Vade Mecum

Renee’s apartment building dispersed the early evening light and scattered it onto the wet pavement. I stepped over the shards of glass near the steps and slipped into the foyer. I rang her.

"Hello?"

"I’m here," I said through the intercom.

She buzzed me through the door. I lumbered up the steps to the fourth floor. Winded, I knocked on her door and she opened it. I wondered if I should feel guilty being here. I shivered as she poured the wine.

I once made a vow. The preacher said that love never fails. So be it, I thought. My vows were a tabula rasa to me, a script I was creating and preparing to act out. The car was soaped up, and as we slid into our seats began our journey, its wheels reminded me of the rings we now wore: both were vital in whisking us away. But nobody gave a fuck about us after we said our vows, the vows being paramount to everyone. Sarah’s mother was so proud to have finally gotten her married, to a minister no less.

"Last night I had the strangest dream," I told Renee from the floor in her dimly lit sitting room. Her moist eyes reflected the flickering candles. "We were here. You smelled of flowers and cinnamon."

"Your dreams, they frighten me," she said between sips of wine. She lounged in her leather love seat. I looked into her bedroom. Her computer was turned on, waiting for commands. A human heart pulsed in a deep blue field on her screen. Renee took a bite from her baguette before laying it on the end table, accidentally tipping her ashtray. Ashes drifted to the floor.

"Maybe it wasn’t a dream," I suggested, still staring at her computer. I wanted her.

"You’re blue," she said. I couldn’t bring myself to smile.

My son turned four last year. I am constantly amazed at all he knows and what he picks up on even when he appears to not be listening. But I was unprepared when he asked me if I was going to die.

"No," I said, fingering the crucifix around my neck.

"You’ll live all day long?" he asked with a crinkled brow.

"Yes, all day," I replied. He smiled and seemed content with that answer, but I trembled, my body responding to something I had no awareness of. I felt like the butt end of a joke. Several months later I left Sarah. I see him some, but it’s perfunctory: me the dad, he the kid. He hasn’t asked me lately if I’m going to die.

"I was in your room, on your bed. You had several candles lit. The flames danced in anticipation. Your hands and knees dented the mattress while your hair swept over your quilt. I couldn’t see your face, your expression."

"Why do you insist in telling me such strange things?" she asked.

"A dream--is that so strange?" I replied. I moved closer to the couch and rested my head on her knees. She suddenly jerked her legs apart and my chin hit the cushion with astonishing speed. And then, before I could lift my head, she brought her legs together, trapping my head between her bony knees. I tried to pull my head out, but she squeezed tighter, crunching the cartilage in my ears.

"You’re really hurting me," I said.

She loosened her grip and I pulled my head up. "Keep your fucking dreams to yourself," she said.

I used to love to talk on the telephone with Sarah. She had a breezy voice that fit perfectly inside my ear. Yet there were other voices I was attracted to. I once kept a firefighter on the telephone longer than was necessary just so I could linger in her voice. She had called as part of a fund raising project for the fire department. Before long, I had her describing for me her fire uniform in precise detail. Her voice, slightly tinged with smoke, was as delicate as the fine, golden threading weaving its way throughout the stitching in her zippered pants. She was cradled in my ear and I in hers.

But it was Sarah’s voice I loved the most. We dated in college before she moved some two hundred miles away for a social work job. Later, while I was attending seminary, I asked her over the telephone to marry me.

"Yes, of course," she answered.

The following weekend I implored Sarah to drive home to help pick out the wedding bands. I chose simple gold ones, and I insisted engraving on the rings, "My beloved is mine and I am his." She seemed unconcerned about the rings.

"Love is more than a ring," she said.

"Don’t you like the gold?" I asked. She didn’t answer.

As we were driving back to my apartment, Sarah reached for my hand. I looked at her and realized I was disappointed that her voice, the luscious voice, didn’t match her appearance. I was struck how the yellow lines on the highway numbed my face.

"Any beer?" I asked.

"You know I don’t drink beer," Renee replied.

