Ghostheart

by R.J. Ellory

  On 25 April 1956 Rocky Marciano retired undefeated. Forty-nine wins out of forty-nine fights, and only five opponents had ever survived to hear the final bell. Rocky Marciano recognized when a good thing was done, and he got himself out.

  Much like Harry Rose, a small kid out of someplace called Hell who’d only ever wished to be free. When we found each other we had pretty much next to nothing, and when we parted we parted much the same way.

  ‘Easy come, easy go,’ Harry Rose would say, but with Harry – as always – you could never tell how much of that was the truth.

  There was silence for a little while after they’d finished reading. Annie had rested her head on Sullivan’s shoulder the whole time through, and it was only as he turned the last page that he realized his shoulder had gone to sleep.

  Annie moved slowly and let him up. He stood there without words for a second, and then he smiled.

  ‘Why do you think the old guy wants you to read this?’ he asked.

  Annie shrugged. ‘I don’t know Jack. I’ve been thinking about it, and I haven’t liked what I’ve been thinking.’

  Sullivan didn’t respond.

  Annie shook her head. ‘When he first came there was something unsettling about him … like there was a way he would look at me as if he knew me.’

  ‘You think –’

  Annie stopped him. ‘Let’s not go there Jack … I don’t even wanna know what you were gonna say. All I know is that we’re not gonna be going there tonight, okay?’

  ‘Okay Annie,’ Sullivan said quietly. ‘Okay.’

  Sullivan stayed until just after midnight. Later, lying in her bed, Annie heard him talking to himself through the wall. It was a little while before she realized it was the TV. She was relieved; all she needed now was for Sullivan to lose the plot on her.

  A half-hour or so earlier it had started raining again, and from the warm darkness beneath her quilt she had listened as the rain scattered its footprints across the roof above her. There was something so infinitely reassuring in that sound, something timeless and unique. She wondered if such a sound had been there through her childhood, and if she’d felt the same way. She remembered so little of those years, the handful she must have shared with her father. He must have come to her at night – all fathers did, didn’t they? And he must have tucked her in, perhaps read her a story and then, turning out the light, he must have leaned close and kissed her forehead.

  Good night Annie.

  Goodnight Daddy.

  Sleep tight … make sure the bugs don’t bite …

  I will Daddy … I will …

  And then sleep would have come, and she would have remembered the security and strength of his presence. Perhaps he had smelled like David Quinn: leather and coffee and tobacco, a haunt of musk, but paternal, benevolent perhaps.

  All those memories must be there, she thought as she drifted into sleep … but for some reason I can’t remember a single one …

  THIRTEEN

  Another change of pattern. Seemingly insignificant to others, but in some way life-changing to Annie. She woke at her regular time, and though she had expected to think immediately of what she had read the night before with Sullivan it was not until she stood beneath the shower that the images came back to her. Strangely, they came with less intensity and emotion than previously. Was she becoming numb to what she was reading? In the place of discomfort and disturbance she found herself thinking of these men, Harry Rose and Johnnie Redbird, and wondering how it would have been to lead a life like that. A life so full of every human emotion, good and bad, terrifying and exhilarating, that there would be no room for worry and confusion. Life would come at such a pace you would merely have to ride with it, or get crushed beneath it.

  She left at the same time on Friday morning, but walked the other way, just walked – without purpose or direction – down Cathedral Parkway onto Amsterdam, continued all the way to West 97th and turned left towards Columbus. The store was now four blocks behind her, her apartment seven or eight. She thought of John Damianka appearing at lunchtime with a mayonnaise-drenched sub, looking through the closed door of The Reader’s Rest and wondering if Annie was sick. This was so unlike Annie, so unlike her completely.

