Chapter 18

 

                In 1880, two young men jumped off the chasm bridge into the frothy foam of the Paterson Falls basin. They had pumped each other up to it with challenges and taunts. One swam out; the other drowned -- although it took an all-night search to find the body.

                George Garrabrant, a well-known river man, led the search.

 At a coal driver's picnic on the falls' grounds in 1881, a man laid down in the grass near the edge of the cliff. The sunlight and warm spray lulled him to sleep. Somehow -- in his sleep -- he rolled over and fell off the cliff, landing on the stones a hundred feet below. Witnesses said he was no more than a mass of flesh, and yet, he survived.

                      ************

                "Where in blue blazes have you been!" Jack roared, the minute Maxwell came through the door.

  The Greasy Spoon stank, not just from the greasy food which Jack had burned in his rush to keep up with the morning demand, but with that underlying scent of street, the smell finally making its way after years of keeping it out with bleach and detergent.

                "I'm sorry, Jack," Maxwell said, easing onto one of the counter stools, pushing aside the egg-stained platters and coffee-stained cups. "It's been a rough night. I don't suppose there's any coffee left or a clean cup to put it in?"

                "Don't start harping on me," Jack warned, waving a greasy spatula at Maxwell, thick, globs of what had once been egg plopping out its ridged surface. "You say you had a rough day. It's been hell here. Not only was the morning rush worse than usual..." Here, Jack lowered his voice. "...But Mr. Harrison called."

                Maxwell stiffened, images of his earlier thoughts returning.

                "Why? Did he find out the store opened late?" Maxwell asked, twisting around, suddenly wondering where Suzanne was.

                "That's right," Jack said. "He wondered about why nobody bothered to answer his call at 7 a.m. But I think he had another reason. I think he's heard about your little guest in the back."

                Jack stabbed the spatula towards the back room, indicating that Suzanne was still in the store room or the bathroom.

                "How could he know?" Maxwell asked. "Unless he's been here, and if that was the case, we both would have been fired already."

                "He doesn't have to be here to know what's going on," Jack said. "The man has his spies. The old Italian crowd who hung out here when his father ran this place, they call him up when they see something they don't like. I'll bet they called up about her. God knows, enough people have seen here hanging out here."

                "But did Mr. Harrison say anything specifically about her?"

                "No," Jack admitted. "Nothing specific."

                "Thank God!"

                "That's not the point, Max," Jack said. "We've got to get rid of her. I don't know if you've noticed, but she's begun to stink up the place."

                "All right," Maxwell said. "I told you I would talk to someone at the mission."

                "Today?"

                "Yes," Maxwell said with a long sigh. "Today. But not before I get some coffee. Do you have any coffee or not?"

                Jack swished a dirty cup into the sink full of suds, ran it for a moment under the running faucet, then slid it across the counter, clearing the rest of the dishes away with his other hand. Then, he reached for the pot of coffee, the glass already stained brown from hours of heating and reheating on the coils. The brown liquid fell into the cup as thickly as mud. Maxwell sighed again, then took up the cup without adding sugar or cream.  It was a bitter brew, as bad as roofing tar, and yet Maxwell forced it down, sip by painful sip, half to wake himself, half to punish himself for being such a fool.

                "Well?" Jack asked, rage ebbing a little as his curiosity took hold. "Did you at least get lucky?"

                "I don't want to talk about it," Maxwell said, gulping down another painful swallow of the brown bitter brew.

                "Oh sure, leave me in the dark," Jack said, throwing up his hands. "I'm only the one who covered your ass. I don't need to know why."

                "No, you don't need to know," Maxwell agreed, staring down into the black muck at the bottom of the cup, like a medium into tea leaves, reading nothing of the future but darkness. "Does that offer to go get drunk still hold?"

                "Drunk?" Jack said, perking up. "As in New York City?"

                "Wherever," Maxwell said. "Do you still want to do it?"

                "No can do," Jack said. "I'm broke."

                "How can you be broke already? You just got paid a few days ago."

                "You were broke, too, yesterday," Jack protested. "Until you got an advance from the boss."

                "Yeah, but I paid bills this week," Maxwell said, saying nothing of the bundle he blew in the clubs. "You don't have to pay for anything but the rent and as far as I can see, the only place you go is to New York, and that's only once or twice a month. Yet you still manage to spend as much -- maybe more -- than I do. Where does it all go?"

                "Look, friend," Jack said. "You keep your secrets, I'll keep mine. All I said is that I couldn't go drinking tonight, okay?"

                "Would you go if I paid for it?"

