Agnes Among the Gargoyles (38 page)

   Of course she left the resume in plain sight on the desk.

   Cautiously she peeks in. The priest seems unaware that anything is amiss. He hoists two cases of soda and a bag of chips onto the desk. He gathers up all the papers on his desk and slides them into a folder, then puts the folder in a briefcase. He stacks the briefcase on the soda, turns out the light, picks up the pile and leaves.

   Agnes knows she has blown it. When he looks at those papers he'll know that someone knows. He will destroy the evidence, hunt down Agnes and slaughter her—it's as simple as that.

   Agnes makes her way back to the girls' dressing room. Jo Bailey is there, looking for her. Agnes steps quickly through the French window.

   "Hi," she says casually.

   Jo is alarmed. "Where were you?"

   "I had to get some air. I felt sick."

   "When you didn't show up to work the sound I got worried," says Jo.

   "I'm really sorry."

   "It's okay. I got Doreen to do it. She knows the cues. You know, you really don't look so hot." She puts her hand behind Agnes's head and strokes her hair affectionately. Then, in a move that strikes Agnes as shockingly inappropriate, she kisses Agnes's cheek. It's not a peck, either. It's a kiss.

   Agnes wipes away the moisture.

   Jo realizes her mistake. "I'm sorry."

   Agnes regrets displaying her revulsion. "I don't like to be touched, that's all."

   Jo avoids Agnes's gaze. "Will you still come to the cast party?"

   "Of course."

   "It's at Father Chris's apartment. He's ordering the pizzas now."

   "Sounds great."

   Jo's expression darkens. "He said he was getting soda. I hope he remembered tonic."

Twenty-two blind teenagers eat pizza in Father Chris's studio apartment. Father Clarence sweeps into the gathering, issues congratulations to cast and director, takes a ceremonial slice of pizza and is gone, off to a fund raiser at the Met or perhaps supper with the mayor or, perhaps, to fuck Madelaine Wegeman.

   The kids love Father Chris. (Sweet innocents! thinks Agnes. Would they love him if they could see those cunning and passionate eyes?) They tease him about his unworldly, ascetic persona. They tease him, also, about his subservient relationship with Father Clarence. The kids think Father Clarence has a woman somewhere.

   "But she'd have to be someone stupid," observes Grace. "She'd have to believe he'd leave God for her."

   Agnes cannot take her eyes off Father Chris's closet, for that is where he stashed the briefcase. If people lived in normal three- and four-room apartments, as they once did, it would be a simple matter for Agnes to retrieve Barbara's resume on the way to the bathroom. It's difficult to find a private corner in a studio apartment.

   Jo Bailey wasn't kidding about the tonic. She's got several bottles of it, and a bottle of Bombay gin, and she's getting plastered. The kids know that she has a real drinking problem. There is an uncomfortable silence whenever she bumps into something on her way to get another drink, or when she makes an incoherent comment that's meant to be funny. Jo starts to fix Agnes with the aggressive, paranoid eye she gets when she is drunk, but Agnes has too many other things to worry about. Within the hour, Jo is asleep in an armchair as Paul Simon's
Grace
land
blasts out of a speaker a foot from her head.

   At one o'clock, the party ends. Father Chris has arranged for a pair of minibuses to take the children home. He piles all but three of the kids into the buses. Perri, the girl who played Beatrice in the
Much Ado
segment, and the boy who played
The Merchant of Venice
's Antonio all live in Brooklyn Heights, in the opposite direction from everyone else. Father Chris will take them home in his car.

   Father Chris nods in Jo's direction and asks Agnes, "Any suggestions?"

   "I'll take her home," says Agnes warily.

   "Let her sleep a while," he advises. "She might be easier to manage."

   Jo shifts in her chair. She groans and drools.

   "I think we have to do something about her," says the priest.

   His tone alarms Agnes. "Like what?"

   "The usual. Maybe we need to have an intervention. She's a good teacher. It's a shame."

   Agnes helps organize the three Brooklyn-bound children.

   "I'll be about an hour," says Father Chris. "I'll drop them off, then I have to drop off some sheet music I forgot to leave at the church for the morning."

