“You just said, ‘up to that point.’ At what point are we justified in disobeying God?”
“Since you put it that way, Father, I guess the answer is never.”
“The pray and ask God to grant you the spiritual wisdom and insight to discern why, despite all the blessings He in His Providence has seen fit to shower down upon you—loving and devoted wife, healthy righteous offspring around your table, comfortable home, honorable profession—you feel somehow your disobedience is justified. Ask yourself at what point you deem yourself entitled to deny God’s commandments and betray all those around you. And to betray your higher nature into the bargain.”
“I know, Father.”
“Do you? Then ask yourself in particular why your obsession with humiliating the face of this woman, this Drey. Don’t you realize that she as well as you and every one of those you cause to sin or in whose sins you participate or whose sins you condone, are all created in the image and likeness of God?”
I turned my head away.
He said, “It’s a sobering and humbling thought, isn’t it? The idea that you, Ricky Galeer, are in fact an abuser of women.”
It hurt worse to hear him talk about me using my everyday name.
“And where will it end? What does the Devil next have in store for you once you reach your level of comfort and boredom with your current sins? Sex crimes? Assaults? Rapes? And who will number among your future victims? Children? On that day when your recurring sins yield no more pleasure, when vain repetitions of these same offenses no longer render their fleeting thrills, where will the Devil lead you then?”
“I—I don’t know. Down the garden path?”
“Not closer to God, I assure you of that.”
“But what about Diane and that other woman?”
“Remember when Peter asked the Lord how many times we were to forgive our enemies?”
“Vaguely.”
“And what did our Lord say in response?”
“Seventy times seven.”
“And even though He may not have meant four hundred ninety as a literal number, how many times has Diane sinned against you?”
“Once that I know of, Father.”
“One time. And how many times have you sinned against her? Has it been four hundred ninety?”
“Close, but who’s counting?”
Father Gerasimos said nothing, but rather held his right hand above his head and pointed his index finger straight up at the ceiling.
“Capital Who,” I said.
“Capital Who,” he nodded. “Do you have any more sins you wish to confess before I give you your penance and pronounce the absolution?”
“No, Father.”
“Your penance will be to visit the sick, in this case your sponsor Kevin. You will fully disclose your recent slip and humbly seek his advice. Then you will stand up at the next twelve-step meeting and publicly share everything with them. Do not mention any names or phrase your sharing in a lascivious or provocative way that might tend to cause a weak person to sin. Forgive Priscilla her sins against you in your heart but do not confront her. It will not be necessary at this time for you to confess your own sins to her.”
“What about Lieutenant Grimm?”
“Forgive him as well. And pray fervently for him and for all your enemies.”
“I mean, he wants me to perjure myself in a sworn statement that falsely implicates an innocent man and sends him away to prison.”
Father Gerasimos arched one eyebrow. “And your question?”
The door swung open. Grimm poked his head in and saw me with the stole draped over my head. “We’re not quite finished here,” Father Gerasimos said evenly. Grimm closed the door but left it ajar while Father Gerasimos prayed the prayer of absolution over me, ending with. “Go ye and sin no more.”
“Thank you, Father.” Something always came over me after confession, a feeling of profound peace I can only compare to the feeling you get when someone you have wronged or deeply wounded forgives you utterly, or the total emotional surrender that comes with a tearful reconciliation. Repentance, in other words.
In my case it lasted about five minutes, when Father Gerasimos left and Grimm barged in.
“Ready to give me that statement now?” he asked. “I don’t want you throwing a clot and dying on us before I get what I need.”
I have never known it to fail: immediately after every confession I am invariably confronted by a seemingly inescapable occasion to sin, a nettlesome challenge to my faith or an especially overwhelming temptation.
“I don’t know; they have me kinda drugged up now. Can’t it wait?”
“You’re a lawyer. How does that work, that deathbed statement thing?”
“Come on, Grimm. Can’t you see I’m in no shape to conduct a seminar on hearsay exceptions?”