  She found herself smiling at the thought, and continued walking. At 96th she decided to take the subway, the 59th Street/Columbus Circle route, and when she boarded she found the train all but empty. Ordinarily she would have chosen a seat away from other passengers, but this time she sat down without thinking, looked up as the train pulled away, and noticed a young priest facing her. He was dressed in dark pants, a black shirt and white dog-collar, and over this a worn leather jacket. A suede bag, tassels on its lower edge, hung from his shoulder and protruding from the top of the bag was a mass of folded papers and notebooks. He was reading something and, peering at the book as inconspicuously as she could, Annie recognized the cover of The Human Stain by Philip Roth. She frowned, a little bemused, and then questioned her own preconceptions as to why a priest would not read such a book. Not that she had read it herself, but that he would be reading anything except the Bible or ‘Notes Regarding The Book Of St Luke: Part One’.

  She looked up. The young priest was looking back at her and he smiled, a warm and genuine smile, which she returned. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-two or three, darkhaired, his face muscular and well defined. His eyes were a startling blue, and from the way he sat, his carriage and demeanor, he looked like the sort of man who would take care of himself physically. Break a sweat in the gym two or three times a week, perhaps play basketball, quarterback for the monastery?

  He was handsome, that was for sure, and Annie found herself wondering what such a young man would do with all his hormones.

  She blushed at the thought, and silently scolded herself for entertaining sexual thoughts about a priest.

  ‘You have read this?’ he suddenly asked.

  Annie looked at him, surprise evident in her expression.

  ‘Er … no, no I haven’t read it,’ she replied.

  ‘It’s quite something,’ the priest said.

  ‘Is that so?’ she said, wondering what kind of conversation she would now have to endure with a priest.

  ‘It’s about a man of seventy-one who has an affair with a cleaning woman half his age. He sees her mopping the floor in the post office one day, and he winds up having an affair with her. What d’you make of that, eh?’

  Annie shrugged. Was he asking her about her moral standpoint on age differences? Or the fact that it had been an affair? She opted for the safest response she could think of and said, ‘I haven’t read it … I really couldn’t say.’

  The young and handsome priest obviously wanted to engage in conversation, because he smiled and said, ‘I don’t mean the book per se, I mean the idea of a seventy-one-year-old guy banging a thirty-four-year-old woman.’

  Annie’s mouth visibly dropped open. Had she heard him right? Did he say banging?

  ‘I … I suppose it’s all down to individual needs and desires.’

  The priest winked at Annie. ‘Sins of the flesh,’ he said in a deep and serious voice. ‘And why the hell not? You only live once, and if you get it right you go to heaven, though I can’t say that even I know how you get it right all the time. If you screw it up you go burn in an everlasting pit of sulphur for eternity. What’s there to lose? I’m getting off two blocks from here and you’ll never see me again.’

  The young priest laughed, shifted his tasselled suede bag from his lap and leaned forward. ‘So whaddya reckon?’ he asked. ‘Would you get it on with a guy twice your age?’

  Annie thought of Jack Sullivan, and then there was a fleeting image of Robert Forrester … She stopped at that thought, and it was not that his age seemed to present an inhibition, but that there was something almost incestuous about the thought. It would have been like having sex with her uncle … or her father? And then she spoke: ‘I suppose it would depend on who it was, and whether or not I
found them attractive.’

  ‘Good enough,’ the priest said, and then he leaned back in his chair and smiled a winning smile.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ Annie said, feeling a little more confident, a little relieved that this conversation would only continue for a few minutes more.

  ‘Shoot,’ the priest said.

  ‘Are you talking to me about sex because you can’t ever have sex?’

  The priest smiled, and then he started laughing, and the sound of his laughter seemed to fill the entirety of the carriage, drowning out the sounds of the wheels on the tracks beneath them.

  ‘Of course I can have sex,’ he said. ‘I had sex this morning as a matter of fact … damned good sex if I might add. Figure I’ll marry this girl … helluva girl who can have wild sex with a priest and not get into the moralistic guilt-ridden bullshit that seems to drive so many people out of their minds.’