"Only diet sodas."

"And red wine, don’t forget."

I shut the refrigerator door, walked to the sink, and filled a glass with water. She sat at her table, thumbing through a catalogue. She read aloud a description of a fountain that promised tranquility from a hectic life. As she read, I watched the miniscule particles that floated gently in my water gain volition. The particles seemed to hear her voice and move in tandem with the intensity of her speech, finally crashing into each other and clouding my water. Renee grabbed my trembling hand. I looked up. Her eyebrows were raised in question. It was then that I made a vow to myself to baptize her.

Sarah and I were married one Saturday in June. The wedding was a simple one, not frilly, with minimal guests. I stood alone while Sarah’s sister stood next to her. A friend from seminary, now a minister, presided. The text for the homily was from John, chapter six:

     In all truth I tell you, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of man and
     drink his blood, you have no life in you.  Anyone who does eat my flesh
     and drink my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise that person up on
     the last day.  For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.  Whoever
     eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in that person.

 The other text was from First Corinthians:

     For as with the human body which is a unity although it has many
     parts - all the parts of the body, though many, still making up one single
     body - so it is with Christ.

"Those were strange passages for a wedding homily, don’t you think?" Sarah remarked to me as we sat in the plane on our way to the beach. I watched shadows from sporadic clouds settle across the mountains below us.

"How so?" I asked.

"Well all that eating and drinking the blood and the body--it was just a little much for me."

I felt cramped inside the plane. I wanted to stretch and rest lazily like the clouds drifting across the mountains below us. I wanted her to trust my choice of scripture.

"But the blood and flesh are unified," I protested.

"I suppose," Sarah said. She shut her eyes.

"Are you ready to lose yourself?" I whispered into her ear. She smiled without opening her eyes. I touched her pink fingers, twisted her ring, and rested.

"Let me tell you something, Renee."

"It’s not a dream, is it?"

"Mostly no." Renee eyed me warily, and then, flicking red wine on me, told me to proceed.

"The night before my wedding I saw Sarah’s dress hanging in her parent’s spare room closet. As I shut the bedroom door, I could hear their voices in the living room reminiscing about childhood friends and events. I lifted the dress from the closet and spread it out on the bed. It was beautiful, precise, and ivory laced. I thought it fit her personality well. Her veil rested on the dresser next to the clock. I lifted it gently, imagining Sarah’s luminous eyes peering out from behind it. The living room voices suddenly swelled and I dropped the veil in fright. The fake pearls danced atop the headband, keeping time with the ticking clock. The voices crescendoed into laughter. I could hear Sarah’s voice above the din, laughing hysterically.

"I moved to the bed with Sarah’s dress and I held her sleeve, her hand. Her stomach was flat as I stroked it, her breasts soft. The nape of her neck rested in my hand as I rolled onto her dress. She was incredibly sexy. I kissed her face and sternum. I lost myself inside her dress.

"Later that night I dreamed I lifted Sarah’s veil only to find another one behind it. That one, too, I lifted, only to discover another one. Infuriated, I tore it away, and there was yet a fourth one. I could hear her from behind the veils, her voice faint, repeatedly calling my name; yet I couldn’t see her. Soon the whole room was littered with veils. I trampled on them, screaming, finally awakening myself."

Sarah wandered aimlessly down the beach while I took an opportunity to lounge near the surf on a beach towel under which I had made a sand pillow. A book shaded my eyes.

"Nice nap?" Sarah asked. She leaned over and kissed me, her white nose greasing mine. She smelled like a coconut.

"I wasn’t asleep," I said.

"Then how do you explain Karl Barth on your face?"

"Osmosis," I joked. I reached for her fingers and toyed them with my own. Her cuticles felt swollen under the tips of my fingers. Her skin was smooth, silken almost, and her white spotted nails felt nacreous. I shut my eyes and fingered the tight, new skin on her knuckles.

"Where’s your ring?" I asked suddenly, jarring Sarah.

She looked out to the ocean. "Out there."

"What?"