                Jack looked up, bearing a slightly less indigent expression, but one tainted with suspicion. "Sure," he said. "But what brought on this bout of generosity? You usually insist on going Dutch."

                "Let's say I had a bad night and need to flush it out of my system."

                "Okay, I won't ask. Never look a gift horse in the mouth, my old man used to say."

                Maxwell pushed himself up from the stool.

                "Where are you going now?" Jack asked.

                "Home. To take a shower."

                "What about you know who in the back?" Jack asked tilting his head in the direction of the store room.

                The sound of shifting boxes and cans reminded Maxwell of his other chores.

                "When I get back," Maxwell said. "I need a shower and shave if I'm going to meet people at The Mission."

                "Why bother. I'm sure they're used to the filth."

                "I'm not," Maxwell said and plodded towards the door.

                               ***********

                Maxwell got back to the Greasy Spoon a half hour later to find Nathaniel sitting in one of the window seats.

                "What the fuck is he doing here?" Maxwell shouted at Jack, who still stood behind the counter, wearing rubber gloves and clinging to a dish he was intent upon scrubbing, stacks more standing on the counter behind him still waiting to be scrubbed.

                "You mean you didn't send him?" Jack asked.

                "I'd never do that," Maxwell growled, the stench of the bum filling the place again, making the air even more foul than it had been the first time Betheme had come, as if Nathaniel was the epitome of that scent, manufacturing it, spreading it the way other men might spread religion. "Let's get him out of here before any more customers come in."

                Nathaniel's grin never wavered, a permanent expression pressed into his melted face like a letter seal into warm wax, hardening, humorous only at first glance, horrible as death.

                "Hey, Buddy!" Jack boomed. "You gotta leave."

                Nathaniel's good eye flickered red in the dim illumination as it studied Maxwell, then Jack. His head shook slowly from side to side.

                "We not leave, no, no, not without Suzzie," he hissed, his half mouth slurring even the simplest words. "You take Suzzie and we wants her back. Yes, yes, we wants her back."

                "Fuck you," Maxwell said, taking one stern step towards the little man, thick blue veins exposed at either temple. "You'll get her back over my dead body."

                Nathaniel's one eye blinked, looking somewhat surprised at Maxwell's reaction.

                "But you can't keep her," the little man said. "She doesn't belong to you. No, no, she doesn't."

                "Who does she belong to?" Maxwell asked, swaying slightly, the man's smell making him dizzy the way too much car exhaust sometimes did. "To you?"

                "Maybe, yes," the little man hissed. "Maybe she belongs to everybody. Yes, so everybody can love her."

                It took a moment for Maxwell to work out the meaning of the slurred words, his head tilted slightly as his face grew redder and redder with rage.

                "You take that back!" he exploded, taking yet another threatening step towards the little man.

                "We won't," Nathaniel shouted back. "We won't and you can't make us. Everybody says the same thing. Everybody says how much they loves little Suzzie, how much better she does it than anybody else. Sweet Suzzie, soft Suzzie, Suzzie that everybody loves."

                "I told you to shut up!" Maxwell screamed charging the little man, only to have Jack grab him back.

                "Calm down, Max," Jack whispered. "Calm down."

                "No," Maxwell said. "I won't calm down. I won't let this fool make Suzzane in a police man's whore."

                "From the sound of things I'd say it's already too late," Jack said, shifting himself between Maxwell and the smaller man, his own eyes full of alarm.

                "Not my Suzzane," Maxwell said. "She wouldn't let herself do anything like that."

                "It's a rough world out on the street," Jack said. "People do a lot of things there they wouldn't other wise do, things to survive."

                "Yes, yes," Nathaniel agreed. "We have to survive, we do, we have to eats and sleep."

                "Not any more," Maxwell said. "Suzzane has stopped being anybody's whore."

                "Whore? Whore? Yes, she's a whore. She's our whore, our sweet, sweet whoree that we keeps safe. The police will want her," Nathaniel said, in a slightly more panicked tone. "The police will come and say: `Where's our little Suzzie?' and say `If there's no little Suzzie, you can't stay here,' and we's be out on the street, out on the dirty, nasty street where people can get at us. We can't have that, no, no."

                "Shut up!" Maxwell yelled.

                "But she is, yes, we knows all about her, she is a whore now and was a whore before we meets her."

                "You know nothing about her," Maxwell barked.

                "But we do, we do," the little man said, his one good eye alive with mischievousness. "We knows how she went crazy once, then did all those nasty things for all those nasty people in New York."

