Eminence

by William X. Kienzle

  Father Robert nodded. “Very impressive, my son. You have done good work.”

  “But it won’t mean anything if it doesn’t get published.”

  “It is at a publishing house?”

  “Yes. I’m waiting to hear from them.”

  “Very good. We will do what we can.”

  As if actuated by an unseen sign, Brother Paul rummaged through the black bag. He handed the priest a small round container, which appeared to be painted or gold-plated. A tiny white fragment was mounted therein on a red background. The container bore some sort of identifying tag. It was impossible to know what was there without the leisure to study it and that opportunity was not afforded the young man.

  Father Robert read silently from a document handed him by Brother Paul. Then, “My son, this which I hold in my hand is from the bones of St. Francis of Sales. He lived on this earth hundreds of years ago. He was a great bishop and a doctor of the Church. He converted many, especially those trapped in the heresy of Calvinism, to the one true Church. And, most important for you, he too was a writer. He wrote Introduction to the Devout Lift, a book much prized and read even today. I will bless you with these remains of the great St. Francis and I will pray for you. Dispose yourself, my son, to receive the blessing of Almighty God through the intercession of St. Francis of Sales.”

  In silence, the priest traced with the relic a sign of the cross over the young man. Then the priest leaned back as if tired. The movement also indicated that the interview, as well as the blessing, was concluded.

  The young man did not rise. “But Father, won’t you pray for me and my book now?”

  From within the cowl worn by Brother Paul came a voice rampant with authority, a tone which, indeed, in other surroundings, might almost be taken for menace. “Father will pray for you later. Now, go.”

  The young man seemed stunned as much by the tone as by the finality of the message. Without another word, he struggled to his feet and backed away from the two monks until he was lost in the congregation. Then he turned and hurried out of the chapel.

  Though a substantial crowd remained, not many more were in line to talk with Father Robert.

  The next suppliant was a woman, who might have been in her sixties. She was well-dressed and well-groomed. She wore dark glasses and was accompanied and led by a woman who might have been her daughter.

  Some solicitous soul brought over a chair so the woman would not be forced to kneel on the hard floor. The young woman, who would remain standing, thanked the anonymous Samaritan.

  The cowl moved almost imperceptibly as Father Robert appraised his latest client. Neither spoke, as if expecting the other to begin.

  Finally, the woman cleared her throat. “I am Mrs. Anne Whitehead, Father. And . . . I ... I don’t exactly know what’s expected . . .”

  The cowled head tipped to one side as if asking what the problem might be.

  She couldn’t see the gesture but the lack of verbal response suggested she continue. “I cannot see. I’ve been to doctors—many, many doctors. Hospitals. I’ve had many treatments. Nothing has helped—at least not much and not for very long. I’m desperate, Father. Is there anything you can do?”

  “How long have you had this condition?” Robert asked.

  “For the past five years.” She hesitated. “I’m sixty-six years old. The doctors tell me I’m healthy otherwise. I feel good enough. From all indications, I may have many more years. Father, I don’t want to spend them sightless. I’ve heard that you pray . . . that your prayers are answered . . . often.” She bowed her head. “Can you do anything for me?”

  Brother Paul had been rummaging through the black bag. He now handed Father Robert a small relic, at a distance indistinguishable from the previous relic, along with an identifying note.

  Father Robert cupped the relic in his right palm while he held the card in his left hand and read from it. “This is the relic of St. Lucy—a fragment of her bone. She died a martyr in the fourth century. She was a noble Christian woman who was condemned to death by the Emperor Diocletian. They tried to have her burned at the stake, but failed. They tore out her eyes, but her sight was miraculously restored. Finally, she died by the sword. St. Lucy is the patroness of the blind. She is a very powerful saint and, through all these centuries, she has interceded with the good God for all those who trust in her power.

  “Can you trust in her power, my child?”

  “I . . . I want to believe. Oh, God, I want to see again.” Tears appeared on her cheeks, escaping from beneath the dark glasses.

