Discretion (32 page)

Now is different. Christel is reserved. This is her testing, letting me feel what it’s like to be without her.

Fifteen years ago, she did this to my weak, teenage mind when Natalie went missing, to ensure I would learn to listen. It’s hardly more bearable now.

With an hour left to the trading day, I feel like lying on needles. Like my colleagues, analyst reports and intuition is all I have, with millions in the balance—but I know better than to think it’s all about money. It’s about lives. Medicine and clothes. Education. A better society.

I return to my desk and stare at the quotes screen a moment. What I must do is documented, put down days ago. I work, referencing my notes as a guide and find a groove. I refill my coffee. After the email is cleared, I stretch my legs outside my office. I run into Brin and John, managers, who are surprised to see me out of the cave. Questions come and I make a point of quick answers.

My phone vibrates, but I resolve to ignore it. My phone vibrates again. Then again.

I push through working on the last two accounts for the day. The Dow is down two hundred points. Volume is steady. Options activity is higher than normal.

None of this used to be uncomfortable. Not a bit.

One
P.M.
arrives and it’s over for today.

Christel is silent, still. She’s giving me space and time to make up my mind about meeting Jackson’s source. After all, it’s my choice.

W
ith time to kill, instead of wallowing, I leave the office for a short escape. The gym is a place of solace, to clear my head. The formidable cinder block walled weight room brings out stress, sweat, and loud heavy metal. Music, that is. Men and women alike, obsessed with fitness, spend considerable minutes of the day to release, to exert, and to build.

A considerable share of infidelity happens here and in well-lit places. Stories drift in the locker rooms, the racket ball court, of who did who. But what is fact or fiction?

After a short lifting session to get blood flowing, I find three guys I’m familiar with on the basketball court, who work together at Lockheed Martin about two miles from here. They blow off steam, playing a physical game as if it’s the finals. Grunts, dripping sweat from all glands, and cursing one another. It’s how they compensate for working together; they can’t express quite how they feel while at work. In this place, all those rules turn upside down. In these halls, dickhead is a term of endearment.

Mike Larison is normally here and that reminds me, today is different—life changes so fast.

The guys greet me with the usual homage to Allan Wyle, and I join in the game, two on two. We play hard for forty minutes, drenched as if we played under the garden hose. My arms hurt, and my shoulder. Maybe my knee also, but I can’t be positive about that until later on tonight.

With basketball euphoria behind me, my mind returns to the complications of my own life, which I’d rather avoid—as if by sweeping them under a beautiful handmade Persian rug, the choice that radically changes my life will disappear.

The shower is hot and distinctly alone—the only place anymore that I shower solo and I miss my partner. I appreciate her, while I stand here in the scalding water, and fear washes over me, that she may disappear from my life without Christel, like steam. The thought, the question—what if Marisa were to leave? Haunting. What if my work, the security it provides, is that important to her?

My job I can do without. Millions are stowed away in savings and hedge funds call every week. But would I retain such a position without the insight that’s made me famous? Having always worked with Christel, the idea of going alone is terrifying.

What would my life look like tomorrow and can I accept that murky picture? But then, can I continue on with her in good conscience?

Christel is comfortable. She completes me. She gives me what I want. But is it right to want that?

I fear her power, and I crave it more so. Where could she take me in the future? To what heights will she bring me?

It’s time to leave. It takes determination to grab my shorts and shirt, dress and walk out of the locker room.

Jamal is gone. He comes back to my mind like a flash; the thoughts of him and memories of him are as live wires to my nerves. Like the announcement of your own death, it’s sinking in. Someday I’ll die, but to see another pass, while I live on, is entirely different. It’s not a mere topic, but a reality. Emotions are a hard fight now, thinking I will never see him again. Not now. Not ever. I could have gone this morning—cut out of work and seen him again.