                "And then she went to the hospital and got herself better," Maxwell said. "I heard all those stories, too."

                "Not all the stories, no, no," Nathaniel said, shaking his head slowly, sadly, from side to side. "She did all those things and worse things, terrible, terrible things, and then went to the hospital, yes, and got a little better, yes, nasty doctors stick her with needles and fills her up with pills, then sends her out saying they can't do any more for her, saying she has to do for herself."

                "So?"

                "So she's almost better, yes. She doesn't think about no nasty things so much as she used to. She thinks she will find a good man, a steady man, a man with money, and she does, and she gets married."

                "Married?" Maxwell said, a pained surprise sounded in his voice. "She got married?"

                "Yes, yes, and had a baby, too, and she think she is happy, yes."

                Maxwell nodded slowly. Even through such a distorted filter as Nathaniel, he saw the truth, recognizing the essential desire he himself had come across years earlier in Suzzane, that desire for house and home and normal life, spending her years with husband and child and routine, supper on the table at night, breakfast, in the morning, a pattern ingrained in her by her life in the Midwest, a life to which she would always seek to return, even when returning was impossible, even when the world went topsy-Truby. Oh she had talked a good show, and properly hated the trap her father had made for her, but in the years of growing up under its domination, sable messages had shaped her into wanting those very things despite her conscious disapproval.

                "All right, so she was happily married," Maxwell said. "That seems a far cry from being a cop's whore."

                "Pretends to be happy," the little man said. "Bored happy, happy she hates so much she nearly kills herself with it, yes, yes."

That made sense, too, Maxwell thought, the struggle leading to a misery of undecided desires.

                "How the hell do you know all this?" Maxwell asked.

                "Little Suzy tell us, yes, over and over, she tells us, yes, how she hates being stuck in that house with that man, hates to hear him coming home at night -- the thumps of his feet on the porch, the coughs he makes from the door. She says she feels like a slave, yes."

                Oddly enough, this also rang true to Maxwell, as if she wasn't completely satisfied with life even then. She seemed in a constant struggle between opposites, fighting to keep her dancers shape while some other power manipulated her from within, making her depressed about not having a baby.

                "Yes, Yes," Nathaniel went on, "and she hates her baby, too, yes, hates the poor, poor sweet baby. Terrible, terrible, baby. She hates and sometimes she wishes it would die, and sweet, sweet Suzy would be free. No more nasty cries in the morning to wake her, no more cries in the night, no, no."

                "Now I know you're lying," Maxwell roared, though as shaken by the potential truth of this as any he'd heart, remembering the one time when Suzzane put a cat to sleep, not because it was sick or in pain, but because she simply hadn't wanted it around any more.

                "But you could have tried to give it away," Maxwell had protested when hearing of the act.

                "Who would want such a mangy creature?"

                "Someone might have. You didn't have to kill it."

                "It's no loss, Max."

                "It was a life."

                "So? It lived some, enjoyed what it had. It was luckier than some who never had a life at all."

                "So you'd kill for convenience?"

                "I've done it before, Max. With other things."

                Maxwell frowned. "You mean on the farm?"

                "No," Suzzane said. "I don't mean on the farm. I mean right here. In the New York area."

                It took a moment for Maxwell to understand, vaguely remembering talk about doctors she had gone to, and now, standing before Nathaniel, Maxwell wondered if one of those slaughter beings had been his. Would she have hated his child as much had she let it live?

                "So did she kill the kid or what?" Maxwell asked Nathaniel.

                "No, no, she just thinks, not acts, yet," the little man said. "She wants to be a good little wife, yes, but tells her husband how if she doesn't get out, she'll go crazy, yes."

                "Did he help her?"

                "No, no," Nathaniel said. "He very old fashioned man, yes, man work, woman take care of children, yes, and he work so hard and say he only wants supper on the table at night, no complaints. Then when he drinks beers, he gets angry, yes, thinks about her, says how hard he's work and how she doesn't appreciate him, no. Poor, sweet Suzy never goes to the police or shows the marks or tells anyone how hurt she feels, thinking she wants to kill her husband, too. She begs him to let her out, let her have friends, let her have a job.

                "`Back to 42nd Street, you mean!' he husband says.

                "`No' she says. `It's not like that. I just want to earn a little of my own money.'

                "`What? My money's not good enough?'

                "`I didn't say that,' Suzy says.

                "`Then what?'

                "`I guess I just want to feel useful again, worth something.'

                "`And you don't think you're worth something here?'

                "`It's different when you have a job and someone pays you for what you do.'

