I leave on February 13 for my UK tour of Hardball.  Kerry Hood,

Kerry Hood chaperoning Sara on the Cam

who is the Toscanini of publicity, has me covering as much of England as we can manage in a week.  I hope that I’ll see some of the UK readers who’ve been posting here along the way.

New Book

I love the titles people have been suggesting for the new book. I think I have enough to go on, and will let you know before I leave for England which one seems to work best.

James Thurber once wrote, “The Beaver is a Working Fool, Who Went to Manual Training School,” an absurd couplet that has clung to me all these years because I seem to be a working fool.  I finished the book last week, after rewriting the middle six chapters twice and the ending five times, and I am sort of in a blur right now.

I’m posting a chapter here, in which, V I is indulging in her favorite hobby, breaking & entering.  I’ve had interesting protest letters on V I’s hobby–”You think you’re so moral,” they tend to read, “and yet your character breaks the law.”  And all I can say is, “right you are.”

Chapter 34

NightWork

We drove down to Club Gouge in Petra’s Pathfinder, Tim in the front seat with my cousin, me drowsing in the back.  I’d collected my picklocks from my car’s glove compartment, and locked my handbag, with Chad’s black armor mitt, in my trunk: I planned to drive straight to the Cheviot labs in the morning.

“So, is this, like your first break-in?” Petra asked Tim.  “It’s my—I don’t know—do I count the time you broke into my apartment when I forgot my keys, Vic?”  She looked over her shoulder at me as she spoke and the Pathfinder fishtailed.

“Keep your eyes on the road: I don’t want it to be my last,” I squawked. Petra managed to straighten out just before colliding with an oncoming bus.

“Do you two gals think because I was a soldier I’m some sort of outlaw?” Tim Radke asked. “I mean, the boss here thinks I’m a hacker and you, you think I’m a break-in artist?”

“I’m the outlaw in this party,” I said, just as Petra started to say, Oh, gosh, me and my motor-mouth.  “Unless you have skills you’re keeping to yourself, I’m the one who can pick a padlock in thirty seconds, using the lip of a sardine can.  Petra, darling Petra, put your damned phone away or let Tim or me drive, okay?”

“Gosh, Vic, I was just—

Tim took the phone from her. “I didn’t survive five years in Iraq to die in a Chicago car crash.”

“Okay, okay, you two bullies.  I’ll get back at you, see if I don’t.”

Without seeing her face, I knew she was giving her exaggerated pout, the look she assumed when she knew she’d been caught in the wrong.  We were taking her car because neither my Mustang nor Tim’s old truck handled well on these slush-filled streets, but I was beginning to realize that a good car isn’t as important as a focused driver.

When we got to Club Gouge, I had Petra drive slowly past so I could see if Olympia had any security in place. The fire damage had been confined to the interior, so no boarding alerted you to the damage.  Only the empty parking lot told passersby the club was shut, that, and a message in the box by the front door used to announce upcoming acts.  Tonight it read: “Club Gouge is closed for repairs. Stay tuned for our grand re-opening next week,” which was clever, because no matter when the repairs were complete, the grand re-opening would happen next week.

No one seemed to be watching the club, either from the alley, or my own forlorn post up on the L platform.  I told Petra to park up the street and to stay in the car with Tim while I worked the lock.  “If I holler, take off and leave me on my own.”

Tim got out of the car with me.   “I learned a thing or two about keeping a lookout when I was in the Army.  If you’re going to be an outlaw to try to help Chad, at least I can keep watch.”

Petra decided that meant she should join us, as well.  She thought she needed to skulk, lurking behind L girders. then dashing to the next open space.  It was Radke who told her she was attracting attention.

“Act normal. Act like you got a right to be here,” he said.  “It’s the only way if a patrol—a cop, I mean—rides by.”

A keypad worked the front lock, but Petra had never been given the combo.  The side door, which opened onto the parking lot, had a keyhole that sat flat against the panel.  It was tricky, but not impossible—although my sore palm enhanced the challenge.

While I worked the lock, Tim disappeared into the shadows behind us.  I trusted him.  Of course I trusted him.  Even if he had a combat medal, he didn’t own expensive clothes: he wore a faded Army parka, not a “soft overcoat.”  Still, I was relieved when the tongue of the lock slipped back and he reappeared, a shadow sliding up to the door.

While I held the tongue flat, he slid a metal strip along the door edge and pried it open.  When I tried to turn on the hall lights, nothing happened. The building was bitterly cold: Olympia, or perhaps the city, had shut down the power to lessen the risk of the fire restarting, or to save money until construction started.