  Annie shook her head. This couldn’t be a real conversation. This couldn’t be a real priest. I mean, what was it with the book? What was the tasselled suede bag all about? What possible notes could a priest need to write down and carry around that would justify a shoulder bag?

  Must remember to have intensely provocative conversations with single young women on the train. Must remember to mention the fact that not only can I have sex, but I can have damned good sex with a girl who doesn’t do guilt trips. Say four Hail Marys and three Our Fathers after I jerk off in the chapel bathroom. A quart of milk, a dozen eggs, a tube of vaginal lubricant and three packs of Trojans. Oh, and don’t forget to tell Father O’Reilly that Sister Martha’s got a vibrator.

  Annie smiled weakly, couldn’t think of anything to say, and for a moment she looked to her left out of the window and wished that the priest would go away.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘Did I embarrass you?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, you just caught me a little off-guard.’

  The priest sighed. ‘I’m constantly being reprimanded for my outspoken views, you know?’

  Annie eased back in her seat. She didn’t want to look at him. Her mind was crowded with what kind of wild sex he might have had that very morning before he put on his shirt and collar, donned his leather jacket and shoulder bag, and walked down to the train.

  But then who was she to judge anyone? Only last night she had stood naked at the kitchen window and watched a man across the street as he gawped at her. Perhaps, she thought, she should tell the priest.

  Forgive me Father for I have sinned. I have never attended confession in my life, but I felt I should make an appearance because last night I stood naked in front of my window and let a complete stranger stare at my breasts. And to tell you the truth, after the first moment of embarrassment and shame, I actually felt something like an epiphany, a catharsis perhaps, like Paul on the road to Damascus. Oh, and another thing. When you first looked at me I thought about you sweating in a gymnasium, and I kinda figured you might be in pretty good shape under the collar and crucifix …

  She didn’t think so.

  The priest glanced at his book once more, and then said: ‘Reading this thing you can’t help but think of the seventy-year-old guys you know, and it just seems crazy that the drive would still be there at that age.’

  ‘Charlie Chaplin fathered his last child in his eighties,’ Annie said.

  The priest nodded. ‘He sure did, you’re right there …’ he said. And then: ‘My stop,’ as the train drew to a halt. ‘Take care,’ he said as he rose from his seat and passed her. ‘Remember that it’s not a sin unless someone else gets hurt, eh?’

  Annie looked up. The winning smile. The startling blue eyes. Beneath the shirt and collar a body that would sweat in the gymnasium. Wild sex with a guiltless girl first thing in the morning. She smiled weakly. ‘I’ll remember,’ she said, and silently upbraided herself for her wicked thoughts.

  The train moved away. She closed her eyes. She thought of David Quinn, and asked herself if anyone would get hurt, if she was merely living this thing called life, or if she was pushing the walls of the envelope a little too far. What would she do if she found herself in another close situation with David Quinn? If he made an advance towards her that was anything more than an advance of friendship? Yes, she had kissed him, but she had kissed men before, kissed them more than once, but it had gone no further. It was her decision now, for she sensed that David would not hesitate, either that or she had read everything wrong. She could make it go whichever way she wanted. Would she back away? Would she ever so politely refuse his attentions? Or would she seize the moment? She believed she could not answer that question until the moment came, if it ever came, and even the thought of such a moment sent butterflies through the base of her stomach. The anxiety … no, the fear was there, but wasn’t it this very same fear that had forever denied her what she really wanted? And how would one overcome such a fear? By living life perhaps? By doing the very thing that one was afraid of? She believed so. She actually believed it might be so. And then she asked herself why she’d ended up taking this train, why she’d sat facing the priest, and how he had possibly imagined she would want to discuss such a subject with him.

  Your thoughts are almost exclusively responsible for the situations you get yourself into, Sullivan would have reminded her.

