‘Yes, ma’am, but I gotta go,’ he said and swung himself off the bed. When he looked back at her, he saw her smiling at his naked butt. It stirred the old juices. ‘Well, maybe I can be a little late. Who needs breakfast when I have a full meal here?’ he added.
She laughed as he crawled back under the blanket. He glanced at the window before he embraced her. Morning sunshine sliced through the darkness like a razor, cutting around skyscrapers and finding its way toward the shadows that had thought themselves invulnerable. Like the great beast it was, the city began to stir. Lights went on, traffic increased, noise seemed to rise out of the sidewalks. The images hovered at the rim of Palmer’s sexual thoughts. He shook them off like a dog coming in from the rain and lost himself in the heat of his passion.
If anyone asked how he could even think about making love at this moment with all that awaited him on the job, he would have the answer. For the moment at least, it was the only thing that made him feel safe. Maybe that was the greatest reason of all to admit to love, to care for someone more than yourself. The loners weren’t just lonely; they were afraid.
A smile, a touch, a kiss, whispers in the darkness, someone to hold you, all conspired to build a fortress around you. You cuddled beside someone who like you had confessed to herself that on this journey it was necessary to hold someone’s hand and share dreams.
And of course, help you climb up and out of nightmares.
Four
He had slept in Central Park. When he lowered his head on the grassy knoll and closed his eyes, he wondered if he would awaken or die there. If he died, his body would be discovered and, because he had no identification, be relegated to the obscurity of the homeless and stuffed away in some unmarked plot. There would be no evidence of his renewed existence. Worst of all, they would go on unpunished. His revenge would be buried right beside him and he’d sleep with the frustration into eternity. That sort of punishment rivaled something mythological. It ached him just to think about such a possibility.
The warm sunlight on his face opened his eyes with glee. He sat up and looked around. He was still alive, but even more importantly, something unexpected was happening. He felt stronger. He was actually hungry, and he hadn’t been hungry like this for some time. Beside his mother’s money, he had robbed the taxicab driver and had more than six hundred dollars extra. He rose and made his way to a small coffee shop on Madison and 61st, seemingly growing more invigorated with each step he took. When he entered the shop, the aroma of coffee, bacon and eggs raised his expectations even further. He surprised himself with how much he ordered.
While his breakfast was being prepared, he went into the men’s room and did the best he could to clean up. He could see that the short-order chef and the cashier were close to turning him away, thinking he was really just another homeless man who had scrounged up enough money to order some breakfast. He deliberately made his whole wad of bills obvious and that seemed enough to get him a ticket to remain.
In the bathroom he regretted not having a razor. The gray stubble had thickened over his cheeks and chin and made it look like he had sandpaper for skin. However, his lips had more color and some of the pallor in his complexion had diminished. His eyes looked clearer. Maybe it was his imagination or his hope, but his hair looked darker and thicker, too. When another customer entered the bathroom, he stopped studying himself and left quickly.
He returned to his seat and ate with a ravenous appetite, gulping three cups of coffee and finishing all the toast. He used a small piece to lick the plate clean as would a dog. He could feel eyes on him, imagining their comments and thoughts as he devoured his food, but he ignored it, left a hefty tip for spite, and walked out.
The rapidly warming day filled him with a joy he had no longer thought possible. For a moment he stood there with his face in the direct sunlight, smiling like some five-year-old. He even laughed aloud and then realizing his actions might attract attention, he quickly gathered himself and walked on.
As he made his way up Madison, he avoided looking at everyone who passed him going in the opposite direction. The expressions on the people who had seen and heard him laughing before made him nervous. The possibility that someone might look into his face and realize who and what he was frightened him. Nothing would be worse, would be more of a disappointment, than to be given the opportunity to get so close and then fail. That would be almost as much torture as what he had already endured.
When he had first started out on this mission, he was afraid his memory would disappoint him and he would follow one dead end after another, wasting what little time he had left. He was buoyed by how much he did remember and grew more confident with the resurrection of even more detail. He noticed that it really was getting easier for him to walk, too. His legs didn’t wobble nearly as much as they had the day before, and the aches and pains he had experienced in his hips and lower back were practically non-existent. Do I dare hope? He wondered. After all, the image that was reflected back at him when he gazed into store windows was still unrecognizable.
When he reached the church, he hesitated. Despite his disgust with religion, he was not able to completely discount the presence of God in the world. Goodness knows, his mother had done all she could to impress upon him that even if he could get away with something wrong, he did not escape the eyes of God and he was depositing sins and blasphemies in an account that would be called up on Judgment Day. Although he was able to get past the threat, he never completely rid himself of the fear. The church was intimidating.
But the church was ruled and run by men, he told himself, and their motives were really no higher than his when they were stripped down to cold reality. There was the same thirst for power and the same selfish need to please yourself and build your own ego. They just did a better job of disguising it, and where corrupt politicians wrapped themselves in the flag, these men of the cloth wrapped themselves in pages of the Bible. They compromised to move up the ladder of wealth and power as much as anyone. He comforted himself and steeled his nerves by concluding that they were no better than he was.