As we moved deeper into the dark building, the acrid stench of charring began to choke us.  Charred and frozen at the same time, what a gruesome end.  I pulled my muffler over my nose and mouth.  I didn’t want to think about what poisons the fire had released: the synthetic fabric in the curtains, the varnish on the stage floor, the polymers in the wire casings, all those must be grade-A carcinogens when they burn.  I imagined my lungs coated with some kind of black grease that would never come out.

“Not all the perfumes of Arabia.”

“Say, what, Vic?” Petra demanded.

I hadn’t realized I’d spoken aloud.  Bad sign.

I shone my flash up the corridor.  The shadows made ghastly shapes—the wires looked like the tentacles of a giant mantis.  I shuddered, but moved forward.  Petra was subdued, even clutching Tim’s arm as we edged our way to the back of the stage.

The Body Artist’s computer was still there, still attached to the web cams and the plasma screens.  I held the flashlight while Tim unhooked the connectors.  We were out of the club and back in Petra’s Pathfinder within ten minutes.

Petra turned north onto Ashland, moving at a fast clip, talking in disjoint sentences: the adrenaline rush made her higher than a fistful of speed.

“Stop!” Tim shouted.

“I’m just saying—“

He grabbed the wheel from her and shoved his foot on the brake.  We stopped inches from a silver SUV that was blocking the intersection at Carroll.  I twisted to look behind us and saw a Mercedes sedan pull up.  As I looked, Rodney began to work his bulky figure from the passenger side.

“On three, you two get out and run as fast and far as you can.  I’m getting into the front seat.  No argument, just go!”

My gun was in my left hand as I spoke.  Tim had his hand on the door handle.  On my count, he jumped from the passenger seat. I opened the rear door.  Petra sat frozen in the driver’s seat.  I yanked open the her door; Tim ran around the back and pulled her out.

Men were climbing from the SUV and heading toward us.  I fired over their heads and Tim and Petra took off down a side street, away from us.  Someone shot back at me, but I was crouching behind the Pathfinder’s open door.  I climbed into driver’s seat, put the car into gear, twisted the wheel and floored the accelerator.

The wheels spun on ice, then grabbed and I crashed into the silver SUV’s left headlight.  The impact knocked me against the steering wheel, but I backed up, gears whining.  Someone was firing at my windshield. The glass splintered but I bore down on the shooter, and he fell backwards, away from my mad driving.

I wrenched the wheel around again and managed a U away from the shooter, toward Rodney and his sedan.  I slithered around him, but just as I thought I was home free, he shot out the Pathfinder’s rear tires.  I bumped down the road on the rims.  In the rearview mirror, I saw Rodney get back into the Mercedes and come after me.

Oncoming traffic honked at me, or at the sedan blocking the right lane, but no one stopped to see what was going on.  Too much MYOB, just like Mrs. Murdstone had said at Mona’s apartment this afternoon.

I jumped from the car at Lake and sprinted toward the L steps.  I’d almost made it when a figure in black outran me and pulled me down.   I rolled over, got into a crouch, gun out, but someone else came from behind and hit me on the side of the head.

On December 23, 2009, the People’s Republic of China condemned the poet Liu Xiaobo for the crime of “inciting subversion of state power.”  The trial lasted less than three hours, and the defense was not permitted to present evidence. Two days later, on December 25, Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to 11 years in prison and two years’ deprivation of political rights.

Mr. Liu’s alleged crime was the co-authoring of Charter 08, which, inter alia, advocates free speech and the end of single party rule.

The PEN website has complete details of Mr. Liu’s harassment before his arrest and the concomitant harassment of other signatories to Charter 08.

As a member of PEN, I am urging people to write on Mr. Liu’s behalf. Letters should be sent to the Chinese Ambassador to your government. For Americans, the details are:  His Excellency, Mr. Zhou Wenzhong; Ambassador of the PRC to the United States; 2201 Wisconsin Avenue, NW; Washington, DC 20007; Fax:  202.588.9760.

In England, the Ambassador is Madam Fu Ying; 49-51 Portland Place London W1B 1JL; Fax:020-7436 9178.

In Canada, the Ambassador is The Honorable Lan Lijun; 515 ST.PATRICK STREET, OTTAWA, ONTARIO, CANADA, KIN 5H3; Fax: 001-613-7891911 7891414.

My experience in writing on behalf of prisoners of conscience is that fax is the most reliable way to communicate, but if you are more comfortable with email, you can go to the embassy websites to get email information.

