Kissing in Manhattan (29 page)

James was nervous tonight because he wanted two things. He wanted to tell Rally his strange, secret habit of talking to the Otis elevator in the Preemption apartment building, where he lived. And he wanted to give her a pair of opal earrings that had long been in his possession and even now were in his pocket.

“What?” said Rally. Both she and James wore blue jeans, and under the table Rally had her ankle resting against James’s calf.

“Nothing,” said James.

Three tables away were a band of skinheads, sharing a plate of Squid. James recognized them as regulars, and Rally knew them from Minotaur’s Nightclub, but the lovers and the punks only nodded at each other. Their nights were going perfectly. They needed no one but themselves.

“Come on,” teased Rally. “You’re thinking about something juicy. What is it?”

James sipped his coffee. “Nothing,” he lied.

What James was thinking about, as he gazed at Rally, was happiness. Inspired by love or caffeine, his mind tonight was on the fine and illicit pleasures of the planet, on their merits and dispersement. Some people cut daisies, thought James. Some visit Wales, or choose cocaine, or dig latrines for the poor and the weak. James fingered the opals in his pocket. He’d acquired them in a mystical place, and now, as he watched a blood vessel pulse in Rally’s neck, he understood that these gems might be bearing him forth toward someplace just as rare, the kind of country you could reach only if you lay in the dark with a woman and gave in to the quickening colors behind your eyelids.

“Tell me,” begged Rally.

“I will,” promised James.

Outside the restaurant the air was bracing. James breathed it in, held Rally’s hand, made sure of the moon. They walked a few blocks, then took the subway to the Preemption apartment building. James was bursting to tell Rally about Otis and to give her the earrings, but he wanted to clear the air first with Patrick, his housemate and Rally’s former boyfriend. James wanted to end any bad blood with Patrick, to make his and Rally’s new couplehood official. So, saying he’d explain later, he asked Rally to take the seven flights of stairs with him instead of the elevator, and they climbed to his apartment. James held Rally’s hand and led her through the door, and his heart hammered. But Patrick wasn’t home.

“It’s only ten,” said Rally. “He’s probably at Duranigan’s with a woman.”

“Duranigan’s?”

“That’s where he always takes us. Them.” Rally squeezed James’s arm. “I meant them, baby.”

James looked at the floor.

Rally whispered in his ear. “I love you,” she said. “Remember?”

James nodded. Rally kissed his temple.

“Well,” she said, “should we wait?”

James glanced toward Patrick’s bedroom. He shrugged. “He’s usually back by eleven. It’d only be an hour.”

So James and Rally waited. They sat on the couch, and tried to watch TV, but James couldn’t concentrate. He also wouldn’t take off his shoes, which made Rally nervous, and then she couldn’t concentrate either. Finally, James turned off the set, and they sat there, holding hands in silence. With nothing else to do, James pressed the messages button on the answering machine. There were several bright greetings from friends, and then there was this:

“Hello. My name is Father Thomas Merchant. I’m a priest. It’s a Saturday night at nine-thirty. I have an urgent message for a James Branch.”

James sat up.

“Father who?” said Rally.

“Shhh,” said James.

“—your number from the operator. The message is this. Get out of your apartment right now, please. Your roommate, a parishioner of mine, has just left me and he’s in a very . . . agitated state. He may be heading home, and you may be in danger. He mentioned your name specifically. He is armed.”

“Holy shit,” whispered Rally.

“—reach me at St. Benedict’s Parish on Wall Street, whatever the hour. I suggest we meet at once. Your friend needs help. In fact, I might—”

The machine beeped. The priest’s voice ended.

“Patrick’s Catholic?” said Rally.

James stood up, grabbed her hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

They slid on their coats, and hurried out into the hall. They started for the stairwell, but Rally yelped in surprise. Standing before them, twenty yards away, blocking the entrance to the stairs, was Patrick Rigg.

“Hey, you two,” said Patrick.

He stood in a black suit, facing them, his hands open at his sides. He looked as if he’d been standing there some while, and he looked dangerously set, like an athlete at a starting line, about to lurch into action. Halfway between him and the lovers was the closed door of Otis, the elevator.

“H—hey,” said James.

Rally moved half a step behind James.

“I haven’t seen you guys,” said Patrick. “Not since New Year’s.”

James could hear his housemate’s breathing. It sounded loud, labored.

