Cole Perriman's Terminal Games (32 page)

Halfway back, they stopped at one of the restaurants on the pier and found a table by a large window overlooking the beach and the ocean. They ordered sandwiches and beers.

*

“Marianne,” Nolan said, ignoring the shakiness in his own voice, “What are you and I going to do?”

“Tonight we’re going back to your house and order a pizza and make mad, passionate love. Tomorrow I’m going to get all businesslike, go back to Santa Barbara, and blow everybody away with my wonderful designs.”

“You know that’s not what 1 mean.”

“Doesn’t it seem kind of soon to talk about anything further in the future?”

“No.”

“You’re absolutely right. It doesn’t,”

She studied the bubbles in her beer and pressed her lips together. When she didn’t say anything more, Nolan felt a pang of fear. He had the feeling that this wasn’t going too well—and it
had
to go well. He wanted it to with all his heart.

“I want us to move in together as soon as possible,” he said. She looked up. He could see the flush in her face, the emotion in her eyes. But he could also see that she was holding back.

“You know I want that, too,” she said. “But I do have some reservations … some real problems dealing with …”

“I have real problems with our
not
being together.”

“So do I,” she said. Now he could see that there were tears in her eyes. “What do you want, Nolan? Do you want to be a Los Angeles homicide detective forever? What am I supposed to do—wait at home every night, hoping you’ll make it back alive? I mean, I suppose I could find a job in the city, but I don’t think I could stand the life you lead.” She wiped her eves, then repeated, “What do you
want?”

I want you.
But he knew that wasn’t what she meant. He was stunned for a moment. “I don’t know,” he said. “When was the last time I decided to do something just because I
wanted
to do it? I can’t remember. For a long time it was like I had
become
a family, there was no separate me any more. In a way, Louise and I weren’t even a couple. Everything, all the decisions, involved what we
all
did.”

“You’re not that person any more,” she said.

“I know. I keep all those photos around to remind me who I was. It was the only point of reference I had.”

But what were his options now? How could he make them include this woman? He quickly, unhesitatingly, told her about Crazy Syd—how he wanted to retire, and how he had been after Nolan to take the job. He saw that she looked puzzled. Somehow he had to find a way to explain it to her. It was terribly important that she understand what he was saying.

“Have you told Syd anything one way or the other?” Marianne asked.

“Not definitely, but I really think it’s what I want, Marianne,” Nolan said with a sudden certainty. “I want to be in a smaller town, know the people I’m working with better—a community, you know, if there is any such thing anymore. It would be good just to live among people without being the adversary all the time. That’s what I want. But only if you’ll come with me. I want you to marry me, or just go with me, whatever suits you.”

Marianne began to stammer helplessly.

“Nolan, Oregon is beautiful, but … I have a
job,
darling. How could I find a job in a place like that? What could an interior designer possibly do …”

“What do you think, they don’t have
electricity
in Oregon, they don’t have phone lines?” Nolan interrupted, laughing. “Isn’t that the whole point of this electronic cottage shit—that it doesn’t matter where you are when you modem in the work? Honey, a couple of weeks ago, your office was in a hotel room. And just this morning, it was in my
house,
for Christ’s sake! Why shouldn’t it be up in the Oregon wilderness somewhere?”

Marianne just stared at him for a moment. The she said, “I’m going to ask you a question, and I want you to answer me absolutely honestly. Do you promise?”

“Sure,” Nolan said, grinning.

“I’m serious.”

“Okay,” Nolan said. “So am I.”

“What if—and I mean
if
—l were to say ‘yes’ right now? How would you feel?”

A soft smile appeared on Nolan’s face.

“It would scare the shit out of me,” he said.

“And maybe—just maybe, doesn’t some
tiny part
of you hope I don’t have the guts to leave my life behind?”

“Maybe,” Nolan said. “Just maybe.”

“Because changes make life tough, right? Even when they make it better?”

“That’s right.”

It was Marianne’s turn to laugh. “And who was it who just told me about how awful computer technology was? How it pulls people farther and farther apart? How it gives them excuses not to look each other in the eye, not to make commitments?”

Nolan laughed, then abruptly said, “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Marianne said.

Marianne raised her glass of beer up to his in a toast.

“Here’s to having no excuses,” she said.

“I’ll drink to that,” Nolan replied.