"I was swimming and it slipped off as I was coming back to shore."

"Why didn’t you grab it?" I demanded.

"I tried, but the sand and rough surf swallowed it."

I stood up, grabbed my goggles, and started down the beach.

"Where are you going?" she asked. "It’s only a ring."

I stopped walking and turned around. She hadn’t moved from her spot. "Come with me," I demanded. "Show me where you lost it!" She stood there, motionless, her feet planted in the sand. Anger overcame me, so I turned away and went into the sea to find my gold band.

One day, after a particularly intense argument with Sarah, I took my son out for a drive. Rushing him out the door and into the car, my gut retching with hate, I ignored his innocent pleas for an explanation concerning my erratic behavior. After speeding away and running a stop sign, my son asked, "Daddy, are the birds in a hurry too?" I choked back my tears as I softly braked and stopped the car at a city park. I didn’t take my eyes off him the whole time he played.

Renee answered her door one evening in a saffron sarong. It was wrapped tightly around her hips, and I had a sudden urge to carry my Philistine goddess to the temple in Ashkelon. She seemed impressed that I had walked fifteen blocks in a cold rain to see her. Or perhaps she was only happy to see the wine bottles under each arm. Nevertheless, she let me in and I hung my coat and shirt on the hook behind the door. She threw a towel at me after she took the bottles. I could hear fill two glasses. She returned carrying a tray with brie, wine, a baguette, and several lit candles.

"Haute cuisine," she said as she hiked her sarong up her thighs and settled into her love seat. Isat on the floor.

"No diet Coke?" I asked.

She held up her wine. "To the rain."

I clinked her glass with mine, and we proceeded to sip our wine quietly, listening to the rain as it washed through the down spout. The sound of the rain set me at ease. It rejuvenated the dried melancholy inside me, strangely comforting me.

"You’ve dreamt again, haven’t you?" she blurted. Startled, I spilled wine into my lap.

"How do you know?" I asked.

"You’re trembling."

"I was hoping to get drunk before I proceeded," I said.

"Ah, ministers and alcohol--a fine mix!" she exclaimed as she set her glass down and poured more wine. "An erotic dream, I suppose?"

"Yes, but your body had my wife’s face. I found that to be an odd sensation."

"All lovers are false," she said. "Your eyes are shut. You’re essentially blind." She pulled the hair from her eyes, exhaled, and drank the rest of her wine in one large gulp.

"Then why do you continue with me?"

She scratched her lip, smiled faintly, and shrugged. "Who said you were my lover?"

I used to call home every Thursday morning while Sarah and my son were eating breakfast. I was a nice break from my sermon writing. Once, after a small conversation about backhoes, my son whispered into the telephone, "You’re my best daddy. I love you."

"Did you prompt him?" I asked Sarah after talking to my son.

"No, of course not," she answered softly. I shut my eyes. I could see her mouth moving, forming words, the crinkles in her lips giving traction to the words she spoke.

After I hung up the telephone, I crumbled my sermon and tossed it in the corner. I pushed my bible off my desk, not in anger, but in revelatory bliss. It, along with my sermon, seemed utterly pointless in light of the experiential.

I removed the cross from my neck, opened it, and looked at the Gospel of John written in tiny print within it. I took several pictures of my son from my desk, removed them from their frames, and cut them up, arranging them carefully within the confines of my crucifix. He was splayed out, but I managed to fit him in. I put him around my neck, my vade mecum.

The following Sunday I led my congregation in the Eucharist. I presided in the front, away from the pulpit, with heavy eyes. The light filtering through the stained glass windows was a subdued yellow. As my congregation left their stolid pews and filed to the front to receive the bread and wine, I noticed how much they looked like resigned and dejected animals. I felt utter loneliness in the midst of nearly two hundred people. I wanted to scream, "This is my body, broken for you! This is my blood, spilled for you! Do this in remembrance of me!" The monotonous crunching of clean, white wafers swelled into a vertiginous wave inside my ears. I looked up at the window and saw Jesus holding a lamb. He looked tired, like had had been walking all night looking for the stupid lamb’s owner. He seemed to be in need of a beer and a smoke. I tried to push away the thought that Jesus was only a crispy wafer and an urbane sip of sanguine wine, but the thoughts wouldn’t leave. Eat my flesh and drink my blood, Jesus said. Backhoes are neat because they dig holes, my son said. This was to be my last Eucharist service: I left the ministry two months later.

