“Yes,” said Thomas, “I’m wondering.”
There was a rustling, then a silence. The stranger had settled in.
“I’ve come to tell you,” said the voice, “that human lives are absurd.”
“I see,” said Thomas.
The hidden stranger laughed. “I doubt that you do. But, even so, human lives are absurd, and I’m going to end one.”
Thomas kept his handkerchief to his nose. “You’re going to end a human life?”
“Yes.”
“Your own?”
“No.” The stranger seemed to yawn. “I’m going to kill another man.”
Like an athlete Thomas cleared his mind. He ignored the stench around him, prayed a prayer for himself and the stranger. Lord Jesus, help us is what Thomas prayed.
“Say more,” said Thomas.
“The man’s name is James Branch,” said the stranger. “He’s my roommate. I’m going to shoot him dead.”
“Why?”
In the quiet Thomas could almost taste the man’s sneer.
“There is no why, Father. There’s only absurdity. People die. That’s all.”
“I’m afraid that sounds terribly convenient for someone who’s considering murder.”
“Go to hell, Father.”
Thomas sat in silence, waited. He thought of things in his life that he’d stared at and marveled over. He thought of Jocelyn Rich’s abdomen, of dead flowers, of the hands of beggars.
“What could you possibly know about absurdity, Father?”
“A little, I suppose.”
“Really. Well, I know a great deal about it. A great deal.”
Thomas kept his mind a blank slate. He forced his thoughts away from suspicions that the unnamed man was armed.
“My brother was killed when he was a boy, Father. He was killed at an amusement park by a man dressed as a cartoon character. A giant Guppy fish.”
Thomas waited. The dank, bitter stench of the stranger had seeped completely through the grille now, filling the confessional like an outhouse.
“You can go ahead and laugh, Father. I know it’s funny.”
“I don’t feel like laughing. I’m sorry about your brother.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet you are.”
Thomas was getting a feel for the stranger’s voice. It was a young man, after all, a powerful, cynical young man who needed to speak his piece.
“Tell me about James Branch,” said Thomas.
“I’ll tell you what I feel like,” snapped the stranger.
“All right.”
Moments passed. The darkness was a limbo.
“I’ll tell you about my women.”
“All right.”
“I have tons of them. They’re like a harem. I’m rich and I take these women out to dinner and they come over to my apartment every night and strip and I tie them up and they do whatever I say.”
“Sounds like a rare setup.”
“Shut up, Father Merchant.”
Thomas was surprised to hear himself named. It sounded like a conscription notice being read out.
“These women,” muttered the young man. He sounded disgusted, compelled. “These women can make me . . . they can make it hurt less inside me. Sometimes.”
Thomas thought of men and women in Manhattan. He thought of them in restaurants, waiting for coffee, or tensely, wordlessly sharing elevators with each other, or kissing one another in Battery Park, or arguing in their beds. Then, in a flash, Thomas saw his way into the young stranger’s mind. He understood.
“This James,” guessed Thomas. “This James Branch. He’s taken one of your women. Fallen in love with her.”
The figure through the grille said nothing.
“And she’s fallen in love with him,” said Thomas. “And she’s your favorite.”
Thomas heard breath seething out of the man.
“There’s no point in having favorite people, Father. God only takes them away.”
“Not always. And if He does, He was just lending them to you anyway.”
“Quiet, priest.” The stranger stirred in his cage. “Don’t get all wise with me. There’s absurdity out there and you know it.”
Thomas closed his eyes again. “Then why have you come?” he asked gently.
The visitor was quiet for a long moment.
“You’re right about the girl,” he said finally.
Thomas’s mind was a black satin bedsheet now. Spread across it was a naked young woman with hair the color of honey.
“So why kill your friend?” asked Thomas.
“I never said he was my friend. He’s my housemate.”
“Even so.”
“I can’t let . . . He’s trying to . . .”
The stench in the closet intensified. Thomas wondered for the first time whether there might be a base, supernatural odor, a redolence, that happened when one human soul tried to control another.
“Can’t your housemate have this one woman?” asked the priest. “You say you have a harem. Aren’t they enough?”
“In my life,” hissed the other, “nothing is enough.”
Thomas breathed only through his mouth. He was hunched forward now, his face close to the grille, his eyes still shut. “Are you carrying a gun?”
“Yes.”
“Is that why you never come to Communion?”
“Yes.”
“You believe that the things that you do and the thingsthat you think are so awful that God could never approveof you?”
The stranger’s teeth made contact with each other. “Yes,” he said.
Thomas wiped his brow. His head throbbed with the weight of another man’s life. Thomas’s past, his aunts’ rearing of him, the clarity of his own heart, had come to a sudden point. There was only one thing left to talk about.
“Listen,” said the priest, “you can’t kill another human being. It’s against the law of God and you know it or you wouldn’t have come. But there’s something else you don’t know.”
“What’s that?”
“God does approve of you.”
The stranger sucked air in, released it. “How do you know? How in hell could you know?”
“Because God gave you a special gift. A smell.”
“A smell?”