Daybreak by Liu Xiaobo

over the tall ashen wall, between

the sound of vegetables being chopped

daybreak’s bound, severed,

dissipated by a paralysis of spirit

what is the difference between the light and the darkness

that seems to surface through my eyes

apertures, from the seat of rust

I can’t tell if it’s the glint of chains

in the cell or the god of nature

behind the wall

daily dissidents

makes the arrogant

sun stunned to no end

daybreak a vast emptiness

you in a far place

with nights of love stored away

Every January for more than 5o years, people in the University of Chicago community have tried to lighten winter’s bleakness with a musical revue.  For many years, the witty Robert Ashenhurst and Ned Rosenheim provided words and music in a Noel Coward/academic vein.  More recently, Andy Austen, by day ABC-TV’s courtroom artist, by night a playwright, has written scripts that are both clever and charming–and often very funny.

We’re lucky to have the talent in the community to make it a  good show, even though the stage is tiny.  Sara Stern is an exceptional actor and takes a leading role; Dr. Philip Hoffman, a senior oncologist, plays a wealthy society matron, and musicologist Noel Taylor pulls it all together in only 4 weeks of rehearsals.

It’s one of my pleasures to take part as well, and over the last five years, my character –whether an evilly scheming Morgan LaFey or a stern police officer–sings an aria that proves she has more ambition than skill.  This year, I play a fundraiser with a recalcitrant daughter and my aria, sung to the tune of Habanera, is a paean to “L’argent!” (L’argent stays true when lovers flee/when kids behave to you ungratefully…)

The show takes place in the Quadrangle Club and is open to the public; details below.

P.S.  Thanks for all the wonderful title suggestions.  I’m sifting through them as I work on rewrites!

Related event

• Date: Friday, January 29th 2010 – Saturday, January 30th 2010
• Time: 8:00pm
• City: Sara Paretskyin Chicago, IL
• Venue: Quadrangle Club, University of Chicago
• Address: 1155 E. 57th Street, Chicago, IL 60637
• Venue phone: 1.773.493.8601
• Country: US
• Admission: 30-70
• Age restrictions: All Ages/Licensed
• Box office: 1.773.493.8601
• Notes: Sara plays a diva in The Revels, an annual musical revue at the University of Chicago. On January 29 you can buy a ticket for the show only @$30; buffet dinner and show is $60. On January 30, there’s a sit-down dinner and show package for one price, $70.

I haven’t posted anything new for awhile, because I’ve been working flat out to finish the draft of my new novel before I head off to the UK on tour.  I finished the draft this afternoon, with more of a whimper than a bang.  I lay down for an hour–it’s physically strenuous, writing like a madwoman, and then went to rehearse for the Revels, which take place the last weekend in January. This year I play a fundraiser who sings the “Habanera” song from Carmen, warbling “L’argent,” instead of “L’Amour.”

THE NEW BOOK NEEDS A NAME!

My working title is Body Work, but I’m not a hundred percent happy with it.  Book names are funny.  Some come with the idea, as happened with Hardball and Bleeding Kansas.  Others come after the book is finished, like Bloodshot and Killing Orders.  Body Work–I’m not so sure.

The action of the book is about an Iraqi vet who suffers from PTSD.  He starts having violent outbursts at a nightclub, and, when a woman who also goes to this particular nightclub is shot and killed, the vet is arrested.  V I Warshawski is hired by the vet’s parents to clear his name.  At the center of the story is a performance artist whose act consists of appearing naked on stage and letting people draw on her.  She’s enigmatic, a figure of mystery.  She’s not part of the main action and yet her presence galvanizes all the disparate people who make up the book…the head of a Ukrainian organized crime syndicate…a civilian defense contractor doing business in Iraq…an immigrant family whose daughter is the person murdered at the nightclub.

With this small bit of information, try your hand at a title.  Remember, the V I titles are two words, with a double entendre.  If you come up with a title that works for the book, you will get a walk-on character named for you.

Happy New Year to anyone who’s able to open their eyes enough to look at a computer today. I was way over my limit last night but finally, at two p.m. on New Year’s Day, in Chicago’s 7 degrees, I’m ready to look at the world if not to smile at it.

Because it’s the new year, and we all want it to be a good one, I thought I’d start with sex. Writing about it, to be more precise. We’ve all heard Elmore Leonard’s dictum about leaving out the stuff the reader skips many many times–but I almost always skip sex scenes. Yes, he/she took off her/his clothes. They got naked, they got into bed/backseat of car/faux-skin rug in front of fire/billiard table, and heaved about like demented hippopotami for a bit and then-can we get back to the story?

