Deep into the following Saturday night, June 30, Mary Aurora is rudely awakened by the buzzer located on the wall above her bed. Putting both pillows over her head doesn’t help because she can still hear the buzzer and she knows too that he’ll keep his finger on the button until she makes an appearance. Throwing off the pillows, Mary hollers, “I’m coming, asshole!” — immediately regretting it because if Dr. Quinndell heard her …
Worried now, she quickly gets out of bed, flips up the light switch, pulls on a pair of jeans and a teeshirt, and glances at her image while walking past a mirror. Forty-three years old but clinging to the illusion she can pass for thirty-five, Mary wonders why none of it shows — everything she’s done this past year, you’d think she’d be scarred by it somehow. The buzzer is still squawking. Two more weeks, she tells herself, and I won’t have to listen to that goddamn buzzer ever again. Two more weeks and I get out of hell.
Mary Aurora has lived in a self-imposed hell for exactly fifteen days short of a year — the length of time she’s been working for Dr. Mason Quinndell here in Hameln, West Virginia. And in just fifteen days, on the one-year anniversary of the deal she made with the Devil, Mary will be given two envelopes, one of them containing a cashier’s check for $250,000. In the second envelope will be an address and twelve photographs.
To obtain the contents of these two envelopes, Mary has performed acts of such degradation that had someone described them to her beforehand, she would have denied even being capable of such acts, much less doing them voluntarily, doing them routinely.
The buzzer is incessant.
Mary hurries downstairs and stops at the double doors leading to Dr. Quinndell’s office. She takes a breath, trying to compose herself and trying not to speculate on what the doctor wants her for this time. She raps hesitantly on one of the doors.
“Enter.”
The office is of course completely dark, Mary expected that, but where’s he hiding this time? Is he going to jump out from behind one of the doors and grab —
“Mary?”
She finally lets out that breath. He’s at his desk near the back of the office, Mary safe from his touch at least for the moment. “Yes, doctor?”
“I want you to drive me someplace.”
She wonders if that’s all he wants.
“Are you wearing your uniform?” the doctor asks in that soft and cultured voice he’s so proud of.
“No.”
“Would you mind terribly putting it on?”
“Of course not.” Why’s he being so nice to me? Mary doesn’t see the point of wearing her uniform, but if wearing a uniform is all the doctor requires from her tonight, Mary’s grateful. “I’ll go put it on right now.”
“Thank you.”
She turns toward the double doors.
She freezes. “Yes?”
“Were you having sexual intercourse when I buzzed you?”
“What? No, of course not.”
“I was just wondering.”
When he says nothing more, Mary continues toward the doors.
“Because I distinctly heard you shout something.”
She freezes again, her palms becoming instantly wet.
“Upon achieving sexual climax — either an authentic climax or a faked one, if indeed you can any longer distinguish between the two — don’t you usually proclaim that you are ‘coming’?” He waits for an answer. “Mary?”
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes, I say that.”
“You say that you’re ‘coming.’ ”
“Yes.”
He pauses a moment before continuing. “Which is why I assumed you had a lover upstairs — because I heard your fishwife voice screeching out that you were ‘coming.’ In fact, you said, ‘I’m coming, asshole.’ Didn’t you?”
She knows better than trying to lie to him. “Yes.”
“You see why I’m confused. If you were announcing a climax, you were also referring to your lover by the rather odd endearment of ‘asshole.’ But now you’re claiming you weren’t having sex. Pray tell, to whom were you addressing that statement — I’m coming, asshole, hmm?”
In contrast to her wet palms, Mary’s mouth is so dry she can’t swallow.
“Mary?”
“I was … it was, uhm, it was sort of an automatic reaction to being suddenly awakened by the buzzer.”
“You mean that statement was addressed to me. You were calling me an asshole.”
Although the doctor loves toying with her like this, Mary knows that the consequences of these games — if she makes the wrong move, utters something to set him off — can be horrifying. “I was still half-asleep, I didn’t know what I was saying.”
