“Hey, Eli. Didn’t see you there at first,” said Gold Tooth. “We thought you were—”
“Out!” screamed the magician. “You have turned this City of God into a den of thieves! Out!”
The two dealers hesitated, then hurriedly gathered the nickel bags and crumpled bills from the mud while Eli loomed above them. (If Thomas could have slowed the footage down and studied the micro-expressions on the dealers’ faces when they looked at Eli, he would have seen something not unlike fear. Fear—and respect. And oh how often are those two aligned.)
Eli walked back to his particleboard-and-chicken-wire shack. The magician followed, breathing hard, still angry. Then Sebastian, then Thomas. The crowds parted before them.
The squatter watched Eli coming toward him, but Eli said nothing. He reached into the shopping cart and wrested loose a wooden sign. It read: HOME SWEET HOME.
Eli turned to Thomas. “We can go now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
IN THE EMPTY QUIET of a stained glass interior, the three Christs sat on a pew in their bathrobes, heads tilted, staring at the crucifix above the altar.
“They never get my eyes right,” said the magician.
“Or my nose,” said Eli.
Elderly parishioners were petitioning the saints, on their knees, hands clasped on rosaries. Yearning voices. Abject desires. Too much God? Or not enough?
Thomas stepped out from inside the confessional.
“So what did’ja tell him?” Eli asked, voice too loud for their surroundings. “The Sadducees have these places bugged, so you gotta be careful! And the Pharaoh has agents everywhere, even here. Specially here.”
“I didn’t confess,” said Thomas as he buttoned up his overcoat. “I had a question.”
Is what I’m doing ethical? Is it right?
“And?” asked the magician.
“No one answered.”
No one at all.
The magician looked over at the confessional; the curtain was partly open. “The booth was empty,” he said.
“Exactly,” said Thomas.
On the drive back from Tent City, they’d stopped here unexpectedly, with Thomas pulling into the parking lot at the last moment. “Here we are,” he said, eyeing Sebastian in the rearview mirror. “Our Lady of Constant Sorrow. I used to come here with Amy, your sister. She dragged me here every Sunday like clockwork.”
Sebastian didn’t answer.
And now they were inside, and Thomas was looking at these small gods on the pew before him. “How can you all be Jesus?” he asked. “I need an answer.”
“How can water be ice and steam and liquid?” the magician replied. “Same substance, different forms.”
Thomas thought about the anger that had shown itself in the magician when he overturned the tables in Clothes Peg Alley. He wasn’t playing a role; he was truly in the grips of righteous rage. How do you tease out the delusions from the underlying character? How much of it is entwined, and what is lost if you extinguish the delusion? Much like cutting out a potentially cancerous growth, the question becomes, How much of the healthy tissue around it are you willing to sacrifice?
Back outside, a cold wind was sending the last of the leaves scuttling along the sidewalks. Thomas pointed to the street corner where the magician had once kept vigil. “Your old spot,” he said. “Why were you there anyway, day after day, across from the church? Was it a protest?”
“Not a protest. A reminder.”
“A reminder?”
“That I’m still here.”
“Do you think that’s why Eli blinded his eye, was dancing naked under the stars? Was he trying to remind the world that he was here?”
“Perhaps.”
Eli was tromping ahead of them, kicking his way through the fallen leaves with the deliberate gait of a schoolboy. When a man in a suit bustled by, Eli asked him for spare change.
“Get lost.”
“I already am,” Eli replied.
And as they made their way through the crumbling leaves, the magician said something that would stay with Thomas long after everything went wrong, long after it all fell apart. “Do you know what Eli’s problem is?” he said. “No one cares about him. Only God.”
And if you remove that?
CHAPTER THIRTY
DUSK SETTLED, ALMOST TACTILE. As soft as dust and nearly as imperceptible. They arrived at Saint Mathurin’s Seminary at that time of day filmmakers call “the magic hour,” when the sun has slipped below the horizon, but is still refracted across the sky. A time of indirect warmth, of diffuse blues, of light without shadows.
