Arc of the Comet

by Greg Fields

  “Why?”

  “Her firm sent her to Philadelphia for a couple of days to work on an account. She’s staying at the Hotel Fairmount, can you believe it? She got in today and she leaves tomorrow night. We had dinner, and she went back to do some work, but she’s coming over in a bit. We’ll probably be up all night reliving our sinful pasts.”

  “So she’s not there now?”

  “Oh no. She wanted to go back to the hotel to change and to write a quick outline for her meetings tomorrow. She’ll be here soon. Shall I give her your regards?”

  “Of course.” His fears broke through their interment, ghoulish green specters that would dance gleefully around him all night. He would have to deal with them accordingly, and he knew that they would exact their price. A pound of flesh.

  “Well,” Finnegan went on, “the reason I’m calling, other than to hear your lovely young voice, is to alleviate my own state of loneliness. Can you come down this weekend, and which train will you be taking?”

  Glynnis sighed audibly. “No, Conor, not this weekend. I can’t come.”

  “Why not, Glyn?” Finnegan’s words sank to a hurt whisper. His spirit, already tested by the reappearance of Lynda, plummeted through the floorboards, through the apartment below, through the ground and into the cold, silent, stifling earth. “Glyn, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong. I just can’t come. I’m sorry.”

  “Could you at least tell me why?”

  “I’m not feeling quite right, Conor. I need a weekend to myself. All I want to do is curl up in bed with a good book and some brandy.”

  “Alone, I presume. You have a cold, then, or a touch of the flu?”

  “Perhaps. Call it that. This week has depressed me thoroughly.”

  “It’s done the same to me, Glyn. Don’t you think we might bring each other back to the ranks of the living?”

  “Not this week, my love. I just want to rest.”

  “You know, I’d be willing to drive up to Philadelphia and keep you company. I wouldn’t mind trying to nurse you back to health.”

  “You can’t, I’m afraid. Conor, it’s not only physical. I feel run down mentally, too. I wouldn’t be much good to you now. I wouldn’t be good company and I’d be doing nothing for myself if I spent the weekend with you. You’re sweet, Conor, and I love you dearly, but I think I should be alone.”

  “I’m not certain I understand, Glyn, but it appears I have no choice. I was counting on you, though, to bring me back around.” Finnegan spoke slowly, sadly, tiredly. “You’re all I think about, Glynnis, and nothing, absolutely nothing, lends any meaning to what I’m doing here except you. The rest is all ornamentation, all gadgetry. You alone are my substance. I do love you, girl. You hurt me by your distance, you know that.”

  “Oh, Conor, you make it so difficult. I hurt myself as well, you must believe that. But we’ve been over this so much.”

  “And I’m not going to resurrect it. I suppose I spoke unfairly, and I’m sorry. I’m saddened by being without you any longer than I have to be. As I said, Glynnis, I’m not certain I understand, but I’ll honor your preferences. I don’t mean to pressure you.”

  “But you do it so well, Conor. You’re so subtle. You seem so much like a puppy that’s been accidentally kicked and sits in a corner whimpering to itself. I know you don’t want to pressure me, but the truth is, you do. This is not easy for me, Conor. I hope you believe that I’d much rather be in your bed than mine. Just not this weekend. There’ll be plenty of time for us later.”

  “We get greedy for the present even at the expense of our future,” said Finnegan. “We’re all creatures of expediency.”

  “Exactly, my love. It’s the rare individual with foresight, and rarer still the one who honors his foresight with discipline. Be patient.”

  “You sound unusually reflective for someone who’s just put off her lover. That might cause me to worry. I think I’d be more assured if you just dismissed me out of hand without a preconceived justification.”

  “You get nervous when I think too much.”

  “Or too deeply.”

  “Fear not, love. I’m still yours. ’Til death, I hope.”

  “As you wish. Call me Sunday night, won’t you, Glyn? That will at least give me something immediate to look forward to. And Sunday night alone is the most bitter. Sunday night always seems like the dead end of a broken arm, just dangling and useless.”

