The Dance Of The Spiral Virgins

Fifteen

Partially hidden by a column separating the rooms, Maribeth shot Marvin a look of confusion. He stood frozen, the color in his face drained.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
He replied, “Not a good time to meet your folks, dear. I’m getting out of here.”
“Wait a minute. Wait a minute. What’s the matter?”
“No time to explain,” he whispered. He bent down on weak knees and began to collect the books hurriedly. “Here,” he said thrusting “Mitochondrial Mutations In Primates” at her. “Just say you dropped this. Don’t mention me.”
“But…”
“Maribeth? Is that you, darling?” Trish Harris’ voice whirled down the length of the entrance hall and round the corner where her daughter stood, newly in possession of a book Marvin never expected to lay eyes on again (and which she had no inclination to ever read). He had turned by then and was on his way back to the rear hall. The question in his mind was, should he even bother to go downstairs, or simply continue on to the rear door, the garage, the driveway, and then to the street beyond. At the far end stood Anselm. He wondered nothing at all.
Maribeth shouted, “Wait!”
The sheer volume of her statement—the announcement to the first family and their visitors because of it— answered Marvin’s question. He bounded the distance to the door, balancing the weight and mass of the books in one arm, extending the free hand toward the knob when he drew near it. The hand met Anselm’s midsection. Quickly then, Marvin’s full body. He bounced backward, landing on his rear, dazed and confused, his wrist nearly broken when the hand it carried met the angel’s unseen body. He sat for a moment watching the multi-colored stars whizzing in front of his eyes.
“Ohmagosh! Marvin!” Maribeth was at his side by the time Betelgeuse fell below the horizon, and the sun began to brighten the old man’s eastern hemisphere. She fell to her knees and put a hand to his cheek. “Oh, when will this knocking yourself out come to an end?”
Soon, hopefully. The brain, even the super-brain, can only take so much abuse. He wasn’t thinking this, however. He really wasn’t thinking much of anything at all this time around. Marvin’s brain in the space of less than a week had been spilled out onto the ground, stuffed back in by the best and most expensive doctors in town, been packed with two or three gigs of the world’s greatest literature—and now this.
Anselm waved a finger over him. He hadn’t intended for Marvin to meet a stone wall, forgetting momentarily that he was indeed that wall. Even angels are capable of miscalculation.
Marvin shook the remaining stars away, and realized what had happened, at least in the preceding moment. To him. From his perspective he’d simply run into the door. Something similar had happened a few years back when he had lifted a turkey from the frozen section at the Piggly Wiggly Market, and then made a mad dash for the rear door leading to the alley. That time he’d wound up out cold for twenty minutes as a result, and soon afterward spent a month in jail for shoplifting. Sitting in jail he wondered why he’d been so stupid to have stolen a turkey to begin with, having no way to cook it. Couple that with the fact that it was mid-January, colder than the hubs of hell, he was sleeping beneath the loading dock (colder than the hubs of hell), and that the frozen turkey would remain frozen until May at the earliest…
Just a crazy impulse. A genetic predisposition to steal.
“Are you okay?” Maribeth asked him.
“Yeah, I’m fine, I think. Help me get these books…”
“Just lie still for a minute. You might have suffered a concussion,” she said, forgetting for the moment that her father and mother, a Major from the Salvation Army Mission, and an officer of the law were likely…well, there they were before she had time to forget.
“Maribeth! What on earth is going on?” Mums.
Time for a bit of creative thinking, Maribeth was thinking. She rose to the occasion as the Major prepared to offer appropriate biblical verses, and the cop scoured Marvin’s vaguely familiar face with his eagle-sharp eyes.
“Who is this?” Richard Harris demanded. “What’s going on here?”
Maribeth addressed them.
“Daddy, Mums, I want you to meet Mr. Marvin…”
“Fahl-graf…stad,” Marvin blurted. Professor Fahlgrafstad. Forgive me. I fainted. The heart, you understand.”
“Oh dear,” Trish Harris said, bringing a hand to her mouth. She knelt quickly beside her daughter, readying to help the stricken man. The Major had long ago forgotten all about Marvin Fahlgrafstad—Fuster, and fortunately for the then-naked Marvin, the incident at the Mission had gone unnoticed. The cop narrowed his eyes. Something was terribly familiar about the face.
“What is he doing in our home?” Richard took the reins.
Maribeth was cooking by then. “He came by with his books to…umm…show me what…he’s been reading. Up. On. Oh, it’s wonderful, Daddy!” She spoke more quickly, now, with confidence, having gotten past the clumsy part of her lie. “He’s exploring the mysteries of the human gene. Stuff. I don’t really understand it as well as he does, but he wants me to be his…lab assistant over at the university. Isn’t that a kill? Me? Your only daughter?”
This seemed to excite Trish. “Oh my, yes. But I had no idea you were studying science, darling. When did this come about?”
The cop crinkled his mouth, stepped forward, and peered more closely at Professor Fahlgrafstad. “You look awful familiar. Have we met somewhere?” His tone was anything but pleasant; in point of fact, downright suspicious-sounding. Marvin smiled dumbly, as if his encounter with the door still had his brain rattled, and then turned his attention back to the first family’s exchange.
“Yes,” Richard added, “when did you get interested in science? A professor? At Denver University?”
It was not unheard of for a perverted university professor to bedazzle a beautiful female student with twenty letter-long words of praise, and then charm her into bed. Not that many years ago Richard had been a student too, but with a keen future politician’s eye. Men never change, essentially, he knew. His premature assessment of Marvin’s M.O. was, however, at least one beautiful girl off the mark. Marvin was deeply indebted to Maribeth, but interested in her body he was not. Further, though the governor had no way of knowing anything at all about this, it was never Marvin’s intention to wow the woman of his dreams with heady words. His intention was simply to win her with his youth.
“Oh Daddy, please. You know very well I’ve always watched The Science Channel. But to answer your question, I met Mist…Professor Fus-fahlgrafstad a few semesters ago on campus in Biology. His area of research astounded me. He…well, maybe he could explain it better than I could.” Maribeth looked imploringly at Marvin the scholar to rescue her. Marvin thought hard on his coming dissertation for a second or two.
“Certainly, my dear.
"Sir,” he said looking up at the governor, “I intend to unravel the mysteries of the human gene and then reverse my age. Quite simply.”
Richard stumbled backward in shock—or anger—and glowered at his nit-wit daughter. He regained his composure and replied to Marvin with a scowl.
“Get out, you idiot.”
“Daddy!”
“Be quiet, Maribeth. You must be insane.” Richard turned to the cop.
“Get this nincompoop out of here.”
The cop came alive, the look of recognition rising like a star bursting in his eyes. “I KNEW I’d seen you somewhere! You’re the drunken bum that flipped me off this morning. Get up!”
“Oh dear…”
“Mama! It’s true. Mister Fuster is a genius, I swear it. I saw him read an entire book on the way home from Araby’s.”
“Fuster! I remember you,” the Major exploded.
“Get up,” the cop ordered again. Marvin sat quietly, disobeying the law for the thousandth time in his adult life.
“I thought he said his name was Fahlgrafstine,” Trish said, the look on her face betraying her growing confusion.
“Get him out!” Richard ordered the cop once more with force.
“Mama, he can’t leave! He’s been hurt…through no fault of his own. In our home! If you let Daddy throw an injured genius out, I’ll simply die! If I don’t keel over dead, I swear, I’ll starve myself to death instead. He’s done nothing wrong…” And on Maribeth went as the cop disregarded her pleading threats. He grabbed Marvin by the collar—the collar of one of Richard’s cashmere sweaters—and yanked his frail body to its feet as though the wasted carcass encasing Marvin was a plastic trash bag filled with crumpled paper. Marvin coughed as the collar cut off his air supply.
“You beast! Leave this poor old man alone,” Maribeth screamed. She launched herself at the cop, pounding on his back. The cop diplomatically paid no attention to her pummeling and began to read Marvin his Mirandas. Marvin coughed more.
“He’s nothing more than a God-forsaken alcoholic derelict,” the Major advised anyone who might care to listen. “I can attest to that first hand, with God as my witness.”
Maribeth continued to engage the cop’s back with both fists as she turned her head and snapped at the Major. “Oh shut up you old fart. Why are you here anyway? Begging for money? Get out!”
“All right, all right! Stop,” Richard said, wading into the fray. Marvin’s face was contorted and turning purplish in the death grip of the v-neck. The officer released him from his grip, at which Marvin collapsed onto the floor for the second time. Maribeth and her mother, hands of mercy extended, came quickly to his aid.
“’… And, when he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of Heaven so fine that…’ What…what was it he said?” Marvin sputtered. “I have seen eternity staring at me this evening.” He sat slumped and staring forward, mumbling at his hands that lay palms-up on his knees. Maribeth and Trish fussed over him, but it was as though he had left the hallway and the mayhem slowly fading around him.
Richard motioned the officer to move back, but paid no attention to the Major, who had only come, uninvited, to ask the governor to attend a gala dinner at the Mission, which was to be prepared in its entirety by the residents, none of whom could he possibly know had ever cooked anything more complex than a hard boiled egg. The Major had complete confidence in the hand of God in the matter at any rate. His