From where they stood, the seminary looked like an advent calendar, lit from within, some windows shut, some open and empty, others glowing yellow. The one-a-day chocolate countdown to Christmas. (As a child, Thomas never went to church, but Frances brought him an advent calendar every year—which he immediately looted like some sort of fevered second-storey man, leaving behind nothing but gouged windows and torn cardboard. “Pace yourself,” Frances would always advise. But he never did. Advent calendars were supposed to teach children the virtue of patience; instead, they taught the exact opposite.)
The seminary grounds were quiet. Thomas parked his Prius and, with his three Messiahs, he walked up a small hill beside the main building to where the advent lights were reflected in a pond, brackish and awaiting winter.
Eli and the magician stayed back while Thomas walked along the water’s edge with Sebastian. Wisps of cold mist. Cat tails and lily pads, curling at the corners.
“This is where they pulled you out, isn’t it?” Thomas asked. “This is the pond where it happened. I’ve read your file, Sebastian. In the days before your breakdown, you weren’t eating, you weren’t sleeping, were studying all day, praying all night. That’s when it happened, isn’t it? That was when God first spoke to you.”
A small breeze wrinkled the surface of the water.
Sebastian stopped and closed his eyes. “A dove descended from Heaven. It said, ‘You are my own dear Son. And I am pleased with you.’ ” When he opened his eyes, they were wet with pain.
“They had to repaint your dormitory room after you left. Did you know that? ‘God is love and love is God.’ That’s what you wrote, isn’t it? Again and again, on the walls of your room? You wrote a commandment, ‘Love God,’ a thousand times in your own blood, until you passed out, had to be rushed to the emergency room.” Thomas had seen the scars that criss-crossed Sebastian’s forearms. “You weren’t trying to kill yourself, were you, Sebastian? You were trying to say something, trying to write it in your own flesh, a message, a distress signal.”
Sebastian stared at the water. “Thou shalt love the Lord God with all thy heart and all thy soul, with all thy strength and all thy mind.” His eyes grew wetter, but they never spilled over. “I have done that,” he said. “I have kept the faith.”
“Sebastian, what you wrote on those walls, that directive: Love God, that’s from the Epistles of Saint John, right? But here’s the thing: I looked it up, and I read the rest of the passage. There’s more to it than that. Here.” Thomas pulled out a slip of paper from his wallet. “The entire passage goes: Love God, but first, love one another. If you cannot love your brother, your family—whom you can see—how can you possibly love God, whom you cannot see?”
He waited for Sebastian to say something, but he didn’t.
“For Amy’s sake, for your family, for those who love you, I would ask that you reconsider your beliefs.”
The magic hour was ending and the darkness was upon them. The lights of Saint Mathurin’s had grown deeper, and the wind was picking up. Across the pond, Eli and the magician had become silhouettes.
Thomas turned to go, then stopped. Listened.
“Can you hear that?”
Sebastian looked at him. “Hear what?”
“Just there . . . under the wind.”
“The silence?”
“You can’t hear silence.”
 
; “Yes you can,” Sebastian said, more to himself than to Thomas. “You just have to listen really closely.”
Thomas turned his head. “It’s gone. The music. Must have been from inside. Choir practice or something.” Then: “You can go back to San Hendrin anytime you want to, you know that, right?”
Sebastian nodded.
“Why stay with me, then?”
“I felt—I felt maybe you were the one who could do it.”
“Do what?”
“Untangle me.”
Eli was now hollering from the other side of the pond. “Pharisees! On their way! Take heed!”
A groundskeeper was walking up the hill toward them in a slow but determined stride. The white bathrobes of the three prophets were highly visible in the gathering darkness. “Gentlemen,” he said.
“We were leaving,” said Thomas, coming down to meet him.
“Do I know you?!” Eli roared, startling the other man. Fight, flee, or submit. The groundskeeper’s amygdala was quickly flipping through its options. He decided to stand firm.
“This is private property,” he declared.
“Private?” yelled Eli. “I am the Lord Jesus Christ. I own these buildings in their entirety and all the lands that surround them!”