  “I’ll call you Sunday, then. And Conor, it it’s any consolation, I know I’ll regret not being with you as much as you resent my not coming. I can’t explain what gets inside me. But I do think I need the time away.”

  “You worry me, lass,” Finnegan sighed. Security is at best a fragile thing, and at worst ephemeral. Finnegan knew he would get little rest over the next few days. He would not rest well again until he slept once more next to Glynnis.

  “Please don’t worry, Conor. I’ve never been more yours.”

  “Glynnis, remember when we first met you said that I was destined to have my heart broken? I never believed that, and I still don’t. But you’ve made me vulnerable in ways I had never conceived.”

  “That’s an awesome responsibility, my love. And whether you believe it or not, you’re too innocent and good to escape this existence unscathed. You will be shattered, Conor Finnegan, but I pray that I’m not the one to do it.”

  “You’re the only one who can.”

  “The subtle pressure again,” replied Glynnis with a sly laugh. “I’ll leave you now before you reduce me to tears. I’ll talk to you Sunday, Conor. And I am sorry for your loneliness. My portion is just as great.”

  “Good night, sweet girl,” and she was gone, leaving Conor Finnegan to face his specters, mocking him there in eerie, haunting gyrations as they grew in number.

  ***

  “Pray, brethren, that our sacrifice may be acceptable to the Lord our God.”

  “May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands, For the praise and glory of His name, For our good and the good of all His Church.”

  He knelt, the soft board creaking beneath his weight. Two pews ahead a small girl turned around, kneeling in the wrong direction, her gentle head topped with a mane of white-blond hair and marked by two translucent blue eyes facing him directly. She looked at him, did not take her eyes from his face, fascinated by the young man’s humble yet intense gestures.

  ’She stares at me,’ he thought, ’and her world expands. She grows past it. She does not know that this is happening, what it is, or that it is inevitable. Her mouth chews around the back of the pew. Poor child.’

  “On the night He was betrayed, He took bread . . .”

  The church was half full, a smattering of people on both sides of the aisle but most, probably two-thirds, sitting on the right. An oddity, the young man thought. He noticed every week that people tended to sit in the right-hand pews. His own tendency was to sit in the area with fewer people to balance things out. Why are people so reluctant to sit apart? Why do they feel that they must always follow the lead of those who’ve preceded them and sit in areas already well-settled? He couldn’t understand it. His young blonde observer still looked at him intently across the two-pew gulf. He shot her a smile. To his surprise she did not turn back toward her mother. Instead she continued to look at him, expressionless, her sharp blue eyes studying his face.

  “Though Him, with Him, in Him. In the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor are Yours, Almighty Father, now and forever.”

  Above and behind the organ spat forth a series of echoing chords. They flooded down like ashes from a distant fire. He sang a throaty set of three ’Amens’ as he always did, just loudly enough to hear himself apart from the muffled, horribly off-key voices of those near him. He enjoyed the sound of his voice. He thought it a rich, resonant one that could rise or fall with whatever tune it carried. Had he wanted, he might have been a singer, perhaps a distinctive voice in a great choir, or possibly a singer of the gentle f
olk songs he found so honest. Whatever there was to do, it was worth doing well.

  He rose, the kneeler again creaking with his movement. His lips formed the words to the Lord’s Prayer, but this was a mechanical exercise. Church, he had always believed, was a difficult setting for serious prayer. Too many distractions—the sounds of other humans, the breathing of the old structure itself, the statues and icons in every corner, even the way the light fell through stained glass upon the high triptych behind the altar. All this conspired to pull his mind away from God and keep it tethered to the mundane. He was certain it was no different for anyone else, no matter how they might pretend.

  “Let us share that peace . . .”

  He turned and stepped over to the old lady down the pew. She was a tattered, faded specimen, dressed in a dingy yellow topcoat, her furrowed head covered with a scarf in deference to traditions now irrelevant. He extended his hand. “Peace,” he said. She turned toward him reluctantly, a tiny forced smile upon her lips. Her touch was brittle, like crumpled paper. She said nothing as she shook his hand quickly. The young man stepped back after his dismissal and she resumed her wooden pose fronting the altar, this unwelcome and awkward intrusion now complete.

