The Eighth Deadly Sin

THE EIGHTH DEADLY SIN

A Novel by Geoffrey A. Feller

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 by Geoffrey A. Feller

CHAPTER ONE:

AN EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES

If there was a worse subway station in Boston than Government Center, Melanie Dvorak didn’t know which one it was. But after her delayed flight into Logan, she was too tired to care.

Melanie had left New York in a grim mood in the first place and waiting so long for takeoff hadn’t helped matters. Now, despite the best of scheduling efforts, she was arriving home just in time for the evening rush hour.

At least her husband Simon Herbst had been at the terminal to meet her late plane. However, he hadn’t driven to the airport; Simon hated to drive anywhere in the city. Nor did he want to ride in a taxicab during heavy traffic despite all their money. Melanie was married to a subway fool, which was one of the nicest ways she could put it.

Perhaps it was easier for Simon as a big, tall man. He stood out in a crowd and people usually got out of his way. In those same crowds Melanie felt lost, shoved around, buffeted about, and occasionally stepped on. She was often too small to be seen until the damage had been done.

Melanie was a shade over five feet tall, yet still lean and muscular under her professional woolen suit. She worked out with dedication but felt faintly embarrassed about it. During what she now had to consider her youth, Melanie had been a gymnast and later a bike messenger. To maintain as much strength and stamina as possible, she now had to strain and sweat in a health club. Melanie thought she was acting like too many or too few other thirty-seven year old women.

Of course, Simon appreciated the results. He was like too many other men of any age, after all.

Melanie had known her husband would insist on riding the T back home. After the stress of negotiations in Manhattan and the impotent frustration of waiting for the jet to leave the tarmac, Melanie had no energy left for another struggle.

Without a word of reservation or even resignation, she had followed her big man onto the shuttle bus to Airport station on the Blue Line. What the hell, he was carrying her luggage. It was one small valise containing little more than a day’s change of clothes, various toiletries and makeup.

Aboard the first train, Melanie had been able to lean against her husband’s wide, soft torso as they’d stood all the way into downtown. She actually liked his mix of flab and muscle; Simon was like an always-warm mattress she could curl up against, standing up or lying down.

He had gently cradled her with his free right arm and, finally relaxed, Melanie closed her eyes. They didn’t need to talk; his body was the proverbial comfort of home. But within ten minutes, they’d have to switch from the Blue to Green Line at Government Center Station beneath City Hall Plaza.

Transferring meant riding an escalator up one level. Upon reaching the upper platform, Melanie began to silently complain about how ugly it looked.

She objected to the design, for one thing. The Green Line section was roughly triangular, causing the inbound and outbound tracks to fan out from each other. In other stations, they followed more orderly parallel paths.

It confused people who didn’t know any better, such as bewildered tourists coming in from the airport the same way Melanie and Simon had just done. The tracks leading towards the Common and Public Gardens were designated as westbound on the wall signs rather than downtown, for example.

How was a Texan looking for the Cheers bar on Beacon Street supposed to know he was standing southeast of that tourist trap? He could unfold a map and disrupt foot traffic while trying to make sense of it all, if possible.

Those who weren’t confused were more often than not simply rude, impatiently wading through more slowly moving bodies. Even Simon was guilty of that offense, though usually without realizing what he was doing.

And he was doing it right now, carrying the valise in his right hand while ushering Melanie forward, his left arm encircling her shoulders. They needed a westbound train.

Green Line cars were modern trolleys that operated in subway tunnels under central Boston, rising to the surface beyond the skyscrapers and the most expensive residential districts. Simon was leading them towards a typical pair of trolleys coupled as a short train. Each could be driven from either end. These ends had streamlined contours reminding Melanie of insect faces. But the twin headlights suggested a pair of almost cute animal eyes.

Both cars were overflowing with passengers. It was clear that all those who wanted to get off had already done so. At each set of open doors, handfuls of diehard commuters edged precariously inside. Simon and Melanie stepped right up to one of these doorways and assessed the situation.

We’ll never make it into that one, Melanie sighed, looking up the steps.

"You can still fit," Simon declared loudly.

