Gospel (33 page)

O'Hanrahan repossessed the rabbi's glass, poured her a single, and pressed it into her hands. She was seated inexorably in O'Hanrahan's chair, as the rabbi closed the door.

Lucy took a deep breath. “Well, ninety minutes ago I ran into Gabriel. We met when I was making my phone call at the station—you know, checking in with Chicago. Gabriel and I talked—”

Rabbi Hersch: “Did you tell him we had the scroll?”

“I think he already knew.” She tried to sound particularly female and desperate: “Well, if you guys had
talked
to me and let me in on one single
thing
you've been doing, I would've been able to make the right strategic move, so stop glaring at me.”

O'Hanrahan, sitting again, leaned forward from the corner of his bed. “And did he tell you why he stole the Matthias scroll from me in Rome?”

“Well, not in so many words, but I think I know.”

They were waiting.

“I think,” Lucy began, “he was supposed to steal the scroll and take it to the Franciscans. He botched the plan down in Italy but I think he just got what he was after right here.”

The rabbi shook his head. “That little nebbish? That boy couldn't tie his shoe without help. How would he blow up a safe?”

Lucy swallowed hard. “I think Brother Vincenzo actually stole it. But he didn't have to blow the safe. They came in while the pub was closed from three to five.”

O'Hanrahan stared at her incredulously. “
Who
is Brother Vincenzo?”

“The guy who is traveling with Gabriel. You're right, Rabbi, sir, Gabriel couldn't break into a safe, but Brother Vincenzo could, without using an explosive.” They continued to stare at her. “He converted to Catholicism after a life of crime in Naples, after prison. Now he's a Friar Minor.” She added, “I ran into them both in Oxford. They just left on the six o'clock bus to Belfast.”

The rabbi put a finger to his temple, considering.

Lucy: “But
they
didn't blow the safe, Dr. O'Hanrahan.” She took a deep breath. “I think someone different, the man in the German car, was trying to steal it. And he blew the safe, but it was too late—Gabriel had gotten it already. As I said, Gabriel got on the six
P.M.
bus.”

“And the safe was blown up,” said O'Hanrahan, “at seven…”

Then after a pause, Lucy said slowly, “Gabriel said that we were all in great danger. That … that truly dangerous people were after it and might kill you, sir, and you, sir, and me, if I kept with you. He said the only safe place for it was under armed guard. And then he said…”

O'Hanrahan felt a smile play on his face, despite himself: “What?”

“He said, I hope you get to Assisi sometime, Lucy. You know Assisi, sir, that's where St. Francis founded the order—”

“I know where goddam Assisi is, Lucy—what else did he say?”

“And he said tell Dr. O'Hanrahan to look him up in Assisi.”

The rabbi: “You're sure he was headed to Assisi?”

“Well, yeah.”

Rabbi Hersch was revived. “I hope it's true, Paddy. I hope the Franciscans
do
have it!”

O'Hanrahan was rubbing his hands together. “We may not be dead yet!”

“Look, I gotta get back to Jerusalem before my department kills me,” said Rabbi Hersch. “You check out Assisi. The
minute
you get your hands on the thing again, you call me and let me know how we're doing.”

O'Hanrahan was already scooping up clothes and papers and putting them into his suitcase, now open on the bed. “You got it. If we move fast we can be in Belfast tonight and get a nightbus to Dublin…”

“Are you kidding?” cried the rabbi, stupefied: “Get on a goddam plane!”

“Mordechai Hersch,” O'Hanrahan lectured, while throwing his shaving kit into the bag, “I did not come this far on this project to die in a lousy plane crash. For twenty years I haven't been on a plane. I'll take the ferry to Cherbourg, the train to Paris, and then—”

“What? Sometime in the next century you should get there!”

O'Hanrahan reexamined his shaving kit items. “Look, I got a copy of the photos, and you've got the slides. I want a little time to work on this mysterious script.” O'Hanrahan spied a white medicine bottle and removed it and set it aside, adding nervously, “Of course, maybe the Franciscans won't want to give it back to us—”

“It's the property of Hebrew University. Tell them that!”