  And of this she didn’t wish to be reminded. It was Friday, she wanted the week to end so she would feel somewhat less guilty about leaving the store closed. She wanted some time and space. That was it: some time and space to be herself, to collect her composite parts together and gain some understanding of what might be happening to her. Something had changed, and though she could not clearly isolate the point of change she surmised that it had to be the effect of several factors. Her concern for Sullivan and the deal they had made, David Quinn of course, and then there was Forrester. He would return Monday evening, perhaps bring another letter, a fourth chapter of the book, and it was this story that had intrigued her. Haim Rosen a.k.a Harry Rose, a young man who had seemed to tear off handfuls of life and devour them before he even reached twenty. She wondered what might happen to him, what might happen to his friend Johnnie Redbird – even now imprisoned somewhere for the rest of his life for a killing that seemed altogether justified. Someone had been hurt then. Someone had died. But had it been right? She wondered what the priest might have said about that. Was it wrong for Elena Kruszwica to have killed the SS officer? Was there such a thing as justifiable homicide? Did it make it okay if killing someone balanced the scales of injustice, or prevented the loss of further life? She thought that perhaps it did, that God would understand such a thing. Johnnie Redbird and Harry Rose had killed Karl Olson because Olson had brutally murdered Carol Kurtz, and then Johnnie had taken the punishment for both of them, and thus Harry owed his life to Johnnie. What would happen to these people? She wished for them to be fictional characters, but then again somehow representative of all that was involved in being human. Love and loss, faith and passion, jealousy, anger, hatred, and finally death. These were heady and intoxicating themes, themes that played through her mind as the train sped through the theater district towards Chelsea. She figured to get off in Greenwich Village, to spend a couple of hours wandering without any real sense of purpose, and this – at that moment in her day, perhaps her life – seemed the most purposeful thing to do.

  NYU Books, Barnes & Noble on Broadway, north-east into the antiques district, back along Fifth past Mark Twain’s house towards Washington Square … somewhere in her wanderings the day dissolved, and as evening drew in around her, as her feet started to ache, she made her way back to the subway and went home.

  There was something so familiar in the smells and sounds of the block as she walked up the stairs. Here was home, and home, after all, was surely the residence of the heart. Years ago, back in her childhood, she must have felt this way coming from school. Must have done. Couldn’t remember. Had for some unknown reason folded all those memories neatly and stowed them in a ho
pe chest never to resurface. Why had she chosen to forget? Was there something back there so frightening it had been safer to wipe all of it away with a single sweep? She didn’t know, and at that moment didn’t care. She was tired mentally and physically, and all she wished for was silence and warmth, perhaps the company of Jack Sullivan for an hour or so before she slept.

  She knocked on his door but there was no reply. He was either dead drunk or out. If he woke or returned she would hear him, she’d invite him over, but that was later – after coffee and some TV, after taking time to think of nothing for a while.

  She closed the apartment door behind her and threw her coat and scarf across the back of a chair inside the doorway. From the kitchen window she could see the lights across the street. There were several people over there. Perhaps the guy had invited a few friends over, bought a couple of six-packs and some pizza, see if the brunette with the towel on her head would get her clothes off again.

  She smiled to herself, switched on the coffee percolator, and returned to the front room.

  FOURTEEN

  Annie?

  She could hear breathing, and then there was the faint smell of alcohol and cigarettes.

  ‘Daddy?’ she murmured. ‘Daddy?’

  Annie … wake up …

  She felt a hand on her shoulder, and though there was something pulling her firmly but so gently into a deeper recess of sleep, she fought it, fought to open her eyes, and saw Sullivan leaning over her, smiling, opening his mouth to say something else.

  She raised her hand, silenced him. ‘Give me a moment,’ she whispered.

  Turning somewhat awkwardly on the couch she sat up straight. She looked at Sullivan, her eyes unfocused, a taste in her mouth like sour copper, and she closed her eyes once more and breathed deeply.

  ‘Coffee?’ he asked.