Dead Man's Face
By: Dale C. Uhlmann
Chapter 1
Little Josh Spencer battered the stubborn, immovable juggernaut of an oak door so furiously that his knuckles were soon covered with ugly, red blisters. He wretched his slightly built shoulders and thin wrists as he violently tugged at the stiff brass knob that refused to yield. The door was too much for any eight-year-old, let alone an asthmatic like Josh, whose breathing was now becoming dangerously short and labored, as he felt the air to his lungs being choked off, like a chicken whose neck was being wrung. He knew, though, that he had to keep trying-he knew that he had to escape from that nightmarish room. If he didn't, he feared, he would end up like Sam.
Josh, an only child, had traveled with his mother, Claire, a twenty-four-year-old divorced woman from Indiana, when she had answered an ad, supplied by relatives living in that state, to work as a housekeeper for a retired surgeon and medical school instructor, Dr. C. L. Aranya, who was now living in Denver, Colorado. It seemed that nobody else in that area would take the job. They had traveled with Claire's newest live-in boyfriend, Jim, a twenty-seven-year-old unemployed ballroom dance instructor whom she had met in a bar. Instantly, the medium-height, but striking woman that night with the short, auburn hair and crystal blue eyes, and in the pale yellow cotton tank top and tight polyester Gap blue jeans, had caught the eye of the tall, dark-haired, and stubble-chinned man in the braided pony tail, blue denim jacket and jeans, and black Hard Rock cotton T-shirt. It wasn't long, after a few beers together, that Claire's rented condominium had made room for an additional resident, the latest in the line of live-in strangers that Josh had had to get used to. This one, though, had, to this date, stayed the longest, and had evidently planned on hanging around with them in Denver for the foreseeable future.
But life for the three of them was about to change that cold, early November evening. Josh had decided to venture out in search of Sam, his Black Labrador puppy, which they had adopted from the local animal shelter upon their arrival as a friend and companion for the boy. The dog had mysteriously disappeared, and had been gone for about a week. Somehow, Josh suspected that he had been kidnapped by Dr. Aranya, a tall, thin, eighty-four-year-old woman who had instantly struck Josh as some sort of bizarre cross between Cruella De Ville and Martha Stewart. There was something creepy about her, perhaps her cold, lizard-green eyes, or her long, wispy, gray hair that framed her face like the limp, damp strings on top of a wet mop. All in all, with her road-map face of wrinkles and crow's feet, she reminded Josh of a Mayan mummy come to life in a dubbed-into-English Mexican horror film that he had seen on T.V.
That night, Claire and Jim had been too preoccupied with what had become a nightly ritual to notice Josh's clandestine absence from the house. After having consumed several Absolut and Tonics, they had retired to the sanctuary of the house's main upstairs bedroom, where, at Jim's instructions, they had danced an obscene, drunken tango and then had commenced tearing each off other's clothes (a navy blue, white-blocked-lettered cotton/polyester sweat shirt and black corduroys for him, and a long sleeve, white knit crew neck sweater and GUESS cotton blue jeans for her), after which they had collapsed on the bed in a stupor of clumsy intercourse. Josh had become all too familiar with the routine, and, at the sound of the two's intense giggling and laugher, had known that it had been safe to exit the house without being noticed. Quickly tugging his bright orange and wool Indiana Pacers toboggan over his curly red hair, and donning a hunter green winter coat over his powder-blue, cotton/polyester sweats, he had grabbed his mother's keys to her employee's house from the kitchen windowsill and had set off, on a quarter-mile trek, and in the middle of a chilly, lake effect snow shower, to the place where he was sure Sam had been abducted, and imprisoned.
There, he had noticed that Dr. Aranya's split-level ranch house was dark, except for a light in the basement, and one from a room at the end of the second floor hallway. Nervously, silently, he had unlocked the front door, and decided to try the upstairs room first. Upon reaching the second level, he could hear the unmistakable sound of a dog's whimpering, and had recognized it right away as Sam's. To his delight, the door had been open.
It was a large room whose thick walls had been marred by chipped and flaking, pale-blue paint, and full of long, oblong cots, covered in dingy, white sheets. On makeshift balsa shelves nailed to these walls he had been surprised to see rows and rows of empty cages, the types he had seen in pet stores (although the half-consumed tin plates of food and water, and the dried feces on the cages' straw lining would indicate that they had been recently occupied). Was this some type of laboratory? The whimpering, which had never ceased, from his first entrance into this room, had led him to the end of a winding corridor, where he had eagerly awaited his reunion with Sam, and the chance to make what he had thought would subsequently have been a quick and easy getaway. It was then that he had seen it: sitting in the middle of a cage that, like the others, had been placed on its own balsa shelf, was, like a grotesque image in a drug-induced dream, a hideous facsimile of what had once been Sam. The thing in the cage had had Sam's head, but the body of a furry white, and rust-brown-speckled guinea pig. Josh could see the wine-red patchwork crisscross of jagged surgical thread that had attached the head upon the misplaced body, and the resulting stream of dry blood stains from each thread, whose crimson color had spoiled the purity of the body's pristine, white fur. The head had then started barking loudly and enthusiastically at the sight of his beloved young playmate, and, judging from some slight, almost imperceptible movement in the creature's hips, had tried, but in vain, to shake the rodent torso's stubby substitute for a canine tail. It had then occurred to Josh that the poor thing was unable to move its lower trunk, making the boy deathly sick to his stomach. Instantly, Josh's breathing had become painful and labored, and he had forgotten to take his asthma inhaler with him. Terrified, he had raced for the door, but Dr. Aranya, evidently alerted by the barking, had trudged upstairs and locked it.
Her young victim now pounded helplessly, and then collapsed on the floor. Dr. Aranya then unlocked the door, entered the room, and laid the now unconscious boy in the middle of her coffee brown leather living room sofa. She then called Josh's mother from her old, coal black living room land phone, and told her that she had found the boy outside her door, and suspected that he had been the victim of abduction and attempted rape. Claire then shook off the effects of the last Absolute and Tonic as best she could, got dressed, hopped into her 2000 silver gray Grand Am, and rushed over, alone (Jim had totally passed out, and was currently in such a deep, alcohol-induced slumber that he could not yet be awakened), to take her still unconscious son home. Once back there, in her kitchen, and in his mother's arms, Josh finally came to, his bright brown eyes staring at her in a blank expression of terror; his breathing was still shallow, and he could not utter a sound. Doctors later would diagnose his condition as the result of some unknown, extreme trauma from which he might never recover, and advised her to place him in a mental hospital, as a ward of the state, where he would have to remain indefinitely.
Six months later, with her son still in the same condition, and with no reasonable hope of recovery, Claire, in a frenzy of guilt and sorrow, would hang herself with a brown leather belt from the top rung of her shower curtain, and Jim, now without a meal ticket, would leave town. Dr. Aranya would have to find another housekeeper, but, in the meantime, she had other plans, which would affect other innocent lives-and hundreds of miles away, and in places she would never have imagined.
Chapter 2
Like the film noire tough guys he had always idolized-Alan Ladd, Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan-Alex Roth wanted to take chances. Of that group, his favorite was Bogie; his Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, he was convinced, was "the stuff that dreams are made of." Like Woody Allen's neurotic nebbish in Play It Again, Sam,Alex, a young Jewish-American film student from Columbia University, considered Casablanca the greatest American film ever made. Unlike Allen's character, however, he was not myopic, nor short or plain-looking, but, rather, tall, 6'3," and striking, with naturally wavy, dark brown hair that he had recently decided to style as a permanent, and lake blue eyes, and popular with the ladies; their only link was their love of film, so much so that Alex had rebelled against his family's wishes and forsaken a safe, lucrative, but, from his viewpoint, dry and stale career as a tax lawyer, and instead had enrolled, after his undergraduate work at Columbia, in U.C.L.A's esteemed film school. There, he hoped to combine this study with his other love, music, and enter Turner Classic Movies' "Young Film Composers' Competition," compose an original score for one of T.C.M.'s numerous silent films that needed musical accompaniment, and win the $10,000 Grand Prize money that would get him started on a career he really loved. He badly needed the money; his family had disowned him, not only for this decision, but, more importantly, for another of his "calculated risks" or gambles that he was sure Bogie or Mitchum would have taken if they felt it was right-his courtship of a young Syrian-American girl he had recently met at U.C.L.A.
Her name was Fulla Al-Jada, whose first name, in Arabic, means "'beautiful flower.'" How apropos that name was. She had sleek, black, shoulder-length hair parted on the right side of her head, bright, flashing chestnut brown eyes, an oval face, deep, becoming mahogany complexion, and full, sensitive lips that would curl in either a warm, friendly smile, or an enticing pout. As Charlie Chaplin had once written about his one-time co-star/protégé/lover Edna Purviance, "'she was morethan pretty.'" In addition, she had a lovely Middle Eastern lilt to her voice that Alex found absolutely beguiling. To Alex, she reminded him of Princess Fatima from Disney's Aladdin, one of his favorite movies as a kid.
His parents had fully expected their only-and, frankly, spoiled-son to marry a "'nice Jewish girl'" from New York, but Alex didn't like Jewish girls. Like Groucho Marx, who said he had married gentile women all his life because he had found most Jewish females pushy, and conceited, he had been taken with Fulla the moment they had met at U.C.L.A. in the fall. She came from Detroit, where her uncle had raised her after her parents had been killed in a Lake Michigan boating accident when she was two years old. Unlike many traditional Arab girls, she was her own woman; fiercely headstrong and independent, she spoke her mind freely, but she also had a natural, self-effacing charm that everybody who met her, including Alex, instantly found irresistible. For her part, she loved his openness, and sense of humor, and the arts interested them both. In fact, she had taken both ballet and dancing lessons all her life, and had enrolled at U.C.L.A. to become a professional choreographer. They shared one other common link: her family, too, objected to their courtship. But while Alex's parents had merely ostracized him, Fulla's family wanted to killhim. Fulla's Uncle Faheem, her adoptive father, happened to be, much to her shame, the head of the Detroit Syrian mob. She had cut herself off from these disreputable ties and influence, and had refused any help on their part in achieving her educational and career goals, but she knew that her relationship with Alex was something they could not ignore, and would do something about. Like his cinematic heroes, Alex really was taking a realchance now, but, spoiled boy that he had always been, what he wanted, he was determined to have.
Now, Alex had decided, was the time to make the next move: to elope with Fulla, this, despite the fact that he had just received a most disturbing note, scrawled in blood-red ink, on a single sheet of three-ring notebook paper, from her uncle:
"I WARN YOU, YOU ZIONIST DOG, THINK WITH YOUR HEAD, NOT WITH YOUR DICK! GO FUCK YOUR OWN KIND, SOME HOT-TO-TROT JEW-TRAMP FROM THE SYNAGOGUE! LEAVE FULLA ALONE!"
"Well," chuckled Alex, crumbling up the note in his hands and jauntily tossing it, NBA style, with a Lebron James-like flick of his upraised right wrist, into the ceramic trash can a feet feet away, in the corner of the waiting room of the Justice of the Peace's office. "I guess I'm not Uncle Faheem's ideal choice for a son-in-law!" he joked. "Oh, well, remember what a hard ass Robert De Niro was to his son-in-law, Ben Stiller in Meet the Parents? He came around!" He then started buttoning up the collar of his sky-blue cotton dress shirt and adjusting up the silk, white-speckled, wine-colored tie and gold clasp he had chosen to wear with his slate gray, two-piece rayon suit for the civil ceremony he had arranged. Fulla, dressed in a simple, white pinstriped, navy blue double-breasted polyester jacket and matching skirt, her head adorned by a white lace wedding veil, looked on in dismay.
