Blue World (33 page)

There were two more chimes. Then silence.

John took a deep breath, his heart hammering. He could still smell her perfume, and he thought it must be caught in his clothes. The palms of his hands were slick with cold sweat. He thought he might be about to faint, but surely he was made of stronger stuff than that. His black slacks had bulged at the crotch, and he knew he had to get to his bathroom shower and turn on that freezing water fast.

“God help me,” he whispered as he hurried out of the sanctuary.

Just when he least expected it, he would catch a hint of her fragrance. He was sitting in the Scaparelli Seafood Restaurant in North Beach, with Monsignor McDowell on his right and the mayor’s chief aide on his left, when he smelled it in the garlic-and-rosemary sauce. He was reading his report on the homeless figures and the soup kitchen’s budget when he caught it, and he quickly sniffed his fingers as if he were scratching his nose. Her scent was everywhere, yet nowhere.

And gradually it dawned on him that her aroma lingered in his mind.

A dark-haired woman wearing a red dress came in, and snagged his attention while the mayor’s aide was talking to him. John watched the woman, holding hands with a date or her husband, as she neared the table and passed it, and he heard her say something to the man in a voice that was nothing like Debra Rocks‘.

“See what I mean?” the aide, a somber-faced man named Vandervolk, asked him. John nodded yes, without really understanding the question.

“No, we do not see what you mean!” McDowell said quickly, his crusty, age-spotted face growing deep wrinkles as he scowled. “Either we get the matching funds, or we’ll have to shut down to half of what we’re doing now. That’s the bottom line.” He glared with his ice-blue eyes at John Lancaster.

The conversation went on, edging toward heat, and John’s attention drifted in and out. He sipped red wine and smelled her. He clasped his hands, and saw her lips behind the grille. He heard a woman laugh, and he looked around so fast McDowell said, “John, what the hell is wrong with you, boy?”

“Nothing. Sorry. I was thinking about something else.” When McDowell got mad, you better pay heed.

“Well, think about the business at hand!” the monsignor ordered, and continued his debate with Vandervolk and the other three men at the table.

John tried to. But it was a difficult task. He kept seeing swirls of red from the corners of his eyes, and then he was gone again. He had taken three cold showers--bang bang bang, one right after the other. Then he’d sat down and concentrated on his jigsaw puzzle, still dripping wet and shivering. He’d gotten four pieces mashed down into the wrong grooves before he gave it up. And then, as if in a sleepwalker’s daze, he’d found himself standing at the window, stark naked and broken out in goosebumps, staring at that red X in the sky.

I’ve got a movie showin‘ on the strip, she’d said.

“Isn’t it, Father Lancaster?”

John looked, alarmed, into the monsignor’s face.

“Isn’t it?” McDowell asked again, his eyes threatening rage.

“Yes, sir, it certainly is,” John answered, and McDowell smiled and nodded.

“We’ll tackle the porno problem at a later date,” Vandervolk said. “As both you gentlemen are well aware, the mayor is doing everything possible to clean that area up. But those people have got smart lawyers, and they slam the First Amendment in your face like a hot skillet.”

“Well, get better lawyers then!” McDowell thundered. “Pay ‘em more! Forgoing on twenty-five years I’ve had to sit on the edge of that filth and watch it grow like a cancer! You know, somebody went crazy over there last night and killed some people! Probably was teased to madness by some-- dare I say--whore with the morals of a packrat. When is the mayor going to get that filth out of my parish?”

John had lifted a fork of whitefish to his mouth. Now he paused and looked at McDowell. Looked at him long and hard, as the old monsignor continued to rage about the porno district. He thought he saw a callous face behind that age-spotted flesh that he’d never seen before. McDowell hit the table with his fist and made the silverware jump.

“She was a person,” John said.

McDowell’s mouth stopped. He stared at John. “What?”

John had spoken without thinking. He was trembling inside. He put the fork down, the whitefish uneaten. “She was… I mean, she must’ve been a person. The girl who was shot.”

“What do you know about it?” McDowell challenged.

Now was the moment to tell him about Debra Rocks. Here it was. But John reached for his glass of wine, and the moment slid forever past.