  Ahead of him, the young white-blonde girl turned around once more to look his way. He smiled again and this time, catching the spirit of the communion going on around her, she smiled back. He raised a hand in a small wave, his smile deepened and became sincere. The girl’s mother turned then and he saw that his new friend had inherited her beauty from those who went before. Funny he should not have noticed her before, because she was truly eye-catching. Her hair, white-blonde like her daughter’s, was pulled back to her neck where it formed a tight ball. Her face had been carved from white onyx. Her cheekbones set off a small mouth and framed eyes lightly shadowed in blue to reflect their natural color. He could see that underneath her coat she wore a delicate white blouse with a lace neckline that rose up to her long throat. She couldn’t be more than twenty-five, he surmised. She looked at him and smiled formally, nodding her wonderful head in his direction while her thin lips formed the word ’peace.’ She completed the gesture and turned forward again. The young man studied her from the rear, noting the slender form buried beneath the camelhair coat. Her tightly wound hair hid the nape of her neck. Fine white hairs spun away rebelliously from the ball although its shape was firmly tied down. He wished he could reach across to her and unleash her hair, detonate it, and let it explode over her shoulders and down her narrow back. He wished he could plunge both hands into it, lift the weight of it and feel its sensual, silky dimensions. Let her daughter watch if she wished.

  He fell back to his knees. “Lord, I am not worthy to receive You, but only say the word and I shall be healed.”

  He rose and followed the woman and her daughter up the aisle. No one had been sitting in the intervening pews so he walked directly behind her. Her hands clasped in front of her, as were his. At the front of the aisle stood the priest with his altar boy but they were amorphous white and purple forms. He focused his gaze on the woman’s back and the top of her lovely, proper head. Her daughter clung to one leg. Her mother was wearing a plaid skirt and, of all things, knee socks of a woolen blue. He found it unique, and therefore attractive. He had rarely seen such dress before.

  Unclasp those fine hands, young woman, and let me replace your daughter at your leg. Let me peel down those warm blue socks and pull up your plaid. Together we can celebrate a sublime divinity that mortal man cannot see. We can offer our own Eucharist.

  She received the wafer on her tongue and headed toward the side aisle to return to the pew with her daughter. He saw her out of the corner of his eye, a new, albeit obscured view, framed by an altar and a sacristy, that he wanted to be able to regard as inappropriate.

  The priest stood before him, the transparent wafer held forward. Fr. Kovaleski was a tall, somewhat overweight man who took his vocation as seriously as any priest who had ever come before him. His black hair, touched with large shafts of gray, swept up the sides of his head and piled itself on top to make his head appear blocky. The priest’s face, universally unsmiling, looked through its crags and crevices behind flimsy wire-rimmed glasses at the young man now before him.

  “The body of Christ.”