"Please, Alex!" she pleaded. "This is no joke. HE MEANS IT!"
"Hey, so do I," he smiled, embracing her warmly by her slim waist and drawing her closer to him. He gently lifted the front tip of the veil with his right hand and treated her full, pouting lips to an affectionate kiss. "You know by now that the more somebody tell me NOT to do something," he continued, still holding up the veil with his right hand while continuing to encircle his waist with his left, the more I'm gonna DO it."
"Oh, Alex," she continued, undaunted by his flippant attitude, "I KNOW my Uncle Faheem, and this marriage tonight…well, he WON'T like it!"
"Maybe, but I'm not marrying HIM. I'm marrying YOU, remember?" affectionately drawing her tighter to his stout, barrel chest.
"Oh, please!" pleaded Fulla; throwing up her petite hands in dismay, "listen to me! He hates the very though of us seeing each other. And when he finds out that we're married, I don't know WHAT he'll do!"
"Gee," Alex answered, in a tone of mock gravity, "you don't think it's because I'm Jewish, do you?"
"Oh, you don't take anything seriously, do you?" she complained, glancing downward in frustration.
Alex now did his best to prove otherwise. "Hey, 'beautiful flower,'" he answered softly, temporarily releasing his embrace to gently nudge her face upward by placing his extended left forefinger on her chin. "I'm serious about YOU; you know that."
"I know, she replied, but Uncle Faheem…"
"Look," he said, interrupting her, "this fucking blood feud thing of his…and my parents are no different…is so anal! This is the twenty-first century, for God's sake! What the hell do Jacob and Isaac, and the Seven-Day War have to do with US, here-NOW?"
"I know," she replied, glancing down again, self-consciously, but…"
"'But' nothing!" Alex replied. "I'm not a Jew, and you're not an Arab, okay? We're just two people who love each other and want to be together. What's so freakin' wrong about that?"
"Alex," Fulla tried to reassure him, glancing up and looking him squarely in his eyes, "I couldn't agree more. You know how I feel. I WANT to marry you, but…"I'm afraid…for you!"
"Hey, DON'T be, okay? We've got big things planned. I'm gonna win that ten grand, and compose scores for films, and you're gonna be a great dancer and choreographer; everybody on Broadway will come to see your shows-including my mom and dad! And OUR kids are gonna have something to be proud of! Come on, now, relax; the Justice of the Peace is waiting." He then drew closer to her, and kissed her passionately; their now tightly closed eyes shutting out all doubts and fears. Alex then released both her chin and the veil, which now again dropped around her forehead, and smiled. With his left hand, he then plucked a white carnation from a nearby vase on the oak desk next to his left arm, and placed it in his opposite lapel, while she retrieved, with her left, the violet corsage she had earlier temporarily placed next to the vase. He now took her right hand, now steady and firm, in his, and, opening the door to the outer lobby with his left, called out to the waiting Justice, "We're ready."
The ceremony was short and perfunctory-not exactly the kind of marriage that the two of them would have ordinarily preferred-but it had served its purpose, and the two had become husband and wife. Their wedding night was spent in Alex's off-campus college apartment, a simple one-level stucco brick dwelling that he and his cousin had recently renovated. He and Fulla would later need other accommodations, they realized, but for now, this dwelling would be sufficient, at least until, Alex was convinced he would win the "Young Film Composers' Competition" and come into some money to supplement the part-time A.V. University job he held on the side, helped out by the salary Fulla was earning from her secretarial position at the local real estate title office.
Following their wedding night together, the two slept in late, about 10 A.M., for it was Saturday, reclining leisurely in their nuptial bed. Fulla, clad in a sheer, snow-white lace nightgown, lay peacefully on her stomach; her face nestled comfortably in the soft, plumb-colored, cotton case of an oversized, fluffy down pillow. Alex, shirtless, and wearing only the drawstring pants to his off-white drawstring cotton pajamas, lazily opened his eyes, playfully grinned, and straddled himself across her rear side, the fingers of his right hand delicately caressing, between the nightgown's long, thin shoulder straps, the tender flesh, as soft as a baby's skin, of her exposed back. He tenderly kissed his bride's adjacent erogenous areas, from the nape of her neck down to the lower crest of her spine, and back up again. She smiled, eyes still closed, and purred softly, like a contented kitten. Then, Alex turned over on his back, drew up the loose matching, plumb-colored, cotton bed sheets around his lower body, just below his waist, leaned back on his own pillow, arms comfortably drawn back against his head, fingers interlocking and elbows extended, and, sighing contently. Fulla likewise gathered the sheets around her own waist, and gracefully adjusted her position to lie on top of her husband's bare chest, nestling her face in its warm, soft bed of dark, tousled hair. Her soft, bounteous cleavage, generously exposed by the nightgown's plunging bodice, pressed against Alex's barrel-chested, muscular upper frame. As the fingers of her left hand played with the particularly thick strands on his sternum, Alex, noticing her satisfaction, remarked, "Aren't you glad I didn't shave and wax it, like most guys do now?"
"You bet," Fullah answered, closing her eyes blissfully and smiling contently, "Give me a hairy chest any day!"
"As long as it's not yours?" he grinned.
"Oh, you silly thing!" she laughed, opening her eyes, glancing up, and gently, playfully slapping her right palm over his forehead. They both laughed as she again reclined in his arms, resting her head and the palms of both of her hands on the middle of his chest.
Then, Alex leaned to his left slightly, picked up the midnight-blue remote control on the nearby oak bed stand, with his right hand, and pressed the "ON" button to activate his 16" bedroom T.V. He then switched to "04" on the device's channel selector, and pressed the "ON" button for the D.V.D, which had been placed on a shelf just underneath the TV, on the same home entertainment stand. He then activated the "PLAY" button, to activate the D.V.D. that was already in the machine, and playing was a print of the 1926 Lon Chaney, Sr. silent film The Blackbird. This was the film that Alex was now competing with seven other students across the country to compose a musical score for. The film dealt with a criminal (Chaney, the "Man of a Thousand Faces") who masqueraded as a partially paralyzed bishop as a cover for his crimes. In the scene they were watching, the clip that he would be required to compose musical accompaniment for, Chaney's character had to duck behind a closed door, slamming it tightly, and quickly execute his change of clothing back into the Bishop, in order to avoid detection. It was an unintentionally funny scene, and both Alex and Fulla laughed uproariously.
"You know," he said, clicking both the T.V. and D.V.D. off, and laying the remote control on next to the right side of their sheeted legs, "I'll bet I could use some French horns there to REALLY bring out the frenzy and panic in that scene. What d' you think?"
"Sounds all right to me," replied Fulla.
"Y' know what I'd like to do more than anything else right now?"
"What?" asked Fulla, raising her head to make eye contact, and smiling in anticipation of a much more romantic answer than the one she would now receive.
"I'd love to discover a print of London by Gas Light, the 1929 silent film that's disappeared from the face of the earth."
"Oh, that!" she said, in mock disappointment, lowering her head again to his chest.
"It's a 'lost' film" he went on, now totally immersed in his life's dream, "but, because it's the last known movie ever scripted by Henry Greenberg, a rea l amateurwho seemed to disappear, too, after the film was completed, it would be a real find. Both T.C.M. and Eastman House would pay a lot of money to me for the restoration rights-and an extra fee for the music score I'd supply for it."
"Yeah," said Fulla, disconcertedly.
"What's the matter?"
"Well, this is the first day after our wedding," she complained, raising her head off his chest to again look him in the eyes. "I thought you'd have other things on your mind than that old silent movie you've been trying to find!"
"Who says I haven't?" he smiled.
"Well," grinned Fulla, lovingly wrapping her arms around his neck, "NOW you're talkin'!" She drew gently drew his face down to hers; they closed their eyes, and lovingly kissed each other's lips.
At that moment, their wedded bliss was interrupted by the breaking down of their bedroom door, and by four pairs of strong, rough hands that tore them apart from each other. What would happen then would be an act of horror that would violently alter both of their lives forever.
Chapter 3
Alex felt his assailant's strong forearms force themselves under his armpits and up over the back of his neck in a full nelson that caused the blood to rush to his head, and his legs to almost collapse beneath him. He tried to thrash free, but his assailant's harsh, Middle Eastern-accented warning subdued him. "Don't move, or I'll break your fucking neck!" the muscular, stubble-chinned young Syrian shouted. Alex complied, and was dragged into his kitchen, where he was forced onto one of his own wine red, plastic fold-up chairs that the intruder had, with one, swift kick of his coffee brown, steel-toed work boot, dislodged from the table. There, he quickly pulled a coil of strong hemp rope from the right pocket of his black leather jacket, which he wore over a white cotton muscle shirt and slate gray denim jeans, and began to tie Alex's body, from his legs to his upper forearms, which he forced behind the seat's hard back, to the chair. Meanwhile, Fulla, who had wrung herself free from the grip of her own assailant, rushed headlong into the kitchen and made a valiant effort to rescue Alex, frantically trying, with both hands, to pull Hassan, Alex's medium-height, burly captor, away from her husband, but his strength proved too much for her. Instantly, he squeezed Fulla's wrists, yanked her away, and then, brazenly, slapped her across the face with his bulky right forearm. She collapsed on the kitchen floor, blood flowing freely from the left corner of her mouth, trickling down on her chin, and staining the purity of her white night gown.
At that moment, Hassan felt the blunt end of the barrel of a pistol on the back of his skull. He collapsed, face-first, just a few feet from Fulla, utterly unconscious. The tumult brought the other man, Mohammed, a tall, black-goateed Arab man in a battleship gray, hooded cotton/polyester sweat suit and ocean blue Adidas sneakers, and from whose grasp Fulla had escaped into the kitchen, to face their boss, Faheem, who stood over his fallen partner, his left hand, a midnight-blue onyx ring inlaid with gold on his forefinger, aiming the silencer directly at the nape of Hassan's neck. "You're lucky I didn't kill you for striking my niece," said Faheem, coldly and matter-of-factly, or, as William Faulkner would have remarked in his classic short story "Barn Burning," about his protagonist, a stoic, but vengeful and brutal sharecropper, "without heat." "But I don't want to waste the bullet," he said, placing the gun in his jacket's right pocket. He prided himself on self-control, and Hassan had breached that code in having emotionally struck out against Fulla, who, like a newborn fawn, rose unsteadily to her feet to confront her uncle, who looked up behind him, shrilly whistled, and called to Al-Azair, his faithful Rottweiler. "Get in here, you mutt! Why are you mulling around out there?" The dog meandered in, and sat down, submissive and docile at his master's feet.
Faheem was a short, but stout man, only about 5'7," but with an intimidating presence, and penetrating, oak-brown eyes. He had a thick, black, Turkish-style moustache that drooped down over the corners of his tightly drawn mouth, and was dressed impeccably this day in a three-piece, white pin-striped, slate blue Oleg Cassini suit, peach-colored shirt, with gold cufflinks, cherry-red tie, the fabrics made of the best of Middle Eastern silk, held by a solid gold stickpin, and, one of the few concessions he had made to the West, because he liked their appearance, alabaster-colored, suede Italian designer shoes. All in all, he seemed more like a stockbroker than a thug with delusions of grandeur than a crime boss. "Are you all right, Fulla?" he asked.
