Synopsis

 "The Minstrel" is a 130,000 word novel that takes place over the course of four months, with the exception of the conclusion, which takes place three years after the rest of the story. Its genre is that of subterficial urban drama, where many things seem to be happening below the surface for those characters that are willing to look. The perspective follows the experiences of seven disparate characters from an intimate third point of view: the protagonist, Raul Valesquez, a middle-aged Latino amnesiac searching for the daughter he has lost; Cindy DiEsposito, a thirtyish Caucasian woman who lives on the streets hiding from her abusive husband; Emmanuel Jackson, a fortyish African-American who to the outside eye is a charismatic Christian minister but internally is imprisoned by a crime he committed in his past; Jonathan Pfeifer, a Caucasian paralegal in his early thirties who is caught in a spiritual quagmire where he realizes that the cultural goals he pursues as an adult pale next to the idealism of his youth; his boss Russell Frawley, a playboy Caucasian lawyer in his late forties who finally finds meaning in his life of cynicism after meeting and falling in love with Cindy; Russell's wife Joan Taylor Frawley, an alcoholic who is paying the price for giving up her individuality to fit the social norms of wife and mother, avenging her losses in such a way as to take down everyone in the society with her, and Carmen Sanchez, a middle-aged Latina nurse who is the key to Raul's lost past. These people, representing conflicting sides of general society, come together in such a way that their latent prejudices and fears explode upon one another.

The Minstrel

 ONE

It all began when the bum showed up in their town.

It was obvious he was a bum. First of all, no one had seen him before in this proud town just outside the Big Apple. He didn't seem to be anyone's friend, or relative. If he had been, the advice dispensed would be to get the guy some mental help. He was wearing a brown winter jacket that had been out of style for at least twenty years, even though it was at least sixty-five degrees out this October day. Nowadays it seemed the men wore jeans to work, but his looked like they hadn't been washed for six years, again, the wrong style, no belt, and at least two sizes too big. He carried a backpack, even though there were no colleges or hiking trails in the area. People crossed the street and gave him wide berth as he passed, especially the women. But a few brave souls managed to get a good look him, trying not to be intimidated by his linebacker stature. They witnessed his dark mane contrasting against his pale skin, hair remarkably trim and contemporary considering his lifestyle, the square jaw with the low and even stubble. They saw steel-like posture that would give a sense of comforting authority if he were a man in charge of a disaster. Most disconcerting was his eyes; dark orbs squinting just enough to announce to anyone daring enough to confront them that he was paying attention. Some people later said that when you looked at them, it was as they could see into your soul.

He wandered about the town's streets where the merchants set up their shops, looking to see which of them would offer him work. The first store he came upon was a grocery store with missing paint and broken window shutters, a building out of place in this land of Victorian Vogue. He entered the store, the door creaking complaint with its effort. The store seemed as a morgue compared to the flurry outside, darkened with neglect. The wanderer looked about the store, seeing only a lone man with thick glasses cowering behind a counter of bored vegetables and asked if he needed a worker. The shopkeeper nervously shook his head, no, no hablo espanol; grateful he hadn't listened to the wife with her gun control rhetoric, and for the security of the gun now behind the cash register. He clutched onto the piece until the bum disappeared from his turf, then hurriedly locked the store, afraid of what would happen next. Most of the people here were okay, but a bad element was coming. What the shopkeeper had just encountered was added proof to this statement. Damn hobos had finally arrived in his neighborhood. Worse, they didn't even speak English anymore.

 The stranger was not angered by the reactions of the townspeople. He had seen it all before, souls starved in fear when the feast of love was right before them. His thoughts of them were not thoughts of retaliation but prayers that they would see the love of God as he had seen throughout his life.

He presently gave up his search for work, seeing that today he had no prospects. He left the town and started down the streets of fenced-in yards, yards that got bigger and bigger as he got further and further from the town. It was getting dark, and he was searching for an empty yard so he could go to sleep. He still had some food and money from his last job. For a while he would be okay without work.

 He began to sing. Always his voice had been his solace. His voice had carried him as he had wandered over the years, a minstrel traveling far from anyplace he had known, just like the minstrels of old. It was the talent that God had given him for his comfort in his darkest times, and for praise in his brightest. He sang a song that he memorized as a child, long before he could even read. The song was a simple prayer of thanksgiving to the Lord for the great works he had done in the world. He was grateful to be alive, just so he could love the Lord. For as sinful as he was, he knew the Lord was giving him a second chance.

Inside the two-story colonial style homes that he passed, the everyday bustle of life continued, not yet aware of their new visitor. In one home, a young girl with hair flowing like snow lay on her bed crying, her thoughts flowing like the run-on sentences she spoke in: the one who was captain of the cheerleaders, homecoming queen, prom queen, etc., because her blow dryer had fizzed out; she was finally going out with the captain of the football team tonight, but omigosh she couldn't go out with her hair like this because what would everyone think? they all thought she had naturally curly hair, and now she looked like a dead fish. In another home, there was another young girl. She was the one who as a child had been the girl with bad hair and thick glasses who always gave the right answers, but had in her seventeenth year transformed into a girl with the latest style of frames and tailored skirts, but just as many brains as before. She, too, lay on her bed crying, not as loud as Ms. Homecoming Etc., but crying nonetheless, for she had just been accepted to Vassar college, her first choice. Unfortunately, she had also found out from ept home pregnancy that the first and only time she had sex, she had gotten pregnant. Downstairs her parents were watching TV, Comic Relief to be exact. There was nothing else on; everything was about sex and violence nowadays. The jokes were funny, but the father, being the good leader that he was of his family, immediately shut off the comedy when Billy Crystal appeared on the screen asking to donate money for the homeless. Since he was so rich, he could donate the money himself, the father reasoned to his wife. Leave us working folks alone. His wife, being the good doctor's wife that she was, sat in mute compliance. Neither one seemed to sense the despair of their daughter upstairs as the TV channel switched to a story about Vietnam on PBS. The house was mute except for the peppered sound of gunfire on TV and the grave drawn out voice of the commentator. Vietnam was a scourge that has been forever etched in the minds of Americans, he declared. His listeners mutely complied.

 In another house, one that was not so concerned with sex and violence, Melrose Place was on full volume so that the Mrs. could clean up in the model gourmet kitchen after her football playing sons and stock broker husband. She hated the domestic chores, but this week the cleaning ladies had done a shoddy job. She was going to have to give their dispatcher hell; she'd give the crew hell, but her high school Spanish from twenty-five years ago was all gone except for Buenos Dias. Well, at least she had her sixteen inch TV perched by the bread maker. This way she wouldn't miss Jane sleeping with Jack while Amanda walked in on them. All of the sudden, her exciting interlude with the tube was interrupted by Sally Struthers asking her to send money to starving children in Africa. The Mrs. caught a glimpse of a very dark child with an extremely swollen belly. She shut the TV off in disgust. Amanda should be back in another minute, she reasoned, timing it on her Rolex watch. She had these commercials timed down to the second. One minute, twenty-two seconds, to be exact. Then she could turn on the TV again.

 The voice of the stranger broke into rhythm of their evening. Weak yet powerful, it jolted each and every one of them. The voice was a sound that they had never heard, and it made them afraid. Their fear manifested as annoyance that someone was making a racket at eight at night; startle for the unexpected sound on their otherwise quiet block, and most importantly, as anger, for the noise that they heard was in Spanish, and that could only mean that an intruder had entered into their midst.

 The men of the block came storming out of their homes to set the matter straight and get this guy off their street, relishing the showdown. They were great men ready to defend their homefront. But when they stormed onto the battlefield of their front steps, they were met by emptiness and quiet, like no enemy had ever been there. The men looked around in bewilderment, their noble war march halted in confusion. They wondered if they were having early senior moments, or if those drugs they took in the sixties were finally striking back. Then each saw their fellow neighbors in similar quandaries standing on their steps. In talking to one other, they discovered the voice they heard wasn't in their minds, but rather a collective and communal experience. Each admonished the others to keep a lookout, and to lock the wives and children in the houses for the night. They bonded together, having this common enemy. Trees and gardens invading property lines were forgotten in this time of crisis. They were united.

This is how the stranger who would only be known by many as the minstrel arrived to the last stop of his life. A lover of peace, he was unaware that his arrival here was a declaration of war.

TWO

Several miles from where the action was brewing, in a part of town where Victorian Vogue was just beginning to succumb to the domino of abandoned buildings that littered south of there, a young woman called Cindy could be found muttering to herself among the bustle of evening commuters in their Tuesday best, trying to ignore her. She was in bad mood. Not that she was having a bad hair day, or broke her Atkins diet with a potato chip, or any crap like that, though she had found another clump of dark hair on the pavement when she woke up an hour ago. She hadn't eaten a real meal for days. Whenever she passed by a store window displaying the mannequins in Madison fashion, which was often, she always thought a cadaver was looking back at her; she had never known she had such prominent cheekbones. Maybe living on the streets for the last year or whatever it was had something to do with her rotten mood, but Cindy wasn't considering that possibility. The weather was getting to her. Another gray day. Same shit different day. Cold. Damp. And it was getting colder and damper with each passing day. Even the fall foliage looked cold and damp in its greyness, not that there was a whole hell of a lot of fall foliage featured as a tourist attraction in this part of the Bronx. With the cold weather descending, maybe she should hitch a ride to Florida. She liked it there, one big beach party where the rum flowed and no one cared about anything but where the next bash was. Besides, she didn't think that she could take another winter like last year. Ice everywhere. She'd have more fun hanging out in a walk-in freezer. At least there was food there.

 That thought led her mind to food. Where could she find it. Could she find it. Even though she knew it was counterproductive, she let herself savor her old life like a good toke of 42^nd Street Jonathan's weed. Bad as life had gotten, food had never been an issue. It had always been there, even in her childhood where they practically lived in poverty. In adolescence, her mother forced her to cook and clean while she whored around with her boyfriends, thinking that she was tricking Cindy into believing she was some high rising career lady. Cindy would pig out on potato chips in rebellion against this burden; potato chips, a small luxury now. Food problems got more high-classed when she was living with her psycho husband. It was like, whether the maid would make her some nice pasta, or would she get stuck with lamb chops again. Within one year of marriage she gained ten pounds, going from five four and one hundred and fifteen to 125, and her six packed husband said she was a whale. So she went on diets, turning food away when all the abundance was right in front of her. There had been so much food in her life that she had to develop self-discipline to refuse it. All that food she wasted; she could use it now. All that money wasted on Jenny Craig and Bally's. She found the best diet for no money down. Starvation. Homelessness did have its advantages, she supposed. Her stomach growled in fierce agreement.

 She stank. Maybe she'd go to the Y and take a shower. She felt too weak to move, but the place was only two blocks down from here. She could rinse her clothes out as well while she was at it, something she didn't get to do often enough. Public washrooms weren't cutting it anymore for hygienic practice. It was always a pain in the ass, hanging around until nobody was there, trying not to get caught by some dumb-ass security guard, grabbing a few paper towels, soaping them, ducking back into the cubicle and cleaning whatever body part that was easiest to reach. Repeating the whole process again until she couldn't stand it anymore. Her skin had never been as dry as it had been since she had to come onto the streets. There were parts of her body that hadn't seen water, soap, or fresh air for days. Forget laundry service. Her mother would be more reliable. She liked to forget that she'd been wearing the same jeans, underwear, and red shirt for at least two months, but the smell made it hard for her to put it out of her mind. Revulsion went through her. Her own flesh was a decaying rot. The aging process magnified: instead of being old at fifty-five when it was time to trade in for the younger model, she was old at thirty- or was it still twenty-nine? She was so subhuman she didn't even know how old she was.

Cindy was not a hooker. She stole to survive, though she knew if she ever got caught, she might be sent back from whence she came, like a truant schoolgirl, back to her husband like she was lost property. But she was not into selling herself. Not that she had any real moral objection to the practice, but she had been under the control of men for too long. The risk of jail was the lesser of two evils. Besides, nobody suspected women of stealing anyway, whether it was a wallet left carelessly on a counter or a loaf of bread from a supermarket. They always suspected the black guys for that kind of thing around here. White women's little brains were incapable of such heinous acts, she supposed, in the lawmen's eyes, which worked out well for her. She liked stealing bread and fruit mostly, ready and immediate kind of food. Vegetarianism had never been her thing, but it wasn't so bad when it was the only food that was around.

 She had kept herself pretty safe so far. She'd only been beaten up once in the last year, which was nothing compared to the treatment she'd received with her husband. She'd taken the last piece of pizza from a pie that somehow gotten dropped in the street; there must have been a story behind a fresh pizza left in the middle of the South Bronx, especially a supreme. Unfortunately, Cindy had missed all of the action. But she felt damn lucky to be the last one to savor this treasure. Until this old guy with no teeth who'd come just a little too late for the feast had a temper tantrum and took it out on Cindy. She lost a tooth. The old guy got his dues from her. She was sick of being a punching bag for men. She'd punched his head, his stomach, and kicked his balls. She'd called rape. This rich Italian macho guy with buff muscles, moussed hair, gold chains pulled up to the scene in black Corvette like an angel gone suave. He took out the old guy completely in one manicured punch. Cindy had no idea whether the old guy lived or died. The last thing she saw was the rest of the street people gathering around, taking the old guy's shoes, dumping out his backpack and grabbing at its contents like an open piÑata. There had been woodcarvings, pictures, a stuffed bear, and some money. The last went over well. The stuffed bear got dumped back by the guy's feet.

 What happened to the guy, who cared. That night she got a real four course meal, a real bed, and a nice Italian Stallion to screw. It felt like high school all over again, savoring some really good caramel. She even got some nice clothes, compliments of the guido's absentee wife who was visiting the Stallion's mother in New Jersey with the kids. Giving old Tony a break, how nice. Damn, what a break they had, he from the kids and the old lady, she from the streets. He even got her a new tooth the next day. Better than the old one, at least whiter than the old one. Sometimes now, she'd look at it in the subway lavatories. It stuck out like a suburbanite in the ghetto. But it was better than looking like a permanent Halloween decoration. She still wore the clothes, designer jeans and some silk getup shirt and a leather jacket. They'd held up well, but they were starting to go, holes in the ass, stains everywhere. And they weren't enough to get her through the winter here.

 She heard her mother's voice sometimes. Cindy hadn't spoken to her for years, didn't know if she was even alive. But she still heard her voice every so often, like at this moment. Cindy could see her with her fake red nails that never stayed on, black and grey roots stabbing through her tired blond job, clown makeup caked on her face that was supposed to make her look ten years younger but only made her look like a fool. She generally didn't have much good to say to Cindy, not that she ever did. I raised you with morals. Not to be a slut, her litany would begin. I raised you to be a good girl. To have a man take care of you.

Yeah, yeah, Cindy would retort back All talk and no action, slut. And look what good waiting around for a man did for you. You'd sit by the window telling me what a great guy my dad was, and he was so good I don't even know who the hell he is. I still don't know if my last name is your name or my father's, because I don't even know if he bothered to marry you. I never met him. But that was what a good girl was, a wuss sitting around waiting for him, a pathetic wimp who couldn't stand up to him. Then I found a man to take care of me because I didn't know what it meant to take care of myself, and I wound up just like you, a pathetic mess cowering in the corner. I should have stayed alone the way I was. I would have been better off. I'm better off now that I am alone. Even if I am homeless. Stay away from me with your pathetic way of thinking. Because even though you were willing to give your soul to anyone who had a dick, you wound up alone anyway. Stay away. I need to find my way back to my life. MY life. Stay the hell away from me.

 Her mother's voice slunk away, for now. It would come back, though. It always did. But for now, she was free. Savoring the first moments of liberation was one of the best drugs that Cindy ingested. It was one of the rare moments when she tasted life in her soul.

 Cindy disappeared down a dark alley. She was in search of a hot shower and a good meal.

THREE

  It was Sunday morning; time for Emmanuel Jackson the preacher to give the sermon to the lost. Time for the faithful to gather round the table of the Lord, at least for those who bothered to do so; Emmanuel was disgusted at what little priority God got nowadays. The older generations of the congregation lamented to him that since the sixties and free love, the churches had lost their groove with the younger folk. Such a shame, for the numbers in the congregations were dwindling fast, mostly from their contemporaries dying off, as the younger folk spent many a Sunday morning worshipping porcelain toilet bowls resulting from visiting the temple of Dionysus the night before. Emmanuel knew the excuses: the preachers were boring and out of touch; besides, who wanted to drag themselves out of bed on a Sunday morning when you could lie around watching Meet the Press and cartoons in the comfort of your own home? Such unfortunate souls, so oblivious they were to their own eternal doom, their snooze buttons buzzing away like drones of destruction.

But Emmanuel had some hope. There were some younger folk that were aware that these were dangerous times. That technology was sapping away the spirit in the form of mindless TV and Internet, that the worship of material things was so rampant that anything less than total devotion meant you were unambitious and lazy. This insidious thinking was enough to alarm these fortunate folks to turn to spirituality for answers, not the kind of spirituality that preached platitudes in ornate churches of marble and stained glass, but the kind of old religion that was willing to strike the soul in chastisement so it would wake up and smell the fire and brimstone.

Those getting out of their cars to go to service at the New Covenant Assembly of God in Riverdale, New York to hear the preaching of Emmanuel Jackson were some of those fortunate souls seeking a better way. The ten year old brick building shone like a new soul. There were blessings to be found by the revival inside. Truly, truly, they felt blessed indeed by the shepherd that led the flock. Young and hip, he spoke the truth with conviction, ready to lead the flock into a new relationship of power with the Holy Spirit. So blessed were they were, to have a leader such as he. As the band boomed its introductory songs, and Emmanuel prepared for his entrance, he saw the crowd that awaited his message, having waited all week since Wednesday to hear his voice. He entered the auditorium, and their eyes followed him as he made his way to the front of the church, gratified to see him once again. Seeing him was like eating at a good soul food restaurant, one of his congregates had told him. He hoped he was that, and more, for their souls' sake.

He picked up the portable microphone that awaited him and began praising God, walking in the aisles and shaking and embracing each of the members of his flock, the whites, the blacks, the Latinos, in all, seventy-five of the eighty-one registered members were here today. Emmanuel began praising the Lord. God He is good. Let us all show the Lord how thankful we are today for bringing us His blessings. The flock jumped and sang and clapped at the very words of their humble preacher as the twenty piece band boomed its praises on brass chords and the choir raised its hands to heaven. But the preacher's voice could be heard above it all. His very voice brought joy to their souls.

I am just a servant, the preacher said.

Yes Jesus, the flock replied, praise the Lord.

God has revealed his spirit through me.

Alleluia. Thank you God.

His Holy Spirit is your only protection in this kingdom of darkness. He will guide you like lost sheep to the light.

Oh Jesus. Thank you Jesus.

He will speak through me because he has appointed me your leader. He has drawn you to me, so you will listen to His words that come from my mouth. Nothing that I say comes from me. None of my wisdom is my own. All that I say comes from the Lord, for I know nothing.

Alleluia. Praise you Lord. Amen. Thank you Jesus.

 The flock sang its praises, together, yet separate, each an instrument in a heavenly orchestra. Its melody was beauty to behold. The shepherd let his flock sing its praises for awhile, then silenced them with his hand as a conductor would his orchestra. All went from total noise to total silence in less than half a second, getting better performance than most luxury cars. He looked over his people like the father would his children. All looked to him expectantly, hoping for a word of knowledge from the Holy Spirit to come from him.

Sister Vera is not here, as well as Brother Brian. Our sister is ill with a sore throat. And our brother is in the clutches of the devil. He has been afflicted with depression. Satan has been harassing his marriage and home. Let us pray for them, let us bind the devil together.

Praise Jesus. Satan, we bind you in the name of Jesus. Alleluia. We resist your evil spirit as our Lord in heaven commanded us. By the authority of Jesus we bind you and loose the power of the Holy Spirit upon our brother and sister. We have all the power through Jesus Christ. You have no power with us Satan. Get from the temples where Vera and Brian's spirits reside. Alleluia, Jesus. Thank you God.

 A lull of noise hummed through the room once again. Some of the flock sang, their eyes and hands raised to the One Above. Others mumbled in a foreign language too exotic for any on Earth to understand. Emmanuel the shepherd stood in their midst, his head bowed. The acoustic effect was hypnotic; one could easily be lulled to sleep by it, but this shepherd would never allow such a thing to happen in his church.

He took his place at the front of the congregation. He looked upon them like a father with his brood. In the front, sat Casper Williams, the father he never had, who beamed pride at the arrival of the minister. The shepherd owed him a debt of gratitude, for without him he would be lost. Casper Williams knew almost everything about him. Almost everything. All attention riveted upon the minister, except for a single voice singing in the back. No one paid much heed; people received revelation all the time. The flock waited upon their shepherd for direction.

 The shepherd announced a Bible verse. Immediately all complied except the singer, whose voice was so low that no one noticed his presence. The shepherd stood in silence, and the flock awaited him: Was he getting a revelation? The flock waited in anticipation. When none came, they bowed their heads in prayer, joining their leader in private meditation, waiting for God's spirit to come to them.

 The minister was in his own world, praying for strength. Unbeknownst to the flock, this was his most common prayer. Suffering and fear had been constant stalkers of him in his life. Many times when he stood up here he'd been tempted by the likes of Satan to succumb to depression, anger, rage. He was confronted by temptations that were likely to make him fall in these times of weakness. The gangs, the women, the drugs, the crime; they all waited for him to return. Satan always knew what one's weaknesses were, and he using them as weapons against all of God's creations, against him. And at this moment, he was under attack, the ghosts of two females and a man dogging him: Abdullah, the woman who never grew old in his spirit, who always remained alive; a little girl he had only met once in his life, and her father whom he had had such a vicious hatred for in the darkest part of his life. The hatred, born of jealousy and drugs, was long covered by Jesus' blood, but many times he was plagued with desperation that sent him spiraling back to that day of condemnation. He was overcome with an urge to curse the people before him, even Casper the father he never had. Why couldn't they find their own way, and leave him alone. Why did he have to be a leader to them, why did Casper expect so much of him, he thought, aware of the guilt he felt at holding back from the man he loved. But he didn't know what he could do about it now, after all this time, to confess the lie he had been holding back. When Satan attacked him like this, he was rendered impotent. The burden of leadership became too great for him, the burden of a violent past unhealed. He couldn't even figure out how to lead himself. How could he be a leader to others.

 He was a symbol of awe to them. He was born to be a preacher, they thought. Just from his name, they could tell he was in the role that God intended for him. Emmanuel Jackson, the preacher, the bearer of light. Unifier of the masses. Emmanuel, God with us. There were two groups of sheep in front of him; the rich and white, who longed for the Holy Spirit in their lives but couldn't find him in the stuffy mainline churches, and poor and black; those who looked at the preacher's success and were trying to find the same access codes to God that he had, just to emulate the wealth that he had obtained. He was the middle ground, the safe point between two camps, the lightest of the blacks and the richest of the poor, he was the interpreter they clung to as a last hope for solidarity in a world that scoffed the peacemaker.

For he was a man of God. His life was the straight and narrow; no detours from the devil for him. Hard work. Prayer. Praise. Sacrifice. He scoffed at the arrogance he saw in the rich/lights and the self-pity he saw in the poor/darks.

get on your feet! Yes Lord!

praise and honor the lord! Yes Lord!

you are the chosen bride of Christ, no blemish is to be found among you! Yes Lord!

scorn all sloth and sin! Yes Lord!

resist the devil and he will flee from you! Yes Lord!

stand with Jesus! Yes Lord!

  Jesus, Jesus, he prayed fervently. Save me from myself that I will see love and compassion instead of disgust and scorn for my flock.. I am just a sinner like they are. You are the Almighty. You have never sinned.

 I have sinned greatly. Let me be humble like your servants Paul of Tarsus and King David, who were once like me. Let me become a little more like you today than I was yesterday. Draw me closer to you. I need you. Amen.

 He lifted his head and saw the people about him. They rejoiced. Their shepherd was back. He began to laugh, and soon the congregation followed suit.

Jesus was the laughter of his soul.

  FOUR

 The minstrel, the media decided to call him. Because all he did was sing all day. All of the time. He never seemed to go away. As far as the townspeople were concerned, the minstrel was too good a name for a lowlife who prowled the streets like he was a rabid animal. He became a favorite topic, uniting people who previously had nothing to do with one another. They complained about him while they huddled together awaiting schoolchildren being bused home, while they drank coffee in plastic cups to and from the subway. Their complaints were all universal in tone: why couldn't he speak English, why didn't he stay where he belonged, why did the government let these people into the country to begin with. The story of how he harassed the shopkeeper with his antics was a favorite topic as well: the nerve of him trying to get a job, taking work away from Americans who deserved them. Couldn't he leave them alone? They should call the police on this guy. They paid good taxes to live where they did. Who needed some hobo to come along and harass their community?

 The minstrel, even if he knew what was being said about him, would not have been concerned. He had seen the evil of this world. To him, the bickering would rate as dangerous as a child's music. Besides finding his daughter Raulita, his main concern was where to get some decent work. Restaurants had always worked well for him, as well as construction. They paid him cash for the day, which always worked well for him because he never had to say who he was or where he came from. The questions were always difficult for him, for he did not always know the answers to them. He could find where some who spoke his language were. In that place, few questions were asked. Even though they knew he was a citizen in this land of strangers by his accent alone while they were aliens to be castigated, he had always found acceptance among them They saw he was searching as they were. Someone would lead him to work there. In the end, God would lead him where he was supposed to go.

He leaned back against the wall in the alley. A folk song came to his senses, one that he'd sung as a young boy. His mother taught it to him. He taught it to his daughter. A song about love. A promise to always be there. A promise to care forever, for he always would.

 Someone was looking at him. He could feel the eyes. The minstrel looked into the direction from where they came. He found them far above, in a building across the way from him. Though the person was far away, he could see a vision of a handsome blonde Caucasian man, his blue eyes soft with compassion despite the hardness they had seen. For a brief second, he found them, and was warmed by them. Some schoolchildren crossed his path, a girl looking like Raulita had on her first day at the Catholic school. When the children disappeared around the corner, he turned away to resume his journey. But he thought of the eyes of the young man. The minstrel wondered about their owner. He had a feeling that he would see that person again, and felt a deep peace at the thought. He could feel the spirit of God on his path, and knew he was closer to his destiny, that Raulita was in his reach.

Jonathan Pfeifer stood by the window of his office in Frawley Esq. Associates grateful for a lull in the busy day he had today, his blond looks that always made people ask if he was a surfer reflecting back at him. As a paralegal for Russell Frawley, Jonathan served many functions, and today, he'd been an answering service, screening unwanted calls for his boss: Frawley's cronies Ray Spinella and John Compton called all morning over some police brutality issue, and a Mrs. Danforth threatened to sue Frawley for defamation for not getting her crack-selling kid off scot free. But miraculously all three had found other pastimes besides calling here and the phone finally rested. Even Frawley had stormed out about an hour ago, ruddy faced though still sober, driving past Jonathan like he was just part of the furniture. At least Frawley had the business sense to make sure he had the best furniture to ignore; nothing but the best leather, the latest computers and a real paralegal from a real law school like St. John's to show people what great taste he had, Jonathan mused.

The stranger that had just come to town began singing began, a gift of ballads brought from a culture reviled. It had been happening on and off for the last few days, ever since the rumors circulated that a new hobo was stalking the streets. The audacity, they cried, to be homeless, for one, but to pollute their lily white world with this disgusting noise that wasn't even in English? They had no sense of compassion; probably because they never had to. Life had been preset; a course set for the starts, without the likes of displaced people to mar the blueprint. To Jonathan, the singing was enchanting, taking Jonathan's mind into a world where love ruled, like the song was intended only for him. Jonathan knew Spanish, unlike his neighbors, so to him the music was more than gibberish. He opened the window so he could hear the music better. The lyrics soothed him, assuring him that love ruled despite all the power evil seemed to wield, and to never give up hope on the promise of eternal love. God's love was eternal, and would sacrifice all for his people, as a parent eternally loved a child who was willing to sacrifice everything. Though Jonathan had long ago stopped believing in that sort of God, he felt a sense of peace that lulled him into a state that he just wanted to bask in, like a tropical sun enveloped around him. He looked out the window to see if he could find the source of the voice, and thought he saw a figure in an alley looking in his direction. A gaggle of schoolkids in parochial uniforms walking by on the sidewalk obstructed his vision, and when they were gone, the figure was no longer there.

The melody remained with Jonathan throughout the afternoon. He felt cheered by it. He felt compelled to glance more frequently at the framed photograph of his daughter Raven, nestled on his desk. It was the one of her proudly marching off to her first day of school with her Power Rangers lunchbox and new sneakers He felt joy looking into her onyx eyes bright with excitement and the smile beaming across her heart-shaped face. He smiled with her, relishing the bond that would never break.

 FIVE

 Cindy was wet. She'd been wet for three hours now after getting stuck in the rain, and she wasn't getting any drier. Copping a subway ride to the north side of the borough hadn't even helped, despite all of the dry hot air circulating around her. It just made her thirsty as hell. Literally, probably, if you believed in the hellfire shit. Worse, it was daytime. She usually slept then so she could be on the move at night, but she couldn't get to sleep at all, not that she ever got a real beauty night's worth. The whole situation was getting her quite irritable. She had intense desire to knock people over as she passed by them; they were driving her crazy. All of them stared at her, Gucci and Tommy Hilfiger Wonderpeople. She heard them whispering. The hell with them. They whisper, they criticize, but not one of them bothered to ask if she needed help. For all they knew, in her tattered condition, she'd just been raped. They didn't care. Assholes, all of them.

 The men in particular got to her, looking her over like a slab of meat. There was something perversely disgusting about a man who looked old enough to be her grandfather slobbering over her, holding a hand of a lollipop sucking little girl calling him "Pop-pop." Or the drooling husbands ignoring their wives. She could smell impending violence reeking from these male vultures' pores. The women were easier to deal with. All they did was stick their noses in the air like they were sniffing their own CKOne when they saw her. She didn't care. She wasn't looking to get in with some clique. She had more important problems, like living.

Cold. Maybe she'd go back to the subway station. She wondered why she had left there to begin with. It was always warm there. No would one snub her, because everyone there was a loser by society's fake standards. Some of the guys there were pretty cool, willing to share the spoils they had. Like this guy she used to know called St. Francis, who was a decent guy even though he talked about God all of the time. He helped Cindy through the first winter here. He seemed to get food from nowhere, and he seemed to share everything and yet never go dry. Even the birds flocked to him, hence the nickname. He seemed so spiritual that people thought he wasn't even human, like he was an angel or something, until he was found a couple of months ago in a dumpster with a bashed-in head. Well, maybe she'd have comparable luck finding someone like him again, someone who lifted some food from a dumpster or had a good joint to take her mind off things. She started heading back but realized she'd been meandering so much she was totally lost. All she saw were a bunch of boutiques for people who were so rich that they threw money away out of sheer boredom. She knew, she'd been one of them. But screw that, where the hell was the terminal? She was itching to go somewhere warm, and where she was relatively accepted.

 Maybe she should do something stupid like go to a women's shelter. I'm a battered wife, my husband beats me. See if this time they'd rejected her for being too rich or put her on a waiting list, like the last couple of times she did the politically correct thing to get out of her hellhole. They fed her lingo about some kind of welfare reform shit, and the accounts being joint or some other pencil-pushing red tape. Option two was come back when she was legally separated, after she would get every bone broken in the process of legally ridding herself of an obsessive asshole. See you when I'm dead, Cindy said. Rich women don't get battered. Their lives didn't need protection they way poor ones did. Besides, they had said, with all her money she could get a job and apartment herself. Good old option three. Right. Like it was ever her money. Like Patrick was going to hand over ten thousand dollars so she could get rid of him. Not that poor women got any help either. Men ran the show.

And why should anyone want to help stupid women who got themselves who got tied up with jerks? Cindy heard it all before, from the country club set who thought Patrick was a saint, to the dumbass talk shows, to the men in the bars and the women in the malls. It was the women's fault; they deserved what they got, especially if they didn't leave the first time it happened. They must like it. Then they turn around and want help and expect the good taxpayers to shell out hard earned money for their stupidity so they can have a free hotel. They should have thought about that earlier. Everyone knew that. Everyone was a big expert because they watched the OJ trial. See, the bimbos must really like it. Like after coming back to a shithole called home after a shelter that should have been salvation rejected you, and having photographs of every shelter in a fifty mile radius splayed on a table, one with you walking out the door, then finding your face rearranged and all ten fingers broken backward, that was fun. Sure. They must like it. Dumb little bimbos. She'd heard it all.

 Cindy laughed aloud. Yeah, I like it. Whip me, beat me, chain me-please oh baby, please. You want to know a big secret, my real ambition in life was always to be a masochist. Maybe be in one of those hardcore porn movies where I get pissed on. But I couldn't make it there, so I settled for broken bones for free. You've got me figured out baby. Never wanted to be a doctor or an actress. I truly found what I was looking for in life in bruises and fractures. Yeah, right. And fuck you too.

 She got herself so worked up that she realized she was saying all this shit out loud. Nothing she couldn't live with, but she knew she breached some kind of tea party definition of good public manners. Sure enough, as she finished her lively conversation amongst she, her and herself, she noticed that people were staring at her. She was getting sick of this. This was not a freak show. If anything, they were the freaks, looking like a clone factory spit them out of a machine. She started screaming at the top of her lungs that abortion was a mortal sin and all their souls were damned to hell. Many bodies scurried in many directions. Cindy smiled. Works every time, she thought smugly to herself.

Except one remained.

 Far off she saw a man. Well, not that far off. He was standing in the alley that she was planning to duck and hide in. The way he was looking at her got to her. It was different from the gawkers. It was like he knew her. She did not want to be known. And he was kneeling, as though he had been in the middle of prayer. That freaked her out big time. She'd been joking before. She didn't give a shit about abortion or anyone's soul. Last thing she needed was for this weirdo to think that she wanted to join a religious cult.

 But the thought of being known was even worse than that.

 She ducked into a stationary store, oblivious to all the upper-crust stares she got while in there. She pretended she was looking for a card for someone, knowing how stupid all this looked. She was too poor to feed and clothe herself, and now she dared to soil this reputable enterprise trying to find a card for some Invisible Man. What the hell was she doing in Hallmarks 'r Us? She almost laughed. When the cashier picked up the phone while looking in her direction, she almost left. Then she thought, the hell with it. A night in jail might not be so bad. She didn't have to give her name. She'd probably get out before Patrick came. And she'd get a good meal and a warm bed. She could get used to the idea.

 The cashier's conversation oozed with "miss you honey", "can't wait to lick you honey". Complete barf talk. She judged that unless the cashier had a personal booty relationship with a badge, the fuzz wasn't on the phone. She was actually disappointed. Jail was almost sounding nice. After standing around another couple of minutes, seconds, it was hard to estimate, she got fed up waiting for the cops to come and listening to 1-800-ADULTERY. So she left. Luckily for her, the praying mantis was gone.

 She resumed her search for the subway, and felt relief when she saw the terminal sign just ahead. She was almost dry. It wasn't much to celebrate, but in this life, this kind of thing almost made her happy. Almost.

The day was sunny now. Before it had been dark, and the heavens had unleashed its tears. The minstrel burst into song. This was the happiest he felt all day. It was such a simple pleasure, the sun. Such life it held, such power. An awesome spectacle.

 He knelt down to find his bag, which was hidden behind the garbage can. He wanted to change and find a place to wash. He had just washed himself the previous day, but he desired to feel water rushing over him. A baptismal of his spirit, the renewal of life. He was beginning a new life; this was the start of a new chapter here. It would be good to stay here. Perhaps he could settle down once more. Days like that seemed so long ago.

Suddenly he stopped. He heard a cry, and turned to see what could only be an angel; an angel that bore the same radiance as Raulita. When he saw the angel, he knew she was showing him what Raulita had grown to be. She stood at the alley, watching him, more beautiful than he could imagine. His heart leapt for joy. Dear Dios, what could the angel mean? Was she to lead him to the daughter lost to him? yet just as suddenly as he recognized her, she disappeared. Panic went through the minstrel. He couldn't lose her again; not after all that he had been through. And this angel, he could not lose her either; she was the fruit of hope to him. Please God, he thought, as he ran to the street. But the angel was not in sight. The street was suddenly deserted, as though no one ever walked there. Despondently, the minstrel went back to his alley, going through his bag with much less enthusiasm than he had previously. There was some food. He would find a place to sleep tonight, he always did. But there was an emptiness to his heart that he had not felt in a long time.

He had lost her again. And he was plagued with the vision of death, of a casket draped in flowers, the one that was too much for him to bear. He crumbled to his knees, burying his face in his hands. To the Virgin Mary he desperately pleaded for mercy. The Holy Mother, she had lost her son; she would show a lowly man like him mercy. He began to say the Sorrowful Mysteries of the rosary once more. The words soothed him. Tentatively, he began to feel peace again. In his prayers, he was assured that all that would come before him would be all right.

SIX

  One lovely frosty night a week or so later, Cindy was eating a fine breakfast of moldy bread that she'd found in a dumpster, after sleeping in luxury on a heating grate. She couldn't stop thinking of the praying mantis man, for whatever reason. Then, if life couldn't get any stranger, she saw these dorky college students marching down the road with a clang and a bang, looking like a scene out of Candy Land. They were singing some song that had this hearty feel to it, the kind intended to manipulate you into pretending life was really grand, even if an asshole with a gun just blew your hand off. As they got closer, she could tell it was some Christian hymn—it sounded boring and mentioned how they were going to cast out Satan, Jesus is our salvation, etc. And wouldn't you know, they were headed right for her, like she'd put out some kind of loser radar, here I am! Yippee.

"Praise be sister," began the one who looked the oldest, a guy who hadn't recovered too well from a massive adolescent zit infestation.

 She continued eating.

 Next, some oreo dude who seemed like one of those eager puppies whose life ambition was to prove to the Great White Way that he wasn't one of "those" black guys, sauntered forward. "Repent, for Jesus is your lover. He will be a lover of your soul."

 Sure. And Simon Peter was a loan shark. "Yeah?" she asked. "Is he going to pay my bills or give me somewhere to live?"

 "Of course!" Oreo replied confidently. "Jesus can do anything! Ask and you shall receive!"

 "Really? You mean, abracadabra, just like that? Hell, oh excuse me, darnit- sounds better than any other man than I've ever messed with. Where can I get in touch with this Jesus guy?"

 The Jesus freaks started shifting on their feet like lost penguins. Probably weren't used to having their minds screwed with. Life had been a carnival for them up until they met her. The whole group seemed like they wanted to leave, except for Oreo and this girl she hadn't noticed before that looked like she'd been rented from a Bambi movie. She'd stare at Cindy until Cindy looked at her. Then she'd look away. Oreo was on a selling spree now, undaunted by her sarcasm. And the whole group seemed to be held up by him. Maybe he was less oreo than she thought.

 "You just talk to him. Like he's right here."

 "And he'll just show up and start conversating with me?" She emphasized conversate. Let's see what this dude was made of.

 "Yes! He will!" the leader said.

 She started laughing. "I already talk to myself like a crazy lady. I don't need some holly roller to come and tell me to go blame it on some guy who's been dead for two thousand years."

 "No! You will not look crazy! You will only be doing what you were meant to do," Oreo protested. "And besides, he is not dead. He is alive. He is the Living Word. He is in your spirit. He really will be there for you, if you trust Him. But if you never ask, He will never be there for you."

 This was a really bad joke. Here she was with no place to sleep and she was stuck in a Sunday school with the kind of people who stuck their noses up at her in high school. She started laughing, and couldn't stop laughing. Even Oreo and Bambi were looking at her like she was possessed. Guess they hadn't studied exorcism in Vacation Bible School. Finally she managed to speak through her cackling. "What the hell makes you so sure that I haven't asked? Believe me I've asked. I've asked so much that I've cried myself to sleep and throat was dry from screaming, I was asking so hard and my brain hurt from praying. See what good all that shit did? You're looking at it. A goddamn sore throat and a lot of broken bones is what I got for my fucking efforts. You know what? Tell your God that I will gladly stick my finger at him when he sends me to hell while you fly off with your wings. He's already sent me there. And I haven't even died."

After she finished her tirade, the whole bunch of them got this dumb look on them like they really were sheep. She'd ripped their sweet little god to shreds. What to do? They began to walk away, the wimps. They told Cindy that they wished her well. Sure. Like OJ loved Nicole. But Cindy was still hungry. And didn't Jesus say something about feeding the hungry? So she called out, "Hey." The only one that turned was the kid who looked like Bambi.

 "Your church got any food?" Cindy asked her.

 "No we don't. We don't have a need for food drives in our neighborhood." The girl's voice was shaking. Maybe there was a human being in there.

 "Oh," Cindy replied. "Okay. I just thought I'd ask."

 Bambi swayed on her feet, like she was caught between the urge to give the starving soul of Cindy more and the urge to follow in the path of cookie cutter righteousness. She started to take a step forward towards Cindy. But then--

 "Hey, Carla, let's go," the zit leader intoned. Cindy could tell he'd decided she was one of the Bad People he as a Christian man should shield the women and children from. Screw him.

 A dejected Carla despairingly bade herself to follow. "I'm sorry," she begged. "I'll pray for you," she promised.

 "I'm sure you will Carla," Cindy agreed. "Now run along with your friends and go back to your goody two shoes neighborhood. You hear?"

 Cindy leaned back her head and made like she was trying to sleep, watching Carla. She looked like she could be any girl in the world. Maybe if life had gone down less of a bumpy road, Cindy could have been her. But obviously, that wasn't how it went, and that was why Cindy was here homeless and starving, and Carla was tra-la-laing in the name of Jesus and going home to a pot roast dinner. That was the breaks. A few seconds later, Carla rejoined the flock, busily singing praises to the Lord.

 Cindy listened as the music drifted away. In her inattention, a tear managed to get past her eye and onto her cheek. She swiped at it. Emotions were for sissies, she admonished herself. They were the dubious luxury of those who had food on the table and a bed to sleep in. And that sure as hell wasn't her.

 She went back to her crust and continued with her meal. It was gone two bites later.

 SEVEN

Jonathan felt brain dead as he sat in his office. Three o'clock, the electric grandfather clock bonged, and no work done. He had three cases that he was supposed to research and he hadn't even touched them. He was acting secretary and sounding board for all of Russell Frawley's irate clients, witnesses, etc. This was the second time in a week that he had to cover for Frawley. A drunk day, Frawley explained to him when he called Jonathan's house at six in the morning to inform him that he wouldn't be coming to work. The man was unbelievable. Not only did he have the nerve to harass his employees at home, but he was proud of being a lush. He wished he could go home and be with Ashley and Raven, but it wasn't meant to be yet. It was three o'five now.

 He saw a newspaper. Ignoring the ringing phone, Jonathan picked up the paper, scanning the headlines to lose himself in a world that wasn't in his head. Fare hikes in mass transit, two suspected in armed robbery, a woman remembers her murdered daughter on the fourth anniversary of her killing. Everything in the paper seemed related to death and misery. Jonathan sighed, wondering what it was about human nature that craved so much death and destruction that it got so much more attention than the many good and kind things that were in the world if you only looked He'd love to write a story about Raven, but the press would never publish it unless someone kidnapped her. She wasn't a good enough story just as she was. Innocence never seemed to be.

 He stumbled across an article on page four. The residents of a hamlet outside of Bronxville were convening about the situation of The Singing Hobo, or the Minstrel, some called him. Their economy was being affected by his presence. Just the very idea of a homeless man walking the streets was making people who would normally browse the stores as a pastime stay locked up in their homes. Some residents reported that their children were having nightmares because they thought they saw this bad man at the window. And the police were doing nothing about it. The article cited a Cadillac windshield mysteriously smashed in and aluminum cans missing from recycling boxes. The man was trespassing. He should be arrested. Meaning, this man is not like us. Remove him.

 He really hadn't done anything wrong, mind you, at least not yet. "Not yet" were the operative words. With people like him, it was only a matter of time, you see, said the interviewees, who varied in ages from forty-two to seventy-five, both male and female. After all, how did he eat? He certainly didn't work if he were a street man. He probably robbed people. The ladies had been admonished by town officials to keep their pocketbooks close to them at all times and not to travel alone, if at all possible. There was a Citizens' Concerns Committee number to call if any suspicious activities were cited. This committee were planning to build a blockade around the houses in the form of a big fancy wall, read the article. If they couldn't keep the undesirables from walking their streets, at least they could protect their hard-earned homes from him. They weren't going to let their town go the way others did. The hobos weren't going to destroy their little community, a committee spokesperson named Dr. Michelle Johnson-Frawley said.

Jonathan stared at the name. Johnson-Frawley. He knew that woman was related to his boss in some way. He wasn't sure how, but he knew she was. He'd heard Russell Frawley mention that name more than once. Knowing he worked for someone related to a person who thought like that made Jonathan feel sick. He felt like a co-conspirator in her prejudice, because he knew Frawley would think the same way as she did. Jonathan itched to leave this place forever. If he didn't have a family to support, he would have.

Three-fifty. He would leave in an hour. The ticking of the clock hands reverberated like a bomb in his head.

EIGHT

 Russell Frawley, Jonathan Pfeiffer's boss, was quite busy, which was why he had not come to the office that day. He was not on trial. He was not in a meeting. He was not with a client. He was trying to pick up a girl in a bar.

 He meant to have been at work. Really, he had. Okay, last night he'd been drinking, and was heading home so he could catch a couple of z's before he had to head off to the office he when the bar closed. But, as luck would have it, his stupid wife wouldn't let him into the house. His house. The one he paid for. She wouldn't let him in it.

So after banging on his own front door for a half an hour, and having to yell at nosy Doris Ferguson next door who had no sex life being a Peeping Thomasina staring at him through her window, he took to the streets again, maneuvering his Lincoln Continental through the streets, feeling like all of the sudden he was on an obstacle course. There were garbage cans everywhere, idiots with mailboxes sticking out on the streets, dumb cats running wild. He had a mind to call the ASPCA. But he didn't feel like dealing with animal rights freaks at the moment. Finally he got to a mini-mall with bright fluorescent lights that made him dizzy. He found a pay phone and called someone, he forgot who. So it couldn't have been that important if he couldn't remember.

 He found a diner near the mini-mall and drank a lot of coffee, trying to substitute caffeine for sleep. After all he had to go to work. He was a very busy man But all the coffee did was make him want to puke and besides the waitress had an attitude and one of those ugly moles on her chin that you fixate on because it tangoed when she talked She got snippy, and he said to go see a dermatologist. Then she started to have a nag attack. So much for the customer was always right. He didn't need this shit. Besides, maybe a drink would do him good. He was hungover as hell. One drink, that was all. Then he would go to work.

 And he had been at the bar ever since.

 So, about this woman. She showed up when the sun started blaring through the skylight (What bar had a skylight? This one did. It was annoying. No one ever sat under it. It got too bright there.), so he figured it had to be around noon. He knew she wanted him, because she was sitting two seats away from him, and there was hardly anyone else in the bar. Yet she sat near him. It was like an angel walked in the room; because when she opened the door to come in, the sun streamed behind her. Frawley felt blessed indeed. She was a dark exotic beauty with silky looking black hair and sumptuous brown eyes, a wonderful change from his wife's bleached out blonde looks. She was dressed in holey jeans and a ripped T shirt. She wanted him. She wasn't giving him a second glance. Frawley got the game she was playing. She really, really wanted him.

 He looked in the glass behind the top shelf liquors to make sure he was kosher for love. His reddish hair still looked combed, he still wore his Joseph Abboud suit and it wasn't too wrinkled, so he still looked like he had a professional job somewhere. When he was satisfied with his looks, he turned to face his exotic prey, soulfully searching the profile of this woman to get a sign of how to move. Such pain he saw in the pools of her dark eyes, he speculated with drunken sentimentality. He mesmerized poetically, wondering if those eyes were mirrors of what he felt inside of him. Pleasure fluttered across his genitals in the fashion of a butterfly. Frawley envisioned a pastoral scene where he and this woman were running through green meadows, the meditation rudely interrupted by an unidentified loud belch coming from the back of the bar. But the pleasure survived the rude onslaught, what pain the pleasure inflicted upon him, teasing and torturing him. He wondered if this were a sign to come, that she would be a tease. He wondered if she would be his torturer. His manhood rose at these thoughts.

 Drinks were sent to the lady, courtesy of Frawley. Each time a drink was sent, her order changed. Whiskey sour, gin and tonic, rum and Coke, and a bunch of pina coladas. Each time a drink was sent, it disappeared after one gulp. This was going to be easy, Frawley thought with greedy lust. But she still hadn't looked at him. And by this time, a little audience had gathered at the bar; many were his colleagues having a three martini lunch. Some were watching the seduction scene with bemused interest. Frawley knew that now was the time to make his move.

 "Hi there," he called to the girl. Still no answer. Okay, the coy act was starting to run thin here. She wasn't deaf. She'd certainly heard, "What are you drinking?" But everyone in the bar seemed to have heard his hopeful salutation except his lust object. Frawley found himself profoundly embarrassed. He decided to cut off the liquor supply, while continuing to fortify himself. That should get her attention, he decided. It didn't.

 To hell with it, he decided. There were other bars in this town. He didn't need to take this broad's shit. Besides, his colleagues were here. This whole scene wasn't any good for his image. He could hear them snickering as he put on his overcoat. To hell with it.

 "Thank you for the drinks, mister," she called out as he was ready to saunter past her. Immediately her voice propelled him in her direction. She was his magnet.

 "Hey, no problem. Anything for a lady in distress," he said, sitting on the stool next to him. She sniffed. Frawley wasn't sure what to do now. This wasn't as easy as he thought it would be. She was as confusing as hell. One minute she seemed interested, next like a cold fish. So he ordered another beer and gulped it down. She looked at him and snickered. He snickered back. He cleared his throat again. "So where are you from, little lady?"

 The girl shot a look at him that made her look crazier than his wife. That was a nearly impossible feat. "Look mister. If you want to take me to bed, get two things straight: one, don't call me little lady. And two: an experienced barfly like you should know better than asking a woman where she's from; it's none of your business. Unless of course I've misjudged you. Maybe you've never done this before."

 Spiky, spiky. Frawley liked that. "Oh, I see that the lady, excuse me, the woman has a mouth."

 "I need one," she came back, "to deal with assholes like you. You know, if you're going to hang out and get on my nerves, why don't you buy me some food. I'm hungry. Some fries and a hamburger would be good."

 "Some fries and a hamburger for the woman!" Frawley bellowed loudly. The woman jumped at the noise and swore. "Sorry," Frawley mumbled, instantly humbled. Harsh women always rendered him a little boy, ever since the venerable Michelle Johnson-Frawley birthed him.

 The woman grumbled in acknowledgment. Frawley felt himself leap inside at her very voice. He was finally getting somewhere.

 "Had a hard day?" he asked cheerfully.

 "You could say that," was her reply.

 "Me too. Tough day at the office. Bagging bad guys, protecting the innocent, dealing with crook lawyers, that sort of thing."

 She looked at him through narrowed eyes. They looked lethal. "You're a cop?"

 "Nope. Lawyer. But not a crook one," he added quickly.

 "I'm sure you're not," the lady replied. Her eyes returned to their luscious ovals. Frawley was excited. He was gaining her confidence.

"My name is Russ. Russ Frawley." He held out his hand.

 The lady squeezed it briefly, hesitating before replying. "Adelaide."

 Frawley paused. Anonymity seemed to be her style. Hesitation? No last name? He smiled, hoping to crack her suspicious shell. "Adelaide? Just Adelaide? No last name?"

 "That's right."

 He laughed like it was a great joke, though he felt his mental footing slipping. "Oh I get it. Like Charro or Cher?"

 "Yep. Just like Charro or Cher."

 "Wow. That's cool. You must be famous. Are you?" Wow. That sounded stupid. You must be an idiot. Are you? He berated himself. She didn't answer. Boy, he was acting like such a moron he was losing her. Then the food showed up. She ate quickly, though he wasn't sure if it was just because she wanted to get the hell out of here. She ate as though this were the first thing she'd eaten for days. Frawley watched her. She didn't look at him once.

 "Can you get me another beer?" she paused midway.

 Frawley's heart leapt with his hopes at hearing her, among other things. "Of course. Anything for a woman, especially one as beautiful as you. You're not a feminist, are you?"