                "`That sounds disturbingly familiar, too.'

                "`I'm not talking about getting a job on 42nd Street,' Suzy says. `Why do you have to keep bringing up the past and throwing it in my face?'

                "`Because people throw it in my face,' the man says. `They keep asking me what it's like being married to a whore.'

                "`I wasn't a whore.'

                "`Pardon me,' the man says. `What do you call displaying your sexual prowess in Show World then?'

                "`I was confused.'

                "`Confused enough to send out invitations to everyone you knew? That's confused?'

                "`Yes.'

                "`And you're not confused now?'

                "`I'm not asking for much. I'm not demanding a divorce. I just want a little more freedom.'

                "`To send out more invitations?'

                "`To find myself,' she says. `After all you plucked me out of the middle of that mess -- and I love you for being such a knight, but I still have some issues to resolve for myself.'

                "`I thought that was what the hospital was for?'

                "`The hospital dried me out, and set me on my feet again, but it couldn't cure me.'

                "`And a job would?'

                "`It might help me feel stronger.'

                "`Bullshit!'

                "`Please, Mark, I'm only trying to make sense of my life. Keeping me caged won't help.'

                "`You're not caged. There's no lock on the outside of that door.'

                "`But I'm chained here just the same, help in place by you and the baby.'

                "`So now you're blaming the baby?'

                "`I'm not blaming anybody.'

                "`Look, girl,' he says. `You didn't walk into this marriage blind. You knew what you were doing.'

                "`I'm not sure I did.'

                "`Thanks a whole fucking lot.'

                "`I told you, I was confused. You seemed so wonderful, the way a life preserved must seem to someone who's drowning.'

                "`And now I don't seem so wonderful?'

                "`I didn't say that. I haven't stopped loving you. But I'm not comfortable with the way things are. And if I don't get a little more room, I might stop loving you. And I wouldn't want that.'

                "So he says, okay, yes, yes. He finds her a job, a nice safe job," Nathaniel said. "A job where he can have some friends keep an eye on her, and when he tells her about the job, she is very suspicious, yes.

                "`A job? Where?' she asks, thinking he might try and chain her to some other place twice as bad as the house."

                "Where did he get her work?" Maxwell asked.

                "In a bar, yes, a nice clean bar and the right side of town. So respectable, yes and proper. No drunks like us, no cheap wine bottles, no, no, not for this place or the people who goes there. Everybody there gets drunk with a suit and tie on, and gets drunk over dinner."

                "She was bar maid?" Maxwell said. "After all she was through?"

                "Barmaid, yes, and more, much, much more."

                "What do you mean?"

                Now, Nathaniel lowered his voice, his good eye and good side of his face, taking on a sly expression as he attempted a grin. "Clean men in suit and ties like things, too," he said with a wink. "likes nice soft things."

                "Maxwell!" Jack said sharply, as Maxwell frowned, trying to puzzle out Nathaniel's meaning. "Let's stop all this talk. If you're so found of the girl, why put yourself through all this torture. You don't need to know more than you do."

                "I need to know it all if I'm going to help her," Maxwell said without turning to look at his roommate and his friend.

                "But how do you know any of this is true?" Jack asked. "This little snot hardly seems like a reliable source of information."

                "I can check it out," Maxwell said, then addressed Nathaniel again. "So what happened at this fancy bar?"

                The little man glared with his good eye at Jack, then brushed back the two long strands of hair out of the melted side of his face.

                "Her boss -- her cruel and nasty boss -- says getting people drunk is not enough."

                ""What else did he want?" Maxwell asked.

                "Do do something special for special customers, yes, to do for those special customers what she does for the cops now."

                "And she agreed to that?"

                "Not at first, no no, she says `No way, I'm not like that,' she tells her boss.

                "`Don't give me that shit, baby,' her boss says back. `I've heard all about your exploits in New York.'

                "`But this is supposed to be a family bar, husbands and wives come here.'

                "`Sometimes husbands come without their wives,' her boss says. `And if we want to keep them coming, you've got to put out.'

                "`And if I say no?'

                "`Then you don't work here any more, you dig?'"

                "What about her husband?" Maxwell asked. "Didn't he put a stop to it, or didn't he know?"

                "Oh, hubby knows. Bar man Hubby's best friend, yes, yes, both have good laugh yes, think it all funny."

                "And she knew he knew?"

                "Not at first. Very secret between those two, a private joke. She goes to work. Does special work for special people and Hubby asks: `how was work, dear?'

                "`What do you mean?' she asks, very scared.