  “Then receive the blessing of God through the intercession of St. Lucy.” Robert, relic in his fingers, traced the sign of the cross over the woman. “Per intettession em Sanctae Luciae benedicat te Omnipotens Deus, Pater, et Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus.”

  At these words, the woman made the sign of the cross upon herself.

  There had been little sound in the chapel from the moment the blind woman had been presented to Father Robert. Now the silence was profound. There was a sense of expectancy. Yet no one could be sure what anyone was expecting. Even regulars at these Masses and ceremonies could not recall having anyone bring to Father Robert a problem as challenging as blindness. The atmosphere was not unlike that in some of the scenes described in the Gospels when the blind and the cripples were brought to Jesus. The onlookers then and now didn’t know, but were eagerly caught up in what might take place.

  No one moved. The woman made no attempt to rise from the chair, nor did her companion offer to help her leave.

  Father Robert started to extend his hand, then withdrew it. Now, suddenly, he reached out and with delicacy removed the woman’s glasses.

  “Wha—?” She was startled.

  “Believe!” he whispered, just loudly enough to be heard by those very near. “Believe!” There was urgency in his voice.

  “I . . . I do believe. Oh, yes, I do believe!”

  Brother Paul moved forward abruptly, as if he were going to intervene, perhaps assist.

  Father Robert bent toward the woman and pressed both his palms against her eyes, gently at first, then with greater pressure.

  She felt the coolness of his hands. It was a refreshing sensation. But there was something else. She became aware of some sort of energy field surrounding her. With the pressure of his hands it was as if that energy field had been compressed around and into her eyes. Though she never revealed the feeling to anyone, the sensation was that of an orgasm brought about by protracted, gentle foreplay. And the expression of that eruption was much the same.

  It was a prolonged, even frightening, moan.

  There were gasps from the crowd, unsure of what had happened. Father Robert seemed stunned. He fell back against his chair, hands raised as if to protect himself.

  The woman turned her head from side to side with a look of incredulity. She kept moving her head as if she could not get enough of whatever it was she was experiencing.

  “I . . . I . . . I can see! I can see! Oh, God Almighty, I can see!” she cried over and over, and threw herself to the floor on her knees.

  Chaos, tumult.

  It was difficult to tell who was more electrified. Those in the chapel were caught up in the madness of the moment. Some surrounded the woman. Some ran out onto Michigan Avenue, shouting news of the miracle.

  The woman, nearly crushed by well-wishers, could not stop weeping nor control her desire to see everything at once.

  In the midst of this bedlam, Brother Paul, clearly the only composed person in the chapel, led Father Robert back behind the altar into the residence area, away from the crowd.

  They would not be missed until much later.

  CHAPTER

  5

  Cute. Trite as it was, it seemed the appropriate word to describe Pringle McPhee. Bangs, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, breasts, waist, bottom—even her attire was cute. Her legs alone were in exception to the descriptive term. They were magnificent.

  Pringle, a recent acquisition o
f the News, had the rudiments of a brilliant and talented reporter. Examining her application test scores, the personnel manager couldn’t believe his luck.

  Fortunately for everyone involved, Pringle McPhee had spontaneously drifted toward Pat Lennon. Exactly the course the city editor had hoped for.

  Pat was too young to be Pringle’s mother. More like the ideal age for an older sister. That more or less described their relationship. Pringle confided in Pat and Pat tried to guide her around the professional and personal pitfalls of life. The two, about the same size, could easily have been taken for sisters.

  It was midafternoon and in the city room of the News less than half the staff writers were at their desks, or anywhere in the building, for that matter. Most were out digging up stories, researching, interviewing and/or finding themselves frustrated up one of the many blind alleys of journalism.

  Lennon was putting the finishing touches on a story about a boating accident on the Detroit River near Belle Isle. She checked her watch. Slightly less than an hour before her appointment to interview Father Robert. It would take only fifteen or twenty minutes to get there, so there was no great hurry. At least that’s what she’d thought until she became aware that someone was sitting at the adjoining desk. And it was not the occupant assigned to that desk.

