The Gargoyle (63 page)

I tracked the dog down and found him stretched out in the study, breathing shallowly. When I swept my hand along his side to comfort him, fur came off in my fingers. His ribs were a story of starvation and I was shocked: not strictly at his thinness, but because I didn’t understand how it could be possible. In recent weeks, Bougatsa had been eating much more than usual; in fact, he never seemed to stop eating.

I headed into the basement to inform Marianne Engel that her dog was seriously ill, because I wanted to shame her into coming with me to the veterinary clinic. But it didn’t work out quite like that. She was hunched over a beast whose eyes seemed to be issuing a stern warning to keep away. I spoke anyway. “There’s something wrong with Bougatsa. He’s sick.”

She looked up at me, as if she had heard some mysterious clatter coming from an area of the room that was supposed to be empty. Blood was flowing from one of her wrists where the chisel had gone wrong, and streaks of red were painted across her forehead where she’d wiped it. “What?”

“You’re bleeding.”

“I am a thorn prick on Christ’s temple.”

“No,” I said, pointing. “Your wrist.”

“Oh.” She looked at it, and some blood flowed into her open palm. “It’s like a rose.”

“Did you hear me? Bougatsa is sick.”

She tried to pull a strand of her hair away from her breast, where it was awkwardly pasted with sweat and stone dust, but her fingers couldn’t quite gauge the distance. She missed, over and over. “Then go to the infirmary.”

“You mean the vet?”

“Yes.” Drops of her blood fell into the rock chips at her feet. “Vet.”

“Let me look at that.” I reached towards her wrist.

Marianne Engel, with a sudden look of terror in her eyes, raised the chisel in my direction. Only once before had she threatened me with violence, when she’d thrown the jar of coffee at me in the belfry. At that time I was certain she meant to miss me but I could tell that if she lunged at me now, with the chisel, she would mean it. She looked as though she didn’t know where she was, or who I was; she looked as though she would do anything to defend her ability to keep working.

I took a step back, lifting my hands in the gesture people automatically make to show they mean no harm. “He’s your dog, Marianne. Don’t you want to come with us? With me and your dog, Bougatsa?”

The name seemed to stir her memory. The knots of her hunched shoulders released and she let out the breath she’d been holding. Most important, she lowered the chisel as the fear left her eyes.

“No.”

There had been no anger in her voice, but also no regret. Her voice was simply dull and hollow, lacking any nuance of compassion, as if her words were not new sounds but echoes.

By the time I had my foot on the stairway’s bottom step, all her attention was once again focused on the stone in front of her.

The veterinarian was a plump woman named Cheryl with red hair and bright eyes, probably of Irish heritage. One of the first things she asked was why I looked the way that I do, which was so much better than trying to pretend that there was nothing wrong with my appearance. “Car accident.”

“I see. So when did you start noticing the problem with, ah”—she glanced at the chart that her receptionist had filled out—“Bougatsa? Greek pastry, right?”

“Yeah. Same color. I found diarrhea on the floor this morning, and I think he’s been eating leaves.”

“I see.” Cheryl nodded. “His coat always like this? It seems to be lacking luster.”

“You’re right,” I answered, “and it feels kind of greasier than usual. His problems started recently, but this morning it was like they just jumped up a level. He’s definitely losing weight.”

She asked whether he was lacking energy, and I confirmed he was. Then she performed a few little tests on him, shining a light into his mouth and eyes, with Bougatsa whimpering passively throughout the process. I asked what she thought the problem was.

“Does he seem tender in this region?” She asked this while pressing at Bougatsa’s stomach, and then answered her own question. “Actually, he doesn’t seem to mind it too much. Were there any signs of undigested fat in his stool?”

Who—other than a veterinarian—knows what undigested fat looks like in dog shit? I answered that I’d forgotten to run a chemical analysis before arriving, so I couldn’t say definitively. Cheryl gave me a scowl before lifting Boogie’s tail to inspect his anus. “Has he been eating his own excrement?”

“Jesus Christ.” Once again, Cheryl expected far more from my observational skills than I felt was reasonable. “I don’t know. Maybe?”

“I can’t be sure what the problem is,” Cheryl said, “without running a few tests. Would you consent to leaving him here for a day or two?”

This wasn’t the time to explain that Bougatsa was not actually
my
dog, so I just signed the release forms. When I asked whether the tests would be painful, the good vet looked offended. “Not if I can help it.”

I told the dog to be good for Dr. Cheryl and he slopped his tongue out to lick my hand. Some people might view this as a sign of affection, but I’m fully aware that dogs do it only because it is an inborn instinct for grooming.

When I called a few days later, Cheryl still hadn’t found the cause of Bougatsa’s problems but assured me she was getting close. She sounded apologetic but, truthfully, this was actually what I’d been hoping for.

