in his life had certainly complicated matters, yet he knew if he hesitated now the entire matter would be over and done with. And the hell of it was that before Tracy had entered his life he was looking forward to the change. He was glad now that this new wrinkle in his life was still unknown by anyone in the department. He simply did not know what to tell Tracy, let alone how he might tell her.

That more than anything else guided him as he sat in the A/Cs office. He knew he couldn't spend the rest of his life driving around in a patrol car shaking doors on deep nights or checking police reports for spelling errors until he dropped from old age. Tracy or no, he knew in his bones that his days as a cop were numbered.

"I accept, sir. What do I do from here?"

"I'll take care of the next step, son. I'll have some paperwork for you to sign off on in a few days."

"Yes sir."

"And son, about Mrs Tomberlin, put an end to it now - before things get too serious."

Burnett looked back at the A/C, then blinked rapidly as he stood and turned to leave.

He could have sworn he heard the old man laughing as the door closed behind him.

********************************

Burnett was alone in his apartment later that afternoon. He sat hunched forward on his little sofa, his hands together on his knees as he nursed a beer, slowly turning the bottle round and round as he thought about the choices he'd made that day. Tracy wasn't home yet, probably wouldn't be for another hour or so, but he knew it was going to be bad. 

They'd both fallen pretty hard for one another. He felt as attached to her as he had to Diane, which was to say he felt as strongly for her as he ever had for anyone. He loved her in his way, and even though she told him she loved him, Burnett wasn't the type to go by words alone any more. He felt loved by Tracy, really loved, and that counted for so much more than words ever could in his book. But he had made the hard choice today, a choice he would need to share with her before they could move on - either together or apart - but now he felt as if he'd betrayed both Tracy and himself in the A/Cs office earlier. 

Was he running away?

He heard her knock on the door and he walked over and opened it, and he kissed her when he saw her face, kissed her and then all the cares of the world fell from his shoulders when he felt her lips on his. He kissed her, and he knew she was meant to be. He kissed her, and he realized the enormity of the mistake he'd made.

But there was something else.

She smiled at him as he pulled back, and he looked down to see a bottle of champagne in her hand.

"It's for you," Tracy said.

"For me?"

"I won't be drinking. Well, not for at least the next nine months or so."

He looked at her, saw his reflection in her eyes, saw the bewildered expression spread across her face, the eyes tearing, and the mirror of his soul shattered into a million pieces. He was falling, falling, falling into the depths of night, and only the broken shards of his soul lit the corridor of time he found himself falling in . . . little pinpricks of memory that danced in his mind's eye as he stood in silence, watching tears fall down the face of the woman he would have presumed to love.

She turned from him, walked away from him, and left him twisting in the afterglow of a million broken dreams.



Heaven's Rending Ch. 06



Chapter 06: Convergence 

Pol Jorgensen sat in his office in the Foreign Ministry and looked at the latest round of political cartoons spread out across his desk. They mocked Islam, again -- or so it had been alleged in newspapers across the Middle East -- and now decades of work building Danish credibility throughout the Middle East was literally going up in smoke. 'Danish Press Freedoms to Blame for Continued Carnage in Beirut!' bleated one leftist tabloid from London. "Oil Prices Surge -- Blame it on Copenhagen!" cried anchors on CNN. Jorgensen looked at the headlines from today's newspapers and once again cursed under his breath. Every democratic institution had been turned against itself! That, he said to himself, would be the most lasting consequence of Bush's War on Terror. The longer the new president carried on the war, the more insane the world grew. A week after his inauguration, then man had had a profound religious awakening. Some thought it was a stroke, others saw it as the hand of God, but what was becoming ever more apparent was simply this: the longer the war went on, the more Western political traditions suffered. They were withering away. 

