The Blessed (20 page)

Lucy looked down at the extinguished wick and noticed the smoke from it was rising. She could feel his breath blowing it. She moved in and brought her mouth to the screen. Loose and relaxed. She opened it slightly, seductively, pressing her lips against the grid.

He leaned forward.

Lucy shut her eyes.

He took his fingers and traced her lips through the screen.

Her tears fell onto the screen, forming tiny square prisms in their path.

“I’m just so tired of putting on a show.”

“Never apologize for who you are.”

“I hate hiding who I really am,” she said. “I feel like you know what I mean.”

“I do.”

The drive to the pastoral residence in Queens was fraught with flooded roads and disabled streetlights, but Frey was determined. It was near closing time as he pulled into a parking space and walked quickly through the pouring rain toward the main entrance. The elderly receptionist had already diverted all incoming calls to voice mail and was gathering her things, preparing to retire to her room to wait out the storm, as the front doorbell buzzed. It was a grating sound, in stark contrast to the beauty of the nightly vesper bells that had just begun to ring out. Her first thought was that it must be something urgent to bring a person out in
this weather. A sudden sickness requiring the administration of last rites perhaps, or a doctor making a house call.

“Monsignor Piazza, please.”

“Whom shall I say is calling?”

“An old friend. Alan Frey.”

A very odd time for a personal visit, but the look in the man’s eyes told her it was both a matter of some importance and none of her business. “I’ll let him know. Just a moment.”

Frey waited impatiently. Dripping wet from the rain, he parked himself on a rubber welcome mat next to the coatrack and an umbrella stand in the wood-paneled entryway. He wished neither to stain the antique carpet beneath his feet nor leave any trace of his visit, regardless of how transitory. After a short while, a grandfather clock against the wall of the foyer caught his attention. The sense of time passing was suddenly acutely noticeable to him. The countdown was maddening. He felt like a wrestler pinned to the canvas.

The receptionist excused herself hurriedly as the long, thin shadow of Monsignor Piazza appeared, preceding him into the room. The gaunt old priest limped slowly to the reception area as his waning eyesight confirmed the identity of the unexpected guest. A heavy wooden rosary swung from his hips, keeping time with both his twisted gait and the hallway timepiece, as he made his way across the marble lobby.

Piazza stood before the doctor silently, remembering every exchange between them, as he looked him over. The doctor
stared back. The frail man before him had lost much of the regal bearing that had nearly earned him the Bishop’s seat. His thick white locks had thinned, his back was curved, his arms weak, legs unsteady, his cheeks hollowed, his eyes tired and milky. A spent force.

“Nice place, Father. I’m glad to see you are taken care of.”

“What do you want from me, Doctor?” the priest said tersely.

Frey gestured for the priest to walk with him into the soggy courtyard, protected only by a leafy pergola, as the harsh rain fell all around them. “You don’t still blame me for the church closing down, do you?”

“I blame myself. I lost my church. But I assume you haven’t come here seeking forgiveness.”

“It is an urgent matter. The Boy. Sebastian. You remember him.”

At the mention of Sebastian’s name, the Doctor noticed the Monsignor’s hands begin to shake, ever so slightly.

“He
was
a boy,” the priest said, the tone of regret unmistakable, “when I sent him to you.”

“Older now, Father, but sadly not any wiser.”

The priest issued a tight smile at the suggestion of rebellion, a certain pride in his onetime charge breaking through.

“Is this the urgent news you have come to bring me on such a dangerous evening?”

“He has done a bad thing. Kidnapping. Murder.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Don’t take my word for it. The police are involved and
they believe it. But for this storm, they might have him in custody already.”

The priest’s demeanor remained purposely impassive. “Well, whatever it is, I am retired, as you see. What would you have me do about it?”

“Do those in our line of work ever really retire, Father? It is a part of us, from beginning to end, is it not?”

“He is your patient.” Piazza waved dismissively.

“He
was
my patient. Now he is a fugitive.”

The statement seemed more an accusation to the priest, as if he might be hiding the boy.

“And you think I know where he is?” Piazza asked resentfully.

“That is what I came to ask you. You knew him better than anyone.”

The priest stared daggers at the sharp-dressed man before him. He had vowed to shepherd his flock, but Frey was definitely a lost sheep. Very lost.

“I should have never sent him to you.”

“I know it’s an unpleasant topic. . . . ”

The priest chafed at the description. “Unpleasant? A child’s life destroyed? Betrayed by those he trusted. Yes, it is most unpleasant.”

“You did the right thing, Monsignor. He was unmanageable. Delusional. In desperate need of medical and psychiatric help.”

“Which you provided so successfully, I see.”

“As successfully as you, Father.”

The priest sat on the stone bench before a grotto centered
around a statue of St. Dominic, founder of his Order, patron saint of the falsely accused. He placed his face in his hands and exhaled deeply. “He was telling the truth. But I didn’t believe him,” the priest lamented.

“The truth? You are as insane as he is.”

“From the moment I foolishly entrusted him to your care, Precious Blood began to die. Without the chaplets, without Sebastian, the purpose of the church faded and was lost. I was lost. That is when I knew the legends were true. That he was right.”

“Not all was lost though, Father. My real estate partners and I were able to secure the structure and will soon put it to a much more practical use.”

