Stud Rites

 
     
    LATE IN THE EVENING on a narrow street in Providence, Rhode Island, the handsome woman catches a stiletto heel in the antique-brick sidewalk. As she regains her balance, the diamond on the third finger of her left hand refracts the inadequate light of a pseudo-gas lamppost. She curses aloud. A phrase comes to her: one little candle. Better to light one than to curse the quaintness. She smiles. She has gained in wit far more than she has lost in looks. Besides, in preparation, she has shed forty pounds. Her rings are loose on her finger: the diamond and its friend, the platinum band. Her legs are as good as ever, and the tweed suits packed in her leather suitcase will serve their intended dual function of proclaiming her essential, if adopted, Englishness while disguising the dog hairs she is bound to pick up. Blocks ahead of her, a dog walker pauses to let a little terrier mix lift a leg on a tree. Owner and dog move on, turn a corner, vanish. The woman’s eyes search for what she has been told are the interior lights of her hired Porsche, her rental car, as it is called on this side of the Atlantic. An American car, she reflects, would have come equipped with some sort of automatic device, bells or whistles to warn her that she had flipped the wrong switch or failed to close the door all the way. The Porsche itself, an intelligent and subtle machine, may have issued an elusive caution that, if heeded, would have spared her this late-evening nuisance of running out to make sure that the battery did not drain. As it was, an anonymous neighbor had rung up her cousin, who could hospitably have volunteered to dash out instead of sending a long-lost relative on this bothersome errand.
    This dark street, however, threatens none of the famous violence in America so beloved by the British press. This is a safe street in a charming neighborhood. Except for the click of her heels on brick, the swoosh of autumn leaves, and the distant hum of traffic on some unseen thoroughfare, the handsome woman hears nothing. Reaching the Porsche, she is more irked than alarmed. Fumbling with the key, she peers through a window in the hope of spotting a low glow of light, a sign that she will not, after all, need to delay her morning’s departure to have the wretched battery recharged. She is eager to arrive at the final destination of her journey. She looks forward to hearing that she is as beautiful as ever, that she hasn’t changed at all. Her last feeling is one of mild irritation. Her last thought is that the miserable battery has, after all, gone dead. The blow is swift, powerful, and fatal. As her body falls, the dim light again catches her diamond. Hurried hands slip the rings from her finger. Frightened eyes do not see the woman as handsome. In the murderer’s view, she has not aged well.
    More than twenty-four hours later, in a poorly lighted parking lot on a second dark night, the old man impatiently awaits his companion. What can be taking so damned long? The pollen count must be high. The air is damp and thick. Breathing is difficult. The old man is in a foul mood. His position entitles him to respect. His gnarled hands pat his pockets in search of cigarettes. He never coughs. Rather, he admits to a frequent need to clear his chest. The sound could be mistaken for the low rumble of a big dog. Hearing it now, the murderer is not deceived. This blow, too, is swift and powerful. This blow, too, is deadly.
     

 
     
    RELICS: venerated remains.
    Buddha’s tooth, snatched from his funeral pyre.
    The shroud of Turin. If not Christ’s image, whose?
    The stole of Saint Hubert. Presented on the occasion of his consecration by an angel of the Virgin Herself, it was a narrow, yard-long band of silk interwoven with gold, but of incomparably greater spiritual than commercial value. Sacred coin, it was bound to appreciate. And so it did! When Saint Hubert died in a.d. 727, he bequeathed the stole to his budding cult; and for a thousand years, from all over France, vast hordes of pilgrims trudged in haste to a small abbey deep in the Ardennes in search of the miraculous healing that flowed from the Donor through the saint to the sacred relic. The need of the pilgrims was great. In the stole lay their only salvation. All, you see, had been bitten by dogs.
    As had we—Heaven preserve us!—the hundreds of souls who’d made the pilgrimage across the globe, from Great Britain, from Holland, from Japan, from Canada, and from all