American Savior (7 page)

“So he’s God and he isn’t, simultaneously. Right?”

“Probably,” Esmeralda said to me—she was a good, kind, attractive woman, too sweet for Wales, many of us thought—“probably we
shouldn’t expect to understand those types of things. Just take them on faith.”

“Yeah,” Wales agreed, “especially for those of us with small brains. You follow?”

“What do I know about security?” I said. “That’s what worries me.”

“Use your creativity. Talk to your vaunted ‘police sources.’ Learn as you go.”

“Right, okay. You’re the campaign manager. I’m just in charge of—”

“Keeping God alive,” said Esmeralda sweetly.

TWELVE

Zelda always kept the hour between one and two open. At one o’clock I was in the hallway outside her office, and when she opened the door she hurried over, wrapped me in a tight hug, and held on. “I’m afraid,” she whispered in my ear. She seemed to be shaking.

I said, “I know, I know. Don’t worry. It’s going to be fine. We’ll work it out, don’t worry.” We stepped into her office and sat on the couch, close to each other.

“I went to the station this morning and resigned,” I said, thinking that might ease her fears.

She put a hand on my thigh and squeezed hard. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

I looked at her: the wide-set, dark eyes, the turned-up nose, the pretty mouth that could bloom into a smile as bright and lovely as sunlight pouring down into a mineshaft where you’d been stuck for a month. The intelligence, the goodness, the compassion shining there. It was not a small thing, given my history, to have a woman like that saying she loved me. Not a small thing.

“Jesus showed up,” I said. “Or Hay-Zeus, or whatever he calls himself.”

“He
did!
”

I nodded. “He came into Wales’s office when we were all in there—me, Walesy, Esmeralda. He called me the man of little faith.”

“Really?”

“He said we’re kicking off the campaign a week from today. You’re the press liaison.”

“Press liaison? I don’t know the first thing about dealing with the press.”

“Right, but he thought you’d be great at it. I’m in charge of security, if that makes you feel any more secure.”

“Not much, honestly.”

“Well, how about this, then: He wants my parents to be involved. My brother Stab, too. Wales. Ezzie. Maybe even Enrica Dominique. We’ve raised a couple million dollars already.”

“Then it’s serious now. It’s real.”

I felt a zipper of chill go running up my arms.

“What’s wrong, Russell?”

“Nothing.”

She took hold of my chin in one hand and turned my face to her, lovingly, gently. But the eye contact was intense. “Full honesty.”

I looked away, looked back. “You haven’t met him,” I said.

“I know. I can’t wait.”

“Right. But I have met him. Twice now. And, well, you know, there are certain aspects of this that don’t exactly inspire confidence.”

“For example.”

“For example, he doesn’t fit the description.”

“What description?”

“He’s saying he’s
Jesus,
Zel. Jesus. The Big Guy, you know,
God
for a lot of people.”

“And?”

“And he doesn’t fit the description. I mean, don’t get me wrong, he seems to know things about people that I’m surprised he knows. And when he comes into the room you can definitely feel a sort of, I don’t know, a power or something. But, look, I feel that when the Patriots’ quarterback comes into the room, for God’s sake. I’ve felt it with nurses on kids’ wards, with—”

“Your friend, what’s-her-name, for example.”

“Yes, my friend what’s-her-name, who you also haven’t met. And stop
being jealous, that’s my territory. Listen, he’s an impressive guy, but look at what we’re doing. I’m quitting my job. We’re about to go public in support of this guy, saying he’s Jesus, I mean,
the
Jesus. What does that do for my reputation, and for your reputation if we’re wrong? If it’s some kind of scam? Have you considered that?”

She looked at me. She sat back on the sofa and just looked. It was a look that made you feel like you were three and a half and had knocked over your bowl of cereal for the second time. “You’re wavering,” she said, after a few bad seconds.

“Probably.”

“Do you have any idea how much wavering I see in this room?”

I shook my head.

“Husbands who say they want to love someone forever, and then they waver. Mothers who decide to have children and bring them up in a loving home, and then they waver. Men and women who promise this, and promise that, and they keep to the promise for a month or a year or ten years and then something happens, life happens, and they wobble, they waver, they crack and crumble. You know what that does to the people in their lives?”