  “Pat,” said Pringle McPhee, “have you got the deputy mayor’s private phone number?”

  Hardly breaking stride in her attack on the computer terminal, Lennon flipped open her listings pad and indicated the desired number. If she had hoped that was the extent of McPhee’s interruption—and she had—she was going to be disappointed.

  “Have you got a minute?” McPhee asked.

  “I’m on deadline, Pringle.” Lennon was the only one in the office who called Pringle by her given name. Everyone else called her Mac. Lennon called her Pringle because, well, because it was a cute name.

  “It’ll take just a minute or two,” McPhee coaxed.

  Out of the corner of her mouth, Lennon blew a stray hair back off her face. “Well, all right, Pringle, but this is a little tight. Okay if I finish this piece while we talk?”

  McPhee was in awe of Lennon’s ability to do well more than one thing at a time. Even so, she would have preferred Lennon’s complete, undivided attention. But ... “I suppose.” And then, without further preamble: “It’s about Fred.”

  Lennon shook her head. The stray hair bounced back onto her forehead.

  “I know you don’t care for him, Pat, but he’s important to me.”

  “Pringle, I don’t give a damn one way or another about Fred. I just think as far as you’re concerned he’s a dead end.”

  “Just because he’s married with a couple of kids?”

  “Yeah, that’s not bad for starters.”

  “That’s a problem, I’ll grant you. But we’re in love. I love him. And I know—I know,” she emphasized, “that he loves me.”

  “He has a great love capacity. There’s you and his wife and his kids. Do they have any pets?”

  “I wish you wouldn’t make fun of him.”

  “Sorry. I don’t mean to. It’s hard to avoid it.” Lennon noticed a typo and ran the processor back through the little green words to correct it.

  “I didn’t tell you what happened last night.”

  “But you’re going to. Just for the sake of clarification, what does he tell his wife all these evenings he spends with you?”

  “Executive meetings. After all, he is senior vice president of the most prestigious PR firm in town.”

  She was not breaking new ground with Lennon, who was professionally aware of just about all the movers and shakers in the Detroit area.

  “And his wife swallows that? All those evenings!”

  McPhee nodded, but the motion was lost on Lennon, whose eyes were fixed on the screen as she wrapped up the story.

  “Anyway, I want to tell you what happened last night.”

  “Ah, yes.” Lennon could guess what was coming. One of the things she desired least in life was to listen to others’ sexual adventures. That ranked down there with sexually explicit films and novels. She fervently believed sex not to be a spectator sport.

  But McPhee confided, often. Having lived almost her entire life in Battle Creek, Michigan, she was somewhat overwhelmed by Metropolitan Detroit. Not that wheeling-dealing, vice, corruption, and life in the fast lane were totally alien to a smaller city, but she was befuddled by the volume and intensity of all this in the mega-city milieu.

  There were many people McPhee could talk to, but no one she trusted more than Lennon when it came to confidentiality. Thus, regularly, Lennon was bombarded by McPhee’s “sexperiences.” And because she understood that she was McPhee’s only receptacle for confidences, Lennon was resigned to her role.

  Sometimes McPhee’s affairs were tender, even engaging. Sometimes they bordered on slapstick. And, at times, they were genuinely unconventional.

  McPhee edged closer to Lennon. Yes, this seemed certain to become sisterly.

  “You know,” McPhee said, “Fred doesn’t like to use a condom. He says they offend his esthetic taste.”

  There were times when Lennon wondered whether public relations work caused brain damage. “So . . .”

  “So, last night, he—”

  “—just happened not to have a condom handy?”

  “Well, no . . . uh, well, yes . . . um, I mean, yes, that’s right, he didn’t.”

  “And you couldn’t supply him with one.”

  “He says that condoms inhibit him. He calls them anti-erotic.”

  “A more popular word for them is ‘safe.’“

  “Safe?”