He headed for the rectory, eager to see the look on Father Martin’s face when the man confronted him. The priest had visited him at least a half dozen times in prison. He had evinced such confidence and projected the authority and the complete assurance that he had divine permission to approve all that had been proposed. After all, according to Father Martin, it was another weapon in the arsenal to defeat Satan or satanic forces at work in the world.
‘You’re redeeming yourself in the eyes of the Lord by volunteering for this, Bradley,’ he told him. ‘I know you haven’t been a religious man and I know this has brought great pain to your mother, but I truly hope this will restore your faith, for it is a merciful God who has enabled man to find this solution, a solution in which you pay for your sins, but become restored faster so there will be time to build your good deeds, and win back the love of God. Bless you, my son.’
The priest’s eyes were soft and angelic and his touch comforting. His voice was mesmerizing. He looked like he truly cared what happened to Bradley’s soul, that Bradley’s fate was intrinsically linked to his own. He gave him the sense that if Bradley turned him away, he would suffer just as much.
The fact that Bradley could recall this speech in such detail didn’t really amaze him as much as the other things he was recalling. After all, Father Martin had truly had the most significant influence on him. He revisited those words often during his period of decision. The priest practically branded them with a molten hot cross into his brain.
How clever they were to include every angle, he thought: religion, science, law, politics. Each had its arguments and its justifications. Each had its promises and its rewards for him, and now each would know him and what they had done. He wouldn’t just make them eat their words; he would make them eat their deaths.
He rang the buzzer on the rectory door and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Specks of egg yolk appeared o
n his brown spotted skin. He really had gone after that food like some wild animal, he thought and smiled at the impression he had made on the waitress and cook. The waitress had quite a full figure, albeit wide hips that looked like a rocket launching pad. He could launch something off her, he told himself and chuckled. Could he be mistaken? Did he have other appetites rejuvenating as well?
A short, fragile seeming man who looked like he was prematurely balding answered the door. He wore a white shirt opened at the collar and a pair of black pants. He had an unusually narrow nose and two beady black eyes. How could he breathe in enough air through those small, pinched nostrils? Bradley thought he resembled an insect. There was something at once feminine and childish in his smile, in the stretch of those thin, slightly orange lips and small teeth glittering like tiny precious stones in the sunlight.
‘Good morning,’ he said smiling as if Bradley had been coming here this time of day every day for years. ‘How might I be of assistance?’
‘You might be of assistance by telling Father Martin I am here to see him.’
‘And who might I say is calling?’ he asked. He sounded like he was attempting an Irish accent, but doing it badly.
‘Bradley Preston Morris,’ he declared with an exaggerated flair stimulated by this wisp of a human being taking great care with his diction. ‘Himself,’ he added. ‘In the flesh, as they say.’
The young man blinked his long eyelashes rapidly and then suddenly hardened. His whole body was folding into a defensive posture like a caterpillar curling. His eyes seemed to freeze into glass orbs and his lips turned down in the corners. He lifted his small shoulders as well, making it look like his neck lowered as would a submarine periscope when the captain urgently screamed, ‘Dive, dive, dive!’
‘Who did you say was calling on Father Martin?’
‘Just tell him Bradley Morris,’ Bradley replied with a directness and firmness that clearly stated an impatience for the slightest delay. Gentleness was over.
‘Wait here,’ the man replied sharply and closed the door in his face.
Bradley felt a swirl of rage building in his chest. He wasn’t confident of the strength in his arms and he didn’t know how long he could exert his muscles anyway, but he was filled with a burning desire to wrap his hands around the man’s neck and squeeze the arrogant life out of him. The surge of anger, however, was followed with an all-to-familiar sense of utter exhaustion. Once again, he felt his body slipping off his bones and looked down to see if a puddle of his flesh was beginning to form at his feet.
The door was abruptly opened again and Father Martin stood there gaping at him. He looked like he was sniffing him as well.
‘Bradley?’ he asked, a look of incredulity molding itself in his face.
‘Yes, Father, it is me to the bone, Bradley Morris.’
Father Martin simply stared and then he realized what he was doing and stepped back. ‘Come in, man,’ he said with sudden urgency, looking past him to be sure he wasn’t followed or accompanied by anyone. ‘You’re alone?’ he asked, not hiding his utter surprise underlined with a hint of panic.
‘Yes, Father, as alone as ever,’ he replied.
So, all this is still clandestine, Bradley thought as he stepped into the rectory. The world knew nothing after all. That was good. Knowledge was power and he had knowledge.
He gazed around the living room, surprised at how simple it was. There were only religious icons on the walls, a very dark gray rug on the floor between the sofa and two cushioned chairs, and an oval cherry wood table. There was nothing on the table.
‘Please, have a seat,’ Father Martin said. He turned to his assistant. ‘Bring us some cold lemonade, please, Gerald.’
‘Yes, Father,’ Gerald replied, glancing suspiciously at Bradley as he left.
Bradley sat on the first cushioned chair and Father Martin lowered himself on to the sofa. He was a tall man, easily more than six feet one with broad shoulders. Bradley recalled him saying something about playing football at Notre Dame. His dark-brown hair was streaked with gray along the temples, but still quite full. He imagined him to be in his fifties.