“I was divorced, you know that. It happens. It’s called a mistake, bad judgment, youth. It doesn’t mean—”

“I’m not talking about breaking up with a crazy or abusive spouse, or when a marriage is unhealthy. I’m talking about faith. Constancy. You’re worried about your reputation. Do you know what Gandhi said?”

I shook my head.

“He said, ‘A man of courage can do without a reputation.’”

“That sexist bastard,” I said. “And all these years I thought he was a cool guy.”

She almost smiled. Almost. After a second or two she said, “You asked me to marry you this morning. Are you going to waver on that, too, Russ?”

“Never.”

“Maybe I don’t fit the description.”

“It’s a different situation. You’re not claiming to be God. You didn’t
ask me to quit my job and help you run for president. You’ve got a nicer body than he does—”

“Be serious, please.”

“All right.”

“What, exactly, would he have to do in order for you to believe he is who he says he is? Think about it, Russ, two miracles and a dream sent to me—that isn’t enough?”

“It should be. I mean, it would be, and he seems like he knows my whole history … but, in person, I don’t know, maybe I’ve met too many con artists in this business. Maybe it’s what I said this morning: I’m too egotistical to want anybody else to have all that attention. Or maybe it’s the opposite: I mean, really, if God came to earth, would he come to
me?
Would he come to West Zenith, of all places?”

“West Zenith is
exactly
the type of place he’d come to. And maybe you’re more special than you give yourself credit for. Maybe we all are. Maybe that’s the whole point—that we’re all, you know, we’re all
worthy
of something like this happening to us even though we don’t believe it. We’re caught up in our failings, our bad stuff. We walk around feeling we should be better all the time because the society is constantly sending us that message. Not thin enough, not young enough, not nice-looking or rich enough.… I see it in this room every day, every hour.”

“That argument has a certain appeal,” I said.

“You can’t take anything seriously, can you.”

“Sure I can. When the kid fell off the fire escape, when I heard about that, I took it seriously.”

“Because you were able, for those few seconds, to relate to your own damaged inner child. The only compassion you can have for yourself is via someone else’s story.”

“Stop please.”

“Don’t you see what’s happening?” she said. “God comes to you, in the flesh, and you reject him. And why? Because of your profound but subtle lack of esteem for yourself. You’re placing limits on yourself that aren’t there. It has to do with your childhood trauma and, before that, your parents’ childhood trauma.”

“Zel. Stop. Please.”

“All right. But I’ll say one more thing: You don’t have a lot of time to decide. You have a week to get ready for what’s essentially going to be a mob scene.”

“And to go see my parents. Which is more daunting, actually.”

“Take me with you,” she said. “They’re my future in-laws, I should meet them. Or are you wavering on that, too?”

I was shaking my head.

“Not wavering? Or not taking me to see them?”

“Not wavering. I love you. You can take that to the bank and make a deposit and get the interest on it for a hundred years. I love you, I want to marry you, and have kids with you, and live with you until I die. Okay?”

The smile had come out. The mineshaft was lit up again, and you could see your way up and out of it and into full daylight.

“And the other part? Jesus?”

“I need another hour or so,” I said.

I hugged and kissed her and went out of her office and down to the street, and I walked around for a while, aimlessly, which is what I do when I’m upset, just looking at the world going by, people hurrying here and there, cars, trucks, buses, skateboards. I went into American Soldier’s Memorial Park and sat on a bench, with a handful of street people scattered around on the lawn, and the leaves on the trees shimmering in the sun. I wasn’t thinking, exactly. It was more that my mind was twirling and coasting, flitting this way and that, a tiny fish caught in a tidal pool. After a time, I don’t know how long, a guy came and sat down not far from me on the bench. Dreadlocks, rotten old sneakers, stained pants, a flannel shirt on in the June warmth. He asked for some change, and I reached into my pocket and handed him a ten-dollar bill. I could see the surprise on his face for an instant, and then he covered it over as if he didn’t want to appear too grateful, or thought he didn’t deserve anything more than a couple of quarters. And then he hurried off to buy whatever it was he was going to buy with it—a hamburger, a hit, a bottle.

