Sin or Redemption?
by Penn Madison

It's just a game, that's all. How long you can go without saying anything personal? Make eye contact, nod. Ask the leading question, "And then what did you do?" Sprinkle exclamations: "No!" "No way!" "Oh my god!"

Keep moving. Make a point to remember names. "Hey, how are you, Dr. Greenwood? And, Pauline, lovely as usual." Feign intimacy. Lean toward Pauline, lips skimming her cheek, whisper, "Still flying to Chicago for your gowns, I see. Only the best." Master the art of the bitchy compliment. Flatter them, zing others. "You make every other woman here look small town."

Exit gracefully, before they can ask about you. "Have to catch you later. They're running me ragged as per usual."

You won't meet up with them later, nor will they notice or care.

You're thirty two years old, only ten pounds heavier than in college, and have a good job as an event planner for the American Space Society (yes, the initials are A.S.S., you've heard all the jokes.) As a single, employed, heterosexual man you keep reading you're part of a sought-after minority.

Yet you're alone, completely alone. You've made treating yourself well into an art form. Like a woman, you take nightly scented baths to relax, and you consider your biweekly fifty dollar massages a necessity. You shop at Cunningham's for crab-stuffed chicken breasts and raspberries out of season. The owner of Vintages puts aside bottles for you, and the manager of Rearley's Fine Men's Wear has your measurements filed away.

You're always being fixed up. You take a woman, ten years your junior and poured into faux leather pants, to a fine restaurant. She talks all night about her job (underemployed with an flirtatious boss and all her women co-workers are jealous of her) and her ex-boyfriend (who wouldn't commit and then, not eight months later, up and married someone else.) At the end of the evening you tell her you have season passes to the Symphony and would she... She backs away slightly and tells you she's "not ready" for another relationship.

At home you lie in bed and stare up at the skylight that set you back $12,000. Your electric blanket is warm and your stomach is full of rare steak and baked potato, and you remind yourself how good you've got it. You remember the feral children you saw in a newscast, and you know you are a spoiled American who needs to be more appreciative.

But you can't help but wonder if it's you. You look around at the single people you know: Tom, your drunken neighbor; Lila, the Space Society's anorexic secretary who blurts personal tidbits at the most inappropriate times; Betty, the Wok and Roll's fiftyish, thrice-married waitress with her garish makeup and braying voice--it's so easy to see why they're single.

You decide to call your former neighbor Julian Guest--the original woman magnet--and ask him to level with you about what the problem might be. You'll admit to Saturdays where you don't speak to another soul all day, or your dates that you never see again. You won't mention your conviction that you're simply using up precious air (you're a conscientious environmentalist who recycles glass, paper and plastic) that could be better used by someone who enjoys life. Instead of someone like you who thinks, more frequently lately, why not end it now? Have to die someday.

You leave a message for Julian and he doesn't return your call.

Then everything changes.

You're schmoozing your wealthiest donors, the Hendersons, who've sprung for a Platinum Partners table. Rocky Henderson is telling you about his golf game that ended just forty five minutes earlier. You do not golf, but you know that doesn't matter.

Then you notice her, movie star beautiful, voluptuous with hungry eyes and a mass of Titian red hair. She's by the bar, chatting with a tuxedoed man and his chubby wife whose evening gown stretches across her back fat.

The redhead motions gracefully with her wineglass. She laughs. Your eyes meet. You nod, then look back at Rocky who's seen a friend, yells, "Jerry Smith, you sonna bitch, I thought this was supposed to be a high-class shindig."

Rocky turns on his heel without another word to you. You stand there, self conscious. She approaches. You're the proverbial deer in the headlights.

What to say? What to say?

She pushes curly ringlets off her lightly perspiring forehead. Her eyes, topped by Garboesque winged eyebrows, are as dark as brownies baking, and you notice that she's not pale with blotchy freckles like most redheads, but lightly tanned, a delicious mocha color.

She stops, her long, pianist-worthy hands flutter, her nails are a plasticky red except for the index finger of her right hand which is sunglass-shiny black. You pull your gaze away from the valley of her cleavage. An odd, ink-stained design--a tattoo?--peeks above her décolletage.

You hear someone calling your name. It's skinny secretary-girl Lila, coming to tell you the award ceremony will start in fifteen minutes.

You turn away, face your beautiful stranger. She winks at you, and you hold out your hand, amazed at yourself. You pull her toward the veranda where you know it'll be cool and private.

You still haven't spoken, and as you elbow through the crowd, you murmur, "Toby, glad you could make it." "Joe-meister, congratulations, you're a lucky man. Shannon's one of my favorite people," but you don't allow anyone to waylay you.

