Redemption

The carillons from St. Stephen’s Catholic Church pealed out the traditional Psalm of Westminster Abbey, signaling midday. The harmonious acoustics drifting from the bell tower to the seashore and beyond seemed to momentarily freeze the living world in a pastoral abstract. Scenes of near perfection are rare and fleeting. This one was no exception.

I was working as a backup set of eyes for my partner when a piercing ray of sunlight caught the periphery of my vision. The laser-like projection was little more than light reflecting against the cheap metal alloy of an inexpensive wristwatch—a ten-dollar knockoff shoved up the arm beyond the dislocated elbow of a headless, handless corpse lying unceremoniously, face down, near the pilings of Pier 31.

There is something strangely seductive about a dead body resting in shallow, lapping water at high noon on a bright day. Dead bodies have no particular effect on me. Rather, they create an intuitive response that makes me want to secretly study the reactions of those nearby. A quick glance assured me my partner was patiently awaiting her contact. I decided there was no harm in perusing the faces in the crowd, eyeing their reactions to the dead body they were certain soon to notice. A cynic might say I was a voyeur of the observers of the recently dead. They might be right.

My line of sight was redirected by yet another reflection, also from a timepiece. But this light was cast from the pure gold band of a Rolex hanging loosely on the wrist of one of the well-heeled lunch crowd gathered for a bit of repast at Avec Sans, the current chic hot spot on Pier 31. The tragically hip hustlers, gentrified money types, and hangers-on feigned half-disinterest as they peered toward the waterlogged, mutilated torso.

The rest of the world does not presume such highbrow airs, and the fashionable clique’s muted response was quickly countered by the frantic shriek from a stout woman whose clothing style identified her as a tourist from somewhere deep in the heartland.

“Gawd! Look, Henry! Gawd! A body. There, in the water. My Gawd!”

Her melodramatic histrionics created an instant chain reaction as hundreds of people within earshot turned their heads in unison. Their first glance was toward the screamer. The second collective gaze was in the direction she was pointing.

Henry’s reaction—more precisely, the lack thereof—was that of a man who many moons earlier had compressed the whining pleas of his wife into mere background noise. Ignoring her hysteric overture, the nearsighted Henry continued peering over the top of his bifocals and responded with a minimal gesture involving only the slightest lateral tipping of his head and a barely audible, “Uh-huh.”

His visual faculties were engaged elsewhere, trained on a pair of firm, melon-shaped breasts stuffed into a T-shirt that required more work from the eyeball muscles than the imagination. The exhibitionistic young woman’s nubile buttocks were clad in what could only be described as the tattered remains of a pair of skintight, threadbare blue jean shorts, but it was definitely the taut pertness of her nipples that grabbed his attention and left him mesmerized. I was certain the breasts were purchased, but that didn’t seem to bother the blushing Henry in the least as he coaxed a response from his throat that had apparently lost its lubrication.