He put the valise down between his feet and made a sudden move. The next thing Melanie knew, her husband’s big hands had slipped through her armpits from behind. Simon lifted her up and deposited her on the second step. He had picked her up as gracefully as if the two of them had choreographed the move long ago. As a matter of fact, Simon had done this kind of thing many times before.

The problem was that Melanie hardly ever enjoyed being handled like a doll except in their private moments. And after the day she’d been through, any patience for her husband’s self-indulgent antics was negligible.

Melanie staggered slightly as she tried to turn around, groping for a handrail and catching a stranger’s elbow instead. She immediately let go but kept her balance like the old gymnast she was. By the time she was facing the doors, they were already closed.

Melanie looked at her husband through the door’s oblong windows. The smile framed by his full beard was uncertain, as well it should have been, and it collapsed altogether when their eyes met. She took in his figure from this elevated perspective. Simon was overweight but his expansive shoulders helped improve the overall impression. This afternoon, he was wearing a green trench coat with his corduroy slacks visible at the hem. His heavy boots, a designer imitation of what a steel worker would wear, actually gave him another inch or two of height, which he didn’t need.

In that respect, Melanie was defiant over her diminutive status: she rarely wore high heels. Her nearly flat black leather shoes were an advantage at a time like this. The trolley’s electronic caution bell clanged, warning everyone that it was about to roll forward. Luckily, the thing moved without lurching although Melanie still flexed her thighs just in case. On her left, she finally found a bit of handrail to grasp. Melanie was left-handed anyway so it was a good find. A moment later, the trolley began squeaking its way around a sharp curve in the tunnel.

Well, at least no one had laughed at her while Simon was trying to be playful. And she’d heard no sympathetic comments, which could have been worse. Most Bostonians didn’t like to invite conversation with strangers. It seemed as though the ghosts of long-dead Puritans sometimes inhabited present-day Massachusetts residents to keep them properly reserved in public. Or perhaps in Publick.

Melanie smiled momentarily, thinking that she might have found the topic for some future column. Then she looked at the woman directly ahead of her, reflected back in the glass, the dark tunnel behind it.

While Melanie’s perhaps obsessive aerobic and weight-lifting chores had left her with an almost satisfactory body, she could still see age in her face. Laugh lines had started to show up around her thin-lipped mouth and undeniable creases had begun to colonize her high cheekbones. Her dark blue eyes had crinkles alongside the sockets now. At least Melanie’s short brown hair was as thick as it had ever been. But now the gray hairs that had first appeared a couple of years ago had been fruitful and multiplied.

Maybe the wrinkling had been accelerated thanks to the hours she’d spent getting tanned out in the streets as a bike messenger. It still annoyed her to consider that she’d fucked around for four years doing that. But Melanie’s writing career had begun immediately after she quit the biking gig. Her only wish was that she had gotten rich from selling her own words!

Melanie shook her head as though she were shuddering. It was more comfortable to think about gray highlights and crows’ feet.

Simon had gray hair as well, some of it in his beard. He was also nearly completely bald at the age of thirty-six. But his skin was nice and smooth and a man could always age more gracefully than his wife. Simon had given up wearing contact lenses since they’d first met but not even his expensive oval spectacle frames could seriously obscure those lovely hazel eyes. And Simon liked to praise her eyes, too, even though she needed to wear reading glasses lately.

Okay, so they each had beautiful eyes. You didn’t loose that advantage at least as long as glaucoma didn’t set in.

The train pulled into Park Street Station. Quite a few riders clambered off the trolleys at this stop; it was a busy transfer point with the Red Line subway one level below the Green Line tracks and the Common directly above them. Melanie seized her opportunity to ascend to the aisle. She even saw an open seat next to an Asian woman who was about as small as she was. Yet she hesitated, trying to decide if it was worth sitting for only a couple more stops.

It didn’t take long before someone else benefited from her caution and dropped into the hard plastic seat. With an imperceptible shrug, Melanie took hold of a stainless steel pole near the right side steps. The trolley refilled with commuters and she found herself squashed against a well-dressed upper management type.

He seemed indifferent to her presence as he tried to read what appeared to be the Wall Street Journal. Had he even looked at her, this executive might have assumed that she was a college professor like her father had been. It was a common misconception. Meanwhile, Melanie was thinking that this executive probably had a stock portfolio that looked like a booklet of gift certificates next to hers.