“You ain’t talking to a rookie, Ricky—hey, that kinda rhymes, don’t it? Anyway, you ain’t dealing with no dummy: I took a law enforcement course or two out at the college. The perp has to believe that death is bearing down on him at the time he makes the statement, right? You tell me, what’s the other requirement?”
“That he actually dies without recovering, by the cause of death he feared.”
“Hospitals are dangerous places, Ricky. But you know that; you used to sue hospitals all the time, didn’t you? Must make you a little bit paranoid now, though. I mean, here you are lying up in one of the very same hospitals you probably sued back in the day. Lawsuits make long memories. Grudges that can last for years. Who can say?” Grimm fooled with my IV line. “You know what I heard once? That a single air bubble running through one of these things can stop your heart. Wonder if that’s true.”
“Diane and Heart will be back any minute.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. I heard Diane say she might have to go home and do something, and that she was Heart’s ride. Interesting phraseology, huh? You think there may be something more than the usual womanly affection going on there? A little mud-wrestling but they left out the mud kind of thing?”
“Quit talking about my wife, Grimm.”
“You know, I couldn’t help noticing there in the cafeteria, that wife of yours, Diane? She’s got perfect skin, skin like one of those supermodels, even under those shitty fluorescent lights bouncing off the yellow walls and that. I said to myself, I’ll bet Diane must get herself a facial every day to have that flawless a complexion.”
I went for the button to call a nurse but Grimm snatched the cord out of my reach.
“C’mon, Ricky; I heard the priest mumble the magic words over you not five minutes ago. Air bubble was to hit your heart now, all that happens is you stroll right on in through the pearly gates like a groupie with a backstage pass. Ever wonder what it’s really like up there? Think maybe it’s like they told them nine eleven guys, with the seventy-two virgins and that? Guess there’s only one way to find out.”
Grimm diddled with the line, bending it between his thumb and forefinger in rhythm to a pulse, barely kinking it and then letting it go, watching for my reaction.
Two quick taps at the door. “How we doing today?” A tiny brown woman of indeterminate age, Thai maybe, or Pakistani, wearing a white lab coat, popped into the room with a beaming professional smile stretched across her face. I couldn’t make out her nametag with my one good eye, but she looked familiar. A moment later Diane and Heart appeared.
“Doctor Kakapahtithanjorn is one fast walker,” Diane joked. “Heart and I are winded just trying to catch up with her.”
Of course. Ophthalmologist Scheherazade Kakapahtithanjorn—Doctor Kaka Pottie behind her back—had been the target of an ill-considered medical malp case my former boss had pushed on me years ago. Something about her recommending an eye surgery that had ended with a bad result. I barely remembered sitting across from her in a hospital conference room taking her discovery dep. But would she remember me?
Doctor Kaka Pottie began by applying hard thumb pressure to the bones around my left e
ye, asking, “Does that hurt?” and, “What about now?” When I told her no, she not so gently removed the bandages, whipped out a penlight flash and peered into my eye, her face inches from my own. She moved the light sunrise to sunset across my field of vision.
“You got any double vision?”
“No.”
“Floaters?”
“No.”
“Tell me when you see my thumb.” She slowly rotated her left hand, thumb upraised, from behind my left ear about a yard away.
“Now,” I said.
“Good. You still practice law?”
“Yes,” I admitted reluctantly, adding, “but I don’t sue doctors anymore.”
She looked over at Diane. “You his wife?”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“Your husband take a helluva deposition, I say that for him. Put me through the wringer for sure. Didn’t get no money, though.”
“Not dime one,” I said. “It was never my idea to sue you in the first place, Doctor. No hard feelings?”
“No, no,” she said dismissing it with a wave of her hand. “You just being a good soldier, following orders. Why we pay the big bucks for insurance in Illinois.”
“Well, I hope you won’t hold it against me. My practice now is limited to representing abused children.”
“Good for you, Lawyer Ricky.”