I also skip sex scenes as a writer. Every year, when the Bad Sex in Fiction Award is announced, I thank my writing muse for steering me clear of any chance of being publicly humiliated at the In and Out Club.

This past December, Philip Roth was shortlisted for The Humbling, in which an aging actor “converts” a lesbian to heterosexuality: “This was not soft porn. This was no longer two unclothed women caressing and kissing on a bed. There was something primitive about it now, this woman-on-woman violence, as though in the room filled with shadows, Pegeen were a magical composite of shaman, acrobat, and animal. It was as if she were wearing a mask on her genitals, a weird totem mask, that made her into what she was not and was not supposed to be. There was something dangerous about it. His heart thumped with excitement – the god Pan looking on from a distance with his spying, lascivious gaze.”

The ultimate winner was Jonathan Littell, for a passage in The Kindly Ones. “Her vulva was opposite my face. The small lips protruded slightly from the pale, domed flesh. This sex was watching at me, spying on me, like a Gorgon’s head, like a motionless Cyclops whose single eye never blinks. Little by little this silent gaze penetrated me to the marrow. My breath sped up and I stretched out my hand to hide it: I no longer saw it, but it still saw me and stripped me bare (whereas I was already naked). If only I could still get hard, I thought, I could use my prick like a stake hardened in the fire, and blind this Polyphemus…”

In writing about sex, one should ask the same question about anything one’s including. Is there a reason to have it there to begin with? Narrative flow? Plot? Character development? Fun? And if there is a reason, how do you do it well?

For my money, Joyce (or, according to some scholars, his wife, Norah) does it best in Ulysses, where Molly says, “He kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower…and I drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”

On the other hand, you can’t beat Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, for brevity. “The Duke returned from the wars today and did pleasure me in his top boots.”

Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, painted by Charles Jervais

I hope 2010 is a year of health and peace for all who visit this site.

As the year winds down, it’s time to consider the highpoints and hand out kudos to top performers.

Best text messager: Andy House, who drove his $2 million Bugatti Veyron into a lagoon because he was texting at the wheel and what was left of his brain was allegedly distracted by a low-flying pelican.  The link’s headline says “$1 million,” but other sources put the price at around $1.8 million.” Although–what are a few zeroes among friends?

Best explanation of why we need to have our handguns with us AT ALL TIMES.  The gun enthusiast’s website, Frontsite goes through how to do just this. What about when you go to the bathroom? their newsletter asks.  A question that has often worried me.  And the answer is both logical and practical.

“If your gun is in a holster attached to your belt, keep it there.  When you pull up your pants, the gun will still be there.  Where you get into trouble is when you are not using a holster and set your gun aside in the bathroom. THIS is at least an embarrassment and at worst a tragedy waiting to happen. Do people leave guns in bathrooms? ALL THE TIME simply because they set their gun aside rather than keeping it in the holster or (if not wearing a holster) placing it on top of their dropped trousers between their legs…Private citizens, law enforcement, and government agents leave their guns in hotels, airports, and restaurants on a regular basis… DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU.  The result of your carelessness will cost you and can be tragic.”

Or ludicrous, depending  on your sensibility.

And, while we’re on the topic, Most creative marketing plan of the year goes to beer vendors at the Washington, DC, pro football stadium.

Best book moment of the year: Amazon’s decision to remove some 57000 authors it deemed riské or offensive, from its rankings and search engine.  These included most LGBT authors, including James Baldwin. Just a computer glitch, they assured us after 18000 people signed up for a boycott.

Best politician of the year.  This is such a crowded field I wouldn’t presume to decide, especially since I’m biased in favor of my own Rod Blagojevich, who shook down a children’s hospital for campaign contributions, and wanted to put Barack’s Senate seat onto the market.

South Carolina’s Mark Sanford, flying to Argentina to see a lady friend, claimed he was hiking the Appalachian trail instead.  The state recently fined him $73000 to cover the cost of using the state plane for the flight, which seems kind of cheap, but the cost of living is lower in the south.

Jenny Sanford, who decided to divorce Mark is much duller than Patti Blagojevich, who ate tarantulas on TV–she says she did it for her family.

And then, New Jersey, which is always stealing Chicago’s corruption thunder, gave us some Brooklyn  rabbis and the mayors of Hoboken and Secaucus, involved in a money-laundering scheme so complex that V I Warshawski threw up her hands in despair over trying to unravel it.  Suffice it to say that a yeshiva’s papers were taken as part of the evidence, and that human kidney trafficking played a role.

Please let me know the many wonderful stories I missed.