                "`I mean exactly what I asked.'

                "She look at him, studies his face. He gives none of it away, no, no, straight as stone he looks and she sighs and says: `The job is all right. Just cigarette smoke and drunks.'

                "Then one day her boss makes it worse and tells her she has to do a private party.

                "`What?' she asks.

                "`A private affair, for some businessmen. They want to share a little.'

                "`Are you telling me I have to be part of a gang bang?'

                "`No reason to get vulgar about it. Let's call it group sex.'

                "`No,' she says. `I won't do it.'

                "`What about your job?'

                "`There are limits to everything,' she says. `This job isn't worth going that far for.'

                "`What about your marriage?' the nasty barman asks, smiling so sweetly it makes her sick. `I wonder what your husband would say if he knew about all the side work you've already done?'

                "`Why you son of a bitch!' she yells and tries to scratch his eyes out, but he holds her hands and grins as she curses. `You're the one who pushed me into this.'

                "`Did I?' he says, releasing her hands. `Nobody put a gun to your head. You could have gone and gotten yourself another job.'

                "`But now you're holding my marriage over my head,' she says. `If my husband finds out, then my marriage is over, and you know it.'

                "`He doesn't have to find out, and if you do this once, no one will ask you to do it again.'

                "So she did it, and hated every bit of it, hated the men, yes, and the every which way they did things to her, vulgar men, yes, animal men dressed in fancy suits, did it from under her, from over her, did it in her mouth, in her ass, in her cunt, always hurting her when they did it, always pushing too hard, and laughing hard when she complained, doing it harder the next time, and harder still the time after that. They did it so much she says she could not think of ever doing it again, with anyone, even her husband, and she got blind then, drunk blind, all the faces looking like the same face, until she came to the last face and found it was the face of her grinning husband, a mocking husband who tells the men what a whore she is, and what she did in New York, and how he rescued her from the hospital to become his private whore, but now she looks like she's everybody's whore again.

                "`Once a whore always a whore,' he says and laughs and does to her what the other men did to her and right in front of the other men, then later, beats her worse than he's ever beat her before, the way her daddy used to beat her, wearing that same cringing face that her daddy wore, beat and beat until she had to go to the hospital again, this time to fix more than her broken ankle, yes, this time the doctors have to fix her face and arms and one whole leg which he broke with the broken leg of a chair."

                "But why the hell did he beat her?" Maxwell asked.

                "Because she was a whore."

                "But you said he knew and joined in on the orgy."

                "He knew. But he hated knowing. He seemed to think the who things was some kind of test, yes, yes, a test, one he say he knew she would fail, one that she couldn't pass because she was -- he says -- inclined that way from the start, from when she was back on the farm with her daddy, getting worse and more evident as she grew up."

                "That son of a bitch!" Maxwell said, banging a table with his fist, a white platter jumping with the impact, rattling against knives and fork. "Well, did she leave him after that?"

                "No, no, he left her," Nathaniel said. "He says he couldn't live with her, knowing she was so inclined. He got a divorce, took the baby and went where Suzzy could not find them. Oh, how she cries over that baby, oh, oh,. Him she could care less about, but the baby, she loves, that sweet, sweet baby. That's all she thinks about. It's crying rings in her head all the time, yes, yes, she and the baby crying together sometimes late at night."

                "But that doesn't explain how she got the way she is now -- I mean, she's almost a zombie," Maxwell said.

                "She tries to drown the crying she hears with drugs and drink," Nathaniel said. "Not so much now as back then, now the Forget has taken like roots. She doesn't think as much as she used to. She only cries after dark, and does what people tells her the rest of the time."

                "And you want her back to keep on doing what she's been doing?" Maxwell asked, glaring across the table at the man, concentrating on Nathaniel's good eye.

                "We needs her."

                "Then you're not better than her husband."

                "Not fair, no, no!" the little man howled, staggering up out of his chair, the chair falling back onto the tiles with a whack. "She does because she wants. We don't make her. We don't tell her what to do. Not for cops. Not for nobody."

                "Wants?" Jack growled, after having worked his way from behind the counter. He now stood a half dozen feet from the table, his face nearly as red as Maxwell, and his eyes equally as angry. "She catatonic. How can anybody figure out what she wants or doesn't want?"

                "We knows," Nathaniel said. "She talks to us, only us, she trusts only us."

                "You?" Maxwell said, his voice breaking as if in a laugh. "Why would she trust you?"

                "Because we loves her."

                "Love? Pimping her to the cops is a wonderful sign of love."