"A lot you care!" Fulla replied.
"You don't know how much, my loving niece," he replied. "I'm here to save you from a mistake that will ruin the rest of your life. Doesn't that prove it?"
"Who the hell asked you?" Fulla shouted. "You're my uncle, not my keeper! I told you before, I'll make my own decisions, and lead my own life!"
"Not as long as you're part of this family" answered Faheem coldly and flatly, again, "without heat." "I owe it to my brother and his wife, true Syrians, to make sure that you don't go astray."
"You leave my parents out of this!" Fulla demanded. "This isn't about them, damn it; it's about you-you and your crazy racial ideas!-your hate! I don't want any part of your life-the shootings, the car bombs, the filthy money from people's spilt blood, weaknesses and vices-the coke, the heroin, the hookers-all that, and more, has paid for my life and my home! I know that, and I'm ashamed of it-and I'm ashamed of you!-not of us, not of our people, but of you! You represent all the worst that Westerners think about us!"
"You've lived in this fucking West too long, girl! Why, when you sit down and cross your legs, you even show the heel of your shoe to others, like all those discourteous, spoiled Western girls you've been around. You're coming home with me-now!"
"No, Uncle! This is my home!" Fulla answered, punctuating the remark with a downward thrust of her left forefinger. She then marched defiantly up to Faheem and thrust her right hand and ring finger into his face. "See this? We were married last night?" She noticed the glimmer of shock, the only emotion that he could not now suppress, in his eyes. "Surprised?" I guess your spies didn't tell you that!"
"What have you done? What have you done? You have married a Jewish dog, and now your children will be mongrels!"
"Oh, dear Uncle Faheem, there you go again, those old ideas of racial purity of yours. You know, you and Hitler should have gotten together; then, what a Holocaust you too could have had! Yes, we're married, and there's nothing you can do about it!"
"Silence!" he said. The tone of his voice frightened Fulla; she had never known him to lose control of himself, but he had now. "I'll have the marriage annulled! You, get your miserable ass up!" he commanded Assan, who had come to, and who now groggily started to rise to his feet, rubbing the contusion that was already developing on the back of his head, and blinking at the near blinding headaches he was even now experiencing. "Mohammed, take Fulla into the Sedan outside, and drive her back to my house." Faheem then turned his attention to Hassan, "and you, you dog, if you want to redeem yourself, stay here with me, and do exactlyas I tell you! I have something that requires your talents!" He then cast a menacing glance at Alex, who still writhed and struggled against his constraints.
"No! No!" shouted Fulla, as Mohammed grabbed her forearms with both hands from behind, and forcefully dragged her from Alex's apartment. Once he heard the slamming of the door, Faheem walked toward Alex and announced, "Now, my son-in-law, I have something very special in store for you!"
The thick hemp of the tightly knotted ropes cut into the bare flesh of Alex's back, chest, and stomach as Faheem leaned over him, his outstretched left hand resting on the base of the chair above Alex's face. "What are ya gonna do, torture me?" Alex asked, while managing the best shitty grin he could in order not to show his victimizer how afraid he really was.
"It would be no more than what you Israeli dogs have done to us when you've taken us prisoner."
"Oh, so I'm a prisoner now, am I? What?-we're at war or something? Hey, let me give you a little geography lesson, bud. I'm from the Bronx, not Tel-Aviv."
"It doesn't matter, Faheem coolly replied. "You're still a Zionist mongrel, and now you've polluted Fulla with your vile blood!"
"Hey, get real, man! This is the digital age, the age of information-not the Dark Ages!"
This war knows no time or century, my friend," answered Faheem.
"So what're you thinkin' of? Huh? Putting electrodes on my dick? Pulling my fingernails out with pliers? Beheading me?"
"Yes" replied Faheem impassively. "I've considered all of these measures, and, as fitting as they might be for other dogs, not one of them will do. It must be something very unique."
"Well, I'm sorry, but I've already been circumcised!"
Faheem stared on silently and grimly, unperturbed by Alex's brave sarcasm.
"Oh, wait, I know," he went on, "You keep callin' me man's best friend. How about takin' a cue from Brunuel's An Andalusian Dog, and splitting my eyeball with a razor?"
"Oh," Faheem smiled slightly, "I'd forgotten that you're a film student. You would think of that! No, the punishment I've decided on you must always see, and live with, the rest of your life. Every day, your own mirror will be its cursed reminder!"
"Aw, come on, man," Alex said, the tension finally getting to him. "Let me go. Fulla and I love each other!"
"Would my niece love you, I wonder, without your handsome features? With a face like the one you will soon have? Hassan! "
Heeding his master's call, and pulling a scalpel out of his left jacket pocket, Hassan was now ready to do what Faheem commanded; they had planned this before they had even arrived. Instantly, Faheem stepped aside as Assan leaped in front of Alex with the speed and grace of a panther, straddled his lap, and held the scalpel, glistening in the morning sunlight that streamed through the front kitchen window aloft in his left hand while holding his face immobile by grasping his chin with his left. Rhythmically, forcefully, went the downward thrust of the surgical instrument that had often been called upon to save lives, and that now was being used to ruin one. Cleanly but cruelly, the scalpel's sharp edge hacked strip after strip of both tender flesh and soft muscle from the Alex's face. Bits and pieces of flayed skin, intermixed with blood and tissue, flew everywhere, soiling the eggshell white walls and freshly waxed celery green speckled white tile floor. Alex screamed and wailed in agony as, piece-by-piece, his face was being butchered beyond recognition.
"Now his nose," Faheem, impassively intoned from the north corner of the kitchen, his right hand pulling from his left pocket trouser an Arabian cigar wrapped in cellophane, which he now peeled away with his right hand, carelessly dropping the scraps to the floor.
Alex screamed like a man tortured by the demons of hell.
"Now his lips," Faheem commanded, placing the cigar in his mouth, and starting it up with a silver butane lighter that he had plucked with his left hand from his right trouser pocket, to which he then returned it. He started puffing contently away, filling the kitchen with the cigar's pungent, overly sweet odor, serenaded by Alex's anguished screams.
As Alex's cries reached a fever pitch, Al-Azair, the mud-brown rottweiler, which had followed his master into the kitchen, whimpered and bellowed in fright, and frantically dashed for the door. The poor animal battered the edifice with its body, which it had overturned in a paroxysm of fear, in an effort to escape from this Chamber of Horrors, and climbed to its hind legs, clawing frenziedly against the immovable barrier.
"Deeper, deeper! " insisted Faheem, the cigar clenched tightly between his teeth. "I can still see his Jew-face!"
Hassan responded, and scraped even more furiously with the scalpel until it reached tendons, and, finally, bone. By that time, Alex had passed out from shock, torrents of blood and piles of loose flesh spotting his bare chest and skin.
"That's enough; let me see," said Faheem, as Hassan let Alex's head drop to his chest. He drew nearer to inspect his henchman's work, his right hand yanking Alex's head up by the hair. He turned the hideous, now skull-like face to the right, then to the left, then to the right again. Then, he withdrew his hand, let the face that now longer resembled neither Alex, nor any other living human being now, drop down, and said, "That'll do. Let's go."
Their foul work done, they left the house, followed by Al-Azair, and leaving Fulla, whom they later released and drove back to Alex's apartment, to view the carnage, and tend to the living corpse that had, just hours before been her husband.
Chapter 4
The months that followed were sheer torture for the couple. Visit after visit to plastic surgeon after plastic surgeon produced the same disappointing news: nothing could be done to restore Alex's face. Not even the famed Cleveland Clinic, that House of Medical Miracles, and host to both Presidents and world leaders, could help him. The damage done to both the skin and underlying tissues had been so deep, and the risk of infection so high, that even skin grafts were out of the question. And because of their patchwork nature, Alex was told that he would actually be better off looking for the rest of his life like, in his own words, Lon Chaney's Erik, the Phantom of the Opera. His face was a virtual living skull, animated only by the melancholy, sapphire blue eyes that illuminated the hollowed sockets. Hassan had done his work well. But if his cruel master, Faheem, thought that this atrocity would destroy Fulla's love for Alex, he was wrong. If anything, it had made her more devoted to him than ever, for this was no monster, but the man she loved, and she had quit her job in order to provide him with the love and support that, in this short time following this crime, he so badly needed.
But if Faheem had turned Alex into a monster, he had unwittingly done the same to his niece. Whatever familial love she may have felt for her uncle was long gone. Like the narrator of Edgar Allan Poe's story "The Black Cat," "evil thoughts" now became her "sole intimates." She was now possessed by what Poe had called "Perverseness." When she was not tending to Alex, and, unbeknown to him, not shoving a wash cloth in her mouth to stop herself from crying, she preoccupied herself with the thought of, one day, somehow, making Faheem pay for this unspeakable cruelty.
In the meantime, she was preoccupied with attempting to keep her husband's spirits up, trying to convince him-as well as, secretly, herself-that the next medical visit or phone call would bring the miracle that they both fervently hoped and prayed to God for. But as the weeks passed without any such word, he sought relief from his growing depression through alcohol, and often lay in bed all day. He had also ceased to regularly bathe or shower, and ate only sporadically, claiming that, if his faced looked like a skull, he might as well go all the way. He would read the same books and articles, over and over again, on his idol, screenwriter Henry Greenberg, who had penned London by Gaslight, the lost silent film he had always dreamed of finding and restoring. The rest of his time would be spent aimlessly playing the same clip from The Blackbird, while still scribbling down notes on a yellow legal pad for an accompanying musical score, although hopes for the "Young Film Composers' Competition," as well as for a normal life, now seemed like distant memories.
Still, some things were not mere memories, like the mounting bills that the two, both of whom were unemployed, could no longer pay, their meager savings now practically spent, and with no insurance to pay for the medical consultations, as well as for the pain relief and scar softening treatments that Alex required twice a month. There seemed to be only one solution, since neither could turn to his or her family for support, but it was a decision that was absolutely repugnant to Alex.
"No way, Fulla! No fuckin' way!" he insisted, downing a shot of Bourbon (his fifth of the day) from a glass that he shakily held in his right hand, and then shattered into multiple piece and shards when he then tossed it angrily into the kitchen sink. This outburst, however, failed to deter Fulla, who, clad in a beige terry cloth bathrobe and royal blue felt slippers while reading the morning paper that day, stood her ground.
"Alex, face facts," she argued. "The rent on your place is already overdue this month. We have no income right now, and our credit cards are all practically maxed out. What else can we do?"
"No!" Alex still said, wiping what were left of his lips with the left sleeve of dingy, battleship gray cotton pajamas, which he had worn, without washing them, for three weeks straight.
"Look, Alex," she answered, holding in her left hand a folded page from the local newspaper's classified section, "this place is hiring now. Some of my friends practically put themselves through college while dancing at gentlemen's clubs, and I've had dancing experience."
"It's not your dancing they'll be looking at, and you know it!"
"Okay, so I'll have to show my boobs and maybe my snatch a little! So what? It's not like I'd be having sex with anybody. It'd be strictly 'look, but don't touch.'"
"I said 'no!'"