Patrick cleared his throat. “I gather things are going well for you two.”

“We’re in love,” blurted Rally. “We . . . came to tell you.”

Patrick drew himself to his full height. “You hear that, Branchman? Rallygirl says you’re in love.”

“I hear her fine,” whispered James.

“Well.”
Patrick scratched his jaw. “People fall in and out of love all the time, I guess.”

“I mean it, Patrick.” Rally’s voice was solid now. “I can’t see you anymore. I’m with James.”

“There’s no hard feelings,” said James. “We just . . . you know. Um. We wanted to tell you. To be clear.”

“We’re on our way out, Patrick,” said Rally.

Patrick sighed. Smoothly, as if following instructions, he drew a gun out of his coat pocket and pointed it at James.

“Oh, Jesus,” said Rally.

The hall was empty except for the three of them. James moved himself in front of Rally.

“Maybe you should stay still, Branchman.” Patrick trained his eyes and his weapon on James.

“Oh God,” said Rally.

In his gut James felt hungry or empty. He’d never been in the presence of a drawn gun—especially not one directed at him—and he stared at it with horror and dizzy respect. Patrick’s fingers were locked around the SIG so tightly that his knuckles might have been cogs in the gunstock. It reminded James, as he swallowed air, of a health teacher he’d had in grammar school, a wiry man who’d often repeated the sentence
The human body is a machine
.

“Patrick,” said James. “Listen—”

“Maybe you should stay quiet too,” insisted Patrick.

James rubbed his hands together. He thought of the opals in his pocket, of what he hoped they meant. He watched Patrick’s gun.

“Patrick,” James said quietly. “You . . . Um. You have, like, one hundred girlfriends. And they all adore you.”

Patrick closed his eyes, once, hard, then opened them. “Rally. Would you mind coming over here by me a minute?”

Rally was crying. Her fingernails, short and sharp, dug into James’s biceps.

“I’m not going anywhere with you, you psycho,” sniffled Rally.

James backed up two paces, moving Rally with him.

“Stop it,” said Patrick. “Don’t move.”

James stopped. “She’s upset,” he explained. “Um, you’re not a psycho.”

Patrick’s chin, James thought, was quivering.

“James,” said Patrick, “did I ever tell you that I had an older brother?”

“No, Patrick.”

“Well, I did. His name was Francis. He got killed at an amusement park.”

“Jesus. I—I’m sorry, Patrick.”

Patrick scowled. He still hadn’t taken a step forward or back.

“Patrick, please,” begged Rally.

“Isn’t that amusing, Branchman? Isn’t it amusing that Francis died at an amusement park?”

James remembered something he’d read. He’d read that when people got shot, they messed their pants.

“It doesn’t sound amusing, Patrick,” he said.

“Well, it was. It’s a long story, but if you read it in the paper, it would’ve made you laugh.”

“All right,” agreed James.

“What do you mean, all right? There wasn’t anything all right about it.” Patrick clicked off the safety on his SIG.

“Help!” shouted Rally. “Help.”

“Shut up,” said Patrick fiercely. “Shut up and get over here by me right now.”

Rally whimpered. She buried her face in James’s shoulder.

“Make her come over here, dammit.”

James’s eyes flashed at Patrick. “No,” he hissed.

The elevator door opened. A priest stepped off. He looked to his right at Patrick, to his left at James and Rally.

“Whoa,” said James.

Patrick’s eyes swelled. He took a step backward. “Father Merchant?”

The priest wore a red parka, with gray Eskimo-style lining around the hood. It was a cheap parka, the kind a child would’ve worn tobogganing in the 1970s. Under it the man wore a black shirt, a stiff white clerical collar.

“Put that gun away,” said the priest. He pushed his hood back off his head, stepped into Patrick’s line of fire.

“You followed me?” said Patrick.

“I looked up your roommate’s address,” said Thomas, “and your doorman gave me the apartment number. Put that gun away.”

“I’m James,” said James from behind the priest. “James Branch. I’m the one you telephoned, Father.”

“I’m Rally,” said Rally.

The priest said nothing. He was facing only Patrick, boring all the force of his mind and his countenance into his one desperate parishioner. If James and Rally could’ve seen the priest’s face, they would’ve witnessed two fine blue eyes, but beneath those an expression of revulsion, a hint that the man was smelling something nasty.