 "Nope."

 "That's good. I hate feminists. They whine too much. They make a big deal out of nothing. If you were one you would make a big stink about a man offering a lady a drink. Or if I held the door open for you or something like that. They think it's sexual harassment."

 "That's stupid."

 "It is, isn't it? Me, I'm a gentleman. I like to do all the old-fashioned things for a lady. Pick her up, wine her and dine her. I hate when a woman pays. It makes her too much like a man. I need a lady to be a lady. Something soft to hold onto and look up to. Not this equality garbage."

 Adelaide didn't respond. Frawley panicked. He'd crossed the line. He'd offended her. "Look, can I buy you another drink?" he asked quickly.

 "No. You can walk me to where I'm staying," Addie, he decided to call her, got off the barstool and headed for the door.

 Frawley could hardly believe his luck. He followed her, a dog pursuing his bone, proud that he had shown everyone his extensive sexual persuasion powers. He knew all along that this would be easy. All the winos and slobs watched his exit. Frawley generously pitied them for a second before returning to his real focus. Poor jerks would go home alone. Not him.

 They left the bar without speaking a word. Frawley was too engrossed in his lust to see or hear anything but Addie's moving form. He was particularly absorbed by her buttocks, which were barely covered in a pair of ripped up jeans. No underwear, he noted. His mind swooned with hordes of lustful thoughts as she led him to their destination. It occurred to him for a brief moment that she could be a crazy lady leading him to his death. In his horny and intoxicated state of mind, the whole thing was processed like a Twin Peaks fantasy. He had always gotten off on David Lynch.

 She directed him to a part of town that Frawley only came to when he had to deal with his pro bono clients. Frawley just blinked at the ramshackled building with a neon sign that said OTEL on it , and in smaller lettering, V CA CY. Well, it wasn't his usual fare. But the place had a certain charm to it. A real kinky one at that. Frawley could dig the adventure.

 He must have been staring at the place for awhile, because he was startled by a sudden, "Are you coming or what?"

"Oh, yes yes," Frawley squeaked eagerly.

 Next stop: the front desk. Frawley assumed she was getting her key. So he stood and waited for her. She turned on him in annoyance.

 "Well?" she barked. "Aren't you going to pay?"

 Frawley started, momentarily thrown off. "Well, I-, I-" Didn't she say she lived here? Frawley was really getting confused here.

 "I told you, I don't pay on my dates," she yelled loudly enough for people outside to turn and stare. Frawley was embarrassed as he stood there with all eyes on him. Here he was, a fine attorney, and he would be know as a cheapskate throughout this town? Especially this part of town? He couldn't have that. And suddenly, the idea rumors spreading that he took his date to a cheap motel seem to loom larger than the appeal for a walk on the wild downtown side. This certainly wouldn't do. If rumors were going to be spread, let it be known he was a man of style. He took Addie by the arm and whisked her outside.

 "Hey, where are we going?" she asked angrily. Luckily, she didn't try to break free from him.

 "You'll see," he announced, whisking her into Lincoln Continental, shooing away a black boy that was hovering around the car like a fly. He turned to see a shivering Addie next to him. After a couple of minutes, it dawned on him that she might be cold. In a grand gesture of chivalry, he pulled over his car, momentarily double parking and causing the girl to groan, removed his overcoat and gently placed it around her shoulders. She managed a smile towards him, though it was plain the gesture had taken a great deal of effort, him, and he warmed inside by her attempt. It was the first time she'd showed him any real sign of affection. His heart and penis fluttered rapidly.

 He chose the Chateau Nice, a favorite business meeting place of his when he entertained clients in the bar with jazzy lights and premium aged liquor. Since his were usually male, he had never had the opportunity to stay here, though it was written up in all the Yuppieorama mags like Conde Nast. The valet boy came for the car. This was exciting.

 He told Addie to wait in the lobby while he ordered a room. He liked the girl, but hey, discretion was discretion. So he ordered the best room in the house, a room that had been supposed to be booked but canceled at the last moment. Fate was definitely on his side today. What amenities. King size bed. Whirlpool. Sauna. Balcony. The name? Avery Valance, his name of intrigue, procured by an extortion client who he'd help beat a federal rap for racketeering. License and credit card? Sure, here they are. Room 512. Thank you sir. Luggage? No, no luggage. I'd like to have the room indefinitely. Two hundred dollars on the sly in cash hushes any protest. Of course, sir; stutter stutter. Have a good day sir; stutter stutter.

Room 512. Room 512. The Garden of Eden. With his own Eve. For now anyway. But the good ones never lasted. The bad ones, you married. Oh, but he couldn't wait for this morsel. He could taste her even now as he approached her sitting in the lobby. She looked like a diva, reclined in the leather couch. All the yuppies and buppies passing by gave her the eye, but Addie returned with a look of venom that would melt Democratic Headquarters. Atta girl, Addie. You show the fakeos. He reached her, and it was his honor to give her his arm to escort her.

 "Took you long enough," she grumbled as she got up and accepted the gesture. The impact of her touch almost paralyzed him right then, she was so hypnotic. Man, he'd never been with a lady that exuded sex and charisma like opium. Addie seemed to resent this effect. "Give me a break," she snapped. " I'm not Miss America. Give up the Madonna worship. And I don't mean the singer."

 "I'm not worshipping a dead statue. I don't want some eternal virgin," Frawley snapped.

 She grunted.

 They reached the room without much conversation. Addie had long pulled away from his arm. Frawley resorted to all kind of kinky fantasies with Addie in order to deal with the silence.

After what seemed like six Presidential administrations later, they reached the room. Before he could say, she was naked. Not a stitch on her, and he hadn't even touched her yet. Boy, she wanted him. Russell sucked in her physique in one glance. She needed some meat on her bones, but despite her gaunt frame, she was contoured with shapely curves that made him want to sculpt her like an artist of passion. If hard times hadn't been a part of her life, she would be such a knockout, he knew. Because she was beautiful now. He made a move for her, but she neatly evaded his grasp and disappeared into the bathroom and closed the door. He heard running water, the fixtures to the bathtub being manipulated. He smiled. A shower together, a warm bath of love. Voraciously, he ripped at his clothing until it had completely departed company with his body, ready to join his nymph.

 Not so fast, not so easy. The locked bathroom door barricaded his fantasy. Frawley backed away, confused. Something was wrong. He stood in a hazy mental fog staring at the blocked entrance for what seemed like a long time. Then it hit him. She was playing hard to get. He giggled. Two could play the game. He trotted under the covers and waited for her, pretending that he was asleep, that he hadn't been willing to wait up for her. But a full night and day of drinking caught up with him soon. He wasn't the frat boy from Harvard anymore, and his body hitting the bed reminded of him of that. He was soon out cold for real, before he even knew it.

  Meanwhile, Cindy, a.k.a. Addie, lay in a tub of bubbles. The whirlpool jets felt so good on her body. She hadn't realized how much pain her body had been in until now. She wished she could be like this forever.

 But after a few hours in the tub even she got a little tired of being a dried out prune, so she got out, reluctantly parting with the bathwater like a friend she'd never see again. She had rinsed out her clothes before her bath, and they surprisingly were almost dry. She thought it was going to take a lot longer. She put them on, resenting them. She really didn't want to be reminded of what she had to go back to after this little night on the town. After all, this guy was married. He hadn't said so, but she knew. She could smell it, it seemed so obvious. A guy with a real job wearing a nice suit would only be in a lowlife bar in the middle of the day if he was running away from the wife. The bachelors would wait for the night life for the relatively virginal meat, and the lowlife singles wouldn't be so carefully pressed and tailored by Joseph Abboud. Let's put it this way, old Jonathan would be in bad need of dry cleaning the way this dude was boozing it if there were no wife to clean up after him. Of course, Cindy was technically married, too, but that was different. She was sure this guy's wife wasn't on the prowl after him. In any event, he wasn't going to be providing her with luxury like this for the rest of her life. Besides, he didn't even know her real name.

 She surveyed the room that she was in. Marble carpets. A sunroom the corner of the room with a sauna, steambath, and Jacuzzi dressed in various pastels. A king-sized, fluffy bed. A twinge of nostalgia pricked at her. It was in a room like this that she had been in love. And in a room like this when her heart had been broken. The stuff of yesteryear, that was what this was. She bit her lip to prevent the tears from flowing. If she let them flow, they would kill her. Her tears would dictate her actions, and she would run on emotion instead of her head. She would make a phone call, be lured into the trap that memories and emotions were the bait for, and it would be too late. She would die. The tears could not be allowed to flow. Another part of her humanity chipped away.

 She was hungry, desperately hungry. One normal meal and her body automatically thought everything was just as it always had been, time to eat, drink and be merry. She had forgotten the feeling of normal living. It used to be so familiar that she didn't pay attention. Now it felt strange; like coming back home after a really long trip. Like a magnet, she was drawn to the wallet that was lying on the bureau and the room service menu that was next to it. The wallet had cards under two names: Russell Frawley and Avery Valance. She grunted. What, was this guy wanted by the authorities? The people she teamed up with, what winners they all were. But then again, look at her.

 Quietly she slipped out the Master Card bearing the name Avery Valance. She was in a compassionate mood. Let him have an assumed identity if he wanted. Intuitively, she knew that Russell Frawley was the guy's real name. Maybe because in her years on earth she'd discovered that alcohol was the best truth drug known to mankind.

 She looked at the menu. Filet mignon. Shrimp scampi. Whole lobsters. Her hunger ate her stomach just from reading the menu and know that she could actually order anything she wanted from it and eat it all herself. She cast a long look at the sleeping Frawley. He didn't know how good he had it in life.

 After half an hour of savoring the luxurious menu, she decided on lobster tails, linguini with white clam sauce, a large Greek salad, shrimp bisque, and two chocolate parfaits. Once she placed the order, she wanted the food to arrive immediately, if not sooner. Each passing moment made her more irritated in her starved suffering.

 She ambled over to the sunroom looking for something that would get her mind off of her hunger. She got more than she bargained for. Memories which had been mere flashes and impressions formed in some vague haze flooded her, attacking her with the force of reality. This whole scene, the room, the food, and the rich man had been her life. What a price she had to pay for that life. A private hell, a public spectacle. She was less afraid now on the streets than she had been then. Self-pity crept into her. All she wanted was a normal life. A nice apartment, a job, and maybe a man to love her, in other words, the life she never had. Cindy believed that such an entity couldn't possible exist. A normal life; things that ordinary people either took for granted or who wanted to trade it in for bigger and better; that was what she wanted. She had had both glamour and poverty. Ordinary was the elusive dream that seemed to slip through her fingers.

 And as far as she was concerned, that life would never happen for her. She'd settled down and tried ordinary for the briefest of times, when she fled her husband's home about a year ago, the prelude to her current lifestyle. She almost got killed for her attempt to do ordinary. Till death do us part had almost become reality for her. Her driver's license was what almost killed her. She grunted. She remembered the high and mighty bitches she'd hear put down women like her, in the clubs, the stores, all the hoity-toity snot nosed places where to belong you had to prove you were better than everyone else. The dummies should leave before they became a statistics in a body bag, these great idiots of philosophy preached. They must like it, that was why they stayed. And the unsolicited advice, usually from such close friends like the beautician or the interior decorator, that somehow seemed vaguely pointed at her without her saying anything. And always, it was the women. Men never said things like that to her. Maybe because they knew what the rage of their species was all about. It didn't end with a U-Haul dragging away possessions, a women's shelter or divorce court. It did not end. If the little ninnies were here, Cindy show them reality: See, I took your advice. I left. And that was when I almost became a fucking statistic in a fucking body bag. Taxes and driver's licenses: nemeses to her personal survival. What a joke. The streets were safer.

 The food arrived, all protected and sealed by sliver platters like hidden treasures waiting to be revealed. Cindy stared at the covered meal without really looking at it. Somehow she found herself no longer hungry. She sat half awake, basking in the smell of her treasures. Presently her appetite returned. Food cravings. She remembered them. God did she feel good. She resolved that if she ever got to live a normal life ever again, she was never going on a diet. It was such a waste.

 She sipped at her soup. The rich broth dispelled some of the knots wrapped inside her, its heat adding a healing twinge of pain to her raspy throat. A hot bowl of soup was her salvation. She almost cried when only a few measly drops were left. She licked the bowl, self-consciously keeping her eyes on the sleeping Russell Frawley as she did so. She suddenly became annoyed at herself. Why in God's name was she concerned about what some old man thought of her? She didn't even know him. His opinion didn't matter. And yet here she was, getting all bent out of shape. It made her feel weak and inferior to be subjected to worrying about others' opinions. Her concern about people's opinions was what gotten her into trouble in the first place. She didn't want others to have that power anymore.

 Consuming the bisque had taken the ravenousness away, and she felt more human having some food in her. She went on to reveal the rest of the banquet and sat down to feast on it, this time as a lady with a napkin on her lap and with utensils in her hand. Somewhere into her salad she decided some soft music would be nice. She chose one of those jazz stations that played the kind of music that preached the world would be healed by the salve of romance. She was seduced into a trance-like mood as she ate the meal; the whole atmosphere acted as a sedative. For the first time in a long time, she felt security. It took her awhile to realize that security was what she was experiencing. So foreign.

Her meal made her sleepy. She debated whether she should take the couch or sleep with Russell Frawley. As she was deciding, she idly went through his wallet. Master Cards, Visas and American Express, all Gold. Even Dining a la Card. A picture of him and what seemed to be his wife and son, probably taken ten years earlier, judging by the look of the present day Frawley. His drivers license, which announced that he was born on November 10, 1950. The receipt for the hotel, which said it was October 15, 1997. Almost forty-seven years old. A Scorpio. She was an Aries. Her thirty-first birthday would be in April. She suddenly felt very old. She felt like her life had escaped her, though only thirteen months were missing from her life.

 She finally decided on the bed. After all, she didn't get to stay in many of those nowadays. Besides, he wasn't all that repulsive. Not too much gray, all his hair, no middle aged paunch, nothing explicitly ghastly about him. Sighing, she stripped herself of her tattered clothing, and being as naked as he was, slipped under the covers next to him entwining in him as she slept.

NINE

 The minstrel was walking to work. A man picked him up at the corner where the workers were and took him to his farm every day. The minstrel got food, a shower, a clean room when he worked late, and some newer clothes. The minstrel considered himself lucky. The farmer said when the harvest was over, the minstrel could stay and do handyman work. The farmer said that the minstrel was the best worker he ever found. The minstrel thanked the Lord for his admonishment of hard work, for he was being rewarded. Life was good indeed.

 All the workers needed a place to live. They did not speak the language of this land, just like the minstrel. He was grateful that he could speak to the farmer, that he understood. When the farmer picked him up, he expressed his concern for his fellow men, how they had nowhere to live. They couldn't afford most rent. Money they made went to food and the rest went to families abroad. The minstrel envied them. He wished that he had a family to support, still. But he just had himself to worry about, which really was easier. These men went to sleep cold every night because their commitment to their families made them do so.

 This is what he told the farmer one day when he picked the minstrel up in his truck. So the farmer drove to a building, a great big building. There were boards on the windows. The farmer said that the building had been abandoned because the landlords were drug smugglers, and that they had set fire to the building just before the government confiscated it. Now the government had forgotten about it, so here it stood, alone and unused. The minstrel and farmer got out and looked over the building. If you climbed the fire escape, you could get into the building on the fourth floor. The fire had apparently only damaged the first three. The foundation on the fourth floor seemed to be solid, and there was plenty of light with all the windows. At least the minstrel's friends could be warm at night, the farmer said.

 So the next time he saw the workers, he told them of the good news, about this home for them. Excitedly, they followed him to the building, where they promptly went and moved their few belongings in. A home, finally. They could be dry at night, and they would be off their streets. And they had good jobs where they made more money in one month than they did in a whole year back home. The workers were very grateful indeed.

 The minstrel would go and visit them. The farmer let him take some of the harvest to his friends, so he would give them food and buy them matches and paper so they could stay warm at night. His friends had found a metal garbage can which they used as a fireplace. They would sit around the fire and the minstrel would teach them the songs that he taught Raulita. The minstrel was happy with his new friends. He felt like he truly found a home.

 One rainy night though, while they were singing together, two men with flashlights raided their home. They wore blue suits and held gold badges. They took the vegetables that were in the home. They were ready to grab the minstrel and his friends. The minstrel was enraged at this attack. A feeling of deja vous swept over him, and in his venom, he began to hiss at the suits jumping and stomping all about them. He told them off in Spanish, purposely foaming right in their faces. The blue suits were young, younger than even what Raulita would be now. They were scared by the crazy man's tactics. Seeing an opportunity, the minstrel's friends formed a circle around the blue suits. The minstrel could see panic in their eyes. Feeling victorious, the minstrel looked the one holding the vegetables straight in the eye, and put his hands out gesturing to the food. The terrified man dropped them in his arms like they were a bomb ready to go off. Then the minstrel gestured towards the makeshift entrance. The men scrambled in that direction, and the circle made room for them to leave, and watched as they disappeared, their footsteps fading on the escape as they got further and further away.

 The minstrel and his friends celebrated that night. They sang and feasted on the goodness that the Lord provided. That night they were safe, and they were warm, and they were dry. They were grateful indeed.

TEN

 Joan Frawley was waiting, as usual. Waiting by the window while sipping a fifth of vodka and wondering where her husband was seemed to be her regular occupation as of late. She waited all the time, at the bank, at the supermarket, for her no-good son of a bitch husband to drop dead. One of her favorite times to wait was in anticipation of the big sales at Sach's and Bloomingdale's. When the wait was finally over and she could sink her teeth in the luscious beauty reserved especially for the privileged, it gave her such a rush of adrenaline that no other drug would ever do for her. Those times of waiting she worshipped, with all her heart, all her soul, all her mind.

 But this present waiting, this was different. It was not bringing her pleasure, though she always loved vodka. She resented this waiting; there were so many other things that she could be doing right now: her nails, a massage, or a long hot steam bath in her Jacuzzi tub. But no, she had to sit here by the verandah instead. Actually, no one had made her wait there, but she wasn't in the frame of mind to be self-analytical right now. She was condemned to wait here, rotting by the window, by forces beyond her control. No matter what pleasure she thought of to try to get her off this couch, she still wouldn't move. And still no one walked through the door.

 Damn him, she thought. He's ruined my life. He goes out, night after night, while I remain here all alone with nowhere to go. She lay back in her velvet cushions and began to weep drunkenly. That asshole has ruined my life, she lamented. She ripped at the silk robe about her body. No matter how she arranged it about her, it was getting in her way. It was all Russell's fault.

 Another woman was in the picture. Joan just knew. Call it woman's intuition, but deep in her gut, she damn well knew that she had been replaced. Besides, over the years, she memorized his little routines where his women were concerned. The morning Jane Fonda workouts, his neglect of her, and his calling her old hag to her face. These were all signs that another woman was lurking in the winds. She could read the signs and she read them loud and clear now.

 Leave him, a voice inside her would say. Millions of women have done it and so can you. Joan hated this voice. It was a remnant of the old days when she was Joan Taylor. She hated it because it reminded her of an era which she long ago neglected to have a relationship with a man. This voice tried to convince her that she still was that feisty, independent twenty year old. It seemed to think that a forty-six year old woman with no skills, no degree and no job experience could just walk out on her husband and strike it rich. But Joan Frawley knew better. Her husband was one of the best defense lawyers east of the Mississippi. Supreme Court judges came to him for legal advice. She, on the other hand, was a complete nothing. If she tried to leave him, she would be out on the streets. Some kind of miracle would have to happen to her life to give her the power to protect herself if she left him.

 She primped up her pillows so she could observe the driveway without sitting up. She was getting tired, and the view only revealed the same dank darkness it ha been for hours now. She started to cry again. If she ever found one of these tramps with him, she'd make her pay. She was the one who belonged with Russell. They raised and lost a child together, dear Quentin. She had lost her virginity to him. He had been the man who made her laugh. He belonged to her. She needed him. He made her life worth living. Without him she did not exist. She barely existed with him. But at least being with him made her feel like life was worth living.

 He wasn't coming home. For the fifth night in a row , she was going to have to sleep alone again. She hated sleeping alone. It frightened her. She never quite outgrew her childhood fear of the dark. The comfort of her husband's body was vital to her, even when it was drunk, stoned or smelled of other women.

 The vodka was almost gone. Somehow time had slipped from her; the clock read three o'clock. Another night of loneliness, she thought wearily. For a brief second she caught her reflection in the bay window. Her blonde mane was showing gray, her once-perfect oval eyes had little crinkles by their edges. She looked old. Hatred increased inside her. She had never looked old, even a year ago. Now,, here she was turning into the old hag that Russell accused her of being. It was his fault that she was becoming this. His fault, and the fault of the little biddies that he screwed. She vowed to avenge herself for the loss of her youth. No matter what it took, she would get them both. They had all made her spirit old.

 Russell and Addie were in bed together, which wasn't anything new given the last five days, all care of Trojan. It had been one hell of a vacation from Joan. Though to him, Addie was more than a vacation. It wasn't the first time he cheated on Joan, but he didn't feel anything towards the others the way he felt towards Cindy. The other two were quick one night stands. One a paralegal of what's-his-face yeah Sturbridge though he'd forgotten the paralegal's name and everything else about her other than she had killer legs and twenty three and almost cost him his life because apparently Sturbridge had been bonking her and Russell had committed affair faux pas. He didn't fare much better the next time out. Vampire number two was also ex-wife number two of his friend Ray Spinella. Her name was Dorothy. Don't ask him about Dorothy. No happy little Toto with her. He had to have been shit-faced to get himself involved in that disaster, the fatal attraction Witch of the East Bronx. Somehow Spinella found out; Russell didn't have any idea if he confessed in some drunken stupor or if Dorothy thought the revelation was going to rip Spinella's manhood to shreds, but if it was door number two it didn't work, because Spinella thought Russell's getting tied up with Dorothy was the biggest laugh in the world. Hey, what were friends for but to relieve you of psychotic insignificant others.

So after a night of lousy sex, Frawley began receiving manna from heaven such as dead rats in the mail, and cryptic messages of violence such as (i) wIlL gET YoU from O magazine and Weight Watchers; he'd recognized the fonts from the myriad of trash that Joan subscribed to. After Dorothy, the idea of being stuck in Kansas seemed like Oz.

 Anyway, Addie was nothing like the other two. No fatal attraction here. And she had just as much brains as she did beauty, which he noticed more and more as time went on. She was the complete opposite of any of the women he dated, looks and otherwise. He'd always gone for the tall, small-titted blondes whose refinement smacked of parlor gloves, afternoon tea by the yacht club wearing hats six times bigger than their heads. Joan fell into that category, incidentally, being blonde, five foot nine, and an alumni from Smith etc. If experience told Frawley anything, was not to put any stock into what the Ivy socials and debutante balls offered. It was probably fake anyway. Kind of like the bullshit of drinking cordials when you knew everyone wanted to get down and drink a tequila sunrise and a cold Bud. He thought Joan would be different, being really smart in college in guy things like algebra, but somehow she turned out to be as fake as every other woman he dated, all hung up on what clothes to wear and what terrapin fork went with which caviar and all that. She got worse when Quentin was born, and even more ridiculous after he died. Russell could understand her grief, obviously; Quentin had been his son too. But somehow her grief had done nothing but make the rift between them greater. Who knows, maybe Quentin was all that held them together, that the two of them had survived on the commonality of making it in upper-middle class lala land. But he could have done that with anyone, the role was so generic. What he had been looking for was someone real.

That's what Addie was like. More than her Mediterranean looks and good stack was the fact that she seemed real to him. Somebody with her own personality. Like he could take her to some shindig and say, this is Addie, and everyone would see she was Addie, not get her confused with Tammi or Debbi or Suzi or some other cuti(e). She wasn't just some cookie cutter blonde who got facials and manicures and drank Slim Fast all day. When he first saw Addie as she guzzled drinks down, holding her own like a man and not too ladylike to show it, that was all the first impression he needed. He was hooked.

 Russell watched her as she slept. It was two o'clock in the afternoon; their heated sex made for extremely irregular sleeping hours. The sun peeked through the closed blinds, shining on her face. She was so hot that even the sun had to sneak a peek at her. Russell wished that he had still been a bachelor right then; he'd take off with her and go to Las Vegas, city hall, Captain Merle Steubing or anyone else that would join them together now.

Strange how he felt so strongly for a woman he just met five days ago and knew nothing about. Once he sobered up after their first meeting and stumbled into the bathroom, happily discovering it unlocked, he encountered her hand-washed laundry hanging in the shower. Sober, they reflected reality better than his hormone-affected drunkenness. He'd passed by too many women in the streets and seen too many lost causes in the courts to be fooled by what he saw. This girl was obviously on the streets. Then his natural wariness set in- he knew he was a great catch, of course, but what were a street girl's motive for tying up with him? Was she a hooker, or trying to rip him off, or both? Russell decided to say nothing but keep his eye out for anything suspicious. And so far, nothing: except for room service he hadn't paid for, which was OK by him, no strange charges on his credit cards, he still had all his cash, she hadn't discussed any weird payment options for services rendered, and no psycho pimps or undercover cops busted down the doors. But he still couldn't bring himself to ask her what the deal was. Somehow it seemed disloyal and irrelevant tow hat they shared. But he still wondered what brought her to the streets, and what kept her there.

 She began stirring, a lioness stretching forth to greet the day. Russell felt his heart stir just watching him. She blinked awake, and through half open eyes shielded by her hand to block the afternoon sun, she focused on him.

 "You've been watching me," she declared.

 "Yeah. Why, do you mind?"

 She hesitated. Russell took note of the pause. "No." By his calculation, seventy percent of her said this. The other thirty percent did mind.

 He got up from the bed. "You want coffee?" He asked as he made himself a cup, black, hers the way he'd come to know she'd like it, really light, really sweet.

 "No." She sat up, head buried in her hands. "What time is it?"

 "Two o'clock. In the afternoon."

 "Sun's so fucking bright."

 "Mmhmm." Russell came back to the bed with two coffees. She eyed hers like it was some kind of truth pill that would make her say something that she'd regret later. "In case you change your mind," he supplied. She shrugged and flopped down on the bed. Russell felt at a loss. None of his charm was reaching her. And he wanted to reach her.

 "You want to watch TV?" He said, flopping down next to her. She shrugged again. With her dark hair wild and untamed, she looked so hot. Gosh, if it wasn't sexual harassment to reach out and touch her when she didn't want to be bothered, he'd be on her right now. Instead, he let her have control of the TV. "Here's the remote. You pick it." She picked up said obligatory remote and began channel surfing. From her profile, she seemed a zombie on automatic pilot, her mind here, her mind gone. Russell panicked, going through a mental catalog of their time together, wondering if somehow he'd driven her away. But her body was still here. Even if he had done something, the fact that she was still here meant that he still had a chance at winning her back. But beautiful as she was, he still couldn't help but cringe slightly when she settled on some Gen-X music channel playing Reality Bites the Dust or whatever inane titles they used nowadays. There were six idiots with perfect bodies and no brains tossing a beach ball on Malibu or Venice or some other silicon sandbox, wearing sunglasses that looked too big for them but Frawley supposed were the hip style for this two month period. Then the big moment arrived for the budding starlets: a cameo of each one came on, and they each offered psychoanalysis of the other participants of the show: i.e., Susie is really shy, we need her to get her to spread her wings so she isn't swallowed up by the vultures of the world, like any of Susie's cohorts were a prize catch, David is too obnoxious, we all have to sit down and discuss this with him and call him on his stuff. Russell wondered how many takes it took before they whittled "his stuff" out of "his shit." Frankly, Russell thought it was all shit. Why didn't they get they a job and be productive members of society, like him? If a playboy like him managed, why didn't they?

 Then finally this group came on and played music . It wasn't one of these hyped up things where they wore makeup like transvestites, just a bunch of dudes playing guitar in a garage. They didn't sound as bad as he thought a band that young would, and he told Addie so, adding that they must get a lot of little girl groupies.

 "They're gay," she said. Russell was so glad to hear her speak that he almost didn't pay attention to what she said.

 "What's that?"

 "They're gay. This group. They are gay."

 Russell's inner homophobe glommed onto what she said, and suddenly the five dudes' singing began taking on a whole new meaning. Coming over to your heart conjured up the most sickening images for this one hundred percent diehard hetero. He suddenly grabbed the remote from Addie, ignoring her alarm and flipped to the next channel, where he was confronted with a flock of Afro-American female butts in thongs flapping on the beach and some black dude that looked like he ripped off a jewelry store walking among the harem, a-rappin' and a-chillin' with this other bro. Russell swore in disgust. Where had Bob Dylan gone? Addie looked at him as he indulged in his private lament. "At least they're not gay," she said. Russell wasn't sure if that made him feel better or not. But she was talking to him. It was a start. He moved in closer to her so they were touching. It didn't seem to warm her up, but the gesture didn't drive her away either. The brothers were still a rappin' in an open convertible on the freeway, but she seemed to only hold a dull interest in it, so he put on the channel of neutrality, the Weather Channel, and concentrated his energies into understanding the buxom beauty next to him. It wasn't going to be easy. With that face of stone, it would be like solving a 1000 piece puzzle of a kaleidoscope. Maybe a drink would help.

 "Do you want to go down to the bar?" He asked hopefully.

 "Maybe later." She hunkered down under the blankets again, rolling herself in them. Russell could tell she was enjoying her experience with the linens a little too much, like she was enjoying it while she could, he concluded, thinking of the clothing in the bathroom.

 "Do you want to go shopping?" He asked, marveling at his own brilliance. Shopping would get almost any heterosexual woman going. Maybe the lesbians too. Who knew nowadays. Addie looked at him, the first direct gaze she'd given him since she'd bleary eyed staring at him. He felt like he hit jackpot.

 "Shopping where? Where your wife goes? Or some dive?"

 Oh. He wasn't figuring on that response. Reconfiguration time. Which should he address? Wife or shopping? The latter was less volatile, but by opening the former, maybe he could make headway into finding out more about her life. So, living on the edge like the daredevil he was, he chose the former.

 "How do you know I am married?"

 "Your wallet has a picture of you with her. And your son. You look like you were on vacation."

 The picture from the Grand Cayman, the last vacation they all took together. He didn't want to talk about it, especially about Quentin. "That picture was taken a few years ago," he stated.

 "Oh? What does that mean? A few years pass, and automatically makes you less married?"

 "Some things have changed since then."

 "I see." Somehow that seemed to kill the flow, and Addie was making like she was ready for a tryst with Mr. Sandman. Russell didn't want that, so he chased after the current to bring the flow back.

 "Why are you so concerned. You saw the picture of my wife. But you're still here. So you can't be that bothered by it, right?"

 Addie shrugged like she didn't know the answer herself. "I just wonder why people do what they do, that's all," she stated.

 "Why is that? People usually want other people to do what they need to do. So do you have any idea why you do whatever you do?"
Addie jumped out of the bed. Big nerve had been hit, obviously. "What the hell are you, some kind of Freud?" She headed towards the bathroom, and Russell followed. Damn if he were going to allow her to storm off like that. She whirled around on him like if she had a weapon, he'd be dead now. "Do you mind? I want some privacy."

 "Why are you all of the sudden so angry?" He demanded, almost as loud as she. "Did you really think that I wouldn't have questions for you? Especially since you seem so hell-bent about finding all you could on me? Did you?

 "Boy, you really know how to charm a girl. Is this how you talk to your wife?" She stormed into the bathroom and almost slammed the door, but Frawley caught it in time.

 "Where do you think you're going so fast? Back to the streets?" No sooner had he said the words when she turned and faced him, her face frozen cold. But only for a second. She was a survivor, like him. Poker was more than a game.

 She looped back toward the shower. "I don't have to hear this shit," she said. She was acting like all his guilty clients saying, "I didn't do it," while under oath. Never trust a woman who talked with the back of her head. Not that they were easy to trust to begin with. But from the looks of it, she was getting ready to go, streets or not; and Russell couldn't let that happen. He berated himself. Maybe he'd been too harsh on her. Damn, he'd cross-examined people and been nicer. She threw off her robe , which immediately threw his hormones into a tailspin and any hope of reasonable logic out the door, and again, like the first time, she ignored him by pulling the curtain around her and started the shower. Except this time, he'd been smart enough not to get locked out.

 "Addie, I'm sorry," Geez, that was hard. Apologizing didn't come easily to Russell. But Addie wasn't willing to appreciate this. Steam wafted past him, and a sensuous strawberry smell filled his nostrils, almost diverting Russell from reality. Which was Addie was willing to make it her last strawberry shower just to leave him. He had to stop her. "Addie, don't go. Where are you going to go?"
"Shut up."

 "All right, all right. I won't mention the streets again. But stay. I don't want you to go."

 "What about your wife? Your son? What about them? Do you care how this might affect them?"

 Steady, steady. "Look, my wife doesn't want me. She's a drunk. I know that's not an excuse, but it's not something that I'm so thrilled to deal with."

 "Get a divorce like everyone else does."

 "Believe me, I've thought about it/"

 "But?"

 "But," Russell sighed, "It's not on my list of fun things to do. Or cheap things, either."

 "So, you're not getting a divorce because it'll cost you. Gotcha. Doesn't explain your son though. What about him? Aren't you concerned about how your philandering will affect him?"

 "You're not so innocent in all this either."

 "He's not my son. And I don't have kids. Can't. Besides, it looks like I might be innocent. I'm leaving. So answer my question."

 Russell twisted his mouth in nervous thought. The rage he felt anytime Quentin was mentioned was back. He always dismissed any thought of him so he wouldn't have to confront this feeling of being robbed. He felt rage at Addie too, though he knew she had no way of knowing. But his desire for her was gone. The hell with her. Who needed her.

 "Well? Aren't you going to answer me?"

 "No."

 "Ah. Guilt. He does have a conscience! Doesn't give a shit about his wife, but mention the boy--"

 "He's dead."

 Addie darted around the shower. Russell didn't care about the surprise in her eyes. He'd gotten her attention, but he didn't want it now. And he didn't want her sympathy. "What did you say?" Like this was the Rocky Horror Picture show.

"He's dead. Are you happy now? This is what happens when you nose your way into other people's business. You find out the truth. Happy?" Images of Quentin ran through his head. They didn't comfort him, only reminded him of what he lost. He didn't want to remember. Addie didn't exist anymore as he slammed the bathroom door behind him and sauntered to the mini-bar to forget. Who wanted to remember? He didn't want to remember what it was like before he was robbed. Because he'd see himself in the mirror as he did now, and remember that he had been robbed prematurely.

 He slammed down a shot of whiskey, letting the alcohol burn his throat. It was pleasurable numbness. He could pretend that nothing was real. All these things in his mind, he could chalk up as bad Hemingway. They weren't real. They never happened. Addie wasn't real--

 "I'm sorry." Her hand was on him, her strawberry scent surrounding him like the first flower of spring in the barren winter landscape of his myopia. He tried to maintain the stoicism that had erased her from him, but despite the alcoholic haze or maybe because of it, he found himself warming to her touch. She had been wearing a towel when she came out of the shower, and he pulled it away to receive her, wanting to remember her now that he was reasonably sober, hoping her angelic body would be a salve for his bleeding mind. And as he drank her in, he saw the scars. He saw old wounds all along her body, human bite marks long forgotten but the scars their testament, and from there noticed how her nose, her chin, and her fingers seemed to be too bent to be a gift from God. It could be from the street life. But maybe they were why she was on the street to begin with. His second guess smelled more like the truth to his feral instincts. He knew, and her surprise seemed to indicate that she knew that he knew. He ran his tongue along the scars on her chest, hearing her gasp elude her facade. Before she could protest, he took her mouth in his, and she instantly surrendered, as they impassioned each other in their newfound bond of grief.

 Cindy lay back in the king sized bed. She had it all to herself now that Russell wasn't here. He'd gone off to see his wife or a client or get drunk or whatever he was really going to do under the guise of going out. He'd asked Cindy to join him, she didn't feel like tagging along like some kind of call girl for hire. That was all she needed, to deal with that; for her name to get around town as the mistress. Not only would she have her psychotic husband stalking her, she'd have to deal with his bereft drunken wife of taking all that she had left. What a pair of freaks. Maybe she could give the wife Patrick's phone number -- right. No thanks. The less known she was, the safer she would be.

 The hotel room was quiet without Russell. Cindy was not interested in television or the jacuzzi or any of the other fringe benefits that being a mistress brought. Cindy was getting increasingly restless, and though the suite was set up to be an oasis of luxury, which it had been that for her for five days now, suddenly it felt like everything was closing in on her, like the whole thing was a well-disguised trap. No matter where she went in the place the feeling wouldn't leave, a feeling of panic, wondering what insanity she had led herself into now. What had she done.

 She was going to have to go. She couldn't continue like this. It was impossible to do so. It may have seemed the most obvious choice to continue down this merry path of bliss that she'd been living, but in her life, bliss was only a fairy tale, and she would rather deal with the harshest coldness of reality than to suffer the cruelty of illusion, to have it snatched from her and leave her begging for more like it always did. The darkest chapters of her life began softly, as soft as the satin sheets that surrounded her now: was the illusion worth dying for , as she had once before? And she knew that as she asked herself that question, the answer was no, that even in her worst despair in her flight, she had the knowledge that she had chosen to survive, and not hide in an illusion of love. For what was love anyway? And had she met it in just five days time? Another illusion. There was no illusion in a hard bed of concrete with only other smelly bodies and a crowded hating grate for warmth.

 She gathered the clothes that Russell had bought her on some of his solo sprees, stuff she would have never bought herself. They were too many, and not suited for the life she was about to embark on: expensive wool suits and leather clothing that would make her an instantaneous mugging victim as soon as she walked out the door. What was she going to do with this shit? Use it as a pillow? Maybe the leather would work if she ever wanted to start selling herself and being under the power of men again. But she wasn't about to sink that low. The best she could think of was maybe the clothes could get her some decent drugs, seeing that they were new, then she could sell most for the drugs for money, leaving aside some for emergency fixes or reserves, and then she could get some food. She laughed at all this, even though it wasn't funny. Here her lover thought he'd impress her with Ralph Lauren when he'd have scored more points with Chef Boyardee.

 Quietly, as though leaving a place of sacred worship, she let herself out of the hotel. She didn't leave a note. She didn't look back. If she did, she'd waver. At least, she thought, as she headed back to the streets, if this was a wrong decision, it was her own. And it wasn't the unknown. There, she'd lose herself.

ELEVEN

 In the final moments before dusk, the overcast day suddenly turned bright. The late afternoon sun emerged from behind the gray clouds like a royal making a grand entrance. The minstrel beamed, bursting into a song of praise that he had heard as a child in his homeland. Light would overcome the darkness, the final victory.

He turned a corner and found himself on a street that he had not been on for many years. He recognized the tall buildings, the outline of the projects. The people who had lived there had arrived with such hope, the street had been alive with vibrant dreams and colors. Children had played soccer and baseball, women conspired together behind veils of knitting and babies on the fire escape, and the men stood on the corners and sat in pubs, smoking cigars and drinking beers, plotting to rule the world. Everyone felt rich; blessed with abundance. Their wealth was not necessarily material, though many never had so many things in their lifetime. Their wealth was a bond, a sense they were all family, that they had found a haven of community with one another. He remembered those days well.

 But now, the street was deserted. There were no children playing soccer, no women on the fire escape, none of the men he knew on the corners. Those whom he did pass did not acknowledge him, as if to do so would invite danger. The projects were crumbling, like the abandoned hopes that many had. Graffiti littered the buildings, with the angry protests of those whose spirit had been robbed. It was the only testament left behind to show they had ever existed. The minstrel stopped singing, and all he heard were sounds of decay, of garbage trucks passing by and distant horns blasting in confrontation. The minstrel's previous joy sank into sadness, sadness at what destruction the Enemy wrought against God's children and how he poisoned their souls.

 Down by the old stationery store and pizzeria there had been a church that he and Lupe worshipped at during their courtship and the early days of their marriage before Raulita was born. After all the decay he had seen here, he still was not prepared for what he saw: the stationary store had morphed into a deserted bakery, barricaded with fences and wires. It looked like a prison. The pizzeria had been deserted altogether, shelled out like it was attacked in a war. And the church was the saddest of all. It was a white wooden church which had been simply decorated by the parish, making look very much like the rural Baptist churches he had visited over the years. Its main relic had been an alabaster replica of the Holy Family smiling together, welcoming all who passed by. But now, the building itself had been condemned. Large gashes plagued the roof, threatening to collapse. The windows were boarded up, and the whole edifice had not been spared the graffiti its neighbors suffered. The Holy Family had not been spared the desecration either. Someone had chopped off Joseph's arm, and painted a mustache and devil ears on the Virgin. The Blessed Child was missing altogether, and the minstrel was horrified at the prospect of what had befallen Him. Joseph and Mary clung together in their mutilation, hovering over the empty crib, as though foreseeing the nightmare of the future, the loss of their beloved Son. The minstrel felt tears in his eyes, knowing their pain. He crumbled to his knees, thinking of Raulita, and how he lost her. He had a vision of a casket, newly put in the ground, draped with flowers, an image he could not bear to hold or believe to be true. To the Virgin, he pleaded for mercy. For the Holy Mother knew his pain, of that he was sure; she had lost a child just as he had. She would show him mercy, bring Raulita to him in wholeness. He recited the Sorrowful Mysteries of the rosary, and felt her compassion. Through her compassion, the minstrel knew that God's comfort was upon him, the Virgin an agent of God's glorious love. The minstrel clung to the feet of the statue, cocooned in the warmth that his soul now felt. When he knew he was strong enough to leave, he departed from the church, and the destruction he saw around him no longer seemed so strong, for he was renewed in God's power.

Just as he turned to leave, a dark-skinned man of medium height carrying a Bible approached him. The man seemed familiar and unfamiliar all at once. He was walking quickly, head down, as though deep in thought. But for just one second, their eyes met. The minstrel thought he saw recognition in the man's eyes, but the man continued briskly along his path. The minstrel turned and watch the receding figure, and saw a vision of a dove trying to envelop the man in a cloud, but the man kept evading it. Raulita suddenly appeared between him and the man, as innocent and vibrant as she had been before her little brother Pablo's death, before it all ended, skipping the way she did when she played hopscotch with her friends. She followed the man as he turned a corner, and along with the dove, disappeared from sight. The minstrel cast a final look at the Holy Family, asking for God's protection of the man. Then he walked in the direction that the trio had traveled, trusting he was closer to finding his way back home.

 Emmanuel Jackson went on his usual walk after official office hours ended. There were times when office hours went long past the official hour, times when he was sitting over a hospital bed, praying for the healing of a brother or sister, or called to the prisons he called home for too long, introducing the glory of Christ to a soul that was as lost as he once was. When he went there, he thought of Carlos, a lifer who risked his safety by proclaiming Christ in jail. The peace of his soul led Emmanuel to accept the love of Christ. He died just a month after Emmanuel's conversion, but his impact stayed with Emmanuel. Anytime he felt fear, he would think of Carlos and his jailhouse preaching, who faced down fear with God's love. Carlos had not allowed fear to dictate his actions, so Emmanuel made it his credos as well. Anytime, anywhere he was called to proclaim Christ, he would go. It was the least he could do with his life, considering how useless and worthless he knew he was. He never told anyone but the late Carlos of the spiritual battle that raged inside of him, not even Casper Williams, the elder who had pulled him out of the life of revolving door prisons, and into the ministry. It was his thorn of torment, his cross to bear.

But today had been an uneventful day, with the exception of two phone calls from Sister Vera. She was a prayer warrior on the order of the prophetess Anna. She called twice today. The first call had been for intercessory prayer for the rash of crimes that had been springing up in the area. Just last month there had been a killing of a street person near the church, a vicious stabbing that had woken up the community to the fact that crime could happen anywhere, not just the south side of the city. Soon after that, a wave of vandalism hit the area, busted windows in the night, and racial epithets splayed over buildings that were already dead of life. Today in particular, Sister Vera felt the need to pray. Later in the afternoon, she called again. She had an urgent word of prophecy for him. Today, God would confront him with an issue from his past that he had been trying to avoid. She gave him no details, and though there was no way she could know, because one person took his secret to the grave with him, paranoia flooded Emmanuel, that he had been found out. Sister Vera's prayer for him did nothing to allay the fear, and despite his resolve, Emmanuel could not fight it. He wondered what God had in His mind then, and now as he walked about a deserted street. It was one of the places he cased in his old life; he wasn't too afraid of ghosts here, for most people from that life were dead or in prison. It was on this street where he met his girl, Abdullah MacNamara, Islam Girl, her street name before he rescued her and made her his hostage. She was the woman he would die for, the woman he could not live without. He could picture her ebony lips upon his neck, the caress entrapping him to believe that she was forever. He saw her smiling, rubbing the magical channel of her womb which carried their unborn child. In the vision, he slapped her away, not wanting the trap, because he knew the nightmare which would follow, the root of his secret fear. Jesus has washed away my sins. My past is covered by the blood. He repeated the intonation which Carlos taught him as spiritual warfare. People like us, he instructed, are tortured by Satan through our past. We must remember that no matter what we have done, the blood has washed us clean. It would make him stronger. Jesus, be my strength.

 Just as he was beginning to feel revitalized, he saw a man walking past the condemned Catholic church. They encountered each other through their eyes only, but as Emmanuel passed the man, his image locked into his mind. And as the man's voice began to sing, a voice that resonated like the fallen angel of light himself, a memory resurrected in his mind which he did not want to see risen. But it was there, unfolding with a life of its own which he could not exterminate. He wondered if the man were an angel or a demon, to bring such chaos to him. Fear stayed in his bones despite his cry to the living God, and he remembered Sister Vera's prophecy, that he would be confronted by the past he did not want to face. He walked away, quickening his pace, as though to outrun the images that were flooding him, but he could not: the ghost of a little girl whom he had buried alive, a little girl whom he had met only once in his life, on the darkest night of his soul.

TWELVE

 Jonathan was tired. It had been a long day at work. Frawley had missed his third day at the office in two weeks, as well as two trials. Jonathan felt like an idiot covering for his boss in court, and when Frawley's clients called, for he did not know what to tell them when they demanded Frawley's whereabouts. So he got yelled at, while Frawley was probably out partying his butt off in some bar. He was glad to be home now. It felt good to have a meal with his family, to clean the dishes with his wife and daughter, and sit on his own couch and watch news on his own TV. So glad to be able to enjoy the little pleasures of his life. So good to have a home.

 He was just standing up to get something to eat when he heard the words "race riot" coming from the TV. His attention riveted upon the screen, watching the young Asian reporters mouth. The words race riot made his blood ripple. He felt conscious of his whiteness, and the danger it could present in this time. He wanted to run from his own skin when racial danger was present. He was reminded that he, Joseph Christopher Pfeifer, was white.

 Living in this part of town, being white was an advantage. He could walk into a store or down the street without being stalked, or blatantly accused of stealing just for handling merchandise at a storefront. For everyone else though, it was another story. He remembered the time he invited an old college buddy of his, Michael Samuel, to his house for a weekend just after he got back from Oklahoma. Raven had been just about two then. Michael was black, which never made a difference to him but apparently made a difference to everyone else around his neighborhood. Jonathan recalled walking down the street with Michael and watching his neighbors cross the street when they saw his buddy and him coming. The bravest would give stay on the same side, but wouldn't pass without throwing Jonathan a dirty look, as if to say, how dare you bring that garbage into the neighborhood. Jonathan was embarrassed for his friend, who had the dignity not to comment on their crass behavior. But he never visited Jonathan again. Jonathan hadn't spoken to what had been his best friend for over two years now.

 Jonathan himself never did so well, either there. By virtue of his whiteness, he was recruited to join the war against the coloreds. When he had been living with his grandparents, they tried to school him in the logic that white was better, but he never got it. His parents had taught him differently. They had been missionaries for the inner cities, and he had grown up believing that God made the black one, the yellow one, the brown one, the red one, and the white one all equal. God had sent his Son to rise up against sin for all of them. By the time Jonathan was sent to live with his paternal grandparents when his parents were killed in a car crash, it was too late for him to be convinced otherwise. He was nine years old, and he had seen too much of reality to buy his grandparents' rhetoric. So he was deemed an insolent. A nigger lover. And of course bringing home his half-breed daughter really topped everything else. But he was white. So he was tolerated.

 There were shouts coming from the TV. A mob of people congregated in front of a hospital. It looked like Columbia Presbyterian. It was nearly impossible to decipher the reporter's voice amidst the roar of the crowd, and Jonathan felt frustrated, wanting to know what the scene was about. And yet, he didn't want to know either. It made him afraid. The war had been declared between the races, and he would be thrown on a side. He didn't want to be there.

 Someone had been attacked. It was a white man, and the sketch of the suspect was that of a black man. Another person was seen fleeing the crime. They showed this composite, and it was that of a white woman. The sketch looked vaguely familiar to him, enough that he felt frozen to his seat. The reporter said something else, but Jonathan still couldn't make out what she said. He wished to hell that he could hear what was going on. He wanted to know what she had done or what had happened to her.

Raven bounded toward him, snapping his attention away to her. With the spontaneity of a child, she jumped into Jonathan's lap, hoping to find eternal security in her father's embrace. Her smile conveyed this, entrusting an awesome amount of responsibility upon Jonathan. How could he be a tower if strength for this innocent one when he could hardly find the strength to sustain himself. But Raven's smile never wavered. She loved him. Would she love him as much on the day that she discovered that he was not God? He wondered. He prayed that she would. She was his symbol of peace and purity. He looked into her eyes and all thoughts of race, the Brownies, and Frawley were gone. In her eyes, he saw hope. In her heart, there he found his peace.

THIRTEEN

 The minstrel sat by the river. He shivered as he had just washed. He had tried to wait inside the library until he was fully dry, but he had been asked to leave; they said that he was getting all of the books wet. It was all right; he had been there most of the day. He loved to read, and this library had a lot of Spanish books. He just wished it wasn't so cold. Otherwise, outside it was beautiful. The sun was shining brightly. God showed his beauty in the outdoors.

 He began humming a simple folk tune. It had been one of Raulita's favorites as a child, about a princess and her favorite lamb. The princess had magical powers, unbeknownst to anyone but the lamb. She was able to protect her favorite creature from all harm, even from the big evil wolves that lived in the deep black forest. Were it that he had those powers that the princess had. The devil would tempt him to sell his soul for that power, just to have Raulita and Lupe by his side once more, safe and happy just like it used to be. His life didn't matter much now, for his family had always been his life. Without them he was nothing.

 The city lay before him in the distance with its towering statures and corroded air. HE listened, wondering if her could hear a single noise amidst the low but audible roar, but he could not. IT was all blended together, enmeshed, confused, devoid of originality. It was where he was born, somewhere in that city or some other city. He just remembered dirt being everywhere in the city where he was born. Always scared. Being glad to survive, just for one more day. Then seeing God. In the faces of pain that also rejoiced. That was where he came from. And he watched it from the peace that he found here in the country. Even from afar, the city had power.

 He found a change of attire in a clothing bin later that night. He pack a bunch into his knapsack for later use. Of his old cloths, he dispensed of in the clothing bin. He had no more use of them, for he carried little with him. If someone had use for them, he was grateful. God would lead him from here.

After he had gotten his supply of clothes, he went in search of a place where he could go to bed. In a few days, he would meet with the farmer again and stay with him. For now he was on his own. He liked the solitude, and it he could look for his daughter if he was out on the streets. The streets did not frighten him. There was darkness everywhere, and there was light as well. No place was any less dangerous than any other, for Satan and God could bee found in any corner of this earth. Having God, he had no fear of the dark.

 There were trees here; trees that were segregated by fences and house. In the daytime, the trees were a splendor of colors. Now they were dark. He walked through one of the yards. It was amazing how much land just one person could own In the yard, there was an apple tree with its last fruits blooming on it. He caught sight of the apples in the glint of the moonlight, and rejoiced in his findings. The last he had eaten was a loaf of bread that he had found by a bakery, and that had been this morning. As he ate the fruit, he felt all his senses being satiated. He consumed three, then four, then five of the apples. He thanked God for His mercy. Even he, the lowliest and most despicable, was provided for in His presence.

 His bed that night was under the tree. The house yielded no light, so he was in little danger of being detected; come dawn, he would wake up and make his way toward his people, and toward Raulita. He was warmly dressed. He could rest peacefully tonight right here.