"Then we're gonna find ourselves out on the street any week now. Look, honey, I'm not crazy about this idea, either, but it'd probably only be for a little while, till I can find something else. But these bills have gotto be paid, and we've got to continue your treatments. We can't do either without money."
"All right, Fulla," Alex reluctantly agreed, "do what you have to do."
The next day, Fulla auditioned at the La La Palooza Gentleman's Club, in downtown Los Angeles. What won the management over, as Alex had predicted, was not her expert choreography, but her statuesque 6'1," 42, 22, 34 figure. They decided to costume her endowments in a revealing two-piece, beaded, turquoise chiffon bra and matching belly dancer pants, with bright, yellow-gold lace veils hanging from the sides; three rows of silver bracelets on each arm, and a shiny gold ring navel completed her outfit. Billed as "Fulla, the Desert Storm," she became an instant hit with patrons, and was everybody's first choice for $25.00 table and $50.00 private lounge dances; for these latter shows, more liberalized touching by the customers was permitted, while management discreetly looked the other way.
As Fulla had thought, after a few weeks, the money she was earning was pumping much needed income into the household, but Alex still hated the arrangement. He had, long ago, re-evaluated their marriage as a farce, as "Beauty and the Beast," but now it seemed like a mockery. The thought of strangers, whom he regarded, despite the euphemism, "Gentleman's Club," as drunken perverts ogling his wife's body filled him with both rage and self-loathing, for he blamed himself for, in effect, having forced her into prostituting her God-given talents, and training. Finally, one Saturday night, he could bear this indignity no longer, and resolved to take matters into his own hands.
He dressed himself in an olive green, cotton pocket T-shirt, tan corduroys, and gravel-gray hunting boots, along with a camouflage-colored military flap jacket. Like a vampire, Alex had long ago determined that his face would never again cast a reflection in a mirror, and had turned the glass surface above his bedroom dressing table to the bone-white-painted wall, as well as having removed the medicine cabinet mirror, which he had replaced with duct-taped cardboard. So he finished dressing without the benefit of the mirror that he had had, just a few months, ago, fastidiously consulted daily for adjustments to his appearance, and donned a black wool ski mask, which he roughly pulled down over what remained of his face, shredding a few flakes of remaining dead tissue in the process for the dust mites on the floor to feed upon, and left for the La La Palooza Club.
He parked his used, off-white Accord as near as possible to the front entrance, so he could make a hasty getaway later, and entered the Club. Although the pink Fredericks of Hollywood teddy-clad young Korean-American girl who took his $10.00 cover charge at the door thought it strange that he should be wearing a ski mask in a public place, there were no house rules against this attire, and she let him in.
Once inside the Club, whose air was thick with the stale odors of cigar and cigarette smoke, Alex adjusted his ears to the booming R&B and Rap music, and his eyes to the neon lights. He then sat down on one of several royal blue, leather chairs close to the center stage, brightly lit by three phosphorescent blue spots, where he ordered Vodka. The other men who sat at the stage stared at the stranger in the ski mask, and wondered if he were intent on robbing the place, but their attention was now abruptly averted by an announcement from a young African-American D.J. in a black and gold Oakland Raiders cap, and matching cotton jersey and trunks, interrupting a Destiny's Child song for the next act.
"And now, gentlemen, get your hands together and give a warm La La Palooza welcome to tonight's featured attraction, the Arab bombshell-her boobs are two BIG weapons of mass destruction, y'all!-FULLA, THE 'DESERT STORM!'"
Instantly, the stage exploded in swirls of red flashing lights, accompanied by an old Eurhythmics' song, "Would I Lie to You?" Then, strutting from the runway, and up to the stage, was Fulla, her belly dancer outfit leaving little to the imagination. For her first number, she treated the crowd to an expertly performed belly dance, her lean and muscular stomach reverberating in perfect rhythm to the music, while clapping a pair of ivory castanets in each palm with her fingers, the nails immaculately filed, and adorned with black polish. She would occasionally pause, and toss, at various intervals, one at a time, the veils hanging from her waistband to the customers seated at the stage, and kneel before a particularly animated customer while shaking and fondling her breasts. This action, in particular, infuriated Alex, who, unnoticed by Fulla, because of the blinding lights, gazed silently on, barely restraining his indignation. The customer would then generously pull from his wallet a bill, ranging in denominations from one to ten dollars, and place it in the lining of her elastic waistband, which she would stretch and hold out with both hands, or underneath the front band connecting the two cups of the costume's bra. A few customers even shoved a bill or two in her bounteous cleavage, which generously spilled out over the top of the cups. With each donation, she would politely smile and say "thank you," even, though she secretly resented their leers and sexual jeers.
Now, with the second song, another old Eurhythmics' tune, "I need a Man," came the part she especially detested: she would have to strip, but she knew that most of the larger bills that she would make that night would come from this stage of the act. As lead singer Annie Lennox's voice began to fill the house, Fulla promenaded around the stage, dollar bills hanging from the front and sides of her waistband, and sexually gyrated to the song's suggestive lyrics. "Shit!" remarked one short, prematurely balding, and slightly paunchy young man, wearing a lavender toboggan. "I've got to get me some of THAT for a lounge dance!" The thought of this pervert possibly fingering Fulla was too much for him to bear. He drew back his right fist and punched him on the chin, causing the lout to spill his draft beer, which he held in his left hand, all over himself.
Meanwhile, Fulla had drawn her hands behind her back, and had deftly unsnapped her bra. Before she could strip it off and send it sailing into the crowd and bearing her breasts, Alex had leaped up on to the stage, and had placed both arms protectively around her bosom, in an attempt to cover her, and to carry her away. Instantly, as she looked into the eyes that shown through the mask, she knew that familiar desperation and sorrow, and recognized those arms that had often held her so lovingly. "Alex!" she exclaimed.
Before she could utter another word, two massive, body-builder-type bouncers jumped onto the stage and tore the masked man from Fulla, who quickly re-snapped her bra from behind her back. She then ran to the trio, shouting, "No! "No! Please don't hurt him!" but they had already subdued him. Alex's arms had been pinned behind him by a young, burly Hispanic man, while the other bouncer, a dark-skinned Mediterranean man in his early thirties, and both wearing navy blue La La PaloozaT-shirts and white Wrangler cotton jeans, marched up to Alex, and, with both hands, tugged up and off the ski mask, flecks of dry tissue flying into the musty air.
Instantaneously, Fulla covered her face with both hands in sorrow, and shocked cries went up from the audience. One young dancer/drink server, a cute, freckled, strawberry blonde girl in a candy-striped bikini, screamed and fainted onto the floor, the five Martinis on the tray crashing to the ground. All beheld the skeletal visage that had once been Alex Roth, whose eyes from the dun sockets now wept in mortification, tears streaming down his raw, bony face.
When the "monster's" identity was known, the management fired Fulla, and, worse, public disturbance charges against Alex would be filed. He would have to appear in Los Angeles municipal court, and soon the whole community would know about "The Monster behind the Mask."
Chapter 5
Alex was charged with Disturbing the Peace and Disorderly Conduct, misdemeanors that would probably involve a fine and some community service. Because of the couple's financial hardships, Alex was assigned a Public Defender, who would plead her client's case before Municipal Judge Frank Sutter. Sutter was a judge who believed in "shaming" those who came before his Court by videotaping his hearings on closed circuit T.V., so that their friends, neighbors, and families would know of their transgressions. It was a form of punishment that he firmly believed had strong deterrent value, and, as a middle-aged Black man who had vivid memories of the violent inner city L.A. ghetto he had grown up in, he wished that more of his own friends, who were now either dead, the victims of urban violence, or who were now doing time, had been shamed themselves, and redirected down a different path. In fact, it had been those painful memories, particularly of his fourteen-year-old cousin, who been paralyzed from the waist down during a drive-by in which he had been tragically mistaken for another young Black teen, a member of a rival gang, that had led him to join the Air Force after high school, and then enroll in law school and take the Bar, before working as in the Prosecutor's Office, and finally running for Municipal Judge. His standard address to any young miscreant, minority or white, was always the same: "You know, I see a lot of my cousin in you, and that's a shame!" The Judge would then show him or her a photo of his wheel chair-bound cousin, and recount the story of his tragic fate, coupled with a "tough love" sentence that would invariably include a stiff fine and community service for a first offense, and jail, no matter what the excuse or circumstances, for the second. He made it clear that he did want to see the same person a third time in his Court, or else the sentence would be even stiffer.
He did have a sense of humor, however, which he delivered with extra sharpness for the camera. Once, when a neighborhood fence had stood before his Court, the Judge had sarcastically told the spectators-and the viewing audience-"wow, you're gonna want to stick around for this one, folks. This guy thinks BIG! He not only stole a stereo system, but a big-screen T.V., D.V.D., and entire living room suite, too!" Then, he addressed his bailiff, "Johnny, tell him what he's won!-an all expenses-paid trip to jail!" And when a teenage girl, clad in a light blue L.A. Dodgers jersey, black Levis cotton jeans, and flip flop sandals, and charged with shoplifting a pair of Reeboks from a Payless Shoe Store, had impudently smiled and answered his "grow up and take responsibility" lecture with a sarcastic "I turn eighteen next month" reply, he had been in rare form on that day. "Then act like an ADULT, you LITTLE BRAT!" he had responded. Then, he had screwed up his face in a mockery of her earlier grin and repeated, "'I'm gonna turn eighteen next month!'" He had then rhetorically asked, "You know what you do when you turn eighteen? You join the MILITARY! You get a JOB! I tell ya, young lady, you picked the wrong Judge to get sassy with this time!" He had ended up ordering her to pay the store for the shoes, fined her $300.00, and sentencing her to walk up and down the same Payless she had shoplifted from with a sign reading, 'I stole from Payless' for four weeks, from 4PM-5PM, after school, and to do community service during the weekends for that same period of time at the local Meals on Wheels. When she had started protesting the decision, he had simply replied that it would be either that, or jail.
He could be equally harsh with adults. Before Alex's hearing on this morning, and pleading "no contest" to a D.U.I. charge, was Jason La Rue, Casting Director of the L.A.-taped syndicated tabloid program The Patty Collinsworth Show, whose guests regularly ran the gamut from transvestite rodeo cowboys and trailer park beauty contestants, to Killer Clown Neo-Nazis and paternity-tested transsexuals. The show was nationally renowned for its excruciatingly bad taste. The medium-built, thirty-two-year-old man with the high forehead and receding, sandy brown hairline stood in a rumpled, two-piece charcoal gray suit, a red power tie knotted loosely and crookedly around the unbuttoned, dingy collar of his white cotton shirt, had spent the night in jail, before the show's executive producer had posted a bond that morning. He squinted while running his right hand over his pounding forehead. "Aw, what's the matter, Mr. La Rue," Judge Sutter asked, his voice heavy with sarcasm. "A little hung over from last night? No wonder! It's a good thing your vehicle is still drivable, and that nobody was hurt. You gotta remember, Mr. Roth, Denny's doesn't have a drive-through, so you can't try to make one out of its side window with your S.U.V.! Are you listening, Mr. La Rue?"
"Yes, your Honor," he answered sheepishly, leaning forward over the defendant's tan-colored podium at the front of the courtroom, just a few feet from the Judge's bench, and speaking into its outstretched black microphone.