“They'll take us more seriously,” said O'Hanrahan, pausing to lay the whiskey bottle tenderly, reverently upon the clothes, “if they think we've figured out the translation.”

O'Hanrahan spun around to see Lucy sitting in the chair, her glass of whiskey untouched. He grabbed and downed it in a single gulp: “Aaaah! Well, at least you leave us, Miss Dantan, happier than when you found us.”

“Thanks for the information,” said the rabbi, perfunctorily. “And sayonara, little girl. And again, if ever you should be in the Holy City of Jerusalem, should you be so blessed, do stop in.”

Said with absolutely no conviction, thought Lucy.

“And let
me
say,” said O'Hanrahan, zipping his suitcase awkwardly, “that next time you make it your business to follow someone tracking down a scroll on the ecclesiastical black market, you might want to consider telling the people you work with
everything
you know, so these little incidents won't happen—”

“Dr. O'Hanrahan, you made it quite clear you didn't want to talk to me this whole day!”

“You should never get hung up on technicalities,” he said, closing the suitcase at last. “Morey, meet you downstairs in five minutes.”

“I'll call a cab, Paddy.”

And after the rabbi left, O'Hanrahan reached over and took the white medicine bottle and put it in Lucy's hand.

“What's this?” she asked.

“Lomotil,” he said. “For that ever-churning stomach of yours you're always going on about. A fair trade for the Bushmills, right?”

O'Hanrahan sat on the bed, catching his breath, a whirl of ideas in his head. The room was quiet, but from the street outside there was the noise of police sirens, downstairs the sounds of cleaning up of wood and plaster and broken beer glasses, customers returning to their pints in raucous, nervous laughter to erase the fear of some moments before.

“You're not mad at me?” wondered Lucy.

“Of course I am. You should have told me the second that twirp Gabriel spoke to you—you should have wrestled that little worm to the ground and held him there for me to pulverize.” O'Hanrahan stood and lifted his case. “Well, Luce. All is forgiven, and I apologize for being so unsociable.” O'Hanrahan gave Lucy the sign of the cross: “
Sine, Domina mea, sine me flere; tu innocens es, ego sum peccator.
Go in peace. And you keep checking the newspapers.”

“What for?”

“When I get my hands on Matthias and translate him, my dear, I'll be front-page news around the world.” He gave her a wink. “And in your own infinitesimal, little insignificant way, you played a part.”

She smiled weakly. “Thanks a lot.”

And O'Hanrahan was gone.

Lucy stood up and realized she'd have to go back to David's to get her things. Then down to Dublin to catch a plane home. As she walked down the stairs and into the bar, the smell of charred sawdust and plaster still in the air, she saw the spectacle of O'Hanrahan and the rabbi depart: the professor having purchased another half-bottle of whiskey at the bar, swigging it, laughing at something the rabbi said, frisky and revived as they could be. The old coots. Special Services had yet to arrive and the bartender was adamant that the old men stay and answer questions, but they had an unstoppable momentum.

Standing outside, she watched them scramble into a taxi and ride away. And Lucy was bereft, knowing the adventure continued without her.

J
UNE
30
TH

Lucy had an opportunity to make some kind of farewell I-really-like-you speech on the three-hour ride down in the car, but David and she talked about other things, and Lucy wondered if David was sensing the awkwardness too. Lucy had written a letter last night including her name, address, home number, all relevant details, and a short note saying how happy she was to meet him, how her sofa was open for business … she had paused and contemplated making a double entendre about her sofa
bed
being open for business too … No, not my style, Lucy figured. I could make the joke, but that's all it would ever be then: a joke. And for once, I don't want to be Lucy the Pal, Lucy with the jokes, the trusty female friend.

When they were on the outskirts of Dublin and began to see kilometers announced for the international airport, Lucy knew she was counting down the minutes.

(Why can't you speak what is in your heart?)

I'm a coward, I'm a failure. I'm not pretty enough to be entitled to make a move on someone …

(But you are beautiful in ways that he can see.)