Chanukah begins at sundown on December 11.  It’s a child’s holiday, with candles, songs, and, in the affluent west these days, presents.  For adults, at least for me, it’s a bit more problematic–it’s a holiday that celebrates confusing things, the triumph of religion over reason, the cleansing of the Temple, the start of a theocracy not unlike current-day Iran’s.

Religion and politics in the Middle East in 167 BCE were just as complicated and deadly a combination as they’ve remained today.  As David Brooks reports in the New York Times, many 2nd century BCE Jews embraced Greek culture, including elevating the power of reason over blind faith.  Others were furious at the way in which science and art had taken the fundamentals out of that old time religion.  And the Macabees belonged to this second group.  When the Graeco-Syrian rulers took a step too far in defiling the Temple, the Macabees were able to rouse local opinion and begin a revolution against Syrian rule.

The history, with the restoration of the Temple, makes me proud, sad, appalled, breathstruck at the beauty and misery of it all.  Yes, the lights burned again in front of the Holy of Holies, the sacrificial pigs were cleansed from the sacred space.  But a century of enlightenment crashed to an end as religious rule was restored first with an iron, and then with an inept and corrupt fist.  And within another 200 years, the Diaspora ushered in 2000 years of suffering, culminating in the Shoah.  During those years, lighting Chanukah candles became a statement of courage.  You put them in  your window, even though that could invite the destruction of your home and the murder of your family, to show that you were not ashamed to be a Jew.

The parallels to American and Iranian religious fundamentalism are so pointed that I won’t dwell on them.  (No, we don’t believe in evolution!  Yes, climate change is the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on the American people! rousing statements by members of Congress, candidates for President, and ministers.)

Meanwhile, some people are trying to make political hay out of the Obamas’ invitation to a holiday party in honor of Chanukah.  The Obamas invited 50 fewer people than did the Bushes–they must be dissing the Jews.  They didn’t say “Happy Chanukah” on the invitation–unlike the Bushes, who put a Christmas tree on theirs.

This time of year exhausts me with its fights over who is holier than thou.  On the Christian side of the aisle, a member of the Tea Bag Party is trying to put a law on California’s books requiring every public school in the state to force all children to sing Christmas carols.  The proposed law includes an enforcement clause requiring the state to litigate against schools that don’t comply.  California is sinking under its budget deficit, but surely it can find room to put Christmas Carol Inspectors on the rolls.

The only way I can cope with the season is to turn away from the history of bloodshed, the warfare over holiness, and focus on the lights: the flame on the candles, the twinkling of the Christmas decorations.  More light.  More and more light.  And with it, as the US ramps up for year eight of its own Middle Eastern wars, as the desolation continues in Darfur,

in Congo, Zimbabwe, and in Gaza, may we please find some little flame of peace that we can blow on and turn into a true fire–not of zealotry, but of justice.  And may the One who makes peace in the High Places grant peace to us all.

Kaddish, by Rex Sexton

in Lake Woebegone, Garrison Keillor’s home town, but not so much so in Chicago.  We started with a gang of housebreakers who targeted our area.  They would come to the front door; if anyone answered, they’d say they were looking for yard work.  If no one answered, they’d hustle around to the back and break in through the second story windows–they even carried ladders with them.  We haven’t seen them for a few days and don’t know if they were caught, or simply cleaned out our street and have moved on.

Two days ago, while walking my dog in the park south of the Museum of Science and Industry I came on a man torturing a dog.  I called the University of Chicago security, since they usually come faster than city cops, but they said, out of their jurisdiction.  By the time I actually spoke to a Chicago dispatcher, the man realized I was on the phone and had packed his dog up and taken off.  I feel the kind of helpless rage you feel when you haven’t been brave enough to save a small creature in need–but I knew my golden retriever and I could not get close to a man with a tortured bull dog.  I’m trying to find a direct line to the animal abuse unit at the Chicago Police so I can put it on speed dial if, Gd forbid, there is a next time.

And finally, while walking home with my dog this morning I managed to fall and impale myself on my cellphone.  Somehow neither the phone nor I broke but I am badly bruised and will be pretty gimpy for a week or two.  Meanwhile, my dog is definitely not Lassie: she thought the sight of me on the ground was hysterically funny.  She snatched my hat from my head and began barking and lunging at me, daring me to try to catch her and get the hat back.  When passers=by stopped to help, Not-Lassie tried to entice them into tug of war with the hat.

And that’s all the news from Lake Michigan.  Don’t have a catchy paraphrase of Keillor’s tagline, but you get the point.