"Good! Now, here's the deal. Because this is your first D.U.I, you'll get only forty-eight hours in jail, starting this Friday afternoon at five, to Sunday afternoon at five. When you get out, you'll start attending, every Tuesday evening, for the next three months, meetings of your local A.A., and be on Probation for thirty-six months. Also, you're gonna pay $2,000 in fines and court costs, with at least forty dollars due by Friday of every week until it's paid, and I'm restricting you to occupational driving only during your Probation. That means you can only drive to and from work. Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir, I do."
"Okay. Now, one more thing," he quipped. "Tell Patty she wears too much eyeliner on that awful show of yours!" A gale of laughter then went up from the spectators. "That'll be all!"
"Thank you, your Honor," La Rue replied, and turning to leave, but, feeling faint, decided to sit in the public galley for a few minutes to clear his head. The Judge did not notice La Rue's sudden change of plans, because he busy studying the hearing schedule that he had now picked up, with his right hand, from his finely polished mahogany desk top. Then, placing the schedule back down, he adjusted with his left hand the rose-flowered, lake blue silk tie that he had worn with a peach-colored rayon shirt under his judicial robes, cleared his throat, and announced, reading from the schedule and not yet looking up, "Next case, Alex Roth."
Alex, dressed in the same clothes that he had been arrested in, and Fulla, wearing a purple, zippered rayon jumpsuit, over which, from her right shoulder, hung her black leather purse, and white Sketchers, marched up, side by side, from where they had been standing behind La Rue, to the podium, where they stood before the bench. Accompanying them was the Public Defender, Julia Sinclair, a bespectacled young woman with short, dishwater blonde hair, and wearing this morning a powder blue, polyester dress suit and white, ruffled cotton blouse.
"Mr. Roth," Judge Sutter began, "You've been charged with Disturbing the Peace and Disorderly Conduct at the La La Palooza Gentleman's Club. How do you plead?" As the Judge finally glanced up, having taken an extra few seconds to scan the list of remaining hearings that had been scheduled before lunchtime, he noticed, upon looking at him for the first time, that Alex was wearing a burlap hood with eyeholes over his head. "What the hell's the meaning of this, Ms. Sinclair?" he demanded.
"Your Honor," the Public Defender answered, "there are mitigating factors that you should know about."
"Ms. Sinclair, I should certainly HOPE so, but I am NOT going to consider ANYTHING until your client removes that damn hood! What's the meaning of this, Mr. Roth?" asked Judge Sutter of Alex. "Is this your idea of a joke? Who the hell are you supposed to be, 'The Unknown Defendant?' One thing I WON'T tolerate is anybody making a mockery of this Court! Now, take that mask off, or I'll put you in jail for Contempt!"
"I'm sorry, but I can't do that, your Honor," came the muffled voice behind the hood.
"Yes," Fulla added, leaving Alex's side momentarily, and rushing up to the Bench, two armed and navy blue uniformed guards intercepting her and holding both of arms steady while stopping her just inches from Judge Sutter. "Please don't force him to take it off here!" she pleaded.
The Judge then picked up and pounded the gavel loudly with his right hand, and called for Order. He then glowered at Fulla in anger.
"Your Honor," the Public Defender interjected, "you don't understand. I'd be glad to explain the entire situation to you now, in your chambers."
"Quiet, Ms. Sinclair! Bailiff," he now directed, and rising to his feet, "remove that hood!"
Responding to the Judge's order, a tall, rangy, red-haired man in a midnight-blue polyester suit and dark, matching leather belt, barbershop-striped rayon tie, and light blue cotton shirt, marched up to Alex, and, with one fell swoop of his left hand, tore the burlap mask from his face.
Immediately, a collective cry and gasp of shock and terror issued forth from the onlookers. Judge Sutter, who had seen more than of his share of horribly scarred burn victims of test flight crashes while in the Air Force, still recoiled, his mouth agape, at the death's head young man who stood before him. Then, regaining his composure, he shouted, "Kill the cameras! Kill the cameras!" After a few seconds, he said, "Mr. Roth, my deepest apologies for what I have just put you through. Whatever may have happened at the Club, all charges are dropped. You need help, and this Court will see that you will get it! Ms. Sinclair, please see me in my chambers. This Court will now call a recess!" He then picked up his gavel with his right hand, pounded it in official pronouncement, laid it back on the desk, and started for his chambers.
Fulla, who had rushed to her husband's side, began crying in relief. As the two, accompanied by Ms. Sinclair, started exiting the courtroom, Jason La Rue, the one spectator who had NOT shielded his eyes, or turned his face away, during this whole incident, calmly walked up to the three, and introduced himself to the couple, with a most unusual proposition to offer them.
Chapter 6
In most American towns, the tacky, exploitative banners, promising the most bizarre attractions known to humanity, were now gone, along with the shrill barkers and the three-a-days. Special interest groups decrying the exploitation of its subjects-the "'humaniacs,'" as one frustrated New York showman had referred to them-had, along with the rising costs of the business itself, all but shut them down. But the old-fashioned "freak shows" were still thriving-having been given new life, in the electronic Age, by the tabloid media. People, both celebrities and non-celebrities alike, routinely paraded their public and private lives before the cameras in the voyeuristic genre of "reality TV," or, as in a "dog and pony" show, displayed their latest bodily transformation, from liposuction-induced weight loss, to breast enlargements, to trans-gender-bender surgeries, on the latest talk shows. It was in this climate that The Patty Collinsworth Show had found a loyal audience. A simple stage, furnished with about a dozen steel plastic folding chairs, and surrounded by lights, cameras, and a studio audience, a gallery of grotesques themselves, whose insensitivity and disrespect toward some of the more unruly guests were often encouraged by the host herself, had replaced the old tents and curtains. Patty, a tall, leggy ex-fashion model whose long, blonde hair was her trademark, was the combination ringmaster/barker. It was this modern-day sideshow that was the only place in which Alex could find any welcome or acceptance. The $5,000 fee that Jason La Rue had offered him and Fulla to appear on the show, to be taped four weeks from now, and aired within six weeks, was too generous to pass up. Because of the possible danger to Fulla, the show agreed to keep the names of her disreputable relatives confidential, but Alex would have to surrender his dignity and pride by, at one point, shedding his burlap hood, and bearing his horrible visage before the cameras. As in a true freak show, the curtain would have to drawn back at some point, and the "payoff" delivered; the customers would accept nothing less for their fifty cents paid admission, and tabloid TV was no different.
Alex had been scheduled that day as one of several guests on an episode entitled, "I'm No Different Than You." There was a young woman who had been born without a lower waist or legs, a middle-aged African-American man who had been born without arms, an eighty-year-old Taiwanese-American girl whose eyelids, ears, and bottom lip had been torn off by a pit bulldog, a six-year-old Latino boy suffering from such advanced aging that he now, tragically resembled Jabba the Hut on a bad day-and then there was Alex, who, dressed this day, as recommended by the show's wardrobe advisors, in a graphite-gray rayon suit, beige cotton shirt, and white-striped maroon cotton tie with a silver stick pin, shared, among other intimate details of his condition, the fact that hair festers, embedded in the crust of what remained of his skin tissue, were a constant source of irritation. Fulla, sitting next to her husband, and wearing a beige cotton pant suit, light orange crew neck top, and tan pumps, added that this problem alone had led to both staph infections and additional, painful surgeries.
Patty, smartly attired in a lavender, polyester, double-breasted jacket and matching skirt this day, had seen photographs of him un-hooded, and so she was somewhat prepared for his climactic unveiling. Still, actually seeing such a visage in the flesh was different, recalling Victor Frankenstein's reactions to his monstrous creation once it had been endowed with life: "I had gazed upon him while unfinished; he was ugly then, but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing that even Dante could not have conceived." To see what remained of the muscles of Alex's face actually moving, and the things that he now called his lips giving articulate speech to this living skull, was something that even surprised the normally unflappable, never-at-a-loss for-words host, who, noticeably, taken aback, addressed her guest in hushed tones. The normally disrespectful and unruly audience, who had been on their best behavior during the whole program anyway, given its sensitive subject matter, simply looked on, as they had on the other guests that day, in stunned silence. Like the "freak show" paying customers of old, they were, from the start of the program, both simultaneously repelled by, but drawn to, and fascinated with, each abnormality paraded before them. The show, in addition to the appearance fees they had all been paid, offered Alex and Fulla, as well as the other guests, what the Court, too, had provided them: references to counseling agencies. But this appearance, unbeknown to them, helped them in one other way: it had caught the eye of Dr. Rosalie Hernandez.
Dr. Hernandez had first become interested in the field of plastic surgery from her experiences as a child in Brazil. She had been born with an unsightly hair lip, and, because she was a member of an upper-class family (her father was an endocrinologist and her mother a government-appointed nutritionist), her parents had been able to afford the corrective surgery. However, she remained haunted by the sights of less economically advantaged children whose families could not pay for such benefits: those with grotesquely enlarged head and facial tumors, children who would always remain outcasts. It was these memories that had inspired her to attend medical school following graduation from college, and to pursue a career in plastic surgery. Over the past ten years, she had begun pioneering a new procedure, one that, she was convinced, would replace painful and often ineffective skin grafts and give horribly disfigured patients a chance at a normal life.
Conventional skin grafts involved transplantation of skin (but only inches at a time, due to potentially severe bleeding) from other parts of the patient's body-from the back, arms, buttocks, and legs, for instance-to rebuild lips, brows, and other portions of severely damaged and/or burned faces. However, the skin commonly had to be rebuilt every few weeks, requiring additional operations that may, in some cases, last years, and which still often produce artificial-looking scarred masks that neither appear nor move like pliant, real skin. This fact, plus the risk of infection due to the need to continually reopen old wounds in the same areas, had rendered impractical any such operations for as terribly a damaged face as Alex's. As Dr. Hernandez watched the program while tending to her lab work that morning, in a special room of her private Anaheim clinic, her heart went out to the young couple, and she was convinced that she had found a potentially ideal candidate for her revolutionary new treatment: full face transplantation requiring a single sheet of skin, and in only one operation.
She had pioneered the method with animals. In fact, she was busy that day tending to new test subjects, whom she had subjected to years of face transplants. As listened with one ear to Patty's interview with Alex and Fulla, she would, with both hands, lift various raccoons from the cages that lined the ceramic folding tables of her lab, check their blood pressure and other vital signs, and then return them to their cages. "Oh, you're shedding," she would chuckle at one raccoon, wiping the stray gray hairs from her white lab coat, which she wore over a wine-colored, short-sleeved, crew-necked cotton sports top and matching skirt, her sleek brunette hair, which she normally wore down, framing the delicate beauty of her high cheek-boned, dark complexion, was always done up in a bun while working. These raccoons no longer had their trademark black bandit masks, but faces of thick, white fur, donated by test rats. She smiled with satisfaction at the animals' data sheets, attached to a clipboard that she held before her hazel, bespectacled eyes. Their reactions were normal, and just as importantly, the transplanted rats' faces had taken to their recipients' skin seamlessly, with no need for additional operations. Moreover, none of their new faces had yet turned black, a potential side effect that she had feared, and the anti-rejection drugs she had administered to them, had, so far, not resulted in cancer. She was convinced that the procedure would work with humans-but she had to find the right one.