 He dreamed that night of the Caribbean. Ah, but that place was magic. The sand slipped through his toes, the sun gently toasted his bronzed skin, as he watched the blue expanse of a mirror with its corrals, reefs, and shells that were so exotically painted with its mixtures of pale and darkened hues. The people all smiled and waved as he walked by. They were not afraid, for they all were bonded like one big family. They had peace here.

 Coconuts. He was there, drinking their inside beauty. A child came up to him, and he cracked the fruit open, giving the child half. She grabbed it and turned to smile at him before dashing off into the blue yonder. It was Raulita.

He called to the disappearing figure. Briefly, she stopped and waved again, then she vanished under a faraway reef decorated with exotic greenery. She was gone. But he was at peace. She was safe, wherever she was. And he knew that he would be led to her again.

And when he woke, he gave thanks to God, rejoicing at receiving this wondrous dream.

FOURTEEN

It was later that day that he saw her, but only in a photograph.

She was on a Spanish newspaper. Someone had been murdered. A vicious killing; a prominent suburban preacher had been stabbed. His name was John Benedict, and apparently he had a weakness for prostitutes. He had been found in a cheap hotel, and Raulita had been seen running from the place about the time that the preacher died. She was not a suspect, but a witness. The sole witness. The woman was estimated to be about five foot four and one hundred pounds, too small to have stabbed this man with as much force that had been inflicted upon him. No one but the victim, the murderer, and presumably Raulita had seen the murder. The police needed her, and needed her badly. A black man had been arrested for the crime, but his friends, neighbors, and relatives all had an alibi, that he had been at his godson's birthday party, and yet, he was still in jail. His family was outraged, as well as different people in the black community. The only evidence the police had was that a handkerchief with the suspect's initials was found a few yards from the body, and the suspect was the nearest male resident with those initials. Besides, members of Benedict's congregation insisted that a week earlier, the suspect had thrown racial epithets towards the Reverend while he made his weekly rounds of preaching through the neighborhood. And the congregates claimed that they had preached to the witness. She had been very irascible and seemed dangerous. So the police said that if anyone came across this woman, that they should call 911 immediately, and they would take care of the situation.

 The minstrel felt fear. His daughter was being hunted again, and just as before, he was not there to protect her. He tried to remember last night's dream, but he felt the fear anyway. He could not even be faithful to God even when he gave proof of his protection. He fell to his knees, crying, and begging for mercy from the Lord. Several passerby witnessed his outburst. They whispered amongst themselves. They whispered judgment. He was a condemned man, and guilt had been sentenced upon him.

 He went to the abandoned church and spent the inside there where the cross still hung. day there. Before he could get right with Raulita, he had to get right with God. As long as he felt this judgment, he was not right with God. He knelt and stared at the immobile darkened figure hanging on the once-magnificent cross. It cried with him. It knew his suffering. It bestowed upon him the mercy he so desperately sought.

The streets were dark when he returned to them. He found his dinner in a dumpster behind a fancy restaurant and ate well; stew, lamb, green beans with almonds, cut corn, and bread. The food was still warm and had a drowsy effect on him. He sat by the dumpster and allowed his body to relax. He gave into the sleepiness. The dawn sun woke him the next day as it always did. He had no dreams.

 He had no memory of the following day. He spent the day wandering down the streets, looking for Raulita. There was no sign of her. At the end of the day, he sat and watched the river, wondering where she was, seeing the endless horizon of the water made her presence seem more distant than ever.

 The second time she ran away, she was gone for a long time. It was after her mother died. For three days. HE had delayed the funeral just to find her. A panic. He felt like he had lost both of his loves. Ominous feeling that he remembered. He got a call from Raulita's principal; she had run to her. She had been safe then but he had see a vision of the future. And she was being hunted now, like an animal.

God told him things. Always, he felt like God's confidante, a position that he was honored and felt unworthy of. God told him things in his prayers, in his dreams, and through visions from high in the heavens. He could even hear God's voice when he quieted his thoughts and spirit. Any time God spoke to him, he tried as best as he could to listen to everything he said. God was on his side, lowly as he was. God was his only true friend, and he valued that friendship. You did not turn a deaf ear to your one true friend.

 She was alive, God told him in a vision. She was free. Every time he prayed, he saw her running through fair green fields. She was happy. There were clouds threatening to storm, traveling right on her heels. She was unaffected by them. In this vision, he knew that God was telling him that she was safe.

 And of Lupe. He had dreams of her sleeping in a beautiful, peaceful forest. She looked innocent, like in their early days. He longed to see her again. He thought of the days that they had been in the mother land together. Little by little he remembered his life, and God gave his memory back. One day, He would give him Raulita and Lupe again. He had faith in God's word.

FIFTEEN

Russell Frawley had a hangover, and a bad one, at that, He'd yelled at his client in front of a jury. He threatened to fire his law assistant Jonathan. He puked his guts out twice in just the last hour and even Coke was refusing to stay in his stomach. And to top it all off, he missed Addie. He needed a beer badly.

 She left him. After two weeks of non stop sex, she left him. She hadn't been there when he woke up today, and she had left no way for him to get in touch with her. He was totally bummed out by the situation, and to get through this lousy day spent the whole time reminiscing about his time with her. About how they ordered room service and had breakfast in bed together. About how making love to her made him think of nothing else but her. About how they would talk endlessly about anything and everything, everything but each other. He did not know where she came from, and she refused to tell him why she was on the streets, but Frawley knew in his gut that this was no ordinary street girl. She was no bimbo. She had guts. Unlike some other women he knew.

 Joan knew something was up. Actually, she'd be stupid if she didn't because he hadn't been home in a week, but even though Joan had been really smart in college, she could act like an airhead. Shit could be happening right under her nose and she would insist that she didn't know what was going on. Frawley figured it was some kind of survival mechanism especially since their son died. She really fell apart after that. Frawley wouldn't have minded if she hadn't blamed every problem, including Quentin's death on him. By this time in life, she had turned into a complete martyr. The world had wronged her, so she was out for revenge, although all she did was sit and nurse her scotch all day. It was too much for him to deal with. Besides, after all the accusations he got about having an affair, he might as well go out and have one. A man could only take so much.

 So now here he was, sitting in his office feeling like he did during the days of Woodstock (the real one in '69, thank you). Maybe worse than that. At least then, there was peace, love and real music. Now, the music was noise, people shook hands in peace then bombed each others' families, and though there was plenty of lust there was no love anywhere. Hopefully there would be with him and Addie. If he ever found her again.

 He was startled out of his reverie by Jonathan knocking on the door along with a chipper hello. He was too happy for Russell to deal with, especially today. Happy people never cheered him up. They made him want to scream. Like his wife, except she wasn't happy. He supposed happy people and unhappy people annoyed him. He just liked normal people.

"Yes?" he barked more sharply than intended.

 "Your wife is here," Jonathan informed him pleasantly.

 Speaking of the devil. Shit. Hell was ready to break loose. And of all days, on the Hangover Supreme Day. He grunted.

 "Should I say you're in?" Jonathan inquired.

 It would do no good for him to say no. She'd break through the windows now that Jonathan knocked on the door- not that it was his fault, it was his job to knock on his door. It wasn't Jonathan's fault that he was too happy on the day that he was totally shitfaced. OR that he was too happy to begin with. "Sure, let her in," he complied. Maybe he should have stayed in court. He could have asked for continuances all day and hung out drinking coffee in the cafeteria.

 Well, hardly a second had passed when the door to his office was flung open. He could smell the alcohol a mile away. "Where have you been?" Joan demanded. "Do you still live in our house, or have you taken up residence elsewhere?"

 This was going to be fun, real fun. "Joan, can't this be discussed elsewhere?" he asked in his best lawyer voice. "In case you haven't noticed, this is my place of work. It is not an appropriate arena for marital spats."

 "Marital spats?" Joan demanded loudly. Frawley hastily closed his office door. No use getting more embarrassed than he had to here. Joan didn't miss a beat. " Do you call it a 'marital spat' when a wife wants to know where the hell her husband has been sleeping for the last week and a half?"

 "I have been home several times during this time. If you weren't passed out maybe you could have spoken to me then, right?"

 "Are you going to sit here and evade my questions all afternoon? I don't have time for this. Answer me instead of arguing about the location of the fight."

 "I am commenting about the location of the fight," Frawley started slowly, as though speaking to a retarded, or nowadays, mentally challenged child, "because my employee is sitting right outside the door. He can here every little word that you are saying. I would prefer not to look bad in front of my employee because if I do, he will quit, and I will spend all of my time filing papers instead of winning those big cases that bring in your fur coats. Besides, it is hard to be the authority figure when the employee thinks that the boss is a big buffoon."

 "Aw, poor baby. Can't get no respect. Well, listen sweetie, you want respect, then you come home and sleep with your wife. I feel like an unwanted hag."

 That's because you are, Frawley thought. But he was willing to be political. After all, he hadn't gotten this much power with the DA just on his good looks. "All right, honey, I'll come home tonight." He patted her head like she was an unwashed sheepdog.

 Joan threw her arms around him. "I love you Russell," she exclaimed.

 "I love you too, Joan," he lied. He pried her loose of him. She continued to hold his hands.

 "I don't want to lose you, Russell," she proclaimed.

 "I don't want to lose you either." That was the truth. It would cost him too much money.

 She was back in his arms, sobbing loud enough to block out the sound of traffic four floors down. Her uncombed hair hung like knotted string about them. His mind drifted to Addie and how beautiful she was, and how he wished he was with her. He was still a young man, probably with at least another thirty good years ahead of him. And he didn't want to spend it with Joan.

 Joan was staring into his face. Frawley wondered if she had read his mind. He shrugged off the thought. If she had, so what. She was too stupid to do anything about it. The tears were still streaming down her face. If it had been Addie, he would have wiped them away. But it wasn't. It was Joan.

 "Why can't things be like they used to?" bemoaned Joan. Frawley heard this argument before. It made him tired to have to endure it yet again.

 "Things always change, hon. Nothing stays the same." He always said that. It was like second nature for him.

 "But do you still love me? Why do I have to be alone so much?" She was breaking down completely, beginning to collapse in his embrace. It made Frawley angry. Needless hysteria always enraged him. He was so angry that he wanted to hit her, which made him even more angry. To lose control over a woman was not in his agenda. He forced himself to speak slowly.

 "Because that is how it has to be. If you love me, you'll understand that. You wouldn't demand so much from me and you would be more reasonable once you realize we can't go back to hippie sweethearts. Our son has died. I have responsibilities. You remember when the therapist said that change is inevitable, right?"

 Joan reluctantly nodded.

 "Good. Then you will understand that you must forget about silly worries like does my husband love me and why does he stay out so much and worry about more important things. Like, when was the last time you cleaned the house?"

 "Last week," Joan sniffed.

 "Now, see? You're long overdue on that priority. I thing it's time for you to worry about that. Agreed?"

 "Agreed."

 "All right. Why don't you go home and take care of that chore like a good person would." Ugh, he disgusted her. The smell of her unwashed body mixed with the alcohol made him want to gag. Tonight would be one hell of a long night.

 He started short, right up into the eyes of death. Even in her drunken stupor, evil emitted from her eyes, scorching into him. Frawley, once aware of her, was unfazed. She would forget all about this in the morning, he conceded to himself. Everything would be as it was.

 "You're going to be home tonight." It was posed as a statement to him, not a question.

 "I know, I know. I'll call off my clients' conferences. But don't complain when we can't afford your Gucci handbags and your Home Shopping sprees," he called of as Joan sauntered out of his office. His assistant Jonathan looking between him and the departing Joan as Frawley closed the door as he closed the door of his office again.

 "What are you looking at?" he barked at Jonathan, who sighed as he started to dial the telephone. That kid has an attitude problem, Frawley thought angrily. No respect for authority. He'd never get as far in life as Frawley had with that attitude.

 Whew, that had been a close call, he congratulated himself as he sank into his reclining chair. His gift of logic was what saved him yet again. He would survive on his own resources. With all the power he had, he would survive all that challenged him.

SIXTEEN

 The Reverend Emmanuel was fighting a war. Inside the battalion of his dominion, he was preparing the army of God to fight against the devil. There was no talk of peace, of gentleness, or of meekness. He had victory on hi mind. The victory was for God's glory. He was honored to take up this fight. He would not back down before the task in front of him.

 The Church, the Bride of Christ, needed purification. She needed the strength of her Betrothed. All this talk amongst the sheep, the mumbo jumbo of feeding the poor and sending missionaries to far off lands to build homes was pure nonsense. The world was laughing at the Church because she couldn't get her act together, and the world knew it. That was why they rejected the Church. Why would they trade in all their earthly pleasures for something that seemed so weak? The Church needed to regain her power. They had the message of life, they were the ones with the power, even though it wasn't the least obvious to anyone who was not part of her. Jesus seemed conspicuously absent from most bodies of Christ. Well, Emmanuel didn't know about the rest of the Body of Christ, but his sheep were going to be strong in the Lord. There were to be no backsliders here.

 He could spot the backsliders a mile away. The Spirit within him always made it obvious to him. It was as though the conflict in their souls resonated from them, portraying the struggle between the angels of God and the servants of Satan. The armor of God had not failed them; they failed God. They failed to resist the devil like James the apostle implored, and now they had fallen prey to spiritual attack.

 These people were unwelcome in his church. You could not serve two masters. You could not serve the Lord and the world. Either you were hot or cold, not lukewarm. The Lord said this, so Emmanuel obeyed. And as the Lord spewed the lukewarm from his mouth, so did Emmanuel spew the lukewarm from his flock, in order not to contaminate the faithful members that remained. Paul had directed the Corinthians to banish the incestuous backslider, and so did Emmanuel. The disobedient were shunned, unwelcome to house meetings and Bible discussions. They were remanded to the back of the church during service, unworthy to be in the front in his sight. Those acknowledged as unrepentant backsliders were shunned until they repented and Emmanuel received a word of knowledge that it was all right to embrace the sheep back into the flock.

 He was outside, staring into the sky. Blue, pure, like heaven itself. God was purity, bliss and love. The way of Satan was death. Why people would allow Satan to plunder their souls after they had tasted the sweet spirit of the Lord was beyond him. The devil only offered temporary pleasure. In the end he only brought death, with no exceptions. These false Christians thought they could have their sin and eat it too; sin now and call on God when it was over. What did they make God out to be? A cafeteria? Pick and choose what commandments you wanted to follow and leave the rest? No, God was no fool. He was not to be deceived. Perhaps these harlots would be spared and God would keep them in the fold, but they would pay heavily in this life, especially if they did not repent. He did not want any part of these recalcitrants. He only wanted souls on fire for God, the true God.

 This life was better than his old life. He would never want to go back to it/ At times, Satan would plague him with his vile crimes as a sinner. In a way, it was easier for him to see himself as a sinner. His sins were obvious to everyone who knew him back then, though most did not know of his past now. To be considered evil amongst evil men had always been his lot. There were people who had met their Maker prematurely because of him, and one still haunted him. He hoped those souls had made their peace with Jesus before he snuffed out their lives. He would hate to know that he had sent some good soul to the devil just because they hadn't had time to repent to Jesus before their deaths, and he thought of them quite often. He still asked God's mercy for those deeds.

 Gangs. Emmanuel saw them constantly on the streets. They tried to camouflage themselves, but he could spot their earmarks anywhere, even after all these years. He used to stand just as their did, with the wary looks, the stiff chest, dark expressions. A hooded, featureless creature would stand on the corner and a Cadillac would pull up to it. A brief interchange, and the Cadillac would speed off, and the hooded figure would mysteriously disappear. He was getting older, but he was not so old that he did not remember. He watched his pasts on the streets. Nothing had changed there. The devil still maneuvered in his old ways here.

 Guns. He saw where they were hidden on them, because he used to hide them the same way. Guns. The devil used them to destroy his life; how many years had he destroyed behind barbed wire and bars because of them? Guns. The ending of life. Made him a god unto himself, choosing when people would die. There were payments for these crimes. Six casualties. Three rival gang members, all with children, two Hispanic, one white. A white woman, done in revenge for a killing of one of his homeboy's woman. And last, a man and a child, both Puerto Rican. The man made to many waves. He tried to take men off the street, including Emmanuel. He didn't mind his own business. They were his last casualties.

 Children. Their faces looked at him now as he passed them playing on the playground . They always were afraid of him at first. He would smile, and then somehow they warmed to him. The Lord smiled through him and the children saw His beauty in his soul. Emmanuel himself was not beautiful, for he was evil. Children knew no color when they saw a beautiful soul. They were smiling now. No color. No Spic, no nigger, no honky. Children could be cruel and use many other names, but did not have the weapon of racism at their disposal or understanding. Something seemed to go wrong later on; maybe the children should teach the elders, instead of the other way around

 The courage of his convictions was faltering. He had been spared to better his people and carry God's message to them. T o save them from the streets.

 Living very much the life that his last victim had. But he wonders if he wanted to anymore. If he was worthy anymore. Had he ever been worthy?

 Emmanuel went to prison less than a month later. Not for the murders, but for armed robbery. He had held up a bodega on 168th and gotten time for that, only the second time he ever saw the inside of the cell. It was in prison that he had his conversion experience. There had been this guy named Carlos who'd been there years before him and would in all likelihood be there long after him; he was in for a double capital crime- a fire marshal as well as a police officer. They were both shaking him down when he was armed and high on crack, and he shot both of them. Carlos had no memory of the murders. He had just been a junkie trying to support his habit before that incident. Now he was a cop killer, and he was in for life. He managed to stay downstate only because the state facilities had been full then. He still was in danger of being transferred. Then he would see none of his family, for they all lived in the Bronx. Emmanuel felt he beat the system then. For five killings he should have been in longer. But in six months, he was going to be free.

 Despite his lot in lot in life, Carlos almost seemed happy. Every morning, he would start the day by singing praises to God. Some of the other inmates would join him. Carlos welcomed everyone to join him, but few were willing, or brave enough, for that matter. For people who were brave enough to challenge life on the outside, most were conservative here. There was nowhere to hide here. But that didn't deter Carlos. He read the Bible and preached from it. Though there were a lot of people who covered their ears when he spoke, Carlos was well liked. He could be trusted, and he was admired by everyone because of his guts. When you had a problem, you went to Carlos. He was more popular than the prison chaplain. The inmate population could relate to him better.

 It was during one of his conversations with Carlos that he first heard of the Lord. He had been telling Carlos his usual rap about his worries; about whether Abdullah was waiting for him, even though she visited him every time the public was permitted, about what was he going to do with his life once he got out of jail, would any reputable employer hire a black man with a prison rap, when right when he was in the middle of talking about whether he thought Abdullah was pregnant with a boy or a girl, he stopped. It was Carlos' expression. It was so peaceful, so calm. Emmanuel had never seen anything like it. It had more impact upon his spirit than any blow or threat ever had. He wondered at what Carlos had. After all, it wasn't like Carlos had much to be peaceful about, condemned for the rest of his life to this place. But yet, there he was siting before Emmanuel with the utmost calm about him.

 Carlos noticed his alarm. He asked Emmanuel what was wrong, but a voice inside Emmanuel's head that Carlos knew what he was going to say. It was the first time Emmanuel had ever heard this voice in his life.

 Emmanuel stuttered, not really knowing how to answer. He was in awe of the spectacle that was Carlos. He finally found the words asking, how is it that you are so peaceful when your life is such hell?

 Carlos smiled, apparently not the least abashed by the question. His dark, rugged, beaten face seemed flawless then, like an angel's. It was like a transformation had taken place. It is the peace of God within me, not of my doing, the perfect face said.

 What the hell is that supposed to mean, Emmanuel barked, suddenly afraid. There was a part of him that wanted to run, and yet he remained where he was.

 What I mean is, Carlos explained, the source of my peace does not come from me. It is a gift of the Lord. The Lord lives within me. I asked him to live and reign in my soul, and He is my peace and strength now. Without him, I am nothing.

 Emmanuel was still confused. How does God make you peaceful when you're stuck in this place?

 My happiness and joy has nothing to do with this world, was Carlos' reply. Whatever happens in this world right now doesn't matter because it has no meaning in the long run. My joy comes from the knowledge that an everlasting God loves and cares for me. I anticipate eternal peace and life when I die and go to heaven. All this I have because of God. My time here means nothing compared to the eternal joy I have with him.

 Emmanuel still didn't get it, even though he found his fear dissipating. He was instead, awed at this god who loved all, even the criminal. If Carlos had this much peace, he either was smuggling in good dope or maybe God was doing something good for him. He couldn't get over the fact that God would give a murderer peace of mind. Incredulous, he inquired more.

 So if God is so loving, how come you have all this peace and I don't. And what makes you say that you are going to heaven when you're a murderer?

 Carlos smiled knowingly. Ah, but you see, God looks at sin differently than you and me. To Him, if you are angry with your brother, you have sinned no differently than if you murdered him. Sin is not ranked in order to him. Sin is just choosing to live apart from him. So you see, God sees me no differently than he would you. He loves everyone, but he will respect our free will and not interfere if we do not want his Divine influence in our lives. But God does not want anyone to go to hell, even someone like me. That is why he sent his son to die and resurrect, so all could be redeemed. God is merciful to everyone who asks and who chooses to have Him rule their heart.

 Emmanuel felt like running from his seat as a prickly fear set through him. Vague memories of loud Baptist ceremonies during his childhood came back to haunt him. Hands telling him he should fall at the feet of the Lord. He turned to Carlos asking, you don't mean the blood of Jesus stuff, do you?

 Carlos smiled, tipping his head to one side. Why yes, I do. Are you saved too?

 With that. Emmanuel bolted away from there as fast as he could. He couldn't deal with any of this Jesus freak stuff, no matter how peaceful this guy was.

 He changed his mind in a matter of days.

 It was about a week later; hard to calculate exact numbers of days in a place like this. The day he got the news, the worst day of his life. Abdullah was dead, her life robbed by a single bullet. His world, his love gone forever. She had been his strength for many years now, and when he was not there to protect her, she had been stolen from him. He needed her strength to survive this pain, and she was no longer there to give it to him. His soul was in anguish, crying out for comfort, and now that she was gone, there was only one place he knew where to go. He ran to the chapel where he knew where Carlos would be, and he knelt down next to him and wept, saying over and over without realizing what he was saying, I need your Jesus, I need your Jesus.

 Carlos nodded calmly, as though he was expecting Emmanuel to say that all along. All he asked was, Are you ready to relinquish all control of your life to Jesus Christ, or just the parts that hurt?

 Emmanuel suddenly didn't care anymore if Jesus ran his life or not. For twenty seven years he had run his own life, and look where it had gotten him. Being the murderer of a young girl and her father, and locked up behind bars while his girl and his unborn child where gunned down in cold blood. Who cared if Jesus ran his life? He could have it as far as Emmanuel cared. IF Jesus loved him so much, let Him fix his life.

 Carlos asked another question. "Are you willing to accept that you are a sinner and deserve damnation for all your sins, but that Jesus died in your place and resurrected so that you can have his power and victory over sin? "

 The resurrection. How many times ha he heard of its power in his earlier days. It was amazing how rapidly his memory of the old pastor Smith hollering about the power of the Lamb. Hearing of the power through the love of Jesus. The power he had created by conquering death and sin. Jesus was the only real power. And Emmanuel needed him now. HE was ready/

 There had been no vision or powerful light when Carlos prayed with him to accept Jesus Christ. TO be honest, he felt nothing different at all. He began to wonder if he hadn't prated correctly. Until that night, when he experienced a soothing deep sense of peace which he never experienced before. He realized that Carlos was right; nothing on earth did matter. He had the peace of the Lord now, the assurance that God would be with him forever. All other things seemed to pale in comparison to that glory.

 And for the last fourteen years, Emmanuel Gideon Jackson had been a saved man.

 A ball from a nearby game dribbled near his car. There were kids playing a game, couldn't be more than eight years old; an age where innocence started meeting the monsters with a vengeance on the streets. One of the kids came over to him. He said, mister, can you get our ball, we can't go in the streets. Emmanuel looked at him, wondering what this kid would be like when he was older. If he would even make it that far. Emmanuel had been that age once, and look what happened to him. But there was nothing he could do for the kid. Nothing but throw the ball back. So he did. Several women eyed him suspiciously. Who could blame them? A black man loitering in a nice car near a bunch of kids? What good could come of that? Because he knew. He knew from before, before he put the costume of God on in his life.

 So he drove away. Away from the stares, but not away from the darkness that lodged inside him. There was no escaping that. None.

SEVENTEEN

 Cindy sat alone in the shelter. It was ridden with graffiti and dirt. She was the only white woman here. The rest of her counterparts regarded her with suspicious stares, probably thinking she was some kind of undercover welfare policeman or something. Maybe they just didn't like white girls here. Cindy didn't care. She didn't care about the dirt or her roommates. No one checked to see who she was here. So all she cared about was that she had a bed for the night. She'd lived long enough without friends to know that she'd manage.

 The place was full. They served people by kicking out the longest tenant so that the bed would be empty. Soon it would be Cindy's turn. Out of forty women, she was here the eighth longest at sixteen days and thirteen hours. Some clientele had already accused her of white privilege, saying that as they were getting kicked out that Cindy had been there already when they arrived, and that Cindy should be next. Given that, Cindy wouldn't be surprised if she was asked to leave next. This place was run by white women. And white women, Cindy discovered through the years, were basically cowards, especially when it came to minority women. Some fucking white privilege.

 Besides being the only white resident, she seemingly was the only childless one at that. There were kids constantly screaming here. It was like being stuck in a maternity ward, except that visiting hours were never over. At least she only had herself to worry about.

 She closed her eyes as she lay on the cot in the room she shared with three other women, and felt a strange sense of gratitude. This place with all its drawbacks was still better than the home she had left. No one hunting her. No obsessed lovers begging her to stay after nearly killing her saying that if she left they would kill themselves. And so far, no police here to harass her and send her back to Patrick like she was an errant schoolchild. At least, not yet. Knowing Patrick, he was sure to have every precinct in the Northeast notified that his wife had been kidnapped. Any time she saw an officer she was terrified that she was going to be sent back to Patrick. They would take one look at her sorry state and one look at perfectly groomed Armani Patrick and laugh at her story of domestic violence. And back to hell she would go. She'd rather put up with the nursery school environment here.

She wrapped herself in her blanket, holding onto the minimal security she had now. She prayed to God that the police would not search for her here. Her whole life was gone now just so she could be free, though if she thought about it, she lost her life the minute she decided to marry Patrick Hughes. She didn't know where her family was anymore; they cut her off the minute she came home as his bride. A foolish girl would have no part of their lives. But at least she was free of the classy rich prison which her marriage vows had sentenced her. And now, it seemed like for the rest of her life, she would have to be on the run. And for what. Her survival. Survival, her survival, what did it mean? Was her life doomed to be nothing but flights into obscure existence? What could she do with her life if she could never stay in one place, never to be known to anyone?

 Thoughts of murder came to her head.

 She was not divorced. Patrick would never let her go that easily. He had even told her that he would never let her go. At one time when she was younger, those words were romantic. Now they were a nightmare to her. She was afraid that even in her ragged condition, he might find her on a street corner somewhere. She would not live to tell about it; she knew from experience. Sometimes, though, she found her weary bones aching for that day. At least the fight would be over.

 Disillusioned by charm, that was what had happened to her. She had been fool who was enchanted by wealth, gold and comfort. There had been a false sense of peace about the rich which she never thought apparent in her lower class lifestyle. She knew better now. Even after two years of bruises she'd been stupid enough to hold onto the myth. And worse yet, she woke up from her illusion only to find herself married and trapped. The worst, she had still loved him.

 It was dark in her room even though the clock over the door read two o clock, and Cindy knew it was afternoon. When her roommates were gone and she had control over the room, she kept the shades drawn. The ugliness of reality was not so glaring in the darkness. Eleven years wasted married to a psycho. She had nothing to account for that lost time except for a lot of scars and a name that wasn't hers. With the wisdom of a thirty year old and perfect hindsight, she knew her life had been better before Patrick, even though she had kept running away from it. She wished she hadn't treated her mother so horribly. It would be a great comfort to run to her right now. Children didn't realize the wonderful value of their parents until they were supposedly too old to need it. At least, that was so for Cindy DiEsposito Hughes.

 Where could she go from here? They would try to put her on welfare. And once her social security number popped up again in the system, Patrick would be on her tail again. She wished she knew the right people. She knew some criminal people. but not any that were of use to her. She only knew drug addicts and street people. Nobody who could find her fake ID so she could start her life over again. At this point she was stuck running from shelter to shelter. Her options were few.

 Suddenly it hit her. Russell/Avery. He was her key. Obviously he ha fake ID. And once she got him drunk, she could probably get him to do anything. Especially after giving him the good sex that he thought he needed.

 She would leave in the morning, maybe go back to the bar where she saw him last time. She'd take a few pieces of clothing from the laundry and climb out the window, something that she had done before. She was going to find Russell. Something in her mind decided that. And inside it was the first time that she felt quiet.

EIGHTEEN

 There had been a news brief. It was traumatic in and of itself, as Days of our Lives, Another World and Pacific Palisades were hacked in the prime of their hour long lives. But then, reality hit. Black faces were shown, and all eyes were riveted to the TV as never before. The blacks. They were starting up again. Many delicate female hearts in the walls behind the fortress almost came to a start. Why couldn't the Negroes shut up? came the angry growls of their male protectors as they sat at their three-martini lunch. Couldn't they leave us white folk alone and just go back to killing themselves off like they were so good at doing ?

 The walls of their fortress was breaking.

 Several stores in the White Plains area had been ransacked. They were part of a strip mall of a particular person. This person, Randall Capriani, was the father of one such David Capriani, the arresting officer of Tony Jesus Velda. Mr. Velda, 32, an African American mixed with two parts Puerto Rican and one part Italian, was charged with one count of second degree murder. His arrest came after the stabbing of Benedict, 57, a Presbyterian who had been a respected member of his community for years. The hotel manager saw a man of his description leaving the building at the alleged time of death of Reverend Whitman. However, there were at least twenty people who could vouch for Mr. Velda's whereabouts at the time of Reverend Whitman's killing. They said that he was working at Jimmy's pizza all night the day of the alleged attack. HE worked there as a cook. Did he ever make a delivery for someone else, Capriani had asked the owner. Occasionally, Jimmy admitted. But not that night. He was sure of it. How many employees do you have. Jimmy said, forty, give or take. So Capriani arrested Velda anyway, because he thought Jimmy meant well but was too confused to remember the exact detail of that night. Velda's neighbors said Capriani arrested Velda because the hotel manager was white and Jimmy was black. So were the rest of the people who could vouch for Velda's alibi. And the whites, they always stuck together. If you were black, the hell with what you wanted t say. Well they were going to listen now..

The fortress was at war. The minstrel stood by and watched. Black faces were everywhere, screaming and yelling, running and throwing things. Many were taking things from the stores as they fled. It was like the end of the world.

 He jogged unnoticed to a ransacked grocery store, seemingly abandoned in the noise. Taking a loaf of bread from the shelf, he searched for someone so he could pay. If there really was no one here, he would go to the church and make a donation. He almost gave up when he saw a man cowering in the corner, a black man. The minstrel was reaching into his pocket for money when he was startled by a scream coming form the man.

 He was speaking in Spanish. The minstrel saw that his mouth was forming different words than he was saying, so he knew that the Holy Spirit was interpreting for him. The man was saying not to come any closer, or else he would shout. IT was then that the minstrel saw the gun in the figure's hand, and the minstrel was filled with sudden deep rage.

 Snarling, the minstrel lunged forward in a frenzy, knocking the piece from the startled man's hand. The minstrel was fast. God was on his side, he knew that. With the venom that Christ possessed when He knocked over the temple, the minstrel grabbed the weapon, dumped the contents of the magazine on the floor, and with his bare hand, smashed the gun on the ground until it broke while its owner watched helplessly in paralyzed fear.

 Afterwards, they faced each other. The minstrel held out his hand to help the man to his feet. The storekeeper flinched, but slowly seemed to accept the minstrel's hand. They stood eye to eye. Black and white, deceptively white. The minstrel could feel that the man was only seeing skin. But he saw more. The fight was not against flesh but spirit. God's spirit united all. Still holding the man's hand, he said a prayer for both of them. He heard the man praising Jesus. God's spirit united all

 He gave the storekeeper the money. Finally, the man accepted it. The minstrel looked outside. The streets were quiet, so he decided to leave. He bade farewell to his friend, who gave him God's blessings in return.

 Alleluia.

 Christmas lights. There were Christmas lights in the store windows, as well as menacing Jack-o'-lanterns with their empty features. The minstrel stared at the windows, the violence of the day drifting further and further from his ears. He praised God for His Almighty protection and prayed for the souls who acted out tonight. He also prayed for his new friend.

 He caught his reflection in a storefront window. Lines in his face which he had not noticed before, lines which signified that in worldly terms his journey to the Lord's home was half over. White skin, paleness which had both hidden him and cursed him amongst his people. He touched the image; the image touched him back, each trying to discover the other's identity, yet united. He knew he was God's child, yet there was a stranger before him. He was going to be called to God sooner than what the world expected, he knew that he had lived many more years than he had left. He looked forward to that day when the Lord called him back home. The emptiness within him would be gone forever. He would see Lupe and little Pablo again, and one day Raulita would join them. He wanted to see Raulita before then, at least before he died. It was the only wish he had for his life.

His reflection seemed as a demon, Satan had much power and could manifest in many ways, even though his power was only a fraction of that of the Lord's. The Evil One was eating at this sinner's soul. A tear fell from the minstrel's eye, and he wiped it away in the mirror image, watching it elude his touch. The Holy Spirit rescued him then, letting him fall to the ground to experience a world where all he saw was light and the smile of a child that he had always loved.

 He did not even feel the pain that had caused him to fall.

NINETEEN

 Cindy used the riot to her benefit.

 It had been easy to escape from the shelter. No one had been paying attention; all of the workers had been congregated together watching some soap opera when the news interrupted, so she used the outrage to take her duffel bag (something she'd borrowed permanently from the attendant) of various necessary stolen items and her little self to the street. She got away from the shelter as fast as she could, keeping her eyes out for any cop that was around. Chances are they would be where the action was and not overly worried about a street girl, but she had been a witness to murder.

 Well, she wasn't exactly a witness, but she had been the closest thing. She had talked to the guy who had been killed and bummed a closet space from him. It wasn't the first time it happened. She found some fat guy in the bar who looked lonely and went somewhere with him, and usually they were too drunk to get laid so she wound up being a shoulder to cry on and got a free night to sleep. Besides, if they ever found her she couldn't tell then anything. She had been to drunk to notice anything other than the fact that something dangerous was going on and she got out of there before she could get even a glimpse of him. As far as she was concerned, they had the right guy, and she wasn't interested in being the Great White Hope to set the record the straight for all the racists. Hell, she probably was a racist. She didn't like anyone right now, least of all herself.

 Daylight waning. She headed down a darkened road, one of those roads that little women like her were supposed to be afraid of. Darkness didn't faze her, nor did any variations of concrete. As far as she was concerned, she lived through eleven years of darkness in the fanciest of concrete, and she was alive to talk about it. She wasn't about to get scared of a little dark tunnel at this point.

 There was someone sleeping by a dumpster. She felt a twinge of empathy and a shock of alarm in the same breath. This was not where she expected to see one of her own, on the border of north Bronx. Three miles south, maybe, but not here. She hoped this wasn't some crazy guy out to get her. Cautiously, she approached.

 The body stirred, turning so that the face of the man confronted her full force. The motion startled her, but not nearly as much as when she saw the face. IT was the man who ran after her a few weeks ago. She was filled with a sense of fear, even though he lay here wounded, powerless to do anything to her. She still felt hunted. Her instincts warned her against anyone who needed her. They could be a trap. Anyone who wanted her must be an enemy. Only she could choose. And now, she chose to run.

 She ran from that place, away from whatever strange anxiety she felt when she was with this man. He was frightening to her well or injured. Her guilt at her desertion was fleeting. She could not stop. She could not care. Her life was at stake. And that was the only thing that she had left. It was the only thing that mattered to her now.

 Jonathan left his office at four-thirty as usual, despite the saccharine imploring of his boss to stay where he was safe, in other words, where the white people were. Jonathan took one look at Frawley's red face which reeked of alcohol and immediately departed. Even in the aftermath of a riot, the streets seemed safer than the prospect of being caged into the same four rooms with a narcissistic drunk.

 Vicious glares visited him as he walked to his home. Only when he had been involved with his daughter's mother had he felt so self-conscious of his color. Ever since then, his identity was tainted as a white man, not just a man. It was strange how in so many places that if you referred to someone as a man or a woman, you just assumed they were white. Anyone else, at best, was described as a black man, Oriental woman, or whatever else. Living where the white man was minority opened his eyes. If he was going to refer to anyone by race, he had to be part of that too. That was part of equality. So, here he was, Jonathan Pfeifer, white man, Swiss American. Hair so white blond it looked like it was stolen from the snow of the Alps. He was walking down a black section of Westchester, going to the subway to go to Riverdale. He saw a bum drinking beer. Jonathan felt guilty in his fine clothes, at least relatively fine clothes. He gave the guy a dollar.

 Jonathan had always lived with the conflict of good and evil, racism and love. His parents had been wonderful loving people who helped anyone in need. They had been part of rallies in the sixties to liberate blacks, sponsored SDS meetings, fun loving. Jonathan remembered laughter in his early years. Then tragedy struck; a fiery car crash took out both his parents and an unborn sibling. So little Jonathan, who had been at summer camp at the time, was sent to live with his paternal grandparents, stern people who he had always been afraid of. They tried to instill messages of hate in him, but he resisted, instead making friends with anyone who his grandparents didn't like. He was alternatively labeled as difficult and gullible by them. IT was not until Jonathan was older that he realized that his parents were jealous of anyone who seemingly could influence him when they couldn't. They had both died over five years ago, and he had the sad feeling of not knowing who they were except in their caricature ways. He felt like they were too busy hating everyone to know him either, and he had lived with them for ten years. IT made him feel vastly alone.

 Then came his adolescent life, where he rejected all whites and anything to do with it. He set out for Oklahoma to work with the Peace Corps instead of going to Harvard as he was expected. He worked on a reservation, where he had met Jenny, Raven's mother. That was when he truly learned that love had no color. Issues of gender and race seemed so petty then. He wished that he could go back there. Instead, he had Ashley, the wife that he could present to high society. He never married Jennifer, and it made him feel no better than if he was his grandparents' kin.

 He loved Ashley. He had been in love from the start. When he met her, it was with a deep affection, nothing like the passion he felt for Jenny. It had been in college; he was thirty, she twenty-one, daughter of debutantes and high society. Every time he thought of Ashley, her very image sustained him. He was a single father ostracized by his family struggling to get through college, deeply in pain over the loss of Raven's mother. Ashley's smile and laughter warmed him. She was full of life, the life of every party they were at. He was proud to have her on his arm, and she was in awe of him; his unconventional life, his wild experiences, and enthralled that a man as old and as experienced as him could be interested in a little girl from Westchester.

 So much in love he was, and so afraid that he might lose this gift, that the two were married within five months in quick civil wedding. It was his victory, her rebellion. Jonathan Pfeifer was not what the elder Thomases had in mind. Jonathan and Ashley were married for six months when he discovered that the Thomases had been arranging for a patriarch's son to marry their daughter once she finished college, which she had been two years away from doing. Both sides of the family accused them of a shotgun wedding, though she had been a virgin on their wedding night. When six months passed and no child showed, the Pfeifers insinuated that their great-grandchild aborted, and the Thomases accused Jonathan of being a gold-digger. One time he heard them call him a n-lover in front of Raven. They were not allowed in the house for two months. That was back in the days that Ashley was on his side.

 Jonathan and Ashley managed by themselves for awhile. Ashley valiantly refused any stipend from her parents, trying to convince Jonathan that she had never been in love with anyone but him, and Jonathan let himself believe it. He consoled himself with the fact that he had been her only lover, and felt flattered by her devotion. Ashley worked in a JC Penney as a salesgirl and became a devoted stepmother to Raven, while Jonathan went to law school and night and worked as a law clerk during the day. Then one night he sat with Raven in his lap and noticed that she no longer was a baby, she was a child. He hadn't even seen it coming, he had been so busy. He cried in bed that night, and Ashley held him but he was too wrapped up in his own worries to notice anyone but himself.

 Now he noticed, but if he wondered if his concern had come just a little too late in his marriage. Rarely did he receive a kiss or a hug from his wife when he walked in the door. Gone were the days where she stood with him against her family. He would come home in the expectation of hugging his daughter only to come home to an empty, desolate house. Ashley would be out shopping with her mother, and Raven would be at a neighbor's house. Ashley said that she didn't want to hurt Raven because Lillian Thomas didn't care for her. Jonathan would get angry at Ashley's veiled implication that she had changed loyalties back to her mother. He would think of the man that Ashley had been intended for, and he would feel used. An adolescent rebellion. By rejecting him, Ashley was looking grown-up. Mature people didn't associate with white trash.

 He thought of Jenny again. She was a wet brain. At the tender age of thirty-one and with a brand new baby, something snapped in her brain and sent her forever into waking oblivion. She had not even recognized her daughter. Jonathan wondered if she was still alive. He wondered what would have happened if she had never snapped, and felt guilty that he never married her, yet felt grateful that his single status was what enabled him to remove Raven from the situation. He missed Jenny terribly, and sent a thought of love to her, hoping somehow across the wire, she received the message.

 Just as he turned a corner to head to the subway station, he came upon a figure that startled him. A crumpled form, lying on its side near a pile of glass and other debris with blood surrounding his body. Jonathan froze in his place. Never had he come upon a sight like this, even in his peace Corps days. The figure seemed dead. Slowly and methodically he approached the figure, praying to the Great Spirit that he had briefly encountered for strength in case he was confronted with death.

 The man was alive, though unconscious and severely underdressed for an October night in New York; he had no jacket or socks. Gently, he pushed the man on his back so he could determine the extent of his injuries. There was a gash on the man's right temple. A bloodied rock lay guiltily nearby. The man was a victim of the violence today, he guessed. The street remained quiet. It was as thought all had left so as not to be blamed. Caucasian or White Hispanic. Six-three, about two hundred pounds. Gash to head but otherwise in seemingly good health. Jonathan did not mention his garb. He had a feeling that they would think, as he suspected himself, that this was a drifter. They usually didn't waste time for drifters here.

AS he waited he got a closer look at the man's face. Something about him looked familiar. His expression of repose touched Jonathan. He looked so peaceful. Jonathan was almost envious.

 After what seemed like an eternity, the ambulance finally arrived. Jonathan was aware of the glares he and his friend received as the technicians handled the victim, They handled the stranger with timid hands, as though if they touched him, they would catch a disease. One of the medics was black. The attitude of the people sickened Jonathan, especially the black medic. She of all people should know.

 Jonathan rode in the ambulance with the man, holding his hand and staring at his face, feeling nuts at not being able to place the man. They arrived at the hospital, and Jonathan mentally gave him the name of Raul, the first name that came to his head. He watched as Raul was wheeled away. One of the nurses commented on Raul's odor and held her nose. Jonathan hadn't even noticed the odor.

 He looked at his watch. Seven-ten. He was ten minutes late already. He knew he should call home, but he did not. The thought of Ashley's insistent voice made him weary, and he was weary enough already. It was over five minutes before he was even able to find the strength to pick himself up to make the journey back home. He suddenly felt very old.

TWENTY

The fortress was in danger.

 After the commoners had revolted, a village meeting convened regarding the security of the community. Several of the venerable nobles of the village had put their houses up for sale in the week since the riots. The fabric of their existence was falling apart. Something was going to have to be done. Quickly.

 The meeting was presided over by one Joan Taylor Frawley, the socialite wife of attorney Russell Frawley. Her influential mother-in-law, the cardiologist Dr. Michelle Johnson-Frawley had ordered the meeting, saying that her daughter-in-law had something important to suggest. Everyone wondered what this woman had to say. It was rumored that her son died of a drug overdose, and ever since then, she had become a real lush. Her husband was known to have a roving eye. It was supposed that she wasn't very smart. She didn't entertain or mingle, and she never had anything interesting to say. She certainly needed her husband's influence to get here. Out of respect for Johnson-Frawley. who was a great benefactor for much of the local arts did they listen.

 Taylor's neighbors couldn't have misjudged her more. She was, in fact, a genius, a girl who graduated third in a class of three hundred. She had won a grant to Yale when she was only in the seventh grade when she devised a scale that measured gravitational differences in the floor. Science had always been her favorite. Joan Taylor had never been the type of girl to play with dolls and act cute. She was fascinated with the stars, looking up at them at her parents' Greenwich estate. She came to know each of them by heart, when they would arrive in the sky. Sometimes she would talk to him; the odd genius in a world of little socialites searching for friends.

She never went to Yale. In fact, by the time her senior year in high school rolled around, there was an argument as to whether she should go to college at all. Education was unnecessary, as she would never have a career, particularly in a profession as masculine science. A woman of her status should marry, and that was all the education she should have. She was to have a debutante ball like all the Taylor girls before her. The grant would be converted into hard cash; John Taylor the broker would see to that. The money would go to something more practical like a dowry or a wedding.

 As luck would have it, she became ill the week before the gala event.

She had been swimming in the chilly May waters of the lake near her parents' house, and she came down with sever pneumonia. The day she was to debut, she was in the hospital. She veered in and out of consciousness, hearing her mother alternatively lament at the possible loss of her daughter and her harsh whispers panicking not knowing if Joan was ever going to find a man to take care of her. It was typical of Marion Hawthorne Taylor, to love her daughter and yet make it seem that the only important thing was for her youngest daughter to get a man. She was worried that Joan was too much of a tomboy to ever hold a man's attention. Drifting in and out, Joan would wonder if she was right.

 In the end, the family relented by letting their daughter attend Smith College, where she could learn the niceties of being a woman and get this "college thing" as John Taylor put it, out of her system. Besides, Smith ha nice socials where, if they didn't quite have the class of a debutante ball, it was reputed that they attracted nice boys from the surrounding universities.

It was at one of these socials that she met Russell Frawley, a law student at Harvard University. She was impressed with him almost immediately. A handsome, older, Ivy League man who spent the whole evening with her. How it would impress her parents. They'd written her off as a spinster, but she'd show them. He was so funny, easy to talk to, so charming. Joan knew she was the envy of the other girls. His parents paid for his college, so she knew that he must come from a good family. At that time, she only knew money as a barometer for decency. And at that time, it seemed to little matter that he spent most of the night refilling his champagne glass. Joan actually thought it was cute. How stupid she had been.

 So she spent her time shopping, trying to impress the love of her life. She went to Manhattan to find the best, and he would take her to the Waldorf Astoria and tavern on the green. Her stars appeared for her night after night, but she had forgotten about them. She had found a new love, one that was presentable on her arm, at least to the eyes of others.

 And so, in June of 1972, one year after they had met, Joan Taylor and Russell Frawley became lawful man and wife. She was two months pregnant, feeling somewhat dehumanized, wondering if her playboy husband married her only to avoid scandal. In the month before their wedding, her would disappear for days, only to be found drunk on his parents' front lawn. Two weeks before her wedding, Joan was tempted to run from it all, baby or not. She longed to tell her parents of her true feelings, but she knew that she could never to that. Marion Taylor would never forgive her for the amount of money she would have wasted on such a rebellious child. Joan remembered during her wedding reception giving a glance to her stars, the first glance in the long rime. Looking at them, she felt disconnected from both them and the bride she was. She felt like a shell with no identity.

 Her marriage was a disaster from the start. Russell was furious to hear that she was pregnant, and her fear that he would feel trapped in the marriage was realized. He tried to bribe her to abort the child; imagine a man telling his own wife that he would give her a million dollars just to get rid of it. Somehow, Joan thought she was entitled to the money anyway if he had it; she was his wife. But it was family money. And as she found out later, Russell didn't have a dime for himself.

 He hardly ever was home. Joan had spent most of her adult life alone. She didn't fir in with the social crowd, and so she had no way of breaking out of her prison. As Russell became more and more prominent as an attorney, the cages got bigger and bigger, and people saw less and less reasons why she was so unhappy. People suggested shrinks and doctors. They felt sorry for her. Everyone knew what a playboy she married. Most times, he wasn't playing with her.

And then there was Quentin. The drugs began early with him; he had just finished Cub Scouts two years earlier. A child. Joan remembered the day when she cleaned his room and found the first of many joints. She had just dropped him at his friend's house after spending the day in the park with him. It had been, up until that point, a beautiful day in May. She remembered feeling, now, he has left me too. That was the day that she joined them, into a world of chemical wasteland. That day, she found a third love. Russell she hated. The stars were forgotten. Booze was the kindest to her. Eventually she hated Quentin, too. She wished she had an abortion, and in the greatest of stupors, she told him so. Quentin died of an overdose when he was thirteen. He was to have been in varsity soccer that year. Heroin had other plans. Joan told him that she wished she aborted him the previous day.

 The day she confronted her husband in her off in her office, she was sick of being made the fool. Someone told her that he was seen with a prostitute. Joan snapped. Bad enough that she had been jilted, but for a woman that wasn't even of her stature, one that he handed money to, that was too much. After she for it all out of her system, she sat by the bay window again, glancing at the faraway stars. She caught a glimpse in their beauty of the Joan Taylor of yesterday; the feisty one, the tomboy, the dreamer. She spent the rest of the night wondering where that Joan Taylor went.

 And now, the riots. Joan had been three days sober when she saw them on the news, her present abstinence born of sheer will to combat whatever woman had snagged her husband this time. She joined with her mother-in-law in changing the zoning laws. Michelle Johnson-Frawley had been involved with zoning ever since the minorities moved in; trying to change their residencies to business districts so they would move out. So far, to no avail, mostly because she couldn't get enough interest in the project; no one cared unless it was literally in their back yard. But now with the riots, all had changed.

 Taylor, with Johnson-Frawley, introduced a comprehensive segregation zone. A gate would be installed around their area, with a security guard and private roads. Frankly, Taylor thought this was awfully late in coming. With the salaries that they made and the services they provided for their community, it was amazing it took a crazed murderer for everyone to realize they needed special protection.

 It was expected that the proposed five-million dollar project might get caught up in red tape, so Johnson-Frawley with all her pull in town hall was a vital tool indeed to get this project going. She could brush aside the officials with her checkbook like they were gnats on the ground. Her pocketbook wouldn't even feel the effect. Red tape was meaningless to her.

 Joan was exhilarated to finally after all these years to be doing something worthwhile with her life. As the negotiations were set with the White Plains government and later that month in Albany, Joan felt happy and proud of herself, like she was doing a service for her people. The Africans were busy calling other blacks "their people"; why couldn't white people do the same?

 She smiled, basking in the knowledge of her good deeds. Soon she would go to Albany to finalize the plans, getting state emergency funds, care of her mother-in-law. She came home to her drunk husband and for the first time felt better than him, and felt that finally, vengeance was hers for the taking.

TWENTY ONE

 Cindy found no refuge in the streets that evening. No bed, no warm, albeit lukewarm meal for her tonight. It was freezing, and she shivered violently. She began to think herself a fool for choosing freedom over life; for she would die soon if she lived like this much longer. She wondered if she could survive another New York winter out her, and wondered why she would want to; only to have to survive another one a year after that.

 For the first time that she could remember, Cindy allowed herself to sink into a numbing depression, the kind that could steal valuable energy that might be needed for survival. She didn't care anymore. She thought of the injured man by the dumpster. He might die. And she would have a part of it. She was like that rabbi in the religious parable who passed by the Jew beaten up by robbers-she couldn't even help her own kind.

 The thought of the Christian parable startled her. Religion; her enemy for so long. Messenger of condemnation, eternal judge of her soul, that was what religion came to mean for her over the course of her adult life. On Sundays it was a special day of payback where you got to dress up for the day and smile at all the people you hated and hear all the things you heard all week- whore, born to bear physical pain in labor (and out of it too), condemned to live in the shadow of her husband. Patrick would hear it and it would give him more incentive to act as he did; after all he was the head of her. Never once did she hear of the love, peace and mercy that the Church proclaimed itself to be. She deserted the church when she deserted Patrick. The niceties of a normal life had betrayed her. There was a graffiti strewn park across from where she was. Several teenage boys shot hoops. She could see some of them laughing. A girl was being pushed by her mother on a swing. Even in the poverty of the inner city, Cindy envied them all. There was someone to laugh with them. There was no one for her, now or ever. Except for once, once when she had first left, for the only six months that she lived a life that was ordinary.

