CHAPTER 13

Madame Métier After Her Husband

Following her husband’s death, Madame Métier had to regroup herself. Since she had been left with no money, she decided, in the manner of most widows, to put her house up for sale. However, when the first comers—a man, his wife who chewed gum, and two children with music-producing electronic earmuffs wired to their ears—strewed their way up the walk, Madame Métier thought better of the idea. She told them the house had been sold and forthwith removed the sign from the curb. She would have to think of something else.

Shocked by the prospect of actually having to leave the house in which, when she had worked, she had worked very well, she decided to scrape it down for all possible saleable items.

First of all, there was her husband’s Medicines Chest. After several days of searching, she was able to locate its key wrapped in cotton-wool batting and stuffed in the toe of his left green lizard slipper. This she removed, and after locking all the doors and pulling all the blinds in case she should uncover anything untoward, she went upstairs to the Medicines Chest and immediately opened it up. Inside were various items: his gold-plated toothbrush, a small flask of whiskey, some toothpicks, some red cough medicine and aspirins, stocks of various prescription items (these he had been known to generously dispense), and, in a rusted quite sizeable tin in the far righthand corner, a large quantity of white powder in a tightly rolled up plastic bag. This, when she put her finger to it and licked it, tasted quite strange. Fearing it was something deadly—or, contrarily, that it was something of great medicinal value—she sealed up the box and decided to think things through.

She went to her bed, hoping a good night’s sleep would clarify some things—whether to sell her house or her husband’s possessions—but unfortunately, she was unable to sleep. Her mind was a maelstrom. It was, she noticed, quite distinctly agitated. Perhaps seeing her husband’s things was more upsetting than she had imagined. Perhaps she had loved him more than she guessed. In any case, she lay vividly awake all night, fretting about her precarious future.

When at last the sun came up she realized that, in fact, she had been briefly asleep. This gave her hope. As soon as it was reasonable, she called up her husband’s best friend, one Monsieur Morte, the mortician (his work took up where her husband’s left off), in hopes that perhaps he would buy, or give her advice about how she might sell, her husband’s medicines.

Monsieur Morte’s main undertaking in life was to store up as many gold bricks as he could in his downtown security vault. These, he supposed, would forestall (at best) or embellish (at worst) his own inevitable demise. For, although he commerced in death, he himself was afraid of it.

Monsieur Morte arrived around noon, wearing a pork pie moustache, a tall fur hat, and black gloves. He did not smile when she opened the door, nor extend her any further condolence—he had done that already, she supposed, when he gave her a bargain burial—but proceeded directly behind her up the stairs to look at the Medicines Chest.

She opened the door to the chest and he looked at the various items: the toothbrush, the red cough syrup, the quantity of stock prescription items. He seemed disgruntled, as if to say, how rude of you to ask me to look at all this when I could be back at my office, profitably embalming someone. But then, with a flicker of interest, he opened the rusted tin box. An unusual, somewhat enthusiastic expression passed through his eyes and was then at once dispelled. He closed up the tin, passed his glance once again across all the various items and suggested that, if this were acceptable to her, he would give her $5,000—for the lot. The white powder, he explained, was a rare but somewhat valuable bulk medicinal substance and perhaps he could sell it to some of his colleagues and friends. Some medicines, of course, were worth more than others. There were some virtually useless over-the-counter items here, but, nevertheless—he repeated himself—he could give her $5,000 for the lot if she could settle it now and if she would make a point in the future of failing to mention what, precisely, had transpired between them.

Almost before she could make up her mind he had withdrawn the black glove from his thick left hand, pulled out the fifty one-hundred dollar bills that were rolled up in his pocket like a plump croissant, and handed them to her.

Madame Métier was amazed. “I’ll get you a bag, then,” she said. She went down to the kitchen to fetch him a sack for his things—the bottles of pills and the curious tin—but by the time she returned he had already packed them in a large manila envelope, which he had handily stored in his inside coat pocket. Overwhelmed by the five thousand dollar croissant in her hand, she offered also to give him the Medicines Chest, but this he refused. Perhaps she could find some use for it herself, he said.

In a fluster—she was scarcely able to comprehend what had just occurred—Madame Métier showed Monsieur Morte downstairs to the door. It was now well past noon. The sun was up and the roses were singing in the garden. The strange agitation that had made her so wakeful the whole night before seemed now to have passed. She breathed in the sweet summer air, closed the door, took the handful of bills, and folded them into her lingerie drawer. Then she drew off her clothes, and with the cool summer air floating in through the windows, she lay down on her bed and fell into a deep, restful sleep.