Father Martin clasped his large hands together, the fingers moving like baby snakes over his knuckles.
‘Aren’t you going to ask me how I feel, Father?’
‘I imagine you’re about to tell me,’ Father Martin said.
The soft, angelic smile and loving eyes were buried under a look of anticipation, suspicion and a bit of anger. The man was annoyed that he had simply shown up at his door like this without any warning. Was he mad at me, Bradley wondered, or more angry at his fellow conspirators for not giving him the heads up? Whatever, it wasn’t very Christian of him to look and sound like this. Where was the mercy and compassion now? Where was all that holy talk? God’s voice? The priest was recoiling like a snake moving into a protective stance. Thieves and scoundrels … all of us, Bradley thought.
‘Betrayed, Father, I feel betrayed.’
‘Why are you in these clothes? Where have you been since …?
‘My death?’
Father Martin didn’t respond.
‘I heard I had a very nice funeral. You weren’t there by any chance, were you, Father? I simply don’t remember all that much about it.’
Before Father Martin could reply, Gerald entered with a tray carrying a pitcher of lemonade and two glasses with ice cubes in the glasses. He placed it on the table between them and then carefully poured a nearly equal amount in each glass.
‘Anything else, Father?’
‘No, Gerald, thank you,’ Father Martin said, but Gerald didn’t leave. ‘That will be all, Gerald,’ he added firmly and Gerald glanced at Bradley and then left.
Bradley lifted a glass to his lips and drank. He was incredibly thirsty. He emptied the glass without a breath and put it on the table. Father Martin looked at him as if he had just completed an amazing task, and then he sipped at his glass of lemonade.
‘Yes, Bradley, where have you been since your death?’ he asked. ‘You’re not working somewhere, are you?’
‘Heavens no. I’ve been in a clinic or hospital, Father. Don’t know what they call it exactly. I was on some rather restricted floor, if you get my drift. At the time it didn’t matter. I wasn’t having visitors. It was, as you might imagine, unexpected.’
‘Unexpected?’
‘Yes, Father. You see, I was brought there with the expectation I would soon die.’
‘Die? But I was under the impression …’
‘Oh, yes, tests were done on me before that and I thought everything was moving along as planned, but pretty soon, I sensed that things were moving along too fast, if you get my drift.’ Bradley smiled. ‘Someone forgot how to put on the brakes.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Father Martin said. ‘That’s not what I was told would occur.’
‘Funny, it’s not what I was told would occur either. What do you think, Father? Will I be even more redeemed now, now that I have suffered more than I was sentenced to suffer? God should take that into consideration, don’t you think?’
Father Martin shook his head. ‘Why did this happen?’ he asked, not visibly angry. ‘You’re not the first. I was told there was solid proof of success. I even met one and I know he hasn’t turned out like you, so there has to be some explanation. When they transferred you to that clinic, they were surely looking for an explanation.’
‘You mean they didn’t just put me there to die? Well, that should make me feel lots better … an explanation. I wonder if they ever found one perhaps to help the next poor sucker.’
‘I’ll check into it. For now, however, I’d advise you return to the clinic. I’ll make some calls and—’
‘Oh no, Father. I can’t return. I’ve lost my faith, you see.’
‘You can’t just wander about in this condition. Something should be done about this, Bradley.’
‘Oh, something will be done, Father,’ Bradley said. He poured himself some more
lemonade and gulped it down. Then he wiped his lips with the back of his hand and flicked it to get the lemonade off as he stood up.
Father Martin sat there looking up at him. ‘Where are you going to go, Bradley?’
‘I was thinking of visiting with Mr Temple. I can see him now, standing there beside you, explaining all the legalities, the way I would continue with my life under a new identity, the job, the place to live … all of it. He even went through that charade of having me sign those papers, remember? The ones with his signature on? The corporate lawyer, very impressive. Even you were impressed with him and those documents, weren’t you, Father? I haven’t seen those papers since. Have you seen them? I wonder where they are?’
‘Now, don’t go off on some wild goose chase, Bradley. As I said, I’m going to make some calls and—’
‘No, Father. You’ve done enough,’ Bradley said. ‘I didn’t come here to ask you for any more help.’
Father Martin nodded. ‘I understand your bitterness, my son.’
‘Good, Father, because I don’t.’ He paused and looked at the wall behind Father Martin. ‘There’s Jesus on the cross wondering how the hell he ended up there, I’m sure. He and I have a lot in common, the only difference being I had encountered more Judases than he did,’ Bradley said.
He walked around the sofa and touched the icon.
Father Martin turned to watch him and then looked away.
Bradley started around the sofa, paused, drew out the knife he had taken from his mother’s set of steak knives and had used on the cabdriver, seized Father Martin’s hair and pulled his head back just enough to expose his throat. He was pleasantly surprised at his speed and agility when he sliced through the priest’s Adams apple.
The priest gagged, his head dropping forward when Bradley let go of his hair, and then he toppled slowly from the sofa to the floor, choking to death on his own blood.
Life Sentence Page 6