                "But we does love her," the little man protesting, jabbing his crooked finger at Maxwell across the table. "And she knows it, too, yes, yes, she knows it."

                Maxwell swayed as he stood, his fingers grabbing at the back of the chair for support. Then, when secured, he hissed at the man to get out.

                "Get out and stay out," he said. "And I mean it."

                Nathaniel shook his head.

                "We's come to get Suzzy," he said.

                "Too bad," Maxwell said. "If you don’t go, I'll toss you out, and I won't be gentle about it."

                This time, Nathaniel's stare grew hard, his good hand curling into a fist at his side, his stance seeming to indicate his willingness and possibly his ability to fight off his expulsion. Yet, this too passed, and the little man sagged again, sighed, and shuffled away, one sideward step at a time to the door.

                "You'll be sorry, yes, yes," he hissed. "We hates you, and will always hate you, and we promises to make you pay."

                "Go ahead, hate me," Maxwell said. "But at least this way, Suzzane will stop paying room and board with her body."

                Then, the man was gone, taking most of the smell with him, though enough lingered in the air behind to be annoying.

                "Why did you do that?" Jack asked.

                "Do what?"

                "Refuse to give her up."

                "You heard him. He's pimping her to the cops," Maxwell said.

                "Yeah, and that means from now on, we're going to have the cops hounding us for taking away their little play thing."

                "But I thought you were as shocked as I was about what's been done to her?" Maxwell said.

                "Shocked? Of course, I'm shocked. But damn it, let's be practical about this. We can't help her anyway, so why are we putting ourselves at risk?"

                "You can't seriously believe they'll bother us over losing her?" Maxwell asked. "They probably have dozens of groupies."

                "Not all the cops have groupies," Jack said. "Some of the desk jocks are too fat."

                "Are you're afraid of fat old out-of-shape bureaucrats?"

                "They still have a badge."

                "I don’t care. I won't have them mauling Suzzane."

                "You think it's going to be better at the public shelter?" Jack asked. "You've heard as many of the horror stories as I have about those places: rapes, murders, robberies. You'd be better off bringing her to our place than condemning her to one of those institutions."

                "And you would consent to that?"

                "No, I would move out," Jack said. "And after a while, so would you. This is her life, you can't ruin your own trying to fix it. She has to fix her own life for herself."

                "She can't fix anything, look at her."

                "Then, you'll have to let her go," Jack said. "Let her find her own doom, otherwise, you'll cause her more grief in the end."

                "You sound like a Goddamn Republican," Maxwell said, chuckling slightly.

                "I'm trying to be a friend."

                "I know you are," Maxwell said, finger tips brushing the surface of the dirty table. "But I can't stand by and do nothing. She meant something to me once."

                "All right. Go talk to the people at the shelter," Jack said. "I remember there being a Catholic Shelter down on Broadway somewhere. Maybe that place would be better than the rest."

                Maxwell nodded. "I'll go collect her," he said.

                "No," Jack said, grabbing Maxwell's arm. "Talk to the shelter first. Get a commitment. You walk in with her cold, they'll tell you to get lost. When you come back, we'll go get drunk."

                ***********

                Father Craig greeted Maxwell in the vestibule of the church, his sinewy hand closing around Maxwell's for a single, firm handshake. He was a tall man, and looked more the part of an Army drill instructor than a priest, greying hair cut close to his head, emphasizing his tanned and time-carved face. Even the slight smile of greeting tugged on the tight flesh.

                "Nice of you to see me, father," Maxwell said, glancing around at the mahogany world into which he had stepped, huge door meant more for giants than for the collection of old ladies and misfits that stumbled in and out for daily mass. This late in the day, however, only a residue of incense remained, like the scent of some sweet perform caught in the wind after some woman's passing.

                Maxwell remembered the smell all too well, it stirring up some deep feeling that memory only partially explained. He recalled those days as a child when he had sat in one of the pews each Sunday, imprisoned by his mother on one side and his uncle on the other, as the chanting went on and on from the alter. Even now, the smell of the melted wax was the same, though many other churches had abandoned candles for timed electric lights. The candle flames swayed at the far end of the church to the air disturbed the opening and closing of the door, the light through the red glass making it look as if the tiled floor was on fire.

                "Frankly, I'm a little confused by all of this," the priest said, his voice creating deep echoes through the church, even when he spoke in lowered tones. "You're not a family member and yet you seem remarkably interested in this woman's welfare."

                "I know it all sounds strange. I suppose it is strange," Maxwell said. "I think I can make sense of it for you. Is there somewhere more private where we can talk?"