The clinic would be convenient housing while I had my operation, so I explained my situation and asked whether Bougatsa could remain until I got out of the hospital. The vet was agreeable, saying it would provide time to do a thorough diagnostic workup.

Now I only had Marianne Engel to contend with. I didn’t want to leave her alone at home, but she was an adult and I was only going to be in the hospital one night, two at the most. Should she follow her regular schedule, she would be carving the entire time. Had I been home, she would only have ignored me anyway.

As soon as I was settled in at the hospital, all the old faces filled my room. Both Connie (ending her shift) and Beth (starting) dropped in to say hello. Nan was there, and after a few minutes Sayuri and Gregor entered at a respectable distance from each other, touching hands only when they thought no one was looking. When I said the only person missing was Maddy, Beth informed me that she’d recently married and moved away. My first assumption was that her new husband must be some sort of bad boy—perhaps a Hell’s Angel or a corporate lawyer—but, much to my surprise, he was a graduate student in archaeology and Maddy was accompanying him to a dig on the coast of Sumatra.

Everyone asked about Marianne Engel; and I lied, sort of. I said she had a pressing deadline for a statue, seeing no need to add that her Three Masters were the ones who now set her timetable. Everyone nodded but I could see that Sayuri, at least, was not buying my story. I couldn’t look her in the eyes, and this alerted Gregor to my deception as well.

When only Nan and I remained in the room, I asked—since I still had a few hours before my surgery—if she wanted to go for a walk around the hospital grounds. She looked at her schedule, checked her pager and cell phone, and called the nurse’s station before she finally agreed. Halfway through our stroll, she even slipped her arm into the crook of mine and pointed out some patterns in the clouds that she said reminded her of a school of sea horses. I treated her to a hot dog from a vendor and we sat on a bench as the people walked by. Nan got a mustard stain on her shirt and I thought it looked good on her.

I counted backwards when the mask was placed over my mouth. By this point, I was an anesthesia expert and I knew I’d wake up in a few hours. Undoubtedly there would be residual soreness, but I was used to pain and had been through enough surgeries to know that I would be fine. At least, as fine as I ever was.

Except it didn’t work out that way. My routine surgery had a complication: sepsis. Such infections are not uncommon in burn patients, even those as far along in their recovery as I was, but luckily the infection was not particularly severe and my body—so much stronger because of my exercise regimen—would be able to cope. Nevertheless, I needed to remain in the hospital until it passed.

Sayuri called Cheryl to extend Bougatsa’s stay, while Gregor volunteered to inform Marianne Engel of my situation. He decided to drive to the fortress to tell her in person, since she was not answering her phone. I warned him that there was a good chance that she wouldn’t answer the door and, as it turned out, I was correct. After ten minutes of pounding, Gregor gave up even though he could hear Bessie Smith wailing at full volume from the basement.

Jack had an extra set of keys, so I called her to request that she check in on, and feed, Marianne Engel. Jack assured me that she would do so, and even asked whether I needed anything brought to the hospital. There wasn’t, because I’d made so many visits that I habitually packed a full bag (fresh pajamas, toiletries, books, etc.) for even the smallest of operations.

With these few things put in order, there was nothing left to do but lie in my bed (which, by the way, no longer felt like a skeleton’s rib cage) and heal. Each evening, Gregor brought me new books, and once he even sneaked in a few beers. Because, as he explained with a glint in his eye, he was a bit of a rebel. I assured him that he most certainly was.

After a week I was released, and Gregor booked off an hour to drive me home. When we arrived at the fortress, all was silent. Normally this would mean nothing—maybe Marianne Engel was out for a walk, or preparing on a fresh slab of stone—but I had a bad feeling. I didn’t even bother to check her bedroom; I headed directly for the basement, with Gregor following.

Even though I had lived with her for more than a year, I was not prepared for what I saw. First, there were three newly completed statues: numbers
8
,
7
, and
6
. Given that I’d been gone only a week and it usually took her more than seventy hours to complete a single piece, the arithmetic suggested that she’d been working not only without a break but also with greater fervor than usual. This I could hardly believe.

Marianne Engel was not working or asleep on new stone. She was sitting in the middle of her three new grotesques, covered entirely in stone dust that emphasized her every emaciated bone. She had been skinny when I’d left for the hospital, but she was much thinner now. She must have eaten nothing since I’d last seen her. Her chest heaved a wretched little victory with each breath, and her skin, which was so bright when she was healthy, looked as though it had been rubbed over with old paraffin. Her face was a skeletal mirror of what it once had been, with such large dark circles under her eyes that they gave the impression of gaping sockets.

A crimson gloss of blood coated the medieval cross tattooed on her stomach, oozing from a series of deep gashes on her chest. Her right hand lay open on the floor, cradling a gory chisel in fingers that looked like an old lady’s, ready to snap under even the slightest pressure.

Across the flaming heart on her left breast, Marianne Engel had carved my name deeply into her flesh.