 It was just after she left Patrick, when in blissful naivetÉ she assumed that by leaving she would be rid of him for good. She had moved to the Lower East Side, amongst the hippies and the starving artists that meandered there. She shared a loft with a couple of girls and got a job waiting tables in a greasy spoon. Compared to luxury and pearls, one would think that she was miserable here, but she actually became happy. It was wonderful to be peaceful again.

 And then, one afternoon, it ended with the abruptness of a hidden bomb exploding on a city street. She was coming home from her job like she had been for weeks. Just as she let herself into her studio, she felt the blow coming from behind. It felt as though someone shot her, and as she fell she knew that her attacker was none other than her husband. And then blow by blow she felt her life force being taken from her. After all she had survived, it had come to this; she was being beaten to death. Just as she thought she'd taken her last breath, someone walked into her apartment, the someone that saved her life. Patrick disappeared out of her second story building, and Cindy lived. A few hours after lying in a hospital bed, she left to begin her sojourn on the streets. IF Patrick tracked her down in her dump in the inner city, he would find her there too. She then began taking refuge in the danger of the streets. She was not going to let her husband kill her. She had nothing but her life, and she was damned no one would take that from her as well.

 In her musings of her survival, Cindy had been wandering. There wasn't much to do but think, but sometimes she got herself lost doing so, unaware of her surroundings. It was a dangerous thing for her to do, for you never knew who lurked around the corner, but sometimes her brain didn't give a shit. It needed to seek its own refuge in fantasy, tired of working with nothing to show for it. And then her brain would lead her where it wanted to go. It was heading back to the street where she found the crazy hobo lying in his blood. She wondered if he was alive. And then she felt guilty, and angry at being that way. She could not to afford to trust anyone now, for it was everyone for his own here on the street. And yet, here she was, watching to see if some crazy guy who she didn't even know was alive. Maybe she was the one who was crazy.

 There was a commotion going on in the place where she last saw him. An ambulance was there, along with blue-uniformed paramedics lifting a figure on a stretcher into the ambulance. A plainclothes figure climbed into the ambulance after them. A white guy, blondish. Cindy presumed he called for help. A stranger, probably; he was too fair to be Latin. A stranger, like her, but unlike her, called for help. She watched as the ambulance pulled away, and her eyes misted. She cursed her tears, but they remained, and Cindy tried to forget them as she set off to find her bed for the night.

It was hazy and dark in the passage where the minstrel lay bleeding. Colors, vibrations, smells that mingled together gave him no sense of the journey he was taking, but he could feel the Lord holding his hand. His spirit was a balm to the minstrel's soul; His protection, his comfort. When the world assaulted him, he knew that the love of Jesus would shelter him, in Him, the minstrel would always live. The minstrel knew that much of his past was hidden, and he was grateful for God's divine shelter from what hurt him. That he was unworthy of such kindness made him love the Lord even more; that he was even loved made him eternally grateful for such undeserved richness.

The passage gave way to a green forest at the edge of a lake, and as he explored the forest he felt a vague sense of deja-vous. He smelled the foliage, full of aromas of spruce, oak and evergreen, intoxicated by the scents. The air was balmy, rendering him drowsy, taken in so far that nothing else but the Lord existed where he was. All the worries that he brought her were forgotten. If this was heaven, he was content.

The path he traveled on led him upward on a steep path. He felt not the least bit strained from the climb; he felt a new energy instead. As he reached the apex of the hill, he looked back from whence he came. He saw the lake in its entirety stretching along the horizon laced with the magnificent woods along its borders. He was in awe of the lake's grandeur, more apparent now from a distance than when he was close to it.

 The sky was beautiful; clear and blue. A pristine picture of Heaven far above. A sparrow traveling across it like a shooting star, leaving in its wake a bright array of colors. A rainbow, subtle in its hue, pale yellow ,orange, red; God's covenant to Noah before his very eyes. He rested in its quiet, the beauty fusing with his thoughts. He remained there until he felt God tugging at his spirit to go. He got up from that place and went, God holding his hand along the path upwards.

 As he continued, he caught something from the corner of his eye; a relic of the past. There, high in a oak tree as tall as the sky, was a clubhouse, except it was decorated like a girl's dollhouse, with frilly curtains in the windows, flowers at the door. It was a special dollhouse; his precious daughter's. He had made it specially for her on her seventh birthday. He smiled as the sun shone upon the fruit of his love, and knew that soon God would lead him back to her.

 With a sudden start, he was jolted out of that world. Instead of the colorful landscape of the lake, pale, colorless hues were painted along the canvas of his vision. The silence of the garden was pierced by monotonous beeping, punctuated by a low roar of voices, tired sounding, all fusing into one another. He was not standing in a golden forest but lying in a hard bed, pale like the rest of the room; pale like the curtains that began and ended the room's existence, and panic entered his heart as he realized that he was alone here, without Lupe, without Raulita, and that the beds by him lay empty. He screamed, unaware of the many alarmed faces upon him, and in desperation, ran to the nurses station, hoping against hope that the worst had not happened, demanding to speak to a doctor; where had they taken them? He was next of kin, he had to see the bodies if they were dead. And then anger, as the young nurse blinked at him in confusion; what part of this did she not understand? His family had come with him. The last thing he remembered before he fell was seeing their bodies being taken away in their home. He wanted to see them. Anger welled in him as the young nurse blink her blue eyes in profound confusion. He needed Lupe. He needed Raulita.

 A short middle aged Hispanic nurse with deeply spaced eyes appeared by the young nurse's side. The minstrel had a vague feeling that he had seen her before, but could not place her. When she spoke, her accent told him she was the same ancestry as he, and he relished the simple bond. She regarded him with grave concern as she spoke: Your wife and child are not here. You came alone. You were found unconscious by your friend Jonathan, and he had an ambulance bring you here. There was no one else with you.

 He let out a wail, unable to accept this news, indifferent that the young blonde nurse jumped in the fear. He watched the Latina nurse. She remained as she was, her features set in deep compassion. But she could not bring Raulita back. He sauntered away, a raging bull on a mission. God was all that he took with him as he felt the eyes of the nurse watch him leave.

 Jonathan sighed as he parked his car by the hospital to see the singer he found. Ashley did not know that he was here. If she knew that he was here, she'd pack her bags in a second. The singer was below someone like her. Jonathan himself barely cut it at this point. He wished he brought Raven with him; he was beginning not to trust Ashley with her. He never knew when she would be drunk, and if he was not there, Raven would get the brunt. Luckily, Raven was not home yet, tonight was Brownie night. but he missed her. She was his whole life.

 He walked into the hospital, thinking about the singer. He intrigued Jonathan; he seemed like someone with a rich past. He had an aura of peace that Jonathan envied. Jonathan would trade everything but Raven to have that peace. He would even be willing to lose Ashley. His heart was the weight of a boulder because of her.

 He had a strange sensation as he approached the nurses' desk to ask about the singer, like he was a foreigner in a new land. At his inquiry, the younger nurses began to whisper frantically. Carmen, the head nurse, shoed them away.

"Your friend left today," she said brusquely. "About two hours ago. I guess you didn't see him?"

"He said something about his wife and daughter. Do you know anything about them?"

 Jonathan grinned wryly and shook his head, baffled by the information that the singer had disappeared. "I don't even know his name."

 "Such a shame, isn't it," she said. "He probably had a wonderful family. I wonder what happened to him."

 Jonathan let her words sink in before saying anything more. "What do I owe you?"

 "We could send a bill, if you want."

 Ashley. What would she think if all that money that could have gone to Sach's went to a homeless bum who couldn't speak English? Jonathan was tempted by the bait to egg her on but resisted. "No. Let me pay you now." He waited as Carmen dealt with the accountant before giving him an invoice, aware of the nurses ogling him. He was used to the attention, though his good looks did not mask the man who was inside; the last thing he ever thought of was what his exterior looked like. A strange man in a world of materialism.

Carmen came back with the bill. "You can pay it downstairs by the main entrance. Take the elevator behind you."

 "Thank you."

 "No, thank you." Jonathan looked up at her. "We need more people like you. If everyone was like you there would be no problems in this world.

 Jonathan looked at her, touched by her words. When was the last time Ashley said something like this to him, that he had to hear it from a stranger? He smiled his thanks.

 The wind did not feel as cold as it had been when he left.

 The young nurses were in a flurry after the mysterious hunk's departure.

 "That was weird," the receptionist, Bridget said.

 "You're telling me," agreed Margie, the nurse who had been unfortunate enough to be the backlash of the hobo's outrage. "He was a total psycho, that bum. Why a cute guy like him-" she gestured to the exit door, ignoring a black woman with a bandaged hand trying to get her attention "would want to hang out with a bum like that, well, you got me on that."

 "Girls, get back to work. Margie, it looks like someone is waiting for you." Carmen snapped. The younger girls gave her barely concealed glance of resentment. Older and non-white, Carmen usually found herself the enemy of her underlings. But that didn't concern her. She wanted them to grow up, act professional. Carmen found herself boiling with anger at the appalling behavior of the young women who supposedly dedicated their lives to serving people. What right did they have to judge that homeless man? Who knew what he had been through? And to make comments about the man who might have saved his life. It was amazing how people scorned those who did good, unless it was good towards them.

She stared at the door, wondering who the homeless man was. She wondered what family was missing him, and she felt empathy for them. For she was just like them. For eighteen years, there was someone lost to her. She hoped that the man found his wife and daughter, so that they would not have to feel as she had for all these years.

TWENTY TWO

 Hardship was something that Carmen Manuel Sanchez was no stranger to. She'd spent her whole life in the projects, first in Brooklyn, then in Jamaica, and finally, Spanish Harlem, where she lived now. Even with her nursing license, the inner city was her destiny. There were too many bills to pay, and she was the only one to do it. Her husband had been laid off for years since his heart attack, and his disability barely covered his medicine and their food. They had six children together, and two of them were in college; Joseph and Paul ,two were at home, Luisa and Carmen and the other two, were grown and had their own families, and tried to help out when they could, but it was still tight for her, especially with her husband Carlos' medical bills. She'd worked her whole life, since she was twelve. Her first job was at a clerk in an all night deli by the ghetto; she'd taken the job with its lousy hours because they gave her cash. She could still remember the sound of gunshots when she was walking home, and the hobos as she passed as she made her way home. Images of TV commercials of young girls playing with Barbie dolls punctuated her world of violence and poverty. It seemed far away from where she lived.

 She'd had a best friend, two if you counted the girl who suddenly disappeared with her family when Carmen was nine, but the one that was her sister for life was Lupe. They met when Carmen moved to Spanish Harlem with her family at the age of nine. Lupe Rosario loved in the projects across the street. The fist time they met had been in the streets. There had been a game of stickball going on. Carmen had just been standing by and watching the boys playing, the role that she always played. But not Lupe. Lupe was a wild child, one of the boys. Lupe went where the boys went, whether it was to smoke cigarettes in the corner of the schoolyard, play basketball in the streets or climbing trees in the park by St. Mary's Church. Carmen had seen her around, but was intimidated by her tomboy ways. She'd seemed so tough with her jeans and her baseball cap. She was big and scary looking; Carmen was afraid that Lupe would beat her up. She had a feeling that it would be a good idea to be on Lupe's good side. She was someone that could be leaned on, a protector. Carmen was always afraid on the streets, and she wanted to have as much protection as possible.

 She'd figured that she would impress Lupe by playing the stickball like she did, but all she did was miss the ball and trip over her saddle shoes, and she was mortified, especially when the boys laughed at her. But not Lupe. She told the boys to cut it out, and amazingly, they listened. Carmen decided then and there that Lupe was her best friend for life.

 So that was the beginning of their friendship, and it had been a lasting one, all through the years. Through all the hardships, violence, indigence, and terror, their friendship came second only to her relationship with the Lord as the sustaining force in her life. Together they stood strong in the times that might have destroyed them if they were alone. They leaned on each other when no one else was there in a cold, dark world. Not that when she was growing up was Carmen ever mistreated. It was just that her family was too concerned with survival to tend to the insecurities of a young girl. It was through Lupe that she found laughter in her soul. They shared everything in their hearts: their secrets, pain, their dreams. Carmen was the youngest of six sisters, always being the brunt of their jokes. With Lupe, Carmen knew she would never be laughed at. Her secrets would not get around the whole neighborhood like it did with the other girls. The other girls were good for sharing clothes and costume jewelry. It took a long time for Carmen to learn that it wasn't the same as sharing her heart. That was what Lupe was for.

 Carmen became interested in boys first. Lupe was still playing basketball with the boys when Carmen excitedly came to her with the news that she'd received her first kiss from the head of the bike gang, Jose. Lupe reacted with disgust, the first time she overtly showed disapproval for anything Carmen did. Kissing was gross, was twelve year old Lupe's opinion, sharing spit and tongue touching. At first Carmen felt the shame that she always did when her mother called her a worthless wench and when her sisters and brothers made fun of her. She began to cry, even more to her shame. Lupe came over to her and tried to make a joke out f the whole thing, which made Carmen feel better. Lupe never apologized. To some, that made her seem arrogant, but Carmen knew she wasn't. She acted sorry, which was better than her family, who said they were sorry but then did the same things over and over. Carmen had accepted this about Lupe as a young child, understanding more deeply as she matured into an adult. She knew that Lupe was sorry as she took her hand and led Carmen to a stack of women's magazines that her mom stashed away. They looked at the fashion section so Carmen could get pointers so she could attract more boys to get more gross kisses; what else were friends for but to help each other? Lupe reasoned to Carmen, with her indifferent shrug.

 Lupe didn't get involved with boys until two years later, but when she did it was with such intensity that even flirtatious Carmen was terrified that Lupe would run away and get married. She didn't date a lot of boys the way Carmen and the other girls did. There was only one man for her, and he was the envy of all the girls. An older man, not a high school boy. He was nineteen, the most gorgeous man that Carmen ever saw. A boy with a motorcycle and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, but not a gangster. He was a man onto his own, dark and mysterious, a Latino James Dean. He was so smart that he went to the university, where he was a junior. It was nearly unheard of for a Latino to go to college; it was lucky that any finished high school; so many had to drop out to help support their families, or had to get married at ages that Carmen found ridiculously young now. But Raul Valesquez had no family; and he was not from the neighborhood. Lupe said that his family had been killed when he was fifteen in a shooting incident in Puerto Rico. Then he moved to the States, and he traveled for a year around the country, searching for a home, until he settled in New York, where he found his cousins, the Sanchezes. He was very patriotic; had a great love for the Puerto Rican community. He was going to school to be a counselor to help gangsters to get off the streets because of what happened to his family. Carmen was impressed, as well as everyone else. Raul Valesquez escaped the trap that had been laid out for him. Instead of falling into the violence, he fought it. That bought nothing but admiration from the community he settled into.

Raul had always been a devout Catholic. He went to church almost every day, bringing his guitar with him . No one dared comment about his gangster apparel as he went into the sacristy and as he led the folk group in song. Carmen would spy on him when he thought no one else was looking, when he knelt in the vestibule. He would seem almost regal in his pose; a core of inner peace emanating from him that was awesome to behold. It seemed as though nothing could destroy him. He seemed invincible.

 When she was eighteen, Carmen married one of the Sanchezes, Carlos. Carlos was Raul's sidekick, and wherever Raul and Lupe were, Carmen found herself with Carlos, and they were drawn to each other, mostly, Carmen recalled, out of convenience. They spent countless nights on the backseat of a Buick while Lupe and Raul sat and talked, the two intellectuals. Carmen remembered the first time she actually felt jealous of Lupe- jealous of her mind, for being able to attract a man for her mind; Carlos never talked to her about anything; he just wanted to get her clothes off. It was one of those times in the backseat that she felt the pang and actually slapped Carlos to keep him off of her. Raul and Lupe were talking about Vietnam. Raul was saying that he was glad that he was in college, to avoid the draft. He would rather better his mind than fight a cause that wasn't his. Now Carlos--he regarded flippantly with his hand-- was too thick to get into college. He would have to get married if he wanted to keep his precious balls intact. A week later Carmen got a marriage proposal, two weeks before graduation. Carmen swore, looking back, that Raul intended to save her honor. He thought men who slept with women who weren't their wives were pigs. Carmen didn't know whether to be comforted or ashamed by that realization.

 So while Lupe was getting ready to go to secretarial school, Carmen was preparing to get married. Carmen had to admit that to some extent she was relieved; for the last tow months, she'd missed her period, though no one but Lupe knew, and she had her first child exactly seven months later, in January of 1964. Lupe and Raul didn't marry until three years later, in a big June wedding. Lupe had just graduated from secretarial school, which she'd attended nights while working as a receptionist in a doctor's office. By the time they got married, Carmen was pregnant with her fourth child, and going to work in a bodega while her husband slept after his night shift as a janitor in the airport. With their busy schedules, they saw much less of each other; their outing restricted to the holiday get-togethers and the occasional phone call. For a while they recaptured their high school camaraderie as they prepared for Lupe's wedding, with Carmen being matron of honor, but after Lupe got married, the rush of everyday life returned, and they went days without speaking to one another. Sometimes, the loss hit Carmen, when she was dealing with unpleasant things such as her husband's drinking or the endless mess of seven children with not enough money to feed them, and she would remember the bond they shared, and wondered why life impeded on something as special as her sisterhood with Lupe. She hardly had time to be sad about it, and in a way, that itself was even sadder.

 Raulita was Lupe's first child; she was named after her father because she looked just like him, from birth to her early years. She had the same intense, piercing, black eyes and raven black hair. Later on, when she reached school age, her face softened into delicate slopes that more resembled Lupe. She was a beautiful girl, with a smile that could light up the room, but her innocence was not of naivetÉ. It was a marvel to have her watch you, made you wonder how much of that innocence was a mask to cover her inner thoughts, and how deep did they run.

 Then both women got pregnant again at the exact same time; their due dates were in mid-March. They were so excited for each other, so bonded by their mutual experience that when Carlos was laid off from his job, Carmen was strangely undaunted. Raul and Lupe generously opened their home to the Sanchezes, and the women were back together, bonded as though they were back in high school together. They went shopping for their future children together, each understood the other one's fears and hopes, because the other had the same thoughts. For six blissful months, Carmen felt like the families had been blessed once more. Carlos even began to stop drinking and stay home more; Carmen's children accepted Raulita as though she was their sister. The five room apartment was crowded, money was still tight, but amidst all the love in the family, Carmen barely noticed these things.

 It was at the Valesquez home that Carmen learned the true meaning of God in her life. She learned from watching Raul. He spent much of his free time writing songs about his love for God, and the family spent many nights singing the songs he had written. Raul worked at a youth project trying to get young people off the streets, off drugs and out of the gangs. He opened his home to them, and many nights they listened to Raul talking about how wonderful and loving God was if you only sought him out; he was always looking for you to rely on Him. Instead of reciting meaningless prayers over and over again, Carmen began going to churches when there was no service and sit in the presence of quiet. In this stillness, she began to find God. She felt Him within her, a steady, quiet presence. She accepted him just in time, for she would need His power sooner than she could ever imagine.

 It began three days before Christmas, in 1972; Raulita was five years old then, still believing in Santa Claus. still believing in magic. Lupe had been standing on a ladder, decorating the tree with Raulita putting homemade popcorn garland on it, trying to reach the higher branches when she suddenly collapsed. At first the family thought she fell, and Carmen chastised herself for not being firmer with her about working so strenuously; Lupe had always been stubborn. But in the hospital, the doctors said that something had gone horribly wrong with her pregnancy; they were forced to do a premature Cesarean just to save Lupe; she nearly bled to death getting to the hospital, and after the operation, remained unconscious for days. Little Pablo Valesquez came into the world two and a half months too early; totally ill-equipped to handle the challenge of life outside of his mother. He spent the duration of his brief life in an incubator; never knowing the touch of his mother's arms, never seeing her face. Raul watched as his baby son kicked and scream, collapse from lack of oxygen; he anguished at the inevitable fact that this blue-faced baby would soon die, and his mother would not be able to be there for him. The screaming and kicking trickled away into whimpers and fidgets that soon became silence. Pablo died in his sleep, sucking his fingers in a last ditch effort to regain his mother's security. He died four days after he came into the world.

 Lupe wasn't quite the same feisty woman after that. It was as though a part of her died with Pablo, some part had to be with the son that she never met. In the last six year's of Lupe's life, there seemed to be little joy in her heart. Nothing seemed to bring her to life- not Carmen, not Raul, not Carmen's children, not her work, not the songs of joy she used to sing, not even Raulita. She would just sit on her fire escape looking out into nowhere, as though somehow in the fog that surrounded her, she found a secret world which gave her comfort. She no longer slept with her husband at night, preferring to sleep in a chair by the window. Raul had Carmen and Carlos move to his bedroom so he could stay on the couch and keep watch over his wife. And Raulita would watch her parents. Carmen caught her once at night, feeling those dark eyes turn upon her, full of fear, fear so intense that Carmen could still feel it now in her memory. Carmen hugged the child, wishing to take the pain from her, but not knowing how. She wept with Raulita in her helplessness.

 Raul, Carlos and she spent much of the time they had been singing in silent prayer now. Raulita was the most silent of them all. Carmen was heartbroken at the child who once used to spend her days laughing and singing. Instead of playing with her little girlfriends here, she spent more and more of her days solitary, preferring instead to spend her time alone reading, playing with her dolls, or staring into space. She would even shy away from her cousins when they tried to play with her or share their dolls. At the tender age of seven Raulita had become a recluse. The atmosphere became so dark that Carlos insisted on moving their family elsewhere. Their children were getting depressed, and as far as Carlos was concerned, they would get enough of their share later on. They moved in with an uncle who lived in the South Bronx. Raul understood, but as Carmen walked out the door and saw Raulita watching her, she knew the child had been hurt all the more, and it killed her to this day when she remembered that face in tears.

 They still kept in touch with Raul. He convinced Carmen to go back to school to become a nurse. Carmen had always wanted to go to college, but she never though she was intelligent enough, or had enough drive to finish; besides she had kids so young and there had been bills to pay. But her oldest child was nearly thirteen now; the kids would soon be gone, and she would have her whole life in front of her. Raul told her she was intelligent, that in the long run, she would be better off with a career than running into the dead end jobs she had. Five years later, she had her career, the best move she ever made. It was too bad Lupe never saw her at her best. If she only knew how. There was little encouragement from anyone to leave her husband and start a career. She was a Catholic and a housewife; the domestic role was sacred; she should be grateful for the role that God gave her and not spit in his face by trying to destroy what He made in the first place in the Garden of Eden. Besides, she was a Latina, and one nearing thirty at that. What kind of career could she start? In that way, Carmen found herself knocked down before she even started. She couldn't even answer the questions. She felt shame for even asking them and put them away in a remote place in her mind where she hoped she'd misplace them.

 But Raul didn't let her forget. He would ask about her plans every so often, just enough not to let her forget. It irritated her more than anything else, though she found herself going to Raul even more for guidance, despite the fact that her drunken husband began vehemently accusing her of having an affair by going over there all the time. His accusations would propel her more to go where she was accepted. Sometimes she cursed t he existence of her children, much as she loved them; because without them she could have just walked out, Catholic or no Catholic. She couldn't say she felt shame when she thought like that, especially when her quiet lovely children developed into free-thinking teenagers. Adolescence appeared to early in her children. When her oldest turned nine, she found cigarette butts in her room. She started smelling alcohol on the twins' breath when they were twelve. Carmen found herself discontinuing cleaning their rooms, afraid of what she would find there. She berated herself for her weakness and at her lack of strength to fight for the lives of her children, which were slowly being ebbed away into a world of violence and mayhem, where to be straightlaced could cost them their lives, but so could being on the dark side of the street as well. She would see the pushers on the corners of the streets, ;lurking, waiting. These were the people her children faced when they walked the streets. And she felt powerless to do anything to stop them.

 Many times when she visited Raul, there were people from his church there. They encouraged her to come to their church every time she visited. Even though she'd long ago put her trust in God, Carmen had not set foot in a church since her youngest's baptism. She always felt lesser than and judged in the presence of churchgoers, including to some extent, Raul, because he seemed holy in times when all she could do was rage; he seemed purer than humanly possible. Her life, even now, was less than reputable. She felt judged for not being joyous enough, pious enough, for being angry at all. Even here in the inner city, they expected people to be absolutely pure, after all, Jesus and Mary remained pure in violent times. The priests seemed just as macho as the lay men in the real world, but everyone knew that the nuns were in charge. The women, they knew better how to take care of things, and how to hide in meekness when the source of power was with them.

 So the first few times when Carmen saw the church men over, she ignored them, especially those that sported gold chains like trophies around their necks; she knew those types. They reminded her of her husband—there would be hardly enough money for food, yet he had to buy his gold chains to look like a real stud to all the muchachas that he wanted to seduce. If she came over and they were there, she all but ignored Raul and went to Lupe on the fire escape. Machismo was what she escaped when she came over here. She didn't need it in her haven.

Lupe hardly ever talked now. Gone was the wild child free spirit, gone was the tomboy who would take on the world. Raulita herself was equally quiet, sitting on Carmen's lap, her big oval eyes always on her mother. Lupe only spoke when spoken to, with as little words as possible to answer the question. Even when Raul came over to give her affection, she would hardly respond. Carmen had to admire Raul---if Carlos spent day after day sitting on a fire escape, ignoring her, not taking care of the children, she wasn't sure if she wouldn't have had an affair herself. At least Carlos was a good father, actually what that meant was, he was no worse than she was. How good parents could they have been if their oldest boy was in a gang? But he tried as hard as she did; trying to instill religion, discipline, lecturing them when they were wrong. When they were younger, they used to both hit the kids, like the time when she caught David with drugs. But the oldest ones were bigger than she now, and their anger scared her. They could easily hurt her if they wanted to, even though at their worst, they never had the audacity to hit their mother. She couldn't take the chances Carlos could still afford to take. Yes, as a father, he still was not the worst.

 Sometimes in the silences among the female Velasquezes she would sit and think of this, dreaming of times better than these. Sometimes she would listen to the noise coming from the streets seventeen below, a world of violence that seemed closed within on itself. Sometimes she would listen to the male voices from inside the dwelling, and the laughter she would soak into like a hot bath, indulging in the sound of a rare jewel that hardly could be found anymore. Mostly, in these silences, she would find herself there, in the men's prayers. All of the men, she came to know over time; they were ex-gangsters, coming together weekly to support their transition from a life of crime to a life with some semblance of hope. They prayed for those they had left behind in the gang, that they would find the light of God in their lives. Their conversations were about their pain and suffering rather than litanies in which they lamented over the damnation of all the other misbegotten souls who refused to see the light that they had seen and which had made them oh-so-perfect. They sounded like sinners who loved Jesus in not so perfect ways, much like herself. Gradually, Carmen found herself warming to the group, first managing to say hello to them, then eventually sitting down and "rapping" with them, as they put it. Raul had already mentioned Carlos to them; he was worried about his prodigal cousin. One of the men, Pedro Santiago, informed her of another group they had for their wives and girlfriends, the one who were choosing to stick it out with them, which in her better days, had been a brainchild of Lupe's. They supported each other while their men tried to get out of a street lifestyle. They needed each other; often their men went back to the streets out of pressure, habit or boredom; sometimes, the women were alone in their journey to freedom, because most of their men never got out in the first place. So they met together in secret, to evade the threats that were lobbed their way; threats were common, the gangs didn't like anything that threatened their solidarity, and it was a threat for some of the women to go, Raul said. Carmen marveled at how Raul could get along with these thugs, given their reputation. But he was not afraid to speak, he was not afraid to care.

Eventually, after some time, Carmen got up the nerve to go to the women's group. Unlike the men's group, which was mostly Latino, there were a mix of all races there: Caucasian, Black, Latina, Native America and Asian. She heard of the death threats to these women, making her life with philandering Carlos seem tame. They laughed off any comment on their courage. To them, this was survival, and courage was beyond the point when basic survival was on the line. Besides, one African woman pointed out, it was just as much a threat to stay home idly hoping that the drive-by or house raid or revenge killing could happen. If they were going to be in danger no matter where they went, they may as well get killed trying to get stronger.

Carmen found herself becoming close with one woman. Her name was Abdullah MacNamara, a black women who had briefly become a Black Muslim around the time of her daughter's birth and soon after discovered the hidden wonders of Haitian voodoo. Abdullah had been exposed to many cultures with her mother's varying interests. It was like going to school without dealing with white oppression, she explained.

She was about six months pregnant at the time Carmen met her, a beautiful ebony woman with high cheek bones and a tall graceful figure; her pregnancy only enhanced her beauty. Abdullah hoped for a girl, then she would call her Epiphany, because once she knew she was pregnant, she knew that she had to start over, end her life of sin, and she said she had come to know Jesus through the conception of her baby. The baby's father was a drug lord who had just gotten out of jail for possession, and even though she knew it was wrong, they lived together; she felt safer with him there than not, she said as she played with a garnet ring on her left finger. She never said why she stayed with him, and Carmen somehow felt as she saw the eyes drift into a lost world she couldn't enter, it would be better if she didn't ask. Carmen presumed pregnancy was the reason, the reason why many women she knew relied on the unreliable, including herself. Where else would an unwed Black woman go? The homes were all for white people and rich blacks like the Supremes. The sixties had brought liberation for white women and black men, but black women were far behind.

 Apparently Abdullah's man had been an upstanding citizen for the briefest of times. He had stopped drugs and even begun an outreach program for youths on the streets. He'd gone back to get his GED so he could become a youth counselor. There had been times when their apartment had been littered with runaways who had sought refuge with them, eerily similar to Raul, and she felt a chill go up her spine when Abdullah said that, she didn't know why at the time. Abdullah remembered this experience as exhausting and defeating, the tone which marked their first five years together. They even planned to get married; Abdullah finally found herself comfortable enough not to be terrified of him—he'd never hit her, at least, Abdullah denied it, but the hashish, heroin, and everything else had turned him into another person. Abdullah never knew what she was coming to. But for tow years, there had been peace. Abdullah said it was the first time in her life that she had been truly happy. Carmen looked at this young beautiful, intelligent creature and felt a stab of anger. How could society allow a person like her to be oppressed and suppressed? Carmen was angered by the injustice. And this was a free country?

 Her anger motivated herself personally. Her long ago dream of going to school uprooted itself with full force. She saw the women, the pain they were in, and the contempt that they were regarded with. She had been so involved with Lupe and Raul and her own family's needs to see the pain of those about her. The women in the group reminded her of the pain that surrounded her, that there was a world that didn't worry about survival and who enjoyed all who enjoyed all the simple luxuries of life. She forgot about the times when medical care was denied, she realized the one time a black pregnant women named Jackie came in bruised and battered with a broken arm from a gang bang. She'd been thrown out of the emergency room an hour after she'd been admitted, after being ignored for nearly five hours while she waited, while all the rich boys and girls with Blue Cross were waved right through. Her contractions had been a half-hour apart, which abated into an hour, Abdullah said, she was with Jackie There had been no reason to kick out a pregnant woman like that. She'd tried to raise protest in her friend's behalf, to no avail. She had heard one of the orderlies calling them stupid niggers to another black orderly, who concurred. There was always an Uncle Tom around to kiss ass, Abdullah had yelled. After that, Carmen knew what direction her career would be taking, though it would be a good three years before she got the financial backing she needed. She didn't care. Nothing would sway her now. In the meantime, she could prepare herself for her defiant choice. No married woman had ever sought a career on her own, and all the women had been married, except some poor souls on her mother's side who were the brunt of most of the jokes when they thought they couldn't hear. Eventually she would surpass the man who was supposed to protect her, she who was supposed to be dependent on him, and now, she was the one who protected him, he the one dependent on her. She knew then that she needed strength for what lay ahead. She would never have dreamed how much.

 Lupe's condition was rapidly deteriorating. She sunk in her cheeks, bearing no resemblance to the husky girl playing stickball twenty-five years earlier. She was a shell, a pale colored shadow, very much like the ghost that had attacked her many years ago; the spirits had finally done their work. No longer did she speak, no longer did she travel the road of the living, through her heart betrayed her by continuing to beat without her consent. Carmen tried to get into a tough love mode, telling her she was a baby, that she was evil for allowing her daughter, husband and friends to suffer with her in her morbidity; every trick she could think of that she used on her stubborn, drug using kids, oh yes, she could handle a soul sister that would cry with her every pain, she was convinced; surely she was softer than those that were destined to grow to defy her, but she sat stone silent, she never heard- that was what hurt the most, that she would never care. Finally one day, Carmen told the vacant eyes in hollow sockets that Raul and Raulita were too good to deserve a loca mala bitch like her. The eyes, they never moved, they were the eyes of a dead ghost. Carmen walked out, mustering every fiber of righteous anger within her, convinced that she had made the right choice, but haunted nonetheless, her demons pushing her so hard that she drove off for days, not calling anyone; hoping that the long drive would expel her demons. Because of that costly decision, she never saw Lupe or Raulita alive again. For Lupe died the next day, and she was not even home to take the phone call. They were holding over the funeral for her, but only four days after Lupe died, a gunman attacked Raul and Raulita as they came home from dinner together. Raul himself was in a coma. He was not expected to survive. He'd sustained two shots to his head, one in which the bullet couldn't be removed. Raulita had also been shot. Carmen saw Lupe briefly at the hospital, despite all protests from the staff. She wished she hadn't. Lupe didn't look like Lupe; Carmen longed for even the ghost that she had seen only a week earlier. Lupe was nothing more than a bluish purple pulp. Carmen's mind would be forever seared, the final image of her soul sister that of brutality than the towering rock she was. After that, Carmen didn't even want to see Raulita; if Lupe was so badly marred even after all that happened to her in life, what had become of the quiet beauty of her goddaughter?

The funeral, and the waiting at the hospital; all these things she waited for and went through like a zombie. She was surrounded, as she always was, by her aunts, Carlos' family, her one uncle from Puerto Rico. Even Lupe's family had always surrounded her and influenced her in the loss of their only daughter and sister. But Carmen felt nothing. She remembered her last words to Lupe and wondered in some superstitious way if she was responsible for sending Lupe and her daughter to her death. All she could feel for the duration of the services was intense guilt. There was nothing to appease it. In some way she felt as evil as the killers themselves. Lupe was her best friend, her soul sister, they were spiritually related through Raulita. Lupe must have connected with her words in some way. She wondered if somehow through her words, she made Lupe lose her last ounce of hope. The doctors, they had almost saved her, thought she was going to live, but somehow, she slipped through their hands like gold disappearing into the depths of the sea, maybe like the death of hope which she callously slammed into Lupe's face.

 The hospital seemed like an eerie scene that could only be in movies. The Valesquezes, Rosarios, and Sanchezes all spent their time by Raul's side now, praying for the last thread that remained from the glorious quilt that once was. She remembered old Tia Anna rocking herself in the corner of the room over and over like some bewitched apparition, her rosary beads clutched in one hand as she repeated the Sorrowful Mysteries of the rosary over and over. Most times, she was the only voice that spoke. All were locked in their own silent prayer, fears unspoken but shouting in the air so loud it did not have to speak to be known. Carmen remained as they did. She felt unworthy to say any words of comfort, for she had cursed her only friend as parting words, incarnating the devil to curse the only friends she ever had. She was responsible for shattering the shield that had protected Lupe for so long, to cause her death.

 Pedro Santiago came to visit Raul very often, almost every day. All of the group that had been at Raul's house sat by his bedside at some point, but Pedro was the most frequent visitor by far. She and Pedro would talk sometimes out in the corridor, where the silence seemed less ominous and where it was out of the range of Carlos' jealous eye (he thought all men just wanted to ball her, maybe if he kept his pants zipped up he'd think a little more with the small brain he had left). Pedro had heard a rumor that the murders were vigilante, something to do with a Hispanic gang stealing drug money from a Black gang and the Black guy taking out the wrong man—obviously. Pedro knew for a fact that the Blacks' target had moved to Miami. In her numbness, Carmen did not want to know how Pedro had come up with this information. Rage, a desire for revenge were her reactions to his announcement. She wanted to find whoever it was and give them a Colombian necktie. Pedro must have suspected as much, because he wouldn't tell her who his source was, even when Carmen screamed at him full force in his face. She wound up belting him across his head before Carlos and his brother managed to answer her screaming. The rage she felt was tremendous—at the system, at the men who had destroyed who in turn destroyed those even more helpless than them. She sat rocking, twitching for days afterward as she went through the days, sitting by Raul's bedside and going to work and trying to control her children. No one spoke to her then. At work, where they were used to harassing her and abusing her, they said nothing. Even her delinquent children dared not cross her. She said nothing, yet she was molten fire ready to explode. If it ever happened to bet that she found Lupe's murderer, she would kill, slowly so that there was much pain inflicted. There would be no turning the cheek on this one. Forgiveness was forgotten, not the crime this time.

 She had been in her angry contemplation when she woke up from a nap sitting by Raul's bedside. Lupe's brother and Carlos' aunt Anna had been with her too, but were still asleep. Something about the room was different, she psychologically observed in her physical haze. It took her awhile for her to realize what the change was. When she did, shock waves rumbled through her with a force greater than even her venom possessed.

 Raul was missing.

 No one seemed to know what happened, not the nurses, none of the family, anybody. One minutes he was lying comatose by death's door, the next, he was gone. Vanished. Raul's cousin Pablo went storming up and down the corridor, insistent that someone kidnapped Raul and the hospital was covering up. You couldn't blame him, given all the insanity that had gone on in the last two weeks, but Pablo, he was getting insane himself. He sauntered in and out of every closet and cranny in the hospital, accusing anyone that got in his path of kidnapping his cousin, the only cousin that ever listened to him. He did this until security was forced to remove him, family tragedy or no family tragedy. But he only expressed what the rest of them wanted to but couldn't. They had experienced too much destruction to know what sanity meant anymore.

 Raul remained gone. An exhaustive search was conducted throughout the hospital to no avail. He was gone, as though he had never existed. Lupe and Raulita dying so young made her enraged. Raul's death, which is what it seemed like, even though there was no body, left her hollow. Lupe and Raulita were a stormy seascape painted in dark shadows, while Raul's ending was merely a skeleton of a sketch. He would be an apparition which would haunt her from that moment on till the present day.

 Carmen, the present Carmen, thought of this as she rode the subway home to cook for her invalid Carlos, the Carlos that she swore to leave, but the one whom she could only die for, and the three teenagers, the last of them. The twins, who both went to Pace University, might also be there, but she wasn't sure. The reality of the life she was heading towards on the speeding train seemed remote as she thought of the past. Many times she brooded upon it, but today the memories were stronger. She couldn't quite explain why. An image of the homeless man that had left the hospital flashed through her mind. It was awhile before it left.

 When she got of the subway, she passed the usual bums in the station, all ready to sleep the night. Many others were afraid of them. Carmen was not. They seemed no more dangerous than the random shooting done by faceless enemies in the dead of the night or the drug dealers willing to rob just to get money to pay off their debts. Some of the bums made their makeshift homes here, but most didn't. Those who lived here were relatively benign alcoholics, maybe a schizophrenic or two in the bunch—nothing that could be worse than a psycho with a gun. Sometimes Carmen would gives them extra change if she had it. She didn't care if they spent it on booze or drugs. If it gave them some peace of mind, Carmen had no objection.

 She wondered if the man from the hospital was among the transients. She found herself staring at them a little harder than usual amongst them to get a good look at their faces. Old, young, black white, male female, female with children, and—she had to look away, the ones who were only children. A microcosm of society, a microcosm of throwaways. It humbled her, made her feel vulnerable at the realization that any of those there could have been her. She walked away feeling lucky even though she hadn't found who she was looking for. She felt lucky every time she passed through here. IF she ever forgot, she could comer here and remember that she had much indeed.

 But the image of the nameless man in the hospital remained. He would be searching for his wife and daughter tonight. Carmen hoped that he found them.

TWENTY THREE

 Rain. The rain had been falling for two days, since the week after the riots. There had been a drought of sorts since then, no rain had fallen from the time of the indictment until now. God's judgment for the sins of liars and thieves, cried the ministers on their low-frequency radio waves. Emmanuel and Williams were praying together for grace and strength for the church in this time of crisis. The congregation was being affected. The white segment had all but disappeared from the church. Emmanuel couldn't help but feel scorn at their cowardice in times of trouble. He couldn't conjure forgiveness as easily as Brother Williams seemed so adept at doing so.

 Lately, Emmanuel was in a constant inexplicable state of anxiety. Prayers were a chore. There seemed to be a soundproof barrier between him and God, one too high for him to be able to climb and for God apparently to listen. He felt like Job when he was afflicted and seemed like God wasn't speaking to him. He came to Brother Casper Williams for counsel; he was the only one that he could even remotely show he was human, he couldn't break in front of anyone else. Brother Williams was convinced that the culprit of Emmanuel's setback was the arrival of the stranger from his past. Satan had strange ways of trying to undermine the elect, was his explanation. The devil was using Emmanuel's past as a stumbling block to his future. There was no reason for Emmanuel to feel guilty about what happened, murder or no murder. After all, Paul of Tarsus was had been a murderer when he was called Saul. He killed those he was later called by God to serve when He transformed him into Paul. God had a mighty vision for him. God was doing it for Emmanuel, and he would continue to do so, provided that he didn't let Satan trap him into a sense of false guilt.

 But Williams' words rang into an empty soul. At that moment, Emmanuel felt stripped of an identity. He felt unworthy to be the leader of a flock, so he felt no connection to his role of pastor. The rest of him felt like an open sore that shamed him when the mirror of truth reflected upon him. Unclean, unclean, it said. Stay outside the walls of Jerusalem because you are unclean. The mirror of truth did not reflect a pure lamb washed by the blood of Jesus. It reflected Emmanuel the gangster, Emmanuel the dealer, Emmanuel the john. Emmanuel the pastor, who seemed like some idea of a joke next to all that, was afraid of these three men, but he couldn't escape the fact that all four of them dwelled within the same temple. He found it impossible to throw those men into the sea of forgetfulness as Brother Williams admonished to do. He wondered if Paul ever had, or if his past was his proverbial thorn in his side in Romans, if Paul's past led him to do what he didn't want to do in Romans as well. He certainly felt doomed himself.

 Patience, gentleness; the fruits of the Spirit. Emmanuel had been baptized two weeks after he had been saved in the prison chapel, and even now remembered the power he felt when he was flung under the water, the power that surged as he was submerged. He had never felt power like that, even when his life was threatened on the streets, even when the time came when he had power to take a life. No, this power was giving life, and it was the first time he could ever believe that good was more powerful than evil; that his life had possibility of doing good. Before, goodness had always been a sign of weakness to him. In fact, even his being saved had been expression of his powerlessness. It had been utter helplessness that drove him to his knees before the Lord. Just two weeks later, he felt useful and alive again. That he would be able to turn around even the tragedy of his woman's death and bring good from it. Romans 8:28 promised it. God would bring good for all those who loved Him; God was faithful to keep His promises.

 But that power evaded him now. Little by little, over the years, instead of getting stronger, it escaped from him, like a small leak in a giant balloon slowly, it became more a faded glory than the Glory of the Living God. This terrified him, panicked him. He was supposed to be the leader of many, in control, in charge. He was supposed to lead them to the Source of Power, and through that, they looked to his power to do that. How was he supposed to be a reservoir of strength when he was sapped of the very essence that made up the core of his spiritual life?

 It was in the middle of praying with Williams that Emmanuel voiced what he was going to do. He was leaving. He would not lead anymore.

 It hadn't taken Emmanuel long to come to this decision. He was tired of putting on an act, tired of acting stronger than he really was. Each Sunday he mouthed words that he knew he was supposed to believe but sounded like a foreign language upon his ears. The past that he had held at bay for so long was with him now. It was not something he'd discussed with anyone in his church, nothing about the gangs, the violence, or the pimping. It sounded too seedy for even his ears. They'd known about the drugs, but drugs didn't sound so bad. They were done by socially upright people with family and jobs at a party every so often. Most people knew some one who did them and carried on with life like they were drinking coffee. They might even know some people who hustled a little grass here and there. But pimping, killing, killing little girls—

 When he looked into the mirror, he saw a human tumor, not an angel saved by grace. A little girl—what could he have been thinking? What purpose had it served to mutilate an innocent life like that? Her mother, her screams—then killing, maiming her. What had she done? The eyes of the father as he was held back, pummeled, forced to watch his family taken from him. His eyes, watching, judging. He had made them close as much to turn our the light that shone upon his evil deeds as to complete the mission he'd set out to do, but even before he'd pulled the trigger on the father, he knew he had the wrong man. The eyes told him so.

 He thought back to his seminary days. At the time, the whole idea of going there made him uncomfortable. Emmanuel had quit school before he received his high school diploma. Actually, he'd been expelled. Expelled from public school. He'd brought a gun to school and showed it to a teacher when the Uncle Tom told him he should be in class and not roaming the halls. SO at sixteen, he had his whole life in front of him, and nothing to do with it. The idea of a university then and once he became a pastor was a joke to him. It was an institution of snobbery and racism where the rich little white kids got a chance at a better life, and the only black kids who got there were the ones lucky enough to get there because of their feet or the way they threw a ball; and they were always treated as less than because their smarts were of the street kind and not the kind you would find hidden in a book. He was educated by the university of the streets, where you learned real life and where you could earn respect in spite of or even because of being black. He loved to walk down the streets of the rich white snobs in his full gang regalia and watch the whole lot of them cower from him in fear. Several times he'd gotten arrested for loitering. He hadn't cared. It had been worth the fun.

 Jackson Emmanuel was his real name. It had been a real major obstacle his whole life. People had expected too much of him, somehow attributing to him the role of angel and Savior all in one breath, all because of his name. He had been a preacher's son, too, though he'd been a child born of sin. The only time he ever saw his Papa was the time when he was a guest on Oral Roberts' show, telling the world how he'd delved into a life of sin even as a saved man but he'd turn his back on that now, spent time with his wife and two sons. Emmanuel was the third. He was only eleven when he saw the show, but even then, he wondered if he was part of that life that his father put behind. In the mind of a newly sanctified man, Emmanuel's existence was deemed unworthy and unclean.

 That didn't stop his Momma from loving the ghost of his father. Her dream was for one day having her son to be a great holy man like his father. She would go around, making predictions for him, saying all the things he was going to do as a great holy man. He would inspire hope and Jesus in the black ghetto. Emmanuel hated the expectation, mostly because deep inside, he didn't think he'd be able to fulfill it. His father's rejection of him was damning, made him think that holiness to high a goal to attain. Living a holy life took effort that he didn't have the strength to do, especially in a place where to turn the other cheek could mean death. The streets captured his soul early on. They were the family who accepted him. He didn't want to follow his father, a hypocrite. He didn't want to follow in the footsteps of someone too cowardly to acknowledge him, anyway. His father was not someone he considered worthy of respect. Neither was the God he supposedly followed, if He even existed.

When he left school, he left his Momma's home. He couldn't bear to face her tears anymore. Each time she had to bail him out of jail, come to the school, or got a call from the hospital that he'd been busted up again, he had to face her tears. He could tolerate a beating from her more than seeing her heartbroken. They ripped at what little conscience he had left. She worked so hard to support her three boys, each from men who had promised to stay and left; they all represented the love she tried to hold on to. And this life he led was how he repaid her, with violence and guns, a juvenile delinquent of a son. His older brother Samuel was already dead when Jackson left, dead of an overdose. As far as he could see, Emmanuel was just as dead as he.

 He started with the drugs then. At first, he just sold them, they were a quick way to get money, soon the only way for a black boy with no education to make money. It wasn't long before he started sampling his products; initially, his rationalization for his usage was that he wanted to make sure that his product was pure; after all, competition was stiff. Soon, he didn't need the excuse. The drugs made him high. He felt good. The drugs helped him escape the disease that he was and the decay that was his world.

 Since the reappearance of his nemesis, Emmanuel had a strong desire to return to that world. It had been twelve years since his last drugging episode, and the Lord had been more than generous in providing abundant joy in that time, but he wanted to throw it all away. The pain he was feeling was too unbearable . Twelve years ago, he'd became a killer. Eleven years ago, he became an angel of God. Instead of sounding like a statement of showing the grace a and wonderful mercy of God, it sounded like a crazy joke. Looking into his eyes, he didn't feel forgiven. He felt condemned all over again.

 Valesquez. The name popped into head. It sounded familiar in a personal sense, though he couldn't quite attach the name with a face. The same name had popped up before. With a disquieting feeling, he wondered if it was the name of the thorn in his side. Emmanuel really didn't want to know his name. It would make his crime more real, more personal. In order to put his crime behind him, Emmanuel needed to have no identification to it, no names, places, or anything else that was with him now. This way, he could live with the fabrication that it was part of another existence and that he truly had been born again to a new life.

 The spirit in him was dead. Gone was the life that God had so freely given him so long ago in his time of need, and instead in its wake was desolation, the haunting that plagued him in the quiet days that followed that last arrest. But all the prayers in the world did not alleviate his suffering as they did then. It would seem that God had deserted him. Methodically, Emmanuel searched Scriptures and stumbled upon the passage in Matthew in which Jesus said all sins would be forgiven except for the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. In his despair, he obsessed over the fact that this Scripture might be the reason for his present darkness, for God had led him to that Scripture, and he could find no other reason why He would do so. The passage condemned him rather than consoled him. He had always tried to love God in these last twelve years. What had he done that was so unforgivable?

 Williams lodged a strong protest when Emmanuel informed him of his resignation. He demanded that Emmanuel come before all of the elders before leaving. A shepherd had a duty to his flock, and it was not possible for Emmanuel to shirk that duty. After all, if Jesus said he would never leave or forsake his flock, what right did Emmanuel think he had to act any less? Williams wouldn't buy Emmanuel's spiritual valley explanation. That was Satan trying to lure him into a trap. By leaving, Emmanuel was walking right into it.

 Emmanuel hardly heard what Williams was saying; all that rang in his ears was the phrase regarding how Jesus would never leave him or forsake him if he believed. HE did believe. SO where was Jesus? Had He lied?

 His decision still stood, with or without the approval of the elders. He needed space, away from the incessant needs of the council and the rest of the church. He felt like an empty well being raped for the last two drops of water he had. What he needed was to replenish himself. Jesus had promised that no one who came to him would be thirsty, that he was spiritual drink, for the Samaritan woman and for him. Emmanuel was parched for it, though his doubt in Jesus' faithfulness was growing. Still, he was clinging to the shred of faith he had left. A mustard seed was all he needed. He hoped.

It was at night when he left the pastoral office for the last time of his life, after carefully packing all that was his and visually taking in the refuge that had been his for years and feeling his heart breaking as it did, feeling that, as he started a new life twelve years earlier, once again, at thirty-nine, he was starting a new empty chapter in his life. What was it supposed to mean? He didn't know what it was supposed to mean. He didn't know anything anymore.

 It happened twenty minutes later. At first, he felt nothing. It came from behind. His initial reaction to it was that he had some kind of stroke, for suddenly he couldn't sense any feeling whatsoever in his right side. It was when he collapsed that he saw the real culprit. Looking into a ghost of a dark face, featureless except for vacant dark eyes that caught the light of a stray lamppost, proved to be more terrifying than any pain he felt now. Where was Jesus then, he thought as he tasted the sticky sweetness that was his blood as it slipped from his kidneys and his heart. Jesus, if you exist, please remove me from this terror, he thought, as the oblivion began to take him over.

An eye for an eye. A tooth for tooth. All that a man ever did would come back to him tenfold. Revenge tasted bitter on the tongues of the avenged.

Revenge had made him a permanent prisoner.

TWENTY FOUR

 Cindy was cold and lonely. The air went through her, deep freezing her bones into paralysis. It brought back a memory which, relatively speaking, was somewhat pleasant. Sometimes her husband, after beating her, would thrust her in the basement, locking her in there for days. There was a calming effect to it, once she recovered from the shock of being thrown down the stairs. She would enjoy the stillness, knowing that the only danger lurking was locked away upstairs. Her pain would be so great that her body would react by physically shutting it out. Cold also proved to be a valuable anesthetic. It came in handy to numb her now as well.