Hubris was a bad thing. But it was a useful coping device now and then.

They lived a short walk from Copley Square in the Back Bay at 156 Commonwealth Avenue. Their home was the entire third floor of a grand old building that displayed Victorian era stonemasonry and artificial ivy made of wrought iron. Simon had thought it was funny to refer to their building as a Rockefeller triple-decker even though it was actually five stories tall.

Buying the condominium without a mortgage had put a dent in the principal of their fortune but it had healed within the past year and a half as money on that scale usually did. Melanie and Simon were nouveau riche by definition but they both were shy about advertising the fact. Their neighbors must have found that to be a saving grace; if Simon and Melanie weren’t old money, neither were they famous rock stars or sports heroes.

They certainly hadn’t gone overboard with their cars. No Rolls Royce, Jaguar, or Cadillac for the Dvorak-Herbsts. Instead, they owned a pair of his and hers 1999 Volkswagen Beetles in silver and green, respectively. The cars didn’t even have vanity plates.

Good evening, Melanie, the doorman said, opening the thick glass door to the lobby for her.

Hello, Thomas, Melanie replied, making the effort to smile.

She had once insisted that the staff address her by her first name. Assuming it was a radical departure from the normal decorum, Melanie had been disappointed by their lack of shock. After all, they had been trained to indulge the residents’ idiosyncrasies within law and reason.

Betty the concierge was at the front desk as Melanie walked across the marble floor. She was a motherly type, chubby with white hair and half-moon glasses on a beaded chain around her neck.

Good evening, Melanie, Betty said. How was New York?

Complicated, Melanie said, this time allowing a more heartfelt smile. The plane was late and I just got in.

Heavens, I’m sorry to hear that! You must be exhausted.

Nearly. Simon and I got separated on the way back from the airport. I left him with my luggage. I’m sure he didn’t make it back here first.

I’m afraid not.

Perfectly fine. Just let him know I got in safe and sound.

Of course, Melanie. I hope you have a restful evening.

Me, too.

Melanie was glad the building had no elevator attendant. She didn’t feel like talking to anyone else, perhaps not even her husband.

Inside their condo, Melanie pulled off her little shoes by the entry door and turned on the foyer light. Both of the cats, apparently already stirred by the sound of the key turning, came trotting up to her. They were a male and female pair, the tom was an Abyssinian and the molly was a Burmese. Melanie crouched to pet them both. She asked Philip and Trish if Simon had fed them yet; both seemed to be saying that they were hungry.

But Simon even more of a cat lover than Melanie was. She walked into the kitchen and saw that their food dishes were nearly full. Perhaps enough had been nibbled out of each to fill a feline stomach. Like Simon, both cats had been sterilized; this condo would remain an adults-only residence. Philip and Trish went about their cat business and Melanie continued on to the master bedroom.

She shed her business suit and one of her seldom-used bras along with it. Off came the stockings as well. Melanie found a favorite set of sweat clothes in the cherry wood dresser and pulled them on. Because she was still officially mad at Simon, Melanie also put on a pair of thick socks rather than go barefoot.

Her next stop was at the wine rack in the dining room. She poured herself a glass of chardonnay and proceeded into the high-ceilinged living room. Melanie peered out the window over the sofa. It overlooked Commonwealth Avenue and she thought there was a chance of spotting the big man trudging home in the dark.

Melanie was a bit disappointed by the lack of snow. This December had been just too mild for her. Only ten shopping days until Christmas and the city had barely seen any frost. Still, the lights were up everywhere and people were shopping like mad, spending money like the world really would end on January first.

Melanie eased onto the sofa and propped her feet up on the coffee table. Thinking about money was an inescapable habit. It didn’t matter where you were on this financial food chain. Whether you were living in an alley, public housing, trailer park, apartment building, suburban rambler, this Rockefeller triple-decker, a Beverly Hills mansion, or in Donald Trump’s penthouse (one of them), you still thought about money. Not all the time but always more often than you ought to. Maybe not if you were a monk or a nun, ironically secure in your vow of poverty.

That’s what I need, Melanie whispered. A vow of poverty. Or what do they call it now? Voluntary simplicity.