“Give me that gun,” said Thomas Merchant. “Leave these people alone.”

Patrick’s hand quaked on the gunstock, but the SIG was pointed at the priest, who stood just ten yards from Patrick.

“She has to be with me,” said Patrick.

“Nonsense. Nobody has to be with anybody.” The priest unzipped his parka, revealed his collar. “Now, give me that gun. You’ve got no business pointing it at people you care about.”

Patrick’s eyes rimmed with tears. “I don’t care about them.”

“Uhm-hm. Give me that gun.” The priest held out his palm.

“You—you can’t talk to me like that.” Patrick’s fingers clutched the SIG. “No one talks to me like that.”

“Father,” began James.

“Give me the gun,” said the priest.

With his free, left hand Patrick petted the gun barrel.

“It’s mine,” he stammered.

The priest stamped his foot. “Give it here, I said. Let this nonsense end.”

“I can’t.” Patrick sobbed loudly.

“Let it go,” ordered the priest. He took a step toward Patrick.

“Don’t. I can’t. I can’t.” The gun wavered back and forth.

The blood drained from Thomas Merchant’s face. He took in the pitiful man before him, the dark, expensive clothes, the shaky arms, the lost, snuffling, bewildered expression. Patrick’s index finger quivered on the trigger, and the priest sensed terribly what he’d sensed in the sob of confessing voices, in the bombast of wartime headlines, in the deepest heart of Scripture: the time for words had ended. A gun was drawn, a foul human will was acting, and there were young lives present. For the sake of those lives, for the sake of charity, Thomas did the one thing he could think of to keep all of Patrick’s violence focused on himself. He aimed a mocking sneer at the armed young man.

“You utter fool,” the priest taunted.

“Stop it,” begged Patrick.

“Father,” warned James.

The man in the silly red parka laughed. He made himself do it. “Good God, boy,” he scoffed, “do you have any idea how
ridiculous
you look?”

The gun fired almost by itself. Rally screamed, and Patrick jumped back in surprise, as blood streaked from the priest’s temple. Thomas Merchant collapsed in a heap.

“Oh my God,” screamed Rally. “Oh my God, you shot him.”

“Patrick,” whispered James.

They watched the fallen, bleeding man.

Patrick staggered forward, his eyes fat with horror. “Oh, Jesus.”

“You shot him,” screamed Rally. “You killed him.”

Patrick dribbled to his knees. He reached out with his left hand, pressed a thumb to the priest’s bootheel, pulled the thumb back as if scalded. Thomas Merchant’s head lay on the floor, blood matting the hair.

“Oh, Jesus.” Patrick’s breath came in gulps. His entire body shivered. His right hand brought the SIG to his own temple.

“No,” hollered James. He dived over the priest’s body toward his housemate, but Patrick had already fired.

The nurses at St. Luke’s Hospital got used to James quickly. Perhaps they could see, or even smell, the traces of passion on him, the love affair that awaited him outside the hospital walls. For James came always alone to St. Luke’s. Whatever their reason, the nurses smiled on the young man with the sleepy eyes who sat beside Patrick Rigg’s bed every day.

The priest had survived. The bullet had gone through the edge of his temple. It did enter his skull, just nipping his brain. If James and Rally hadn’t been there to bandage his head and call an ambulance, Thomas Merchant might have bled to death in the Preemption hallway. As it was, just two days after the incident the priest was out of his hospital bed and gingerly on his feet. He wasn’t allowed to leave the hospital yet, but he padded up and down the hallways, visiting the ill and dying, a thick blue dressing wrapped around his skull. The only permanent damage to his person, if it could be called such, was a new, slight, but constant watering of his eyes that his doctors said might be with him for life. It had been caused, they said, by the bullet bruising his brain just so, leaving scar tissue that was impossible to remove and that tweaked certain nerves. So Thomas Merchant, previously a man of uncannily clear vision, would spend his days now with a handkerchief in hand, working to keep his world from blurring.

Meanwhile, Patrick Rigg was paralyzed, in a coma. The paralysis went down his entire right side, from his eye to his toes. His suicidal bullet had struck the meat of his frontal lobe. The bullet had been successfully removed in surgery, and Patrick’s chances for recovery from coma and subsequent survival were fair. The doctors held little hope, though, that his paralysis would clear.