                Then, with a squeak to his rubber-soled shoes, the priest pivoted and led Maxwell left along the rear of the vestibule to a more normal sized door. Maxwell jogged behind the man, eyeing the church through the passing double doors, and the pews lined up there nearly to the alter itself. In the front, above the alter, a huge crucifix hung, with the full body of Christ revealed in all His agony. It was a relief when the priest motioned Maxwell out of the cross' sight.

                The door led outside to a small walled garden, one surrounded on three sides by interconnecting walls. Snow remained around the base of dead yellow stalks and around the legs of the stone bench. Maxwell wanted to linger here, reminded strangely of the roof to his own loft, where similar dead or dying plants lay waiting Creeley's touch to save them. But the priest plunged through another door, which led into a less spacious world, but one no less grandiose than the church.

                Thick carpets muffled the sound of the priest's parading feet, and the woodwork of the church seemed to have shrunk around them, lowering the ceiling and narrowing the doors to more human proportions. The smell changed, too. The scent of ink and paper mingled with that of cleanser and food. Sounds rose and fell behind the various doors along this hall. Some sounded more distant than others, as if this building was much more expansive than the hall indicated, and that the doors leading off this hall led to other halls that led to a host of other rooms Maxwell could only speculate about. He imagined many less luxurious rooms where more vigorous activities went on, in places without wood-paneled walls or carpeted floors, that warehouse section Maxwell had seen so many times depicted in special sections of the newspaper, hidden from the public here, as if the church elders wanted family members to believe their relations -- that special soul who happened to bottom-out in the gutter -- would spend his or her last days here, living in saintly elegance.

                Then, abruptly, the priest turned into one of the hallway doors, entering into what apparently was his office, the carpet flowing into this room from the hall as did the woodwork, only here, the paneling framed bookshelves on all four walls, thick-bound religious texts, some of the titles spelled out in German, French, Italian and Hebrew. Maxwell blinked at these, and then at the priest.

                "Please be seated," the priest said, motioning for Maxwell to sit in one of the thick leather chairs in front of the desk. The seat squeaked as Maxwell sat, the leather so cold against his skin that it raised goose bumps on his arms.

                "You were going to explain," the priest said, seating himself behind the desk, slightly higher than Maxwell, and -- across the wide desk top -- he seemed a mile away. "What makes you take an interest in this woman --" the priest glanced down at a note pad on the desk, a writing tablet placed exactly at the center of the blotter, a few straight lines of writing show, but that was all, with no other sign of use for the desk, serving as a model for a still life photograph with its brass lamp and green shade and its leather-sided pencil cup "-- this Suzzane Miller."

                "Actually, father," Maxwell said, his voice cracking a little as it sometimes did when he was embarrassed. "She used to be my girlfriend."

                "Oh?" the priest said, his long face rippling with the first sign of Suprise. "Now long ago was this?"

                "Many years."

                "So you're not responsible for her current situation?"

                "Well, that's a bit complicated, father. If you're asking me if I feel responsible for how she got the way she is, then the answer is yes, I do. If you're asking if I had a hand in the day to day degradation she's been through, I'd say no."

                "I see," the priest said, folding his long fingered hands over the note pad. "You believe you started the ball rolling?"

                Maxwell nodded.

                "And now you want to make up for it by rescuing her?"

                "Rescuing is the wrong word. Let's just say I didn't feel right leaving her where I found her."

                "Where was that?"

                "Living on the police station steps."

                "And you feel she would be better off here?"

                "Yes, of course."

                "There is no `of course' about it, young man," the priest said. "This could be the place for her, and then again, it might not be."

                "I don't understand. This is a shelter and she is homeless."

                "But that's not all there is to it," the priest said. "We have strict standards here, which she might not be able to meet."

                "Standards?"

                "She has to want to help herself," the priest said. "We don't just house people here, we help them climb out of the mess they've made of their lives. Unless she's willing to make an effort, she doesn't belong here -- and you'd be better off taking her to one of the city shelters."

                "I can't do that!" Maxwell said, pulling himself to the edge of the seat. "Those places are dangerous, full of people who'd use and abuse her."

                "Indeed, any place can be that bad if she hasn't the will to resist."

                "But father," Maxwell said, his hands shaking as he stood. He had to clasp them together to keep them still. "She's been worn down."

                "As many people have," the priest said. "But they haven't lost their will to live."

                "Many do lose it. Like Suzzane. Many never get out of the rat race long enough to build up their resistance again."

