by John L. Monk
“Seriously?” I said, and picked up the ejected round.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I pulled in behind Tony Packo’s and parked. After all the hoopla with Johnny and George, I felt like having the Greatest Hungarian Hotdog ever.
Tony Packo’s had been mentioned several times by Klinger in the TV series M*A*S*H, one of my all-time favorite shows. I’d only been there once before but the food had been good. Lots of memorabilia, and all those hotdog buns signed by celebrities. I’d always wanted to meet a real celebrity (Ernest Prescott didn’t count), and maybe today I would.
I’d gotten most of the blood off my face with half a bottle of water found on the floor under the passenger seat. I thought I looked fine, but the hostess gave me a suspicious once over.
“Table for one,” I said.
“You have blood on your shirt,” she said.
I glanced down. It looked like someone had dipped their hands in blood and then shaken them at me.
“Oh that’s just paint,” I said, laughing at the absurd misunderstanding. These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.
A look of relief washed over her face. “Right this way.”
The place had a lot of people in it. A tourist attraction of sorts, Tony Packo’s had been busy last time, too. Which was fine. It gave me time to ponder the craziness with the rifle and Johnny and his dumb bat.
Until I knew more about my ride, I couldn’t let anything happen to him. Not until I knew he’d done something warranting it. Rules were rules, even if I was the only one following them.
Thinking back, Scott’s portal in the Great Wherever hadn’t had that weird sense of … I don’t know what you’d call it. Like it was okay to take over, with limits. Like with Nate Cantrell, and later with Peter. Both those guys had ended up being relatively innocent. So what did that make Scott? Did it mean he was a butchering killer, like Ernest and Lana, or whatever Fred had been?
Eventually my waiter arrived. His name tag said his name was Troy. Troy-the-waiter was in his mid-twenties. He had enormous circle things in his stretchy earlobes, wide enough to poke a finger through, and his arms were sleeved in an indecipherable confusion of colorful tattoos. His eyes were wise beyond his physical age, and he was very, very cool.
He gave my bloody shirt a quick glance.
“Hello, welcome to Tony Packo’s,” he said in a reserved tone that was technically still polite.
“I know this is going to sound funny,” I said, “but have the Cubs won the World Series in the last, oh say, five years?”
I wasn’t that big of a baseball fan, but I was a little, and on those occasions when I missed the Series I always hoped to find the curse had been lifted. Also, I was trying to cheer myself up.
“You mean baseball?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Can’t say I follow baseball.”
“What’s your sport?” I said, happy to talk to anyone who didn’t hate me yet. “Football?”
He shook his head. “Not really.”
“Why not?”
Troy shrugged, turning his indifference into something cool and interesting and wise and no big deal all at the same time.
“Just the whole machismo thing, I guess. Objectification of women, male hegemony, strong is good, weak is bad, commercialism, big corporations and banks … you know, that kind of thing. Basically a microcosm of all that’s wrong with America.”
“Microcosms,” I said, shaking my head at the shame of it. “Those are the worst kind of cosms.”
Troy blinked, then threw me a sharp look.
“Whataya have?” he said, a few degrees cooler.
“You’re kidding, right? Hungarian dog. Fries too. But please, hold the American-cheese-mo—makes me fart. Thank you.”
“Right,” he said, pulling a thin smile before leaving.
On his way to the kitchen, he passed a waitress and said something. The girl snuck a glance at me and smirked, and the patron she was supposed to be helping sighed impatiently. I felt a little like that infamous butterfly flapping his wings and causing hurricanes around the world.
A different server brought me a drink, and somewhere in the restaurant a cell phone started playing Yakety Sax, the Benny Hill theme, which brought me back to the old days when Dad stayed up late to watch it when he thought Mom was asleep. Mom hated the show, called it smut, and one time over dinner she accused Dad of liking it because the women ran around in their underwear.
Dad’s deadpan response had been: “Sometimes they walk.” Then he smiled the classic Benny Hill mugging-for-the-camera face, and my sister and I took his side while Mom pretended to be offended.
Hotdogs and fries was normally a quick order, but my food hadn’t arrived yet.
Ok, why not…
I got out Scott’s phone, pecked-out a familiar number and wondered, as I always did, if someone would answer it this time. I always expected the number to have changed or been disconnected, but someone picked up after a few rings and said, “Hello?”
Her voice was a little rougher than when I’d called five years ago from Sandra’s house. Tired-sounding. More so than she deserved.
“Hello?” she said again.
My throat tightened and I swallowed.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted.
“Who is this?” she said.
“I mean I think I have the wrong number. Sorry.”
“Oh yeah?” she said. “Who were you trying to reach?” There was a note of insistence in her voice, like she really wanted to know.
I faked a laugh and rattled off her phone number, with the last digit a seven instead of an eight.
“Funny how that happens,” she said. “We’ve had this number for thirty years, and though every telemarketer and charity group in the world seems to know it, we’ve never changed it.”
“Funny,” I said, stalling, hoping to hear more of her voice before it got too weird and I had to hang up. “Uh … why?”