  “Amen,” he said, and extended his tongue. Fr. Kovaleski placed the wafer firmly upon it. For a fleeting instant, the young man thought of the base nature of this practiced gesture—reaching into the mouths of strangers to deposit something on their tongues, feeling their breath on the top of his hand, perhaps pressing down too hard with the wafer and picking up saliva from the slithery membrane. He walked back to his pew and knelt in silent prayer, the wafer having dissolved between his tongue and the roof of his mouth. He swallowed most of it, scraped the pasty remnants onto the back of his tongue, then swallowed again. To insulate himself against the common distractions, he raised his elbow to the back of the pew in front of him and covered his eyes with his hand. It was here, and only here, in the quiet moments after receiving what he presumed was the Body of the Risen Lord, while the faceless people around him shuffled back to their own areas, that real prayer occurred. All the rest of it was mere ceremony. He rubbed his hand over his eyes, wanting to articulate his thoughts but finding himself incapable of formulating a coherent supplication. Images of the past week mingled with his idealistic phrasing so that both elements became confused. He was confused over the nature of prayer anyway. Should it be an act of thanksgiving, an act of penance, an act of proposition, an act of dedication, a simple connection without definition to something broader? He knew, of course, that it could be different things at different times, but what should it be now when, in the serenity of the post-Eucharistic reflection, his thoughts should be clearest and his relation to whatever Supreme Being was most defined? There was always a danger of trying to do too much with this prayer, the only real one he would say all day, when his reactions to the pains and progress of his secular life were more confused than they had been in a great while. The injection of uncertainty, the invalidation of basic assumptions, can be a terrible negation. It comes furtively, this doubt, a hidden disease that works its way secretly into even the strongest psyche and eats its way through the delicate tissue there until all values, all the accepted rules, are called into question. What was once secure becomes tumultuous, a maelstrom stirred by the threatening possibility that love, profession, God and life itself are not truly as they had seemed. In the face of such fears, what good might come of two minutes of prayer?

  “Let us pray.”

  The young man rose once more and stood stiffly to listen to the priest intone something to which he paid scant attention. His mind still worked through the construction of his aborted prayer, a hopeless exercise. He felt ragged standing there, and wondered why he had bothered to come.

  “Bow your heads and pray for God’s blessing.”

  He stood unbowed. Fr. Kovaleski raised his right hand. The young man looked around at the parishioners. Most were buttoning their coats or reaching for handbags. The blessing had been a signal that the end was imminent. Getting out quickly seemed to take precedence over the good wishes of the Almighty Father.

  The organ groaned a recessional that no one sang. Fr. Kovaleski led the retreat. The white-blonde girl and her mother had bundled up during the blessing and made their way into the aisle. The young man stood in his pew until they passed. The child looked up and this time, she smiled first. A blessing, he thought. A benediction. He returned it with his own smile and a small wave of his hand, then remained standing while several more people walked past. The girl and her mother disappeared out the back of the church followed by a train of unknowing worshippers. He genuflected toward the altar and stepped out into the aisle.

  At the rear of the church in the vestibule Fr. Kovaleski greeted his people as they passed by him. The young man was among the last to leave. The priest extended his hand in an unsmiling gesture that was nevertheles
s friendly. That, as everyone had come to accept, was just the manner of a serious priest.

  “Good morning, Father.”

  “Good morning, Conor. How are you?”

  ’What,’ thought Conor, ’shall I say? Shall I say that I am troubled in ways that you could not conceive despite your years? Shall I say that I am plagued by demons, by horned and angular demons, that you could never recognize? Shall I say that I need an exorcism? Do you really want to know how I’m doing, Father?’

  “Fine, Father,” replied Conor. “And yourself?”

  “Couldn’t be better, young man. I could not be better.”

  ’No doubt,’ he thought. “See you next week, padre.”

  “Have a good week,” replied the priest, and Conor Finnegan found himself out on the cold, windy sidewalk. He turned in the direction of his apartment and began to walk.

  ***

  Lynda Hoelscher reclined along the thick rug and stretched her long, graceful legs to their limit as she propped herself on one elbow. She held a glass of red wine in one hand, weighing it there as if it were a glass filled with rubies. She raised it to her lips and drew down a good portion of it. After taking her drink, she shook her head quickly to clear away some loose strands of hair that had drifted across her forehead.

  “You know,” she smiled, “I’m really surprised to find you here.”

  “What do you mean? This is my place. Where else would I be?” Glynnis’s eyes glinted mischievously. She reclined on the floor, too, across from Lynda with her back resting against her small couch. After dinner, a rich meal of pasta, veal, salad and coffee, they had eschewed conventional seating for the animal comfort of the floor. Great amounts of wine had been consumed with the meal, and afterward. Both young women had become slightly drunk in spite of all the food they had eaten. Both wanted to keep on drinking. This was a special time, and the rare contentment of ample food, good drink and close friendship had settled over both of them. They were two cats now, stretching and yawning by the fire.