Transcripts

SPEAKER: Inside, the convent was a surprisingly ordinary place. Not that Mauser had been expecting much of anything else, just not this. The hallway was floored with a durable but inexpensive gray linoleum, and the walls were sheetrock, painted in neutral grays and tans. Dim lights drew him toward the kitchen, large and airy, filled with storage cupboards. He hoped to find an exit, but instead arrived at the foot of a set of stairs.

He climbed. It was from the stairwell that he heard the distant rise and fall of the voices of nuns at prayer, and reached the second floor with its long, narrow hall of sleeping cells. Once he found himself in the nuns most private quarters, Mauser's urge to leave the building, faded. He still had to talk to Eleanor, decide what to do about the Jack shivered, poor, sick, dead old lady. Her prediction had spooked him.

And too selfishly, foolishly, he still wanted to explain himself to Eleanor. He still wanted her to understand, to acknowledge his marriage, his sober self. Changes vast to him, but surprisingly imperceptible to her. He needed a blessing, perhaps an assurance, an OK. Maybe a little common sense, that was all he craved. The grounded feeling of a connection.

So he began to look. Assuming he would locate Eleanor's room by her familiar objects, her tapestries and antique silver atomizers and African carvings, he entered four nearly bare cells before he stopped to think. Each cubicle, a simple rectangle with a slanted roof and one square window, held a cot, a small table with a single drawer, and a built-in cabinet. A crucifix hung on the wall, and the light fixture was a bare bulb, a tiny bedside lamp.

The sameness of the four rooms oppressed Mauser. His vision narrowed. What could he do? How? He rubbed his chin. The cloak. He crushed it to his face and inhaled lengthily and critically. Then he took it away. He tilted his head backward, considered, touched his nose to the weave again. Not hers. He tried to remember. Not soap, not any kind of perfume. Just Eleanor.

He retrieved a time they had been camping together, and he smelled only her. But no, that was smoke of birch caught in her hair. He had it then he had it perfectly. The first time he'd kissed her, tasted her. She smelled like apple skins. Not the sweet flesh, but green skins. Waxy, tart before you peel them.

He started over now. Began with the first room, crept in, and then cautiously, with a delicate excitement, moved to each nun's bed, drew down the cover, and took a breath of the air above the sheet. He smelled the bottom of a cup of milk in one room, sulfur in the next. He smelled pockets of simmering minerals deep in the Earth. He smelled blood, salt, oats, and fresh nails straight from the hardware hopper. Dough, yeast risen but left too long beneath the towel.

He smelled apricots, rough cedar and mothballs, wool, and that peculiar, sharp, sad odor that rises when it is steam pressed. He smelled young hair, and old hair, and finally, he came to Eleanor. The actual scent of her hit him with a shock that opened his heart. He smoothed the coverlet back onto her bed and sat down to wait.