She sighed as the motorway exit passed, then the parking lot entrance, then as they walked with her bags to the terminal, then as they walked through the concourse to check in her bags and purchase a ticket to London, where she would use her return ticket back to Chicago.

“I don't want to go back,” Lucy said heavily.

“I was just thinking how much I wanted to get on the plane with you,” David said smiling.

Was it that he wants so bad to see the U.S., Lucy wondered, or to visit me?

“Anyway,” she said clumsily, knowing he had to get back to Dublin for an afternoon class, “here's a letter with lots of address things and my phone number … and stuff.” Lucy knew her capacity to say anything more romantic was dwindling; she felt her heart darken in defeat.

(
For when dreams increase, empty words grow many.
)

So David said good-bye and patted her on the shoulder, uncomfortably. Then they found themselves stalling, talking nonsense:

“Come see me in Chicago if you get there sometime.”

“Yeah, if I get there I'll come where you are.”

David then kissed Lucy on the cheek and she waved good-bye. But then he ran back to say one more thing: “Whoa, how embarrassing, I forgot completely about
this.
” He held out an envelope. “For Dr. O'Hanrahan,” he said. “For some reason it came to our house.”

Lucy looked at it. It had no stamp, she observed.

“Must have been hand-delivered from the Post Office down the street, special overnight mail or something.”

Lucy wondered if she should open it. “Dr. O'Hanrahan's God knows where.”

“Maybe you can forward it to the rabbi fellow.”

“Yeah, there's an idea,” she nodded, though she didn't have his address either.

“All right, good-bye this time.”

“Yeah, have a good term and all at Trinity. And later on, take care of yourself in Africa. Don't get bitten by a—what are they? A tse-tse fly?”

“I'll bring me spray,” he smiled.

And this time David left more memorably, waving happily, full of warmth for his new acquaintance. Lucy closed her eyes briefly: David. Oh, well, in another world you might have had an affair with someone like that, married him even, settled down and gotten fat in front of the TV together. But not this world.

She absently opened O'Hanrahan's telegram. Inside was a note from the Treasurer, she assumed of Chicago's College of Humanities, and … what do you know? A credit card.

DR. O'HANRAHAN
:

ENCLOSED PLEASE FIND CARD FOR YOUR RESEARCH. WE DO REQUIRE REGULAR SUMMARY AND REPORT PLEASE. FAX
: 312-555-2937

J
OHN SMITH, TREASURER

Lucy looked at the VISA card, which had
CORPORATE ACCOUNT
emblazoned on it, and then
PATRICK O'HANRAHAN
engraved beneath that. Chicago finally came through for him! But that wasn't all. There was an international money order made out in her name for—good God—
one thousand dollars.

Dr. O'Hanrahan, Lucy cried to herself, you left too soon! Lucy wondered how she could send it to him.

First, she went to the Bank of Ireland counter in the airport terminal and cashed her money order.

Second, she went to the travel bureau in the airport concourse.

“Excuse me,” Lucy said to the lady at the Alitalia desk, “the board says there's an afternoon flight to Milan at 4:30
P.M.
Are there seats still available?”

“Yes, miss.”

“How much is it?”

Third, she went to a Eurail information desk and asked for a continental train schedule, which she offered to buy from the man.

“And so if my friend left on the Cherbourg ferry this morning, he'll get in Paris tonight, and then how does he get to Assisi?” she inquired, circling the possibilities on the timetables.

Lucy: “So no matter what, he's got to pass through Florence, right?”

Late that afternoon she sat in an Italian plane, taxiing to the runway. Her wallet contained the cashed money order, minus the plane fare, and she gripped a stack of lire notes ready for a brief stay in Italy.

Thank the heavens above, Lucy Dantan was going to Italy! She'd always wanted to see it. She'd find the professor long enough to give him his credit card and sightsee at the department's expense and then turn right around. It was simply the most exciting thing, the most impulsive thing, the very best thing perhaps she had ever done in her life! Judy would be
green
with jealousy. “You went to Italy too!” she'd whine, condemned to a life on Kimbark Street ad infinitum.

The
Allacciate le cinture di sicurezza
sign dinged on, so Lucy fastened her seatbelt.