It was dusk when I finally drove into the city of W–.  A series of mishaps had dogged my journey, making me feel almost as though the Fates themselves were conspiring to keep me from my destination.  First, the cloak of fog that engulfed the airport and delayed our flight by nearly four hours,

Fog surrounds the Airport

and then, when I finally reached the airport, some 25 miles outside W–, the clerk at the car rental, so hunched over that he seemed to be barely as tall as the counter itself, insisted I had no booking.  When I produced my documents, and insisted on speaking to his superior, he informed me that only he was on duty—this with a smile so malevolent that it made my blood run cold.  Still, I held firmly to my position, that I had reserved a car, a full-sized sedan, and that I would help myself to one on the lot.  However, I discovered to my dismay that try as many of them as I might, none of the cars on the lot would start.

Finally, with another of his evil smiles, the clerk announced that he would find me some manner of vehicle.  And some manner is the best that could be said for it, dirty on the outside with many dents in its body, it still was better out than within, for the interior stank of mold, and much of the floor had rusted out.

The Car of my Nightmares

By now, I was beginning to fear for my safety more at the airport than in the car, and so I took it, vowing privately  to exchange it for another in the morning.

I had promised my dear Maude that I would be with her in time for tea at her office, but by the time arrived, all the gates had been locked for the day.  My cellphone couldn’t pick up a signal outside the massive iron gates.   I finally roused a guard, who although surly at having his evening meal disturbed, did ring through to the Countess J—‘s private office.  As I thought, Maude had waited for me, faithful Penelope that she is, and came scurrying through the gardens to the gate where I was standing.

“You made it!”

Waiting at the Castle Gate

In the dim light, I couldn’t see her face, but the relief in her voice was palpable, and she hugged me with a convulsive fervor unusual in her.  Maude is always full of energy, but seldom of a demonstrative emotional nature.

I told her of my difficulties in reaching the Countess J—‘s gates and felt her tremble in my arms, but she dashed off her seeming distress and said, with an assumption of her normal brightness of manner, “You’re here now, that’s all that matters.”

Maude drew me through the gardens, where some late roses still bloomed, to the side door that led to the Countess’s private rooms.

Castle gardens in late summer

The castle was the main seat of Prince Benedict, the Countess’s cousin, who governed the territories around W–, and held many odd corridors and turrets, where those of high rank lived as well as worked.  The Countess was the Prince’s most trusted advisor, and we in the town of C—had felt great pride and excitement when the Countess chose Maude to be one of her own personal secretaries.

Maude’s mother and I had been dear friends since earliest childhood.  We had scored our first field hockey goals together, learned first-order second-degree differential equations together, field-dressed our first rabbits together, laughed at each other’s jokes, and forborne to laugh at each other’s lovers.  In short, no friends were more inseparable, and, childless myself, I had been one of little Maude’s adoring aunties as she grew to adulthood.  She repaid my love with a thousand acts of kindness.

Her parents were in the Antarctic, where her father was designing igloo-based kitchens and her mother setting up a much-needed sanitation system.

Maude's Father in the Igloo Kitchen

They would not be able to leave until the brief Antarctic summer arrived in some four months, and so when trouble came to Maude, it was me she texted, begging me “2 drop evrytng & cum 2 W @1s”.

It wasn’t until we reached the room in the Countess’s private apartments set aside as Maude’s bedchamber that I had time to look at her more closely.  Maude’s normal bright complexion was grey with fatigue, and even, I thought, fear, and her dark eyes were red from much weeping.

“What ails you, dear one?” I clasped her cold dry hands in mine.

“Ails me?  Why, nothing at all, now that you are at my side, dearest Auntie Calliope.”  And she behaved most strangely, darting from door to door, as though checking for eavesdroppers.  The windows, although we were on a high floor, she treated with especial circumspection.

“Four nights ago, I saw wolves in the castle gardens,” she whispered to me.  “When I told the Countess she laughed at me and told me the politics of the castle were wearing me down.  But then—I went to confide my fears to Jay, and he behaved most strangely to me.”

The Wolf in the Castle Garden

Jay and Maude had been playmates and lovers for years, and he, too, had been offered a job on the Countess’s private staff.  Privately, I had always wondered at their friendship—Maude, so open and impulsive, Jay, subdued, curled into himself like a snail.  Even physically—Maude was radiant with health, her skin dark and clear, while Jay, tall and emaciated, so white that he might be a Belgian endive, living etiolated in a cellar.  And yet everyone agreed that he was a brilliant scholar of naval policy, and, as the city of W—was situated at the mouth of an important harbor, he was a key member of the Countess’s household.

“Strangely how?”