She had interviewed countless patients at her clinic over the last eight months. She had no definite candidate in mind, but she was looking for an adult-not a child, due to the high risks involved-who was truly disfigured, and who would be both mature and emotionally stable enough to accept and understand both the physical and emotional trauma that the process would entail. She could not be sure if Alex would meet those requirements until she had interviewed him, but she knew one thing: none of the earlier candidates she had met were suitable. One young man had been certainly disfigured enough-having been badly burned in an accident-but he had been looking for a specific type of face-a "Brad Pitt" face," he had insisted-so that he could attract as many beautiful girls as possible. Another, a middle-aged woman whose face had been severely scarred by a jealous ex-husband, had wanted to explore the possibilities of a male face, because, she had confided to Dr. Hernandez, she was a repressed transsexual who had always harbored a desire to live her life as a man. Still another, a thirty-year-old white male, whose face had been mutilated by shrapnel during combat in the Gulf War, had wanted an African-American face, in honor of his platoon leader, who had been killed while saving his private's life. Because these people had had a "hidden agenda" ("This is not a retail face shop," she had told them), she knew that they had had the wrong expectations, and were unsuitable. Others she had discounted because they had expressed discomfort over the very thought of "wearing" somebody else's face. But Alex intrigued her, and she was determined to contact The Patty Collinsworth Show's producers and try to get in touch with the couple, but before she did, she had an important phone call to make. "Doctor," she told the party on the other line, from the white touch-tone phone in her office, "I think I may have found the right subject. Would you please send the face to me as soon as possible?" The other party was her old medical school mentor, and she had had to call long distance from Anaheim to contact her, because she was presently living in Denver, Colorado. Her name was Dr. C. L. Aranya.
Chapter 7
Only with a signed promise that The Patty Collinsworth Show would be the first to learn of the results of the operation, and with the understanding that Alex and Fulla would be contractually bound to a return visit, would the show's production company and syndication agent agree to release the couple's contact information to Dr. Hernandez. The two agreed to a consultation at the Doctor's private clinic. There, surrounded by the inviting, cream-colored walls of her closed-door consultation room, Dr. Hernandez, who was sitting on the edge of a white, cotton-sheeted cot in the room's west corner, interviewed Alex, who was seated, several inches from her, on a black, leather swivel chair, adjacent to its twin, where, to his right, sat Fulla. Dr. Fernandez asked him questions about his medical history, and mental stability. Then, rising from the cot, she had him lie down on it himself, while she examined his face-particularly his cheekbones, and what remained of his lips and nose-from all angles with a small, silver, electro-magnifying glass that she held in her right hand while he, clad in an iron gray, hooded, cotton/polyester athletic suit and white and blue-striped Nike high-top sneakers, waited, patiently and silently. Fulla, nervously fingering the buttons of her tan polyester sports coat that she wore this day over an aqua blue, short sleeve, notch-collared cotton camp blouse and matching skirt, along with plain black pumps, at the heels of which she had rested her purse, looked anxiously on. Dr. Hernandez then asked Alex to alternately smile, raise his eyebrows, and open and close his eyes and mouth, again and again. After what seemed like hours, she turned off the glass, gently placed it on an off-white ceramic desk to the left of the cot, and announced, "Okay, Mr. Roth. You can get up now and take the chair next to your wife."
Dr. Hernandez removed her glasses with both hands, folded them neatly, and, with her left, neatly slipped them into the pocket of her lab coat, which she wore over a bright pink, scoop-necked, short-sleeved, cotton sports top and beige rayon slacks. She thought a few seconds, and then said, "I think I can help you, Mr. Roth. A single sheet of skin, taken from a donor face, should take to the existing bones and muscles of your face. Believe it or not, there is an adequate amount remaining for a base."
Fulla sighed deeply, closing her eyes, throwing her head back, and smiling in relief, and while Alex, with his left hand, squeezed her right forearm affectionately. Then, he summoned up enough courage to ask the question that most concerned him at the moment: "What about the cost, Doctor? We have no insurance."
"That should be the least of your worries right now, Mr. Roth," she answered, in her slightly sing-song, Portuguese-accented English.
"What about the cost, Doctor?" he insisted.
Alex's slight raise in voice startled Fulla from her reveille, and her head snapped forward and eyes opened instantly.
"Because you will be the first patient," she calmly replied, "the clinic will cover all costs, including those of follow-up therapy."
"Good!" said Alex, visibly relieved.
"Thank you," answered Fulla.
"Now," Dr. Hernandez continued, rising from the cot and walking toward the couple, so that she could stand directly in front of them, for closer, continuous eye contact, "I want you both to understand something very important. Since this is such a novel procedure, there can be no guarantee of success, and complications could result."
"Such as?" asked Alex.
"Your new face could turn black, possibly requiring a second transplants, and/or skin grafts."
"Okay," answered Alex.
"You'll also have to take anti-rejection drugs the rest of your life, even though they'll raise your risk of kidney damage and cancer."
"Okay," Alex answered once again.
"And because of your agreement to a return visit to The Patty Collinsworth Show, you will have relinquished your anonymity, and so the clinic would not be legally responsible for any violation of your privacy."
"Okay," Alex said, for a third time. His mind had already been made up, regardless of the risks.
"But, Doctor," Fulla interjected, somewhat impatiently, "you haven't told us yet how this procedure works."
"Well, it's actually simpler than you might think, Mrs. Roth. My staff and I will employ microsurgery to connect two pairs of veins and arteries on both sides of your husband's face to the donor skin sheet. Then, I'll stitch about twenty nerve endings to restore both sensation and movement."
"Will there be any scars?" Fulla asked.
"No, only tiny, practically imperceptible sutures, which will dissolve later, to anchor the new tissue to your husband's scalp and neck, and around his eyes, nose, and mouth."
"And…will the new face…look like…Alex?"
"Fulla!" said Alex disapprovingly.
"No," Fulla insisted, "I've got to know!"
"I can only tell you that your husband should look similar to how he had before the…incident, since his existing bone and muscle will provide its base and scope…but I can't guarantee how completely it will resemble his old face."
"Can we see it first?" Fulla asked.
"Mrs. Roth," Dr. Hernandez answered firmly, "the consent forms that your husband will sign, and which contain the same information and conditions that I've just shared with the two of you, will stipulate that you will relinquish the right to choose or approve the donor face. It's already been matched to your husband's tissue, age, sex, and race. There are no second choices."
"I understand," Fulla assured her, "but I still need to see it first…please." Alex simply lowered his head and sighed, acquiescing to his wife's wishes.
"Very well," Dr. Hernandez, rising from her stool, reluctantly agreed. Rising from her stool, she asked them to follow her.
She led them down the hall to two bone white swinging doors marked "Staff Only." With the long, tapering fingers of her left hand, Dr. Hernandez deftly punched the security code on the plate located on the right-hand first door's center. They automatically swung open, and the three entered, the doors closing shut behind them.
Instantly, both Fulla and Alex began to shiver. Dr. Hernandez, who obviously was accustomed to the cold temperature at which this area was constantly kept, seemed unperturbed. With her right hand, she switched on the phosphorescent light on the north wall, and, with her left motioned her guests to follow her toward a lime green, ceramic tub that stood about fifteen feet away, in the center of the room. The tub resembled a whirlpool, except that it was filled with thick ice. She stopped, less than a square foot from the tub's left side, and with both hands, motioned them to approach the appliance's center. The two gazed into the tub. Through the chunks of floating ice, they could clearly make out a solid sheet of skin that was definitely that of a human face bobbing just beneath the surface. It was that of a white male, in his early-to-mid-twenties, they judged, with thin, closed eyelids over the empty sockets, full cheeks, slightly arched eyebrows, a high, aquiline nose, and a cleft, jutting jaw. Even though the face hardly resembled Alex's old countenance, it was a face-it was human." It only took Alex a few seconds to decide.
"Let's do it, Doctor," he said.
"Yes," concurred Fulla.
Dr. Hernandez silently nodded in assent, as she led them out of the room, switching off the light with her right hand, and letting the doors, which had automatically opened upon fifteen feet of their perimeters, close behind them.
Next came paper work, endless paper work, primarily consent forms, followed by processing…and waiting. Then, two months later, Alex was admitted to Almeida County General Hospital, which was helping to fund Dr. Hernandez's research. Alex's face would be removed during the operation and replaced with the donor face, surgery that would last eight to ten hours; he would then be hospitalized for about fourteen days.
Five days before Alex's scheduled operation, Fulla visited him early that morning, and explained that she had to return to Los Angeles for a few days to take care of some "business," as she put it, but promised that she would call him every night, and would definitely be back in time for the operation. Alex, who had been outfitted in an off-white hospital cotton smock, and hooked up by his right wrist to a coal gray, beeping vital signs monitor, smiled from his bed; his head was propped up comfortably against a white cotton case-covered polyester pillow, and a beige cotton blanket draped had been draped around his lower middle. The two embraced warmly and kissed goodbye. But when Fulla drove her 2001 metallic gray Honda Acura out of the crowded hospital parking deck and onto the expressway that balmy May morning, she was headed not for their Los Angeles apartment, but to a local Mediterranean food and herb market. Preparations for the real "business" she had had in her mind for some time, and which she felt she could no longer delay, could only be procured there. From an old Syrian woman that she had become friendly with, she purchased the ingredients for her Uncle Faheem's favorite meal, kibbe, a type of Middle Eastern meat loaf: 1 3/4 lbs. of finely ground sirloin, a pound of cracked wheat, and ten ounces of ground lamb meat, along with some mint springs, salt and pepper, baharat spice mix, onions, shortening, pine nuts, and, for this special occasion, an extra ingredient, just for her Uncle and his closest aids, especially Akeem, something that could be purchased only from the old woman's special, locked storage chamber in the back of the store-and for considerably extra. But, to Fulla, the price was well worth it-nothing would be too good, or expensive, for her Uncle Faheem and his "friends."
Chapter 8
Fulla then stopped at their apartment and, after letting her purse drop softly from her shoulder onto the far right end of the sand brown kitchen table, and prepared the kibbe. Because she had spent far too many years recently savoring America's standard "meat and potatoes" cuisine, and because this was going to be such a "special occasion," she decided to use the best kibbe recipe she could find, one that she had found on an excellent website called "inmamaskitchen.com." She began, according to the directions, which she had earlier downloaded, and had laid out on the right side of the table, nearest her elbow, for easy reference, by soaking the cracked wheat for about an hour in water. She then placed the wheat, sirloin, onions, mint sprigs, salt and pepper, and baharat mix blend into a food processor, and reduced it all to paste. Afterwards, she meticulously prepared the stuffing, consisting of onions, pine nuts, and ground lamb meat, by frying them in fat, and then spreading this mixture over the entire dish, which she had placed in a sheet pan, over which she applied another layer of meat. Finally, after spreading this stuffing mix over the top, she started baking it, at about 190°, for about forty minutes. While she was waiting on the kibbe, she changed the clothes she had worn at the hospital earlier that morning, a short sleeve, powder blue, V neck knit sports top, Faded Glory cotton blue jeans, and cranberry red, and white-striped Sketchers, and pulled out from the bottom drawer of their clothes bureau a long, flowing, Islamic black lace gown known as an abaya, and a matching Islamic head scarf, of the same material, called an hijab. These ceremonial garments she pulled on over her white Lycia Maiden Form bra and panties, and replaced the Sketchers with plain, open-toed, tan flip flop sandals. For now, she would let the headscarf ride behind her neck and shoulders, and would only put it on later.
