We Are Here

by Michael Marshall

  They could just be members of the flock, or perhaps the priest ran some kind of outreach program and these people were cautiously scaling the foothills of recovery.

  It was none of my business, of course.

  But I kept watching.

  Fifteen minutes later someone else turned onto the street, but straightaway I knew there was something different about him. It was partly the way he dressed—a dark suit under an expensive-looking long coat—but mainly in the walk. There’s a style of locomotion you see only in a city, the stride of a man—and it’s always a man; women have their walks of power, but this is not one of them—who believes himself the dominant animal in his habitat. You never see this walk in the country or in small towns, which are insufficiently similar to the wild. You have to be in a city.

  This is my track through this place, and yes, I do own the fucking road.

  As he came up the street, heels making tapping sounds on the sidewalk, I was taken aback to realize I’d made the same mistake again. Something about the arrangement of the streetlights and shadows clearly made it hard to pick people out. This man was also not walking alone, or at least hadn’t been the only person to enter the street at more or less the same time.

  Following behind him was a small group of people. One was a short, bulky man in a retro suit who looked like he was trying to walk the other man’s walk and not carrying it off. The other three were much taller and thinner, and loped along with heads lowered.

  The guy in the coat walked straight up to the church gate and let himself in. The others hung back. I watched the man walk up the stairs, and then glanced back at the second group to see that they’d disappeared.

  The man in the coat opened the church door without knocking or ringing the bell. He didn’t close it behind him either. It could be that I’d simply spent too long watching strangers do not very interesting things, but I thought that was kind of weird.

  It was quiet for five minutes. Then I heard the sound of shouting, and something being broken.

  It was still none of my business, but that’s never really stopped me.

  I stepped off the sidewalk and jogged across the street.

  When I got to the church door I could see straight into the hall at the end of the corridor. The man in the long coat was walking up and down, hands on hips and coat flared out behind, like a ham actor delivering a key speech. I couldn’t see anyone else and so I kept going.

  The priest was in the middle of the hall surrounded by chairs—some of which had been overturned, a couple broken. The second of the two guys I’d seen earlier was behind him, looking totally out of his depth. There was no sign of the other, the man in the untucked shirt, though the door at the other end of the room was ajar.

  The man in the coat turned to me. He looked about forty. His hair was cropped and his face broad but the features even. I could feel the power of his presence from where I stood. “Who the fuck are you?”

  His accent was flat. Not New York.

  “One of the faithful,” I said. “I need to talk with the father about something that’s been troubling me.”

  “You shitting me?”

  “No. Why do you ask?”

  “The father’s busy,” he said. “I suggest you come back another time.” He turned to face the priest.

  “That’s not convenient.”

  The man was motionless for a moment. When he turned to face me again there was a smile on his face. It was quite like one, anyway. “Say again?”

  “You know how it is with spiritual matters. They crave instant solution. I assume that’s why you’re here too. Maybe we should go somewhere, compare notes.”

  He laughed, and turned back to the priest. He liked his body movements, this guy. He was all about owning the space. “Seriously, Jeffers—who the fuck is this person? He a friend of yours?”

  The priest said nothing. The man behind him kept glancing at the door, and appeared to be trying to work out his chances of being able to run at it without being intercepted. It looked as though he had nowhere near enough experience of making that kind of calculation to be confident about it, and was aware of the fact.

  The man in the coat grew thoughtful. “Wait a minute,” he said to me. “I know you.”

  I hadn’t been expecting this. I said nothing.

  “Yeah.” He nodded to himself. “I don’t know where, but I’ve seen you.”

  “Could be,” I said. “I don’t hide.”

  He came and stood about a yard from me. “Sometimes hiding is a good move, my friend. Running never works. But hiding? Sometimes it’s the clever thing to do.”

  Up close he smelled of cologne and self-confidence. He wasn’t scared of me but he wasn’t dumb, either. Something random had come into his orbit and he was too smart to do the obvious and throw a punch or pull out a gun—something I was by now pretty sure that he’d have about his person—and I realized maybe I should have sent Kris a message before I came barging in here.

  There was a flurry of movement, the clatter of a chair knocked over, and receding footsteps. The scared-looking guy had chosen his moment, and run.

  I kept my eyes straight ahead, on coat man’s face. He looked at me a moment longer, then stepped back and laughed quietly to himself.

  The father remained where he was, hands by his side, looking pinched but composed.

  “This guy’s right,” the man in the coat said to him. “I came here for a talk too. But you’re busy tonight, it seems. You got all these people coming to you for help at once. Some other time.”

  He gave me a nod and walked toward the door. Just before he left, he turned back.

  “There will be another time,” he said, but not to me. I’d already been dismissed. “We will talk.”

  He seemed to be directing the remark toward the door at the other end of the hall. Then he was gone.

  Jeffers let out a sharp, hard breath, and ran his hands quickly over his face. “Thank you,” he said.

  “Who’s down there? Though the door?”

  “Nobody.”

  “You mind if I take a look?”

  “Yes, I do,” he said. “This is a church. But even if I let you, you wouldn’t find anyone.”

