Godless (4 page)

“Here it is,” she said before returning to the room. She placed something on the coffee table in front of Matthew. It contained an image about three inches square. He recognized a replica of an Expressionist painting called
The Scream
. He flipped it over to find an online address inviting the bearer to schedule a “Free Spiritual Dialogue Session.”

“I hope you'll get in touch,” the woman added, laying her hand gently on Matthew's forearm. “I sense you need to talk to someone.”

Matthew's eyes shot up from the card.
How dare she
! It was
his
job to coach
her
, not the other way around. It was Ellie Baxter who faced the prospect of prolonged suffering, not
he
. If anyone needed someone to talk to it was this half-crazy debit who didn't know Saint Augustine from Saint Nick, not Matthew Adams, a promising scholar temporarily condescending to the needs of health-system flunkies.

He took the card, placing it in his back pocket to keep it safe until he could find a trash container. “Thanks,” he grunted with a smirk.

“May I have one of those, too?” Mandy asked.

“Certainly, dear,” the woman said as she began shuffling back toward the kitchen.

“I think our job is done here,” Matthew said, excusing himself from the scene. “I'll let you wrap up. I'll be waiting in the car. Use your own password to verify the 309.”

And with that Matthew walked out the front door, leaving his trainee to formalize a failure he had no intention of owning.

Four hours
after dropping Mandy off in front of the house she shared with her partner, Matthew found himself still slumped over a half-finished drink. He had no interest in whatever games happened to be showing on the dozen or so screens throughout the sports bar. Nor did he much notice the usual attraction of Peak and Brew, an assortment of attractive college girls funding tuition by filling beer mugs and chip bowls. He usually finished his customary two beers in about thirty minutes before heading home. But tonight he had ordered a third to justify continued use of the table that would otherwise accommodate three or four rowdy frat boys eager to toast their favorite team's run or score.

He glanced around the packed house that stood a few blocks from the University of Denver campus. Peak and Brew was a favorite gathering place for students. But classes didn't start for another week. Matthew had continued to track such details even after abandoning his dream of graduating from the University of Colorado and his backup plan of attending classes in Denver. His dark days had killed both the possibility and the desire.

A chorus of voices groaned in unison. Matthew's eyes shot up to find the most convenient screen. That's when he remembered the Summer Olympics were in full swing. It seemed the USA men's volleyball team had just missed a match point. He tried to care, but instead lifted the glass to his mouth before placing it back on the table without taking a sip.

Four blocks away was a perfectly comfortable bed ever ready to console its owner. Matthew typically slept his way out of sudden fits of rage. But this one felt deeper and, he feared, would last longer. He only hoped it wouldn't turn into a funk like the one he had suffered the previous fall.

Why had the old woman's refusal bothered him so much? He told himself it was because she'd broken his winning streak. But he knew there was more to it. He knew it had something to do with the look in her eyes or her show of concern. Probably both. The frail, quiet Mrs. Baxter had shaken him to the core.

He'd felt something similar the day he heard his mom tell her transition specialist how much she wanted her son to become a professor. Was a transition less heroic when the volunteer didn't comprehend what was happening, when she blindly trusted her son to have her best interest at heart? But she must have understood, deep down, that it was for the best. Hers to avoid further deterioration and, he had convinced himself, misery; his to fund the dream of college, graduate school, and an eventual classroom of his own.

A renewed sense of anger rose within at the thought of what should have been. The kind of life that chance, fate, or God had stolen from him.

He recalled the humiliation that had spawned his dark days. The tuition that couldn't be paid. The trustee who refused to release money that rightfully belonged to him. Being forced to take an elder-care job working for a cantankerous old debit. Reverend Grandpa, as he had insisted on being called, had infuriated Matthew with a stubborn resistance to common sense.

He was old.

He was disabled.

He was an emotional and financial burden to his daughter and a debit in society's economic ledger.

He was trapped in a decaying body.

He should have volunteered for his own sake, and for his grandkids' sake.

But he refused. He even poked fun at Matthew for suggesting it.

Matthew had nearly convinced himself that both his mom and Reverend Grandpa were better off; that he had done the right thing.
Free those who suffer to thrive
. It had been a philosophy to live by and, someday, to teach. The perfect replacement for a catechism learned in childhood.