 She had been irritable, angry, confused, grimy, lonely, horny and every other uncomfortable adjective known to mankind for the longest time. It was still October, she judged looking at the pumpkin and witch masks sitting immobile in the darkened stationary store. There was an owl costume, too. She felt like an owl herself, living only at night and hibernating in the day. She felt safer living that way/ No one paid attention to the back alleys in the daytime with their busy lives taking so much importance. She slept then, taking comfort in the last warmth of the fall sun. At night was when she began her existence. She ate from garbage cans, went to the subway terminals to perform some semblance of washing every few hours or so, this way smelling no worse than the sweaty commuters she very occasionally brushed shoulders with, then spent the rest of the night moving around, partly to keep warm, partly because a moving target was harder to hit than a stationary one. She was doubly hunted now, no longer human with an identity, but a helpless, panicky prey scurrying this way and that from its predator. Most times she wondered at the futility of her situation. Perhaps she should give up. Maybe she could turn herself in, maybe she could start over. Maybe she would get lucky, get a new identity as some witness protection person, find some kind of underground, maybe get an idea of what it meant to be safe—

 She heard screams, then shots. She felt a surge of adrenaline die on impact within her. Sound like that were commonplace, and once you realized that they didn't concern you, you went on with your business. Living on the streets taught Cindy that TV violence didn't do much to make you immune to the real thing. Actually living through it, time and time again, that was what made you immune.

 A stumbling figure appeared far ahead. He seemed like a drunkard, but he looked vaguely familiar. He moved aimlessly as though he had no conception of where he was or where he was going. Cindy froze, wondering if somehow the shots she'd heard just before had something to do with the figure ahead. A motorcycle turned onto the road and she watched in chilled horror as the man stepped into its path. She screamed, and the man whipped toward her, falling down and away from what was his intended death messenger. The bike screamed by, not even pausing to see if damage had been inflicted, its driver a faceless mask that had nothing but a dark helmet visor where the humanity of his eyes should have been. Cindy watched as the apocalyptic image came at her, turned its ungodly head to her as it went by, and she wondered if it was her life that had been frozen, spent up she almost welcomed the relief, but he passed her by, and she felt dejected, so useless that even death would reject her. A man was dying. She saw the images reflected in the moonlight from a far distance. They were shadows. A slit was held in the hand of one as he brought upon the other. His victim fell as the assailant kneeled next to him, his arm with the slit moving back and forth in an arc that held a deathly rhythm. Cindy swallowed her fear rising within her as she backed away, instinctively knowing that, for the second time in month, she was a witness to murder. Silently she crept closer, hoping to get a better view without being caught and also wondering why in the same breath why she wasn't running for her life. As he approached more closely, the predator seemed to take on more familiar countenance. She had seen him before. And as she stood transfixed, she also knew from where.

 The image stopped its repetitive movement, looking up from his work as though aware of the attention upon him. It seemed to finally propel her to move, running in the shadows which now provided her with more shelter than dander. She ran until the image of another man leaning against the decaying bricks of an abandoned building stopped her short. His very silhouette startled her into a panic. She found herself screaming, and then struggling as she felt his hands on her shoulders. She kicked, screamed— then stooped when she saw who it was.

 It was the man from the riots, the one she'd refused to help, the one whose songs soothed her, the one who'd scared her by his insistence on talking to her. For a moment, she stood in confusion, briefly perplexed by the emotion that seemed to overwhelm her. Then she returned to action again. They would have to move, or at least, she had to. There was not much time for her to spare having a killing following on her heels.

 "We have to go," Cindy said, gesturing to the direction she'd been heading in.

 Baffled, the man looking in the direction in which she pointed and returned to her with a perplexed expression on his face.

 "There's someone after me," Cindy explained with impatience. Still, she was met with confusion.

 "Oh screw this," an enraged Cindy spat, her fear giving way to an anger that gave her the strength to throw off a man three-quarters of a foot taller than she. Determinedly, she ran in the direction she had been heading, only to hear footsteps catching up behind her. Fear prevented her from looking back until she heard a loud thump. Curiosity made her look back. It was the song man. Somehow, he tripped over his own feet and was having trouble getting up. Sighing with an annoyed sense of obligation, Cindy went back to help him. She only hoped this big lout knew how to fend off crazy lunatics with knives.

 "Are you all right?" she managed. God knew where she was getting the patience to deal with him, considering that she was running for her life.

 Again, the bewildered look. "No tu comprendo," came the reply.

 If it were possible to die of aggravation, Cindy would have dropped then. Here she was, trapped in the worst predicament of her life other than when she left her husband, and her only companion was a klutzy dimwit who could only speak Spanish? It could only happen to her, she thought, shaking her head. She started to head down a dark alley, deserted with the exception of a wino who was busy consuming his daily bread's worth of Scotch. Immediately, she felt herself hauled back by Songman, who immediately confronted her with a yammering of Spanish. The guy needs to brush his teeth, Cindy thought, then felt the grime of her own. She kept forgetting that the luxury of Colgate and Aquafresh were gone. She couldn't feel superior to this guy. She was him.

 Cindy tolerated this gibbering for a few minutes before she kneed him in his gut for him to get off her. One man had abused her already, and that was one man too much. If this guy was going to hang around her, he was going to have to treat her with respect. She looked him over as he sat dazed by her blow. He certainly didn't have the money that Russell/Avery did. He might be as good looking even more so if he got cleaned up. But his biggest asset was his monster size, well over six feet with the brawn of a football player, and as white as a ghost. Definitely defying stereotypes here. Maybe he was just pretending to be Hispanic. Why anyone white would want to do that was beyond her, but you never knew nowadays. She shrugged it off. She didn't have the time or energy to worry about some hobo's national heritage.

 She turned to reason with him. "Look," she started, speaking as slowly as she could given her anxiety. "I have a problem."

 "Problema?" he interrupted hopefully, pointing at her.

 "Yes" Cindy replied irritably. "Si. Problema." She breathed, wondering how she was going to manage to get through this bilingual conversation and still stay alive. The wino was watching them with curiosity. He was too blottoed to even be fazed by the fumes of Cindy's evil eye. She looked at him, wondering if he was who she was running from. She tried to brush him off mentally but couldn't quite do so given that he remained in the corner of her eye. It didn't help her anxiety level, even when the guy started snoring a drunk's snore. Damn, she was a fool to even be standing here. What the hell was wrong with her? Affection of any sort could lead to death. Damn her heart anyway.

 "Esta hombre malo," she managed in her best broken Spanish.

 Songman pointed to the wino.

 Cindy shook her head. She began heading down the alley again despite the fact that her companion tried to grab her arm again. He began yelling in Spanish, waking up the wino. Songman pointed at the wino, who took all this in with glazed over eyes.

 "What, you want some vodka?" the wino asked, extending his bottle towards them.

 And a yelp came from Cindy's companion, taking a leap towards the unsuspecting wino, nearly knocking his precious bottle from his hand.

"God, okay, okay. My fault. I should know better than to be nice to anyone around here. Might cost me my life, I forget I forget. My fault," the wino muttered as he clutched his bag and shuffled off into the darkness.

Good, Cindy thought, maybe now this Puerto Rican or Colombian or whatever he is will leave me alone and let me save my life, she considered as she resumed her path. Apparently not, she discovered as she found herself yanked from behind again.

"Will you stop it?" she spat as she whirled to face him. Again, the uncomprehending look. God, how did these people manage here, not even knowing the language. Presumably not too well, she considered as she was reminded of who she was dealing with. At least she had a good reason for being on the streets. Maybe if this guy knew English, he'd be a head CEO for a major corporation. She decided to explain again. "I have to get out of here. Malo hombre." She sounded like a linguist, she was so proud of herself. This time she managed to point in the direction where her nemesis lay, which thankfully was in the opposite direction of the wino.

He looked at her quizzically as he released his hold on her, allowing her to proceed along the path she had chosen. He followed in step, though with a fairly strong limp, which Cindy guessed to be as a result of his accident. "Quien es?" he asked, presumably in reply to her statement. "Tu novio?"

I wish it were just a silly boyfriend, Cindy thought, but then reconsidered as she thought of her husband, wondering if he would have been any less amicable about letting her leave him if she hadn't been married to him, and realized the answer was no. He didn't like losing any of his possessions. "No. No novio." She sighed as she picked up her step. He was still able to keep up with her despite his injury with the long gait that his height provided. It annoyed Cindy to have to come up with dribs of Spanish and try to save her life as well. "Se hablo Ingles?" she asked, hoping to dispel some of her worries, seeing that unless she knocked him out herself, he wasn't going to leave her alone.

She got the baffled look again. "No. No ingles."

Oh well. It was worth a try. Cindy decided not to speak anymore unless spoken to and just concentrate on hiding. Perhaps that tactic would alleviate part of her bilingual headache.

There were several abandoned buildings along their way. She could smell the fumes of crack cocaine being smoked. There were gangs of blacks hanging out on the corner, giving her and her companion the evil eye for stepping on their territory. Cindy felt her companion tug at her sleeve extra hard. For once, Cindy agreed on his insistence.

In the distance, she saw hills, lights and trees. Presumably it was north of here. She tried to think of the geography here but realized she was hopelessly lost. Maybe it was Westchester, Staten Island, Long Island. Who knew. They were all the same to her. She'd gotten to where she was by chance and foolishness, not because of great gourmet food. Her companion seemed to have a better idea as to where he was going. He surpassed her, indicating to her to follow him. Cindy didn't feel she had much choice here. At least, so far, he hadn't attacked her. That in itself didn't make him such a bad travel guide.

"Que te hizo?" he suddenly asked when Cindy caught up to him.

"What?" Cindy exclaimed. Too bad she hadn't paid more attention to her Spanish classes as much as getting laid and drunk.

"El hombre," he tried to explain. "Porque—" he shrugged his shoulders—"quiere te doler?" He banged his head.

"Huh?" Cindy wanted to bang her head at this point.

"El hombre," he began again, pointing at himself and at the black men they just passed. "Hombres."

Spanish 101 for Dummies. "What's doler."

"Doler." He hit himself. "Ow." He said pointing where he hit himself.

So what Cindy got out of that was, why does he want to hurt you. She wasn't exactly sure if she wanted to get into the detail of why she was in trouble, particularly in Spanish.

"I don't know," she shrugged.

He laughed. "No es verdad," he said, shaking his head.

She shrugged again, not really caring. The movement, her fear made her blissfully oblivious to anyone else's concerns or opinions. There was not much that she wanted to care about besides her survival, and even if that failed, there wouldn't be that much problem because she wouldn't be around to worry about it. Too bad she seemed to start caring when she settled down and start her life over again. Maybe she wouldn't be on the streets right now.

But then again, maybe she would. She remembered a quick death, even one with much pain at the hands of her husband wouldn't scare her. It was the slow, molasses pace of torture and waking up to face it all again which had made her flee. She remembered Death-in Life from Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Death-in-Life was her husband, to capture her back so she could once again slowly die, always feeling like dying but somehow not being able accomplish it, like when the motorcycle guy with the death mask passed her by. Death-in-Life was the bogeyman she feared.

"Hola?" her companion's voice snapped her back to life. "Como estas?"

"Bien," a flustered Cindy replied. She had almost hypnotized into believing she had been trapped into her ultimate nightmare. Seeing Songman, she was glad to see she was still among the land of the living, albeit the seedy side of it.

Songman pointed ahead. Somehow, they had walked long enough to reach Fordham University. "Como es?" he nodded his head to the nearest building on campus.

"Porque?" Why, she asked.

"Nos descansar," he replied. Translated, means that apparently he thought it was a good place to crash for the night. Cindy was too tired to object. She was starting to think in Spanglish, not knowing if English or pig Spanish was coming from her mouth. She trudged along until the looming dank buildings grew larger and larger until they encompassed her whole vision. Her friend gestured for her to follow him. Curious, Cindy watched as they bypassed main entrances and headed for darker, woodier niches. Immediately fear arose in her, wondering if this guy was leading her to her death after all, but found herself breathing openly after somehow forgetting to breath when he led her to a hole in the fence surrounding the complex. Obviously this guy had been here before, Cindy thought sardonically,. She was with the expert on homelessness.

They finally made their way into a relatively quiet building. Frankly, Cindy was having misgivings about this whole idea of staying here. She had images of campus security standing over her with flashlights ready to take her to the police. She sure as hell didn't want that.

She checked her Spanish memory banks which were ready to close due to exhaustion. "Muy seguridad?" She wanted to know how many security guards were here.

"Aqui?" he pointed at the floor. "No, no mucho. La policia estan dormiendo." The police are sleeping. He laughed, probably thinking that she found it funny too, but she didn't. If he noticed her discomfort, he didn't seem like he cared. That pissed Cindy off. Goddamn chauvinistic idiot probably thought that women belonged in the kitchen. If God forbid they were in trouble with the police, they should be remanded to the convent for life, while the men ran out and got to be the heroes. One track minds they had, worse than the white men she knew, and that had to be pretty bad. But she kept her mouth shut. All she wanted to do was sleep.

But she couldn't. She sat looking at him after he fell asleep first, wondering why she was so riled up by a man she barely knew. There was something about him, that fascinated her, intrigued her, attracted her, yet filled her with disquieting fear. She couldn't quite pinpoint it, she didn't know quite what.

Finally she fell asleep. But she still had the same question on her mind.

She had nightmares. Vivid nightmares. There was blood everywhere, seeping from the topmost windows of buildings in a great city, slowly making its path down to where she stood, paralyzed in the street below. The blood had almost reached her when she'd finally been able to flee, but to her horror, it followed just behind her, stopping when she stopped, speeding up when she sped up, slowing down when she slowed down. She yelled at it to go away, but it didn't. She screamed for help but nobody came. She remained alone here with this nightmare of death. It stayed with her, ignoring her insistent pleas. It held power over her, and she was helpless, helpless in her screams.

She was being shaken awake, to the image of Songman babbling and squawking at her. On alert from her dream, she flailed her arms at him, scratching his face, which he stopped by grabbing her hands.

"What, what?" she demanded. Accustomed to being on the streets, she felt shock when she was inside a building. Then she remembered, and found herself fully alert to her fear. She bolted upright, prepared to run as she always did. "Are the cops coming? Is security here?"

That stopped him in midstream. He looked at her with incomprehension, his stature frozen in its last wild gesture. Cindy couldn't deal with this anymore. Her life was too stressful to be acting in what seemed like a really bad Saturday Night Live skit. She began packing her duffel bag. If there was going to be trouble here, she didn't plan to be around to be part of it.

Songman got up too, but he wasn't packing. He shook her again. Man, this guy was looking to get belted. "What!" she screamed, on the verge of doing bodily harm. His face froze in midstream. She seemed to startle the Spanish right out of him. Well, at least he wasn't shaking her anymore. That was a start. Now, to figure out what was going on here.

"Policia?" she asked.

The blank look only lasted for a second before he shook his head.

"No policia? No problemas?"

He shook his head. "No." He pointed at her.

"Yeah? What about me?"

He put his hands under his head leaning over in a gesture of repose. Great. Our lives are in danger and he's playing charades, thought Cindy. "Me. Sleep." He nodded his head vigorously. "Me, sleep. Yeah. So what about me sleep?"

He started making Darth Vader noises and began walking like Frankenstein, then pointing to her. So this guy has been in the States longer than I thought, Cindy thought. He has to be American. How else would you know TV and movies better than your own name? She watched his audition for awhile and forgot what was going on. She'd forgotten about the nightmare even though he'd just woken her up from it. There was a window high up that indicated it was dark and a clock that said 4:10 She must have woken him up. "Yes, I did. I did have a nightmare. I'm sorry I woke you up." Why did she apologize? It used up valuable energy to be nice.

"Que?" he asked, shrugging his shoulders.

See, I told her so, her street voice said. "I said, sorry to wake you," she said, pointing at his sleeping bag, agitated at having to repeat herself. As usual, street voice was right.

He shook his head violently, gesturing with his hands that she had misunderstood. "Que sobre?"

Oh. What was the nightmare about. Well, she wasn't in the mood to explain that either. "Oh, that. Nothing. Nothing happened."

"Quieres hablar? " He inquired. How did this guy feel like chatting when he lived like this? " muy malo, no?"

Not as bad as real life, she thought. She took his question to be rhetorical until she saw the eyes on her. He was genuinely concerned. Cindy wasn't quite sure what she should do with that. When she was married, she had nightmares all the time, and if she ever had the audacity to wake up her husband with "her stupidity" as he called it, in other words, her feelings, she would be comforted with a fist to her nose. As a child, her mother would leave her alone to them, thinking that she was just being a baby looking for attention, as though a child looking for attention from her mother was a neurotic thing. At thirty, this probably was the first time someone was interested in even knowing if she was all right even though she inconvenienced them. Something deep inside her warmed. Something dangerous. Something human.

"It's nothing," she insisted, trying to brush herself more than anything else. He still looked at her, she still felt like the child in the cocoon of her parent. "Nada," she added for emphasis. The feeling still didn't go away.

"Es sobre el hombre malo, no?" he pressed.

"Asi asi," Cindy replied with a smile remembering her favorite Spanish expression. She was always so-so. So-so was invisible and kept her out of trouble. Then she remembered the nightmare, and her stomach bunched in knots. It was all she could do to repress the instinct to clutch it and betray any feeling. She remembered the nightmare, and remembered that for the second time in two weeks she had let a man bleed to his death. Three, if you counted Songman, but at least he had survived. At least, with the first guy, someone heard the screams and got help. But this other man was alone, on a deserted street—she felt an odd mixture of desperately wanting to go back but recoiling from the idea in fear at the same time. It was getting hard to live with herself, not that it had ever been easy.

Songman laughed. "No es verdad," he said again.

Cindy sighed exhaustedly, waning to go to sleep but unable to alleviate the conscience that had been aroused in her. She wondered how the hell she was going to explain to this guy, the only one ever interested in her feelings, what they were when she couldn't even speak the same language.

"Un hombre," she started, then made a gesture of stabbing herself in the heart.

"Tu veias un hombre muerto?" Did she see the man die, she assumed. Vaguely "muerto" popped back into her memory, a fixation back in the black comedy of high school.

"Si," she replied. "El hombre malo." She was at a loss for translation.

"El hombre malo lo hace?" he finished making the gesture of stabbing again. The bad man did it. The bad man of Cindy's nightmares. Yes, he did it. He was the one making her life hell right now. It was like running from her husband all over again. "Yes," she finally answered."

"La policia vienen?" Cindy had no idea if the police showed up. They didn't like coming down that part of time, which is why she liked the area so much. If they had come any time while she was nearby, she probably would be in some lockup ward somewhere for being a bad little wife who ran away from home. "I don't know," she replied. "Yo no se."

"Tenemos ir," he announced suddenly, getting up and packing his bag. Cindy watched with a dose of dread and relief mixed into one concoction of bewilderment. "Tenemos ayudar tu amigo." The better and wiser part of Cindy didn't want to help whoever she saw stabbed, and whoever the guy was, he definitely wasn't her friend, but her conscience left her no choice but to comply with Songman's leading. Her exhaustion gave her no strength to do anything but follow. She couldn't believe she was walking six miles back to Spanish Harlem with some crazy Spanish hobo who seemed American so who had to be a Puerto Rican lost in some time warp but who was she to talk. It made her question the wisdom of leaving her husband. At least she got to eat at a table once in awhile then. She faced the same dangers here, but with no trips to Sach's to take her mind off things. There was a veneer of normality then. Now, forget it.

She felt unreal yet familiar. At this time of night, she usually would have been up for hours, not trying to shake out of a restless slumber. Then again she never walked for three hours in a row, which she was pretty sure was how long it took to get here. By the time they reached this bleeding guy, it would be daylight. People would be up and walking around. And here they would come, The Dynamic White Duo To Save The Black World From Itself. Cindy felt like she was going to die any second now.

But she didn't. And she kept walking, following her leader back to the lion's den so she could be a two-course meal for the enemy. Yet somehow she couldn't think to just bolt and leave. It would have seemed the sensible choice. Then again, being sensible was something she seemed too dense to comprehend her whole life. A sensible person wouldn't have wound up in this situation in the first place, let alone wonder what the practical choice in the midst of insanity was.

He was the leader. Cindy was amazed at how knowledgeable he was about this destination. He knew the area well, almost too well. Just a few hours ago, he was a like a stumbling drunk into oncoming traffic. Now he was the stalwart commander of a battalion. Cindy didn't understand it. It was as though he had something to do with all this, he knew his way so well, a deducting Cindy contemplated. But he had been in the completely the opposite direction of the whole thing, logic tried to bargain as panic arose in her. He had nothing to do with it. He was not the killer. But, maybe he was working with someone else, the jittery Cindy returned, Maybe he was an accomplice, and was right now taking Cindy back to his friend so they both could keep her permanently quiet. But if that were true, wouldn't he just take her out himself? There was nobody around. He could get away with it. There was no reason for him to walk with her for seven miles without even threatening her. God knows that if it were her husband he couldn't last that long without betraying some kind of guile.

Her circular thinking led her to the point until she found herself on the same street as she had been only hours earlier. It looked different, the dawning light had cast the shapes into new filmy hues and outlined formation, but she knew it was the same one. The freeze that had descended upon her last night was with her once again.

There were voices, from behind above she wasn't exactly sure. They sounded far away and near in the same moment; within her and well removed from her conscious in the same instant. She looked up, and realized that her companion was watching her intently. It annoyed her. She walked from him to dispel the anxiety.

And there it was.

There was blood. She saw where it seeped down the cracks of sidewalks where it had made its final resting place. She could not see its source; he, she was surrounded by four or five indistinguishable figures staring down. She felt her stomach getting sicker. And she'd thought herself so tough, ha ha.

Songman touched her shoulder. She looked up tentatively. He was pointing at the scene. "Es el hombre malo?" he inquired.

Cindy shook her head, not wanting to get into details.

"Ah. Es el victimo, si? Del hombre malo."

Thank you, Cindy thought softly as she nodded, glad not to have to give an explanation.

They stared at the scene in silence. One of the figures departed in a quick manner, as though he was rushing to get help. At this point it was probably too late, a guilty Cindy thought sardonically. She should have called last night when she saw this, she berated herself.

She was lost in her self-flagellation that somehow she lost time—an insistent tug at her shoulder alerted her to the fact that the circle around the fallen victim had dispersed. Songman was busy gesticulating and yapping at her again.

"What?" she barked.

"Veian!" he exclaimed.

"What?"

"Nos veian!" he pointed at some men who were stating at them.

Oh shit. Cindy thought to her dismay. She felt her insides sinking before she could even collapse. She'd been seen. And she was too exhausted to run. She thought about the guilty conscience that had prompted her to walk from safety across the hills to his hellhole Godforsaken shitplace, and she wondered how stupid she could possible be. Considering that she'd married someone who beat her for a hobby, she presumed that the answer to that pondering would be, very stupid. But her body was too tired to care. What was the point? All this fighting for survival she did, and what did she have to show for her life? She felt like human refuse.

Her friend was shaking her shoulder again. She irritable threw him off her. She didn't care for this idiot's touchy-feely ways, Latin or no Latin. She needed, she wanted just to sleep in peace. Songman kept jabbing away. Instinctively, she belted him, lending a yelp from his burly body. Christ, what a wimp this guy really was---

"This guy giving you trouble, uh, lady?"

The deep voice startled her. There, right behind her, were two men in blue. She felt herself backing away in sheer panic.

"Hey, what's the matter with you? Are you on something?" The figure advanced towards her, yelling and cursing. Cindy could hardly hear what he was saying, her mind was reacting with such a panic. Memories came back, memories of blue officers laughing with her husband, poking fun at Cindy for paranoia, while she sat bleeding and bruised. Memories of a distant arrest for assaulting her husband in self-defense and her breast being pawed by some perverted old cop as she was dragged away. And the knowledge that once she was found, she could be sent back to hell in a gold mine. It was---

"Hey," the one cop announced. "You look familiar. Where do I know you from?"

Cindy always wondered how she would react in this situation, playing out all the angles In her head. Now, she found herself, sitting on the ground, dumfounded. The scene was unreal to her, and she was angry. She had done nothing wrong. She had done nothing to deserve this torture. She shielded her face to protect herself, hiding what little privacy she had left. Her arm was grabbed, and she heard a shout and a loud thunk before the hold on her was no longer there. In a murky cloud, she looked up, wondering what in the hell was going on now, but relieved more than she could ever remember to be temporarily free once again.

She found out soon enough what was going on, as she saw Songman standing over her, providing a barrier between her and the two cops. They kept trying to get by him to reach her, but each time he neatly blocked them, spewing out the most bizarre barking and hissing noises she'd ever recalled, their strange dissonance momentarily baffling her before realizing it was her chance to escape. She found herself running with a speed and energy that she didn't know she possessed. There was no one following her; she heard nothing but the echo of her footsteps on the broken asphalt. She had escaped; free once again. Once again, she'd proved she could survive.

And no longer did she look behind her at the place where she had just defiled.

TWENTY FIVE

First part: break it into conversation between lawyers, more detail about Quentin and his drug problem and conviction.

The days following the attack on their beloved preacher, the black community which had so violently out for justice of one of their own now sat in stunned silence. One of their own had been assailed, and only through some strange miracle was he still alive now. He had been lying in his own blood for hours after being stabbed three times in his back and once in his chest.

So now, they were in a time of mourning, knowing that the real perpetrator would have to be found, and soon—for now, if the white man was covering up one of his own, these killings had just become crimes of hate and bias. This could not be tolerated. The black community had suffered enough under the white man. They didn't need one of their own to be convicted of a crime that the whites had done just to cover their tracks and keep the blacks down like they'd had for so long. All would fight. But for now, a cease-fire. There was too much shock for any real action right now.

As it was in the enemy camp. They had been so sure that this had been a slew of reverse racist attacks; every time, their man had been at or around the area, one time with blood on his hands. He kept saying a white guy did it, but no one, not even the black cops, seemed to buy it. Even they had to, reluctantly and in the confines of iron-barred offices, that they had their guy, but they didn't dare say anything to the Brother Williamses and pseudo-Malcolm X's running around. They would be brandished as Uncle Toms. Their lives would be in danger. Even blacks were afraid of other blacks, people like Russell Frawley scoffed behind their black colleagues' backs.

But now Frawley and his cohorts had a new and perplexing problem on their hands with the downing of Jackson Emmanuel. It threw a wrench into the entire theory. Why the hell would an activist go and kill one of his own? Unless, he was a traitor of some sort, which would figure with the Negroes. They couldn't be loyal for shit, these punks. No ethics.

In some ways, Frawley wished he could think more highly of the black race. It would make life a lot easier if everyone just tried to get along. But it was impossible to. He didn't place any blame on himself for his viewpoint; how could he possibly trust a group of people that he saw day in and day out behind a defendant's chair? When he said things like, most animals were black, and that most violent criminals were black, how was that racist when he saw it proved time and time again right before his very eyes? Yet it was okay for them to go on and on about slavery, like it happened yesterday. Every time a white man tried to arrest a black, get a job over a black, dumped a black to marry a white, he was accused if trying to send the blacks back to slavery again. It pissed the hell out of him. His job was hard enough without having to be accused as a bigot when he tried to do it. It wasn't equality that these assholes were after. All they did was make noise. If they put half the effort into schoolwork as they did complaining and dealing drugs, maybe their damn marks and SATs would be higher . But of course, SAT tests were racist. Didn't have enough ebonics. It sounded like something from outer space, ebonics. Why couldn't they learn "you are" instead of "you be." Instead, they had to make up words to cover up their shitty tracks. And they thought the boomers had messed their heads with the sixties.

So now. The legal strategy too keep their man in custody was going to be complicated. The DA and the police were receiving pressure to try and find another suspect, which Frawley considered a complete waste of time and tax dollars. There was too much evidence to implicate him—fingerprints, a record a mile long, an alibi as weak as a soap bubble, and an obvious hatred for any person who had the audacity to be born with white skin. Who the hell else could they implicate? It wasn't as though there was a whole long list of suspects to choose from. They were going to have to stick with the one they had, unless someone could come up with a brilliant alternative. No one wanted another riot. The next time the blacks would put Rodney King to shame, of that he was sure about. And the blacks were crazy enough to say they had no power? They ruled by fear. All the little white boys were scared of the big bad niggers. They would set free a guilty man just to save their sorry butts. No character. Nobody developed character anymore. Character was too right-wing an enterprise, he supposed.

There was singing coming from the street below. That Spic again. How annoying. Frawley couldn't stand any of the street people, but this one was a real freak, singing and carrying on like he did, making noise. At least most of the other ones were quiet, minded their own business. No, that wasn't exactly true. They were quiet until they needed money. Then they'd take your life over a few pennies, harass and steal from unsuspecting women who were too weak and timid to defend themselves, which were most of them.

Frawley could never understand this business with homeless people. They should just quit the booze if they couldn't drink responsibly, the way he did. And the mental ones should be locked up in a home to protect the law-abiding hard working citizens like himself. But no, now the hobos had rights, too. The liberals made sure that the right to freedom for psychos was upheld, screw the normal people and their rights, they made too much money anyway and complained too much about "people who weren't exactly like them" to paraphrase one hippie activist Frawley remembered hearing. Right, they didn't--- most normal people didn't feel too neighborly about antisocial idiots with three-quarters of their brain malfunctioned. They should be tried as Nazi war criminals for such heinous crimes. But what did he know. He voted for Perot.

Then of course, the true bums, the ones too lazy to go out and find a job and go to work. Like the Spic out there. He probably wasn't even legal, and here he was, roaming the streets, demanding handouts, and on top of this, causing a raucous with his mumbo-jumbo singing. Frawley could never quite understand the incessant need of these "Hispanics" to not speak English. This country had been founded by English. The Constitution was written in English. All the Poles, Swedes, Germans and everyone else who crossed Ellis Island had learned to speak English, but not the Spics. They were better than everyone else. It was their "right" not to speak English. Frawley was getting sick and tired of hearing about everyone's rights; of special privilege for a few and none for the so-called elite. If he looked crooked at a black, he could be taken to court for racial slurs , or even worse, he might be killed, and the jury was supposed to feel sorry for the black bum because of the terrible audacity of the bigoted white man who was so haughty with his "entitlement" (a favorite word of the feminists to generalize all white men's attitudes) that he was so cruel as to hurt the poor, black man in submission. Which proved that the blacks and Spics were dumber than whites, if they needed a lower standard of ethics to survive, then it proved they were weaker and dumber than the whites, who were judged on a higher standard. Even the ultraliberals agreed to that, albeit inadvertently.

Something needed to be done about these street people. They were going to make the place unsafe with their crappy and sneaky ways. Particularly the Spic one, not knowing the language, he must have been ultracrafty just to survive. God, no man could be safe anymore.

Which made him go back to his original thought. The commissioner and the DA were almost reluctant to rearrest the man they had. They were going to try to find some loophole to release him, just to save the city. Frawley was determined not to give in to fear over a bunch of punks. These riots meant nothing, they just saw it as an excuse to loot and rob. HE happened to peer out the window, seeing the Spic meander about, and watched his movements carefully. Looting was probably what the Spic was up to now. Something was going to have to be done about the guy, Frawley thought, and he was going to have to get his office out of the Bronx to somewhere safe, someplace where he could feel safe to walk out of his office and not be afraid because of the color of his skin. The hell with this having dirt cheap rent. He paid in other ways.

Soon he would have to get ready to go to court again. Some CEO's kid had gotten into trouble with dealing cocaine. Frawley was used tom even bored with, these types of cases. HE could write the whole script from top to bottom: boy gets in trouble, rich did finds rich lawyer, judge has kid held in jail, rich lawyer threatens to sue judge and will squeeze the last drop of blood from the city on behalf of rich dad, judge releases kid to shut up rich lawyer and rich dad, kid gets a violation because of a clean record that remains clean no matter what the hell he does. But at least the kids never hurt anyone except maybe a misunderstanding with a girl over he said, she said or some problems in the family. Even at their worst, they had enough morality not to take someone's life, unlike these other colored punks who roamed the streets. Just proved that, even in the area of crime, whites seemed to be the best of the bunch.

It made him think of his own son. Quentin would have been a man, an adult. He had been the rich man's son, too, the one whose slate had been wiped clean at every turn. Everyone loved Quentin. No one wanted to ruin his life by branding him with a criminal record. Frawley had to wonder, in the quiet of his mind as he traveled to Bronx Municipal Court, if someone had the nerve to actually slap a penalty on the defiant Quentin Frawley, that perhaps he might be alive today, maybe even a junior partner with him in law. Quentin had always had a brilliant mind. It was too bad he'd never learned to use it. He kept seeing his son in the waif that he'd been hired to defend. It was disconcerting to Frawley, especially when he got the kid off.

He got back late in the after noon, too dazed to have even gotten drunk over his confused feelings, to find the police commissioner, John Compton, sitting at his desk, waiting for him.

"What's up, Johnny boy?" Frawley asked with a cheeriness he didn't quite feel as he shook the commissioners hand. Whenever the commissioner came in, Frawley felt as though he was babysitting a young child, something he didn't quite have the patience for at the moment.

"Ah well, not much," the commissioner's bulging eyes shifted back and forth in his gaunt head, which was the case of most of his body. He resembled a skeleton for whom flesh was an afterthought, a freakish rather than a formidable presence. He was also lying through his teeth. Compton was too dumb to know how to make social calls. Frawley cursed silently, thinking that he was the one who should have Compton's job. Less money, more power. He'd make it powerful, Frawley thought, unlike the incompetent ass before him. "And how's it with you? Cohen come in here much?"

Libermann? Who the hell was—oh yeah, the Jewish kid. The black dude's lawyer. Looked fresh from Hebrew school. "Yeah, him. Cohen. He's come around once or twice. Wanted to employ my help in clearing his client. Why?"

Compton gave a tentative cough as he shifted his eyes once again. "He's been a lot at my office. Starting all kinds of trouble, you know. Threatening a defamation case against the city. Claims we only have his client because he's black and can't speak English." Spics. Leave them to cause all the problems. Compton coughed again. "Frankly, Russ, I don't know if we have much of a case against him, anyway, you know? Like, what other than circumstantial evidence has the DA have against this guy?"

Frawley was exasperated. He as a defense lawyer, not a prosecutor. Why was Compton pestering him with the petty nuisances of the DA's office? He had more important things to do, like attend to his vodka bottle and find out where Cindy was.

"Have you found that witness yet?" Speaking of Cindy.

"No," Frawley lied, suddenly feeling embarrassed at his ineptitude in the situation. "My assistant, Jonathan Pfeifer, is working on it right now," he said, indication to his suddenly disgruntled law secretary who was giving him the evil eye. Frawley was just glad to have a temporary scapegoat.

Compton regarded Pfeifer for a brief moment before returning to Frawley. "A couple of my men saw her at the scene of the crime just when we cleaned the body out of the way."

Frawley jolted with alarm. "And they didn't catch her?"

Compton shrugged. "She has fast legs, I guess. Must be used to running away from something. She had some Puerto Rican boyfriend who held up my men, which helped her. We don't know who he is. Seemed like a bit of a mental case.

Despite himself, Frawley felt a pang of jealousy. He was used to women whining and pining for attention, not taking up with other men like he'd been no big deal. He wanted to get mad but felt like a dog with its tail in its legs, not an image he relished. He returned his attention back to Compton. "So what do you want me to do?" he asked in his best businesslike tone, which he could fake pretty well. He was, after all, a lawyer.

"Have your assistant find the witness, and see what kind of argument you can come up with to substantiate the physical evidence."

"What do I get for all this?"

"you will be handsomely compensated, I assure you."

"How much?"

"The city will meet with you to discuss a fee."

Frawley tapped his pen to his desk. "Isn't investigation your side of the business?" He was annoyed. All he'd done was turn down the Jewish kid's request to exonerate his client. Now, the little boy ran and told his daddy and the mayor and the commissioner and his third grade teacher, so now there was a big stink over it and his life was a living nightmare. He was beginning to think of early retirement. Well, he always thought of early retirement, but this made him want to just shove his law degree somewhere politically incorrect right that second.

"Of course investigation's our specialty," Compton snorted like an offended debutante, nostrils flaring. "But you're the one insisting the guy's guilty. We need evidence to implicate this guy, or else we're going to have to look for another suspect."

"Why, because the NAACP said so?" Frawley shot.

"There have been reports of a white man lurking around the crime scenes," Compton continued, ignoring Frawley's jibe. "Actually, some reports have said he's white, others Hispanic. We're going to have to look into it."

"So you're not even arresting the other guy, even though there's been another attack?" Frawley was surprised, even though he knew he shouldn't. After all these years, he should know that the justice he served was contingent upon which side was considered more equal than the others. It was time to use the sixties and slavery as a reason for the white's justice system to kiss black ass for the rest of eternity. Should he be surprised? No. But was he? Yes. Maybe he just expected too much out of life.

"For now, we have no other choice," Compton shrugged. "He's the only suspect, and if someone doesn't get arrested, the blacks are going to go crazy on this one. You know, that he we considered the white murders more important to be vindicated than the black one. By the way, the black guy is still alive."

Figures that the Negro would live. "How's that possible? I heard he was lying around in his own blood for eight hours."

"Beats me. I guess God works in mysterious ways." Even God was kissing up to the Negroes. So much for the objective eye of God.

The electric grandfather clock announced the arrival of three p.m. Frawley was getting hungry. And, impatient as he was normally, he was even more impatient when ravenous. Besides, he needed time to mull over the situation at hand. What situations he got himself into. He should have taken early retirement. The hell with his wife and her forty million furs.

Compton was looking at Frawley with a smirk that needed a good Hawaiian punch. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Frawley replied, swaggering away from the waiting desk to his office. Compton began to follow him. "Look, I have some work to do. There are some contacts and leads I need to follow up on." Not a complete lie, but certainly not what he intended to do once he got rid of this goat. He wondered what Cindy was doing right now.

From the look of it, even Compton wasn't even stupid enough to believe his lie. "Hmm, I see. Well, then, I suppose I'll leave you to your important work, seeing that getting serial killers off our streets doesn't grab your attention." Oo, low, I'm shocked, Frawley almost sang. Compton was in the process of snapping his briefcase and gathering his coat like a rejected Amway salesman. Christ, what shit the legal system had turned into, seeing that idiots like these were appointed to high positions. Frawley stood fuming at the door as Compton walked out, then turned his attention to Pfeifer, who was busy writing his life away as usual. Pfeifer irritated him, but being that the guy showed up to work more promptly and regularly than he did and was incessantly busy, Frawley couldn't take out his crap on the guy as much as he wanted to. It would be like yelling at a puppy who just peed on the floor who thought he did good because he missed the carpet. Just didn't seem right. And Frawley was a man who tried to do what was right.

Frawley sat in his office alternatively chewing a pen and nipping his vodka, fuming and raging. The more he sat fuming and raging, the more he thought about Addie and her new Puerto Rican boyfriend. He imagined what they did together, in various ways and positions, envisioned Addie doing to this man what she did for him, and seethed. He imagined the Puerto Rican to have greasy hair and grimy skin and a gold tooth gleaming in his mouth. He imagined him selling drugs to Addie and he paying with a good lay. After all, that was what she'd done with him, right?

He started in his seat, alarmed by a sudden gush of ink bleeding right in his face, and cursed as his mouth filled with the stuff. Apparently he was so lost in thought that he'd confused the pen for the vodka bottle and bit right through his pen. He gulped a huge dollop from his bottle, and spat out ink-saturated vodka (what a waste of good booze), and ran to the bathroom, hoping to salvage his pin-stripe shirt. Women killed him, probably worse than niggers and hobos and spics. He should have never married. Better yet, he should have chucked his Calvinist roots and become a Catholic priest. All the wine you could drink and still be holy.

The grandfather clock chimed four. Frawley grumbled in the silence, feeling apathetic and disconcerted. Pfeifer kept beeping him, letting him know about this client's case and that one. Frawley wasn't in any shape to handle any details and just about told Pfeifer so. He told the receptionist, who was nicely shaped and newly hired by Pfeifer, to hold all phone calls. He put in a phone call to Joan to find out what was for dinner, only to encounter the answering machine. Out being a right-wing activist again with his mother. Kind of like baked Alaska, if you asked him, being a right-wing activist. He liked life before, when Joan was home. It made his life more predictable. But leave it to his mother, the doctor to spoil everything.

Frawley wondered how his father could have spent so many years with such a pesky woman. Frawley recalled his mother as having an opinion on everything, his friends and his father's friends claimed that she was too much of a man for her own good, which meant she thought for herself, not what others told her to do. His father certainly wasn't bothered by her outspokenness. The two of them made a two-career family long before the term was even invented, which seemed to the young Russell Frawley more an embarrassment than a source of pride. Instead of coming home to a mother busy baking cookies in her clean house like all the other kids in the fifties did, Russell didn't even come home to a mother. His father would usually be home, working on some thesis or another while his mother spent her days running her private practice in Manhattan. Russell Frawley Sr. was perhaps the first househusband known to mankind, though from what Russell Jr. recalled, the housekeeping wasn't much to rave about. Eventually, the Frawley household was visited once a week by a Swedish woman named Helga who did a spotless job cleaning the complex abode, only to have her work wrecked asunder in a day by the carefree Frawleys. Russell Frawley never once recalled his mother, or any of the female Frawleys, for that matter, ever once lifting a finger to clean the house. No one else that young Russell knew of lived like that. It made him feel weird, like a freak.

Though it may have seemed to outsiders like Russell Frawley came from a liberal, Bohemian house, in reality, that was far from the truth. Only in the arena of men and women did the Frawleys resemble anything like the hippies and activists of the sixties, and even then, only in a political and economical sense, not a sexual one. After all, they came from good Presbyterian stock. They frowned on any intercourse outside of marriage, for their only son as well as their daughters, too, which Russell soon discovered after his mother reported Helga found condoms in his bedroom. His pained behind didn't let him forget that encounter, and he had been sixteen, nearly a man, and mortally humiliated. Not that it stopped him from sowing his adolescent oats, mind you, but he certainly remembered it. Everyone had a strict curfew, his even stricter than his sisters. By eighteen, he escaped his home thinking that his parents' only goal was to protect his chastity. Now he knew better—their goal was to drive him crazy.

The Frawleys were activists. Conservative activists, if that made any sense in the liberalism of the sixties. They were pro-Vietnam. They opposed all civil rights, SDS, affirmative action, NOW, and Planned Parenthood. They opposed abortion, calling the pro-choice movement pro-death. They would have discussions at home at night, academia, politicians, health officials clergy people joined as well as concerned neighbors worried about their safety in streets that had quite suddenly become unsafe because of rabble-rouser kids. Speaking of which, sometimes students from the college drove by and threatened them. Russell Jr. Had been a swaggering fifteen-year-old at the outbreak of the war and eighteen when it became full force, so he wasn't in the house when the threats reached their apex. His opinion by then was that he thought his parents were stupid to get involved anyway, they were too old for this whole reactionary-activist thing anyway. They acted like they were back in college, marching down the road with picket signs, using their bodies as human barricades. As far as Russell could see, they were trying to act cool and gain favor with the younger generation, the younger part against all the hoopla of the civil right hippies but too chicken to speak out against them. The elder Frawleys felt proud to give this sector a voice. Russell Jr., though never felt heard by them, only embarrassed.

Now, it was all starring again, with this business of the zone off. Basically, nobody black or Hispanic would be allowed through the front door. All except—no, for a minute Frawley had almost said Jackson Emmanuel, but he wouldn't be coming home for a long time, Frawley mused. No, there would be no African American/Hispanic American/Other Hyphen Americans now. For a while, in the White Plains community of Bronxville, it would be white as lilies, literally. For an instant, Frawley wondered if someone in the community had arranged it to be that way, that in fact, the crazy guy they were looking for could actually be white, them dismissed it as soon as he thought about it. The guy they had was their only real suspect, the only one with physical evidence against him. Besides, Frawley didn't know anyone in the community who would be stupid enough to throw away all they had just to off some black dude. Well, maybe everyone had that common sense, except for his mother and wife. OF course it would be them who would. Leave it to him to pick the winners.

Five thirty. He was too tense to concentrate. The vodka was buzzing at his brain, he was irritated because his shirt was too wet, and Addie was still hovering in the back of his mind. The sexpot secretary and Pfeifer had already left. He decided himself to go for a stroll. The city smog would do him good, maybe it would congest his mind so much he wouldn't be able to think anymore.

It was chilly, the wind biting through him. He felt cold despite the alcohol in his blood. It was becoming winter early, he noted as he put on his overcoat. Perhaps he should go into a bar; nights like these were perfect for a night in a saloon.

But that didn't work for him either. He didn't feel the happy buzz he usually got, even after five or six Manhattans. Irritated, he found himself making snide comments to a fat construction guy on the one end of the bar and to some black guy in a business suit on the other. He forgot what he said, but they both started lacing in on him, and then sided with each other to ream him good, so he must have said something. So he got up and left. And started thinking about Addie, then his wife. Boy, no wonder he was bugged out.

Thinking of his wife, he called home again, getting no answer. He looked at the bank clock, which read 8:07. Frawley felt the edge of worry. Even with her crazy meetings, Joan was usually home by now. He sniffed, gulping air, suddenly feeling that it was hard to breath. He snorted back snot and felt the luxury of air once more. Damn, he couldn't get sick now. To stay at home, with Joan—all it would do for him was get him sicker. Besides, he had too much to do.

He thought for awhile. Maybe he should help Cohen with his case. It was the highest profile case that had been around since the Valenti case ten years earlier; most of the thugs and drugs around here were too commonplace to stay in the minds of viewers and readers here and abroad. New York was getting to sport one of the few Black serial killers. The shock waves were emanating everywhere from the fallout. Crime was usually segregated: whites in embezzlement, serial killings. Minorities: drugs, murder, other drug related crimes. Women: crimes of passion, victimless crimes like prostitution. They were all set in their compartments like good boys and girls to make profiling the case easier, hence, easier to solve the crime. Now there was someone changing that. What a way to be innovative—be the first black serial killer of the nineties. Now, that was a way to make a name.

Maybe he'd been too hasty in dismissing Compton and Cohen from his life. It would get his name in the paper, more exposure. Frawley hadn't had his name in the news for nearly five years. He was startled to fizzle and rot in the world of law. Granted, he still had some loyal clients who'd retained him for years, but the last of the delinquent sons were soon going to bee all grown, some even cleaning up their acts so they could live decent lives, which was all well and could, but decency didn't fill his coffer. No, Frawley needed new blood. It could be an advertisement for him. He could start his career all over again. Then, maybe he could afford the expensive divorce from his wife and still live comfortably. Perhaps it would be good. He would call Libermann tomorrow.

With that, a tipsy Russell Frawley managed his way home in his elegant but aging Mercedes. His life was going to take a new turn; he could feel it.

TWENTY SIX

The minstrel was hungry and tired. Once more, his head wound ached. He decided rest was more important than food for the moment. Soon, when he was rested, he would get himself something to drink. Some water would do well.

He passed a barricaded travel agency, closed for the evening. There was an advertisement for Puerto Rico. A memory came to him from somewhere about a sandy beaches, beautiful water, tropical air. He had been walking along the beach with Lupe, Raulita had not yet been born. There had been an orange sun on the horizon, that rippled into pink waves on the Caribbean. They had come to a beautiful forest of palm and coconut trees, and the soft night breeze warmed them rather than chilled them. It felt as though they were the only two people in the whole world. They talked, laughed, naughtily mad passionate love to each other like two teenagers. Raulita was born eight and half months later. They both affectionately bragged to each other that it had been that tempestuous night that Raulita had been conceived. It was a thought that made him smile.

The minstrel had no other memory of his mother land, no idea if he'd ever gone back, if there were trips before. Only that one memory prevailed. It stayed with him as he stood by the agency, the sun setting in a manner not as glorious as the memory but kept it alive for another moment in its silhouette. He walked away from the agency, dazed by his diversion, finding an abandoned alley, and as he lay his head down to sleep on his knapsack with and abandoned carpet rug as his blanket. He dreamed of warm sun and Lupe in his arms. It was a comfort which stayed with him throughout the night.

There was a bright light in a long narrow tunnel. Emmanuel felt afraid, but there was Abdullah, and a young boy who looked just like her standing by her. Emmanuel stared into the child's eyes for a few moments before he realized it was his unborn son. He was a handsome boy.

Abdullah smiled at him but made no move to touch him. She beckoned him to follow her with a silent wave of her hand and turned and made her way down the light path. Mesmerized by her beauty, Emmanuel followed. She looked so radiant, so lavish. His mind focused on nothing but his awe of her.

She disappeared down a sudden turn in the hallway. Emmanuel looked down the darkened enclave where she had gone, but found no trace of her. He stood, bewildered, looking for his son, anyone else he could recognize, but no one was there.

Suddenly a figure appeared, that of a young girl holding a lit candle. She was small, fragile, her dark eyes and dark hair savagely fierce against the paleness of her skin, though to look in her eyes for any length of time, Emmanuel saw the innocence, the sadness in her eyes. He knew her, from where , he could not place. Then he remembered. He remembered where he knew her from.

He screamed at her to leave, only to be confronted with her unmoving, unspeaking figure, damning him with her silence. Even the flame of her candle barely wavered. He screamed and backed away, down the corridor to the source of light before him, only to be stopped by a transparent figure holding his hand up. Whoever it was, it wasn't Jesus. Emmanuel felt himself awash in terror. He was being sent to hell. God had not forgiven him his past; it had not been cast into the sea of forgetfulness. He had been lied to; had always thought that his slate had been wiped clean with just a simple prayer. It had given him comfort, but obviously it had been false comfort. Either that, or he had not believed that right way. His heart had not been what a child of God's should be. HE had lived his entire life wrong from start to finish; a waste of God's creation. His existence was that of Satan's, and now he got to spend the rest of eternity with him. His whole life had been a failure. He was too devastated to even want to cry.

Suddenly there was a rush of wind, not directed in any direction but swirling round and round. It reached him, and with sudden force, whirled around him, encircling him in a trap, and catapulting him with an intensity that he never experienced in his earthly life, carrying him away from the transparent figure, the bright light back through the tunnel until he could see the figure no more. Then everything went blank. Then there was peace.

His soul was quiet. The Reverend Jackson Emmanuel had survived his nearest brush with death. God still wanted him alive, something inside him realized; God still had more work in store for him, he wasn't finished on Earth yet. God had not yet finished pruning the tree that had produced bad fruit.

TWENTY SEVEN

Those in the fortress were busy plotting. The fortifications had to be strengthened, the peasants were liable to riot once again. The priest of the peasants was near death; what little leadership they'd had before had been reduced to ashes. They must be kept under control.

Taylor and Johnson-Frawley were two of the souls trusted by God and man to keep law and order. Today, the Zoning Committee, the name this fine order of knights decided to assume, received word that the peasant suspect might be released on account of lack of evidence. He might not even make it to the grand jury again. One of the most violent of the peasants (and the peasants could be pretty violent, as their actions of late had proved, re: riot) was going to be let free because of cowardice within the ranks. The peasants truly had taken over.

But all was not going so badly for the Zoning Committee. They had just received permission from the local board to fortify their fortresses. They would receive money to aid protection, as well as government workers more than happy to construct their wall for them. A bribe from Johnson-Frawley to withdraw all support for officials in the next election had been key. A petition with a whopping two thousand signatures who would follow her lead had been tantamount in the government's decisions to implicate the Zoning Committee's plan. Congratulations were bestowed upon Johnson-Frawley. She deserved it. She was the best. She and her daughter in law Taylor, a.k.a. Mrs. Russell Frawley, were women for their communities.

Joan Taylor was proud of herself too. All the years she waster, sitting on the verandah drinking her sorrows away were over. She was a local celebrity, a hero. The White Plains Daily, the Daily News, and New York Newsday wrote blurbs about her successes. Finally, at the age of forty-three, she was making something of her life. She didn't care anymore about her pathetic husband and what time he came home, who he'd slept with, or the dinners that were getting cold because of his escapades. Besides, she'd received a few offers from potential suitors herself, some as young as thirty from the Republican club. She met them at council dinners at the county clubs because she came unescorted, that is, unescorted by a man—her venerable mother-in-law was also there, equally flirtatious. Taylor was learning from the best. She didn't care if the ladies of town knitting sweaters and giving high tea talked. She didn't even care if Russell found out. This was her life, and she'd be damned if she missed out on any of the fun any more. She'd wasted too much of it already.

