Author: alysse

Chapter 4: Honey

Climbing the apartment house stairs Jacquetta felt a surge of pleasure when she saw light under the door. Her roommate was home! She unlocked the door shouting, “It’s me,” in case Honey’s boyfriend Barney was staying over. But Honey was alone. She appeared in the doorway with a fizzy glass of champagne.

“Congratulations! How was the party?”
Honey was a slight thin-faced girl with a fine, flower-like expression that could easily seem pinched or pulled by worry or a lack of sleep. Tonight, however, she was beaming.

“It fizzled. I had one drink and left.” Jacquetta happily accepted the champagne.

“Nelson?” Honey asked sympathetically.
“He acted like it was a funeral and I had better things to do.”

Their last fight would always ring in Jacquetta’s ears as Nelson yelled how superior she would soon feel as she looked down on his spiritual squalor from her ivory tower. “He’s the married one, so why does he try to make me feel guilty?”

Honey poured herself a glass of bubbly and settled down comfortably on her favorite sofa. “These guys think they own us, that’s what,” she opined. “And when they find out they don’t it’s a rude awakening.”

Jacquetta tossed her coat over the wing chair, dropped purse and keys on the floor and sat down with a sigh.

“Speaking of which, I thought you were going out with Barney.”

“He was in a mood! Told me my roots were showing so I said I guess I needed alone time! You haven’t eaten, then?”

“Not so much as a peanut.”
“We could heat your mother’s quiche.”
“Or eat it cold,” Jacquetta agreed, suddenly hungry. They decamped to the kitchen where Honey, who would make some lucky man an excellent wife, briskly threw a salad together.

It was a lovely apartment. Honey loved furniture and was constantly working double shifts at The Royal Mess to afford some escritoire or tallboy. Jacquetta, by contrast, had few possessions.

“I met the most interesting old lady on the train,” offered Jacquetta. Beatrix Rainbeaux of the glassworks family. She had an off-hour ticket so I paid the difference to keep her from murdering the conductor, and we fell into conversation.”

“That’s disgusting!” swore Honey, tossing salad energetically. “She could buy and sell you. Her family owns that whole town!”

“She invited me to lunch tomorrow to consult me about evil,” Jacquetta returned, “so it was a worthwhile investment. Paid off a lot faster than most investments do.”

“Maybe she’ll remember you in her will,” said Honey. ”You know, like Howard Hughes, dressing like a bum and cadging rides from strangers.”

“Howard Hughes died intestate.” Jacquetta corrected. “That will was a forgery.”

“Just goes to prove what I always say; rich people are crazy. What kind of evil is she interested in?”

They sat at the table and attacked their meals. Jacquetta considered. It was funny how “unforgettable things” were so easy to forget! What had Beatrix said exactly?

“She met a sociopath she’s afraid of,” she said finally. “I think that’s what she said. And she wanted my advice.”

“Sister Jacquetta, the expert!” teased Honey. “Too bad those silly Catholics say you can’t be a woman priest so you can forgive her all her sins!”

Chapter 3: An Appointment

The old lady’s jaws worked restlessly. “I need to consult you about this matter we mentioned. I am in possession of some knowledge-“

“I’m hardly an expert,” Jacquetta interposed hastily.

“I consulted a worldly expert,” snapped the old lady. “He made it clear to me that I need someone else.”

She then amazed Jacquetta by pulling from her bag an ancient leather book labeled “1910.” Did she know what year it was?

“Depends where you are,” quibbled Jacquetta. The day she was supposed to enter the monastery! But lunch was only lunch. She was curious. It could work.

“Glasstown,” said the old lady. “Named after the family’s factory. We wanted to call it Iridium, but town fathers are so pedestrian.”

“You’re a…Rainbeaux?” It was a famous family – the most famous family in the area. “Your stained glass is so beautiful.”

“Alas, the factory is defunct. Once upon a time artists were content to toil anonymously for the glory of the work, now it’s all about pensions, breaks, insurance and overtime. We were forced to close.”