An explosion of cheers interrupted Matthew's reminiscence. His eyes darted from one screen to the next in search of what had prompted the outburst. They landed on the digital image of a baseball player's casual trot around third base on his way toward home plate. Celebratory high fives and kisses peppered the room as fans wearing caps that matched the player's relished what must have been a crucial home run in a tight game.

Matthew chuckled at the scene of grown men and women living vicariously through their favorite players. Die-hard fans. He had always been more fair-weathered himself, paying little attention to local teams unless they happened to make the playoffs. What was it like, he wondered, to follow a team through the ups and downs of the full season, to cheer them through the losing stretches, and to hold out hope that a winning streak might be just around the corner?

He missed being part of something, believing in something. But Matthew had outgrown both Father Tomberlin's creed and Dr. Vincent's lectures. If an almighty being existed at all, he hadn't been playing well enough to deserve Matthew's attention.

Where had God been when the transition inheritance got tied up in a legal mess for so long it forced Matthew to drop out of college? When the money finally did arrive, half of it went to a criminal lawyer in order to get the police off his back. Such a waste! Especially since the detective had confirmed
three times
that Matthew couldn't possibly have committed the assassination.

And then there was the near miss with the breathtaking Maria Davidson. Against all hope, she'd seemed to find him attractive. A picture in the high school annual and a virtual connection had nearly blossomed into a real-world romance. That is, until a case of mistaken identity chased her out of his life forever.

Perhaps the most disturbing sign of God's absence had been the dark cloud that had overshadowed every fiber of Matthew's existence for seventy-three days he would rather forget. The trips to Reno had managed to numb some of the pain. But it had also drained what was left of his inheritance. So in the end, rather than funding his dream, his mother's estate had slipped into the hands of lawyers and casino owners.

He felt abandoned. Worse, rejected. He wanted to become an atheist. But then whom would he blame for all that had happened? So against his own will, Matthew still believed in God. And that, he realized, is what frightened him about the look in Mrs. Baxter's eyes. She seemed to know something about him Matthew hadn't figured out himself. Possibly saw through his honed script to perceive his lonely soul.

“I sense you need to talk to someone.” She had been right. He had never felt so isolated in his life.

He had hoped the new job would help. Perhaps it had, a little. Everyone needed to feel successful at something. And he did, especially after receiving the associate-of-the-month award twice. But while success had funded a halfway decent apartment and paid down much of his gambling debt, it hadn't brought him what he missed most: a mentor like Dr. Vincent, whom he had vowed never to speak to again. Matthew had relished discussing philosophy, or religion, or even girls with his favorite professor. He now grieved the lost relationship almost as much as he resented the shocking betrayal. Why would Dr. Vincent name Matthew as Judge Santiago's potential assassin? Hadn't he known him better than that?

Matthew pulled the three-inch card Ellie Baxter had offered him from his back pocket. He flipped it from one side to the other and back again. Curious, he typed the online address into his tablet.

The offer reminded Matthew of what he had experienced as a child whenever his mother brought him to Father Tomberlin's confessional. He would reluctantly parrot the expected words, “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” Then he'd told the priest about every offense he could recall, and a few he made up for the fun of it. He had never taken the ritual seriously, but recalled feeling better afterward, especially whenever he had done something that left him feeling guilty.

Matthew smiled at the recollection. He would love to feel better now. Perhaps the Sacrament of Penance, or whatever they called the process these days, would do him some good. Not because he had done anything wrong, or because he believed in sin or absolution. But he did still consider himself a spiritual person. What harm could come of a confidential ear and a bit of perspective and advice?

Matthew's finger hovered momentarily over the calendar. He pressed it, then chose a convenient time and began entering the required details.

“Is this seat taken?”

Matthew looked toward the voice, which belonged to a man he didn't recognize. “Um, no,” he muttered. “It's all yours.” Matthew paid no attention to the stranger, who, he assumed, wanted to pull the chair to the edge of some crowded nearby table.

“Great,” the man replied. “I hate to drink alone.”