Building of the wall would begin as soon as possible in anticipation of the nearing winter season. Already, the first frost had fallen, so time was quite limited. The workers didn't work in cold weather, particularly in ice—it would be too much trouble and exertion, besides, the government had to pay the higher salaries needed for their exertion, so the construction workers had an arrangement with the government in which they didn't work in the coldest months. Time was running out fast.

So Taylor sat down with the foreman and arranged a building schedule for the workers—when the foundation would be laid down, when the building structure would be finished, when the painting and other designs would be put in. Taylor had all kinds of exotic ideas for decoration: murals of birds, political symbols (the elephant was the most popular design), even some pictures of the moons of her childhood. She felt excited the way she had the time when she built a new kitchen in her home. In a sense, she was decorating her home. It was her community, and she took pride in it. Finally everyone would see what she was made of.

It was decided that the building would be terminated for winter in mid-December. The foreman made sure that Taylor knew they were extending their building schedules just for them. She thanked him and gave him a one hundred dollar bill, and told him, more would be coming, giving him a wink, seductive with the power of money, not sex. The foreman promised that he would keep his men in line. After that little interchange, there was no more complaints about inclement weather from any of the men.

All this was decided upon by the week after the Negro preacher got himself stabbed by his fellow gang-banger. Just in time, as far as the community was concerned. Taylor didn't want the Negroes storming her only place of sanctuary because things weren't exactly going their way. You couldn't trust these imbeciles with power that only real adults should have; they abused it and caused chaos. Ask the business owner of the tobacco shop on 180^th St. whose business was vandalized during the recent riot. He'd vouch for that, black or not.

She sighed and walked home, something she'd been chastised for the last couple of times she'd done it, chastisement which she promptly ignored. They all sounded the same, she was a woman, she shouldn't be out alone at night, something she'd heard all her life in variant forms. Women were never supposed to be alone; those who chose to were deemed suspicious, whether they were women who walked alone or slept alone. They were undesirable, all sorts of adjectives with unsavory connotations. She was sick of the lectures. Women were supposed to give to others, but only in ways which were acceptable to mainstream society. When they deviated, they were considered deviant by men and women alike. Men would be called creative for doing the same things.

So she walked alone. The deterrence of bad men lurking in the shadows no longer held meaning for her, she'd grown up and discovered that the bad men were everywhere, and most were not bothering to hide. They were blatantly evil, outwardly corrupt. Like the foreman who could be bent by a hitched skirt and a one hundred dollar bill. That wasn't hidden from anyone. Besides, even if the bad men were lurking behind the shadows, Taylor wasn't about to give them satisfaction, not with her newfound freedom. She refused to give such creeps power by letting them know she was frightened. For too long, she'd been afraid; too long. No more.

She thought about the events over the last month and a half, and marveled at the progress she'd made. It was hard to believe it ha only been that short of time earlier that she'd been wasting away on the davenport drinking her sorrows away, making a drunken slobbering fool of herself by showing up at her husband's office , looking like a desperate drunken hag. She hadn't even showered that day. Now, she took pride in herself. Each day, after her husband left for work, she showered, and spent and hour and a half coifing her hair the way Ivana trump did. Like the entrepreneur's ex-wife, Taylor had the looks and the body to show off in the dim grayness of early middle age, only up to now, Taylor had no reason to show off her looks. OF course, the protocol of the affluent lower upper class deemed it essential the she appear attractive and poised, but done in such as way as not to overshadow the gallant appearance of the husband, the one with the great deeds and accomplishments that could support the wife in such a fashion. Too much gaudiness and she would appear as though she either had no education or, that she wanted to outshine her man, or even worse, be a man herself, and a lady would never want to do that. Besides, gaudiness showed a lack of class, a lack off good breeding and education. So Taylor, as a good lady, complied. She would never want to be accused of lack of good breeding. But she didn't care anymore. All her life, she'd lived for image, renting so much to her outside that she didn't know what her soul was about.

But things had changed. In some ways, the stalker that had been killing the town had given her a gift. Her shell had been cracked. She had been jolted to acknowledge that she was not invincible , the walls of her great castle were not impenetrable. She had been like an innocent child who thought bad things didn't happen in her world. Murder just didn't happen on this side of the tracks. Somehow, despite or may because of her own son being the victim of violent street death, she had remained in a fog, a veil of denial draped over her eyes, preventing her from seeing what was happening right in front of her. She still had believed nothing would happen to her, even as they lowered the coffin of her seventeen year old son into the grave.

But events could have a profound effect on one's life, just one incident and your whole life could be altered forever. The bizarreness of this was that you could never know when these events would happen, nor could you will them to happen. They were random fleeting events whose importance was only recognized when they passed, when they never would really return. Never were they noticed when there; sort of like a friend taken for granted, or time itself. It was only appreciated when it was gone.

This is, in effect what happened to Joan Taylor Frawley. After the weepy sleepless night on the verandah, and the office confrontation fortified with alcohol, she'd stumbled into an alcoholic oblivion which had lasted three days. Perhaps she wouldn't have even stopped if she hadn't heard the newscast on the bar TV. The story had a profound effect on her.

Not that the journalism or any of the actual storytelling was at all impressive to her. Joan had noticed over time that the quality and the competence of the journalists had greatly declined since the days of Walter Cronkite and William F. Buckley Jr. But it was the message conveyed to her, that spurred her into action.

She was forty-three. More than likely, she had less than half her life to live; and what had she done with the first half? Nothing too memorable, as far as she could see. When she assessed her life, all she saw was murkiness, the color of green mud; slop, waste. There were many of those who thought, because she had been born into money and married it, that he life's problems were solved. If she cried, got angry, or was depressed, she was just a self-pitying bitch who was too selfish and greedy to appreciate all that was around her. As a child, she heard this often. As an adult, the words were not needed to convey the message. The look the clandestine whispers, the silent telephone, they were enough. They were louder than words.

But she had always been dissatisfied, not quite knowing herself why she was discontented. Sometimes when sitting around at all the barbecues with the private in-ground pools and strawberry daiquiris galore, while everyone else was laughing and joking, she would sit apart, feeling empty, not even knowing how to join in. Even the times she did manage to fit in an external way, she felt her laughter came from somewhere else, that it was another Joan laughing and not herself. In some sense, it really was another Joan, the Mrs. Russell Frawley the Third, upper-middle class socialite, who could easily be replaced with another frilly knick-knack so her identity didn't matter. Joan the person didn't even fit into the equation. Perhaps this was where the emptiness lay, she had thought over the years, not quite daring to explore that theory and further. There were images to maintain and lifestyles to upkeep. Joan dared not tangle with either of these venerable things.

Now, it was different. Now, the attack upon her fortress had left a gaping hole. She did not quite feel so protected. She had known both white preachers, and knew of the Negro one. The second white preacher, Michael Westerfield, had been a classmate of hers. She had dated him a couple of times. His death, rather, his murder, hit close to home, having a profound effect on her consciousness. She felt as a witness must feel. She had watched innocence being ripped away from her. Violence now held more feeling than the glazed images she'd been fed by the media. Whoever said Americans had been numbed to the effect of violence by media was wrong; dead wrong. She had been permanently alerted from the experience.

Time would end. Linear time, with a beginning and an end; that was her life. A memory popped back to her from high school geometry. Lines had beginnings and ends. Rays had beginnings, but no ends. She had lived her life like a ray, that somehow she had begun and would continue, on and on, forever in this body. Only now at the ripe old age of forty-three did she realize she'd been fooling herself all along, that time, her time, was a line. It had a beginning and an end. With the death of Michael, her peer, she had also learned that the end could come at any time. She remembered street preachers from her childhood in Manhattan: Repent, for the end is near. Never in her life had that seemed so true for her than now.

So, what was she to do with this limited time. Right now, this had proved to be less of a dilemma than she would have imagined. With the venerable Michelle Johnson-Frawley handy, life projects were never scarce. She was always ready to uphold the Christian values of the forefathers and God himself. There was order, freedom for all, hard work, quiet Christian virtue. The noise of the sixties had appalled her, why anyone would ever be called a hero for avoiding national duty during wartime was beyond her. She practically had a heart attack when Bill Clinton was elected. Now, she said the country had truly gone down the tubes—first NOW, SDS, NAACP, then it all amounted to this farce of a leader. We must save ourselves from ourselves, she said.

Joan Frawley couldn't have agreed more. Prior to the killings of the preacher, she had felt safe to walk down her own streets, but she had always been afraid to walk down the streets of Manhattan or the Bronx, because she worried that some nigger would rape her in some sick diabolical demonstration to show the white man he meant business. All the niggers and Spics wanted was for hard working white people to fork over their money just so they could have as many babies as they wanted, take drugs, and sit on their duffs. When the white people who couldn't' afford to have a child of their own because of taxes complained, they were called racists. When government officials had the audacity to cut "programs" that parasitically minorities fed of off, riots were threatened. It was said that the first act of terrorism on American soil was the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. That was a farce. Terrorism had been going on for years. Ask the good citizens of Newark in 1967.

And the terrorism was going on now. Give us your money, or we will brandish your character, or, if we feel like, we will kill you for it. Do not cut our programs or arrest any of us for capital crimes, or else we will burn your cities down. But of course, this was not racist. To accuse these violent hoodlums of racism would land you a racist as well and maybe even a lawsuit for bias crimes. Yeah, these hoodlums worked real hard for their money.

So be it. But Joan Taylor Frawley was sick of not feeling safe in her own community, and so were many other good people. If the Negroes and the Spanish were entitled to safeguard their own regardless of expense, so were she and other whites who felt the need to protect their own. Racial crime was on the rise. If the blacks couldn't deal with the whites, just leave them alone, just like she did them. What was the need for all this violence. They were being racist themselves. Only don't ever tell them that. They might have a temper tantrum and start playing with matches.

Joan enjoyed her work on the Zoning Committee.. It was giving her a selfhood she never knew she had. No more Mrs. Russell Frawley for her; she was sick of being Mrs. Anyone, she wasn't going to hide behind the curtails of an incorrigible drunk. She was her own person with her own goals, doing good for the community her way. She started thinking with the same mind she had a long time ago, before she'd become half of a whole through marriage. The brilliant mind of Joan Taylor had briefly felt uncomfortable, like a shoe not broken into yet; too much freedom, to wide open a space for her to explore. But surprisingly she got used to it very quickly. It was a luxury to be able to think for only one, though the one was so young and underdeveloped that she felt like she was nurturing a child. She was, actually. Her person had never developed past twenty, when she had been of obsessively involved with Russell who she thought was supposed to be her white knight. She had still been a child, and yet she had felt old at twenty to be single, "still" a Taylor, like the identity she had been born with was some kind of shame to still have as a grownup. Now, in her middle age, she was ready to claim it back. She was ready to begin being her own person again. Her person—strong, secure, whole.

She turned a corner leading her into White Plains, her home, her sanctuary just over the hills, visible in the distance. Only a short while left to reach it. She began to feel a comforting peace. Life felt very good to her.

There were two people up ahead, a man and a woman. They appeared to be arguing. The woman kept walking away from the man; the man kept following her, harassing and grabbing at her. Joan felt a slight apprehension at the idea of walking upon an argument. Fighting made her uncomfortable. But somehow she continued upon her path, determined to face the fears that had been caging her all her life. No longer would she be dominated by them.

Imagine her surprise when she reached the two and found herself face to face with her wayward husband. And, presumably, the latest slut that he had been consorting with.

And a slut she was. Tattered clothes, an unclean smell, tattered hair. And on top of it, this mess of a human didn't even want her husband, and there he was begging her to stay with him. If it hadn't been her husband, Joan Taylor would have laughed right there and then at how pathetic looking this middle-aged idiot in his wrinkled suit was. But it was her husband. And despite herself and the great strides she had made towards her independence, Joan Frawley found herself distraught at the sight she saw, panic at the idea of losing her husband, embarrassment at what she was losing him to. She felt like trash, less than that, even. Trash didn't even want her husband. She did. Stupid fool.

A part of her wanted to act. Kick him in his balls, claw his eyes out. Or go home and tell the gossip column in the local newspapers a lurid story of his excursion. Maybe taking all his stuff from the house, bring it to his office and burn it in front of his sleazy nose. All these things she had plotted during her drunken moments sitting on the verandah for when this time came. Now, that it was here, she was immobilized and paralyzed. She felt at a loss to either speak or act. All she could do was watch the repetitive scenario before her, her husband the lecherous wretch to grab at the whore; the whore smacking kicking, screaming at him. Despite herself, Joan felt a smattering of admiration for the slut for having the balls to do what she always wanted to do today. The women today had spunk. Even homeless sluts like this one. The feeling quickly submerged to disgust. She had taken what was someone else's; hers. She deserved no respect.

Then the scene changed abruptly. Out of nowhere, a hulky, dark man appeared, rushing straight for Russell and wrestling him to the ground. Even the slut was suddenly still, probably as dumfounded as Russell himself. She laughed. She wondered what the expression on Russell's face was. But she made no move herself to help her husband. She felt a grotesque satisfaction in watching him suffer his just desserts. Finally, he'd met his match, learning what it was like when he stole another's.

Her husband lay on the ground, actually, half-sitting would be a better way to describe his position. He shook his head, holding his hand to his forehead as his attacker hauled the trashy slut over his shoulders, presumably to give her the good beating she deserved. There was no more movement before her; the storm had ended, and she felt oddly disappointed. She would have liked more action.

Her husband caught sight of her. Once he recognized her, he called to her. He wanted her to take him home.

And Joan Taylor, fully in control of herself again, found herself turning away and going home alone.

TWENTY EIGHT

Another demonstration. Blacks lined all up and down the streets blocking traffic. Today they were peaceful, but they proved an ominous vision for any white passerby trying as best they could to ignore the spectacle.

Tony Jones Velda was going to be held on a grand jury hearing. Three days had passed since the attack was made on Emmanuel Jackson's life, and yet no other suspects had been charged but Velda. The African-American community was in outrage. Those who knew Velda could not imagine him to harm any of hi black brothers. The blacks of the neighborhood had accepted him in all the ways that the Puerto Rican community had not, accepting the black in him as being one of their own. The Reverend Casper Williams along with several other renowned black activists spoke against the racism of the Hispanics that Tony Velda lived among, claiming that their openness to all culture was hypocritical: they were open to all cultures, just so long as African-American blood didn't taint their Latino ways. The Latinos didn't know what it was like to be enslaved or told to go to the back of the bus. Hell, the Latinos even got their special privilege to speak their language publicly. They didn't know what it was like to be hated just because they were dark. Half of them were whiter than the Caucasians in Little Italy. Perhaps, Williams countered, this skin privilege gave them the luxury to turn their backs on one of their own.

So now there were all kinds of demonstrations in front of the courthouse: Latinos, blacks, whites all alike, on all kinds of spectrums. It all began early in the morning, well before 6am, so by the time the courtroom opened its doors for its daily agenda of litigation the crows was in an uproar, almost dangerously so. Each race was threatening the others, there were punches thrown and stones cast, for anger knew no race and knew all of them. Business people, mothers with children going to preschool, and senior citizens walking innocently down the street turned and went in the other direction as they encountered the danger. They, too, were of many cultures and races. Fear knew of no race, yet knew all of them.

Frawley and Compton were yelling at each other in Frawley's posh White Plains office as the blows were thrown in the chamber of the streets.

"You should have called in the military. You knew this could happen, after last time," Frawley accused.

And Compton responded with his usual nervous disposition, the weak coward. "But we didn't know it would get like this. We thought we had warned them."

Frawley recalled broken glass and the smashed store fronts of the recent times, care of the stupid Negroes, et al, who couldn't handle life if it didn't go their way, and instantly wanted to belt Compton. The man was truly an idiot.

"What did you guys do after the riot?

"We notified Albany." Albany? What the hell could they do, send in the cows? "They felt it wasn't an emergency situation. No one died and nothing was permanently destroyed. Washington would have probably had the same reaction."

For once, Frawley couldn't argue. It seemed cities had to burn down and whole towns had to be wiped out before the National Guard got off its butt and did anything to stop the insanity. "Has the grand jury come in?"

"Several hours ago. They're being sequestered in the holding pen."

How apropos. The jury in jail. "So everything's scheduled to happen as it was."

"Yep. But I doubt there's going to be an impartial verdict with all this noise happening outside."

Frawley wanted to scream, since when had a jury ever been impartial, but kept his mouth shut. "I still can't believe the guy hadn't been indicted already. Three people are dead." He deliberately omitted the nigger in the hospital.

"We were waiting for your woman. No leads on her, huh?"

Frawley bristled with agitation. The women in his life were such sore spots that even a fifth of Jack Daniels couldn't take it away.

He'd actually seen Addie only two days earlier, walking by herself in a dark alley. And he hadn't been that drunk, he knew he wasn't; all he'd wanted to do was talk to her, but she didn't even want to see him. She ran away from him, covering her face, but he kept trying to run after her. Then she started hitting him, which for the likes of the good Frawley, he had no idea what precipitated it. Then he was walloped, big time, by some guy who didn't he didn't even realize was there. His head still smarted from the shiner that almost was. When he looked about him a few seconds later, Addie and her new boyfriend were no longer there. But his wife was. Frawley had never been so humiliated in all his life.

And his wife had somehow changed overnight without his realizing it. She was no longer the ugly shrew she had been of late. She was beautiful, stunning even, with her hair coifed, jewels sparkling, spiked heels, she looked like a dominatrix with class. She stood at a short distance, appearing to Frawley like a mirage of an oasis in the heat of a desert. He couldn't recall the last time he'd even been so happy to see his wife. He called out to her, but she didn't hear him. It was as though she really was an apparition concocted from his wishful thinking. Hell, she hadn't been that beautiful since she was twenty-five, at least.

And still he hadn't spoken to her. For days no it had been the same thing. When he woke up in the middle of the night, the bed was empty. When he showered in the morning, there were no sounds from the kitchen. At night, no matter how late he arrived, there was no drunken whimpering on the verandah. And there were no longer any humiliating appearances at his office. All he had been broken into gradually over the last month or so, all but the empty bed. That was what kept him up, with tortured thoughts. He would check her closet, and it would be full. It was like she'd vanished. He had a mind to put in a missing persons report; in his more vengeful moments, he had a mindset that at this point, if she hadn't been kidnapped or murdered, he would kill her the next time he saw her.

"Frawley?" The piteous dork brought him back to reality.

"Oh, yes. I'm sorry. My mind drifted. Where were we?"

"About the witness you claimed to know," Compton returned almost suspiciously. Which was a lie, Frawley had never said he knew her, he had said, he knew of her; he knew to cover his tracks on this one. Of course, idiot box wouldn't know the difference anyway.

"What's her name?"

"What's who's name?"

"Do you ever listen? The witness. What's her name?"

"Addie."

"Addie what?"

"Just Addie."

"Just Addie? Where did you meet her, Alcoholics Anonymous?"

Boy, someone didn't take their Prozac today. "Look, what do you care, anyway? The grand jury is today. Why don't you just wait for the verdict before you get all crazy about my material witness. Besides, from what I heard, you lost her too. But you guys were trusted and paid by the taxpayers to keep her. So maybe, get your guys in gear and out of the donut shop, will you?"

Compton didn't react; he was neurotically focused on his goal. Frawley could have said, hi, I'm going to take my clothes off and dance on my desk and gotten the same response at this point. "I think I'm going to blow up her composite sketch and send it to some other precincts to post around."

"Why would you want to do that? Witnesses make the wanted posters nowadays?"

"Maybe we're operating on the premise that she is more than a material witness."

Frawley was surprised to be bemused by Compton's attempt to sound like a cheap lawyer. A turn of events happening too quick. Velda's fingerprints were everywhere; he'd been seen at the scene of the crime. And they had the audacity to tie in poor Addie, his Addie in the crime? He was flabbergasted.

"Why her? What do you have on her? I thought they determined no one of her stature could have committed these crimes."

Compton shrugged, his left eye twitching, his body squirming, he took a toothpick out of his coat pocket and started chewing on it. He looked like a deflated chipmunk. Which was because he was screwing up and he knew it, concluded Frawley. He was bowing to the noise of all the minorities to look like a pseudo-liberal and get his brownie points with NAACP because he was scared of black skin while voting Republican on the side. Frawley was besieged with an urge to belt him hard on his head; not that it would do too much because there wasn't anything inside. Finally, Compton spoke. "She was at every crime scene. That's what we have on her."

"So was Velda."

"Yes, but Velda was cooperative when we brought him in. She wasn't. In fact, she assaulted two of my officers and had her boyfriend knock one out."

Frawley felt a pang of anger at the mention of the boyfriend but held onto himself. "Maybe she did something else and she was afraid. A lot of people don't like being arrested, John. It's not exactly their favorite experience in life. It doesn't make them triple murderers."

"I'm treating her as an accomplice." Compton said with a short bark. Ruff, ruff.

"Am I to understand then, that I am a witness?"

Compton lost footing on his tenuous confidence with that question. "Y-yes, I suppose."

Frawley leveled him with a glare that he gave every officer who tried to destroy his client in the witness stand in his court.

"But I haven't seen anything. Am I a character witness, then? I told you that I don't know her well."

"I—you could testify to her emotional instability.

"This makes her a murderer, this lingo you're handing me."

"Of course not." Compton suddenly sat up straight. "But it would be a classic profile of a vulnerable woman being manipulated by a dangerous man to assist him in murder."

"The dangerous man being the boyfriend who punched out one of your well-trained men."

"Y—yes…"

"Like Bonnie and Clyde."

"Sure. Natural Born Killers, Kalifornia, that sort of thing."

It was true. Of course, Compton the Illiterate only could provide B movie examples, but Frawley had heard and witnessed many female murder defendants whose defense was based on being lured and intimidated by seedy men into acts that they insisted they never would do by themselves; a sort of temporary insanity plea. It usually worked; a jury generally wouldn't believe that a woman was capable of heinous crimes on her own volition. Perhaps that was true for Addie as well; that she had been coerced into a situation beyond her control. There had been fear in her eyes that he had never seen before in her. Maybe it hadn't been Frawley that she was afraid of; maybe it was the boyfriend she had that she was really scared of. God knew Frawley was, he noted, wincing as he touched his sore eye.

"You think her boyfriend orchestrated the killings?"

"He's a possible suspect, I suppose. Do you know anything about him that could help us?"

"Not much. He's about six two, burly, dark hair, white, speaks Spanish."

"So he's a European Spanish guy."

"Sounds good to me."

Compton whipped out a notepad and began to jot down little symbols that Frawley couldn't decipher. Probably pig Latin, he figured. Here piggy, piggy. Frawley could barely restrain himself from snorting aloud. "Are you going to send composites out now?" he asked.

"Sure. It was authorized already."

"Before the grand jury on Velda came in?"

"Why not? We know he's not going to be indicted. There isn't enough evidence to hold him."

Leave it to a dolt to run law enforcement. "I hope this hasn't been leaked to the press."

Compton hunched himself like a typical coward as he vainly tried to rationalize his actions. "So what if it does? You're the only person who thinks he's guilty."

Frawley felt his anger grow red as he stood up to point his finger so it practically jammed up Compton's nose. "You stupid cowardly shit. You come marching in her like some weak-assed know-it-all trying to get me to help you and then you have the balls to insult me and my position just because I'm the only one around here who has the guts not to bow down to the wishes of idiots who throw temper tantrums? You stupid ass, you're kicking down the wrong man. Let me tell you one thing, just because you're kissing up to them doesn't mean they love you now. You're just a stupid white boy to them. In fact, the drug lords and gang-bangers are probably holed up right now in their little dens laughing their asses off because the little big shot white boy is scared of them. You think you are so hip and tough, and yet you are playing right into their hands."

Compton stood up primly like a schoolgirl and daintily collected his things. "I don't believe I need to be spoken to in this way," he demurely announced.

"Suit yourself," Frawley grumbled, annoyed at the psychobabble of the beuarocrat He felt like he was stuck in an assertiveness training class. He didn't even bother to watch Compton go, though he distinctly hear "racist pig" coming out of the weasel's mouth as he left. Must be talking about himself, Frawley thought, as he swiped the TV remote from under the desk and began flipping through the channels, hoping to ding some juicy coverage of the uprising in front of the Bronx Municipal Court. He wanted to prove that his theory was right, even though right now he'd be doing little more than proving it to his self-created audience of one.

He'd seen demonstrations. They'd been for real causes back then; though Frawley had never agreed with any of the issues. HE was pro-war, anti-choice, retro and proud. But the kids back them they seemed alive and full of hope. There had been a spirit to them which peeved him to death then but had a nostalgic effect on him now. There was none of the violence that he saw today, with the exception of Newark, and that had been the blacks. Now everybody was ready to kill on a moment's notice. The peace lovers had produced a generation of hatemongers. They had civil rights and the Africans to thank them for that;' they had taught more to the know-nothings of Generation X than the Golden Rule ever had. A country full of little governments of one, ready to declare war at any time, even detonate their nuclear bombs on themselves in some warped name of freedom. Why fear the president when everyone pushed the button already?

There was vodka to be drunk, a perfect companion on a dismal, lonely morning where no work had to be done. The phone hadn't been ringing as much since Cohen's visit a month earlier; clients hadn't been visiting as much either. Two or three clients had notified him, telling him that they had hired new attorneys. In fact, the only person who'd been in his office more than three times in the last month was Compton. For the first week or so the trickle hadn't bothered him, in fact, he relished the isolation and resented most of the company. It interfered with his thinking about the Velda case. He'd spent the time in the office, sipping vodka, writing letters to the mayor and the governor asking them to enforce the new death penalty on Velda and a couple of other low-life minorities like him who thought their rights mattered more than the victims they killed. He never got a response from either one, which began to bother him after while. Guess catering to a white man was too politically incorrect nowadays.

 Well, at least there was a good riot on TV, he noted as he turned on his boob tube compatriot. Let them all blow themselves to pieces, for all he cared. He had his booze and his Magnum 357, ride 'em cowboy. Let 'em all blow themselves to hell. He was ready for all of them.

TWENTY NINE

On the streets there was panic. Innocent bystanders, curious onlookers, and righteous Pharisees were thrown about. Those from the fortress that held the good boys and girls from the American nation looked to blue knights riding the dark Chevys for protection, but to their surprise found themselves their hapless victims, caught in an onslaught directed at the dark-skinned peasants. This, perhaps, was the greatest shock more than the actual threat of violence from the serfs. They expected as such from them; after all, that is what serfs and peasants did; their brains were too inferior to know any better. But not the noble knights. They were there to protect them, not destroy them. Something had obviously gone terribly wrong. They wondered what.

The grand jury had finished deliberation. Right now, there were probably in the holding pen praying for their lives. They were cursing the fates that they had been chosen for this task. They hated being in a free country; perhaps being the law abiding citizens they were, life would be nothing more than a simply day doing the little tasks that the government was so generous to share; perhaps then they wouldn't be here, barely clinging to life. They had done the right thing, according to the government, and yet rage still abounded, ready to close on them in seconds. Others wished they'd be voted the way they really wanted; at least then the fear they were being exposed to would have been worth it. Those individuals felt cheated; they had been robbed of their voices. All remained silent and locked away with them; perhaps, until some literary agent or ghostwriter offered a contract for their story. Maybe one day they would be heard.

There were those among them who'd stood up for a brother, to on, even a friend—or a friend of a friend, to be exact; he'd never be here if he were the friend himself, and he was not one to lie to the court about things like that, being a Christian and an American citizen to boot. Those people sat in bemused skepticism more than any real fear. They had expected the riot outside, knowing full well the potential violence in the white man. Their ancestors had suffered under the lash too much for them to be ignorant of such things. It amused them to watch fear in the eyes of their lighter fellow jurors. They were like scared children on their first roller coaster ride. Watching them wile away the idle hours they spent in confinement. It was nice to see the rich white asses sweat a little bit, and behind bars, no less.

Right now, Tony Jones Velda as a free man that wasn't quite yet free. He, like the grand jury and the other defendants who'd been scheduled for heating after him were sequestered in a single room which the court officers sometimes used for recreational purposes like smoking, and when they could, drinking beer. All were quiet except the venerable Velda himself, who kept the atmosphere quite noisy with his vocal complaints and outburst, such as the decor and culinary fare. Besides, he shouldn't be here anyway; he was a free ma. Why the (expletive) was he here stuck in a (expletive) seedy room with the (expletive) scum of the (expletive)earth?

Nobody paid attention to him, busy with their own expletives, such as restraining other defendants itching to start their own riot inside. They looked at Velda with the same regard as they would a mosquito who refused to be killed. The level of control in the room was stifling; twenty-nine bottles of uncapped rage ready to burst. Thankfully for the court reporters, the TV was mandated to be off. Other than the muffled noise that was fairly commonplace outside the dingy room, there was no indication of life outside the four walls, let alone a riot. But the officers knew better. Like faithful disciples in the line of fire, they refused to speak as the grand jury and everyone else threw questions at them, increasingly becoming more pointed. The good officers had been under strict orders from a higher authority not to divulge any information about the riot to the prisoners, including Jones-Velda.

Outside, scuffles had escalated. There were the white ministers, demanding that Velda be executed; to desecrate the lives of God's chosen leaders was purely sacrilegious; they claimed. The bishop spoke. A woman whose lover recently was murdered jumped at him, demanding to know his whereabouts when her lover's murderer was allowed to live while her love rotted in the grave. The bishop was only there to protect his own, she screamed. She lunged forward, but never met her target. He was nothing but shit, the woman screamed as she was dragged away by police. When a Spic died, no on in the Church cared, but when the churchmen died, the Church all of the sudden wanted justice. Fucking hypocrites, were her final words as she disappeared amidst three blue uniforms, one of whom got kicked in the kidneys as he passed an angry white boy. The blue guy coughed but diligently continued on his way; being a rookie he was always meticulous in carrying out orders, but being human, he thought of his wife and two girls at home. He wondered if this job was worth it.

Still no word on a verdict, though being two-thirty in the afternoon, the angry mob was well aware there was one. Black and white alike threw rocks at windows while angrily cursing out the others for their destruction. Brown boys stood in their own corner, angry but unheard. They spoke their own language as they roared, adding to their isolation. One dark one finally acknowledged their presence by picking a fist fight with one. The mob, excited by the action, made room for them so they had their own circular ring to fight in. They cheered on the fight; each vying for the man closest to his color. It was like being at a feast, complete with boxing. A day of fun in the Bronx.

There was live coverage for a time. At three o'clock, the news vans were sent home, to put it euphemistically. Most of the cameras had been knocked down and smashed in a sudden instant; wires had been yanked out and mortally wounded. There was talk among the anchors that there would be a lawsuit against the City of New York, particularly when it was found that a pretty, petite blonde of twenty-seven had two of her teeth knocked out and a blackened right eye. Someone had squeezed her breasts, too. She had been terrified that she was going to be raped. That was intolerable. Time to go to court.

Meanwhile, someone really was being raped and had no TV heavyweights to back her up: a poor young soul of a Latina who'd somehow gotten tangled up on the white side. She was surrounded in a fashion so that even if her people were looking to save her, they couldn't because she was nowhere to be seen. The white assholes, they were having fun, would show her who was boss. They could get away with raping some Dominican bitch in the middle of the day in front of blue suits on the lawn of the municipal court (which being the Bronx, wasn't much of a lawn), right in front of her homeboys and get away with it. But hell, it hadn't been anything new for her, the first one announced with some disappointment. Fourteen, she had to be, and she wasn't even a fucking virgin. She was a whore who deserved what she got, he yelled as the third one finished and they began beating her. Then solidarity of the circle was diffused during the beating, and in the cracks, the Latino men saw their fallen sister. There were spurts of blood as the white boys were not only stripped of their clothes as the Latina but their skin was stripped from their white bones. The girl had been the women of one of the Latino men, pregnant with his child. And she was nineteen, not fourteen, and they were to be married on Christmas Day. Now, she was barley alive. A black brother somehow got shoved into the midst of the fight, and an unknown fist crashed into his skull. His blood was just as red as the white boys', and it was impossible to tell whose blood was whose when looking at the street decorated thoroughly with red. The riot had become a bloodbath, mostly teeming with the blood of brothers and Latinos. It was white boy's day out.

Johnson-Frawley and Taylor sat in Johnson-Frawley's office, watching the Latino boys attack their white boys. Up until this point, the uprising had been fairly more than a nuisance to them, mostly because they knew the white boys had enough decency to know how to conduct a peaceful demonstration; they had been taught right. But the blacks and Spics wanted everything white the whites lost everything. They didn't want to be upstaged or have even a remote chance of the "evil white man" to be heard, so now here they were, animals that they were, causing chaos and destroying things. Enough already. The women weren't going to tolerate an LA riot in their city, and the police weren't doing shit to protect the white boys, so the women knew they had to act, and act now.

Michelle Johnson-Frawley got in touch with the mayor, a white liberal, telling him that the whites were getting out of hand. Joan Taylor called the National Guard and Armed Reserves, telling them that a federal building was under attack and that officials were being held hostage. She considered it their problem that they didn't know that the nearest federal building was at least two miles away. Then both women, sensing that they had done something semi-illegal, crept quietly past closed doors where angry business was conducted until they reached the main lobby, where they headed to the cafeteria to have coffee. No one would ever suspect that the two professional looking, middle aged women of mishap. It would be blamed on the hippies, who were outside the door picketing and playing guitars for peace. The two women giggled between themselves, sharing secrets like a couple of teenage girls.

The verdict and the military happened respectively, three minutes apart. The brave-hearted reporters who had remained plundered the tower, for their gold, taking the blue uniforms by total surprise. When the mob tried to follow, the blues woke up to reality and drew their guns. Even the clubs of the gangsters paled against real ammunition. They stopped dead in their tracks, all were quiet (NRA). Then a lawsuit for police brutality was announced, and the rest took up the battle cry. The force of a mob, they figured, united together in the common cause of violence and fighting for the right to do harm to one anther, had to be stronger than the force of a few.

But things quickly changed. A shot rang out. It froze much of the herd. Unlike many of their fellow mobsters, there were some who had never hear the sound of a gun up close. All the cop shows on TV in the whole world had not prepared them for it. Their sudden paralysis fractured the tenuous thread holding the previously warring fragments together, for many of the darker ones, who were not only more used to the sound up close but used to a white man with a badge threatening them with gunfire, found themselves fueled with new force. They pushed, shoved, and trampled on the prissy whites with no backbone. No white cop with a gun was going to dissuade them from their mission to save their black brother inside. Angry Latinos attacked the black herd, angry at their accusation that they were racist and had deserted one of their own, white the white bunch retreated and sat back to observe the violence, somehow aware that now that the cops were starting to shoot guns, it would mean trouble for them if they started messing around. Let the Spics and niggers take the heat. Besides it was fun to watch those stupid beasts fight. Entertainment.

Looking at the insanity from high above, the whole scenario looked like a zoo run amok. Jonathan Pfeifer noted as her

stared out a tenth-floor window in Municipal Court, just across the street from the commotion, which really meant at this point that if he walked out the door he'd find himself smack in the middle of the whole commotion. He'd come here at ten to serve some papers, and by the time he got out of the judge's chambers at eleven-thirty, the street had become packed tighter than a sardine can. He sure as hell didn't plan to g out in this mess, especially when several phone calls back to Frawley's office yielded nothing. The drunkard was probably flat out again, and the receptionist had probably taken advantage of the whole thing by taking an early lunch for the rest of the day. So, Jonathan would too. In fact, his job was beginning to feel like one big lunch break. No one wanted to deal with Frawley with his incessant ramblings; even his bigoted colleagues didn't want to deal with him. It seemed like everyone but Frawley and the new Nazis down below knew one some level that the only reason why Velda was incarcerated was because he knew he was the nearest black man to the scene. Frawley's cronies avoided him because they were afraid for their lives with someone so bigoted; some mean black boy might drive by their luxurious homes one night and shoot them up. Most others didn't want to be bothered because they thought he was going insane.

He went to the pay phone, thinking he should call Ashley. Every single one was in use each with a line of at least half a dozen people. Most waiting were cursing in impatience at whoever was using the phone, each one believing their call and their loved ones were more important than anyone else's. Anger bred anger bred anger. Jonathan meandered to one of the longer lines. He was in no rush to call the house which he assumed was empty anyway. Anticipating the chaos, the elder Thomas had probably gone with her daughter to Tarrytown for the day; Raven was probably going to the Vanderhoffs' again for the evening. He fumed internally without even having verified his contemplation. He didn't feel like he was projecting; he only knew his wife too well.

He should get a divorce; for Raven's sake. And he didn't even love Ashley anymore. There was nothing to say to her, ever. Their lives were poles apart, and, what was worse, she hated him for being so different from her. Their marriage had become nothing more than a typical, worn out scenario where the very things that had once attracted now repelled. It was a sign of her immaturity. Ashley, for all her sophistication and upper class rearing and her well-bred manners, had never grown up. She was, and still was, a spoiled child who had everything she wanted handed to her and hadn't known a day of hardship in her whole life. Jonathan had more problems than she had, much younger than she. None financial, which seemed to equate in most people's minds that all other problems were inconsequential, ready to be paid off with a bank check and a signature. Somehow, being locked in a closet for a day by an angry parent or watching a mother cry night after night did not seem so bad to outsiders when there was a fancy meal to greet the victims afterwards and designer clothes for them to wear. Not that Jonathan's family was ever rich, mind you. If they'd tried to contend with the Thomas league they'd be laughed all the way to California. But there was money, more than average. The bills were paid, his prep school was paid, and then some. In the early days, there had even been trips to Disneyland and Bermuda. Those days were mere hushes along a darker landscape that scoured the later years. Hospital bills, for mother's nervous condition. Ruptured spleens, heart attacks, compliments of dad's workaholic days as an engineer and rage attacks on his family at home. There was no money then.

Jonathan found himself at an available phone line finally. Discombobulated from his thinking, he mentally stumbled as he placed coins in the machine, wondering who it was he was supposed to be calling.

Yeah, Ashley. See if she were actually home. Raven would be home from school now, so it would be unlikely. The prospect of Ashley spending time with his "bastard" child seemed almost unthinkable, he thought as the phone rang in his ear.

Two times. Three times. "Hello?" The musical quip was unmistakably Ashley. Jonathan almost gasped in shock.

"Ashley?" he made out.

"Jonathan? Is that you? Are you all right?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. I'm at the Municipal Court."

"Omigod, I'm so glad that you called. I've been so worried about you all day, and when I called the office and you didn't answer, I didn't know what to think."

Jonathan found himself touched at the sound of the old Ashley. The concerned voice of his wife soothed him after the nervous tension of the day. "I came here earlier to file some work for Frawley, but I never went back. I have a front seat view of the whole craziness."

"You what! You're right there? They'll kill you!"

"Ash, it's all right. There's been no problems inside the court all day. I just thought it would be better if I wait here until things calmed down."

"Oh God, oh God," Ashley moaned. Jonathan wondered if he should have said anything about Municipal Court at all. The fact was, he'd been unprepared; unprepared to hear her voice or deal with her concern, even though he'd been the one who called. He'd received so little of her concern for so long that it surprised him when it was there. "This whole thing is so terrifying to me," she continued; "I walked into town to buy some soup and there were people running around in the streets. Then I came home and saw the news clip. I ran to the school and brought Raven home as fast as I could." Another surprise. The mention of her caring for his daughter completely won him over, and he was hooked once more. I've watched all day, but the cameras were all destroyed an hour ago. There's no more coverage. My God, what is happening there?"

Jonathan looked again at the packs of animals, the black ones, the brown ones, the white ones all swarming amidst each other while keeping separate. The scene suddenly filled him with nausea. All these idiots, attacking other strangers just because their skin was a different color, as though pigment dictated an opposing philosophy on arrival. Jonathan couldn't make any sense of it.

"Honey? Are you still there?" Ashley's anxious voice was on the verge of panic.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm here," a disorientated Jonathan replied.

"Oh, I was worried. The way these black people are acting, I thought one grabbed you." Jonathan almost laughed despite himself. Ashley would never use the word "nigger", but the way she spoke of blacks, she may as well have.

"They're not letting anyone in the court. They don't want a riot in here too."

"Oh, good. They can be so obnoxious." Obviously, with her mindset, she would have never interpreted the veiled message correctly; that the white people were more likely to start on the black people than the other way around. Jonathan didn't bother correcting her; there was a line a mile long behind him, and his time here was running out. He had more important things to do with it.

"May I speak with Raven?"

"Oh, she's sleeping. Would you want me to wake her up?"

"No, no. Let her sleep. I just wanted to know she was all right." The last sentence he'd thought aloud without realizing until the words were out of his mouth.

"She's fine, just a little tired. It was so crazy at the school, too, lots of people running around and yelling. It was upsetting for her, but she's okay. She's in good hands now."

Jonathan wanted to believe the words she said. He wanted to trust his wife. She really had done nothing wrong. He sighed, eyeing the disgruntled line behind him, and felt there was nothing more to say. "I have to go. There's a line waiting for the phone. I just wanted to let you know I was all right. Tell Raven I love her when she wakes up."

"I will," Ashley said quietly. "Be careful."

"Sure thing." Silence.

"I love you Jonathan." Silence.

"I love you too, Ashley."

In the silence then it was hard to tell if she was still on the line. "'Bye," he said.

"'Bye, love." Then the click. Jonathan felt suddenly empty as he hung the receiver in its place and walked away.

He ambled down a hallway, intending to go to the cafeteria to get some lunch. Suddenly the fact that he hadn't eaten since he left his house at seven that morning hit him. He was searching at the office directory for the cafeteria when a news bulletin coming from an overhead television set snapped him to attention. There was a breakthrough in the Supreme case riot. A verdict had been issued. The media were going to the courthouse with the news. Jonathan wondered how they were going to do that if the mobsters chased all the cameras away.

But there they were, live coverage with anchor Sally Harkensen, standing with eager eyes and a big wide grin that seemed either artificially planted or ridiculously naÏve given the circumstances. She was new, anyway. Jonathan couldn't remember seeing her before. Of course , they gave the dirty jobs to the new guy. Jonathan knew from experience.

Harkensen jabbered away, commotion filing in and out from behind her. It spurred on her speech, she was the typical rookie enthralled with being in the line of fire. Jonathan listened to her words with a half-opened ear: "we're here at the Bronx Supreme Court, live, exclusively. There has been word from the foreman that there is a verdict in the grand jury hearing against Tony Carlos Jones Velda. We go live to the courtroom right now."

There had been a camera in the courtroom, apparently. Somehow, this network had obtained exclusive rights to the drama. Jonathan thought of the other reporters, the ones ransacked. Jonathan's heart went out to the poor bedraggled souls; all that chaos they'd been put through and there wouldn't be any glory for them. The thought of all the dominance and aggressiveness, how willing people were to destroy each other just to get their way and get to the top, instantly sickened him. It sickened him to see mankind behave more base than the least intelligent animal.

"…find that there is not enough evidence…"

Raven had been made terrified today, exhausting her so badly that she couldn't be out playing in the gorgeous colors that decorated the fall landscape, an afternoon sun almost as warm as and August morning. No one here enjoyed it either. No one noticed the oranges, the reds, the golds so briefly but majestically displaying their proud beauty before they fell to the ground and returned to the earth. The souls here were already deep into winter.

"…free to go…"

The camera had a transparent clock in the screen, Jonathan noticed. October 8, 1994, 10:20 AM. As if suddenly caught unawares from daydreaming, Jonathan jerked his watch to view: 3:07. The verdict had been issued four and a half hours earlier. It was far from "live," and four and half hours of rioting had been allowed to go unabated. What the hell was going on?

There was a rumbling commotion coming from below. Far in the distance from his elevated view, Jonathan saw a sight that he had to do a double take on. Funny, but he swore he saw tanks? He blinked several times to make sure he wasn't seeing things. As it turned out, he wasn't. Several other people were looking out the grand window and pointing at the spectacle. A bewildered Jonathan Pfeifer sat wondering how the military had managed to cart tanks through New York City—and why. AN armored vehicle would have been good enough.

All of the sudden there were uniforms everywhere, jumping out of vehicles that sneaked up behind the tanks. The mob dispersed in its confusion, began swarming away their huge bodies, only to be blacked on the other side by a new presence, a massive fleet of blue cars; probably organized in the wake of the confusion the military bestowed. They were from different precincts and different counties; Jonathan even noticed a patrol with Newark insignia on them. A mass effort to get an our of control city back under control again, as it was ready to explode at any moment. The vandalism was nothing compared to the actual fabric that held the society being ripped apart at that very moment, just by the sheer anger and hate that tore gulfs between everyone. Jonathan stood and watched as blacks and Latinos were boarded into the blue cars, while white ones were whisked into ambulances that carried them to safety. Filled with bewilderment at the scene, Jonathan wondered how the whites had gotten off this one. They had started the trouble, yet there had been no move to arrest them earlier. Now, the blacks and Latinos, put in a position to defend themselves and one another were being blamed. A bunch of blacks attacked the patrols, only to be confronted with guns to their faces. The gesture didn't daunt them; they must have said something to the whites that were standing by, because suddenly the whites were on them again, cops notwithstanding. A new brawl had begun.

Then the strangest occurrence happened. In the middle of the brawling races, a figure emerged as if from nowhere, walking between fighting foes as though it was the most commonplace thing in the world. It was enough to send the boxers into such a confusion that their fighting stopped. Then the figure turned around, facing the former fighters and gesturing with his hands in all directions. All just stood there and looked at him. From where Jonathan was, he couldn't tell if the gangsters were laughing at the fellow or now, but his antics seemed to quell the fights better than the army's best weapons could. They were so taken aback by his lunacy it was as though they forgot about fighting. They formed a circle around him while the cops took advantage of the diversion, taking the culprits in small clusters into custody. The perpetrators didn't even seem to notice; they were too busy watching the crazy man.

Finally, one white boy came forward, the first to dare challenging the crazy man's hold by attacking a black boy on the outskirts who said to a white girl that he should stick his black dick in her pink ass if she really wanted a man. The crazy man dodged through the circle and knocked the white boy away while angrily yelling at the black kid. Scared, the young fourteen year old black, who only wanted to sound important, ran away from the crazy man. There was such anger and rage in his eyes. He had to get out of there as soon as possible.

White boy seemingly was not as intimidated as his black peer. Anger at being assaulted and publicly humiliated by a crazy man dissipated any fear he had. He reached behind crazy man as he was yelling and grabbed him by the throat, pulling him onto the ground, ready to beat him to a pulp. The white guy suddenly felt full pain; on the way down, the crazy man somehow kicked him where both real men and male cowards feel pain most. White boy held himself in pain, if you didn't know better, you'd think he really had to go to the bathroom badly by his position. But, the crowd did know better, and white boy's predicament caused a raucous of laughter among the minorities, that is, until the crazy guy started yelling again. The Latinos suddenly appeared somber by his words, as the blacks started cursing at the crazy man in frustration. English, man, speak English. We don't speak no Spanish. Yet somehow, even not understanding, they were rendered as quiet as their Hispanic rivals. The white boys were silent, too; mostly because the police were there. Not that the police scared them. They just didn't want to look like the guilty ones.

 The momentum had been broken. Finally. Slowly, inch by inch, individual by individual, the band of rioters were disbanded. No one walked off with any prized loot; but bounty had not been the point of this riot, blood had. It had been one of passion and glory. Each man had fought for the dignity that they deserved as God's creatures, though at the moment, God had been far from their minds. They had been created black, or white or Hispanic; and they'd be damned if someone was going to cut them down for being that way.

By four-thirty, most of the blatant perpetrators had been carted away by the blue cars. Barricades had been formed outside the court in preparation for the release of Velda, and the more benevolent of the crowd remained, anxiously peering over the blockades and each other, hoping that they would catch a glimpse of the famous anti-hero that had been the catalyst for such vast emotion that day. The crazy Spanish man had disappeared as quickly as he had come, and his presence was forgotten in the din of anticipation for another exalted image. Jonathan Pfeifer, sitting on the third floor in Municipal Court, getting a haphazard view of events from his vantage point, finally felt safe enough to return to ground floor so he could make his way home. He had no interest in meeting the source of destruction , though he had an idea that Velda was more and excuse for the violence than the actual cause. Man was violent because he wanted to be.

The crowd milled on the streets as Jonathan reached the entrance, nearly blocking his path to get out the door. The looked like they were lined up for the St. Patrick's Day parade. Jonathan almost expected someone to walk down the street with a cart of cotton candy. The absurdity of it would be good, considering the nerve-wracking tension most had suffered that day.

Despite his earlier plan, Jonathan found himself in the midst of the throng waiting for Velda. There was nowhere to move with all the people there. He thought of Raven, then Ashley, and wished he was there at home with both of them right now. He was sick of crowds, noise, and confusion. Too much destruction had been witnessed today; he needed peace, but none was forthcoming. He was resigned to spend his time with ogling, wide-eyed children waiting for Santa Claus to arrive. Between the rioting earlier today and the infantile wonder of the crowd now, Jonathan decided he had never seen so many adults act so immature at one time. With all the screaming, hooting, pushing and nudging, Jonathan felt like an alien creature. He wondered if there was even one other soul in the crowd that felt like he did, but from what he could see, he was alone, in his sentiments. He sighed as he resigned himself to stay in a place he didn't want to stay, for God knew how long. There was nothing he could do.

He took his attention away from the masses themselves, for their antics did nothing but disgust him. Instead he scanned the crowd to find the crazy man he'd seen earlier. Form the tenth floor, he'd obviously not gotten the best view of the lunatic, but Jonathan kept expecting to spot him in the crowd and recognize him. He wondered if it had been the Hispanic man he'd found on the side of the road, but dismissed his own thinking. His thinking was slightly skewed on the subject, lending him a confusion about his own inner workings. He himself was somewhat unsure of why a part of him kept searching for a man he hardly even knew, particularly one that didn't seem to desire his company, or anyone else's, for that matter.

He wondered what it took to make a person to desire absolutely nothing—no roots, no family, nothing to tie oneself to one place. Even he in his freedom days had desired some connection, which is probably the main reason why he'd gotten involved with Jennifer in the first place. It was like way back when, trying to find himself and who he was about. Even when he'd woke up to rejoin the world, he hadn't given a clue to anyone who he was. Maybe he didn't even know himself. Jonathan wondered who the guy's wife and daughter were, and where they had gone that he was searching so hard for them. Maybe the guy was a bum and his wife had packed up with the kid and dumped him, with no trace of her whereabouts. Either way, it could understandably send a guy over the edge, lose his marbles. But somehow Jonathan had a gut feeling that it wasn't the case with this one. Something more drastic must have happened to make the guy who he was now, he was sure of that.

His feet hurt and his head ached. The stench of sweat, diesel and pollution was burning away into a fairly breezy evening; all Jonathan could feel was the heat emanating from the other bodies smoldering into him. It was all he could do from passing out just from sheer exhaustion, like many others he saw around him doing.

He daydreamed for a little bit; wondering about Jenny, if she was still alive and how she was doing. It was hard for him to think of good things, he felt so negative. He kept thinking of Jenny, how she was never accepted by his family even when she was pregnant with his child, and how the prejudice she experienced at the hands of his family and other whites in his circle undermined what little confidence she had until she dwindled down into nothing. It was like a self-fulfilling prophecy: the no-good Indian eventually became the no-good Indian. In the end, she was so beaten down by drugs and self-abuse that even her own people hadn't accepted her, and the child she birthed had been nothing more than an inconvenience and a nuisance; white people had done enough damage to them, so the last thing they felt compelled to do was accept a half-white as one of their own when the Indian part was a junkie.

Jonathan loved her like she was an extention of himself. He felt the least he could do after his desertion of Jenny was treat her unwanted child like gold. By the time Jonathan left Jenny, she'd been so far gone with drugs that she didn't even know she had a child, couldn't recognize with him or the fruit of her labor. It had broken Jonathan to leave, but didn't want Raven raised in an area where she'd be rejected by everyone including her own mother. Jonathan had still loved Jenny; memories of the old jenny far outweighed the Jenny she'd become. Perhaps if it hadn't been for Raven, he'd still be with her right now. Maybe Ashley knew that. Maybe that was why she always seemed distant to him, just out of reach of truly loving him. Maybe it was the same for him.