She presses her body against your side, moving with you.

You're outside, the breeze is lifting her hair, she's staring at you. What are you doing? This isn't like you. Now what? Then you realize you're drunk--how can that be?--you've only had a couple glasses of wine, and at home you've been known to polish off a bottle, or sometimes a decadent two, with no negative effects or day-after hangover.

You feel yourself listing slightly to the right and admonish yourself to stand up straight. Drunken swells of conversation swirl in your mind, but you can't make out individual words.

You raise your voice to speak over them and half-shout, "It's so much nicer out here. It was getting stuffy in there. By the way, I'm--"

"I know who you are. It's time we left, don't you think David?"

I know who you are. Innocent words, later so fraught with meaning.

You think: I can't leave, I have to...the awards...

"Oh, I think the gala will continue full steam without you. Your little assistant will ask everyone if they've seen you, and then she'll highjack the President of the Board--Ned Springer, right?--to do the honors."

You nod, dumbly, a portent of many unthinking agreements to come.

"He'll stumble and hem-haw a bit, then give out the awards, easy enough to read the names from the plaques. Half the tables won't even quieten down to hear him anyway. You won't even be missed."

And then the words that were like a punch to his gut:

"Story of your life, huh? "

It seems she knows you, somehow. You don't know what to make of this, but you find it intriguing, thrilling even. You follow her out into the cold night; you ask, "I'm sorry, have we met? I meet so many people, and I'm not all that good with names. Did--"

"David, hush." She whips her shawl over one shoulder; she seems perfectly warm in her emerald green, spaghetti-strapped gown and sandals. She smiles, reaches a gloved hand to the back of your neck, brings your face toward her mouth.

You can't believe this is happening to you. Maybe the stories you've heard from other guys--in lockers, bars, drunken parties--are true; women like this do exist.

Maybe you shouldn't ask too many questions. You kiss her greedily.

Her hand strokes your shoulders before she draws away. "Your name was on the program. Mine's Abby. I'm staying at the Oxford. Arrived this morning from Denver."

"Just to attend the Spacetrazaganza?"

"No. To meet you. Join me for a nightcap?"

"Absinthe?" She asks. Without waiting for a reply she pours from a perfume bottle-shaped glass. The liquid is exactly the color of her gown, her necklace, her sandals. "You've heard of--"

"Yes, of course. I did an internship at Tulane." You pronounce it Naw'lins, to show her you're sophisticated. You look around: the large hotel room could be a bridal suite with its hot tub surrounded by mirrors, mirrors everywhere, floral wallpaper, fresh flowers and a "Oxford's Best" gift basket. You see no suitcases, through the open door of the bathroom there are no makeup bottles, prescription vials, used towels.

"Indeed? But I bet you never tried it when you were there." She sways forward, in slow motion like a sexy commercial.

"But, isn't, uh, this absenthe--"

"Ab-SINthe. With the accent on sin."

"Right. Uh, isn't it illegal or something? I read--"

"The real stuff is, in the U.S. anyway. Now they've got a wormwood-free brand--"

"Wormwood. God, that's right." You swallow. "And this is--"

"Thujone is a sacrilege. This is the real thing. My namesake. Abby's short for absinthe. My parents were drunk on it when I was conceived."

"Uh huh."

You follow her example and savor the stinging drink. The heat of sexual desire courses through your body.

Abby wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. "Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder. Let's fuck."

You thrust in her for what seems like hours, your orgasm a free fall into oblivion (fleetingly you're astonished that you used to worry your dick had gone permanently limp from lack of use.) Afterward, she helps you dress and leads you from the hotel--everything is so effortless--and you walk toward the bright lights of downtown.

In the alley behind Johnny Nolan's Saloon--how magical the neon seems to you tonight--she lifts her gown. She is naked underneath, her shaved pubes moon-white in the streetlight's glow. She swivels, bends, moons a couple walking by, laughs. She grabs your hand and pulls you away, around a corner, down another sidewalk.

She pauses outside the All Faith Chapel. People still wearing their coats are scattered throughout the pews. They're singing "Amazing Grace" when she begins to dance/twirl down the aisle. An pudgy deacon with a lazy eye escorts you to the door, says, "Jesus loves you, sister, but we can't be disrespecting the House of the Lord."