It had all landed in their laps seven years ago, a year into their marriage. Melanie had never known how wealthy Grandpapa Edward had been. He had been much better at disguising his assets than Melanie and Simon were. At least he’d had more practice at living a proportionally Spartan existence than his granddaughter. And she had inherited only a modest fraction of it!

Grandpapa had lived in London so it wasn’t like Melanie had grown up with him. It didn’t make sense that she should get a larger slice of his estate than the rest of the grandchildren.

Grandpapa Edward was already a widower by the time Melanie had first met him; just maybe she had reminded her grandfather of the late Mrs. Ransom. There was a faint resemblance in the old photographs, to be sure.

Yet again, it had probably meant more to the old man that she had spent so much time with him during her summer in Britain following college graduation. It had been the first chance the two had to spend any real time together. Grandpapa Edward had found Melanie’s youthful non-conformity to be charming. Their devotion had been mutual, making his death a traumatic experience for Melanie.

Simon had been extraordinarily kind and loving during that painful time, strengthening the bond between them. He had been privileged to meet Edward at their wedding and once more in England. Simon’s own mourning had been sincere, if less profound than his wife’s.

The legacy had come like a sting through Melanie’s otherwise numbed sensations.

And, to my beloved granddaughter, Miss Melanie Dvorak, the will had read, I bequeath the sum total of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, sterling.

Months later, Simon had joked to a friend that he’d nearly had a heart attack when it dawned on him that the British pound was worth half again as much as the US dollar. He’d told the story while he thought he was out of Melanie’s earshot. But she’d grinned easily, knowing it was the kind of joke Grandpapa Edward would have appreciated.

But Melanie was angry when she’d received notice of her inheritance, mostly at her mother. How could she have concealed this family fortune from Melanie and her sister Becky? As far as they’d known, their grandfather had been an upper-middle class retiree. His left-wing political attitudes had certainly thrown Melanie off the trail.

"Your grandfather wanted it that way, darling," was all that her mother had to say about it.

Later, she had discovered that the basis of the Ransom fortune had been the plunder of raw materials from an Imperial colony back in the nineteenth century. Melanie understood why Grandpapa had kept it hidden. Her parents ended up using their even larger share to become full-time philanthropists while Becky set up her own archeology laboratory, immeasurably furthering her career.

But it hadn’t ended there. Even though Melanie had attended Radcliffe, she had gone there on a scholarship. The idea of real money frightened her and she didn’t know what to do with it.

Simon had suggested the stock market. He said that money on this scale was something you simply invested. Their broker came up with a wide and confusing array of options for them. High tech and internet stocks had seemed a reasonably forward-looking area to concentrate on.

Besides, Simon had remarked, nobody has to wear a tie in those companies. Sounds like our kind of people.

Within four years, one particular search engine became their big jackpot, something Melanie had neither counted on nor particularly desired. But the dividends were theirs, so what were they to do but let it happen?

As millionaires, Simon and Melanie chose to move into the Back Bay, living in the style both of them had wanted. The sale of the third floor had been finalized two years ago last June.

And the money just wouldn’t go away. They had already deposited so much that the interest alone would support them for the rest of their lives. Then Simon had gone and added some more, almost by mistake.

Being rich meant meeting other rich people. The tie-less moguls at their Midas-touch search engine company arranged dinner and cocktail party invitations for them and the couple had accepted. After all, they had a combined curiosity about which famous people they might happen to meet in which art gallery or hotel ballroom.

About a year after they had moved into their Back Bay condo, Simon was introduced to a software designer at one of these parties. He was a youngish man, almost Simon’s age. The designer had been hyped in Entertainment Weekly as the Tim Burton of CD-rom. Apparently it meant, among other things, that this genius had license to dress like Simon’s long-ago dope smoking pals in high school.

The chat had been pleasant. Then Simon casually dropped an idea for a new computer game. Wouldn’t it be cool if you had a virtual Godzilla that you could send to attack a variety of cities rather than just Tokyo all the time?

The software designer had reacted with enthusiasm and talked of drawing up a contract. Simon had later told Melanie that he was startled by the suggestion; he’d been prepared to give his idea away for free. But now they were Simon in Wonderland and Melanie through the Looking Glass; the rules of human interaction had been changed.