God who had urged the saintly man in a cathartic-induced vision to personally visit the state’s dignitary and request his and his family’s presence week after next. In the long run (the Major failed to admit to himself) the attendance would draw the interest of hundreds, perhaps, of the wealthy, along with their well-oiled pocketbooks. For his part, six foot-five Officer Daniel O’Reilly had simply been walking by when he'd spotted the Major, an old acquaintance. In the short course of their congenial conversation he found himself rambling up the Mansion steps beside the Major, unaware that within the hour he would have personally met the beloved governor, his Florence Nightingale-like wife, and the sodden bum he had rousted earlier that day. He would later recall, mostly, having met Maribeth with her viper’s tongue and John L. Sullivan fists.
The governor looked down on the blue-tinted (now) gentleman wearing his sweater, trousers, argyle socks and comfortable loafers, being mothered by Saints Nit Wit and Tricia of Avila. He set aside his urge to throttle Maribeth for the moment and turned to the Major and Officer O’Reilly. Over the Major’s shoulder he spied Consuela and Robert peaking round the corner at the kitchen. Richard spoke to the Major and O’Reilly.
“Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse us.
“Robert,” he said raising his eyes, “please escort our visitors to the door. Major,” he said dropping his gaze, “we will check our calendar to see if the night of your dinner is open. Thank you.” To O’Reilly, “I think the situation is under control. Thank you for your help. We’ll see to the professor, or whatever he is. Goodnight.”
Robert had stepped forward, halfway down the hall, and waited quietly until both men offered their valedictions to the family, and then retreated toward the exit. Following the two men, he glanced back over his shoulder quickly at the bum who had weaseled his way into the sanctity of the home. He could not help but see Maribeth sitting on her haunches caressing the indigent’s face as though by doing so she could somehow erase what the interloper truly was in his heart.
Marvin found his voice as the tempest subsided.
“’It shall be so: Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.’”
“Is he speaking to the Major?” Trish asked her daughter.
Maribeth turned to her mother. “Mama, we simply have

to help him,” she whispered.

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Texte: (c) Patrick Sean Lee, 2012
Lektorat: Patrick Sean Lee
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 06.07.2012

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