“Twenty-one years ago we started getting calls every few months, then maybe once or twice a year. Different people, different places. Something about those calls always seemed odd. Whenever I asked who they were looking for, they said they hit seven and not eight, just like you did now.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes,” she said. “Then, about five years ago, the calls suddenly stopped.”
My mouth was dry, so I took a sip of water.
“And I don’t know why,” she said, “but I miss them. Those strange calls.”
Tears came to my eyes, unbidden, causing them to sting. I needed to hang up the phone and never call that number again.
Instead I said, “Does … um … your husband, or children … do they also miss those calls?”
Hang up now!
“Paul died four years ago,” she said softly. “Jane, my daughter, lives in Toledo. Same area code you’re calling from now, matter of fact.”
Cursing myself for being weak, I said, “Sorry, ma’am. For the wrong number. Small world, huh?”
I ended the call before I could say anything else.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The next day, Tara made us both eggs and bacon and served them with orange juice. She was less hostile than normal, didn’t use any swear words even once. She made the bacon the way I liked it—a little rubbery, just this side of trichinosis. But I couldn’t enjoy it because my sister was somewhere in town and Mom liked chatting with stalkers on the phone. Also, I’d just found out my father was dead.
“How are your eggs?” Tara said.
“Great,” I said, and took a bite to prove it.
Through an astonishing degree of stupidity on my part, Mom had noticed a pattern in the calls I’d made over the years. How could I have been so careless, saying the same lame thing every time?
Tara and I were sitting across from each other at the glass-topped breakfast table in the kitchen.
“What are you doing?” she said, staring at me over her coffee mug.
“Looking at the ceiling.”
“For answers?”
I didn’t know what I was looking for.
“You’ve been weird since you came home yesterday,” Tara said. “Weirder than usual. I know we’re … you know. But that doesn’t mean … Look, we go back a ways. So if there’s something wrong. Other than, you know…”
I needed to get back in the game.
“Everything’s fine,” I said. “My tooth’s hurting me, that’s all.”
The old failsafe.
Tara shrugged and began fiddling with her phone. She had a fancy swipey phone like Scott’s, and she was tapping away at an astonishing speed. She had clear smooth skin and pretty white teeth, and her tongue stuck out daintily when she was concentrating, and boy was she concentrating. Glossy brown hair like Sandra Bullock. No perfume.
“What?” she said when she caught me staring.
“Nothing,” I said.
Tara shook her head and went back to tapping on her cell phone, and I went back to my bacon. When I was done, I got up to put my plate in the sink.
Tara glanced up and said, “Are you going to church with me?” Her tone was rigidly casual, and I wasn’t sure whether to say yes or no.
Growing up, I never liked church and I hated nice clothes. Something about all those people dressed up and being friendly to one another made me nervous. As if any moment someone would go bananas and start yelling profanity and throwing punches. Churches were mostly empty and echoed like caves, and for some reason people thought it made perfect sense to burst into song every three to four minutes, even if they couldn’t hit all the notes. Those times I’d gone, I mouthed the words and spent a lot of time wondering if anyone would notice if I didn’t keep standing up to sing.
A few rides back, my dubious relationship with all things churchy took a slide when I’d run into Anthony Hendricks, the man I mostly thought of as the minister. He’d touched me once, on the shoulder, and nearly kicked me out of my ride. And when he looked at me I felt like running away or passing out or confessing my sins right there and begging for forgiveness. So when Tara asked if I’d go to church with her…
“Yeah, I’ll go,” I said, surprising myself.
After breakfast, Tara went upstairs to get dressed.
I had on shorts and a T-shirt, which God hates. Looking through Scott’s guest-room closet, I found a white long-sleeved shirt and dark pants and put those on. Then I switched out my sneakers for loafers and dress socks, which God likes.
Tara came down in a short-sleeved blue dress with a dark hemline just above the knees, appropriately snug, and a black leather belt around the middle. On her left wrist was a matching black bracelet, and she wore a tiny cross on a delicate gold chain around her neck. Her hair was twisted in a rope over her shoulder. She stood at the base of the stairs watching me, her bright eyes shining like the first light of creation itself.
“Jesus,” I breathed.
“What?”
I cleared my throat and pointed at her cross. “That’s him right there.”
Tara smiled briefly, then stepped past me on the way to the garage, trailing an elusive floral scent. And me.
Upon entering the garage, she said, “Scott … what happened to our car?”
Yesterday, in my preoccupation with Mom and the news about my father and sister, I’d forgotten those idiots had broken the window and messed up the door. To me it was just a car. I didn’t have to get it inspected or repaired or have the tires rotated or any of that. Unlike Tara. To her, anything bad that happened to one of the family cars was a big deal.
“I forgot to tell you,” I said.
“Well, what happened to it?”
She circled it carefully, looking at the smashed-in side window and the glinting cracks in the windshield. The side panel was bent inward from where I’d kicked the door into Johnny.
“Vandals,” I said, shaking my head. Crime’s a terrible thing.
Tara gaped at me like I had a spider on my face.