The groundskeeper reached for his cellphone.
“There’s no need,” said Thomas. “We’re leaving, all of us.” He looked at Eli. “Now.”
Eli growled, but relented, and they walked back to the car like an abridged set of apostles. Who’s leading whom?
On the drive home, Eli shouted from the back seat, “I could have smote him! If I wanted to.”
I’m sure you could have.
A night sky, implacably black and bereft of stars. Thomas thought about the old wino at the library with the broken nose and the misaligned jaw, and of the pair of drug dealers they’d encountered earlier that day in the alley and how fearful they had been of Eli. I’m sure you could have.
Something else as well, a murky message bubbling up from below, something one of the Tent City dealers had said: “What are you, a fuckin’ bat?” What a strange thing to say. He must have meant “rat.” Must have misspoken, or perhaps Thomas had misheard him. (This was in fact an urgent warning, if Thomas had only recognized it. Instead, it fell away, leaving only a nagging trace behind. Why would he say bat?)
Thomas took the long way home, over the Alford Street bridge and then down along Inner Belt Road. Streetlights moved past as though on a conveyer belt.
Sebastian was in the passenger seat beside Thomas, staring at himself in the window. The magician was awake, but Eli had fallen asleep in the back and was snoring—loudly.
“Well,” said Thomas. “At least he’s not smoking his cigar.” Eli had tried to light it up on the way to the seminary and had been shouted down.
The Prius was eerily silent as Thomas took the exit onto 3rd Avenue, across the tracks and past Mattress Warehouse. He watched for a reaction, but Sebastian didn’t say anything. Instead, he continued to stare both at and through his own reflection.
“Doesn’t your dad work here?”
There was no reply, but as they drove through the sparse neighbourhoods and industrial parklands beyond, Sebastian finally spoke, softly. “Have you ever noticed? God only matters when he’s silent. Why is that?”
“Sorry?”
“When you talk to God, you’re praying, and that’s perfectly acceptable. But if God ever answers you, they say you’re crazy. They tie you down and feed you with tubes. They take away your visions with medications and—other means.”
Sebastian, strapped onto a table, mouth-guard in place. Sebastian, eyes filled with fear as a nurse applies gel to his temples, and a doctor presses a pair of handheld electrodes to either side. “Clear!” With today’s muscle relaxants and analgesics, he doesn’t convulse violently. He twitches instead like a muscle spasm, like a frog in a high school experiment.
“God only matters when he’s silent. Why is that?”
The magician leaned up from the back seat. “God chose you, Sebastian. He chose you for a reason.”
“No, he didn’t,” said Thomas. “Stop saying that. It’s not helping.”
“Now then, Thomas,” said the magician. “I don’t mean to play the braggart, but I am the Son of God, and I know of what I speak. O ye of little faith.”
“Gimme your hand. C’mon.”
The magician extended his palm to Thomas as he drove.
“See?” said Thomas. “Nothing. Show me the holes. Let me poke my fingers through them, then maybe I’ll believe you.” And then, realizing they might actually try this: “But don’t go sticking nails through your hands! It’ll take more than that . . . believe me.”
“A sign?” said the magician.
“Sure. A sign from God. That’ll do it.”
And—bam!—the Prius blew a tire.
Thomas swerved, fighting to keep it on the road before bringing the vehicle to a jerking halt.
“Goddammit!”
Eli lurched awake. “Wazzit?”
Thomas slammed the door behind him and stomped around back, muttering dark invectives under his breath. He popped the trunk, rolled out the spare. No jack. Shit. He’d taken it out when he’d had the car in for servicing, had forgotten to put it back. Jesus H. Christ.
The others had piled out now and were standing on the deserted sidewalk. The magician was watching Thomas with an amused look on his face.
“Don’t,” said Thomas. “Not a word.”
When he realized there was no jack, Eli squatted down and tried to lift the car by sheer force, grunting like a discount-bin Hercules.
“You’ll throw your back out! Stop it!” Thomas checked his phone. Limited service.