“Told me he had no time for my silly girlieness, that I needed to grow up and learn how to live in a castle, and stop inventing games.  He said that no wolves had been seen in W—for more than a century, unless at the zoo, and that while Prince Benedict and the Countess were negotiating a treaty with the Emperor of K–, it was imperative that I not bother them with these fantasies.”

“And is that why you sent for me?” I didn’t know what to say: Maude was never an imaginative child.  Indeed, Jay, with his withdrawn silences, seemed more the dreamer of the two.  But—wolves in the private gardens of a major castle, in the heart of a great city?  It was scarcely credible.

“I see you don’t believe me, either,” Maude said mournfully.  “And yet, look at how hard it was for you to reach the castle.  None of the cars worked at the rental agency.  You couldn’t use your cellphone at the castle gates.  The text I sent you was the last message I was able to send, and I had no real expectation that you would arrive.  Only people whom Jay knows have been able to reach the castle for the last three weeks.  And during that time, he has sometimes seen me in the halls and pretended not to know me.  I asked him if he had taken a new lover, if I was the one ignorant person in the castle—and he said he had important work to do and didn’t have time for private jealousies.”

“Perhaps you should take a leave of absence,” I suggested.  “Maybe the Countess is right, that the politics of the castle are wearing you down.  When you work for a powerful prince, everyone is competing for his attention, after all.  And with your disposition, so prone to openness, you may not be best suited for this competitive, back-stabbing atmosphere.”

“Aunt Calliope!” Her dark eyes flashed.  “I won’t listen to such talk.  Didn’t you and Mama always teach me to be a fighter, not a quitter?  How can you suggest I leave the Countess now?”

Maude at Dinner

“All right, child, all right—but—“ I didn’t finish the sentence.  She trusted me, she needed me, I would not turn my back on  her.

We went down to dinner in the dining room where the Countess’s staff ate.  Tonight five of her eight personal staff, including Jay, were present.  I tried to pretend I’d had no private conversation about him with Maude, and asked him the usual dull questions aunts ask their niece’s friends.  I noticed that he drank heavily, but only toyed with his food, although the Countess’s chefs are famous for their light, flavorful locavorian cooking.

State Dinner, by Jacqueline Duheme in "Mrs. Kennedy Goes Abroad"

“Jay, are you ill?” I asked bluntly.  “You’ve scarcely touched your dinner.”

“I’m perfectly well, thank you.” The words were polite, but the manner of speaking was so cold, so rude, that he might as well have said, “Mind your own business.”

“And to drink so much wine on an empty stomach—it’s not healthy.”

Now he did tell me to mind my own business.  “I seem surrounded by women who think they know more about my life than I do myself.”

“Jay!  Aunt Calliope was only concerned about your well-being!”

Jay stood so quickly that he knocked over his wine glass.  As the red stained the white linens which the Countess’s grandmother had embroidered, his eyes glittered and his hands began to shake.  He squeezed the damp spot on the cloth and licked his fingers and then, as if realizing how we all were staring at him, gave an embarrassed laugh and bolted from the room.

Red Wine on the Tablecloth

We stared at one another in dismay, but no one could speak.  Instead, in unspoken accord, we all began to rise from the table, when the door opened to admit the Countess herself.

So many pens more gifted than my own have described the beauty and presence of the Countess J—that I will not add to their words.  Tonight, although she was fatigued, seeming almost asleep, she still held herself erect.  She wasn’t wearing the famous emerald necklace of the House of J–, but had draped a green scarf around her neck instead. She remembered me, although we’d only met twice before, and turned her charming smile on me.

The Countess's Emerald Necklace

“You had a difficult journey here, yes?”

I was astonished that she knew, but merely murmured an assent.

“All journeys to the castle these days seem fraught with difficulties.  But Maude will see that you are well housed.  Tell Jean-Philippe that your aunt may stay in the guest tower.”

“I thought she might share my room, Countess,” Maude said.

“The guest tower, child.  We are not deficient in rooms here in the castle.”

That was a command, and Maude could only acquiesce.  As the Countess ate—very sparingly—Jay returned and began reading dispatches to her, ignoring the rest of us.  The countess, too, paid us no further heed, bowing her head over her clasped hands and listening to his voice, which was soft, and hypnotic only by virtue of its monotone, not from any special eloquence.  The countess moved only once, to tell the rest of us we might leave the room.

I myself know nothing of castle politics or decorum, but I felt compelled to beg Maude to leave at once and return with me to C–.  This heavy atmosphere was no place for a healthy girl.  And if Jay were to continue to act so coldly, so rudely, and the countess to be seemingly under his spell, then no good could come of Maude’s remaining.