                "Is that what you're proposing?" Father Craig asked. "That we take her in to get her out of the rat race?"

                "Yes."

                "To see how she responds?"

                "Yes," Maxwell said again.

                "And if she doesn't respond?"

                "I'm hoping she will," Maxwell said.

                "I know you're hoping, but hope doesn't always correspond with reality, and we must consider alternative possibilities, even if they seem unpleasant," the priest said. "What if the girl does not respond? Do you wish us to give her a place that might help someone who is more willing?"

                "I'm just asking for a chance," Maxwell said. "She deserves that."

                "I suppose she does," the priest said, staring down at the desk top and his own folded hands. He did not speak again for a long while, and in the interim, Maxwell again heard the sounds from elsewhere int he buildings, the bang of pots, the shuffled of feet, the murmur of voices. This might have been the sounds inside a machine, the mysterious parts working together. Maxwell could not imagine any sound Suzzane might make fitting in.

                "All right," the priest said. "We'll give her a week."

                "That's all?" Maxwell said, shaking where he stood. "But she's bad, father, worse than most people you'd probably see."

                "I've seen many bad cases," Father Craig said. "Those who are capable of recovering usually show some sign within a week."

                "And if Suzzane doesn't?"

                "Then I'll have to ask her to leave."

                "I hope a week is enough," Maxwell mumbled.

                "It's the best I can do," the priest said, standing, extending his hand for Maxwell to shake. "Bring her around in the morning."

                *****************

                "Your friend called," Jack said when Maxwell re-entered the store. "And boy, did he sound pissed."

                "Creeley?

                Jack nodded. "This is his second time."

                "Shit!" Maxwell said. "I forgot all about him."

                "That's what he said, only he didn't exactly sound kind when he said it."

                "Give me some quarters," Maxwell said, crossing the room to the counter. Piles of dishes remained in stacks everywhere, on the tables, on the counter, yet Jack had made good progress with as many clean ones in the dish drainer as dirty ones elsewhere.

                "You and your damned quarters," Jack grumbled, as he reached for the register and pushed down on one of the keys, the faded "no sale" marker popped up in the greasy window like a grave stone. "Why can't we get a telephone at home like normal people?"

                "We can't afford one."

                "You mean you're too cheap."

                "I mean I won't spend good money on something we don't need."

                "Those quarters you keep popping into the public phone add up, you know."

                "Shut up, Jack, I'm trying to dial."

                The connecting digest clicked in the earpiece, and then, on the far end, ringing sounded, a whirring that translated to bells on Creeley's phone. Maxwell tried to imagine the old man, pausing in his garden work at the disturbance, drawing himself up from some delicate work among his plants to make his slow way up the back steps into the house.

                "Hello?" the creaky voice said.

                "It's me, Maxwell."

                "About time, you called," Creeley said. "I was beginning to think you didn't want to know me any more."

                "You know better than that," Maxwell said. "I've been busy, that's all."

                "Too busy to bother with an old man?"

                "Busy is busy. I don't mean anything personal by it. Is something wrong? Is there some problem that you needed to talk to me?"

                "Not a problem exactly," the old man said, something odd sounding in his voice, something Maxwell had not heard before, and it alarmed him. "But I need you to do me a favor."

                "What kind of favor?"

                "I need you to pick up a package for me and deliver it here."

                "That's a long trip," Maxwell said. "I'm not sure I could do it until the weekend."

                "No sooner?" Creeley asked, with a sigh in his voice suggesting he had hoped for a different reply.

                "Part of it is gas, I don't get paid until Friday."

                "You could get an advance."

                "I've already done that this week," Maxwell said. "But it's the time that's the real problem. I can't afford to spend two and half hours on the road each way and still expect to get back here in time for work."

                "All right, then it'll have to be the weekend," Creeley said, knowing Maxwell well enough to know he couldn't win this argument.

                "Where do I pick up the package?" Maxwell asked.

                "Rosey's," Creeley said. "I already called her two days ago for her to get it together. All you have to do is pick it up."

                "Fine," Maxwell said. "See you on Saturday."

                He placed the phone back in its cradle and stood for a long moment staring into space, the old man's disturbing tones still resonating in Maxwell's head.

                "Well?" Jack asked from the other end of the room. "Did you get everything settled with your girlfriend or what?"

                Maxwell nodded. "I take her to the shelter in the morning."

                "Halleluiah!" Jack yelped. "As it is, it'll take a week of cleaning to get her smell out of the stock room. Speaking of which. Why don't you lend me a hand with these dishes so we can go get drunk."

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