The Natural Order of Things (8 page)

“Perhaps you can describe these … symptoms.”

The driver chuckles and expertly flicks his cigarette out the window. “Well, for one, you have a certain look of resignation. Also, a look of distrust in your eyes. But of course a man can never trust the people he loves. No, not entirely.”

De Vere crosses his arms, shifts uneasily in the backseat. “I don’t trust anyone. My son is a thief, my best friend is a gullible fool, and I’m starting to think my wife is a borderline sociopath trying to poison me. She’s developed a fascination for alternative medicine. Witchcraft.” He shrugs his shoulders. “It’s a cliché, I know, but only my dog remains loyal to me.”

He feels some shame for divulging the details of his life to a complete stranger, but like a lot of people he knows, too many really, de Vere has become more and more involved in his own problems; he cultivates them, multiplies them, makes them deeper and richer than if he left them alone to spin round and round his brain.

The driver nods. “Why do we trouble ourselves over such things, eh? Wives, sons, they are of little consequence. Life is merely something to endure. Like a disease. Repose will come soon enough.”

De Vere smirks. “Repose? Yes. Or absolution. I would settle for that.”

“You are a man with deep religious convictions?”

De Vere considers this for a moment, notices the small statue of Saint Fiacre on the dashboard. “I thought about becoming an atheist, but then I realized atheism requires more devotion.”

The driver laughs, a low gritty sound like the crunch and grind of asphalt beneath the tires. “Indeed,” he says, “an atheist must be diligent. There is always the temptation to
believe in a fearsome god or in a tempting devil. And any nightmarish circumstance can quickly cure a man of his apostasy.”

De Vere isn’t interested in advice, if that is what this meddlesome man is offering. No one can convince him that what he is doing is wrong, certainly not the cab driver who will soon discover the truth for himself; not the abstinence-stricken priests who listen to de Vere’s expurgated confessions on Saturday afternoons and wait for the appropriate moment to beg him for more filthy lucre; not his wife who suspects him of every kind of misdeed and then attempts to exorcize the demons of infidelity by encouraging him to ingest a hundred different homeopathic potions that are as evil-smelling as they are toxic; not even his perpetually dour best friend to whom he confides every wretched detail late at night in the disquieting calm of his study.

There are too many moral crusaders in the world, each with an equally improbable scheme to lead a man to salvation, a million cures for a million vices—through prayer, repentance, self-flagellation—but when he looks through the portal that separates reality from the hereafter, de Vere sees not the treasures of heaven but the fiery pools of hell. Having already dipped his toes in the scalding waters, he wonders if he can finally muster the courage to submerge himself fully in what the Jesuits warn is “total depravity.” Of course, most people have no way of knowing just how sublime the river of sin can be, how thrilling to be swept away and carried off to a place you never intended to go. Or maybe they do. The world, as de Vere knows from experience, is full of irredeemable hypocrites.

Six months ago, when he first embarked on these forbidden excursions, de Vere preferred to use his own car, but then late one evening, while idling at a red light, a group of teenage boys, oozing with adolescent virulence, materialized from the shadows. They made lewd gestures, rapped on his door, spat on his windshield. Phlegm hung in heavy green beads from the tinted glass. An intolerable situation. He wasn’t about to let this gang of little brown bastards fuck with his lady. No, that would never do. Aside from an occasional trip to the slums, de Vere’s ostentatious European touring car may be the only thing that offers him some satisfaction in this world. He read somewhere that cars are modeled on the female form, and there
is
, he finds, something rather arousing about its sleek and elegant design, the exaggerated curves of the rear end, the heady scent of leather, the breathless moans of the V6 engine. With mounting agitation, he put his hand on the door handle, fully prepared to kick some ass, but from the corner of his eye he caught the flash of a knife blade. De Vere hit the gas hard and thundered away. Gloating with triumph, he opened the sunroof and raised his middle finger. From this incident he has learned two invaluable lessons: victory always belongs to the man with the most torque and horsepower, and more important, it’s best to take a taxi to and from the hunting grounds.