Memories held him through until Velda made his stage appearance and his fans were satiated enough in their lust for his presence. He thought of the home he and Jenny created, full of beautiful flowers and sculptures that Jenny herself grew and created from her own hands. Such a gentle spirit that always gave to anyone she knew, gave her time and compassion. She had not deserved to have been hated for her color. She had not deserved his adultery and desertion. She had not deserved him, or rather, he didn't deserve her. She had deserved much better than what she received.

A proud Tony Jones Velda strutted past the crowd, his head high, his back tall and proud. He had survived prejudice and bigotry, and he had come out far higher than he ever was. Jonathan would try to fell joy for him. But remembering Jenny, he couldn't. All he felt for the gallant figure was an empty hole.

THIRTY

Cindy was out of breath from running. She was near fainting from the exhaustion of Indian summer heat. Running, that seemed to be all that she did now. It almost didn't seem worth it to continue, a part of her argued, and argument that she had been struggling with for months. Why run when there was nothing for her to run to? Unless her husband was dead, there was nowhere for her to go. She would never be fully safe. Her husband had a missing person photo of her; it was like a gunshot from nearly two hundred miles away.

Maybe she should go South. There would be little chance of her survival here if she stayed here through the winter; she barely made it past the last one. At least in the warm South, she could rest. Miles away from her past and the mess she had somehow gotten involved with here. She wondered what it was in her personality that attracted chaos to her like rubber glue. All her life she had just wanted happiness and peace. All she had gotten was pain. She wondered what it was she had done wrong for her life to have turned out this way. All her life, the losers had clung on to her like gnats, the rich and poor alike. She wondered if she was a loser too. Gee why was she wondering. Look at the spacious accommodations she supported herself with. Pretty obvious where she stood.

This month was a good example if she ever needed one to prove her loser status. Her companions consisted of a drunk, lecherous, adulterer who was a poor excuse of a lawyer, and an insane hobo who couldn't comprendo a word of English. And yet, no matter what she did, she couldn't get rid of that. All without even sleeping with him. Getting rid of him was like trying to put ice on the trail that led to her husband; the ice would melt away, leaving a red hot lead straight to her. No wonder she'd been scared to leave. What she had most feared had come upon her, this life of poverty and hiding she had. And the same pattern she'd created with her husband seemed to have happened once again. Twice, to be exact.

She didn't feel sorry for either one of the loons she'd attracted. With Russell/Avery, it had been the lure of a good life, without the side dish of battering involved. Of course, for someone to be drawn to her in her present state, the guy had to be somewhat nuts. He was a source of security got her, or had been, at least until the crazy murders in the last few weeks; but she represented something for him, too; she didn't know what. There was a part of Cindy that wanted to believe that it was something more than his legal fancies, but she refused to believe or trust that part of her. The last time she had trusted it, she'd been imprisoned in a Chinese torture chamber( or New York, to be totally precise) for eleven years. And now she was a fugitive because of listening to it.

She didn't know what to make of the Spanish bum. She still didn't know his name whether real or imagined. He was just this presence that seemed to bounce in and out of her life at random. Maybe he wasn't even real and she was just starting to hallucinate. It wouldn't surprise her. This guy didn't seem real. She usually resented him when he was with her but mussed him when he left, wondering why he'd abandoned her when he acted so much like he cared when he was with her. She hated him for getting through her so, she hated herself for letting him. Yet it was a process that worked itself on her despite her gritty resolve to prevent it. She had no idea why it happened, nor did she particularly care. Self-analysis was reserved for the more established members of the society; those with homes, jobs, and perhaps a Yorkshire terrier, and whose primary concern was whether to go to the movies or see the new cool episode of X-files that night. It wasn't for those people whose primary concern was where to find their next meal, wondering if they would be murdered that night as they slept by an air vent to keep warm—people such as herself. Feelings were a waste of time for her, so she reasoned her emotions away. They interfered with her survival.

Rarely did she get from the house; constantly she was under surveillance by her husband and his cronies, probably because being trash by their standards, she was expected to ball the town the minute backs were turned. Either that, or they were afraid the rage her husband dispelled upon her would go back on them; she was the new scapegoat, let's keep it that way, that sort of thing. God knew the bruises were obvious enough for everyone to see. Cindy could hardly blame them for wanting to escape the same fate as she had, if she wanted to be fair. She didn't feel like it.

taken her eleven years to take advantage of these escapades and take to flight, but regrets were a waste of time and past decisions were meaningless as well.

It was almost on automatic pilot that she found herself meandering to a phone. Her heart raced as much from what she was about to do as from the chance someone might see and recognize her. She changed her voice when she called the operator, asking for a collect phone call to a number that was written on her heart, then hung up the moment the operator asked for her name, afterwards, she crumbled with the phone dangling from her hands, her head hung low in defeat in the realization that in her fugitive state, even her only real love was forbidden to her as well as everything else that made life worth living.

He was angry. Enraged. It was not usual for him to be this angry, because God in His goodness had always led him to a path of beauty where it almost would be a disgrace to His name for him to be angry. Jesus was present at all times to him; who was he not to rejoice at His infinite love and kindness?

But today he was angry, and he knew that Jesus Himself would be angry too, in the same fashion as when He overturned the vendors' tables in the temple. Whatever was good and love was what a pure heart treasured and thought about, and what came from the mouth was a wellspring of the reservoirs of the heart. If the eye was bad, then the light was bad. If a heart was evil, evil would spring forth from his mouth.

His anger was at destruction of God's perfect world and the violation against His creatures. To the minstrel himself, as he rocked back and forth in lamentation to God with a voice that could pierce a heart with its agony, there was a personal lilt to his anguish that could not be squelched. He cried out to God, how could his own flesh be so afflicted with so much pain and fear when he had so much love to give her? Why did she run from him, when all his desire was to protect her? Evil had befallen her once before: he only desired to protect her from it once again.

Then he stopped short, his incantation halted to an abrupt end. God spoke to his heart. He heard the voice as surely as he heard the bells ringing for a Sunday church service and the birds flying overhead calling their last good-byes. There was an answer, and he would be a fool not to listen. He realized God understood his pain. God cried with him with the same pain as he, only His was worse, for His pain was for the whole world, not just Raulita Corazon Valezquez. As surely as Raulita was formed and sprung from his loins, the world had formed and sprung from the Lord's. Just as the minstrel was, He was a parent despairing at the fate of His Lost Child, chasing after the one lost sheep. He more than understood the minstrel's pain. And the minstrel knew, just as God had come to aid him in times of pain, he knew he would do the same for his loyal Friend. It was the least he could do for the Friend who had given him everything.

His footings were a series of clumsy stumblings; he had slept little since waking up to find the angel of Raulita once again no longer by his side. He took this to mean that his child still held anger against him, the love of his life still missing, he lay awake for nights in anguish that Satan somehow destroyed both of them. Why could he have not protected her---

A yell. Then a series of yells. Cheering. Clapping. Then a scream amidst it all. Siren chirping. Brakes screeching. The noise became louder as he continued in the direction he was walking, more insistent. The screaming became more shrill. The sirens sharp barks. The breaks rip across the eardrums. There was chaos up ahead packed on the ground before the throng landed upon the unfortunate creature. The rage filled the minstrel again. This was the evil that had stolen Lupe and Raulita from him.

A little black boy lusted over a skimpily clad white girl who seemingly wore nothing but white lace underwear with a black cape over her shoulders. The girl couldn't even be eighteen. A girl making herself to be a showpiece to get a crumb of attention. Rage again at the devil, seducing a young girl to believe that reducing herself to no more than her female anatomy in the eyes of lusty men was the way to fulfillment; the young men no longer the valiant leaders of God they could be, but animals lusting for not a heart, but sex and blood. It was disgusting what they had allowed themselves to become and what anti-morality they allowed to become part of their hearts.

There was a fight. Over the woman. Because a black boy ludicrously challenged a white boy over what both purported to be the white boy's property, ludicrous because the girl belonged to God only, no matter what either boy or the girl thought. She doesn't belong to you, the minstrel screamed; she belongs to God; his voice seemingly unheard amidst the din of noise. No man had the right to fight for the liberties of a woman's body, he screamed. It was not love they fought for. Lust was hate. The pride they thought they had for their own race was hate; hate for others and essentially for themselves as well; there was hate for God in all of it. I smell it, he said, I smell it all from you. It creates a stench that reeked and polluted even the beautiful nature that innocently flew about. The animals, thought, they were better than the most intelligent of you. Because they are smart enough not to leave God's plan, despite all you do to wreck it.

It was with a ferocious cry that he leapt upon the fighters, his weary body energized with fury at the injustice that had happened upon the daughter of his Best and Truest Friend. Nothing that his victim could do could daunt him in that moment. Age, size held now factor upon him. It did not matter that the young white boy had the advantage of the first attack. The minstrel had smelled his hate approaching. The hate emanating from his attacker seethed all around; who could not sense it. And the minstrel was ready to stand up to hate. It had no true power in the presence of God.

The minstrel easily managed his adversary to the ground. It was cause for rancor amongst the fallen one's comrades and celebration amongst the darker ones present. But he did not wait to be exalted or condemned by mere man. He turned to face the young boy who had so lewdly regarded the woman who had caused so much controversy. The minstrel berated the young boy, causing startle in a young lad who had fund himself a new hero. The minstrel was aware of his surprise and his admiration. The surprise was good; he was young enough to still be impression into redeeming his ways without much trouble relatively speaking. The admiration was not what he wanted, he instructed the boy. The boy was to admire God, his parents and his teachers. Where were his parents anyway? Did they know he was planted in the middle of the most debased form of debauchery he had seen in recent years?

The boy made no reply other than to dart through the crowds of blacks at an alarming rate. The minstrel took pity on the boy, saying a quick prayer of redemption. It angered the minstrel at what a hold Satan had taken on the young. It tempted him to curse fate, but he prayed for God's intervention in the sudden spiritual quagmire his anger landed him in, all but oblivious to the incredulous stares at his apparent talking to himself. The minstrel was not ashamed of his Lord; others can stare and poke fun at him as they liked. The Lord was a Friend worth losing others for, for His friendship was real and eternal.

He heard a cry of pain. It had been the same scream he had heard earlier as he happened upon the vile scene. He moved amongst the crowd to the source; his audience, too baffled by his antics to deny him passage, almost instinctively opened a wide path to let him through, all pairs of eyes intent on the wild figure, except for two. One pair belonged to the girl so badly ravaged earlier that day; her eyes were hidden behind the dark veils of their lids, looking back and forth between the road to eternity and the one she had just left, trying to decide which path was better. The other pair belonged to her grief stricken lover as he raised them to heaven, rocking back and forth on his knees in vigilance next to the fallen girl, over and over, saying, Dios, she is near death, Dios, she is near death. Her face was a contortion of swollen mounds, part of her skull was showing near a cruel blow, while her neck lay at such a vicious angle too gruesome to behold. She, in fact, appeared dead to all but he lover himself.

The minstrel saw her lying there, seeing a face that belonged not to the girl herself but of his own lost love. In grief, he wept with the girl's lover. He clung to the minstrel in his intense bereavement, oblivious to the fact that he clasped a stranger, for any comfort he would take now. The minstrel held the bereft man as he wept himself, reaching out to touch the girl's face. He had an image of the girl as her former self. She was beautiful, a girl who laughed so much that she made others laugh at her voice; taller, fuller, brasher than his gentle Raulita, full of dirty jokes and a warm heart that would reach out to anyone who asked for it, dazzlingly bold in nature, she would capture you the moment you saw her. It was an appalling contrast from the image given to him to what lay before him, for she had been robbed of her spirit. Satan had stolen it from her, his hate destroying all beauty before him. The minstrel yelled aloud, demanding the Enemy himself to get from this place, that as a Friend of God's he wanted no more of the vial creature at this place; he had taken enough from these children of God, hadn't Satan done enough damage for one day? He cried this prayer as the man continued to cling to him and he himself held the fallen girl's head. When it seemed like his prayer had been listened to and Satan's spirit finally fled elsewhere amidst the vile crowd only too eager to catch it, the minstrel released his hold on the girl, silently kissing her on the forehead, touching her womb. He turned so he faced her lover, bestowing the same farewell to him as well, wordlessly wiping the tears from the grief-numbed face. Then he gently pried himself away, turning to leave before he too was paralyzed by his tears.

He was crying even as sudden bursts of joy erupted from where he left, where the one mourning suddenly laughed with exaltation and the dead suddenly came to life, blinking with a freshness and sparkling with a clear radiance which had only a moment ago been destroyed by violence. She squinted, looking, the purity of her face obvious to everyone who had seen it battered only seconds before. It was the face of innocence, like one never touched. It was as though the brutality committed against her had never happened.

But the minstrel was no longer there to see the joy that had taken place. Already he had disappeared as though he had never been there, but all who had been present would remember him, most of all, an eighteen year old girl who had been delivered to the door of death to suddenly awaken whole and her lover who had seen his life virtually end only to have it brought back to him to fullness. They would not be forgetting the minstrel any time soon.

THIRTY ONE

Carmen Sanchez drove home from work. Her car was another step in the direction of the Great American dream; there were two cars parked by her project now, when before there were none. There was a house on Rosedale Avenue that seemed perfect for her and Carlos; now that Jackie and her husband were having their second child there would be room for the four of them as well. She had called the real estate office representing the house and gotten an appointment next week to see it. A real house of her own. Somehow, even with all the college loans to pay off, the medical bills that Carlos had incurred over the last couple of hears, and the rent increase despite the rent control, they could eke out this house on a thirty year mortgage, literally until their dying day; perhaps with Jackie and Simon moving in, his salary could help pay for some of the bills. The twins Michael and James said they were willing to chip in, too. Being single, they could afford to worry about them, they said. Wonderful clowns, they had always been. Joseph and his wife, Althea, a pretty white girl with a Stanford degree, offered the use of their Locust Valley home while the elder Sanchezes prepared for their move. With Carlos' health, Carmen was seriously considering taking up the offer.

Her head ached from a long, long day when she finally got a moment to sit down and collect her thoughts. The Velda hearing being today, there had been many casualties in the fighting that had taken place; but it had not been nearly as bad as Carmen had feared. She'd dreaded coming in today; knowing that she had the evening shift well in advance, she'd be long trying to pawn this day on someone else, the lease education, the least clout; so she'd gotten stuck with this day, wishing she could work even the night shift with its junkies than be there in the ominous daytime.

The day's happenings had been an object for diversion; she had arrived at the hospital at two forty-five with every TV in every day room and nurses' station was tuned to the nasty thing; most stations were only carrying commentary on the crisis because one of the rioters pulled the plug on the battlefield coverage . There was Reverend Aldafah, president of the Black Muslim League of New York City, saying that the faithful were planning a social jihad against the Christians in the community for allowing whites to abuse the African American Community. To turn the other cheek was a joke, he said. Look at the white boys who claim to follow Jesus; look at them today, how they behave; do you see any of them turning the other cheek? No, he continued, the white Christians abused the words of the prophet Jesus to keep the black down. The Reverend Casper Williams, media mogul that he was had to have his press release in there too, considering the pastor of his church had become a victim of this violence as well. Williams said that if it had been a white man charged with killing black men with the amount of limited evidence they had on Velda, the white man would have never been arrested. He also wished freedom for Velda, done with much emotion from his face, tears streaming down, the man with the love for his people, for forgiveness toward the man who supposedly assailed his pastor. Carmen noticed the audience dabbing tears from their eyes. Her eyes remained dry.

Most of the day, she thought not of Velda but of an old friend, the one for years she thought dead. The day was filled with casualties of war stitched up at the emergency room and sent here for their rest, two their final resting place. The phone call was made to the police and the coroner, the first to arrive being the New York Post gleaning information from anyone to give it, shaking their heads as Mark Timothy Haines, Jr. and Richard Elway, both from the Bronxville region were wheeled away to their first stop in the afterlife, the morgue. The public learned of the unfortunate youths' deaths before their parents had, and when the elder Timothy Haines and Mrs. Timothy Haines arrived (though one could swear that she did not look like a Timothy) at the hospital, lawsuits were threatened against the hospital, the press and the city alike for breech of privacy. You see, Mr. Timothy Haines Sr. was a high-ranking partner in Manhattan, with the international law firm Haines, McManus, and Field, the corporation which had represented the US against a certain Japanese auto company for violation of tariff laws. Little did Great Haines know, that if his son had lived he would have been charged with three counts of assault and one of rape, laudable accomplishments for an heir to such a great legacy. Haines got a whiff of that from the renowned New York Post, and the charges were upgraded to defamation of character. Mrs. Timothy Haines fainted dead away and had to be wheeled away to the emergency room at once.

Carmen Sanchez watched an oversaw all the commotion with bemused skepticism. Sometimes when serving the rich white public that occasionally lauded itself in there, Carmen felt like she was dealing with overgrown, obnoxious schoolchildren , resembling children no bigger than the ones on the playground. They knew that they had to be dependent on someone they didn't like, but they would do it kicking and screaming every inch of the way, trying in vain to keep the tone being me Great American Ideal, you Stupid Colored Servant to Serve My Every Babyish Whim. It made Carmen laugh that even in the face of a loved one, the great white way could still get like this, such as when the Great Haines grabbed her paperwork from her as she filled out the required death certificate documents, saying that his secretary would fill it out at her convenience. I'm sorry sir, but this has to be filled out by medical personnel, an inwardly fuming Carmen Sanchez replied in her most neutral voice, trying to remember that in her profession that compassion extended to even the lowest swine of the earth. Who's your boss, Haines countered. I'm my boss, sir, a proud Carmen was glad to throw in his face. Where's the doctor, a somewhat mollified Haines sputtered like a diesel that's seen its best days. He is operating on a ruptured spleen, Carmen answered truthfully but somewhat disappointed, for she would have liked to have seen him shake hands with Dr. Jacque Latoure, a new medical resident recently recruited from the University of Haiti. She would have liked to have seen Haines' reaction to the fact that a Black, and a non-American one at that, actually had his son's life in his hands. But instead, a futile Thomas Haines threw the paperwork back in her face, cursing all the way. Carmen Sanchez took her time completing it, completely aware of his angry impatient waiting. She suggested to Haines that he visit his wife. After all, she was sure to need his vital support at this tense time, Carmen added without hiding the sarcasm in her voice. A woman needed support like that like she needed poison for breakfast. But it was, in any case, a good way to get rid of a major nuisance. She finished the rest of the paperwork in two minutes, called Dr. Brewer, the intern to Dr. Latoure, and had her pick up the paperwork. She spent the rest of the day yelling at her girls and taking up their slack as the new patients from downstairs filtered in. She had to buffer complaints from the girls that they were tired and that the patients were too demanding. She had to listen to the patients' complaints and their families marching up to the desk expecting instant cures for their situations, indifferent to the fact that there were twenty-eight other patients on the floor. She had to deal with dirty looks from black to white, each ready to cry racism when the other was attended to first. There were priests to call, Buddhist monks to track down. And yet, there were no fistfights, no threats outside of Haines. The phone had miraculously stopped ringing at four o'clock, and the last emergency case from the riot rolled in at six-forty. After the last visitor was thrown out at eight-twenty, the rest of her shift went quietly.

Except for one pregnant Latina girl that came in with her boyfriend at nine o'clock. She walked in with Brewer, seemingly in perfect health; Carmen thought she was a medical student ready to start training the next semester. Except Brewer told Carmen that the girl needed a bed. A baffled Carmen complied, thinking the girl looked as healthy as everyone working there, maybe even more so. It was with genuine interest that Carmen inquired the nature of the illness. Brewer's vague reply was only "observation" as she quickly skeddadled away, and Carmen found herself face to face with a girl the stature and looks of a beauty queen. Carmen could help but fell a mite jealous.

As Carmen was leaving, the girl, Lupe Corazon, was placed in the only available bed left on the unit, which only afterwards Carmen recalled being occupied by the strange ranting lunatic that brought memories of her lost cousin-in-law whom she started thinking of once again as she left the hospital. She recalled the memories of how her younger years were shared with Raul and Lupe, the people she'd most loved, and what good times they shared until Lupe's unfortunate turn of mood. Times had been rough, but there had been a joy then that no good material fortune she'd received afterwards ever duplicated. It was as though through having nothing, they all relied on what they did have—each other. Somehow, even though she'd pursued her childhood dream and in her middle years, achieved more than she'd ever imagined, she felt something irrevocably lost, a part of her soul deeply empty. The friendship she'd had for Lupe and the deep respect she'd had for Raul, she'd never found again, with anybody or anything. In essence, she was alone. There was no one's shoulder to cry on, no one she could share her joys and troubles with. She was too busy, taking care of her job, her ailing husband, trying to fill in as leader to a family who had long lost one.

She'd wished that Carlos had stayed the way he had been for that too short period of time, the years after he'd stopped his partying and before the rash of heart attacks that had nearly killed him and succeeded in sucking out most if his life in its wake. For six short years, they had been a happy family, at least as happy as one could be with half of its vital members missing. Still, even with Lupe and Raul gone, they had managed to carve out their own path of happiness. Instead of the grudging submission they had initially accepted their living situation with, they actually acted as though they were in love. Sometimes Carmen would come home from nursing school to find the kids gone or in bed, the lights off, except for several candles lit, waiting on the modest dining room table along with what simple fare Carlos knew how to cook. The food was, usually, quite horrible, but somehow it did not matter, it tasted like the best food she ever ate. It was in those minutes that the fire that barely had a chance to spark in their youth between them now basked in an intimate glow, now a warm, gentle hearthfire. There were trips to the Poconos where they would lie and watch the stars, holding hands long into the night. And there was even money—not enough to make them rich by any means, but more she had ever seen in one sitting. Carlos had finally found steady work as a foreman in the Foodtree Packaging Warehouse in White Plains, supervising the business of storing frozen vegetables to be shipped around the tri-state area. They talked of buying a house, not on Rosedale Avenue like they were struggling to do now, but in Westchester. Carmen had set her heart on a white two-story colonial with blue shutters set on a half acre with rosebushes in the front yard, and two-hundred year old oak trees marking their property line in the back; all on a dead end block. Carmen had never heard so many birds singing in one place; it was like living in a regal country house. The best thing was being able to afford it, albeit with much budgeting, but Carmen knew, after all these years, hard work, perseverance, even the tragedies she had suffered had prepared her for that, and finally, she was being rewarded. Finally.

But it was not to be. Just as they were ready to go to contract, just as their lives were ready to climb upward, Carlos suffered his first major heart attack, the second to follow only six weeks later. The two combined kept him bedridden for seven months, with Carmen barely leaving his side. No more money coming in, the half salary he did receive from his job went to pay off what the medical insurance company didn't bother with, which were vast figures that gave Carmen a headache just to look at. The house, as she sat and watched her beloved husband become unrecognizable amidst a frightening array of lights, tubes and machines gasping for air, become little more than a faded memory, so distant that she had to question if she'd imagined the whole thing in the first place. In the wake of life and death, the whole past seven years seemed like a surreal, puzzling illusion. It was as though her dream had always been that, and achieving it had never been a reality.

Carlos survived the next three heart attacks. The kids getting older, began helping more and more, lightening a load that never quite got bearable for her even now. Her long delayed nursing career finally began when she was forty-four. Life had finally reached a point where she could declare it was as normal as it was going to ever get. She was grateful for this present time, trying as best as possible to put the past behind. And she had, with reasonable success, that is until last week when a mysterious stranger had thrown the past right back in her face.

Raul had gotten himself in trouble again. As she tended to Carlos and gave him his dinner which at midnight, resembled little more than a snack, she saw a composite of Raul's image posted on the late night news. She hadn't been paying attention to it at all; TV gave her no pleasure at this stage of her life, until Carlos' sudden delirious explanation that his cousin Raul was on TV, they'd found him. And Carmen turned, and sure enough, she felt as though she were face to face with a crazy, dirty Raul. She felt her heart jump the way it had when she came face to face with him in the hospital. He was still looking for his wife and child.

He had been in a fight with Mark Timothy Haines, Jr., the last one to be seen fighting with the boy. He was needed for questioning, although no charges were willing to be filed against him yet, to which Carmen promptly screamed "Bullshit!" in her head. An ominous trickle passed through Carmen's spine as she recalled tending to the dead Haines boy, how she had noticed in examination his private parts and underwear riddled with semen. All had looked at one another in speculated fear, as if to say to one another, this is a renowned lawyer's son, you can't possible think what I'm thinking, you can't possibly believe he would do something like this. It was unspoken but heard throughout the room, the shock had a deafening sound of its own.

Carmen had an image of the boy, wondering what his last moments must have been like after perpetrating a violent crime like that. She wondered if right now he was burning for eternity in hell or if somehow God decided to forgive slime like that. She believed in an afterlife, one afterlife only; she couldn't even quite grasp the Catholic concept of purgatory. As far as she was concerned, from her experiences and the pain she had suffered, she was convinced that if purgatory existed, she was living in it right now. She couldn't see good people who loved God and who tried to do the right thing by the God they worshipped being sent to a place of fire and brimstone, however temporary. Sometimes it seemed the Catholic religion deliberately set out to be sadistic with its crazy philosophies. People suffered enough in the world.

But, staring at the dead boy, barely out of adolescence, yet his face twisted in a grotesque pain that looked unreal, she couldn't accept the fact that his soul was resting in peace forever. Yet at just thinking that bitter thought, her conscience felt a sharp kick in its gut. She remembered the parable of the great master forgiving the enormous amount of debt of a servant and how in payment for the generous act, the servant showed nothing but contempt for the one who owed a small debt and couldn't repay him. She was acting like the unmerciful servant right now. Who was she not to forgive the sins of one when the Almighty had chosen to forgive the entire world? The angels would rejoice at one soul repenting for forgiveness, even in the last hour. If he was in heaven, she should rejoice in the fact that Satan had been defeated once again, not bewail the fact that he had done nothing to deserve such a great reward. For that matter, neither had she.

She watched as Carlos munched away, lost in the TV program. IN her younger days, she would have been infuriated by what she imagined was Carlos' deliberate rejection of her after a hard day's work. But somehow, now she was not angry. It really did not matter to her that he said nothing to her. God had showed her what it could be like if she lost him; she was grateful just to have him here by her side.

She stayed awake long after Carlos once again was sound asleep, and the nurse's aide that came twice a week left for the day. The apartment was still with the exception of the streets below and the occasional rumbling from the apartment above them, noise that was so commonplace that it was barley noticeable. The noise that had kept her awake was mental noise; noise which in the dead of night seemed louder than any commotion during the day could possibly be.

 There was nothing that she actually thought of in that stillness. Her thoughts flew all through the night; if she were asked what was on her mind, she would not be able to give a specific answer. The grocery list, asking Julia if she would go to the laundromat, then after hearing what indistinctly sounded like a gunshot, whether the windows were secured, would anyone break in here tonight. She felt afraid to fall asleep, a part of her wanting to remain alert in case Carlos needed her and was unable to speak. Maybe another attack would come, maybe he wouldn't survive through another day. That was when the empty hole that lay dormant inside her suddenly loomed larger. Her thoughts drifted to the past, and she thought to get up and find Lupe to talk about them, but then caught herself, realizing that she had done what she still sometimes did after all these years. She had forgotten that Lupe was not there to speak to her or comfort her. She had forgotten that Lupe was dead. That was when she sat down and let herself cry, something she hadn't gotten much of a chance to do since Carlos had become ill and she had taken it upon herself to be his strength. She cried until her energy felt as though it could be spent no more, and she finally felt exhausted enough to collapse in her bed without tossing and turning.

It was with some alarm that when she blinked her eyes open to daylight. She must have slept some hours, it had been two-thirty just as she lay down on the bed once again and it was now six-forty. Her head felt groggy as though she hadn't rested on minute. Carlos was still asleep in his postuerpedic bed. Her heart felt a longing for him, and she wished that right now, she could lie with him and hold him, sick or not. Perhaps there was not much time for them together--. She wanted to use that time well. Silently, she crept in with him. He made no noise with the exception of a small disturbed grumbling, then returned to his deep slumber. It was good for him to sleep—

Carlos was demanding something. "Carmen! Carmen! Where are you! Aiyee!!" was his last exclamation as he realized his wife was barely two inches from him. "What are you doing? Do you want to give me another heart attack?"

A groggy Carmen smiled as she awoke to her beloved husband's voice. The attacks may have robbed him physically, but even after all that, he was still his jaunty, crazy lovable self. "Good morning, love," she replied, kissing him on the cheek and rolling out of bed.

"What is all this lounging around? Don't you have work today?"

Instinctively, Carmen pulled out her wrist to see the time. It was eleven o'clock. "I have the evening shift this week," she replied distractedly. She forgot something, she knew.

"Since when did this happen?"

"I switched with Maria. So I could get off for Christmas. Remember?"

"Oh," was her husband's reply as he lay back down on the pillows.

His medication. That was what she had forgotten. Since Carmen usually worked days, she lost track of the medication he got during those hours. She always remembered while at work, to call and remember the aide, but now, out of her routine, she was the cream of incompetence. He was supposed to get a pill at eight and then at noon. Being a registered nurse, she could tell anyone else what to do now, but as a wife, she felt flustered. She tried to forget she was a wife, and listened to the registered nurse brain that told her to split the eight o'clock pill in half, and take one part with the twelve, and tell the aide that the other half would go with his four o'clock. She just hoped it wouldn't cause any problems. She had already had enough loss---

"So Raul made TV, huh?"

She was startled back to reality. "What?"

"Raul. Raul Valezquez. My cousin. Don't tell me you've forgotten about him?"

"I think he was in the riots last night."

"They want him for questioning in someone's death," Carlos nodded to the TV. "They don't even know his name. They're calling him the Minstrel because he sings a lot and disturbed the rich neighbors. Sounds like our Raul, eh? The eternal troublemaker."

Carmen sat in silence, watching the screen silently. It was the same broadcast she'd seen yesterday. It looked so much like him. She wanted to reach out to hide him before it was too late. Raul would never hurt anyone without extreme provocation. He shouldn't go to jail for something that was beyond his control, or for that matter, for annoying the rich neighbors with his singing. They were talking of the heinous blows that Mark Timothy Haines had suffered, how he died from a stab wound to the chest, just as the victims of the Preacher Killer had---

With that, Carmen jumped high. There had been no stab wound to that boy. He had been beaten to death, in a fight. They were lying.

"Sounds like Raul got himself in hot water for real this time, huh? No more small stuff for our boy now."

Carmen smiled. Raul had gotten himself more than once for his peace demonstrations outside of the UN. During Vietnam, he had befriended many people from SDS, accompanying the students many times to Manhattan and even once to Washington. He'd gotten busted twice, luckily with no consequences. Raul the hero. Now, he was wanted as a criminal.

"…the subject was seen twice at the murder scenes of the recent preacher killers, just hours after the killings…"

Carmen bolted with horror. Accusing Raul of serial murder, of the preachers, no less. He was incapable. He was the most religious person she knew. He was the one who had led her to God. He couldn't have done what they were accusing him of.

"…was seen to be traveling with this woman, believed to be the missing wife of the late Robert Hughes, III. Mr. Hughes committed suicide last month, according to family members, distraught at the loss of his wife, Cindy Diesposito Hughes. The Hughes family is offering a reward for the arrest of this man on the charge of kidnapping their daughter-in-law. If you have any information, please call this number. All calls will be kept confidential." Right, Carmen thought cynically as the 555-TIPS number popped up on the screen, right under Raul's face.

"Boy, Raul really hit the big time on this one, eh?"

Carmen did not reply. Raul's eyes stared at hers. They sent chills down her spine. Once more, her past was staring her right in the face.

THIRTY TWO

Williams was in the conference room with the rest of the elders. They were holding a prayer vigil for Emmanuel Jackson and giving thanks for the release of Tony Jones Velda, who once more had taken his rightful place in the church choir, joyfully giving thanks to the Lord, jumping high with glee, playing his tambourine. A simple man, but a beautifully joyous one. All were glad to have him back in their midst again. (Casper takes him under his wing, Velda was never part of church before this). He had been missing for too long, these years. The Lord always rejoiced when a stray sheep was returned to the flock. All the elders praised the Lord in acknowledging the good news.

Silence ensued as all the men in the room gave thanks privately to the Lord, beginning their meeting. Williams felt led to speak, to reveal the knowledge that was given to him in confidence not long before. Emmanuel Jackson's life was hanging in the balance, a man whom Williams had nearly considered a son. His crime was a secret amongst the congregation, even perhaps the elders knowledge that would incriminate his permanently in their minds. It was question of justice. God had put the Christian men in this world to show the right way. Certainly, a horrid crime had been committed against this minstrel person, two to be exact. But it gave him no right to take justice in his hands, to irrationally spew it about him, sending it in directions where the innocent lost their lives. That was the poison of anger, even justified anger. It oozed in directions far beyond the original reaches it was meted upon; it took over the man and became him in one swipe, taking its liberties in striking down whatever was in its path, more than willing to lay the blame on the host it fed on. He who knew all including the heart of Satan, knew what a parasite anger was, however justified.

Mark Timothy Haines was dead. Williams tried to feel sorry for the boy, but in his brief nineteen years, his criminal career had taken off like hellfire. His death was by no means Williams' first encounter with him; just a year ago, Haines and his cronies vandalized three or four of the buildings on the street, one of them being the Covenant Church. He was a known cocaine dealer in the better areas, an infamous crack dealer where the living was harder. Once Williams himself had tried to preach to the boy, to tell him that Jesus was the better way. In return, Haines spit at him and told him he was a dirty nigger. Williams wanted to slap him; he'd felt the anger welling up in him, but he had done nothing. And Haines had seen Williams' anger. It brought a smile to his face, evil belying innocence. It was the smile of the devil.

He had to choose, to tell, to not tell. The indecision would paralyze him. He could actually feel the Holy Spirit being sucked from him at that instant. Jesus, be with me, he prayed. Jesus, help me.

He found himself speaking, saying words he hadn't planned to speak. All eyes were intent upon him, at first for breaking the interlude of silence, then for what was being said to them. They were learning they hired a murderer for their pastor. Williams read their expressions, a myriad of them. Anger. Indignance. Disbelief. Pity. Compassion. Such a variance of emotion expressed on these eleven men's faces, a variance which Williams found himself was routinely subjected to. Once he allowed the news to settle in, he interjected his theory before anyone could protest why, when the black man was trying to eradicate the image of slum trash in the minds of the white power, had they entrusted their most to a killer who hadn't even served time for the crime? He knew the question was in their minds, he could read it in their faces, he wanted to know the answer to the question himself. Its answer could wait. Now, justice had to be served. That was supremely more important.

Emmanuel was a victim of vendetta. This mad had lost his family to him. He'd come upon him once again, and he was mad. Who could fully blame him? But it was a crime. And, he was a suspect in the killing of this young boy. Granted, Haines' life wasn't much to speak of, but even the evil had been given a right to a full life in which they could right their lives. No one had the right to take that away. And, this man stole the life of the righteous as well.

Others weren't convinced. They weren't as united in solidarity as Williams hoped they would be. He had thought they would all unite and fight for their fellow brother. They were thinking and intellectualizing what they just heard.

After much debate, they asked Williams what he expected them to do. And then he spoke his mind. Told them that they should stick up for a man who was a victim of circumstances. My God, he was at death's door at a hospital.

The elders looked at one another, more explicitly, at the two white men and one Latino who had literally become white at this outburst. The reaction was a clear answer.

This was not a black church. He had been wrong to approach them this way. Twenty percent of the church was white. The three elders, at 32 and 34 years of age, were the youngest of the bunch, but they were still elders. And they were not black. Williams found himself momentarily embarrassed. Stumbling, he explained it would be added ammunition against a murderer. Knowing this story, there would be circumstantial evidence against this minstrel. He had a motive, big time.

Radcliffe, one of the white elders, shook his head. "How long ago did you say this crime happened?"

"Fifteen, sixteen years ago. I'm not really sure," Williams admitted.

Radcliffe shook his head again. "It doesn't make sense, that this man would suddenly take his revenge. Why now? Why so long?"

"Evil has no timetable," Williams snapped, a little more harshly than he'd intended.

"I heard a rumor that he performed a miracle," Eduardo Conchito put in. The sole Latino in the group, he stood out with his brittle staccato personality, fierce black eyes, and a mouth that he constantly scrunched up, matching the derision he usually mirrored. His skin color was that of cappuccino, perfectly centered between the whites and the blacks that he had to compete with for standing and power. Williams admitted only to himself that he was afraid of Conchito. It was rumored that his uncle had been a violent gang member, and was grooming his son for the business. Though death was something that Williams had no fear of and pain nothing that he was a stranger to, Williams was afraid nonetheless.

And he had heard the rumor, too. A beautiful pregnant girl had allegedly been assaulted by Haines and some of his cronies in the most vile of ways. She had been on the verge of death. Then along came the minstrel, and suddenly she was brought back to life, fully restored and healed. The whole story rang of preposterousness. Certainly, he believed in miracles as much as anyone else, but since when had they been performed by a crazy maniac who had killed in cold blood at least one, possible more people? For healing to take place, the Holy Spirit must be present, through a baptized Christian. Certainly the Holy Spirit would not be present when such diabolical evil existed in a man's heart? The rumor couldn't possibly be true. He managed a kind smile in the face of the passionate Latino, not wanting to offend him. Conchito was looking for a hero just as the blacks had for many years. Conchito, like Williams' brothers, were going to have to learn to look to themselves and to the one true God. Human heroes were too delusional and led to disappointment.

"The only one willing to confirm the miracle is her lover and his homeboys. Other than that, we have no proof that she was injured to begin with," he tried to convince Conchito, the paternal smile still on his face.

"Then why was she in the hospital if she wasn't hurt? My aunt spent most of her shift examining her. She was full of scars, all recently healed. My aunt said so."

He sounded like a child, 'my aunt said so'. Carmen Sanchez was a good woman, but Williams tended to be skeptical of the religious claims of a woman who chanted incantations to Mary and every other Catholic ordained saint while lighting rows of candles and bowing before marble statues despite the second commandment. Besides, she had only been a nurse for eight years. How would she know about something only a trained doctor could diagnose?

He looked at Conchito once again, his eager loyalty spilling onto all his features that made him look like a fierce warrior ready to defend his kingdom. Williams wondered and admired at the apparent willingness for Conchito to fight for one of his own, even for one he didn't know and who probably was a criminal. Williams wished he could see more of that dedication among his own black brothers.

"She was in the hospital for shock and general observation. She wasn't used to seeing all the violence there," he explained quietly, regretting the words as soon as he said them and almost expected what came from the youth next.

"The girl was born in the Bronx. She has lived in the projects her whole life. Her father died of drugs. Her mother is an addict now, and her fiancÉ is in a gang. And you have the audacity to say she isn't used to seeing violence? Where to you get off?" By this time, Conchito was standing. The rest of the elders were visibly nervous. John McDermott and Elijah Corbitt, each seated adjacent to Conchito, stood up alongside him, resting their hands on him to get him to sit down once again. Their efforts were futile. Conchito, in a last frustrated gesture, threw the two elders off of him and sauntered out of the room, knocking into Williams' chair before he left. Williams felt the jolt as a shock. All sat in the stunned silence of the aftermath, all afraid to utter a word for fear it would ignite something or someone further. Much time passed before Williams broke the calm, adjourning the elders' meeting and postponing its finish to after Sunday service. An embarrassing and defeating gathering had thankfully disbanded. A quick prayer was said, and all bolted (relatively speaking for conservative ministers) out the door into freedom.

Williams sat in silence during the aftermath. Entrapment and defeat welled inside the protective exterior that the world always admired as strong. He had let them down, his people and colleagues. Somehow, he had lost his footing as their leader. Perhaps they would convene later and appoint a new leader, maybe a new associate pastor to take his place, and maybe a new pastor altogether.

He went to the hospital, sitting beside the boy he had come to love as a son, crying for him to leave that the boy could not do in his present state. All these years, Emmanuel Jackson had worked hard to overcome his gangster image to become a respectable member of his community, and now that he was in trouble, no one wanted to come to his aid, all because of his past. God threw his sins into the sea of forgetfulness. Why couldn't they? He never should have said anything, he thought as he stared into the face of his surrogate son.

Suddenly he gave a start from the impact of a fleeting thought that wasn't so fleeting. A child was dead and an aggrieved father was running the streets like a crazy man, all because of this man lying here in this bed. Even Williams himself who taught Emmanuel everything that he knew, had been duped. Where had been his trust, that he had refused to confide in a the man who had taken him off the streets, gave him a home, encouraged him to study for the pastorate and smiled with pride and joy as he was appointed leader to a congregation that he, the mentor, helped build? Why hadn't he told him sooner? Why had Emmanuel lied to him and everyone else who trusted in him? Williams stared down at the immobile body, almost feeling the coldness emanating from the shell there. It seemed deeper than the wounds that rendered him unconscious. The coldness seemed to be Emmanuel Jackson himself.

Williams began to back away. The ice that hung over what was his surrogate son seemed to suddenly lift and head straight for Williams himself. Satan, get from me, in the name of Jesus, I command you, he breathed. But the entity still came.

He ran, leaving his vigil bare and deserted, stopping to gratefully gulp air that didn't stink of evil. He stood straight, regaining his composure once more, becoming the venerable respectable Elder Williams once again before he exited the hospital and entered the world once more, feeling secure in God's protection once more.

But not before he heard the hollow laughter come from the room he'd just escaped.

Emmanuel Jackson felt the presence of Williams leave the room. He was watching his body from an inner eye he never knew he had. Terrified, he watched as Williams left the room. For a brief moment, he had felt peace and security once more. Now, he was alone again, watching the shell of his body lie there. He didn't have any concept whether he was dead or alive. Trying to reason proved futile; every time he tried to logically think through anything, his whole thought process seemed to totally shut off, as if he was trying to access some part of himself that was totally blocked from him.

If he was dead, was this heaven or hell? Had he, in all his lessons, been lied to about the real ending of life? Where had the face of God been when he was judged? How come he did not remember him, whether in the sheer anguish of having lost the most beautiful entry into the universe, or in total ecstasy of finally uniting with him forever? Most certainly, Emmanuel Jackson was not in heaven. But neither was his pain the greatest he'd ever felt. It had been greater when—greater when--- who? Lost to him--. His head, or what he thought was his head, hurt. But why was his body below if he felt pain above? Was there really a purgatory—oh God, he hurt. No more thinking.

God, where are you? Who are you? Are you there? Do you exist for me? Do you exist anywhere?

Who are you?

The day was just breaking its waters to birth the night when the farmer returned the minstrel to the depot. The farmer offered for him to stay at the big farmhouse, as the nights were now dipped in frost, but the minstrel had already stayed there for two nights. The longer he stayed away from the city, the more he drifted from the path that the angel of Raulita led for him. He could not afford to lose that path. So he returned to the city, despite whatever travails nature had planned for him. For he was not afraid-- he knew God would not let anything jeopardize his safety until he found his destiny.

 The farmer and he shook hands goodbye, their customary farewell. In five days, the farmer would return for him once more. The minstrel departed from the truck, satisfied at his accomplishment of supporting himself, his pocket full of cash to carry him until the farmer returned. He was grateful to God for the ability to work. Many others he knew were not fortunate enough to have that privilege. He passed by those ghosts as he made his way back to the house that he and Pedro were sharing, ghosts who had been lured by the demons of alcohol, vacant eyes whose souls had been buried under layers of dark sediment of pain. He said a prayer for those unfortunates, as well as a prayer for those who did not have a place to sleep that night. One day he hoped they would know the love of God as he did.

 The darkness settled as he passed by the alley where he and the angel of Raulita had found the body of the man from the abandoned church. He stopped, surprised his walking had taken him here. The wind seemed to curl around in direction, as though fate was challenging the tide of life. The alley rested in a bleak slumber, the windows boarded up as though no one wanted to ever look upon the sight. Garbage rested everywhere, inside a dumpster and outside it as well, the only inhabitants of this wasteland. He thought of the man who had fallen here, wondered if he had survived. He wondered what evil had taken the man so that he would die in such a place as this. This was also the last time he had seen the angel of Raulita. Perhaps this was why he was led here, to see her again.

 He sensed the presence of another without seeing it. Inside his mind he felt the voice of the Holy Spirit tell him that the person meant him harm, but not to be afraid. The minstrel asked Him to guide his actions, knowing that the Spirit of God would have a plan for him. His vision fixated on the dumpster, near the spot where the angel and he had found the body. He could not see anyone there, but it was illuminated with an aura of light that gave away any soul's hiding place. Despite the divine brightness, he sensed evil; not evil in the sense of fallen mankind, but evil that was completely devoid of God's love. He prayed in the language of the Spirit as the early Christians had when they undertook spiritual battle, knowing that he would need to be fortified to confront this situation in victory.

 The Spirit prompted him to go forward and meet the unseen figure. Each step he took was with conviction. The aura surrounding the dumpster became darker, as though the evil one residing there was engulfed in fear of a desperate kind. Evil itself was always fear, because it was devoid of love, but sometimes fear gave the impression of false power through brutality. The fear he sensed now was an acute sense of powerlessness, like the being had lost its footing on a cliff and was dangling in the air. Perfect love cast out all fear, and the minstrel felt compassion for the one who was here. Whoever it was, he or she was one of the unfortunates who had never known the love of God. The minstrel took pity on the soul without ever setting eyes on its owner.

 He heard the footsteps before the figure even came into view, footsteps fleeing from the place that was no longer hidden, then the sound of metal clanging to the ground, a talisman dropped in haste. The minstrel caught a glimpse of the figure as it dashed away: a man, not terribly large but with a build that would make him a contender in any fight, and he wondered why the man had not simply challenged him to a fight. The harm he had meant had been a death wish. The minstrel looked the way the man ran, and suddenly had a memory of when he was here with the angel, of a man who nearly run him over with a motorcycle before speeding away. Then the man turned, reaching into his pocket. The minstrel recalled the reflex action from a memory where he heard Raulita screaming, and he ducked just as two bullets soared past him, their trajectory being his former staid. Yelling came from the street where the marksman fired, yelling in a familiar deep Spanish voice, and the same footsteps that had escaped the dumpster now fled into another direction. The minstrel remained where he was for several moments listening to his breathing, grateful that he was still alive to do so. He could feel God's hand on his shoulder, a balm to the adrenaline that was bursting within him. When his breathing returned to its natural pace, he felt the Hand give him a gentle nudge, prodding and assisting him to rise and leave.

Emerging from his place of protection, he discovered the metal object that had been dropped by the marksman. It was a butcher knife, the kind he used when he carved steaks in the days when he cooked for Raulita and Lupe. This knife had been intended as an instrument of evil, to take his life. He looked at the knife a second more before throwing it into the dumpster.

 Someone was walking towards him asking if he was all right. It was one of Pedro's friends Luis, a young man from Paraguay whom he met at the deport. The minstrel assured him that he was all right, As they spoke, the overwhelming sense of evil melted like snow in San Juan, and the minstrel gave thanks to God for his protection as he and Luis walked together towards Pedro's home for the night.

THIRTY THREE

The singing had started again. A public nuisance, it was. The guy had such a loud voice. No one could sleep around here anymore. It would be good when something was done about it. Soon it would.

Construction was already underway for the Bronxville Rockefeller Community. The decor promised to be beautiful, complete with marble busts of all the presidents every hundred feet and a carved etching enacting the battle of Yorktown all along the outside perimeter. Already, an American flag had been hoisted at the gateway. Up until two days earlier, it had been proudly flapping in the breeze, proudly displaying the show of freedom and the patriotism of the small community inside. But now, it hung sadly at half mast, every so often limply floundering like a dying fish. Mark Timothy Haines, Jr., the only son of Mr. and Mrs. Mark Timothy Haines, Sr., was going to be buried today.

It had been their wish to have only a one day viewing. The strain was too much for the missus, who seemed to be more prone to fainting attacks then usual at this time. Her psychiatrist had to be called in from his vacation in Barbados to prescribe her an emergency dose of Zannex and Valium combined, the only mixture out of the vast array of medication that ever seemed to work for her. Dr. Finley had been notified when Mark Timothy Haines Sr. noticed the bottles were empty when they shouldn't have been until next moth. Something had to be done to get his wife back under control.

Presently, Mrs. Haines was resting comfortable, or rather, conked out comfortably, on a bed in the home of the Haines' longtime friends and family lawyer, the Frawleys. Mr. and Mrs. Frawley, who, unbeknownst to the Haineses, slept together in the same bed for the first time in two months, woke to the noisy singing of the Spic, while Mark Timothy sitting in a rocking chair, babbled on and on by his snoring wife. She was snoring so loud she almost drowned out the Spic singing, which in its own way would have been a blessed relief. No one knew what he was singing because most of them took French. His voice and presence were intrusions upon their lives that they hadn't asked for. Now he was a murderer of the son of their best friends, and he still was free. They couldn't believe as they watched their friends go crazy with grief, that massive crowd allowed an animal like that managed to escape. But God forbid a white man killed a black man. They would have the kid in a minute and the NAACP would march up and down the streets at all hours of the night. You would hear nothing else on the TV. They city would be burned down. But a Spic homeless man killing a promising white boy, no one batted an eye for that. The Haines were crying over nothing. They had too much money to complain. No one believed a white professional family had problems, even when their child was murdered in cold blood. White professionals, they were such racist assholes and snobs, who wanted to listen to their woes? Shit, the coloreds and the welfare bums had real problems, like where could I buy crack without the crackers busting them and violating their civil rights by arresting them. Not a dead, drug-free college boy of nineteen.

Russell Frawley sat on the chemise sofa of his living room, his feet rightfully propped on his coffee table while reading the New York Times, his arm studiously propped on one arm of the furniture. His wife appeared from the kitchen, with a silver tray laden with a golden teapot, warm biscuits, jams, and scrambled eggs with bacon balances on her arm. With finesse, the tray was daintily deposited before him. He looked up from the paper and smiled. She returned the gesture. A united front for all to see. The perfect couple. The epitome of the upper-middle class American Dream.

After serving him and then herself, she joined him on the couch, looking over his shoulder at the paper. Then he caught the article, and from the sense of her stiffening beside him, she had as well.

Addie was there, alive and well in the paper, except her name wasn't Addie. It was Cindy Diesposito Hughes. And she wasn't any vagabond tramp, either. She was the wife of the heir to the Hughes Oil Incorporates. Widow, actually. Her husband had committed suicide. Frawley was pretty surprised that the Hughes family had said something like their son killed himself. He only knew them by name, but big families like that with prominent name would keep a shocking death quiet, say it was an accident or something. They were begging for the tabloids this way. They loved this shit.

"Didn't look like she was kidnapped the last time I saw her," Frawley could hear the smell in the undertones of his wife's sweet voice. Frawley refused to be riled, to play her game.

"Looks can be deceiving. Sometimes a victim sympathizes with her kidnapper and befriends him just to survive." She was looking straight through him. She didn't buy that. Frankly, neither did he.

"What did you see in her? Was it the money?"

"I swear I didn't know who she was." Wrong answer. Now Joan thought she was dumped for a vagabond tramp. He could taste her anger through his closed mouth. So much for calling a truce. "I mean, when I got involved with her, it wasn't for money. I have plenty of my own."

"So why did you, then?"
Frawley had no answer to the direct, probing question, and many answers. Because you are a hag. You are a fishwife. You are a drunk. You are a waste. But then he looked at his sober, attractively coifed wife who for the last two months had fought for their community while he was busy chasing a homeless heiress and getting laid in the back streets. What had been his excuse then? So, in the long run, he had no answer.

"I think we should separate," his wife suddenly announced. "I've spoken to my lawyer about it. He could draw papers by the end of this week."

Alarm shot through Frawley at the prospect that his personal habits and marital dealings were being spread amongst his colleagues. "Who's your lawyer?"

"Rabinowich. Alan Rabinowich." Fuck, what else could go wrong with his life? Of all things that could happen, his wife was seeking a divorce, and from his favorite friend Liebowitz's senior partner. He could imagine the discussion and victory Liebowitz must have felt sitting at the table with all the big partners hearing how his wife was dumping him. Christ Almighty. "Did you retain him yet?" He asked hopefully.

Joan sighed. "Not yet. I just went for the initial consultation."

"I know a couple of lawyers that probably would be better. Rabinowich is such a slime. We could use the same lawyer. That is, if you're really sure that you want to go through this."