“I say load ‘em all up on a garbage barge and send them to sea!” McDowell stormed on. “Maybe you can get a good fishing reef in the bargain.”

John felt a little sick. It was the wine, he thought. Debra Rocks’ scent welled out of it. Someone opened a red menu two tables away. John thought he was sweating under his clothes, and his collar seemed too tight, starched way too stiff. It was rubbing blisters on the back of his neck. And then, terrifyingly fast, the image of Debra Rocks, faceless, and a second faceless girl on the beach with two Mexican lifeguards came into his mind and leeched there and he thought, simply,

I’m going crazy.

“What did you say?” Vandervolk asked him.

“I said… this wine’s making me feel a little hazy.” He hadn’t thought he’d spoken, and this new laxness of his discipline frightened him on a deep, primeval level. He felt like a clock without hands, his insides wound up and running but his face totally blank. The taste of garlic was powerful in his mouth, and he suddenly realized how cockeyed this was: men arguing about feeding the homeless from underbudgeted soup kitchens while eating twenty dollar meals off blue bone china. Something was skewed here, and very wrong, and that awareness coupled with the steamy image of Debra Rocks on a sun-splashed beach made him fear for a second that he was going to be spun off the very earth.

“Where would they go?” John asked, with an effort.

“Where would who go?” The monsignor was wiping his plate with a bread crust.

“The women in the porno district. Where would they go if everything shut down?”

“Not When.” McDowell frowned, the lines knotting between his bushy white eyebrows. “That’s a strange question, John.”

“It may be.” He looked around, uneasily, at the other men. “But I think it’s a fair question. What would happen to the women?”

“They’d be forced to find decent jobs, for one thing,” McDowell said. “And the important thing is that the filth would be off the streets where schoolchildren wouldn’t have to see it every day.”

“I know that’s important, but…” He paused, trying to figure out how to say this. “It seems to me… that maybe we ought to consider the women--and men too--who work over there. I mean… it’s one thing to say they’d be forced to find decent jobs, and it’s another to believe that they really would find them. I don’t think the city would spring for a fund to reeducate prostitutes and go-go dancers, a lot of whom are probably hooked on drugs.” He glanced at Vandervolk, who had stony eyes. Then back to McDowell, who sat with the bread crust frozen at his mouth. “They wouldn’t exactly become Catholics overnight.” He tried for a smile, but his face felt rubbery. “I guess… sir… that what I’m trying to say is… who’ll take those people in when we throw them out?”

A silence stretched. McDowell chewed on the bread and washed it down with a long swallow of wine. “Your question,” he answered finally, “is not based on the greater good. Those people have chosen their own paths, and we’re not responsible for them.”

“We’re not?” John asked, and in his voice--and soul-- there was a deep puzzlement and hurt.

“No,” McDowell said. He put his wineglass down. “We were talking about the homeless problem. How did we get off on this subject?”

No one told him he had sidetracked the conversation himself. The dinner and discussion went on, but from that point no questions were fielded to Father Lancaster. And that was fine with him, because he concentrated on finishing his wine and trying--unsuccessfully--to banish Debra Rocks’ voice from his fevered brain.

I’ve got a movie showin‘ on the strip.

John felt the sweat break out on him around two in the morning.

He lay very still, as if he were trapped in a body he no longer could control. He prayed again, and as he said the words he heard the wail of a police car’s siren over on Broadway.

This time praying didn’t work.

He tried concentrating on the textbook lesson he’d read today, reciting it from memory. Jesus wept. Jesus wept. Jesus…

It was a cruel thing, the Holy Bible.

He stared at patterns of light on the ceiling, thrown by cars passing on Vallejo. The Bible was a cruel thing. Oh, a great revolutionary work, to be sure. A miracle of language and perception. But cruel, nonetheless.

They had copped out when it came time for Jesus to have a sex life. They had simply skipped that part of Jesus’ life, and picked the story up when Christ knew where his life was heading and what he had to do. They had left out anything about Jesus being unsure of himself, or needful of female companionship, or interested in anything but saving souls.

And that was a strange thing, because Jesus was Christ, yes, but Jesus had also been born human. And why had the human race been robbed of answers to questions that must’ve perplexed even Christ?