Of course these monthly outings wouldn’t be necessary if he hadn’t mismanaged the melancholy business of his marriage. He has grown indifferent toward his wife. Over the years she has become irreparably tarnished, another neglected
objet d’art
in his immense and uncatalogued collection of conquests. Sex with her is boring, pedestrian, another tedious obligation like walking the dog or attending mass on Sunday morning. He
thought about ending things once and for all, getting his lawyers involved, but a messy divorce right now would only hasten his destruction. He is already on the brink of financial collapse. Until the economy picks up, he must bide his time, explore other avenues.

To his surprise he finds that company parties and gala dinners aren’t exactly conducive to casual encounters with members of the opposite sex, especially when the tiny breasted ladies, with their taut puritanical faces and severe prudish frowns, waste so much time droning on and on about disgustingly conventional subjects: their learning disabled children, their lazy and inadequate husbands, their terminally ill parents, their insipid duties as accountants and business analysts. He manages to seduce a college intern or two, but even they insist on old-fashioned gentleness and solicitude, and he quickly learns that a comfortable lifestyle doesn’t necessarily entitle a man to possess a secret harem of pretty girls (or even a few plain ones for that matter). Though he wants no entanglements, he has an acute understanding of the rules of the game and, for a little while at least, he abides by them, purchases a few extravagant gifts, vials of perfume, diamond tennis bracelets, spa treatments, reservations for wine and cheese tastings, and in exchange for these creature comforts, he expects his mistresses to submit to his modest desires and then to vanish once he tires of their shrill voices.

But things never work out this way, certainly not in suburbia where all eroticism is crushed to a fine powder and scattered in the wind like ashes from a funeral pyre, the burnt offerings of impetuous youth, and any lingering impetuosity in a man de Vere’s age is regarded as perversion, plain and simple. Unusual delights, if they are to be found at all, must come from these midnight hunts through the streets of a post-industrial wasteland. This haunt of sweet sin does not discriminate: here every man is welcome, and sex remains a constant fount of miracles. Although he is somewhat familiar with the terrain and can still recall the forsaken avenues and narrow brick lanes from his days at the Jesuit high school, he is keenly aware of the dangers all around.

After circling a particularly dismal block for the third time—three, that charming number—de Vere glimpses a pack of stray dogs trotting through the tempered light, wretched curs bred in brutal haste in slimy culverts and under the skeleton tracks of a rotting train trestle. In their tireless quest for food, they topple a trashcan outside an apartment building, the vaguely familiar Zanzibar Towers & Gardens, and fight over a hunk of putrid meat, a sheet of greasy wax paper smeared with red juices, a container of cookies, a headless doll. Snarling their disapproval, the brindled mongrels watch the cab roll by. De Vere feels a close connection to these animals, admires the purity of their instincts. Nature has conferred upon them some special power for reading the minds of men. He wonders if they can sniff out the stench of desperation that drips from his pores and clings to his shirt, his cashmere sweater, his indispensable silk boxers.

“Mongrels …” the driver mutters, swerving to avoid the beer cans that clatter into the street.

Something catches de Vere’s eye. With a tantalizing mixture of eagerness and dread, he sits up, adjusts his collar and sleeves, glides a practiced finger across his professionally whitened teeth. “Stop the cab,” he orders.

“But, sir, there are troublemakers about.”

“I said stop the cab!”

“Very well.”

De Vere rolls down the window, clears his throat, and boldly addresses the woman who has just emerged from the apartment building. “Excuse me, miss!”

Through the partition, the driver whispers, “Sir, she is chattel, a loathsome thing. Vile.”

“Miss, a moment of your time.”

“I beg of you, sir, I cannot possibly …”

With an almost regal bearing, the woman struts across the street in a pair of incredible red boots. A pickup swerves to avoid her. In the bed of the truck several young men shout with malice. “
Puta! Mujerzuela! Almeja!
” Spellbound, de Vere watches her and wonders what has gone wrong in her life, why she doesn’t work in an office building like the rest of the women he knows; it takes next to nothing to sit in a cubicle and pretend to be busy for most of the day. In the business world, one’s appearance means everything, and she can’t very well show up to an important meeting dressed in a purple miniskirt, her cheeks smeared with rouge, her eyes ringed with mascara like warm, wet ash.