“So what’s the verdict, Doctor? Can I go back to work anytime soon?”
“You wanna get out of here? Three meals a day and twenty-four hour maid service?”
“No offense to the accommodations, but yes.”
Grimm’s beeper went off. He left the room.
“I don’t see why not,” Doctor Kaka Pottie said. “Once neuro sign off on it, far as I’m concerned, you discharged.”
“That’s wonderful, Doctor,” Diane said. “Thank you so much.”
“You very lucky. One silly millimeter, coulda lost that eye for good.”
“I’m one lucky guy,” I agreed, glancing at Diane and Heart bedside.
“Well, don’t take any wooden nickels,” Doctor Kaka Pottie cautioned me, and was gone.
“I wonder how soon neuro gets here,” I said.
“I’ll ask at the nurses’ station,” Diane replied. “Then, I hope you don’t mind, Ricky, but there are a few things I have to get done at home. And I’m Heart’s ride, so.”
“No problem. I’ll watch court shows on TV and heckle the judges.”
Heart giggled. Yeah, I sure was one lucky and funny guy.
“I’ll be back for evening visiting hours,” Diane went on. “Or sooner if they decide to discharge you. Call me on my cell, okay?”
“I thought you were going to be home.”
“Home or running errands.” Her eyes darted to Heart’s and back to mine.
“Would you mind asking the nurses if I can at least get out of bed and go pay a hospital call on Kevin?”
“Sure,” Diane said. “Heart, take my keys. I’ll meet you back where we parked.”
“That’s okay, I’ll wait here while you talk to the nurses.”
“Cool.”
A few minutes later a nurse appeared pushing an empty wheelchair. “Hospital policy,” she said. She worked the controls and elevated the bed behind me until I was seated upright. “Can you dangle your legs over the side of the bed?” she inquired.
“Can I dangle? You have to ask?” I joked, watching for Heart’s reaction. When I tried to move, my shoulder treated me to a humbling shock of pain as if to say, remember me? I must have winced, because Heart said, “Are you okay, Boss?”
“Peachy.” I dangled my legs as ordered. The nurse then unceremoniously whipped the sheet off me, exposing more than I had intended to Heart’s gaze.
“Isn’t that what got Kevin arrested?” Heart smirked. She and the nurse helped me into the wheelchair and covered my lap with a blanket tucked around my legs. The nurse rigged the IV so that I could travel with it.
Heart wheeled me as far as the secured doors to the psychiatric ward. Before heading off to Diane’s delivery van she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek, whispering, “Bye.”
I buzzed the attendant, who looked like a retired prizefighter older than dirt. It took two buzzes for him to look up from his magazine and shamble his way to the door. “You lost, Bub?” he snarled through the thick shockproof glass.
“Visitor to see Kevin Quarles,” I said.
“Wha?”
“Visitor to see Kevin Quarles,” I repeated, nearly shouting.
“Sorry, Bub. No visitors.”
“I’m his lawyer, Bub. This isn’t a social call. Now hit the switch.”
He favored me with a dull threatening look for a count of five before pressing a button. A sustained buzzer sounded.
“You gotta push,” he said. I did, grasping the wheels of the chair and opening the heavy door with my feet.
“You know you look like that Raymond Burr guy when he played that wheelchair detective on TV?” the attendant said. “Some say he was queer.”
“Just show me to Kevin’s room.”
Kevin’s room proved to be a padded cell done all in white. The attendant let the door clang shut and Kevin and I were locked in together.
“Holy Cripe! What the hell happened to you?” Kevin shouted.
“Same thing that happened to you, would be my guess. Most likely the same guy, too.”
“That fuckin’ Grimm?”
I nodded.
“It’s that cocksucker needs to be in here, not me,” Kevin said. “You look like you’re the one wearing a straitjacket.”
“Dislocated shoulder.”
“Accidentally on purpose?”
I nodded.
“Asshole.”
“How they treating you, Kevin?”