The salt water filled my goggles every time I went under. Although I searched nearly the entire afternoon for my ring, I couldn’t find it. Sarah’s stubborn unwillingness to help me find the ring surprised me.

"You won’t find it," she implored from the shore. "The waves and sand have claimed it."

I kept diving down, trying to ignore her. Soon she began walking down the shore.

"Where are you going?" I called from the surf.

"For a walk. Come with."

"Go on without me," I said as I emptied water from my goggles.

Later that evening I kissed Sarah’s cheek, then slipped on my sandals. She was lying in bed, reading. Her skin was red.

"Are you going to search for your ring some more?" she asked without looking up from her magazine.

"No, a walk only," I said as I latched the door and slipped out into the clear night. The resort lay along a crescent-shaped beach. I walked along the surf and watched the waves foam up and glitter in the bright moonlight. The palmettos beyond the slight dunes rustled in the warm ocean air. The humid, salty breeze made me sticky. Soon I could hear music on the wind. Curious, I left the beach, following a weathered boardwalk over the grassy dune into an open pavilion. The music was coming from speakers, randomly placed around the pavilion, that looked like small boulders. Ecstatic couples were dancing inside the pavilion, throbbing with the heavy, hypnotic music. Most of the guys had dreads in their hair, and the women were bra less, odd sights for a ritzy resort. Their bodies were amassed into a tangled mess on the pavilion floor. The DJ looked hapless behind his mixing board, and the smoke from his cigarette followed suit, languishing nonchalantly around his face, slightly animated from the solitary ceiling fan above him. I skipped the dance floor and wandered into the pool area. No one was there. Near the bar, a spa hissed and boiled, spitting foam onto its ledge. The bubbles tickled my fingers as I dipped my hand into it. Desiring water all over my body, I pulled off my shirt and eased myself in. Foam undulated at my chest. I am unsure whether I slept or merely lounged in the realm between wakefulness and sleep; yet in that state of dulled consciousness, of near-sleep, I noticed something quite unusual: a toe on my knee. It lingered momentarily then gradually crept up my leg toward my stomach. The toe ceased moving just inside my thigh. I relaxed and my legs fell apart. A foot began to stroke me. I opened my eyes. Across the water was a young woman, her hair piled high on her head. Her eyes were closed. I squeezed my eyes shut when her other foot found mine and nudged it towards her. When she was able, she grasped my foot in her hand, slid it onto her bare stomach, then eased it between her legs. She gently rolled onto my foot, leaning forward, then back, and then forward again, her pace quickening all the while. Suddenly, gasping lightly, she released my foot. Pausing momentarily, I opened my eyes. She was no longer in the water. Her wet footprints trailed across the patio. She was probably on the beach by now, I thought. I lingered a few minutes longer before heading back to my room. Sarah was asleep with the light on.

"Had I ever told you that story?" I asked Renee. We were at her favorite sidewalk café.

"Carte du jour," she said flagging down a waiter.

"I recall I really felt no shame," I added.

"Brie en brioche," she said. The waiter nodded then briskly left us. She sipped her wine.

"Perhaps you were getting back at Sarah for losing your precious ring," she continued. She grabbed her purse and fished her compact out. She dug at a lost eyelash and blinked ferociously.

"The problem is that I was unfaithful to Sarah, and I felt no remorse."

Renee lit a cigarette and said, "Were you unfaithful to her when you fucked her dress the day before you were married?"

Before I had a chance to answer, the waiter brought us our bread and cheese. Renee ate heartily.