Democratic institutions of governance were cracking under a crisis of confidence as autocratic leaders whittled away at the very freedoms they were supposed to protect. Free markets were shaking on their foundations as wealth amassed for centuries flooded into oil sheikdoms and the corporate coffers of huge multi-national conglomerates, and - all of a sudden and once again -- a lot of people were looking at Karl Marx's observation that capitalists would one day sow the seeds of their own destruction with new respect. Just as his country was turning the corner toward a working green economy, the oil barons in Texas and Washington were gong to bring the whole system down! It was either insane or part of someone's plan. If enough people believed in Revelations and wanted it to happen, wouldn't it become a self-fulfilling prophecy?

But the problem Jorgensen faced now was simple: how to re-establish Danish credibility in the Muslim marketplace before the whole house of cards came down around their ears. If most of the world's capital was indeed pouring into the Middle East, the Twenty-first century would belong to the Arab world; that much was no longer in question. But it had been Jorgensen's hope that Denmark could 'get in on the action' by establishing export markets for alternative energy technology in the cash-rich Emirates, but now naïve editorial cartoonists had for all practical intents dashed that hope for good. 

Europe had good technology to offer, as good as anything in the world, and investors would recognize that and act if the political zeitgeist remained relatively tolerant for another decade or so. But America's rampant theocratic petro-interventionism was polluting the global marketplace, souring the Third World's interest in Western goods and turning its attentions once again to Russia and China.

"Won't the Americans ever learn!?" Jorgensen cried out loud as he slammed his desk with open hands. The sound ricocheted off wood-paneled walls with practiced futility.

"What's that, sir?"

Jorgensen shook his head and looked up from his desk, pausing once again to take in Ingrid Andersen's beautiful legs. Oh! how he wanted those legs! To have his face wrapped between those thighs . . . just to smell her down there would be enough, he told himself again. Just that! Was that asking so much?!

Jorgensen pulled himself back from the abyss and looked at the action plan she had produced from her portfolio. Would it work? Could it really be so easy? Could rapprochement with Tehran really be the most expeditious means of reinserting Danish diplomatic contacts into the cauldron of Gulf politics? Would the larger E.U. member states stand for such an audacious act? Or would they take steps to isolate Denmark?

Andersen had approached a member of the Iranian delegation - it was really an overt overture, she told her Minister once again - and perversely she had not been rebuffed; in fact, she had been taken aback by the Persian diplomat's eagerness to consecrate a deal -- any deal -- with Denmark. Something wasn't right. She could feel it in her bones. The Iranians were planning there own operation. She knew it, could feel it, but she couldn't prove it . . . yet. They wanted something in return. But what?

The old man slumped back in his chair. "Nothing, nothing! So, how do you think we should proceed?" Jorgensen asked his protégé.

"With the Americans, sir?"

"No, no, no goddamn it! Iran! What do you propose to do? With your contact?"

"We need to draw them out, sir. Find out what their real intentions are. Engage them, take the initiative from them. This has been the Americans' tragic strategic failure; they are always reacting to radical-Arab initiatives, to Bin Laden, and never seizing the initiative; and when they try to they play right into their enemy's hands. They have been less than incompetent, and I assert that Washington has demonstrated they no longer have the intellectual capacity to work on the world stage effectively any longer. Their corporations are dictating policy! It's insane, yes, but the fact can no longer be doubted. There are no career diplomats left. Policy is being dictated in Washington by lobbyists!" And whores, she wanted to say, but everyone was guilty of that in the new world order. "We must move quickly to fill the void before the political momentum shifts irretrievably to a dialogue between the Arab street and China. With the president's radical conversion, its likely fundamentalists in Europe will find a new partner in Washington, and we can only guess where that will lead. It's a narrow window of opportunity. We must act. Yes. We must act while we can..."

Ingrid crossed her legs and Jorgensen watched out of the corner of his eye as her thigh swished across his field of view. 'Yes,' he said to himself within the confines of his own closeted mind, 'it's time to act.' He fought contradictory impulses inside his groin that told him to take her proposal seriously even as he licked his lips at the briefest thought of hoisting the woman's legs over his shoulders. He tried to summon the courage . . . to ask her to out . . . again . . . 

"Very well," Jorgensen said, visibly crestfallen by his inability to simply ask her to dinner. "Contact this Iranian. And call me as soon as you learn anything. I'll be at home tonight. Alone. So call me . . . any time."