He knew it was said that more wars had been fought, more innocent lives slaughtered, in the name of Christ than for any other reason. So, too, it was true that religion--at least, religion as interpreted by mankind--had fashioned chains to control the sexual urge. The Holy Bible spoke of sexuality in golden tones, yes--but what about the real world, where ordinary people lusted and needed and sweated in the night for a touch of forbidden flesh? The Bible said wait until marriage. No adultery. Be strong. Have faith. Do not covet your neighbor’s wife.

Fine. John understood all that.

But what did the Bible say about wanting the body of a porno star?

He was a virgin. Denial had been tough at first. Gradually he overcame all urges with his reading, his studies, his jigsaw puzzles. He poured his soul into his calling.

But something else was calling him now, something that had sneaked up from his blind side. Something forbidden, and very, very sweet.

“Dear God,” he whispered, “take these thoughts away. Please… take these thoughts away.” He knew that God did His share, but you had to meet God halfway. He concentrated on the lesson, but his memory of the pages he’d studied began to shred and fly apart. Behind the memories was another one: a pair of full red lips, and a tongue sliding slowly across the lower one in a beckoning challenge.

He couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t even pretend to sleep. He got up, just wearing his pajama bottoms, went to the exercise bike, and began to pedal furiously.

Sweat gleamed on his chest. Why was the heat turned up so high? He pedaled faster, and as he went nowhere he stared out the window at the huge, glowing red X.

“Dear God,” he whispered, bowed his head, and prayed again, reciting a litany of Hail Marys.

But when he lifted his head again, the red X was still there.

He’d never noticed it being so bright or so large before. Maybe every time he’d looked at it, a trapdoor had bolted itself into place in his mind so the dark, seething things wouldn’t creep out. But now the trapdoor’s bolts were sprung, and the things within were not priestly. Not worthy! Not worthy! he shouted at himself as he squeezed his eyes shut and pedaled until his lungs rasped and sweat trickled down his face.

At two-thirty, John was pacing the floor like a caged tiger. Touching himself--relieving his tension--was out of the question. Self-abuse was one of the worst sins of all. No, no; he couldn’t do that. He sat down at his jigsaw puzzle, couldn’t stay seated for over two minutes. Nothing on television. He’d seen all his videotapes. The books were dry strangers. Shame and anger warred within him: shame at his lust, anger that he couldn’t release it. It was building steadily inside him, pressing hotly at his groin. I’m a priest! he thought, horrified. Then: I’m a man. But a priest first. No, a man first. A priest… a man…

What would Jesus do in a situation like this?

For that there was simply no answer. And sometime just before three, John decided to get dressed and go out for a walk. In the cool air. Away from this stifling, oppressive heat.

He put on his black pants, black shirt, and white collar. Then a dark blue sweater and a beige jacket. A walk around the block would do him good, give him time to think. Maybe he could find a place that served decent coffee. So be it. John left his apartment, passed the library, the conference room, and the larger apartment where Darryl slept peacefully, went to the street door, unlocked it, and let himself out. Then locked it behind him with his key.

The morning breeze was chill. John put his hands into his pockets and, head lowered, walked briskly away from the towering white cathedral.

He went east on Vallejo, his shoes clocking on the wet pavement. A fine mist was falling, swept in from the Pacific. He passed an all-night coffeehouse, but he wasn’t in the mood for coffee yet. No, no; best to keep going.

A bright redness nagged at the corner of his eye. No need to look; he knew what it was.

And he knew, deep down, what his destination really was.

He turned south on Grant Avenue. A gust of wind hit him and glanced past. He gripped his hands into fists in his pockets--and then he came to a corner where his shadow pulsed.

John lifted his face to the sizzling neon. And there he stood, facing Broadway with its gaudy signs and open doors, its music quiet now, but still rumbling like a sleepy beast. He felt heat fill his cheeks, and he stood on the corner for a long time, just staring down that fiery length of territory where even angels feared to tread.

And then he saw it, on the next block ahead: a theater marquee, one of many, but this one particularly caught his eye. The Pacifica Adult Theater’s marquee announced, in glittery letters,

Animal Heat. Starring Debra Rocks. Eric Burke. Lisa DeLove. First Run!