   He leads the children to his car, a battered flaming yellow Le Baron. It takes him a long time to get the thing started.

   It seems that Father Chris doesn't know that Agnes knows. Thank God, she thinks.

   Agnes steels herself for the next set of tasks. She retrieves the resume from the briefcase. She holds it by the corner and stuffs it into a plastic sandwich bag. She starts shaking her comatose companion.

   "Jo! Jo! Wake up."

   The task seems hopeless.

   "Bailey! Come on. We've got to get out of here."

   Jo stirs and makes an indistinguishable comment. Agnes shakes her again.

   "Jo! Two women alone in the Minotaur's apartment is a bit risky, don't you think?"

   Jo opens her eyes. She tries to get a handle on her surroundings.

   "Listen to me," says Agnes slowly. "We're in a dangerous place. Father Chris wants to hurt us. He likes to hurt women. Do you understand?"

   Jo closes one eye, trying to focus.

   "Jo! Josephine!"

   "It's Joanne, actually," comes the thick reply.

   "Whatever," says Agnes.

   Jo sits up. "I feel sick."

   "You may feel a lot worse if we don't get out of here."

   She breathes deeply and squints up at Agnes. She is unconcerned about the Minotaur. "I had high hopes for us. I was attracted to you immediately."

   "Jo, I'm not gay."

   "You don't know that," says Jo. "I didn't know I was for the longest time."

   "I've got to call Tommy," says Agnes.

   She dials the Minotaur hot line. Whitey Walker picks up. His hello sounds guarded.

   "This is Agnes, Whitey. Is Tommy there?"

   "He's downstairs. I can send someone for him. You want to hang on?"

   "Just tell him I was right. I found the resume. Father Chris is the Minotaur. Jo and I are in his apartment now. We're going back to my place. Tommy can meet us there."

   Whitey doesn't answer. Agnes doesn't hear any ambient noise, either. Jo has unplugged the telephone from the wall jack.

   "I hate it when you talk to your cop," she pouts.

   "Of all the stupid things," says Agnes. "Jo, this is a really terrible time for this."

   Jo isn't rational. There's still a lot of alcohol coursing through her system. "We have to talk."

   "If we get out of this alive, I promise you, we'll sit down in some dyke bar and hash this all out. We'll get drunk together and cry and sing every old tune we can think of. But first we've got to get out of here alive."

   Jo's response is immediate and startling. She picks up the telephone and throws it out an open window. It smashes to smithereens on the sidewalk.

   Agnes runs to the window. "You could have killed somebody."

   "I wanted your full attention."

   "Jo, take it easy—"

   Jo lunges and grabs Agnes. She is a lot stronger than Agnes and, it seems, more agile, even with all that Bombay in her. She starts kissing Agnes. She forced

her tongue into Agnes's mouth. (It feels a lot different from Tommy's, Agnes discovers: smaller, firmer, more darting, like a snake.) Jo loosens her grip to grab Agnes's cunt, and Agnes breaks away. Agnes's fear is replaced by anger. How dare this drunk attack her! And with the Minotaur nipping at their heels! Agnes grabs a broom and, enraged, starts swinging wildly. She will kill Jo Bailey if she has to. She hits the wall with her broom, gouging a hole in the plasterboard. She swings again and knocks one of Father Chris's crucifixes to the floor. On impact, the crucifix breaks apart, and out spill the contents of an inside compartment, a candle and a vial and the Oil of the Sick.

   Agnes hasn't felt this angry since the day she wanted to kill Ronald Wegeman.

   Jo is back-pedaling. Agnes swings again, and knocks over a standing lamp.

   "Agnes, I'm sorry," says Jo.

   Jo's heels catch in the doorjamb of the bathroom, and she falls backwards. She scrambles to a spot near the bathtub.

   Agnes's blind rage overtakes her. She swings the broom back. It hits the drop ceiling.

   
Thump!

   Even in their respective states of drunkenness and anger, Jo and Agnes both realize instantly that the sound is all wrong. Agnes hits the ceiling with the broom handle again.

   
Thump! Thump!

   "There's something up there," says Agnes. "God I hope it's not a body."