  “Someplace along the line, Pringle, didn’t you have a class in something called ‘hygiene’?”

  McPhee blushed. “I know what condoms are and what they’re for.”

  Lennon, having wrapped up the boating accident story, turned to McPhee. “Pringle, the last thing in the world you want right now is to get pregnant.” Unbidden, her thought continued: Pregnant Pringle. It had a ring.

  “I’m not going to get pregnant, Pat.”

  “How do you know? Fred’s fertile, isn’t he? I mean, he’s got two kids. And did you say anything about pets?” Pregnant Pringle and Fertile Freddy. It had an ominous ring.

  “I’m not going to get pregnant because this is my safe time.”

  “Rhythm? On top of everything else, you’re relying on rhythm!”

  “It never hurts to have a fail-safe method to fall back on.”

  “Not a bad thought—if only the fail-safe method were more dependable.”

  Something was nudging at Lennon’s consciousness, something she should be doing, something she should have done. But she was so distracted by her conversation with McPhee, that whatever it was would not come to the fore. On top of that, she was getting a headache that promised to develop into a migraine.

  “Anyway,” McPhee said, “that’s not what I really wanted to talk to you about.”

  “What!” Lennon glanced at her watch. Only a half-hour until her appointment with Father Robert. “Look, Pringle, I’m on a tight schedule. Could you get to the point?”

  “Sure. See, Fred’s going to New York next week and he wants me to go with him. What do you think?”

  “Is he taking the wife and kids? Maybe you could go as the au pair girl.”

  “Pat, get serious.”

  “Who says I’m not? Where would you stay?”

  “His company has a suite at the Waldorf.”

  Lennon whistled softly. “Not bad. But isn’t that sort of public? I mean flagrant?”

  “He says not. He says we can pull it off easily.”

  Lennon tended to agree. Old Fred probably had done this any number of times with pre-Pringle mistresses. “My gut feeling says don’t do it. Or, at least, take a rain check. But somehow I feel this is one you’re gonna have to learn in the school of hard knocks.” She looked meaningfully at Pringle. “Just one thing.”
/>
  “What?”

  “You’d better at least be wearing a diaphragm.”

  Pringle giggled. “You know, it’ll be kind of nice being in New York and thinking of the fun you and Joe are having in Canada.”

  Lennon considered that for a moment. It didn’t pay to go into too much detail when confiding one’s plans. It was one thing to let others know your vacation dates. That, after all, was public knowledge. But telling Pringle the particulars of that vacation had been a mistake. Ordinarily, Lennon did not make such blunders. But this had been so certain. Nothing could go wrong. Nothing but Cox’s lust for a happy-hour story.

  “We’re not going.”

  “But all your plans are made.”

  “Yeah, but we’ve had to put it off. Maybe we’ll be able to go later on.”

  McPhee shook her head. “What a shame! You were looking forward to it so.”

  One of the many nice things about McPhee was her heartfelt empathy. It was particularly touching at a time like this. “Thanks, Pringle, but I’d just as soon not talk about it.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  Another of the many nice things about McPhee: that rare gift of not prying when someone wished to close a subject.

  Suddenly, Lennon remembered what it was she had been forgetting to do all afternoon. “Excuse me, Pringle, I’ve got to punch up this State wire. I should check out this story before I leave here. Just in case.”

  She pressed several keys on the computer until the STWIRE basket appeared on the screen. She requested information under the heading “healer.”

  Rapidly, the message was spelled out on the tube.

  “Damn!”

  “What is it, Pat?”

  “Damn! Damn! Damn!” Lennon grabbed her tote bag and started down the aisle. “There’s been a real miracle. An alleged, reported, goddam miracle! And I spent all afternoon writing about a goddam boat accident!”

  McPhee felt guilty for having bent Lennon’s ear for so long. On the other hand, it wasn’t her fault that Lennon had not checked the ap/upi wire. She returned to her desk to phone the deputy mayor at the number she’d gotten from Pat. There were lots of stories to cover before fun time in the Big Apple.