Jamal and I used to lift on occasion. In high school, it was nearly a daily activity. Jamal was obsessed with sports for a few years, thinking he had the talent to make a career at fullback. He was quick, athletic. Jamal kept me out of trouble and I kept him out of trouble, too. On our own, we were just boys—but together, we were so much more. We held each other to a higher standard. Jamal had fear in God. I had fear in my father. And it worked: dysfunctional brothers—not the same mother, but the same kin.

He can’t be gone. Not Jamal. And now…Christel? Can I live without both?

In a short while, I’ll be meeting the nameless source. A man claiming to have the answers. I wonder whether he can walk on water. To get me out of this mess, he may have to.

T
he drive to the church at Forty-Fourth and Oak feels long. Even with music on, it’s hardly enough to distract me from the impending meeting. It’s like a funeral procession. My attention is laser sharp, as my life comes to one point. One source. Does he have the key? Is this silly to think that one man will fill in the holes, knowing I will alienate Christel? Why take such risk? Shouldn’t I just go home, have a night of the wildest sex of my life with my fiancée and open a bottle of ridiculously expensive champagne? That’s what a normal person would do.

He has nothing to tell you.

She returns to make a case. Nothing, you say? How do I know you’re helping me?

I always have.

I want to believe Christel, I do. But I know I can’t live without answers. I must know. If she can’t get past this meeting, then I know what a friend she wasn’t.

I arrive at the park, get out and saunter, an overzealous effort to seem casual, in hindsight. The instructions are open-ended, as if he’s uncommitted to being here.

There is no one here; this is only a test.

Then why, Christel, are you telling me? If this is a test, why not let me fail, just like before?

No answer. Interesting she presses on against this meeting. What will the source tell me that she doesn’t want me to know? What is she hiding? Perhaps the source will tell me of how I can be rid of her—how she can be made silent.

A few joggers pass by on the sidewalk, an elderly couple getting some fresh air and exercise. The man is using a walker and insists on holding onto his coffee while his wife, at his side, pesters him. A young couple sitting on a thick brown blanket over the grassy area, under a tall tree; a little boy with long blond hair chasing a wiener dog. It’s about ninety-two degrees and sunny, the heat of the spring day.

An unoccupied bench catches my attention, facing one of two empty baseball fields and I take reprieve there, to stare at nothing for a while. To wait. For a sign. For my unknown future.

“Mister Wiley?” a man’s voice says, from behind me. No need to correct mispronouncing my name.

I turn toward the sound; an older man walks around the opposite side of the bench and takes a seat, keeping his distance: close enough to converse, far enough to appear we are not together. Strangers sharing a bench.

The man is balding, with simple round glasses against olive skin. His face is full; there’s a little pudge at the waistline. He dons black slacks, a black shirt with a clerical collar, and appears as somber as I feel. It’s just after three, the set time. He grins, not to me, but to the birds that gather on the sidewalk, to pick at what seed, bread crusts remain.

“Do you ever think about the birds?” he says, watching them with amusement.

Seriously? He’s asking about birds? “Not really. What about them?”

“That as insignificant as they are, God provides for them. There they are, working hard for seed and stale bread crusts, but to them, that is…” He faces me with a grandfather’s wisdom. “Like a filet mignon.”

I can’t help smiling back and it’s refreshing—like breathing clean air after days trapped inside.

He introduces himself: Father Sal Panepinto, raised in Phoenix and priest at Saint Mary’s Parish for the last eighteen years. His work before entering the cloth was working with teen girls mostly, and some adult women. Some came because others brought them into the fold, as sheep to be slaughtered and a few of them went, feeling like they had no other choice. “Running away from home,” he says.

I’m surprised he reveals who he is, considering the secrecy Jackson used to protect his identity. But that could just be Jackson protecting secrets.

Father Sal says, “I don’t try to keep myself a secret…no, not so much. What I do is secretive only so that people can be protected and there are others who labor with me, who share my passion. For God’s work. Jackson told me you have a special case and you need my help. I called him late yesterday because I brought in a young lady who escaped her captors. When I saw the pentagram tattoo on her wrist, like the others, I knew I had to help.” He pauses a moment, then says, “But there is something I must tell you first and I think it will help you understand the rest.”