“I’m Jacquetta Strike,” said Jacquetta. “My church – St. Barnabas – has some of your windows. They are truly glorious.”

“Tomorrow’s Friday. Will that suit?”

“St. Barnabas!” The old woman seemed thunderstruck. “How very curious. I was there…only recently.”

Certainly that church was an out of the way church for a Glasstown resident but Jacquetta did not inquire further. She reached out a hand and the old woman enveloped it in a pair of claws knotty with tarnished rings.

“I’m Beatrix Rainbeaux,” the old lady introduced herself. “My house is in the middle of town, across from the police station. Enormous glass rainbow over the door – you can’t miss it. Shall we say noon sharp? I cannot bear unpunctuality.”

This was simply irresistible. The sisters did not really expect her until Vespers. They had been so understanding about every difficulty.

“I’m looking forward to it,” said Jacquetta.

Chapter 1: A question of evil

On a winter day in 1980, two women who had just met found themselves discussing evil in a train compartment. It had been Jacquetta Strike’s last day at work, and she’d had little to do other than anticipate a cavalcade of “last things”; such as of looking out of a grubby train window and watching the glittering

lights of New York give way to the somber darkness of New Jersey. But her contemplation was shattered by the noise of an old woman having an altercation with the conductor.

“Three more dollars! Why, that’s robbery! My ticket says Princeton Junction right on it! It was perfectly good when I came in this morning, and it’s a round trip ticket. I insist on talking to your superior.”

She was a very short old woman with features too big for her face: eyebrows wrestled like caterpillars at the bridge of her nose and her big coarse ears looked as if they could do with a more thorough washing. She carried a black velvet carpet bag with tarnished silver handles and her sealskin coat had probably been all the rage in the last century, but her rubber tipped cane was pathetically utilitarian.

“This here is an off-hour ticket,” explained the tired conductor, “And you’re riding a rush hour train. See all those people standing? Well, they’ve got better tickets than yours. You needed to wait for the six-thirty.”

“I’ll pay the three dollars,” said Jacquetta, forking it over. Anything for a little peace and quiet to assess the massive change that had just taken place in her life. After all, what was money? The least important thing in the universe. But the old lady turned to Jacquetta with an expression of outrage.

“I can’t allow that! This carriage is as crowded as a cattle car! They should charge less, not more!”
With unseemly haste, the conductor punched a new ticket, eager to be gone.

“It’s the law of supply and demand,” explained Jacquetta. “Everyone wants eggs; eggs are ten dollars. No one wants eggs then they’re giving them away.”

“It’s foolishness,” said the old lady. “And that man was very rude.”

“He was only doing his job.”

The old lady snorted. “That’s a modern excuse for irresponsibility! In my day people were proud of their work, worked long hours with no overtime just to get things right. Nobody cares any more in this terrible world.”

Jacquetta was surprised to see a look of real pain distort the aging face.

“People used to leave their houses unlocked and women could stroll the streets unmolested. People are eviller, that’s all. Everyone’s out for what they can get.”

Jacquetta couldn’t let this one past. “I think there was plenty of awfulness and we just didn’t know about it,” she offered mildly. “The media simply provides a mirror and we’re frightened by what we see.” Our own face, she thought. That’s what scares us.

“Blame and excuses,” disputed the old lady, “The problem is evil. People born without a conscience don’t care what they do.”

“Sociopaths,” said Jacquetta. “I think that’s the clinical term.” Giles de Retz? Vlad the Impaler? Was sociopathy such a modern invention?

“And then some people choose evil,” the old lady insisted, “So they can get what they want. Appetite! You can ride the devil, but you can’t get off.”

“We all have dangerous potential,” agreed Jacquetta. Who would have thought she’d be having a conversation like this on her last day!

“I’m not talking about potential,” said the old lady, “I’m talking about people who’ve murdered! Soulless killers. They’d squash a human being the way you or I would swat a fly.”

“Someone you know?” queried Jacquetta. This seemed more personal than a news story.
The woman’s face buckled like old leather. She nodded. “I’ve looked evil in the face,” she whispered. “I was terrified.”