10110
DIALOGUE BETWEEN
A PRIEST AND A DYING MAN

It was two-thirty Wednesday morning. Howard Cronin jogged out of his own affluent neighborhood, across a four-lane intersection with scarcely any traffic, through a narrow district of parking lots and convenience stores. His breath steamed in the sharp air, but the night was warmer than most at this time of year. The gracefully-arranged paradise of three-story houses with great sloping lawns scattered along gently curving lanes suddenly seemed far behind him. Now he was in an interminably damp, litter-strewn, graffiti-riddled, vastly more dangerous world. He had been jogging this way several nights a week recently, but the reality change never ceased to startle him. Why wasn’t there more of a buffer zone between the reasonably rich and the unreasonably poor? In the not-too-distant past, he had taken no notice of such conundrums. But now, he couldn’t help but notice.

Howard had three months to live. At least that was the best he could figure. Three months ago, after undergoing prolonged, painful, and ultimately unsuccessful surgeries and transfusions, he had been given six months. In the time since then, his team of doctors had refused to offer any kind of an update. Were they too cowardly to speak directly with him about his impending death? Perhaps his doctors felt that they were above talking to any of their patients. Perhaps a common quack would be more forthcoming. Howard had decided not to worry himself about it too much. Life was, indeed, short.

Back at the house, his wife and three children were fast asleep. Tomorrow morning they would all ask about his night—avoiding the little irony of a dying man insisting on late-night health jogs—and he would lie and recite a nondescript itinerary of their immediate environs. No need to worry them with details of his actual route. His family and friends knew that he had been an inveterate insomniac all his life. None of them were surprised that this condition had worsened considerably during the last few months. The thing they would find difficult to believe was that he jogged through these parts of town—and that he was on his way to church.

Four black teenagers, white sneakers and sweatshirts gleaming against the night, rounded the nearest street corner and began to approach Howard. He felt a burst of animal fear and xenophobia, then was dismayed at the grimy texture of his own bigotry. He wished he could scour it out of his mind. But he was a well-off man jogging through a poor and violent neighborhood in a designer sweat suit. Didn’t he have every good reason to be wary?

The kids were less than half a block away now. Their voices had just become audible. They seemed too animated, too cheerful to be planning to attack him. But might that simply be a tactic? Street punks surely knew how to use the element of surprise in just this sort of way.

At less than twenty feet away, one of the youths silently stepped away from the others, moving to Howard’s right, away from the street toward the line of buildings. Howard would have to walk the narrow path between the isolated youth and his still chattering companions on the curb side of the sidewalk.

Apprehension abruptly turned into burning terror and paranoia. He fleetingly studied the incongruity of a dying man being afraid of death. How could that be? Well, the answer was simple enough. He had been assured a quiet death in bed, and now he had brought himself face to face with the possibility of serious and perhaps crippling injury. Death wasn’t nearly so frightening as physical pain. But what the hell was he going to do? The youths had definitely seen him.

Then the young men—the three on his left and the one on his right—brushed past him, towering above him, still chattering as if he wasn’t there. He wanted to turn and look, to see if the quartet had resumed its original formation, but forced himself to keep on walking. He was sure now that the one youth had split away from the others with no other purpose than to scare him half to death. His suspicion was confirmed by a burst of laughter at his back.

His face burned with anger. In his imagination, he pictured himself turning and rushing upon the boys, drawing a hidden, nonexistent weapon—a knife, he thought. As he kept jogging steadily toward his destination, Howard Cronin imagined himself slicing the four teenagers to terrified, bloody ribbons.

The church came into view. It was a dark, regal, Romanesque structure, jarring in its sordid surroundings. It had been there for a long time, standing strong while the neighborhood around it had undergone a de-evolution into impending chaos. Howard had driven past the church many times and knew it was the one place of worship where he could be sure not to encounter any friends or acquaintances. By coming here so late at night, he was absolutely confident of his anonymity. He could have driven, of course, but taking the risk—coming on foot—was more like an act of penitence.

Howard stepped through the broad, open doors into a richly gilded sanctuary dimly lit by votive candles. He had never encountered anyone here, and the church appeared empty again tonight. He was always a little surprised to find it unlocked. At this hour, in this neighborhood, even the most faithful parishioners stayed away. He did not even sense the presence of an omnipotent deity—but of course, Howard had not believed in God since he was a teenager.

As his clattering footsteps echoed noisily through the sanctuary, Howard marveled that such a lavish interior, so open and unprotected, had not been looted by the youths outside.
It’s enough to reawaken a man’s faith.
On that note, he knelt before the altar.

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” he whispered, making the sign of the cross. Then he slid into a pew and settled into a meditative silence, waiting for a welcome sign of sleepiness to set in before his perilous return home.

Then he heard a noise—a slight rustling. He looked up and barely glimpsed a robed figure stepping into the confessional.
A
priest!
he thought with surprise. It had barely occurred to him that this church even had a priest. In an odd way, the idea irritated him. He had come to think of the church as his own, private sanctum. What business did anybody, even a priest, have intruding here?