On his own initiative, Simon had called up Melanie’s syndicate editor for advice. The editor put Simon in touch with an entertainment lawyer who specialized in intellectual property law.

Simon had kept this all a secret from his wife, later explaining that he’d though it would be a pleasant surprise for her. He had scheduled the contract signing for the day before Melanie’s deadline to ease his departure. Simon had concocted a story for her. He said he would be flying to San Francisco on a whim to ride a new variety of trolley that was now in service out there.

Because Simon had been eagerly assuming the look and behavior of a wealthy eccentric, Melanie hadn’t suspected anything was going on behind her back. Besides, she’d been grateful for the solitude as she had a column to finish.

Her husband had returned with his copy of the contract. The game company had already wired a couple million dollars into one of their bank accounts. Additionally, there had been a payment of stock shares and a guarantee that Simon would receive a small percentage of the game’s gross sales.

Melanie had been furious with him. It was mostly over the deception but also because of her husband’s seeming greed. They had followed her parents’ example and given a lot of money to charitable organizations, always requesting anonymity. These donations had been enough to cause their accountant to loose sleep.

And now, like some kind of money addict, Simon had gone behind her back to haul in more. But since her reaction had hurt his feelings, she hadn’t kept him on her rather sharp hook for long.

The customized destruction found in Big Bad Lizard (a generic monster since Toho Studios in Japan held Godzilla’s copyright) had been a notable hit for Christmas 1998. Simon’s royalties had ended up vastly exceeding his lifetime earned income and the company sent him a $200,000 bonus as a token of their appreciation.

I feel as overpaid as the Pentagon, Simon had said one night over dinner, trying to get into his wife’s spirit of Puritanical shame.

However, his potential career as a software idea man was cut short by his own indiscreet mouth. When some Russians had had pirated Big Bad Lizard, selling bootleg editions on the streets of Moscow, a business journalist had actually bothered to track down Simon for a quote.

With a hand-held tape recorder whirring away under his furry chin, Melanie’s husband had said that Big Bad Lizard was just a silly little toy and there were more important things in the world to worry about. His remark made the wire services.

The software designer had called Simon up within twelve hours to berate him. Among other things, Simon had been accused of treating the company’s factories like Monopoly game pieces.

You’re having a high old time playing the dilettante, the genius had said according to Simon. "Just remember one thing, Herbst: we have real working people on the assembly line putting that ‘silly little toy’ into boxes and shrink wrap. You and me, we’re just a pair of lousy rich bastards to them. Rich bastards who don’t care about the working man. If your clever little witticisms put them out of work, don’t you realize they won’t think there’s anything more important in the world than that?"

Simon had been utterly mortified and he passively signed off on a clarification issued by the company’s public relations department. Although he’d learned the hard way to say no comment to reporters, Simon had effectively blacklisted himself with the home entertainment industry.

While his contract was unbreakable and money continued to flow in thanks to Big Bad Lizard 2.0 this year, the board of directors had tried to retrieve his 1998 bonus. In the scheme of things, it was something of a symbolic act but Simon’s lawyer had been too good to let that happen.

Melanie had gone easy on Simon during his crisis. But she shouldn’t help giving him one bit of needling.

If you weren’t my husband, Herbie, I would’ve written about this in my column!

Her column… Melanie had started writing editorials back in 1988 for the now-defunct Action Equals Choice. Ironically, it had been a wealthy friend from Radcliffe whose family money had launched that periodical in the first place. Although the feminist/pro-choice newsletter only had a miniscule circulation, eventually the right people noticed Melanie’s work. By 1991, Melanie had been seduced away from Action Equals Choice with an offer to write for an alternative weekly.

What prompted this decision was a promise made by the weekly’s publisher. He had connections with a syndicate and there was a fair chance they’d pick up Melanie’s column following a suitable probationary period. In any event, she’d have a larger readership.

So Melanie’s by-line started to appear under the banner of Hub-Bub. She’d always hated the name, a dopey play on the city’s nickname of the Hub as in the hub of the universe. Boston had two large mainstream dailies, the Globe and the Herald. Then there was the leading alternative weekly called The Boston Phoenix. Over a generation or so, the Phoenix had driven its radical, counter-culture rivals such as The Real Paper and Boston After Dark into oblivion. While Hub-Bub was neither as old nor as influential those others once were, it managed to survive and operate very deeply within the Phoenix’s shadow.