My girl resolutely refused to consider “such craven behavior,” and yet she was afraid, finding it hard to leave me in the guest tower.  Finally, around midnight, when I was feeling too overcome with fatigue for further conversation, I promised to leave a light burning in the window.  The guest tower lay directly across from the Countess’s private apartments, with the rose garden between them.  Maude could look to my light and be somewhat less lonely in the night.

The Guest Tower

I slept for perhaps two hours, before a noise roused me.  The candle I’d left in the window was burning still; some instinct made me cross the floor on my hands and knees, so that the flame would not cast my shadow on the walls of the room.

I knelt at the casement and looked into the garden.  The noise, a kind of snuffling, came again, and I watched in horror as a large wolf appeared.  It was carrying something in its mouth.  In the moonlight, it was impossible to see colors, but it looked like the green silk scarf the countess had been wearing at dinner.

I darted from the room and ran down the four flights of stairs to the garden.  The door was locked; on the far side I heard the snuffling, chuckling sound of the wolf. I ran up the first flight of stairs and found a window that opened, and launched myself onto the wolf’s back.  His snuffles turned to an outraged howl.

I jumped away and ran through the garden, looking for the countess.  The wolf was far faster than I; he knocked me to the ground and stood over me, eyes glittering red in the darkness, his breath wet and heavy on my face, his tongue licking my throat.  I scrabbled frantically among the plants and grabbed one of the stakes the gardeners used to tied the roses.  Scarcely knowing what I did, I plunged it up into his belly.

He fell away from me, howling loudly, writhing in the grass.  My arms were trembling so violently I couldn’t move, but finally, he lay still.  And in that moment, the moment of death, he assumed a mortal human shape, that of Jay.

I turned in horror from the sight, and found Maude at my side.  Jay’s death howl had wakened her, and she ran to the garden.  When she saw the scarf, abandoned near us in the struggle, she cried, “The Countess!”

The Countess near Undeath

We found her sleeping beneath one of the benches, blood from the open wound at her neck staining the front of her frock.  Even as we looked, though, the wound seemed to be healing, and, by the time we had carried her inside  and given her into Jean-Philippe’s capable hands, only the blood on her dress served as a reminder of her near encounter with the world of the Undead.

The Countess restored

“The scarf,” Maude whispered.  “I didn’t understand why she no longer wore her emeralds, but—she knew she had to conceal that dreadful bite.  Oh! To think he and I once were—“

She could say no more, but flung herself into my arms.

“Working in the seat of power has turned stronger heads than Jay’s,” I said.  “Don’t judge him too harshly.  Remember him as your childhood friend, not as the Vampire of W–. “

I was a chubby kid.  When we lived in town, a couple of boys in my school used to stand on the sidewalk and chant a rude verse at me on the way home (“Fatty,” it began.  I sometimes worry that as my brain disintegrates with age, that verse will be the last thing I retain.)  I was almost thirty when I lost weight, going to Weight WAtchers.  I don’t know what WW is like now, but back then, you’d get on the scale, and, if you’d lost anything, the group would applaud; if you’d gained, they offer warm support for the struggle. I lost 60 pounds, I’ve more or less kept them off for 30 years, but I still have days like today, where I cleared out all the ice cream in the freezer.  Ten years ago, I finally got rid of my size 18 clothes, but I’m thinking I should have kept an outfit, just in case.

At the same time I was struggling with my doctoral dissertation, which I did, ultimately, finish, but that was a long battle, too.  I had a friend who was doing her own dissertation, and going with me to Weight Watchers meetings, and we thought we should start “Dissertation WAtchers,” where you weighed you output each week.  ”Two more ounces, well done, Eileen.  Ooh, threw out six ounces, too bad Sara, but you’ll do better next time.”

I think about DW often because writers seem obsessed with how many words they’ve written.  I belong to another blog, the Chicago OUtfit Collective, and people talk about doing their weekly stint of 7500 words, or brag about producing 5000 words a day.  I know the feeling, counting the words, as if it had something to do with the quality of the story.  I do it myself, and yet, when the writing is flowing, the number of words is irrelevant, and when it’s ground to a halt, as it has for me this week, the lack of words on the page feels like a summary of all my inadequacies.

Okay, enough whining.  Here’s something real to worry about: death threats against President Obama are 400 percent higher than against previous presidents.  And cute kids on the religious right are using a Bible verse as a cloak for, asking God to kill the President.  And they’re getting support from Fox media. Surprise.

Rachel Maddow on Psalm 109