“That
structure
, as you call it, was built on the graves of
holy
men with a
holy
purpose.”

“Yes, well, their mission was derailed, so to speak,” Frey shot back sarcastically.

“Yes, until Sebastian. He understood and tried to make others understand. A herald. But instead of being believed, he was betrayed.”

“These are ravings of that old lady who raised him.”

“She was a holy woman.”

“She was a witch. You said so yourself.”

Monsignor Piazza stood defiantly in her defense and Sebastian’s.

“Not a witch. She practiced
Benedicaria
. The Way of Blessing. She passed this knowledge on to him.”

“Knowledge? This is medieval voodoo for the ignorant
masses. She filled his impressionable mind with this nonsense. A lonely, orphaned boy wanting to feel special. The shame of it!”

Piazza looked at the physician with contempt.

“She filled him with faith and fire. He could recognize malevolence in others that even I could not. I see that now, and I pray that God forgives me for my blindness.”

“I’m not here to revisit the past with you, Monsignor. I don’t have time.”

“Then why are you here really, Doctor? You don’t think I’m hiding him in here, do you?”

“Before he escaped, he said there were others. Did he ever discuss such a thing with you? Did he have friends or acquaintances he confided in?”

“Others,”
the priest repeated, as if he had just received word of a miracle he’d waited for his whole life. “As a priest, I couldn’t tell you if he had. The Seal of Confession.”

“This is not the time for antiquated vows, Father,” Frey lectured. “You care about the boy, don’t you? About his well-being. He may not survive this if the police find him first. There may be hostages.”

The priest was rapidly tiring of the doctor’s altruistic facade. He had been fooled once before.

“What will be left of him if
you
find him first?”

“Life is better than death, Monsignor.”

“Not at the cost of your soul, Doctor.”

“I can save him. Save him from himself.”

“Your compassion is most touching. After all, we wouldn’t
want to make a martyr of him, so to speak?” The priest’s voice dripped with the wry and combative condescension he had been known for in his younger days. Piazza had gotten under the doctor’s skin. The veneer of civility torn asunder, Frey’s frustration now drove him past the point of politeness.

“He is mad,” the doctor opined. “Illnesses like these are contagious among the weak-willed, the vulnerable, the depressed, Father. Dangerous.”

“Dangerous to whom? You speak of the spread of faith like a disease.”

“All this talk about faith and souls. It is from a different time. Haven’t we finally grown past this, Father?”

“I don’t know. Have we? You seem quite troubled by something you don’t believe.”

“Fairy stories! Lies! Meant to control the mind and behavior of people for what? For money? Power?”

“Like the drugs you prescribe, Doctor, to alter minds and control behavior. What do you fear from Sebastian that brings you here? Maybe the psychiatrist should ask himself that question.”

The doctor struggled to keep his composure. “Show me a soul,” he railed. “What does it look like? Feel like? Taste like? What does it weigh? Show me a soul and I’ll believe you. And Sebastian.”

“Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed.”

“Blessed,” Frey mumbled. “That’s the problem, isn’t it?”

“For you, Doctor. For me, a solution.”

“That old church was an eyesore, running on fumes for years, Monsignor. No one came and no one will miss it, thanks in large measure to your incompetence. It serves no purpose any longer except as a future apartment block for stockbrokers and their families. On which I expect to earn a substantial return.”

Monsignor Piazza took his argument under advisement and arrived at a different conclusion. He knew now that Precious Blood had retained its purpose, even if it had a congregation of only one. Or four.

“Perhaps you are right,” he said. “Perhaps not.”

“Look around you,” Frey suggested, pointing out the antique furnishings of the residence. “Your time has passed.”

“I’ll reserve my right to a second opinion, Doctor,” the Monsignor replied defiantly, a sly smile crossing his lips. “I think we are done. I know you. I know your kind. You will not get what you seek from me. Not this time.”

“The decision to turn the boy over was yours; don’t blame me,” Frey said. “It is too late for regret now.”

“It’s never too late.”

The vesper bells ceased. Piazza blessed himself and his unwelcome guest as he departed.

“Don’t waste your time,” Frey scoffed.

As the gray light of late afternoon squeezed past the edges of the warping window boards, the Church of the Precious Blood was revealed in all of its decrepit glory. Sebastian was sitting silently in front of the church. Agnes and Cecilia walked the perimeter of the nave and were soon joined by Lucy, who appeared to have an honesty hangover. They stopped to notice odd markings on the wall, fourteen in all, evenly spaced and about head-high, shapes more than anything else but not instantly recognizable until Agnes put it together. These were shadows burned into the plaster walls, bordered now by peeling paint and sawdust, following decades of exposure to the rising and setting sun.

“The Stations,” Agnes said.

“The Stations of the Cross,” Lucy added.

“Stations of the Lost, more like,” Cecilia nodded, noting the missing icons.

“I don’t get it,” Lucy said out loud, shaking her head. “Never did.”

Something they could all agree on.

“A man is humiliated, tortured, and killed for what?” Lucy pondered. “So a pretend rabbit can crap a basket of chocolate-covered crème eggs and jelly beans.”

“You could say there is beauty in suffering,” Agnes said almost wistfully, calling attention, however unwittingly, to her self-inflicted wounds. “And sacrifice.”