“Don’t laugh,” urged Thomas. “I’m serious. Every night, when you come through the doors, this church fills up with a smell like something burning. It’s bitter and awful, and nobody smells it except me. But it’s not the candles or anything else that makes that smell. It’s you.”
The darkness didn’t move.
“You’re crazy,” whispered the stranger.
Thomas nodded, agreeing with the ridiculousness of his own words. But the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, he thought, and it’s time to scare the hell out of this guy.
“I can smell you now,” said Thomas quietly. “It’s disgusting. It’s almost unbearable.”
“You priest.” The young man was on his feet in the closet. For the first time there was panic in his voice. “You crazy goddamned priest.”
Thomas stood too. He faced what he couldn’t see. He opened his eyes. “You should be grateful. This smell of yours is a gift, a warning sign. God gave it to you because He loves you, but He knows you’re tempted to use your gun.”
“Shut up,” sputtered the young man. He jiggled the door of his chamber.
“Now that you know you smell,” said Thomas, “you’re not going to let yourself hurt anybody.”
Both men were out of the confessional now. The figure in black fled toward the church doors.
“You think you’re weird and hopeless,” called the priest, “but you’re not.”
“Fuck off,” yelled the young man. He blundered his way out onto Wall Street, disappeared.
Thomas Merchant drew a clean lungful of air. He hurried to the rectory, wanting the phone and his coat. There hadn’t been any contrition or absolution, but Thomas buttoned himself into a parka. After all the
se years he was ready to leave his hermitage, the cave of his mind, ready to take action, ready to follow into the streets the awful grace that had been loosed upon the city.
* * *
* * *
The Green Balloon
James Branch was nervous. It was the second Saturday in January, and he was out with Rally McWilliams, his new love, for dinner at Flat Michael’s. They sat at a corner table and ate Chicken prepared with garlic, rosemary, and some unknown wine. When they finished eating, they drank coffee. Their waiter was a little man named Juan, who, delighted with their bliss, bowed to them and fetched their requests.
James was nervous tonight because he wanted two things. He wanted to tell Rally his strange, secret habit of talking to the Otis elevator in the Preemption apartment building, where he lived. And he wanted to give her a pair of opal earrings that had long been in his possession and even now were in his pocket.
“What?” said Rally. Both she and James wore blue jeans, and under the table Rally had her ankle resting against James’s calf.
“Nothing,” said James.
Three tables away were a band of skinheads, sharing a plate of Squid. James recognized them as regulars, and Rally knew them from Minotaur’s Nightclub, but the lovers and the punks only nodded at each other. Their nights were going perfectly. They needed no one but themselves.
“Come on,” teased Rally. “You’re thinking about something juicy. What is it?”
James sipped his coffee. “Nothing,” he lied.
What James was thinking about, as he gazed at Rally, was happiness. Inspired by love or caffeine, his mind tonight was on the fine and illicit pleasures of the planet, on their merits and dispersement. Some people cut daisies, thought James. Some visit Wales, or choose cocaine, or dig latrines for the poor and the weak. James fingered the opals in his pocket. He’d acquired them in a mystical place, and now, as he watched a blood vessel pulse in Rally’s neck, he understood that these gems might be bearing him forth toward someplace just as rare, the kind of country you could reach only if you lay in the dark with a woman and gave in to the quickening colors behind your eyelids.
“Tell me,” begged Rally.
“I will,” promised James.
Outside the restaurant the air was bracing. James breathed it in, held Rally’s hand, made sure of the moon. They walked a few blocks, then took the subway to the Preemption apartment building. James was bursting to tell Rally about Otis and to give her the earrings, but he wanted to clear the air first with Patrick, his housemate and Rally’s former boyfriend. James wanted to end any bad blood with Patrick, to make his and Rally’s new couplehood official. So, saying he’d explain later, he asked Rally to take the seven flights of stairs with him instead of the elevator, and they climbed to his apartment. James held Rally’s hand and led her through the door, and his heart hammered. But Patrick wasn’t home.
“It’s only ten,” said Rally. “He’s probably at Duranigan’s with a woman.”
“Duranigan’s?”
“That’s where he always takes us. Them.” Rally squeezed James’s arm. “I meant them, baby.”
James looked at the floor.
Rally whispered in his ear. “I love you,” she said. “Remember?”
James nodded. Rally kissed his temple.
“Well,” she said, “should we wait?”
James glanced toward Patrick’s bedroom. He shrugged. “He’s usually back by eleven. It’d only be an hour.”
So James and Rally waited. They sat on the couch, and tried to watch TV, but James couldn’t concentrate. He also wouldn’t take off his shoes, which made Rally nervous, and then she couldn’t concentrate either. Finally, James turned off the set, and they sat there, holding hands in silence. With nothing else to do, James pressed the messages button on the answering machine. There were several bright greetings from friends, and then there was this:
“Hello. My name is Father Thomas Merchant. I’m a priest. It’s a Saturday night at nine-thirty. I have an urgent message for a James Branch.”
James sat up.
“Father who?” said Rally.
“Shhh,” said James.