Andersen smiled callously at the old man's servile ineptitude. She would sleep with him to further her career - that didn't bother her. What did bother her was this high level minister didn't have the balls to make a play for her. It was written all over his shaken, pasty face. How could such a spineless toad be expected to carry-out the responsibilities of his office when pitted against some very savvy customers if he couldn't even make a play for a woman? 

Not good. Not good at all.

She stood and walked from Jorgensen's office, even waggled her butt for effect as she passed through the doorway. She smiled when she heard him moan, grinned in triumph as she walked down the hallway to her office.

***********************************

Jonas Carpenter sat in his cubicle and read the brief once again. Mohammed al-Zaq had been spotted near Marseilles and tailed to Hamburg. He had met known operatives in the city before moving on to Oslo, and there surveillance had been lost. Oslo! Carpenter was trying to put the pieces together, and what he saw taking shape worried him. al-Zaq was one of the Republican Guards most disciplined agents, but what was most worrisome was that he was a physicist by training. al-Zaq reputedly understood Soviet era nuclear weaponry better than most Israeli or America scientists, and had long been suspected of gathering nuclear material and infrastructure from North Korea and Pakistan to help Iran cobble together a dirty bomb. The man had been seen with al-Qaeda operatives more than once, so there was little doubt what his intentions were.

But why Norway? And where had he gone from there? There were no known sleeper cells that far off the beaten path. Or were there? Now he'd have to commit agents to finding them.

And now word that an Iranian dissident -- and a nuclear physicist, as well -- had surfaced in Iraq and wanted to talk . . . with the Danes! With the goddamned Danes! So far the morons in Washington hadn't picked up on this one -- but that was becoming all too common these days, Carpenter told himself -- and while that wasn't unexpected it might cause problems down the road. 

Carpenter, or more likely someone from his team, would have to go into Tehran and run a surveillance operation on both the dissident and the Danes. That meant hunting off the reservation - poaching on Langley's turf, as it were -- and potentially taking action against the Iranian if he proved dangerous to Israeli interests in the region.

Of most immediate concern to Carpenter was an item that had popped up from deep background: the dissident and al-Zaq had both studied at Stanford from 1973 through 1977. They had both moved on to the University of Chicago, but both had returned to Tehran in early January 1979, just two weeks before the revolution. Why? That didn't fit the usual pattern. Only families loyal to the Shah had been allowed to send students abroad during those last years; had these two even then been tasked to deep cover by the Khomeini camp? Carpenter didn't know the answer to that one, and you couldn't just pick up the phone and call Information Central for the file. The best way to get this missing piece was to go to Tehran and talk to the man, and that meant poaching off the reservation. The decision to do so wouldn't be made lightly, but it had to be made soon.

This whole affair smelled to Carpenter . . . it smelled of al-Zaq, of al-Qaeda, and of big trouble. It was time now, Carpenter knew, to call Maria and get his group together.

***********************************

Alan Burnett lay on a rooftop in central Baghdad doing his very best not to shiver to death. It felt like it was twenty degrees out, like it might snow at any minute, and he looked up at the yellow clouds and sniffed the air. Cordite and burning rubber filled the air, made his eyes water, and he rubbed them, then looked at his watch. 

0200. Two in the morning. 

A Marine sergeant lay next to him, an H&K PSG-9 resting on its bi-pod, his squad of SEALs and their Navy corpsman concealed in the bombed-out rubble below.

A member of Burnett's team was tailing a group of men suspected of supplying a group of insurgents with weapons; the plan was to monitor the group, follow them and see if they returned to the alley. They had been meeting with another, as yet unknown, agent; Burnett and the Marine were waiting near that spot, waiting to ID the unknown talent, and take him if the man was a known operator.

Burnett's headset burped to life. A simple Morse code sequence: the group was headed toward the alley.

Burnett flipped the night vision goggles down and turned them on. Four armed men edged along beside a house, the stopped and slipped into a rubble-filled entry, and after a moment one of the men flicked a cigarette lighter. A fifth man appeared suddenly, out of shadow at the distant end of the alley; this new one made his way down the way slowly toward the insurgents.