You follow her, your whole being effused with ecstasy. You're in a park--what park? You know this park, but you can't remember its name; it is every park, the prototypical park. Abby wades into the pool that encircles the dolphin fountain, oblivious to the spray crystallizing into ice pellets on her warm body, soon clouds of steam obscure her face. She drops a strap of her soaked dress, acts like she's going to stuff a breast into your willing mouth. A woman swathed in a down parka harruphs, tells you this is a public park, that there are kids present which isn't true. She shouts into her cellphone, and soon you hear a police siren. Abby covers her breast, grins, stoops to splash you. She wades, dress clinging, out of the pool.

Instantly you're dry. With the red glow from the police lights pulsing on your backs, you head toward the park's bandstand. The backroom is not locked. For the second time that evening, she steps out of her dress, billows it over the floor. You look at her hand, abracadabra, she's holding the absinthe bottle.

Nothing surprises you anymore. She gulps from the bottle, then drizzles the liquid down her chest. You suck it from her nipples. You kneel, push her legs apart, and lick up into her warm cleft. You drink the absinthe that pours from her essence. She holds your head, pushing herself toward your tongue. She screams, lowers herself onto you. You are flying, you are drowning, you are in heaven.

You open your eyes. You do not ask, where am I? because as soon as you see her, you know. She is dressed; her shawl draped over her hair in a way that frightens you, but you don't know why.

Her once sparkling eyes are dead, her voice a monotone when she says, "Here. One for the road." She looks down. On the cement floor--for the first time you feel how cold it is, how your body aches, feels bruised--are the two shot glasses from the hotel. "How did--"

She presses her fingers to your lips. "Don't ask. You should know better by now not to question everything. Just go with it. Like you did for the first time this evening."

You know that is true. Before this night your only taste of wildness was Bruce Springsteen songs, shoplifting anchovy paste, calling in sick when you weren't.

"But the party's not over. I know you. I know who you are, what you need. Here." She pointed with her one black fingernail at the first shot glass. "One glass is sin. Not for nothing they call it Ab-sin-the. And the other is redemption."

The magic from the earlier Absinthe is draining away. You're back in the black-and-white flatness of your everyday life. You want the feeling back. You have nothing to lose.

You do not debate the pro-or-con/sin-or-redemption. You point at the first glass. Without hesitation you grab it and gulp quickly. And, just as they say, your whole life flashes before your eyes.

But you don't die. You wake up in your apartment, naked under your electric blanket that is on its highest setting. You're sweating and your hands are shaking. What?

Instantly you remember. The gala, leaving, leaving it all behind. With Abby. The absinthe. What was that about sin and redemption? Which one did you choose? You can't tell.

Until later. You dress, go to work. Lila greets you warily, asks "Where in the heck did you go at the gala? I looked everywhere, but..."

You are not listening. You face her, horrified, as you see a vision of her, rifling through a dresser drawer, clutching a wad of folded bills.

You rush from the office. You walk down the sidewalk, eyes averted, dodging the other pedestrians. You stop in front of the Wok and Roll and catch a glimpse of Betty serving a group of college kids. Instantly a scene flashes before your face: a teenaged Betty, she's driving, her face turned away from the road yakking to her friend, look out!, a horrendous jolt, a dead dog, Betty, mascara'ed tears streaming down her cheeks, drives away leaving the animal howling in pain by the side of the road.

And more: at home again, safe, you think. You flip on the television. The newscaster: his carefully coifed hair, Ken-doll face morphs into a younger, angrier him. You see he's drunk; he slaps a tiny, blonde woman who flies back against the kitchen door. A large bruise is already purpling her eye.

You rush out into the street. As you pass every person, you see their calm, everyday selves transformed: faces contorted, punches thrown, property destroyed, fires started. You stifle a scream when one grandfatherly man's doddering walk is replaced by a hallucination of that same man, younger, red faced and bloated, fondling a young girl. And at that depraved image the realization of what is happening washes over you.

Sin. That is what you have chosen. The final taste of absinthe offered by the drink's namesake has cursed you with the ability to see sin. Everyone's sin, strangers' sins. Sins tucked carefully away, thinking if they're unacknowledged they no longer exist. Everyone's worst sin: the hatreds and drunkenness and abuses and murders and...

You tell yourself, no, no, stop, don't--but you can't resist. You run back to your home, slam open the door, rush to your bathroom mirror. You look at your face. You scream with anger and fear.

You see a beautiful young woman, you know she is your daughter though she looks nothing like you. You watch in horror as she meets a man, takes him to her room, offers him a drink.

This is Penn Madison's fourth published story. She has almost finished her dissertation on the prototypes in Little Women. She lives in Green Mountain Falls, Colorado and is unhappy to report there have been no recent Bigfoot sightings.