So did it all boil down to what Zelda had said? Were these guys out here, and these women walking the streets at night in their short shorts
and halter tops, these kids shooting each other in Fultonville and Hunter Town—was it all an elaborate dramatization of the fact that they had no “esteem” for themselves, as she put it? Did the drunks drink, and the whores go out on the sidewalk, and the high school girls smoke another chunk of crack just to prove to themselves—or to their parents—how worthless they were? And the people who understood they weren’t worthless—the Amelia Simmeltons and Alba Seuniers and Steven “Stab” Thomases of the world—how did they get that way?

I did not know. I did not know. I did not know.

THIRTEEN

On days when I knew I would be driving down to North Salem to see my mom and dad, I always awoke with a mix of feelings, as if anticipation, love, and anxiety had been blended together into a lotion, overnight, and some mysterious spirit of the dream had applied it to my skin from hairline to toenails. And that was before an ordinary visit. Imagine what it felt like to add an engagement announcement to that (they had never met Zelda). And then, of course, on top of everything else, there was what I thought of as the Jesus Stuff.

Adding to the fun was the fact that Dukey McIntyre, Ada Montpelier’s boyfriend and the reputed father of her child, had been assigned to my security crew by Jesus himself, had called to introduce himself, and was already making me crazy. Thrilled by his new responsibilities, he’d taken to phoning the condo every ninety minutes with progress reports. He had friends in the Panthers, a local motorcycle “club” (supposedly enlightened, we’d done a story on them; they had refreshing rules like Members Are Not Allowed to Punch or Kick Their Girlfriends; Members Are Not Allowed to Sell Drugs to Kids in Grade School), and they’d agreed to park their bikes in a ring around the center of Banfield Plaza, with openings for “VIPs” to come in and out. An hour and a half later he called with more news: The guys at Dermott’s, a rough bar on Versifal Street, had chipped in time and money to build a stage for Jesus to stand on when he spoke, and they would be “taking up positions” on all sides to make sure no “punks” gave our candidate any trouble. And so on.

Though she had not yet met Jesus, Zelda told her clients she’d be taking an indefinite leave of absence. This was traumatic for her, naturally: she’d built up a successful practice over the years, and felt almost a parental responsibility to the people she counseled. Later that day, she’d met with Wales and, on his instructions, started contacting press outlets. Zel told me that the major newspapers, TV and radio stations, and national magazines were being appropriately cautious. No stories would be printed or aired for another day or so, until they’d had a chance to check out the accounts of the miracles, get corroborating witnesses. They knew that once this particular cat was let out of the bag it would instantly mutate into a thousand prowling tigers, and no one, no trainer with a whip and a piece of steak, was going to be able to get them back in. During my years in the business I’d developed a kind of sixth sense about these things, and now it was as if I could hear a million voices whispering to each other in a circle that kept expanding outward from Banfield Plaza.

Zelda and I did not say much about it, but something was different between us, expectation tinged with fear. I liked it, when the fear part wasn’t too strong. I think she liked it, too. We had new meaning to our lives, not to mention the engagement, of course (no ring yet, but I’d given her a pair of sapphire earrings to make her feel better about suspending her practice, and she loved them).

But it wasn’t all joy and fun. Getting dressed on Saturday morning before heading out to see my parents, I found that my hands were shaking as I buttoned the collar of my shirt. There was a war going on inside me. By that point I had made my commitment to Jesus, really I had, and to Zelda and Wales and Ezzie, and even, in a certain way, to Dukey McIntyre, too. I felt part of a community of impossible hope. It was like being a Red Sox fan prior to 2004. But, even though I was officially out of the TV business, I was still living the story as it swelled and rolled, still doubting it, checking it, wondering what the twist might be. Because the journalist in me said there had to be a twist. If this Jesus was really perfect, that part of me reasoned, he would have stayed up in heaven and left us to our swagger and sleaze.

Dressed and ready, wrestling with my doubts, thinking about the day
ahead, I went down to my convertible with all that in my mind, and waited for the other shoe to drop, as it were.