The chair hadn't moved. The man plopped himself down while extending a hand toward his unsuspecting host. “I'm Mori. Short for Bryan Quincy.”

Matthew returned the gesture. “Matthew, short for Matthew Adams.”

“Pleased to meet you, Matthew Adams.” The man seemed to mean it. He appeared almost as lonely as Matthew. Not a solitary, reclusive lonely. The kind of lonely that talked to anyone and everyone to fill the silence.

The man had brown hair and a rich-looking beard containing much more gray than his crown or temples. Unlike Matthew's, his hair showed no trace of thinning. He appeared to have benefited from genetic screening. Impossible, of course, since blind conception would have been the norm at the time of the man's birth. Fifty years old? The estimate seemed plausible, especially in light of a rotund torso that suggested several decades of chatty beer-and-chip consumption.

“How did ‘Mori' become short for Bryan Quincy?” Matthew asked, more from polite courtesy than burning curiosity.

“My middle name, Morrison, was my old man's surname,” he said with a chuckle. “They called him Mori, so I became Little Mori. Then just Mori.”

“Got it,” Matthew said with an upward nod.

A cheer erupted around them, prompting both men to turn disinterestedly toward a screen. A replay, which seemed to delight the crowd, meant nothing to Matthew.

“‘Little Mori' just didn't feel right in the classroom,” the man added while lifting a mug to his lips.

“You teach?”

“If you can call it teaching.” Another singular laugh.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that teaching, by definition, ought to include learning. Which is something my students seem determined to avoid.”

“High school?”

“College. University of Denver.”

“What department?”

“Humanities.”

“Philosophy?” Matthew asked, suddenly intrigued.

“Literature.”

“Oh,” Matthew said limply.

“Yeah,” Mori sighed, “that's how most of my students respond when they discover mine is the only elective class that still has openings.”

“Sorry. I didn't mean it like that. I was a philosophy major before…before I took a sabbatical.”

“No need to apologize. I'm used to it. And I get it. Our generation was formed by Google and Facebook.”

Matthew smiled at the mention of the classic brands. His thirty-seven years suddenly felt ancient.

“Why dive deeply into an ocean of words when you can skim along the surface on a Jet Ski?” Mori paused to reach for a source. “I think it was Nicholas Carr who said that.”

Matthew didn't recognize the quote, or the author.

“Anyway,” Mori continued, “this generation is light-years beyond where you and I were when we graduated from college.”

Matthew didn't correct the misimpression.

“Or should I say, light-years behind. I can't remember the last student who had actually finished reading an entire classic novel. They don't know Melville, or Hugo, or even Dickens. You have no idea how irrelevant I feel teaching a literature appreciation course to kids who, for all practical purposes, are illiterate. At least when it comes to the greatest books ever written.”

Matthew had always loved books. In addition to a tablet full of marked-up academic volumes, he had once owned a small supply of collector print editions. But he had read very few novels. Possibly none from start to finish.

“Pretty sad,” he bluffed.

“You say you studied philosophy?” asked Mori.

“I did.”

“So you've read Voltaire, Nietzsche, and the gang?”

Matthew smiled. “I have. You?”

“Of course. Like every other self-respecting atheist.”

“Ever hear of Dr. Thomas Vincent?” Matthew asked.

“Sure. UC–Boulder?”

“That's right. He was my academic advisor during college.”

“No kidding! I've read some of his stuff. Bright guy.”

“Thanks,” Matthew said as if deserving part of the praise. After another sip he came clean. “But I never got to finish the program. Had to drop out. Short on cash.”

“Oh,” Mori said with sympathy, “I'm sorry to hear that.”

“Actually, I wanted to become a teacher myself. Religious studies.”

“I bet you'd have been a good one.” His eyes followed a passing waitress before he spoke again. “But teaching is only half the equation. You need willing pupils, something hard to find these days.”

The men shared the silent communion of disappointment, lost dream sitting beside futile undertaking. Then, to his surprise, Matthew noticed a change in Mori's expression. Chilly cynicism dissipated, as on the face of a discarded coach suddenly assigned a fledgling team.

“Hey,” the elder announced. “Can I suggest an author?”

“Fiction?” Matthew asked.