   She tries to push up one of the ceiling panels. It won't budge more than an inch. Jo smiles in a dazed way.

   "Give me a hand with this," Agnes commands.

   Jo rises unsteadily to her feet. Both women grip the broom and push upward. Something on top of the panel slides. They push upward again. Suddenly, the panel dislodges and falls to the floor, nearly crowning them. They are showered with what has been stashed in the ceiling.

   "What...?" says Agnes.

   Comic books. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands, all featuring the same two archetypes: sacred and profane love, poor and rich, naive and sophisticated, saint and whore, blond and brunette, The Girls of Tremont High, Prudence and Rosalie.

   Agnes stands up on a chair and looks into the space above the ceiling panels. "There must be a thousand of them up here."

   "I haven't read Prudence and Rosalie since I was a kid," says Jo. "What does it mean?"

   Tommy's words ring in Agnes's ears:

   
"Drop ceilings are only good for hiding pornography."

"I don't know, Agnes," says Jo. "Maybe he just collects them. Even priests need an outlet."

   "If he were a collector, he's have them in plastic bags. This is porn—I'm sure of it. Why hide it? Unless his landlord has some weird ideas about insulation."

   "But Prudence and Rosalie?" says Jo. "They were always so sweet."

   Prudence Wheelwright and Rosalie Sorrels and their pals were at one time the comic books characters of choice for adolescent girls. They appeared, separately and together, in about seventy-five titles each month:
Prudence & Rosalie; The
Adventures of Prudence & Rosalie; Willy's Gals; Pru 'n' Ro; Wheelwright, Sor
rels & Co.; The Days and Nights of Prudence; Around the World with Ro; The
Girls of Tremont High—
every possible permutation. The comic books existed primarily so that the girls could be drawn in the latest fashions. Prudence was blond and sweet and simple and poor. Rosalie was brunette and snotty and fabulously wealthy. They vied for the affections of Willy Boyd, a simpleminded soul with hearts in his eyes who couldn't decide between them.

   "Tommy says that men are so insanely driven by sex that they're aroused by more things than we can possibly imagine," says Agnes. "Traditional porn is just the tip of the iceberg. Now I'm sure that Father Chris is the Minotaur. Look—it's always two women, always and blond and a brunette."

   Jo closes the comic she has been paging through. She seems sober. "You're scaring me."

   "I'm trying to. Let's get out of here."

   Jo takes a breath and nods. "Okay."

   Agnes has an inspiration. She opens Father Chris's closet. She parts his cassocks. In the back of the closet is his electric typewriter. Agnes takes out the ribbon cartridge and replaces the machine.

   They get into Jo's big red jeep. Jo starts to get into the driver's seat, but Agnes stops her. Jo slides meekly over.

   Agnes starts the engine.

   "I have to think," she says, overwhelmed by all that she knows and all that she must do. "He's with the kids. Would he hurt them?"

   "He's never hurt children," says Jo.

   "You're probably right. But the cops should check."

   "I have their phone numbers," says Jo. "I can call."

   Jo reaches in the back of the jeep and finds a bottle of spring water. She drinks some and passes it to Agnes. The water seems to percolate in Agnes's stomach, which feels as heavy as the Weird Sisters' cauldron.

   Jo looks for the numbers in her daytimer.

   Agnes throws the jeep into gear and peels out of the parking space without even checking her blind spot. She roars to a pay phone. Jo gets out and checks on the children. Antonio made it home. Perri didn't, and her parents are frantic. There is no answer at the home of the girl who played Beatrice, Sybil Pike.

The jeep roars up Eighth Avenue. Agnes slows but does not stop for red lights.

"Where are you going?" says Jo nervously.

   "To the rectory," says Agnes. She darts to the left of a slow-moving Dodge Colt and finds herself corralled by a construction gang and some double-parked cars. "Goddamn it."

   "Why there? What is it?" says Jo

   "He needs time alone with them," says Agnes.

   Jo whimpers. She looks with horror at the objects in her lap: the comic books, Barbara's resume, the typewriter ribbon. The jeep crashes through a moonscape of potholes.