Now the kibbe was done, and, after carefully removing the sheet pan from the oven with a pair of yellow, green-flowered, Martha Stewart baking gloves, she placed it on a large, royal blue dishcloth on the center of their ceramic dining table, to let the food cool. Then, after waiting for about ten minutes, it was time to add the final ingredient from the thin, angular, four-by-four glass bottle she had purchased from the back room; she vigorously shook its contents, the special garnish that she had paid so much for, into the left side of the kibbe. The liquid quickly soaked into that side of the meat; although it was colorless, odorless, tasteless, it was oh-so-essential as a finishing touch. To mark the "special" side, she garnished it with an ample slice of tomato, and then placed it in a plastic tray that she covered with tinfoil. Finally, she was ready to call the Los Angeles Airport to confirm her plane reservations and rent-a-car for a late afternoon flight to Detroit.
Meanwhile, her Uncle Faheem and his men were busy, and, ironically, working up quite an appetite while up to an annoying, but necessary, task. Federal authorities were re-opening the case of Lawrence Fisher, a city council member who had spoken out against Faheem's "business" practices in the press, and whose death two years ago had been diagnosed as a heart attack, but had actually been sue to a fatal seizure caused by an injection of venom from the fangs of the newly discovered Arabesque Viper, whose poison cannot be detected in the bloodstream after twelve hours). After having been promised Immunity and Witness Relocation Protection, the County Coroner, who had been paid off by Faheem for his phony autopsy, was ready to testify as to the subterfuge, and the Feds had been granted a Court order to exhume the body on Saturday. It was now Friday; Faheem had to work fast.
At dusk, Faheem, Hassan, and Mohammed were granted entrance to the cemetery, having paid off the gatekeepers. There, Faheem, smartly adorned in a tan polyester Fedora and white, three-piece flannel suit, replete with pale green silk shirt and tomato red bow tie, busily puffed on his cigar as he directed Hassan and Mohammed, after they had dug out the grave with pickaxes, to lift the casket up on both sides and place it in the flat bed of the cherry red 4x4 Ranger truck they had driven in. As the two men struggled to raise the cedar casket to ground level, Hassan suddenly dropped his side of the box, pulling up limp, grimacing in pain, and complaining of a hernia. This sudden jolt, and the box's momentary collision with the ground, caused the casket's top glass to crack, and a jet of noxious, foul-smelling odor, which seemed like a bizarre blend of boiled-over antifreeze and backed-up sewer, to fill the night air.
"My God!" exclaimed Faheem, covering his nostrils and mouth with a white silk handkerchief, embroidered with his initials, that his right hand had immediately plucked from his jacket's breast pocket upon immediately assaulted by the odor, "Can't you fuckin' idiots do anythingright?"
"I couldn't help it," complained Hassan, like a small boy, "I'm in pain here!"
"If you fuck this up again," answered Mohammed in Syrian to his partner, "I'll give you a real pain-one that nothing'll cure!-Dickhead!"
"Hey!" protested Hassan, his two hands protectively fingering his right lower side. "Who the fuck asked you?"
"SHUT UP, BABOONS!" ordered Faheem. "Get your asses in gear and that fucking casket on the truck! Fulla called me from the airport twenty minutes ago. She's finally come to her senses and left the Elephant Man! She'll be here in about an hour and a half."
Grunting and groaning, the two men lifted the casket one more time, managed to gingerly lift it from the hole, and waddled awkwardly with their burden to the waiting truck, followed by their exasperated boss. As they were lowering the casket into the flatbed, Assan's hernia gave out again, and, just as before, he dropped his side of it, this time, so hard, that oatmeal brown and banana yellow bodily fluids began to leak from the sides. The putrescence, with the same noxious odor as before, now saturated the open truck.
"You fuckin' moron!" cursed Mohammed, again in Syrian. "Now, look what you did! The fuckin' lid slid off, too!"
"What?" asked Faheem, rushing to the truck, his handkerchief still covering his nose and mouth.
Sure enough, the lid had half-fallen off to the left, revealing a sight that caused both Mohammed and Hassan to instinctively jump out of the bed liner and vomit onto the neatly mowed ground. Even Faheem, who normally was not moved by anything (certainly not by the sight of death) had to stifle an involuntary gag or two through his handkerchief.
Still recognizable-although barely-was Mr. Fisher's face, but it was badly decomposed and maggot-eaten, the cartilage in his nose, and his lower mandible, hanging loosely from the hideous bed of mushy flesh, limp tendons, and bones covered by slime that glistened in the moonlight.
"Come on!" ordered Faheem to his two men, who reluctantly returned to the truck.
"It's a good thing I'm drunk right now!" Hassan admitted to his partner as the two rode in the flatbed beside the casket, and Faheem, still keeping his handkerchief to his face, since the stench was still potent, sat in the front seat and drove. "I won't remember a thing about this in the morning!"
"Shut up! And help me get this lid back on!" answered Mohammed, "or we may be keeping our stiff friend here company!"
About a half hour later, they arrived at Lake Michigan, where Faheem had his paid stooges at the pier take over the task from there, touting the casket out to the middle of lake and dumping it into its murky leagues. Afterwards, following a job far from well done, the trio returned home, to Faheem's magnificent, five-story mansion, where all three promptly removed and burned their odor-saturated clothes (for Hassan and Mohammed, the same they had worn on the night of their "visit" to Alex and Fulla) in the basement incinerator, including their footwear (particularly Hassan's and Mohammed's, since their soles were especially sticky with Mr. Fisher's bodily fluids and putrescence; the cost of his wardrobe, including his prized Italian designer shoes, Faheem would take out of their pay). Tomorrow, they would fumigate the truck. After all three had promptly showered, each one put on his best dress clothes for the evening, at Faheem's insistence, since he regarded his niece's homecoming as a special occasion. He dressed in a white fitted shirt, complete with his customary gold cufflinks, an opulent, navy blue three-piece suit, ruby red tie and gold stick pin, and, for this evening, imported Syrian, sand brown suede shoes, with matching socks made of, like the rest of his outfit, genuine Middle Eastern silk. His two associates wore plain, polyester, ash brown sport coats and dress khakis, light yellow cotton dress shirts and aqua green rayon ties, with simple, silver clasps and cuff links, black leather loafers, and matching cotton socks. As they waited patiently in the ball-room-sized living room, decorously carpeted in sable velvet, and complete with bar, Hassan joked to Mohammed, commenting, in Syrian, on (for them) their unusually formal garb, which replaced the same "work" clothes that they had worn on the night of their breaking into Alex's apartment, "You'd think we were dressing for own funerals!" Mohammed chuckled, about to help himself to a glass of genuine Syrian wine, but his right hand put the glass back on the bar counter when he noticed Faheem's disapproving grimace. It was clear that the best wine would be reserved for himself and his niece, not the hired help.
At that moment, a video camera flashed on an image of Fulla's silver gray Hyundai rental car at the security gate. Faheem rose from the plush nutmeg brown leather couch he had been sitting in, pressed the entrance button with his left index finger, and let her vehicle pass. He then jauntily opened the front door and was utterly speechless at the sight that greeted him: Fulla in traditional Middle Eastern clothing (disrupted not even by the sight of her Western style purse, which she had left in the rental car's front passenger seat), the tin-foiled-covered tray of kibbe in her black felt gloved hands.
"After a few stunned moments, the normally unflappable Faheem gathered his unusually rare mixed emotions-surprise, relief, and joy at her return, and her warmly beckoned her in, placing two hands on her shoulders and planting an avuncular kiss on her right cheek. "Come in, my dear," he announced.
"Hello, dear Uncle," Fulla smiled, nodding in appreciation. As she entered the doorway, she greeted Hassan and Mohammed, complimenting them on their attire. They smiled and nodded in return, and stood staring, as Faheem had, in amazement at Fulla's traditional garb.
"Fools!" Akeem interjected angrily, astounded by their denseness. "Since when does my niece carry trays around and wait on YOU? Take the kibbe into the kitchen, and stay there until I call you. I want to speak to Fulla alone."
She handed the tray to them, and grimaced in nervousness, when Hassan, who had grabbed its right side first, inverted it and handed it, left side facing Mohammed to his partner. But she tried hard to conceal her trepidation. "Come, Fulla," said Faheem, "Sit down on the couch, and tell me what's happened."
"Well," began Fulla unsteadily, seating herself on the cushion to her Uncle's immediate right. "I can't live with Alex any longer. He's turned into an absolute beast," she sobbed, pulling a beige Kleenex from her left pocket and dabbing her eyes, while Faheem sat by her right side, listening indulgently, and secretly delighting at her self-professed marital troubles. "He's turned away from me…he won't talk to me…he won't… respond to me…as a husband should to his wife, in bed. He says that every time he sees my face, he sees you…he sees our race, and he says he hates us…all of us…including me, for…what's happened to him." At this last admission, Fulla again pressed the Kleenex to her eyes, hiding carefully the concealed hunks of Vidalia onion that were inducing her tears.
"And?" asked Faheem, anxiously.
"And I've had a chance to do a lot of thinking, Uncle. I've decided that you were right after all."
"Really, my dear?"
"Yes, and I've learned who the real Alex is-shallow and self-centered, like his entire race. I've decided I belong with my own people. I've left him, and I'm gonna divorce him."
"I see," commented Faheem, secretly delighted.
"You were right about another thing, too, Uncle: I have lived in the West too long. That's why I'm here tonight, and the dressed the way I am-to make amends."
"Oh, no need for that, my dear niece," Faheem reassured her, embracing her warmly, as she buried her head in his right shoulder. "I knew you were just swept away by his handsome face. That's why I did what I did, to show you the true dog beneath the fur."
"Yes, Uncle," she replied, her face, which he could not see, twisted into a mask of hatred and bitterness at these words. She bit her cherry red lips in an effort to suppress her utter contempt for Faheem.
As he gradually released her and she raised her head, she forced herself to break into a broad smile, the same kind that she had often showed the patrons of the La La Palooza Gentleman's Club. "Remember, Uncle, the home-cooked kibbe we used to eat together. Well, I made fresh kibbe before I flew over."
"Oh, fresh kibbe!" replied Faheem, like a small boy who had just been promised a box of chocolates. "I haven't had good kibbe in ages!"
"I thought we'd have it tonight-you, me, and, just to show that there's no hard feelings, Hassan and Mohammed, too."
"As you wish," Faheem answered, although those two dolts hardly deserve such a sumptuous feast. Hassan! Mohammed!" he bellowed, as if calling his dog, which reminded Fulla of his favorite pet's conspicuous absence.
"By the way, Uncle, "she asked, glancing around the house, "where's Al-Azair?"
"Oh, I had to put him down," explained Faheem, jauntily pulling out four plush, royal blue, cushioned wooden dining chairs gathered around the large, oval, mahogany dining table. "He was never the same after that night. Wouldn't eat, wouldn't sleep, wouldn't come when I called him…just lay in the corner all day, whimpering and shaking."
"Small wonder," remarked Fulla to herself. "I'll bet you didn't have any sleepless nights, you sick bastard!" Her contemplations were then interrupted by Hassan's and Mohammed's arrival.
"You!" commanded Faheem of Mohammed, "get a spatula, some plates, silver wear, glasses, and that bottle of wine your friend was guzzling earlier. And you," he told Hassan, "bring in the kibbe, and put it on the table."