“Which wounds me all the more deeply, Mary. Your low opinion of me is apparently so ingrained that even when you’re not fully conscious you immediately brand me with that coarse and most common epithet — is my assessment correct?”
If he’s in the mood for it, this kind of argumentative pedantry can go on for an hour, maneuvering Mary into untenable positions, making her feel increasingly stupid. She tries to cut it short this time by mumbling a simple “I’m sorry.”
And the doctor surprises her by accepting the apology. “Thank you. Now run along and dress, I’ll be waiting for you in the car.”
On her way upstairs, Mary keeps telling herself, two more weeks, just two more weeks and I can go back to being human.
As the car travels the empty and unlighted streets of Hameln, Dr. Quinndell shows off by instructing Mary where to turn at each intersection they come to — instead of simply telling her their destination and letting her find it on her own.
“To punish you for cursing me,” the doctor says once they’ve passed through the gateway to Cemetery Road, “I brought along a rubber glove.”
Her heart squeezes painfully in her chest. Two more weeks, two more weeks.
“But now I realize I don’t need to punish you because I’m already in a good mood, in the best possible mood. You know why I’m happy, don’t you?”
“No, sir.”
He makes a contemptuous sound. “You sleepwalk through life, Mary, you really do. You must not fear death because how could it possibly differ from the way you live your life?”
She doesn’t reply.
“I’m happy because she is in her grave.”
“Oh.” Mary knows who he’s talking about. Her funeral was today.
“And we’re going to visit that grave. Do you think you can find it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Excellent.”
Mary drives slowly down the cemetery’s graveled lanes, and on the second turn the car’s headlights find the freshly turned dirt of a new grave. Mary stops, gets out, opens the doctor’s door, and leads him there.
He asks if the headstone is in place, and Mary tells him it is.
“What’s the inscription?” he asks.
Mary shines her flashlight on the stone. “Just her name and the dates of her birth and death.”
“How wonderfully minimalist,” he says, chuckling. “Show me.”
Mary directs him to the stone, Dr. Quinndell leaning down to run his hand over the chiseled letters and numbers. “Get my case from the car.”
When Mary returns carrying a small black zippered case, she finds Quinndell standing on the fresh dirt directly in front of the headstone.
“I’m here.”
“Yes, I know, I can smell you,” the doctor says, removing his suitcoat and handing it to Mary before turning up the sleeve of his shirt.
Mary opens the case, prepares the hypodermic, and injects Quinndell. He pulls his lips back and hisses through clenched teeth. Mary turns away.
When she hears him unzipping his fly, she flashes the light on his face and sees that he is smiling. “You want me to do it here?” she asks, incredulous.
Dr. Quinndell is momentarily confused but then laughs genuinely, pounding his palms together, just the bottoms of his palms hitting so that the applause makes no sound. “Oh my dear, you are so absolutely Pavlovian, it’s beyond belief, it really is.”
After a short silence Mary hears a stream of liquid splashing on the tombstone, finally understanding why the doctor got her out of bed to drive him to the cemetery at this time of night.
“You see,” he says, talking without interrupting the stream of urine, “Claire and I were alike in that we both believed. Doing this would be pointless unless we both were believers.”
Mary is surprised that after a year with Dr. Quinndell she still has the capacity to be shocked.
“I assume you have a flashlight.”
“Yes,” she replies softly.
“Good, you won’t want to miss this next part.” He’s undoing his belt. “Lefthand pocket of my jacket please.”
She reaches into that pocket and finds a nearly depleted roll of toilet paper.
The doctor is holding out his hand.
“Scented,” he says, putting the small roll to his nose. “Interesting concept, don’t you think — scented toilet tissue. I mean, what’s the thinking behind it?”
When he drops his trousers, Mary asks, “May I wait in the car?”
“Mary Aurora squeamish?” He laughs — and then turns quickly angry. “Go on, get out of here, this is between Claire and me. It has to do with the power of symbol, which you’re incapable of appreciating. Go on!”
Returning to the car, Mary hears Quinndell humming show tunes. She never sees the figure in white step from behind a large tombstone to watch the doctor defiling Claire Cept’s grave.