At El Diablo’s, a bar downtown, I ordered a Bloody Mary. It was Sunday afternoon, and I had just taken my son back to Sarah’s. The bartender shook my drink, poured it into a chilled glass, and stuck a stalk of bright green celery into it. I sprinkled in some extra Tabasco and took my drink to a booth and watched the red creep up the celery’s veins. My shirt hung heavily, nearly touching the table, from the crucifix in my pocket. I pulled it out and looked at it. My son was mostly there, although a growing, sizable portion of him was missing, mostly in his stomach area. In tiny print that I could barely read I saw the words of Jesus breaking through my son’s flesh: I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, with me in him, bears fruit a plenty, for cut off from me you can do nothing. The words then faded into his waist.

When I looked up, I noticed a young woman watching me. She was angular, dressed in black, and, except for her lips, which were painted red, she wore no makeup. She smiled when we made eye contact, and then walked over and sat opposite me.

"Nice crucifix," she said. "Jesus in there?"

"No, my son," I replied.

"Is that one of those Gospel of John crosses?" she asked.

"Yes, but I pasted my son over that."

"May I have a look?"

I held the cross for her to see. She reached for it, fingered the fake gems, and peered inside. "He’s cute," she said. I took a drink.

"What are you drinking?" she asked.

"A Bloody Mary."

"Oh, how appropriate," she said. "You look like the priestly, religious type. May I have a sip?"

I slid my glass to her. She took a sip and then sucked the juice from her lips.

"That’s good. Thank you," she said as she stood to leave. She crossed the restaurant and left the building. I looked down at my drink. Her lipstick had left a cracked simulacrum of her lips on my Collins glass. I picked it up and examined it, a perfect stranger’s lips intimately gracing my glass. I brought the sweating glass to my mouth and licked the lipstick. It tasted like wax and vodka, and I was unable to finish my drink.

In order to grasp the depth of my perceived betrayal of Sarah, I, a few weeks after returning from our honeymoon, invited her to join me for an evening walk through a wooded park near our house. It was a still, humid evening. Everything drooped ungracefully in the heat. Mosquitoes zipped around us. The trail ambled near a river that was desperately low: where water once flowed lay little pools of green muck. Only the sycamores looked vigorous. I swatted at the mosquitoes on my neck. Sarah dug a gnat from the corner of my eye.

"Beautiful woods," she said as she flicked the gnat from her finger.

She turned and began walking. I watched a mosquito land on her shoulder. Its abdomen soon swelled and turned red. I tapped in with my palm, leaving a red streak on her shoulder. Sarah jumped when I killed the mosquito.

"Couldn’t you feel it biting you?"

"No," she said.

"How could you not feel a mosquito biting you?" I asked, annoyed.

Sarah shrugged. I grabbed her arm and turned her toward me. I could smell her shower gel. Her lips parted, on the verge of words, but I covered her mouth with my hand.

"I betrayed you," I said, telling her the story of the woman in the spa. "And," I concluded, "as far as I know, she never once opened her eyes as she rubbed against me, attempting to satisfy some deep sexual need within her." I hesitated momentarily, gauging Sarah’s emotive state. She was serene, her eyes emotionless. Two mosquitoes were hunkered down on her forehead. The trees were motionless, fearful of sweat. "And, if I may add, she succeeded."<.p>

"And you?" Sarah asked. "Did you succeed?"

"She left before my turn," I said, looking into the woods. "And I feel awful because I don’t feel remorse for my actions."

"And you feel no remorse, you say?" she asked. She continued walking. Bugs swarmed her as she glided down the sylvan path. We never approached the subject again.

Renee lumbered clumsily from the table and onto the sidewalk in front of the café. It was mid-afternoon and she had nearly drunk a complete bottle of red wine. I paid the water and ran to catch her, nearly tripping over the mimes on the sidewalk trying to escape from their little boxes.

"Will you come up?" she asked after I caught up.

"Of course," I said breathlessly.

"Will you feel remorse," she asked, "just for me, just this once?"

"Why?"

"It’s illicit."