“About average. Think you can do me a favor?”
“Say the word.”
Kevin held up one hand as if for silence, then moved to the door and peered out both ways through the chicken wire reinforced glass before ushering me to his built-in jail bed. Lifting aside the mattress he showed me a cache of pills and capsules that looked like a mini-pharmacy.
“Cheeked every one a these,” he confided, “right in front of those silly incompetent fuckers’ eyes. Think you can have them analyzed for me?”
“Kevin, I don’t know if I—”
“Just check for Sani-Flush. I got ‘em all fooled; been grabbin’ my guts and putting on a little theater performance every time I felt their eyes on me since they’ve had me in here. I got eyes in the back of my head, know what I mean? That’s why I done what I done in the first place: from feeling their eyes on me.”
“Who, Kevin?”
“The Cat Lickers. The one thing they can’t stand is for you to show them your pecker. Like a crucifix to a vampire”
“Kevin—”
“That one attendant, the one that brought you down? I got him figgered for a defrocked priest, more than likely got caught with his pants down, butt-fucking little altar boys. This is one of them places they like to hide their ex-priests, you know, the ones that fucked up on the job: out-of-the-way mental wards in Cat Lick hospitals like this one here.”
“You may be right.”
“I know I’m right. I’ve smelt fish on the fucker’s breath every Friday since I been here. I keep callin’ him padre just to piss him off.”
“Were you seeing any doctors before they brought you here, Kevin?”
He eyed me suspiciously. “Not for a while. Why?”
“I’ll be representing you as soon as I get out of here. If I’m going to defend you I’ll need to talk to your personal shrink. What’s his name?”
Kevin squinted and said, “Adams.”
“Doctor Adams? I know a lot of the psychiatrists’ names, but that’s not one I’m familiar with. Where’s his office?”
“It’s up a steep flight of outside stairs, right on the main drag.”
“Remember the address?”
“Dodge.”
“Dodge what? Street or avenue?”
“Dodge City, Kansas. Ask for him by name down at the Long Branch; everybody knows old Doc Adams.”
“Very funny.”
“See how good I can pretend to be crazy? I even had my own lawyer fooled.”
“You’re a hell of an actor, Kevin, a regular John Wilkes Booth.” Actually Kevin did resemble John Wilkes Booth—John Wilkes Booth with the hounds after him. “But I need your help here.”
“Then get me out of this shit hole and I’ll tell you the name of the shrink.”
“Who’s seeing you in here?”
“Witch doctor name of DeSmet.”
“You sure that’s his name, now? You’re not trying to shit me again, are you?”
“Wouldn’t think of it. Lawyers are the one thing I never shit—out.”
“Because I’m going to go to a lot of trouble, Kevin, trying to prove you’re not a sexually dangerous person so they don’t send you away to Big Muddy.”
“How’s your sex life, Ricky? It’s not an idle question; I’m asking as your sponsor.”
Remembering Father Gerasimos’s counsel I told Kevin the whole works. When I had finished he shook his head, saying, “Ricky, Ricky, Ricky: what am I gonna do with you, nephew?”
“Tell me about it. I fucked up.”
“Up down and sideways from the sound of it. And with Kendra M? I thought you had better taste than that, man. You know they say the universe is expanding?”
“What?”
“Yeah, expanding faster and faster all the time. I got a theory, though.”
“Really? What’s that?”
“The whole thing’s a humongous egg, and it’s about to hatch.”
“No shit?”
“Hear me out, man: you and me, everybody on earth, we’re like microscopic organelles, the mitochondria in the nucleus of the egg. Except for the Cat Lickers; they’re more like viruses infecting the whole works. The outer edge of the universe is the shell of the egg. That egg is getting ready to hatch, my man, and once it does!”
“Once it does, what?”
“Then nobody’s gonna worry no more about what we do with our poor little penises and our poor little vaginas. Until then, we gotta watch it. So tell me about your relationship with your old man, Ricky.”
“Beg pardon?”
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