The syndicate had picked up Melanie’s column about when her publisher had said it might. Her royalties from this deal weren’t too impressive, not even by pre-inheritance standards. The syndicate itself was not powerful. Melanie’s column mostly ran in second-tier alternative weeklies similar to Hub-Bub.

But money had never been the point as far as Melanie was concerned. It was enough to know that her opinions were being aired in places like Cleveland, Lincoln, Chapel Hill, Berkeley, Santa Fe, and Minneapolis. She felt especially proud of her column’s distribution in Burlington, Vermont. It was Melanie’s native city and her home up until college.

She often wished her home base had been with a bigger paper. Once, during a staff meeting, the publisher had asked for suggestions to promote their publication with a good slogan. Melanie’s sarcastic suggestion had been: We’re so alternative, nobody’s even heard of us.

But the publisher had taken her slogan seriously and that’s what had started to come out of the print shop. Not only on cardboard transit posters but on the masthead itself.

After the inheritance had cleared international probate, Melanie insisted on being paid a nominal one dollar per month from Hub-Bub’s publisher. But she continued to accept all her syndication royalty payments in part to gauge her out-of-state popularity.

Only later, after the stock market tidal wave had flooded Melanie and Simon’s bank accounts, had she finally used her wealth to influence the publisher. At this point, Melanie could have bought him out as easily as she could do a 15-pound bicep curl. But all she had wanted was to have that idiotic name changed.

As of October, 1997, it was called The Nor’easter: A Blast of Fresh Air. Melanie wasn’t crazy about this title, either, but at least it didn’t make her wince. Apparently, somebody on the staff had resented what must have looked like a high-handed power play on her part. The gossipy story had been leaked to none other than the Phoenix.

Boston’s big-time alternative didn’t normally care to acknowledge the other weekly’s existence. If Hub-Bub had been so alternative, nobody had ever heard of it, the Phoenix was content to keep it that way. But some poor little rich girl controlling the owner of a helpless minor tabloid had to be one irresistible subject for an investigative report.

Just as Simon would be having his fifteen minutes of infamy with Big Bad Lizard a year later, this had been Melanie’s turn. It was a nightmare come true. She had been outed as a multi-millionaire in front of the proudly scruffy Generation X readers of Boston’s alternative press.

Apparently, nobody had ever bothered to check her personal background before. But now there were pictures of it. A shot of Simon and Melanie leaving a fundraiser for AIDS research at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, another of their condo building on Commonwealth Avenue, another of Melanie crossing Boylston Street, looking miffed about something. None of the photographers had thought of following her into the subway, which might have helped. Or hurt, for that matter, had she seemed to be making an absurd effort to look folksy.

What had really hurt was one particular criticism, that she was a hypocrite. One more photo had been a head shot. Melanie was damned if she could figure out how or where it had been taken. Someone had probably used a telephoto lens to capture her wearing sunglasses, Jackie Onassis style. There had been a disdainful little sneer of her face, as if she’d heard someone mention the Christian Coalition.

Beneath this candid camera portrait had been a quotation, in large, italicized fonts, from one of her old, old Action Equals Choice columns. The stock market is unethical in itself. Possibly a necessary evil, but an evil nonetheless. Why? The stockholders, in their finite wisdom, continually reward the unconscionable exploitation of workers both here and around the world. And the CEO’s collect their obscene bonuses, completing this circle of corruption. How much money do these boys need, anyway? At the very bottom of this quote was the cutting rejoinder: And how much does this girl need, anyway?

Couldn’t someone have exposed her premarital bisexuality instead? That would have bolstered Melanie’s reputation in this milieu.

She had been tempted to respond in her column. Perhaps remind people that being rich didn’t mean you couldn’t be liberal. Look at Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and his brothers, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California. Hell, look at the vast majority of Hollywood stars!

In the end, Melanie’s gut instinct had told her to clam up and let it blow over. Her publisher had come forward and denied being pressured to change the name of the paper, then weakened his own testimony by admitting that Melanie really didn’t like the old title. But at least he’d