Howard almost fled right then and there. But he quickly reminded himself that the priest probably did not much care whether Howard believed in God or not. Offering comfort was the man’s job, and comfort was sorely lacking in Howard’s sterile and now-fleeting life. He rose to his feet and walked toward the confessional.

“Keeping rather late hours, Father?” asked Howard Cronin, peering into the confessional.

“God knows no business hours, my son,” said the unseen priest cheerfully. “Besides, I might ask you the same question. At least I’m not far from home.”

Then came a slight, awkward silence. Howard stepped into the dim space, sitting down next to the latticework that separated him from the priest. He felt something slick and crackly on the seat and wall behind him, as though someone had covered the inside of the confessional with plastic.
To keep it clean?

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” said Howard, making the sign of the cross again, listening with dismay to the mechanical, rote quality of his own voice. Could this possibly offer him any comfort? Was it anything more than mere procedure?

“How long has it been since your last confession?” asked the priest.

“I don’t know. Many, many years.”

“Then you are more troubled than I had even thought. I’ve noticed your visits. Three times a week or so, you come to pray at just this hour. I’ve guessed that you struggle with yourself, trying to decide whether to confess your sins or not.”

“I’ve never noticed that the confessional was open, father,” said Howard, trying to be diplomatic. The truth was that confession had not crossed his mind.

“What is it that you need to tell me, my son?” said the priest.

To Howard’s overwhelming embarrassment, his mind suddenly turned a complete blank. Why could he not think of any sins? What, exactly, did he want to confess? He could think of nothing precise to say. He was an outwardly gentle man who had never actually struck anyone in anger. He’d been ruthless in business, but had never done anything truly dishonest or illegal. During twelve years of marriage, he’d never actually been unfaithful. He’d never
actually
done
a lot of things. Now that a priest was waiting, did he have nothing interesting to confess?

“I seem … to be a little tongue-tied, Father,” he apologized.

“Take your time, my son.”

“It’s just that I can’t think of anything very specific.”

“Remember that transgressions can take many forms,” prodded the priest gently.

A blazing clarity filled Howard’s mind—like a spotlight turned on a stage where the cartoon image of a dark-robed friar rolled about in a sexual frenzy with three cartooned females. Laughing as though deranged, the friar rapaciously entered, one after another, every orifice the women provided. Worse, Howard could not avoid recognizing the distinctive animalistic characteristics of one of the women—a long catlike tail, a light orange fur covering her body.

Sins of the mind!
Terrible thoughts, violent thoughts, depraved thoughts, thoughts that came to him on the brink of sleep and that he had delighted in acting out in the cartoon world of Insomnimania. But he had not taken the nun that Auggie offered—surely that counted for something! Then Howard’s heart sank again. He had
wanted
the nun, that precise nun, just as he had wanted so much to follow Auggie deeper into that world of power and pleasure. He had been amazed that Auggie knew about the hatred he had so long suppressed. He had broken away from Auggie because his impending death had reawakened an almost-lost childhood fear—this fear for his own soul.

And in an instant, Howard knew that the priest was right. He
had
been coming here in the unconscious hope of making a confession. This fervent desire was what had been driving him here all along. And what about God? In another moment, would he realize that he’d been a religious man all these years without even knowing it? He braced himself for whatever stunning revelations lay ahead.

Howard’s next words came to him slowly and painfully, as befitted the start of a truly awful confession. “In my dreams,” he murmured, savoring his anguish, “I am an adulterer, a rapist, and … worse, much worse.”

Then it was over before it had even started. He had expected a vile outpouring of nefarious imaginings. Was this all he had to say?

The priest actually sounded a hit disappointed. “We are
all
such things in our dreams, my son. Does it shock you to hear a priest say this?”

“I don’t suppose so,” said Howard. And indeed, -be shocking to learn that a priest occasionally had depraved dreams just like anyone else? But Howard remembered his violent thoughts toward the youngsters on the street such a short time ago. And now he half remembered even darker, drowsing caprices on that late-night computer network—games and fancies that often preceded his guilty visits here, but that grew murky in his memory almost as soon as they happened. He knew that his own case was much more serious. Much, much more. And it was made urgent by his approaching death.
If only I could tell the father the truly degenerate state of my soul. If only I had the words …

“You surprise
me,
though,” continued the priest. “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard anyone confess misdeeds committed only in sleep. Perhaps everyone should do so. But perhaps not. Are we free to make moral choices in our dreams? Does free will exist in that realm? If not, why should anyone confess transgressions committed there?”