"It makes it more fun, you mean?"

"Precisely," she said, squishing her nose with her thumb. The sun glinted through the gingko trees lining the sidewalk, their fan shaped leaves flitting little gusts of air our way.

"You know remorse is not something I can conjure," I said as we approached her building.

"And you were a minister," she said, running her hands through her hair. "Aren’t religious folk supposed to feel remorse? Wasn’t Christ’s passion all the more aroused because he felt the remorse of sin?"

I was amused with her rare talkativeness and her sudden interest in theology. "His body, broken for you; his blood, spilled for you," I said.

She grabbed my hand and led me upstairs into her apartment. "No dreams today," she said, pushing me to the floor by her sofa. She went into the kitchen and opened some wine, giving me a glass before disappearing into her bedroom. Faure’s Requiem seeped slowly from around her door. Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. After a few minutes she cracked her door open and whispered, "Crepe de chine."

"Color?"

"Blue," she answered, "and it flows like water over my body." I just stood there as she pulled the door open a bit more and popped the button on her jeans. I saw her blue underpants.

"Are you coming?" she asked as she retreated into her room

The music lured me into her room. She was on her bed, staring out the window. The sun, shining through her window, illuminated a bright square on her floor. Particles, moving gracefully, lingered through the sun-made shaft and grasped onto each other and danced like old lovers on a dance floor. I watched the light box slowly creep across her rug and latch onto her quilt, effortlessly pulling itself up the side of her bed. I had to avoid that patch of light. Its presence in her room unnerved me. Renee suddenly turned to me and pulled me onto her bed. She put her left palm on my forehead and pushed me backwards, pinning my arms with her knees. Straddling me, she pulled off her shirt and undid the remaining buttons on her jeans. I jerked my hand away as my fingers began to warm in the creeping light. Renee dragged her hair across my face and then lay her self against me, her breasts against my chest, her mouth on mine, her tongue teasing mine. Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna. The light crept forward. I tried to wiggle my body away. Renee thought this funny and giggled, trying to imitate my movement. I turned my head and saw the daisies on her windowsill. They looked pathetic, choked by the sun. I put my hands on her back and tried to roll her over. She groaned and began to slide up and sown my thigh. Her jeans gaped and rolled halfway down her hips. The keys in my pocket poked me unmercifully as Renee moved with such intensity that I, in fact, began to worry that my denim would fray her silk underwear. The light box was completely on the bed and I felt it warm my left arm. I lay quietly on her bed, unmoved by all her commotion, more obsessed with the approaching light than sex. She seemed to not notice my quietude, the fact that I was quite clothed, or the sun illuminating us. She suddenly arched her back and bit her lip. Sweat glazed her face. Her eyes were closed as she grabbed my cross and whispered, "My flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Live in me." She collapsed onto me as the light box encapsulated us. No clouds hid its intensity. We lay together, unmoving, a tableau vivant as the opranos sang In paradism deducant Angeli. An ambulance wailed down the street outside her window. Soon the light began to fade as late afternoon approached. The light box crawled down the other side of her bed and onto the floor.

I slipped Renee off me easily. She was asleep. I walked over to the windowsill to move the daisies into the shade. Pausing beside her, I tilted the vase so that a trickle of water moistened her head.

"In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I baptize you with water," I mumbled as the water wet her hair. Her skin tightened and prickled, but otherwise she didn’t move. I pulled a sheet over her bare chest to keep her warm. The lock clicked as I pulled her door shut and walked down the stairs and into the shadowed street.

It’s six in the morning. I have just finished writing. The nurse will be bringing breakfast soon. It’s been two months. Renee said she’ll try to swing by and see how I’m doing. Fine, I’ll tell her. Just fine. I thumb through my notebook and read: His body, crushed, broken. The windshield, shattered on the road, sprinkled delicately with blood. Sarah gone, too. Ravenously injured. Me, the coroner’s friend. Do you know these people? he asked. Can you tell me who they are? I touched Sarah’s serene face. My boy’s I could not. I wear his cross.