Fulla stood and watched silently as Hassan brought the kibbe into the dining room. As he neared the table, his hernia caused him to sway off balance, and the tray to drop lopsidedly to the table, causing Hassan to catch its left edge with his right palm, and to invert it slightly on its way softly and safely down.
"Oaf!" Faheem admonished him. Fulla was terrified to find that all that jostling around had not only undoubtedly disturbed the meat yet again, but also had, as she had discovered when she now unwrapped the tin foil, had bounced the land-marking tomato to the neutral middle of the tray.
"Tomato, Fulla? You know I can't eat it. It'll give me gas."
"Sorry, Uncle, I'd forgotten how delicate your stomach is," Fulla replied, secretly looking forward to the real "stomach ache" he'd be getting later. She then plucked the garnish from the tray with her left hand, and deposited it in the kitchen trash box.
Mohammed now returned with the settings and utensils. Fulla's right hand trembled slightly as she divided the kibbe into separate slices for each diner. But how was she to know which side contained the "extra special" ingredient? She would just have to trust her memory. Then, concealing her nervousness as well as she could, she sat down with her host and guests to eat the kibbe.
"Uuhmph! Good!" announced a contented Faheem, as he eagerly and gluttonously shoveled forkful after forkful into his mouth. "You know, Fulla, if I were on Death Row, I wouldn't mind having this as my last meal!"
"Oh, Uncle," she laughed. Meanwhile, Hassan and Mohammed smiled, enjoying the meal, too.
"No, I mean it, my dear. I'd die for another helping of this kibbe," he insisted, glancing in the direction of his two underlings, and asking, "Wouldn't you?"
"Oh, me, too," smiled Hassan, responding immediately to the cue.
"Same here," confirmed Mohammed.
"Well, boys," smiled Fulla, "maybe…just maybe…you'll get your wish!"
Before either one of the three could respond to Fulla's odd choice of words, Faheem started feel terrible wracking pangs in his stomach, and then began to gag, and cough uncontrollably, desperately clutching his throat. Within seconds, the other two started showing the same symptoms. But Fulla felt fine; she knew she had made the right decision as to which sections to serve the others…and had, with the help of "inmamaskitchen.com, made some damn good kibbe as well.
As all three fell, one by one, to the sand brown carpeted dining room floor, their faces now started turning a deep purple, and they gasped for breath that would just not come. As their bodies writhed spasmodically in agony, Fulla joked, "Kibbe to die for, hey, guys?" She was obviously enjoying the show. "I hope you enjoyed the Arabesque Viper venom, too," she gloated, delighted that the old woman from the Syrian store had not failed her, either. She then rose from her chair and, like some monstrous vulture circling around its kill, hovered over each of her victims, staring, with an impish grin on her face, one by one, into their eyes, and adding, "I made it just for you!"
As life slowly left all three men's tortured and traumatized bodies, and their eyes closed, Fulla helped herself to a plastic bowl and lid from her Uncle's kitchen cupboard, her gloved-and fingerprint-free hands-spooning the "safe" kibbe into a fresh new container. The remaining kibbe would make a full meal for herself and Alex, and if there was one lesson her Uncle Faheem had taught her as a child, it was to NEVER, EVER, waste food.
Chapter 9
On her "red eye" flight back to Los Angeles that night, Fulla slept peacefully and contentedly. The fact that she had just turned into Lucretia Borgia bothered her not at all, although, eight months earlier, she would have been appalled at how coldly and callously she had planned and executed the whole deed. Still, not a glimmer of guilt disturbed her blissful slumber that evening. Again, perhaps Alex was not the monster her Uncle had created, but her. At any rate, she could not bother herself at the moment with what she now considered past history, for she had long convinced herself that all three had had it coming-and more. She could now think only of Alex, for his operation was imminent.
The world's first full face transplant had been scheduled on a hot, dry June Monday morning, at 7 A.M. After his prepping, and reassurances from Dr. Hernandez and Dr. Kenji Sasaki, a young Japanese-American anesthesiologist, both of whom had just changed into their aqua blue cotton caps and scrubs, that there would be nothing to fear, the couple now faced the promise of a new life. At last, they could put behind them the atrocity committed against them by Fulla's now late-and distinctly unlamented-uncle Faheem. When news of Faheem's and his associates' mysterious deaths had been broadcast by all the major local, network, and cable news outlets that very morning, Fulla had discussed their demise with Alex with all the emotion of a pest exterminator explaining a new brand of pesticide. Fulla did not reveal her role in their demise at all, merely and sarcastically explaining the sudden and unexplained deaths as probably due to "stomach trouble." If Alex had suspected anything else about the "'business'" that Fulla had told him that she had had to attend to during those last few days, he had not let on.
Alex lay there that morning in his private hospital bed, propped up against a light blue, cotton case-covered, polyester pillow, while waiting impatiently for the floor nurse and orderlies to switch him to a gurney and take him to the fifth floor operating theatre. As his legs nervously fidgeted beneath the tan cotton blanket that rode up to about chest-level, Fulla decided to break the tension by commenting on his headwear, the standard surgical sponge cap that all such patients wore prior to an operation. This one was a garish polka dot model that made him look like, in Fulla's own words, "a cross between Fireman Bill and Bozo the Clown." Even Alex had to laugh.
"Okay, Mr. Roth. Dr. Hernandez is ready for you," announced Jasmine, the medium-built, middle-aged, African-American nurse, who had just arrived, along with the orderlies. Her rose-flowered, white cotton smock and purple slacks of the same material contrasted with the two plain, aqua green cotton scrubs worn by the orderlies who had accompanied her, Paul, a tall, thin, lanky young man with a shaved head and a silver ring in his right ear, and Keenan, a short, compactly built, Latino-American in a neatly trimmed black beard. She motioned for the two men to help Alex scoot over to the left edge of the bed. Their stout arms then carefully lifted his back and legs onto the gurney, careful not to the mobile vital signs machine that would accompany him on his journey. Jasmine adjusted the gurney's movable backrest with her right hand, so as to make Alex more comfortable. "Ready for a little road trip?" she then joked.
"Sure," smiled Alex.
At that moment, Fulla lunged forward quickly, fighting back tears of anxiety, hugged Alex, kissed him good luck on his right cheek, and said, "See you later, honey."
"Okay, 'Beautiful Flower,' he whispered. "Pray for me."
"I will," she promised, and kissed his cheek again.
"You can wait in the third floor lounge area," said Jasmine. "The receptionist will call you when Dr. Hernandez is done." She then began pushing the top edge of the gurney, turned it around, and wheeled out into the hall, while Paul pushed from behind and Keenan guided the attached machine. Fulla followed, stood outside the room, bravely smiled, and waived goodbye with her right hand as the four boarded the staff elevator and were quickly swallowed up by its closing doors. She then nervously walked out of the room and into the corridor, and turned left down the hallway. As she headed for the visitors' elevators, she kept her promise to Alex, and prayed silently, not for herself (since she was not sure what God thought of her now, despite her rationalization that what she had done to her uncle and his cohorts had been justice , not murder), but for Alex.
Once she had boarded the elevator, she didn't have to wait long, for the lounge was only two floors down from Alex's third floor private room. As she disembarked from the elevator, entered the beige-carpeted lounge, and signed in, she shivered slightly. The air conditioning on this floor of the hospital seemed too high, and her solid raspberry, and white-striped, bare-shouldered cotton tube top and Old Navy polyester khaki shorts, adorned by a black and silver-studded designer leather belt, did not offer much protection against this unexpected chill. It was a good thing, though, that she had taken a short-sleeve, white, blue-pinstriped cotton blouse with her, which she carried under her right arm, just under her purse, for just such a situation. She draped it over her shoulders, and curled up, fetal-like, in a comfortable, coffee brown, upholstered chair. Despite the fact that the TV to her immediate left was blaring with the sound of SquareBob SpongePant s to entertain the kids whose parents had brought them that morning, she felt so cozy in the warmth of the jacket that she soon drifted off to sleep.
Soon, a kaleidoscope of swirling primary colors seemed to swim about her closed eyes, and she dreamed that she now was alone in the receiving room; her ears assaulted by omnipresent mechanical beeps and Code Red alarms. Nervously, she approached a gurney, on which flatly lay a man whose height, frame, and clothing that morning were undeniably Alex, but she could not see his face, since a white cotton blanket concealed his entire body. To the two sides of the gurney stood two orderlies, dressed as she had seen Paul and Keenan earlier, although their backs were turned to her. Strangely, she noticed that both seemed darker complected than the two young men who had attended her husband earlier. Then, when they turned around to face her, she gasped in shock. Grinning, like a pair of hyenas, were Hassan and Mohammed. Then, while still facing and smiling at her, they placed both of their hands at the top of the blanket, and slowly rolled it down to the patient's chest level. Gradually, she could see that the features being unveiled, starting with the hairline and the complexion, and then, one by one, the eyes, nose, mouth, and chin-were not Alex's at all. This she had expected, since he had, after all, been given a new face, but she had never counted on seeing, and on her husband's body, the face that she knew-and dreaded-all so well. Staring up at her, with those cold, piercing eyes, was her Uncle Faheem. He said but one thing, with a devilish smile on his cruel face, the tiny space between two of his front teeth crammed with little bits of the lethal Syrian meatloaf he had consumed that evening. "You were right. That WAS kibbe to die for!" Then, all three broke into a malevolent laugh, so loud that the sound threatened to burst her very eardrums. Pushing her hands tightly over her ears, she tried to scream, but no sounds would emanate from her mouth, which alternately opened and closed in a paroxysm of fear. Meanwhile, the dead men's hollow, satanic laughter grew louder…louder…and LOUDER!
Suddenly, she awoke abruptly to the cherubic, freckled visage of a wide-eyed, four-year-old red-haired boy in a bright green NFL cotton jersey, matching shorts of the same material, and open-toed, black sandals. Her thrashing movements and half-stifled cries had caught his attention, and proven more interesting than the Lucky Charms cereal, Play Dough , and other commercials that had interrupted SquareBob SpongePants . They stared into each other's eyes for a few seconds; to him, she seemed, her mouth agape, and slightly disoriented, like a fascinating new exhibit at the L.A. Zoo's Primate House. The corners of his mouth chewed vigorously, like a cow on its cud, on his Bubble Yum Gum; then, he blew a bright pink bubble so large that it seemed to cover his little round face. Then, after drawing the gum back into his mouth, he grinned proudly, and joyously ran back to the TV, for the commercials were now over, and SquareBob's adventures had resumed.
Alternately closing and opening her eyes, shaking her head, and trying to throw off the cobwebs from this horrifying dream, she decided to get up, and eat breakfast at the hospital cafeteria, and walk around the grounds-the last thing she wanted to do, following that dream, was to fall asleep again, so she scooped up her blouse with her right hand, tucked it under her left armpit, and left. A couple of hours later, she returned, but, remembering the area's earlier chill, took the time now to put on her blouse when she disembarked from the elevator, buttoning it up about half-way up, before re-entering the lounge. She then alternated her time between reading the various magazines and newspapers on the center mahogany table, returning to the cafeteria for lunch, and watching television. Finally, around 4 P.M., she heard her name being paged. She quickly rose to her feet, and walked to the receptionist's desk, where a curly, white-haired bespectacled woman informed her that the operation was over, and that she could see her husband now in the seco