“Hey, sweet thing,” she says, leaning against the cab. “You lookin’ for some company?”

“As a matter of fact …” Feeling almost amorous, he offers the woman his flask.

“Oh, that’s some good shit, baby,” she rasps after taking a sip.

“Remarkable,” says de Vere, stroking the woman’s hand. “A woman who appreciates the green-eyed monster. I think I’m in love.”

She suppresses a belch. “Green-eyed, one-eyed, it’s all the same to me.”

“Marvelous! What’s your name, darling?”

“Name’s Tamar, baby.”

“How unusual. You’re not busy this evening, are you, Tamar?”

“Just finished working a big soiree. Right up there.” She points to a window crowded with silhouettes at the Zanzibar Towers & Gardens. “But I’m free now. Well, maybe not
free
.”

De Vere opens the door and moves over so the woman can slide in beside him.

The driver hisses. “Sir, I will not be a party to this kind of thing.”

De Vere clicks his tongue. By now his response has become automatic, a maddeningly predictable exchange between master and servant. He passes the customary amount of money through the partition and watches the driver count the bills one at a time. It always surprises him how readily these men of conscience transform themselves into purveyors of pleasure, how willing they are to implicate themselves in his crimes and to share in his guilt.

“Very well then,” says the driver. “But one day, sir, one day soon, when she can no longer serve her purpose, this woman will be discovered in an alley with her throat slashed. No questions will be asked. No investigation will be conducted. Among these people, life is a brief visitor. It’s just as well. More time on this earth would bring little in the way of happiness to such a creature.”

As the cab rolls away from the curb, de Vere becomes aware of the driver watching him in the rearview mirror. He has gotten used to this, too. They always watch,
these drivers; they are depraved, the whole damned world is depraved, and so he decides to give the man a show, the standard pornography. He unzips his pants, bunches the woman’s black hair in his fists and forces her into a syncopated rhythm. She stinks to high heaven, reeks of chemicals, lighter fluid, formaldehyde, an odor he can’t quite place. She probably hasn’t bathed in days. This in itself doesn’t bother him. In fact, there is something erotic about her filthiness. It makes his knees tremble. Besides, he always comes prepared to deal with unpleasant details. From his coat pocket he produces a bottle of eau de toilette and spritzes the back of her neck.

She lifts her head. “The fuck you doin’?”

“Shut up and keep going.”

“Why you gotta talk that way?”

“Finish the goddamn job.”

The woman resumes bobbing up and down in de Vere’s lap, her movements so wild, so relentless, so crazed, that he is afraid she might tear into him with her chipped teeth. He groans, rocks his hips back and forth. Then he feels the taxi shudder violently and almost stall.

He opens his eyes, knocks on the partition. “What the hell is it now? Why are you slowing down?”

“I think they’re following us,” the driver tells him. “Yes, there is no doubt about it. They are definitely following us.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You see, this is what they do. Like hunters they lurk in the shadows and then trounce on their prey. Ruthless.”

“Who?”

“The police.”

De Vere turns his head, sees a cruiser riding the back bumper. “Dammit, your taillight is out.”

“Nonsense.”

“I noticed it when I climbed inside this fucking tin can.”

The driver scowls. “They obviously spotted you luring that slut into my cab. I cannot afford to go to jail again. Please, ask her to stop.”

But de Vere can’t do that, not now, not even as the cruiser pursues them through the absurd serpentine streets, not even when the siren starts its terrible piercing wail, and the blue and white lights blind him. He digs his nails into the seat and lets out a rapturous cry: “Oh, God! Maybe this is my road to Damascus!”

The driver hits the breaks and puts the cab in park. “Drunken fool, keep your mouth shut. Or I promise … things will not go well for you.”

An officer approaches the cab, hitches his belt, but instead of interrogating the driver, he opens the back door, grabs the woman by the wrist and drags her over to the sidewalk. She wipes her chin with the back of her hand and pulls the hem of her skirt down so her panties don’t show.

“Still turning tricks, eh, Tamar? Funny. Thought we told you we didn’t want to see you around here anymore. Didn’t we tell you that? You gonna answer me? I know you ain’t deaf, Tamar. Stupid yes, deaf no.”