“—your number from the operator. The message is this. Get out of your apartment right now, please. Your roommate, a parishioner of mine, has just left me and he’s in a very . . . agitated state. He may be heading home, and you may be in danger. He mentioned your name specifically. He is armed.”
“Holy shit,” whispered Rally.
“—reach me at St. Benedict’s Parish on Wall Street, whatever the hour. I suggest we meet at once. Your friend needs help. In fact, I might—”
The machine beeped. The priest’s voice ended.
“Patrick’s Catholic?” said Rally.
James stood up, grabbed her hand. “Let’s get out of here.”
They slid on their coats, and hurried out into the hall. They started for the stairwell, but Rally yelped in surprise. Standing before them, twenty yards away, blocking the entrance to the stairs, was Patrick Rigg.
“Hey, you two,” said Patrick.
He stood in a black suit, facing them, his hands open at his sides. He looked as if he’d been standing there some while, and he looked dangerously set, like an athlete at a starting line, about to lurch into action. Halfway between him and the lovers was the closed door of Otis, the elevator.
“H—hey,” said James.
Rally moved half a step behind James.
“I haven’t seen you guys,” said Patrick. “Not since New Year’s.”
James could hear his housemate’s breathing. It sounded loud, labored.
Patrick cleared his throat. “I gather things are going well for you two.”
“We’re in love,” blurted Rally. “We . . . came to tell you.”
Patrick drew himself to his full height. “You hear that, Branchman? Rallygirl says you’re in love.”
“I hear her fine,” whispered James.
“Well.” Patrick scratched his jaw. “People fall in and out of love all the time, I guess.”
“I mean it, Patrick.” Rally’s voice was solid now. “I can’t see you anymore. I’m with James.”
“There’s no hard feelings,” said James. “We just . . . you know. Um. We wanted to tell you. To be clear.”
“We’re on our way out, Patrick,” said Rally.
Patrick sighed. Smoothly, as if following instructions, he drew a gun out of his coat pocket and pointed it at James.
“Oh, Jesus,” said Rally.
The hall was empty except for the three of them. James moved himself in front of Rally.
“Maybe you should stay still, Branchman.” Patrick trained his eyes and his weapon on James.
“Oh God,” said Rally.
In his gut James felt hungry or empty. He’d never been in the presence of a drawn gun—especially not one directed at him—and he stared at it with horror and dizzy respect. Patrick’s fingers were locked around the SIG so tightly that his knuckles might have been cogs in the gunstock. It reminded James, as he swallowed air, of a health teacher he’d had in grammar school, a wiry man who’d often repeated the sentence The human body is a machine.
“Patrick,” said James. “Listen—”
“Maybe you should stay quiet too,” insisted Patrick.
James rubbed his hands together. He thought of the opals in his pocket, of what he hoped they meant. He watched Patrick’s gun.
“Patrick,” James said quietly. “You . . . Um. You have, like, one hundred girlfriends. And they all adore you.”
Patrick closed his eyes, once, hard, then opened them. “Rally. Would you mind coming over here by me a minute?”
Rally was crying. Her fingernails, short and sharp, dug into James’s biceps.
“I’m not going anywhere with you, you psycho,” sniffled Rally.
James backed up two paces, moving Rally with him.
“Stop it,” said Patrick. “Don’t move.”
James stopped. “She’s
upset,” he explained. “Um, you’re not a psycho.”
Patrick’s chin, James thought, was quivering.
“James,” said Patrick, “did I ever tell you that I had an older brother?”
“No, Patrick.”
“Well, I did. His name was Francis. He got killed at an amusement park.”
“Jesus. I—I’m sorry, Patrick.”
Patrick scowled. He still hadn’t taken a step forward or back.
“Patrick, please,” begged Rally.
“Isn’t that amusing, Branchman? Isn’t it amusing that Francis died at an amusement park?”
James remembered something he’d read. He’d read that when people got shot, they messed their pants.
“It doesn’t sound amusing, Patrick,” he said.
“Well, it was. It’s a long story, but if you read it in the paper, it would’ve made you laugh.”
“All right,” agreed James.
“What do you mean, all right? There wasn’t anything all right about it.” Patrick clicked off the safety on his SIG.
“Help!” shouted Rally. “Help.”
“Shut up,” said Patrick fiercely. “Shut up and get over here by me right now.”
Rally whimpered. She buried her face in James’s shoulder.
“Make her come over here, dammit.”
James’s eyes flashed at Patrick. “No,” he hissed.
The elevator door opened. A priest stepped off. He looked to his right at Patrick, to his left at James and Rally.
“Whoa,” said James.
Patrick’s eyes swelled. He took a step backward. “Father Merchant?”
The priest wore a red parka, with gray Eskimo-style lining around the hood. It was a cheap parka, the kind a child would’ve worn tobogganing in the 1970s. Under it the man wore a black shirt, a stiff white clerical collar.
“Put that gun away,” said the priest. He pushed his hood back off his head, stepped into Patrick’s line of fire.
“You followed me?” said Patrick.
“I looked up your roommate’s address,” said Thomas, “and your doorman gave me the apartment number. Put that gun away.”
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