Then, coming through the empty streets, a chugging minivan approached, slowing to a crawl as it drew nearer. Thomas stepped into the headlights, flagged the vehicle down.
Inside: a carload of nuns. In full habit.
They smiled at Thomas, faces brimming with benevolence.
Thomas walked back around the car with the borrowed jack in hand, glared at the magician as he passed. “This. Proves. Nothing.”
As Thomas cranked the car off the ground, spun the lug nuts clear, and replaced the flat tire with the spare, the sisters of mercy chatted with Eli and the magician. (Sebastian held back, eyes down but listening.) They asked Eli about the bathrobes they were wearing, were dumbfounded when he cheerfully informed them who he was—and then introduced the other two in similar terms.
“They’re with me!” Thomas yelled over his shoulder, as he wrenched the last lug nut back into place. “It’s a form of therapy.”
“For who?” one of the nuns asked.
And thus ended the road trip.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
IT WAS HARD WORK, saving people from themselves, and Thomas stumbled into his apartment exhausted. The others followed, weary as well and besieged with yawns.
Past the messy, blanket-strewn sofa and up the stairs, Thomas entered his bedroom, flopped down face-first onto his mattress. Kicked off his shoes, was soon asleep.
He probably should have locked his bedroom door.
An hour (a minute? a lifetime?) later, his thickly lathered slumber ended with the creak of a door. Light fanned across his room. A hand shook him by the shoulder.
“Thomas, wake up.”
But he ignored this, hugged his pillow more resolutely.
Another nudge. It was the magician, insistent. “Thomas, wake up. We’ve found it.”
“Go ’way.”
“We found Connecticut in the Bible.”
Thomas buried his face deeper into the pillow. “No you didn’t.” Then, to himself: “Crazy bastards.”
The magician shoved him again. Harder this time.
“We did. We found it.”
When Thomas came stomping down the stairs, groggy and annoyed, Eli and Sebastian were huddled around the kitchen table like a pair of World War I generals examini
ng a battlefield map. Except it wasn’t a map they had in front of them, it was a Bible, open to the first page.
“Here,” said Eli. “Ha!”
Thomas squinted. Blinked a few times, eyes still foggy. “ ‘Published by New Testament Books, printed and bound in Bridgeport, Connecticut.’ Oh for chrissake. That doesn’t count. I’m going back to bed.”
“Hypocrite! Fabricator!”
Then, quietly, forcefully, Sebastian spoke. “You made a promise.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CONTOURED WITH PONDS AND walking paths, with summer-sweet shrubs and overhangs of weeping willow, the public gardens across from Boston Common offers a reprieve in the heart of the city. Beech trees and elm. Maidenhair and silver bell. This is where autumn first appears in the city, the ornamental maples blazing early, reflecting in dapple-dab, Monet-like arrangements on the waters of the lagoon. It’s where winter first breathes as well. A park for Sunday strollers and families, elderly couples, walking in step, and sigh-heaving office clerks on their lunch breaks. At night the shadows deepen and the bright greenery of day becomes freighted with darkness and an almost tangible sense of dread. This is the id of the city when the sun goes down.
“Get naked!” said Eli. His breath came out as steam.
Thomas ignored him, tromped on ahead, hugging his overcoat for warmth. The three Christs fell in line behind him, walking in single file.
Thomas stopped, looked around. Seemed secluded enough.
“Fine,” he said. He pulled off his overcoat and sweater, threw them on a pile with his jeans and shoes. Sighed. Stepped out of his boxers. Kept his socks on.
And he danced.
Bare-assed and shivering, turning circles, he made a failed attempt at performing the twist and something that looked like an Irish jig, threw in some boogaloo and a bit of Running Man and then—the sudden blast of a spotlight. The whoop of a siren. A voice on a megaphone.
“Shit!” yelled Thomas.
Eli and the others fled and Thomas followed. The siren was louder now and getting closer quickly, with the red-and-blue lights of the patrol car throwing shadows wildly across the grass. Thomas, lungs burning, still naked and clutching his pile of clothes to his chest, ran.