Even through the goggles Burnett could make out the agent; the man was a known Chinese intelligence operative and had long been suspected of being an intermediary between insurgent groups in Iraq and Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Burnett tapped the Marine next to him -- twice -- on the shoulder; the Marine nodded at the pre-arranged signal.

The agent stooped into the entryway and the sergeant squeezed the trigger: the agent's right elbow disappeared in a wet haze. The insurgents broke cover and were quickly cut down in a hail of silenced fire.

"Okay, corpsman up!" Burnett said over the command net; "Bring in the wagon. Let's load that guy and roll!"

"Roger that," a detached voice said over the radio. "What about the other bodies?"

"Leave 'em," Burnett said into the headset, then he turned to the sniper. "Right, Cookie, let's go see what we can get out of the creep."

Sergeant Bill Cooke stood and put his H&K into its zippered case, then turned and walked away without saying a word. When he was out of range he muttered something decidedly unkind about the CIA in general and Burnett in particular.

***********************************

Mohammed al-Zaq stood beside a brick wall, looked at children playing basketball in the shadow of the Vor Frelsers Kirke in central Copenhagen. The twisting spire, topped with a golden orb, brought to mind images of minarets at home and suddenly he longed to return to his little house on Ansari Street and walk to the park after school with his daughter. What kind of world would be left for her after he finished this assignment? 

All his instincts told him this operation was wrong. Everything that had been planned for so long was simply wrong, monstrously wrong. These children here, today, playing basketball under leaden skies, would go home to families tonight and at tables not unlike those in his own home, they would sit and talk about the fun they had had at school that day. Parents would ask sons and daughters what they had learned during the day, nod their heads and smile when distant memories of other days came back to them.  

Just a few blocks away stood the monolithic brick foreign ministry building. Andersen was walking home along Sankt Anna Gade, passing through the quaint Christianshavn neighborhood on her way to her apartment. The woman from the foreign ministry took this way home every afternoon; the route was now well mapped out and was being covered by his agents. The transceiver in his ear fed him updates on her progress; she was crossing the bridge now, passing the little sidewalk café. The street was packed with cars, people walking home filled the sidewalks. 

"Turning toward you now, on the Prinseessegade."

He saw her then; the red hair, the wide, clear blue eyes. She was quite beautiful, really. Such a waste, he told himself once again. As she drew near he turned and faced her, and he saw the surprise on her face when she recognized him. This satisfied him. She stopped walking, stood her ground.

"I thought we might walk together," he said to her in French.

"As you wish," Ingrid Andersen replied cooly. She was not a field operative, had no protective detail, and suddenly felt very exposed. She felt unsure of herself, off balance, and knew the Iranian held her at a disadvantage.

"Do you think it will snow?" he said.

"There is something in the air, yes. A change in the air."

"Change is inevitable."

"Yes."

"This is a lovely neighborhood. Have you lived here long?"

Andersen shuddered. She was being watched, tailed. What else, she wondered. Her phones? "What is it you want?" she said somewhat undiplomatically, for this meeting was well outside the bounds of normal diplomatic discourse. Almost illegal, in fact, in her protected little world.

"I thought it was the other way around, Ms Andersen."

She walked slowly, thinking, thinking, how to turn the tables on him.

He was content to let her dangle: "Does not your country seek contact with moderate voices? Voices that can help control the damage?"

"Oh? You represent a moderate faction?"

"There are those who want dialogue. An exchange of ideas. Yes."

"And you are among those?"

"Me? What I am is of no importance. Those who sent me. They seek an accommodation."

"An accommodation?"

Zaq stopped, looked up. "Well, here we are. Your apartment."

"You were saying? An accommodation?" She watched him for a moment; his thin face, sunken cheeks, reedy eyes -- all conspired to give the man a haunted look. And he was dangerous, she knew now.

"Yes. I feel snow in the air." He turned, looked her in the eye. "Well, good evening."