Howard didn’t know what to say. He wanted catharsis, absolution, transfiguration, not a theological lecture about sin and redemption. And he felt more and more embarrassed at his own muteness, his inability to articulate his sins. The whole thing was turning out wrong after all. After a few moments, Howard just wanted to get out of there.

Can’t he prescribe a batch of Hail Marys and be done with it?

“You sure do talk a lot, Father,” said Howard with a nervous laugh.

“Sorry,” said the priest benignly. “It’s this graveyard shift, I guess. It brings out the gab in me.”

Howard thrashed about in his thoughts, still groping for something to say. If he left the church now, he would feel more burdened than ever. Should he have made a list?

Then he realized something. He had misled the father. The priest supposed that he was speaking of “dreams” only in the most ordinary, literal sense. Now, perhaps, he could make himself understood.

“When I say that I have sinned in my dreams,” said Howard, “I
don’t
mean during my nightly rest. The fact is, I barely sleep at all. I have—how can I put it?—waking dreams, or barely waking dreams. I consider myself responsible for their immorality. You see, I … engage in wicked games, in fantasies.”

“Ah, you are a novelist, then,” said the priest with an undercurrent chuckle. “I’d love to ask what books you’ve got in the stores. Maybe I’ve even read some of them. But of course, that wouldn’t be a proper question. Well, this is new! Fiction writers never come to me confessing the sins of their make-believe characters. I’ve always wondered why not. But again, we must consider the question of culpability. Did Dante Alighieri sin in portraying an eternal realm filled to the brim with unpardonable reprobates?”

Howard felt a slight surge of anger at the priest’s increasingly facile tone. He had a fleeting impulse to put his fist through the delicate lattice and seize the priest by the lapel and shout obscenities at him. Should he confess that, too?

“No, Father, you don’t understand,” sputtered Howard. “These games involve … women, pain, indecent acts.”

“Do you
believe
that these are
real
women?” asked the priest. “That they experience
real
pain?” Any sign of levity had abruptly left his voice.

Howard was startled, partly at the uncanniness of the priest’s question, partly by own utter inability to answer it.
Did
those anonymous carnal scenes constitute real adultery, real infidelity? And
did
those games with straps and chains and razor sharp instruments engender genuine pain? If so, who
experienced
that pain? He thought, too, of those even bleaker episodes that took place just past the edge of sleep’s dark recess—episodes during which he committed acts of hazily remembered violence. Howard felt tears pouring down his cheeks—real tears, although he was not sure where they came from.

“I don’t know, Father,” he said in a low, choked whisper. “Does it matter? Is a sin of the mind any less of a sin than an outward act? I don’t want to discuss it. I only want to be absolved.”

“I cannot absolve you of your sins, my son,” said the priest sadly.

Howard dropped his head and sobbed quietly.
Of course. How can I be absolved? How can I be truly penitent? I don’t even know the extent of my sins.

Then the priest said, “I
can
absolve you of your virtues.”

Howard looked up, startled out of his grief. “What?” he whispered stupidly.

“Why do you wish absolution for your sins?” murmured the priest soothingly. “Your sins are what are finest and most noble about you. Let me prove it to you. It is easy to say, ‘Father, I have sinned.’ But can you say, with the same simplicity, that you have done something good? Is there a
verb
for committing a virtuous act? No, of course not. This is because we hold good deeds in utmost contempt—and rightly so. Would the lives of the saints be of the slightest interest without their sins? Does anybody really care about their eventual redemption? We revere the Apostle Paul less because he spread the Gospel than because he persecuted Christians, and his name would still be held in awe had his conversion on the road to Damascus never taken place. Our sins are holy, not our virtues. So confess to me your virtues.”

The priest’s voice had changed from comforting gentleness to grim, quiet accusation. Dazed, Howard found himself unable to reason, or even think. He was seized with exhaustion—the same dizzying weariness in which he experienced his blackest fantasies.

“Don’t toy with me, father,” whispered Howard desperately. “I am a dying man. I am in fear for my soul.”

“Your soul is a fraud,” hissed the priest. “It is a sham of the ages. You are random bits of information, no soul. Don’t tell me that you fear for something which you do not have.”

“I have no virtues,” Howard said at last, with a strange mixture of exalted pride and terrible regret.

“You lie to me, my son.”

“No.”

“You have committed the grievous virtue of
forbearance.
You have shown shocking and unnatural restraint in not acting out your desires—in not
perpetrating
them in word and deed. Do you wish to die with such an appalling burden of decency upon your shoulders?”

“No,” said Howard.

“And do you sincerely repent the virtue of forbearance?”

“I repent. I honestly and sincerely repent.”