“Did you call the police?” she said. “Did you call the insurance company? What the hell, Scott? When did this happen?”
Found out and sick of the lies, I told her how I’d come out Tony Packo’s after a healthy lunch of salad and water and found the car all beaten up. A couple of other cars nearby were worse, and when their owners came out and saw the damage we called the police and filed a report.
Tara said, “You didn’t make separate police reports?”
“There was a lawyer in the group,” I said. “He said this way’s more efficient. Trust me, that guy knew his stuff.”
The moment stretched with neither of us saying anything.
“I’ll never trust you again,” she said at last.
Just like that, all the barriers from that first night returned and flew up around her, shutting me off again. Scott was a cheat, and I needed to watch it when I threw around words like trust.
Tara handed me her keys. I said my toothache was bothering me and handed them back, that way she wouldn’t get suspicious when we drove all over the city for no good reason. She didn’t suggest I go to the dentist. She didn’t ask if I’d taken any medicine. She took the keys, got in, and didn’t talk to me the whole way to church.
After parking, Tara gave me a pointed look and said, “You know what? You need to make this count. Not just for me, but for you.”
We got out.
St. Stephen’s was close to the river in an area more densely populated than Perrysburg. Across the street stretched a row of small single-family homes. On this side, the church towered without pity over the world and its sinners. It was brick and big and quite beautiful in an early romantic neo-Byzantium rococo impressionist sort of way. Upon entering through the central door, one of three, I didn’t blow away in a puff of smoke or get attacked by beatific beings with flaming sabers. So I was able to enjoy the distillation of a thousand years of early Pleistocene, upper gothic, lower renaissance, eastern realist, and western iconoclastic architecture. Sculpture and columns, ceiling murals and all that horrible echoing from my childhood multiplied by a thousand, all of it collected in one place to add to my feeling of insignificance.
Ah, church.
There were glossy wooden pews, and people were grabbing the good seats left, right, and center. Before Tara could pick one of those, I snagged a spot in the back, way off on the side. She tossed me a funny look and then sat down next to me.
Cautiously, I poked one of the pleather-bound prayer books in the holder in front of me. Nothing happened.
“Why did you do that?” she said.
I quirked her a tiny Mr. Spock and said, “I’m being … mysterious.”
Tara half smiled, shook her head, then turned toward the front of the church.
Yesterday, I’d found out where the games were on Scott’s phone. I was playing one of them when an echoing voice asked us all to bow our heads in prayer. Organ music groaned loudly from regions groany, and Tara poked me in the side until I put the phone away. Then everyone got up and sang a song while the altar boys walked solemnly around carrying things and doing stuff with the candles.
I made like I was singing while the others sang actual words. Tara had a beautiful voice, and I wondered if she ever did karaoke. I stole a glance at her: pure singing, lovely profile, so alive, so nice.
It was the best moment I’d ever had in a church.
When the singing ended everyone sat down, and a familiar voice said, “The Lord be with you.”
“And also with you,” droned the congregation.
When I looked to the pulpit, Anthony Hendricks, aka “the minister,” was standing there in white and gold robes surrounded by altar boys on either side.
* * *
I was so shocked by the absurd development I sat with my mouth open through the next song and into the next prayer:
“God our Father, your gift of water brings life and freshness to the earth. It washes away our sins and brings us eternal life. We ask you now
to bless this water, and to give us your protection on this day which you have made your own. Renew the living spring of your life within us and protect us in spirit and body, that we may be free from sin and come into your presence to receive your gift of salvation. We ask this through Christ our Lord.”
Then, like the world’s most reverent hecklers, the congregation said, “Amen.”
Time seemed to fly in that suddenly too-small church as I absorbed the shock of the minister’s presence over and over again. It was him. It was him.
At one point Tara said, “Are you ready for communion?”
She stared at me intently while I sat there not getting up for crackers and grape juice. I didn’t dare for fear of being shunted into the line with the minister. And no, I wasn’t ready to think of him as the priest yet.
“I’m not hungry,” I said absently, and immediately wished I could take it back.
“That’s not funny,” she whispered, her expression hurt.
Why couldn’t I keep my big mouth shut?
As if proving something, Tara got into the middle line. The one with the minister.
Near the end of the service I said I needed air and went outside. My plan was to slip home and tell Tara I’d left because I wasn’t feeling good, which would get me off the hook for my lack of zeal. Then I remembered we’d come in the same car.
It was almost like Someone was interfering with things. First, Mom says my sister’s in town, and now the minister shows up in Toledo at Scott and Tara’s church. A lot of coincidence in the span of two days.
About ten minutes later the people let out—the women chatting and taking their time, the men shuffling, waiting to grill burgers and drink and watch sports. It wasn’t football season, so at least they were safe from all that hegemony and objectification of women.
I craned my neck, hoping for a glimpse of Tara making her way out, but didn’t see her. I climbed the steps, poked my head inside, and found her and the minister just inside the doors talking like best friends.
“Scott!” he said, and reached over to shake my hand.
Before the unthinkable happened, I faked a noisy sneeze into both my hands.