He turned again and walked to a gray BMW parked in front of the entrance to her building. He got in, waved to her once while he backed out of the space, then drove off slowly into the gathering night.

***********************************

Pol Jorgensen sat in his office, his chair turned to look out the window to the harbor beyond. All that now lay in darkness. He could just make out the New Opera House, its brilliant white light shimmering on black water, and he wondered for a moment what was playing now. Perhaps Gotterdammerung? 

He rubbed his eyes, reached for the coffee on his desk, wanted to do something, anything, to stop thinking about this goddamn problem. It would not go away. He leaned back, closed his eyes, and he was there.

Ingrid Andersen.

So beautiful. So sexy. So available. 

Why couldn't he make a move for her?

His telephone buzzed twice. The priority line.

He turned quickly and picked it up.

"We need to talk."

It was Andersen. His heartbeat quickened. "Alright."

"Stay there. In your office. I'll be there in ten minutes."

The line went dead, and he felt ill. Not here, not at his home, not tonight, not ever.

But what did she want?

He felt so inadequate.

***********************************

Maria Benevides-Carpenter was sitting in her office outside Tel Aviv, spooning blue stuff from a small plastic container of yoghurt that sat on top of a growing pile of paperwork. She was reading over an intel report from agents in northern Europe concerning the movement of Iranian agents all around the Baltic, and the more she read, the more worried she became. Why there? Denmark she could understand, but why Oslo? Why Riga?

A courier came in, handed her what she assumed would be a priority message, and Jonas nearly bumped into the kid as they crossed in her doorway.

"You eating that blueberry crud again?" he frowned at the blue goo in her spoon and rolled his eyes.

She opened the dispatch and pointed at the seat across from her desk. "Sit," she said. 

As section chief for European field operations, her area of responsibility had quadrupled in the days after 9/11, and now, at almost seventy years old, she was growing immeasurably tired of Israel's never ending conflict with the Arab world. Surely Israel had not been re-founded simply to exist in a state of perpetual war? The mechanisms of Israel's foundation, the UN mandate establishing the new state, the appropriation of Palestinian lands, both had set in motion events that appeared set and ready to consume the world. British Zionism, American Jewry, and echoes of trains and gas chambers had defined this new state; she had been born from a sea of flame and appeared set to die that way too.

She read the dispatch, pursed her dry lips and wrinkled her nose from time to time, but mostly felt a bone-chilling sense that something was very wrong.

"What is it?" Jonas said after looking at her read for a minute.

"Zaq. He's in Copenhagen. Some of his group tailed a woman from the foreign ministry home about a half hour ago. He was there."

"So we've got him again! Where did he go?"

"That's not what I'm worried about. He was sending the Danes a message, and crudely too. Do you have an angle on Katani?"

"The dissident? He's in Baghdad and wants to talk. Approached a Danish emissary. I know what you know."

"Then its no coincidence Zaq is in Copenhagen. They're trying to get to him before we do, or the Americans can figure it out."

Jonas nodded. "We'll have to go in, then, and take him. I'll get the team together."

"Are you going to go too?" She looked at her husband with cool, distant eyes. She already knew the answer.

"I think I have to. If we come into contact with Langley someone has got to be there to divert there attention."




Heaven's Rending Ch. 06



"You? Bait?"

"Sure, why not? They know I'm around, well, here. They never bought that faked death, and you know it. That game is over, especially after Burnett made us on Cypress."

"I wonder what they'd do if they got to you? After all these years?"

"I really don't think they care. Nobody cares about Kennedy anymore, what happened all those years ago. They got away with it, and time washed away the rest."

"I think you're wrong. I think they care very much, and probably a lot of people in America do to. You're the last loose end, you know."

He looked at her, saw her as she was in 1963. "It's a long way from Rio. From Spain."

She smiled at him. "Is it? Seems like yesterday."

"I love you. Will forever, ya know." He bent over and kissed her, then walked from the room before she could say a word.

She watched him go, listened as his footsteps faded, clutched her hands to her chest. "I love you too," she said to the sterile emptiness around her. 

*

©2008 Adrian Leverkuhn