“She escaped?” I say.

He sniffs, his gaze returns to the baseball field. “This young woman is different from the others. She wasn’t a student. No, she’s a wife—a mother—and her family doesn’t live in Arizona. She was taken from her life and family and forced into prostitution.”

“How can people force her to be a prostitute?”

“Threats of violence to her, her family, her child. But that’s only the result of the real problem. The big problem.” He sits in silence, watching the park with ease. “The problem is spiritual,” he says emphatically. “The world is dark. People don’t want to talk about it like that, but it’s all around us, and most live, blind from the truth.”

“Blind? Meaning what? Are you saying everyone needs to find religion?” I say, watching him.

This is what I tried to protect you from.

“Religion can cover up the problem, but not fix it. It’s like a bandage, you see. Gauze only covers a wound; it does not heal it. Conceals and protects, maybe, but does not fix. What the world needs is Jesus. Where Jesus is, the evil that tramples the lives of people can’t be. Do you know why they call Him the Savior?” His eyes meet mine again, a relaxed expression on his face.

I think for a minute, and then concede with a headshake.

“Say a man lives for seventy years, since I’m seventy, and then, by a variety of circumstances, he kills a man. So now he stands before a judge to be condemned, right?”

“Sounds fair.”

“So he stands before a judge, and other people would come forward and talk about how nice of a person this man is, because after all, he does wonderful things in the community, helps people in need, feeds the homeless, gives money to charity. Maybe he even does a little religion—you know, shows up at a building full of people for an hour every weekend. Magnanimous, right?”

I nod.

“So he does all these things, is a great guy all around, a good person, yeah? But now he’s killed someone. How’s the judge to take this?”

“I think I see your point. The judge has to convict him. Doesn’t matter how good he was. He still killed a person.”

“Exactly. So the man is taken to prison for the remainder of his days—doesn’t matter that he was good by some standard, by some list of do’s and don’ts. He still killed someone and has to be punished, if the judge is just.”

“And so?”

“And so, that is where Jesus comes in. We are in the same position as the man standing accused,” he says, carefully.

“How so?”

“Have you killed anyone?”

Shit. Got me there. “I didn’t want to.”

His eyes widen and he shifts back on his seat. “I didn’t expect that. I’ve had this talk with gang members who I know killed people and they didn’t respond that way…so you’re on the right track to admit that.”

I feel so, so stupid. “Thanks, I guess.”

“Where Jesus comes in is when the man stands accused. People that follow Jesus and trust him for their sin, the charges that are against them, are passed to Jesus, as he takes their place before the judge. He takes the punishment. A transaction takes place, and by substitution, the guilty man is free.”

“Sounds like our bullshit political system. Know the right man, get out of jail free.”

He chuckles. “Funny you say that. In a way, that is true. It’s not what you’ve done in this life that saves you, but who you know. The right friend makes all the difference.”

The birds come and go and we sit in silence, which feels comfortable. He draws out a plastic bag from his pocket, and begins tossing crumbs to the birds on the sidewalk, who happily eat off the ground.

“God provides for the birds, Colin. He can and He will provide for you.” He pauses a moment, throwing crumbs about ten feet out for his new feathered friends. “Do you believe that?”

I sigh, watching nature around me, contemplating what this means and when we’ll get to the point of the conversation. It comes down to faith. Can I believe that Jesus will care for me, in place of Christel? This is not the right question. The issue is not will Jesus provide for me, but will Jesus give me what Christel gives me—what I want from the world? I doubt it. “I’m not sure what I believe anymore.” I’m surprised at my own admission. Why am I opening up to this stranger?

“God provides for the birds, no?” Father Sal says.

“They’re alive, so He must.”

“Jesus tells us, in the book of Matthew, that we are more important than many sparrows. You are successful, no? It’s a beautiful suit you wear. God provides for you, does he not?”