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rassing vestige from the days when I was compelled to sit in a church pew and listen to the parish priest pound his fists against the pulpit and promise his unrepentant congregants an eternity of inconceiv- able torments in hell. From him I learned that human nature is fraught with a thousand terrible impulses, the most wicked of which was a child’s lack of honor for her mother and father.
My daughter turned to me and said, “You didn’t do anything to upset the maid, did you, Mom?”
What an odd thing to ask! I explained that I’d never met the woman although I now wondered, as I
gazed at the ghastly image in the mirror, if she was
an immigrant from some remote mountain village
on the edge of a dark forest where the peasants still whispered the old stories and practiced forbidden ancient rites. Oh, I suppose the housekeeper may have had some reason to be irritated with me. In the six months I’d been using the agency, I’d never once left her a tip, not even a small Christmas bonus, but it seemed inconceivable that an employee, sent from a bonded agency, would do anything so disturbing. Not that I was under any obligation to tip her. The agency charged a hefty fee, and I was already way behind on the payments to my therapist.
My daughter ashed in the sink and regarded me again in a strange way.
I laughed. What, did she think, I was actually capable of drawing something so diabolical? The lonely graphic designer with a secret flare for the occult?
I reached out a hand and with one finger traced the horned creature, half-human, half-goat, drawn in a frenzy bold red strokes on the mirror. The tube of lipstick was still on the counter, deliberately placed there like a votive candle before the winged figure now leering at us. What name did the cosmetologists give such a distasteful color? Crime Scene? Urban Decay? Dark Fiction?
My daughter flicked her cigarette into the toilet. “Come sit down on the bed, Mom. You don’t look well.”
I backed away from her and with the intensity of a palm reader studied my trembling hand. Why had I touched that thing? Now I was contaminated. I was going to dirty my apartment with bad vibes, unclean spirits. I needed to call the agency right away and
(continued on next page)
“W
drawing something so diabolical? The lonely graphic designer with a secret flare for the occult?”
hat, did she think, I was
actually capable of
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