  Curiously, I didn’t get the sense that he was lying. “I don’t know what you’ve got going,” I said, “or who the hell that man was.”

  “His name’s Reinhart.”

  “Whatever. I’ve met people like him before. You don’t want them in your life.”

  “Thank you for the advice,” he said. “I’ll be sure to bear it in mind.”

  When I got back onto the street I looked for the man in the coat, but there was no sign. I did catch a glimpse of the guy who’d bolted, however. He was right up at the corner of Ninth, head down and hands stuffed in his pockets, walking fast.

  As he turned the corner, I thought I saw something else—three tall figures, thirty feet behind him, also hurrying, as if following. The image didn’t resolve, however, and I guess it must have been more of the street’s strange shadow patterns.

  I turned for home.

  Chapter 28

  After Henderson left, the priest stood for five minutes. He sent up a prayer for guidance, but ran out of steam after the initial formalities. Sometimes it went that way. You picked up the phone and got a dead tone. A lot of people gave up at this point. Jeffers knew some days the plea went to voice mail and that’s that. He’s a busy guy. Give Him a chance. Jeffers believed this, at least, on good days.

  In the meantime he turned to dealing with the chairs that had been knocked over. He picked each up carefully, inspected it for damage, and returned it to its place in the rows facing toward the end of the hall. There were twelve of these, divided by an aisle in the middle. On both sides each held seven chairs. The days of the week, multiplied by two, multiplied again by the number of Christ’s disciples, another of the private conceits he entertained in an effort to introduce meaning into his days. With faith, so much of what’s important take
s place behind the scenes. Not including the single chair at the head, which faced the other way and on which he sat while delivering his informal sermons, the church provided a hundred and forty-four places for the faithful to sit, less the three that had now been broken.

  Too many chairs.

  He gathered up the pieces and carried them to the side. One was damaged beyond repair—the chair that had been on the receiving end of Reinhart’s kick. The other two were collateral causalities and had received only superficial damage—legs or spindles dislodged from sockets. Jeffers supposed that they would be relatively easy to repair if you knew what you were doing with hammer or glue. The world of physical objects had never been his domain. Even as a child he’d been prone to playing with ideas rather than things, and had never made much of a distinction. He’d ask Dave to have a look at the chairs. Dave was an ex-alcoholic who’d been coming to the church for years (his conversion an early success of Jeffers’s predecessor, Father Ronson) and transitioned more easily than some to the new priest. He functioned as an occasional unpaid cleaner, but from time to time he’d shown himself to be a halfway competent handyman too. Nothing ever quite worked as it should when he’d had his hands on it (the oil heater, for example, which was now discreetly stowed in the basement, along with its fuel, so as not to hurt the man’s feelings), but fixing a few chairs would be within his capabilities … pointless though it would be. Jeffers was lucky to see twenty people in the church at any one time. The other chairs were merely there to make up the numbers, and as a statement of intent.

  One lived in hope, and worked in hope, and that was the way it should be. Hope is how the idea of faith operates in the world.

  Hope is how you make faith do real things.

  When Father Jeffers turned from the pile he saw Maj on the other side of the room. Maj didn’t look happy.

  “Who was the other guy?” Maj asked.

  “The one I’ve told you about.”

  “The guy who’s been tracking Lizzie?”

  Jeffers nodded.

  “He looks like trouble.”

  “Your friend ran away.”

  “He’s always had a tendency toward flight.”

  “You’re not going after him?”

  “He’ll be halfway to Penn Station by now. I know where he lives. Right now I’m more concerned about Reinhart turning up here.”

  Jeffers sensed this wasn’t entirely true and that the man was doing his best to cover intense disappointment. He also knew that Maj, like many of his kind, strongly resisted being told what to feel. Their emotions and memories were all they had. “How do you think that happened?”

  “Golzen must have led him here. He’s building up to something. Fictitious Bob told me earlier that he’s been sending out broadcasts designed to hide something. I had an encounter with Golzen myself before I left town, and he and the three ghouls turned up in a bar earlier.”

  “Were the messages about Perfect?”

  “Not self-evidently. But who knows?”

  “If he’s preparing to leave on his quest, why would he bring Reinhart here?”

  “Could be it wasn’t his idea. You met the guy. Does Reinhart seem like someone who lets people do what they choose?”

  “I’d like a meeting tomorrow,” Jeffers said. “You, Lizzie, Bob, and as many of the others as you can gather.”

  Maj shrugged. “Lizzie’s being kind of … I think she’s gotten spooked by these people following her. There’s something on her mind. I don’t know what it is.”

  “I’d like it if you could try. Especially with her.”

  When Maj had gone, the priest took a walk around the room, checking that everything else was in place. When he was satisfied, he went to the far end and closed the door there. He locked the church and went around to the house. He paused before going inside and looked up and down the street, half expecting to see someone in the shadows. There was nothing to see, but that didn’t mean there was no one there. Reinhart would be back, too. He was sure of that. Though until tonight he’d known the man only by reputation, a confrontation had been inevitable. Black and white, right and wrong, good and evil. They rub along together most of the time, but a battle always comes.

  So be it.

  Upstairs he stood becalmed in his sitting room. Usually he spent this period preparing for the next day. Planning a schedule of visits for those unable to visit the church in person, which boiled down to reassuring the very old that no, they didn’t look so bad and yes, God would be there waiting for them. There was nothing of the sort booked for the next day, however, which left working out what to say to the drop-in group at four and starting to gather his thoughts for the weekend’s sermon. He was ahead of himself on the first task, and drawing a blank on the second except for reiterating the bottom line:

  God is basically on your side, so if life seems to suck it’s probably part of some big plan. In the meantime, pray. And keep coming to church, for Pete’s sake. I’m not doing this for the fun of it.

  He sat in the chair by the window. It was the single decent piece of furniture in a room that was otherwise Spartan. It didn’t have to be that way. Nobody ever came up here. He could buy what he wanted, within reason and the constraints of his salary. He could pimp it out like a gangsta bordello, if he chose, or install a revolving bed with black satin sheets. He’d arrived owning little, however, and remained that way. Everything of substance in the room, excluding the piano, had belonged to Father Ronson. As a child of wealthy parents, Jeffers been brought up in the world of ownership and had found it wanting. Or … was choosing not to acquire merely an easy cop-out, a way of sidestepping the trials and risks of self-definition while appearing to live a virtuous life?

  He didn’t know. He’d been back and forth on the subject, sitting in this very chair, staring out at the simple beauty of the trees and the streetlights, which he saw as the real decorations of the room.

  The results of three years of patient effort stood in the balance. Maj was right. Reinhart could only have been led here by Golzen. Perhaps he should have tried harder to reach out to Golzen. Their messages weren’t so different. They preached parallel paradigms, up to a point: the only distinction being that Jeffers’s was right, and Golzen’s wrong. There were souls to be saved. Souls in danger, lives that had been lived in shadows and untruth but could now be steered toward the light. There was a limit to what Jeffers could do for the regular folks, those who attended because they were old and knew no different or middle-aged and felt they should, as if it was some kind of Book Club with Benefits.

  He could make a difference with this other kind. Many were younger. Most lived outside the law, and almost all on the streets. He could bring them home. Through doing this he might also prove to the memory of Father Ronson that he was worthy of his post. Jeffers wasn’t sure this would make a difference. That wasn’t the point. In the realm of the spiritual, you do things because they’re the right thing to do. That is all.

  What happened this evening was a sign it was time to step up the campaign. To gather the ones he had influence with and forestall any ideas they might have of allowing themselves to slip into Reinhart’s clutches—as so many had done—or following the road to the promised land, for which Golzen claimed to hold the key.

  Tomorrow always holds the potential to be the very best of days.

  Content to have reached this conclusion, the priest sat in the chair, his mind tending toward a comfortable blank. He started on hearing the sound of a distant thud.

  He’d heard the sound more and more recently. He knew the city was loud enough at night that neighbors in the street would either not have heard the noise, or would dismiss it as one of those things, the sigh of a bending branch in the jungle night.

  He knew also that when he went into the church tomorrow morning, however, the narrow door at the end of the hall would be hanging open.

  Chapter 29

  Kris woke earlier than usual. When she trudged yawning into the sort-of-kitche
n she found a note on the counter next to an empty coffee mug. It was from John. It said he was going for a walk. There were two arrows underneath, drawn in his confident and surprisingly artistic hand. One pointed to the cup. The other pointed in the direction of the coffee machine, which was loaded and ready to go. She picked up the note and frowned at it.

  It was considerate, of course. But that wasn’t what struck her. He always went for a walk first thing. John went for a walk in the morning in the same way that the sun rose. John going for a walk was not news.

  So why the note? The fight after the debacle at Catherine’s had blown over. It had been, as John had said, a dumb fight—though possibly not as dumb as he’d made out. It was dumb because fighting never achieved anything, true that, but when two people who love each other bang heads that hard then something needs talking about. Kristina was damned if she knew what that was, which was making her twitchy. She suspected John would have even less idea, not least because he wouldn’t have a clue that they were at …

  The Six Month Suckfest.

  It wasn’t always literally six months when she bailed—that would be stupid and weird and she could have put a note in her diary in advance saying, “Don’t screw things up this week”—but it had fallen close enough on enough occasions that it had become the Six Month Suckfest in her head. She and John had already been together longer than that, in point of fact. More to the point—his stubbornness about moving aside—she was happier than she’d been in her entire life.

  And yet … still there was this itch in the back of her mind, an unsettled feeling in her stomach: and a small, shriveled hand starting to reach out for the Bail Switch. She’d never been able to work out whose hand this was. A remnant of her mother, trying to keep her single? Some personification of insecurities she simply didn’t feel (consciously, at least)? Pure perversity? She didn’t know. In the meantime, the hand kept moving insidiously out of the darkness, its twisted fingers groping toward some agenda Kris didn’t understand and wanted no part of.