"I'm sure. As a matter of fact, I wasn't totally sure until today." She hesitated, probably in order to drive him crazy or make him beg for mercy. No wonder he drank. "I have lived through a lot of things with you. Russell. When I first met you, you were the only man for me." The only one who was stupid enough to have you, Frawley thought with a sneer. "—you were smart, sexy, handsome, funny. But I quickly learned the other side of you. Under that smart, sexy shell there was nothing more than arrogance. You were not strong, you were selfish. The whole world had to revolve around you." Frawley was just about ready to slam down his coffee cup and stomp out at this point. "But then, Quentin came along. I thought having him would bring us together." Frawley immediately squirmed in irritation, annoyed that he was going to be blamed for the irrational baby fantasy not working out the way she wanted. "I found out soon afterwards how silly it was for me to expect you to change just because I had your baby. But at least raising Quentin gave me joy. I felt like a whole person once again."

Yeah, yeah. Get to the point. "So what does all this have to do with the big decision you've come up with? Quentin's been dead for quite a long time now."

She flinched. Frawley enjoyed her pain. She could take that martyred expression and shove it for all he cared. "Because I'm looking at things from a totally new perspective. Look at Mark with Martha. Ever since Timmy died, he hasn't left her side."

"That you know of. Martha is a mental case. She drives everyone nuts. Even you. Now all of the sudden you want to model our marriage after them?"

She ignored the jibe. "When Quentin died, you never were with me. I had to plan the whole funeral by myself because you were out drunk. During the viewing, you stumbled out with a twenty year old, both of you with were disgusting to be around. I didn't see you again all night."

"Well, considering that I was so disgusting to be around, I would venture it that it was a good thing that I was gone all night," Frawley quipped.

"Your mother was the one who filled in for you."

"Look, I told you many times, Sheila and I had business to discuss. She was a law student in my office. And she was twenty-five, not twenty." Why was he saying anything at all? The one time he really was innocent and truthful, that was the time she disbelieved. The fact had been that Sheila could drink like a man and talk like a man, so he'd gone with her to the local bar to drown his sorrows with her. Plus some business on the side, like what next week's calendar was and such. Joan was so self-centered that she hadn't considered what a shame it was the he couldn't confide in her on bit about their son's death. She was indifferent to his feelings. To her, they shouldn't exist. He should just be strong and carry an adult woman on his shoulders his whole life, with no complaints. Her world was so small, it was like she was the only one in it. "Besides, the hostess stuff is more for ladies, anyway, and that's what these things turn into." He gestured to the funeral in their home.

It had been the wrong answer. A grim determined Joan Frawley stared in his face. "I know. All these years, because I am a woman, I have been expected to take up slack where you failed. And on top of it, have a big smile about the whole thing. Well, I'm sick of it. It's time that you took care of your life and grew up. In the last couple of months, I've proved to myself that I don't need you."

"How?" Frawley barked. He was ignored. How convenient, he though as Joan restarted her soliloquy.

"I have become strong…"

"Joan." Frawley said loudly enough for the venerable Dr. Finley and Mark Timothy Haines Sr. to snap their heads around, and, more importantly, to put a startled damper on his soon to be ex-wife's lecture. "Shut up. Get the separation. In fact, get a divorce. I don't care. And I don't care what kind of half-assed feminism you've incorporated into your measly brain. You still sound like a fishwife and you're a waste of my time." He slapped his knees. "And now, since I'm such a cad, and besides that, we're going out separate ways, I'm going out and letting you stay with our guests. I wouldn't want you to become out of touch with entertaining, now with your high-flying divorcee days ahead of you, hmmm?"

And he left. He could hear Joan howl as he slammed the door. He turned to see Finley and Haines desert their post by Mrs. Haines to attend to the new victim. Mercifully, her voice abated as the distance increased; slowly he made the journey away from his old life as he slipped into the new one.

The singing never stopped.

 .

So the grand funeral was conducted without the presence of Russell Frawley. Once again, the pitying eyes were upon his measly wife, who, oddly enough, no longer seemed so measly. She stood straighter, her head was higher. She looked elegant, not the usual frumpy hausfrau who tried to throw on a makeover look. She almost looked noble, regal.

A private gathering circled the graveside where Mark Timothy Haines, Jr. was laid to rest next to his paternal grandparents. Death had skipped a generation and stolen the young. Among the guests, the young girls who found and fawned and pawned and pined over the privilege to sleep with and maybe belong to this handsome young man, now that the trophy of their war had been vaporized, gathered together in what resembled a female football huddle, united by their grief. Years welled in a puddle right in their midst. One tear was incorporated into another, and another, until each had lost their own entity. Grief was like that, Joan Taylor thought, looking at the girls. It sapped life right out of the living as well as the dead. It turned the survivors into walking tombs.

She would grieve no longer. Once again, she would take up her life and be her own soul. She'd tried once in vain as a young college freshman. Now, at forty-three, she would try again. So much time had been wasted. She would never get it back. It was time to make up for lost time.

She would go back to school in January. It had been so many years and lives had changed so much that most of her credits were useless. A whole year of her life had been deemed null and void. In January, she would begin again as a second semester freshman. She was twenty-five years behind schedule. Russell Frawley was a waste of her time which she didn't miss. Let him run around with that two-bit fake neuvo-riche whore. Let him go for trash.

Self-centered as Russell was, he probably still thought that the whole reason why she was divorcing him was because of the whore. That would imply in some way she still cared, that he had the power to hurt her feelings. Two months ago, that might have been true. She hadn't known better. Now she did. She needed him to make her whole then. Now she didn't.

There was the singing again. It hadn't stopped for the whole time the service was going on. The melody was beautiful, which angered her, scared her. How could something so beautiful come from someone so evil. The killer of Mark Timothy Haines Jr. was singing funeral hymns for his victim, hymns so perfect that they nearly moved someone as stoic as she to tears. An evil man with an evil effect. She had head that Lucifer used to sing beautiful songs that had enchanted all. Yet he had the heart of the devil. He had incarnated into human form. It was like he was here.

Such things she would not allow to exist.

THIRTY FOUR

 One fine, dyslexic day in November where the weather was going through hot flashes and cold spells, a day before the onslaught of Black Friday and soccer moms with nothing better to do, Russell decided to ditch his flophouse buddies and go to this mall in some oshkosh place in Roclkland County and look for Cindy. After all, she was a woman, and all women wanted to look good, even those who lived on the streets and stole for a living, so it didn't seem totally illogical. Right now he was in a Wal-Mart hanging around like the other bored retirees and losers were doing. No one noticed him at all. Russell didn't know if he liked being lumped in with bored retirees and losers, but hey, he could hang out incognito, and that was all that counted.

The Wal-Mart rationalization worked well until he was threatened by three different women with rape/sexual harassment/stalking, all because he broke some unwritten PC law by tapping them on the shoulder. He was just trying to get them to turn around to see if it was his Cindy. They didn't really look like her other than being female, but maybe she was wearing some Mardi Gras outfit to avoid being recognized. After all, she was wanted by the police. After that he got himself in hot kiddie pool pee-pee water when he knocked over Elmo. Elmo was holding a guitar, and his hand said "Press Me." So Russell did. And Elmo began to sing and dig it and go groovy with it with his plastic guitar all lit up, but in his automated mirth and exuberance he began to hustle forward, causing the rest of the overstocked Elmos to lose their balance and fall over. Some kid witnessed the disaster and began to cry saying Elmo died, and the kid's yuppie father accused Russell for being a heartless jerk for causing his kid pain, so Russell accused the yuppie of being homosexual for being so bent out of shape over a stupid doll. Again, not PC, and Russell wasn't even sure where the rebuttal came from, but a comeback was a comeback and he could stand tall now.

After all this insanity, he moved his vigil to the front of the store in between the two sets of revolving doors by the classified section. Besides if Cindy did come in, he'd have a better shot of seeing her here anyway, so he figured it all worked out for the best. While surveilling, he glanced over the classifieds. There was some woman named Sylvia who'd give violin lessons in your home for reasonable rates. Russell imagined her to be a big fat woman who was fifty, a virgin and a vapid voyeur, especially with her emphatic CALL ME! YOUR DREAMS ARE WAITING! As a conclusion to her ad. It gave him the heebie jeebies. Then he saw an advertisement that proclaimed, if you have urinary problems, take this phone number with those little strips of paper that you rip off, bearing said number. Russell wondered what pathetic slob would rip off one of these numbers, announcing to anyone passing by, hi, I'm a doofus who can't take a whiz. I've peed and can't get up. Suddenly, as if the gods defending the souls of the incontinently challenged sought revenge, Russell was afflicted with a sudden pain in his groin so intense that the concept of running up the stairs where the lavatory was made him want to scream in pain. So after knocking into various strollers and walkers and amidst a cacophony of watch it sonny/jerks, he charged outside and found the nearest bush to relieve himself. All relief,

 like he did after a hard day's work and a couple of beers. Speaking of beer, which the smell of his whiz reminded him of, he could use one now. He looked up and found he was in luck, seeing one of those bar restaurants whose big specialty are nachos and Friday night happy hour. He looked at his watch-- just after noon. Hey no one could accuse him of being an alkie who needed that morning hair off the dog to get through the day, he thought cheerily, warmed by the thought of spiritual relief, emphasize spirit.

 The bar part of the establishment was empty even though the restaurant half was filling up with sweaty commuters on the half-hour lunch hour. Russell was glad those days of rush hour consumption were behind him, as he sunk into the velveteen bar stool and let himself exhale and relax. The bartender was one of these fiftyish Irish (apologies, apologies-- Irish American) guys whose beefiness conveyed a lifetime of boxing and street brawls, or too much corned beef, or some indeterminate combination and a hairline that had receded all the way to his ears. Russell saw him as a butcher in a past life, complete with an apron and a cleaver. Well, we all have our pasts, he thought as he ordered himself a Guiness despite his inclination towards Heineken. Hey, when you were with the locals, you did as they did.

 He was slurping at the beer and enjoying the scenery of waitresses going by in tight pants when this thirtysomething guy in sunglasses sat down two spaces from him. Shit, a whole empty bar, and this asshole plumps his rump right next to him? No one respected space anymore. Russell did a good take of him; always good to remain alert in his line of work. The guy looked like a film actor who decided to cut the bullshit and get a real job, but held onto some of the trappings of the faux lifestyle: a leather jacket over his Armani, cowboy boots instead of real shoes, and of course, the sunglasses. Russell guessed this was casual Friday style, even though when he looked at his watch, it told him it was Tuesday. The kid nodded hello to him, and Russell did likewise to be polite , but then promptly turned his back on the kid. He was glad some kids still had manners, but he wasn't in the mood to be friendly. He just wanted to mope about Cindy.

 Throughout the next hour, that was exactly what he did, refilling his lager periodically. But every so often, he got the sensation of being watched. Finally, he turned around to see the kid still there, with an untouched Tom Collins in front of him. Russell found that kind of weird. Why sit at a bar if you weren't going to drink? That's what McDonald's was for. What Russell really didn't like about the situation was that he knew the kid was staring at him. Yeah, yeah, he was wearing sunglasses, and Russell couldn't see his eyes, but Russell knew the kid was staring at him. He had a knack for these kinds of things. He didn't like this at all. So he decided to put a stop to it and put the kid in his place.

 "What do you want?" He insisted.

The kid put on this who me? You're accusing me of such deviancy? Look. "Excuse me?"

 "What do you want? I know you've been looking at me for the last hour."

 The man suddenly relaxed, his face warming me into a you busted me expression. "How could you tell," he said in what Russell assumed was supposed to be yuppie-speak for being palsey-walsey.

 "I'm a lawyer. I can tell a lot of things. Like, you've been watching me for the last hour because you need something from me, but you don't want to admit it, so you try to get me to react first by boring your eyes into me like some radar from Mir. Well, it worked. Congratulations. So what do you want?"

 The man smiled like his spiritual protÉgÉ finally found the right insight to the Buddha's pondering. Frawley didn't appreciate this kind of shit from a young punk, and was about to tell his so but the punk spoke first.

 "I have something for you."

 "You what?"

 "Have something for you. Something that you've been looking for."

 "What do you know about what I'm looking for? I don't even know you."

 The smiled oh so Norman Rockwellish. "But you do know me. I was at the Pavilion yesterday."

Pavilion? What the hell was the Pavilion? Frawley scanned the damaged bits of his alcoholic brain to retrieve any memory regarding the Pavilion, and had a vague recollection of some doorman putting him in a valet fetched limo, a movie star he represented one time in some sleaze slander case saying hello, a young man with sunglasses handing him snow---oh, yeah. Now he remembered.

 "Okay, yeah. The Pavilion."

 "You got away from me just when the party got started." The man smiled exuberantly. It didn't go with the rest of the dark persona, and he didn't seem like the kind of guy who would let something be out of place, unless he intended it to be that way. Russell was leery, but intrigued despite himself. It would be interesting to see what this guy had that he thought Russell couldn't do without.

 "So what do you have that is so vital?"

 The man leaned in, CIA style. Russell went along with the pseudo-conspiracy. "I can help you find Cindy," the man suggested.

 Russell bolted upright. "Cindy? Cindy DiEsposito?"

 "Cindy Hughes. Her name is Cindy Hughes." The man emphasized Hughes like it was the password to crack the World Bank. Excuse me for being surnamincally challenged, Russell thought. But his annoyance was immediately superseded by the excitement of seeing Cindy again. His Cindy. Finding her again, well, it would be worth the bullshit of this kid.

 "So what can you tell me about her? Her location?"
"Yes. I do. I have a message that she wanted you to hear recorded expressly for you. It is in my vehicle."

 "You do. And if you had all this for me, why didn't you tell me yesterday? How did you know where to find me today? Are you following me, or what?"

 The misfitted smile reasserted itself. "You really don't remember last night, do you?"

 "No. I don't. The liquor hits you a little harder when you get to be my age. So refresh me."

 Oh you're so witty, the man's chipmunk cheeks cheered. Mmhmm. Cut the shit and where's Cindy, Russell mentally snapped. But of course the kid didn't. "I will answer each of your questions. First, I tried to relay to you Mrs. Hughes' message last night in your hotel room, but as you have admitted, you were less than cognizant. So I postponed the revelation until I knew you were more sober to hear it. To answer your second question, and to communicate to you why I was at your hotel room, I accompanied you there at your invitation while at the Pavilion. To answer your last question, yes I am following you. Because Mrs. Hughes is asking for you, and her message is urgent."

 "You're a snow dealer and she's been confiding in you while on the lam?"

 The man put his finger to his lips. Russell didn't think he'd talked any louder than the punk had, but whatever. "Why do you find this so strange, Mr. Frawley? You're not such an angel yourself, and yet she considered you a special companion, did she not?"

 "You know my name too, huh." Frawley marveled at his own stupidity. What else had he said under the influence? Did he hand out his social security number too? And he thought he was so suave. "Well okay. I want to hear Cindy's message. Play it for me, please."

"I can't do that for you right here. She is in hiding now, and has to be careful. We don't know who could be around listening. So if you don't mind, let's go to my vehicle, where we can be assured of privacy."

 Even though Russell didn't like the idea of being lured off somewhere, the guy did have a point. And he did want to know what Cindy said to him. It made him hopeful. He'd thought she'd dumped him for good after the way she'd taken off, but maybe, just maybe what they shared hadn't just been in his mind, had been something that she had felt too. "All right."

 The two men got up and paid their tabs and headed outside. The atmosphere was back in its menopausal state, so Frawley took off the dapper London wool coat he had been wearing in anticipation of normal November weather. But nothing was normal anymore. That's why he was walking off with some guy he met last night in a stupor just to see the love of his life once more. The whole world had gone haywire.

 So they started walking, and walking. Where the hell were they going? The Appalachian Trail? And where was Mr. Limousine Chauffeur? Cindy wasn't good enough for him? Now they were by a deserted area that had been siphoned into a warehouse section that no one had bothered with for twenty years other than to throw tons of garbage and other undesirables. The kid was jerking him around. Okay, later for this shit--

 "Cindy! Get back in the car!" The kid exclaimed. Russell immediately turned to look in the direction he was yelling to get a glimpse of Cindy. The movement caused him to have his back to the kid for a split second, and in that split second, he found himself headlocked with something so cold that he could feel the freeze through his suit pants and briefs pressed up against what made him different from women. His eyes looked down and made out a carving knife against his balls. This enraged him as much as the threat of death did. This asshole was going to take away his manhood? For what?

 "You fucked her!" The maniac spat in his ear. "You fucked her! Didn't you! You fucked her!"

 "Fuck who? Cindy?" If this were in a movie, Russell would be laughing right now. But it wasn't.

 "Yes! Cindy! Cindy Hughes! My wife! You fucked her!"

His wife? Oh, Christ. Just his luck to get himself hooked up with her psycho piece of shit husband. And he thought Joan was bad. Well, maybe he wasn't as hip, young and fit as Jason or Freddie or Mr. Scream 4 here, but he wasn't about to go down without some ass-kicking. Especially when castration was an attendant issue.

 He clamped his teeth on the arm imprisoning his neck with the gusto of chomping down on a prime rib. That brought the knife perilously close to his manhood, but the psycho backed off in pain that Russell had enough leverage to move backwards. Which he did, bucking into the psycho with all the force he could muster, and seeing the yuppie suede boots right in his way, proceeded to shove his dress shoe heel right on the toes. The man lost his grip on Frawley in surprise, and in his newfound freedom, Russell turned around and headbutted the man's stomach. Ouch, the guy worked out. But not enough to hold his balance from the blow of a pissed off geezer such as himself. The man doubled over, and Russell finally had total advantage. He kicked the knife from out of the kid's hands, and pulled out his trusty Magnum. His manhood was thanking him now. Not to mention the rest of his members.

"Who's in charge now, punk," he called, a premature victory cry.

 The eyes of the punk were full of hatred, rage, of a man who also would not go down without his manhood. Trouble was, Russell had already taken that by screwing the man's wife. This was a psycho blitz that would not stop until the death, and Russell almost anticipated the man's resurgence of getting up and lunging at him before it even happened. He looked like one of the moving targets in the firing range by the court. When Frawley practiced there, he managed to get off three shots, pow pow pow, right into the target's chest. In the real world, there was one pow, and the target never splattered brick red paint all over the place. The eyes refused to die on the psycho even when the rest of him gave it up and fell to the ground, useless now as it had been in life. Looking into his eyes, he felt no remorse for taking this life. It was the first time he killed. He'd always wondered what it would be like if he killed someone. He figured he'd feel something. Even when cops killed they sent them to a shrink for the aftereffects. But he didn't feel anything. Not with those eyes. He felt he just practiced his daily random act of kindness for the world. Cindy in particular.

 Now, to deal with this body. He sure as hell wasn't going to go to the police with it, even if it technically was self-defense. The Hughes had a lot of money, probably a lot of clout, and Russell knew from experience where that would put him, and he just wasn't in the mood to deal with the bullshit. It would be advantageous for him if he could make this look like a suicide and have the whole thing go away. Only to do that, he'd have to leave his piece. That would still involve him. Too bad he was a law abiding citizen. If he'd bought it on the black market, all he'd have to do is wipe the piece down, and voila, instant suicide. Suddenly his attention caught a bulge from the man's pants. Frawley had thought it was a post-mortem hard-on at first, but now looking again, he noticed it was at a really strange angle even for a dead man, like he had been the one castrated. Frawley's heart thumped in his chest as he knelt to investigate, hoping against hope that it was the alibi that he dreamed for. He found his gloves in his prostrate London wool coat. Anxiety made him fumble with them as he tried to put them on, and his own klutziness increased his frustration, as he continually surveilled the area for any outside activity. None was forthcoming other than distant traffic, and once he did get the gloves on, his courage returned, enabling him to plunge into his task with true gusto as he pulled the leather jacket away to reveal a holster. He now had a winning ticket. His excitement grew, as he reached for the holster, hoping he'd hit the jackpot, hoping, hoping--

 He almost screamed with glee. Mr. Patrick Hughes, psycho that he was, at least had class when it came to women and guns. Out popped a Magnum 357, the same as his, and upon further investigation, showed that it also was fully loaded. It was like becoming an instant multimillionaire. Seeing that no attention had been garnered by the first shot, Frawley fired Hughes' gun once into some garbage heap that he covered up, just to keep everything in alignment before putting the gun in Hughes' hand. He envisioned what position a body would be in if someone was crazy enough to commit suicide by shooting himself in the chest. After enacting several possibilities (with the safety clip on-- he wasn't about to join Patrick Hughes, thank you) he found that though awkward, it was possible, and finally decided on an angle whereby Hughes' hand rested on his groin, as though reflexes popped it back. Resisting the urge to plug a couple of shots there, Frawley figured it was good enough. Looking at the knife that almost castrated him, he picked it up and found it fit in his belt buckle like the knights of old. It then dawned on him that Hughes could have easily taken him out with the gun and he wouldn't have known what happened. This knife made this attack personal. Hughes had wanted to see him die in front of his face, to die with the last image in his brain being his blood gloat of victory. Well, maybe in the next life buddy. The knife was Russell's new talisman that showed he still had what it took to survive. He took one last look at Hughes and still felt nothing.

 There was blood speckled on his clothes, but not as much as he thought there would be. His London wool coat had remained unblemished from the struggle, so despite the fact that it was still too warm for it, he put it on. Instantly any visible proof of the killing dissipated. With that, he walked away, and headed for the bus stop. All the way, his thoughts were all on Cindy, wondering if now, she would want him to claim her, now that she was finally free.

The newscast startled her. If it had not been for the newscast, she would not have known. If it had not been for the hotel room, she would not have seen the newscast. If there had been no money, then there would be no hotel room. If there had no body, there would be no money. If she had not been a witness, she would have never seen the body with the money that gave her the hotel room where she saw the newscast.

Christ. Some god was really trying to screw with her life. The newscast was supposed to have made her feel free, that the running had ended. But it hadn't. How could she walk back into her old life, the venerable widow, without being dragged through hot coals by the authorities? Why the hell did she keep on seeing what she saw? Someone was trying to set her up for a big fall. Shed go home, to collect her worth as a widow, only to find police and FBI waiting for her fall, ready to bait her in a second. A kidnap victim, my ass, she thought. They probably had her on as an accessory to murder. The handcuffs would clamp on, and Patrick would have his final laugh. No fucking way.

Man. Her own head seemed just as much a prison as her husband was. Late husband, that is according to the media. Late husband. This was what was supposed to have made her feel free. It didn't.

She wondered about the life she had led. All the time, she had been searching for something that seemed to be missing. She never found it. Thirty years old, and no better off than when she was a child. By now, she was supposed to have a career, be established, have a name for herself. Instead she practically didn't know her name. She didn't know for sure if she was a Diesposito or a Hughes, or whatever elusive name that the seed donor that was her father held? Who the fuck was he, anyway? Who the fuck was she?

Go back to Boston. That was what she should do. Dye her hair blonde, hop on Amtrak, hide out in a bathroom. Or maybe—she sifted through the remaining money she had. Three hundred forty-three dollars. A rich fuck in the Bronx. What an idiot. Asking for trouble, if not murder. But hell, it was coming in handy for her purposes. It sure as hell would be enough for Boston. She could go there and see her mother, if she was still alive. Maybe Amanda and Charlie were still around there. She hadn't spoken to her sister, brother or mother for years. She wondered if she would recognize them. God only knew if they would recognize her.

God only knew if the rumor was true. Shit, she hoped so. It sounded crass, but she wanted the asshole she married dead. No, not really. If she had she would have killed him herself, or would she? She never was one to harm others. Even when Patrick was at his worst, she didn't hurt him. She'd slugged him around a few times, but that was it. Much less than he deserved.

She never could get the whole thing, what prompted someone to be so perfect to all that could see and then decided to spend their whole life trying to take someone down in private. Her thoughts, misguided as they were, had always been for her personal survival and betterment. She never had time to try to rip someone else down. Maybe that had been Patrick's goal to begin with, to rip her down and make her as pathetic as he was. He hadn't succeeded. In that respect, she had won.

It was weird, she had gotten beaten so often and everyone around her pretended they knew nothing, that everything was normal. One time, even, her mother-in-law had been visiting, and Patrick punched her right in the eye, then her jaw. It had been later at night, and he'd been pissed at her for staying up watching David Letterman instead of coming up to bed when he dictated. Or something like that. She had gone up to bed an hour or so later and had been greeted with boom, pow. She kicked him hard in the shin and headed down to the kitchen for ice. There had been Victoria Hughes, sitting at the table, eating truffles and reading Wuthering Heights, calmly looking up and smiling at Cindy like it was normal for people to walk around with split lips and bruised eyes. Patrick, in the meantime, had been yelling all kinds of slurs and obscenities. You could still hear him down in the kitchen, two floors below the bedroom. All the while, Victoria Thorton Hughes languished in her chair as though her son's insanity was background noise. As calming as Muzak. Cindy slept on the couch that night. She woke up to find Victoria standing over her like she was some wretched animal; whether she finally noticed the split lip or disdained at the thought of her not docilely doing her wifely duty by sleeping in the marriage bed, Cindy was never informed. She and her son convened in harsh whispers which excluded her, for the remainder of her stay. Cindy couldn't see out of her eye for three days, it was so swelled. She didn't even bother to ask her mother-in-law to take her to the doctor. She knew that a woman who didn't spend the night with her crazy husband wasn't worth her mother-in-law's time; taking time away from Bronte would be a crime.

Back to reality, the one with no Victoria or Patrick in it. Indifference and confusion dominated her. Paralyzed, she continued to watch the TV. They were still talking about her. Shit, and no one had invited her to speak on Today? Boy, that should be some concern of hers now, right? Hell, she never thought she'd make it this big in the world as a homeless girl. She never even got this much attention from the media as a rich battered wife.

Well, she discovered. She was a kidnap victim. Her head snapped. That was a new one. She looked out at the sketch of her so-called kidnapper and---

Oh. She sat speechless. It was a crude sketch of that Rican hobo who'd been following her around. They said he was a murderer—

He was not, she instantly bolted. They said who he murdered, and she knew they were wrong. She had seen with her own eyes. It wasn't him. Now she felt that her paranoia had been justified all along. If they were willing to lie and say this guy was a murderer and kidnapper, why wouldn't they put a clip on, care of dear old Patrick Hughes the Third, to say her husband was dead just to lure her back to her intended inheritance, just so she could be punished at the hands of her master? Well, why not? They were lying about everything else on TV.

Just then, an abrupt knock came on her door. Oh, shit, she thought with her hearth stomping away, the guy at the front desk saw the news clip. He'd come to send her to the police so she could be arrested or sent back to the fancy Bostonian jail. Oh, shit. Don't answer. She crept under the bed, not even wanting to walk to the keyhole for fear of her approaching footsteps giving her away. She crept under the bed as the knocking increased to pounding, hoping they would go away and never come back. Come to think of it, she should go now. She was on the ground floor. The window was right near the bed. She could get out in no time---

The guy pounding on the door was yelling. In Spanish. Relieved, she crawled out from under the bed as she recognized the voice. Funny how she trusted this stranger like she trusted no other. She should stop, based on her life. But she didn't. Just living, not stepping in front of a truck, well, she had some trust in some basic level of life. This guy, maybe he sprung from that.

She opened the door to find him still yelling. Quietly, she put her finger to her lips, and motioned him in. Quickly, she closed the door behind him, hoping nobody else had been disturbed enough by the encounter to come outside and see who they were.

She was immediately greeted with a huge bear hug, "Mi hiya, mi hiya," he crooned, over and over, clutching her like he'd never let go. Panic at the realization that this had been his deal, thinking she was his daughter, sprang out. Now she'd never get rid of him. She should have bolted out that window and not answered the door. She'd never get rid of him. But deep inside, there was a part of her that didn't want to. It was an immature part of her, the part that drew her to creeps like Patrick without any logical explanation. She didn't know what to do now.

"Vendra comigo." He said, tugging her hand.

"No," a frustrated Cindy yanked away from him. Too much was going on. She had to rest. It was dangerous here, but no more so than anywhere else, and now that she'd paid for the room, she wanted to get her money's worth.

"Por que no?" He was puzzled. His own daughter rejecting him. Cindy wondered why he left his daughter in the first place. Asshole, was her first reaction.

"I don't want to." He looked at her uncomprehendingly. Vexed, she exclaimed. "Look, why don't you speak English. This is goddamn America. I don't understand Spanish."

She may as well have been talking Martian-speak for the look that he gave her.

"Look. No comprendo espanol. Comprende?"

A sad look formed on his face that got to even an exasperated Cindy. "no mas?" He asked in a quiet voice.

Cindy felt her hear drop for him as she instinctively realized that the passage of time had changed things irrevocably for him—what was she saying. She wasn't even the right woman. Her daughter was someone else, someone else who had been deserted. She felt a bond with the unknown woman. And anger at this man.

She was ready to throw him out. Ready to speak and scream the words. But he had already gone. Gone to lick his wounds. She thought she heard him crying as he walked down the hall. Good, a father who left his child deserved his pain. She didn't feel bad for him at all.

But as she lay awake on the ratty bed, she knew that what he head championed was not quite so true in her heart.

 Russell Frawley, Esq had not set foot in his office for three days now. Jonathan Pfeifer was beginning to wonder if he had a job.

 He was watching TV. The manhunt for the minstrel was still out. The parents of Mark Timothy Haines were on every channel, pleading for the capture of their son's killer, for justice. Only one of the obscure independent stations broadcasted Lupe Corazon and her ever grateful fiancÉ, Octavio Garcia. They asked for support from the Puerto Rican community to preserve the freedom of a hero and miracle wrongly accused. A pair of hands who healed would not destroy, was their cry. But no one wanted to hear their story. It sounded like an incredible hoax. No one believed in miracles anymore.

 His phone rang. He had his own personal line now, a recent gesture that Jonathan was surprised that Frawley was capable of making. Ashley, probably. She was probably calling to tell him she was going to be out late shopping again and the raven would be at the Reilly's. Things since their tentative truce during the riots had quickly fallen apart.

 But it wasn't Ashley. "Mr. Joseph Pfeifer?" a strong yet hesitant female voice inquired.

 "This is he. May I help you?"

 "I'm not sure. I would like to speak with you. My name is Carmen Sanchez. I was the nurse at the hospital that you dealt with when you helped the transient."

 Transient. That wasn't a name that you heard terribly often. "Yes, Ms. Sanchez. I remember you."

 "First off, do you have free consultation?"

 Jonathan laughed. "I'd hardly call a conversation a consultation. But yes, I have free consultation, at least Mr. Frawley does. He's the lawyer here."

 "I would rather speak with you."

 "But Ms. Sanchez, I'm not a lawyer. You might want Mr. Frawley if you want legal consideration."

 "You have knowledge of the law, I gather."

 "Yes. I've graduated from law school. But I am waiting to take the bar examination."

 "That's good enough for me. Now, something else. This will be confidential, even though you are not a lawyer yet?"

 "Certainly." Jonathan started to doodle on his paper. Squares, shapes, that sort of thing. "May I ask the general nature of this conversation?"

 "I'd rather say in person." Carmen Sanchez said pointedly. "When may I see you?"

 "I'm free all afternoon." Boy, was he free. He'd never thought that freedom could be so boring.

 "So, I'll come by at one o'clock?"

 "Sure," Jonathan would be glad for the distraction, if nothing else. It was eleven-thirty now. And he couldn't help but think that a person like Carmen Sanchez wouldn't be stopping by a white boy's lawyer office unless she had something important to tell.

 "Please give me directions."

 So he did. And Carmen hung up the phone. So did he.

 He was actually looking forward to speaking with Carmen Sanchez.

THIRTY FOUR

 Carmen Sanchez arrived at Jonathan Pfeifer's office at exactly one o'clock. More precisely, she arrived at Russell Frawley's office at exactly one o'clock. Apprehension filled her as she noted the sign, and she wondered if she was doing the right thing, coming to the office of the lawyer who'd spent his life defending the family that was willing to put her cousin in prison. She almost turned away, thinking she should go to the lawyer that lived in her tenement, when the door opened before her.

 "Ms. Sanchez?" the familiar blonde figure beckoned her. This was the office that wanted to persecute Raul, this was the man who saved Raul. Carmen stood at the doorstep for a moment, flustered. "Ms. Sanchez? Are you all right?" Jonathan Pfeifer asked.

 Carmen recomposed herself, snapping back into the present. "Oh, yes. I'm fine," she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "My mind wanders, you know. Happens a lot when you get older."

 Jonathan sized her up in one glance. A conservative, serious, no-nonsense woman. The look in her eyes seemed to say, I have fought hard and labored long for what I have, and you will have to kill m to take it away or tear me down. The lines around her eyes were wise. They told a story of much toil, but her eyes themselves glowed with the knowledge that the toil had been fruitful. Having a chance to finally look her in the eyes, Jonathan found himself bestowing her instant respect. He offered a small smile to her juncture, somehow sensing that the genial comeback of how she was as ravishing a young woman would be taken with suspicion to ears wizened to years of superficiality and phoniness. She returned his gesture and followed his beckon to his small enclave of an office.

 "Sorry for the mess," Jonathan grinned sheepishly as he swatted away at the mess of papers on his desk. Even with all his cleaning the desk for two hours, he still hadn't managed to fully clear the rubble from his workplace. Carmen smiled. "Could I get you something to drink? Coffee, soda?"
"No, thank you, I'm fine," Carmen clipped, adding a smile to her statement. "Where is Mr. Frawley? Is he working today?"

 The question took Jonathan off guard. " No, not today," he managed. "Do you know him?"

 "I know of him," came the quick answer. "Mr. Pfeifer—"

 "Please call me Jonathan."

 "Jonathan." She smiled again, sighing. "It's been a rough couple of days. Very Busy."

 "You've been working a lot of shifts?"

 "Perhaps that is it. They've been busier than usual. My husband is sick also, you know."

 "I'm sorry."

 "Ah, he's fine. Just incapacitated for life. He worked too hard and his heat didn't like it. He needed a diet too."

 Jonathan noticed that with the exception of the occasional hand gesture here and there, Carmen seemed unusually subdued for what he'd seen of most Latinas. She seemed almost, well, white. He hated making a judgmental observation like that but he found a part of himself couldn't help it. It was so hard to escape prejudice totally. It could be so elusive, such an easy trap to fall into. He smiled his best, most professional smile when the phone rang. He couldn't help but be annoyed. All day, nothing happening and now that he was busy, the phone decided to ring. Drought or deluge. "Hello?" he barked into the phone, a little embarrassed in front of Carmen for his lack of professionalism. He thought he saw her stiffen a little.

 "Oh, hi Jonathan, it's me." This time it was Ashley. Her tone was less than friendly. Now what, he thought with annoyance. Carmen shifted in her seat.

 "Hi Ashley. Listen, could I call you back? I'm with someone right now."

 Jonathan thought he heard a snort. "Yeah? Like who? You're not even a real lawyer. You're a phony."

 She was drunk. Shit. And Raven would be home in two hours, home with a slobbering drunk who spoke her inner instincts when inebriated. That is, of course, she even was home--- damn, this hadn't happened in a long time. He felt his hands go clammy on the phone from apprehension.

 "Ashley, I'm going now. I'm not speaking to you when you're like this. And please don't call me again until everything's normal." He refrained from using the words "until you're sober" in front of his client. He was mortified enough by the blunt interruption.

 "Until what? Hah! You'll never---"

 Jonathan didn't listen to the rest. He slammed the phone down and rested it so it was just not quite hung up the proper way. He exhaled his tension away. Right now, Ashley was busy hitting redial. It would probably be a matter of time before she came down here. He remembered the shit with Joan Frawley only weeks before. At least she'd had a good reason the have the shit fit she did. Ashley would just be pissed that he was alive. Christ, why now, after all this time—

 "Is everything okay?" Carmen asked with a cocked eyebrow. Jonathan nodded emphatically. She just sat for a moment. The phone began its noisy insistence to be laid to rest in the proper manner. "Your phone is off the hook," she nodded to the phone.

 "Yes, I know," Jonathan bristled, a little annoyed at the implicit revelations being made about his life to this stranger. He felt exposed, incompetent to deal with this person professionally now. Just as he was ready to ask her to leave, she spoke.

 "I felt I needed to speak to a professional in case someone needed protection. Legal protection."

 Jonathan nodded, not fully restored in his composure yet. She continued.

 "The man who helped on the street? The one you brought into the hospital. He might be a cousin of my husband's," she said.

 Jonathan sat straight, Ashley forgotten, hearing this. "Who is your cousin?"

 "His name is Raul Valesquez. He's been missing for fourteen years, ever since he was shot and his wife and daughter were killed. His wife was my best friend." She spoke sharply and succinctly.

 "My God," was all he could manage.

 "He was in the same hospital when he was shot fourteen years ago. As far as I recall, the same bed too. I had a suspicion it was he when he yelled at me that day about his wife and daughter. He wanted to know the same thing fourteen years ago. He didn't know they were dead. I think he still doesn't know."

 Jonathan sat silently, his eyes wandering to Raven's picture. For a brief moment, he imagined what it would have been if he lost Raven to some maniac. He would kill the bastard. Just the thought of it filed him with rage.

 Carmen followed his gaze. She was looking at the picture, too. "Is that your daughter?" she asked.

 Jonathan nodded.

 "She's beautiful. How old?"

 "Six."

 Carmen looked at the picture. "Raulita was beautiful like that. Just like her mother."

 "Do you have any pictures?"

 Carmen regarded him for a second before nodding and searching through her pocketbook to produce a small picturebook. She flipped it to the beginning stages. So much time must have disappeared along with her friends, Jonathan thought, as he followed he finger to where she was pointing.

 "This is their family," she introduced, "just before Lupe died in 1978. It's the most recent picture I have of them."

 Jonathan took the photograph from her outstretched hands and regarded it carefully. A man, woman and child, all hugging one another, snapped in a smile that had been frozen in mid-laughter. He looked at the faces of each and stopped at each one. The child, whose laughing face had been erased from the planet forever, the wife that was no longer there to love. Though he knew none of them, he felt a deep pit of loss. Death had stolen joy. He felt hollow and meaningless.

 His final gaze stopped on the man. And for a moment he froze as the vague recognition took him. He had seen the face in a different time—the square jaw, delicate nose, dark, piercing back eyes that paradoxically were filled with laughter and compassion. A complexity of appearance, but a simplicity of love. Yes, he had seen this man once before.

 "He used to write songs all the time. For the church," Carmen said nostalgically, seemingly looking right through the picture. "They were beautiful tunes. Folk music. And he had a voice like I've never heard before. It was clear and beautiful. When he sang, it was like he could take you to another world." She stopped. Jonathan found that as she spoke, he could not meet her gaze directly. The revelations were too personal, and the affected him as though they were his own memories.

 "He did good work, you know. He helped gangsters to get off the streets. Had meetings in his apartment, well, our apartment. We lived with him and Lupe while Carlos was out of work. My husband." She added as way of explanation. "All kinds of boys came to these meetings. He encouraged them to go to school and get an education. Raul had a degree, too. From junior college. So did Lupe. I was so proud of them. They were people to look up to. I envied them. How they struggled to get that education, but they did. I married too young. I was pregnant. I had to wait for my family to grow up before I could take my chance. But I started school when they—they—" she almost choked on the words "went to God. They gave me hope for a new beginning.

 "They loved God. All the time, they spoke of the goodness of God. When Raul sang songs, he always sang giving thanks to this loving God of his. It drew me in. His religion was contagious. It made people want to be with him and to have what he had. The gangster kids, they all flocked to him. His happiness gave them hope. Laughing, he was always laughing. The people on the streets would look up at his window to see what was going on there was so much laughter. Some of the young boys who came to him to end their life on the streets just because they heard it."

 , Abdullah Patrick did not know if the father of her unborn child would come home alive. Emmanuel never could quite get away from his drugs, easy money. So we convinvced her to leave him. He swallowed and paused. Her fingers began to twiddle in their neatly folded stance, she began to tap her foot. Jonathan instinctively realized that she had reached the part of the story where the violence to her loved ones occurred. He wasn't quite sure if he should let her finish the story or fill it in for her. He offered her a glass of water instead, which she readily accepted.

 "I got a phone call, two weeks later or so. That's how I found out what happened to them. Raulita died so violently. And they did nothing to deserve that. I remember Raul lying in the same bed as the transient you and I know had. There had been so many bandages. He had only done good for others. He loved everyone, great and small, just as the Lord told him to. Nothing but love in his heart. I would look at his form, lying there, and ask, who could do such a thing? Who was this God that allowed this to happen? I hated God much at that time. I would curse him at night when I used to say my prayers. In the end I ran back to him because there was nobody else who could take my pain.

 "I had to go to another funeral not so long afterwards. Abdullah Patrick was killed. I was in such shock from Lupe and Raulita I didn't have the strength to be angry at her death. She had been run over by a car. All I could ask was what could she have possibly done to deserve a death so young. She was only twenty-four. But I asked no more. The violence made me sick. I would go home, grateful to have the minuscule problems of a boozing husband who like his horses and women. He never hit me. And I knew no one was after his life, that my life was safe as well. And soon after, my husband reformed even these simple problems and became a model father and husband. I could have not asked for anything more, other than to have my best friend and my goddaughter alive today."

 She stopped again. The door creaked. Jonathan instantly went to it, thinking that Frawley had entered and was eavesdropping. It was just Beatrix Potter, the cat that had been recently presented as a gift to Jonathan by a homeless family he helped place in temporary housing. The agent he dealt with had told Jonathan the he was in the wrong profession; he said with a soft hear like his, he'd survive better as a social worker than a lawyer. Jonathan wondered if he was right.

 "My nephew is a good man. He would never lie, you know."

 Jonathan was startled by the abrupt change in conversation before he realized that Carmen was almost thinking aloud to herself. He frowned, listening more intently to what she was staying. He found himself becoming tense and nervous.

 "Hector always was an achiever, did well in school. Very religious. Very respectful of the Lord. Already he is an elder of a Pentecostal church. He couldn't be any older than you." She gave Jonathan a piercing look that made him somewhat embarrassed at his disheveled office and transient position. He always felt too unsettled for his age. Anything could set him off. He squirmed slightly. Carmen seemed unaware of his discomfort as she turned her eyes from him. "Hector would have never spread rumors. He always was a truthful boy."

 Jonathan looked suddenly at her, realizing that this Hector had revealed something that was vitally important to everyone involved. He wanted more than anything to have Carmen Sanchez dump it all right in front of him right there and then, yet there was another part, the compassionate, curious part that heard pain from a part of the world he'd only seen half-truths of in the movies, where gun play was a form of Hollywood entertainment and nothing more. Carmen Sanchez was telling him it was real, darker and drier simultaneously than Wesley Snipes and Omar Epps could ever demonstrate. He sat there, realizing that, even with all his wanderings and adventures, even with the pain of losing Jenny and possibly Ashley, even with the isolated, empty thought of becoming a single father in an environment that likened motherhood to sainthood and fatherhood a joke of an institution, even with all this, he realized that he, Joseph Pfeifer, had lived a protected, privileged, and even sheltered life.

 "Emmanuel Jackson were drug dealer. Mostly, they sold heroin and LSD. Psychedelics were their staple, especially the late seventies. Marijuana too. But then came cocaine. Obviously, it had always been around. But it was starting to become stylish and chic. It was like having a Porsche in the backyard. There was almost a whole new market for it in the inner cities. They wanted to seem rich. So the dealers pounced all over them for opportunities.

 "Emmanuel went to eliminate the problem. Hector says he was high on drugs. Hector say he told the elders that—that"

 Her voice shook before it stopped dead in her tracks, and Jonathan found his blood go cold. He went to lay a reassuring hand on Carmen's, but she quietly raised her other hand in resistance, seeming to want to go on with her story, only with the help and courage that she could summon through the Lord.

 "Pastor Williams revealed a confession of Emmanuel Jackson's just before Emmanuel was assaulted. That Emmanuel admitted to killing a young girl and her mother before he was incarcerated for armed robbery. He had said he was afraid because he saw someone like the man he thought he killed walking around. He was afraid he'd come for revenge. The man who accosted him was the transient who resembles my cousin."

 Then she was silent. She looked at Jonathan, as though waiting for a response. Though deeply moved, Jonathan put his best professional neutral face on. "What would you like me to do for you, Ms. Sanchez?"

 "Hector says that Pastor Williams believes that Emmanuel Jackson's attack was done by Raul seeking revenge for what was done to his family. He will go to the police with this information. With Mark Timothy Haines dead and the white community against Raul, all he needs is the black community to be against him, which they will if this information gets out. Raul won't need a trial to be guilty then."

 "How can you be certain that this transient is your cousin?"

 Carmen smiled and sat forward, her hands folded under a lips. She looked briefly at Jonathan before looking thoughtfully down at her fingers. "I know it is him, because of what he sings. The songs that I hear from his mouth are those that Raul used to sing. He wrote his own music, you know. He was very talented. All the songs I hear only could have been written by Raul. Beauty like that could only have come from him. Because of his music, I know he is Raul."

 Jonathan folded his hands carefully. "Why do you think it took so long for him to come back?"

 Carmen shook her head, bewildered in expression. "I don't know. Maybe he got lost, and now he's found his way home."

"His search is over, maybe."

 Carmen looked at him. "Or maybe, soon it will be."

 They were both silent for awhile. One was trying to save a stranger whose name he'd just discovered, the other trying to save a friend of her childhood, both deeply affected by the distant presence of the same man. The doomed search of his lost wife and child were what seemingly drove him. Carmen thought of how outside of that search, there was little else for him. He could not recognize her, and wondered if he would remember her if she revealed herself to him. He had been a god to her once. Now, worshipping the true God above, she no longer regarded him as divine, but at his survival and strength and spirit after all he had suffered, she had the utmost respect for him.

 "I just wanted to make sure there was a record of this. Emmanuel Jackson is like a son to Casper Williams. For all I know, he will go to the police and say that Emmanuel never even harmed Raul and that he was struck down in cold blood. I can't imagine him even admitting that his beloved protÉgÉ was a filthy murderer. The way Hector sees it, Emmanuel can do no wrong in Reverend Williams' eyes."

 "But the information could be inadmissible. He said it in the confidence of the clergy."

 "That is only for Catholics, correct?

 Jonathan shook his head. The swarm of his second-year law school knowledge swam in his head. "I'll have to look it up to be sure. Will your cousin testify if it goes to trial?"

 Carmen stiffened visibly. "Do you think it will go that far?"

 "I don't see what other route in can take," Jonathan halfheartedly admitted. "There is no other suspect in the case right now."

 "Perhaps. Yes, he will." The information flustered her significantly. Jonathan switched tracks artfully.

". At that time, they were holding them in my home. Lupe Valesquez had become too ill to have so much company in her home."

 "What was she sick with?"

 "Heartbreak. She lost a child several years earlier. She was never the same after that."

 Jonathan breathed heavily. A story made more complicated than its cover. At first, this had just looked like a series of unsolved murders, with the dice being tossed about the killer, depending on the race and other meaningless factors. Now, it was almost looking like a sinister setup.

 "Jesus Himself said that the darkness hates the light. Darkness will do anything to snuff the light out."

 But it had not been extinguished quite yet.

THIRTY FIVE

 Jonathan spent the next couple weeks obsessed with his new role of investigator and detective. For hours on end, he would sit at the computer in the Fordham Public Library, going over and over news files from the late seventies, hoping against anything to dig information about the Valesquez murders.

 The office was deserted. Frawley hadn't stopped in it once since the Haines boy's death. At home, his wife had mercifully been out cold behind closed doors. He had the privilege and freedom to get Raven ready for school himself, drop her off, go to the office, leave at lunchtime, take a quick lunch break at the Blue Sea Diner down the road, where Suzi the waitress had his Ruben on rye with light mayo, mustard and two dill pickles, Coke and lemon meringue pie order memorized, then he would take a brisk twenty minute walk past the Spanish deli, the boutique shop with grids closed over it, the corner where the illegals stood and waited for work, plus other colorful relics of Fordham. After all that, he would pick up Raven at school, and get her ice cream at the sweet shop being the last place before he took his usual place behind the library computer.

 Raven loved the library, which was fortunate for him now. She had always been the bookish type. A gregarious child when she was born. For a seven year old, she was as bright and articulate as an above average twelve year old. She had already completed James Campbell's Shogun and John Jakes' North and South. She hardly ever got anything lower than a ninety-eight on any test in school, and her percentile ranking was the highest in the nation. She had an IQ of one hundred and forty-one. All her teachers had great expectations for little Raven Jocelyn Pfeifer.

As he passed the illegals, an idea occurred to him. He found himself stopping and all the newcomers gathered around him, thinking him to be a businessman in search of cheap labor. Most of the old ones who wore the faces he recognized ignored him, realizing that he was just a typical New York regular making like he was keeping in shape. But three of the old guys nodded to him. They sat together on a brick wall drinking beer. It was to these men that Jonathan approached.

 They smiled, gold teeth showing, as if amused and puzzled by the approach of the gringo. Jonathan asked if anyone had seen a man named Raul. In response, they pointed to a lone figure standing by a deserted liquor shop. Jonathan gave one look to the bent over, drooped old man and thought to himself, this was the wrong idea. There was no way he would adequately describe the correct Raul's physique in their language. He waved at the men, turning to resume his exercise, when he heard their yells behind him.

 "Hombre, hombre!" they called. Jonathan looked at them speculatively as they resumed pointing to the loner. "Ingles! Ingles!" one explained to Jonathan, the rest agreeing with vehement nods. Jonathan understood their message, and, smiling and nodding his thanks, wished them beuna suerte on their job search.

 The man he approached was unlike the rest. Instead of cracking jokes and beers opened, this one sat apart in a manner that conveyed separatism in more ways than physically. With his head bowed, eyes closed, and legs crossed, he resembled a Buddhist monk at prayer. As Jonathan approached his man, the snoring sounds got louder and louder. Jonathan realized that all it had been was that he had caught the hombre at his siesta time. It took much prodding on Jonathan's part to shake him awake. When he looked at Jonathan, he gave him a look that resembled a man under physical attack, then, when he realized he was safe, changed to insult at the intrusion.

 "What, can't a man get some sleep around here without you gringos having a shit fit?"

 Jonathan eyed the man curiously. A small man with a graying mustache and sombrero, he greatly resembled the hombre in the finishing scenes of the original Terminator movie, and about as evasive as well. He resumed his sleeping as though Jonathan had only been a momentary interruption. Irritated at having wasted his time and angry for coming up with this harebrained antic, Jonathan swore under his breath and once more began to walk away when once more he was called back. Jonathan was beginning to feel dizzy.

 "Now that you wake me up, you say what you come for, eh?" he had a gleam of mischief in his eyes that practically laughed in Jonathan's face. Jonathan felt himself choked back laughter despite everything.

 "I'm looking for a man. He is a little under two meters tall, black hair, gray temples, very white."

 "How old?"

 "Late forties."

 "A mustache or beard on this white man?"

 "Unshaven, but no real beard or mustache."

 "Unshaven?" the man raised his eyebrows and circled his ear with his finger. "A loco man?"

 "No. Very sane."

 "Unshaven but sane? Hah. And he is a white man? Hispanic white man?"

 "Yes."

 "Dominican? Venezuelan? You know, you gringos have a way of lumping us together. What if I said you were no different than a Serbian? Would you like that? Now, what nationality?"

 "Puerto Rican."

 The man's eyes flashed for a second before returning to its indifferent stance. "Yes, we get a few of them. They try to take jobs that don't belong to them." He scrutinized Jonathan. "What's it to you? You want a job? You going to be a white Hispanic boy for the day? You look too rich. You want a job with Raul? How do I know that you don't want to get Raul in trouble, eh? Say I know him."

 "Why would I want to do that?" Jonathan retorted with a smile. The man gave himself away again with the sharp flash. Jonathan knew he had something, so he stayed, standing his ground with a goofy grin, trying to look as innocent as possible. The hombre looked behind him, then returned to Jonathan. "The guys there are looking at you. They want your wallet. You better go. More of them to you. And I can't help you. I am mano viejo."

 Trying to get rid of him. "Don't worry. I have no dinero for them to take."

 The man lowered his eyes to Jonathan's pocket areas, which were inconspicuously flat, devoid of any bulges. He pursed his lips in a sort of defeated look. His body limped and his eyes drooped at Jonathan is resignation. "I am an old man," he weakly protested.

 "Well, you'll be an old man in jail for illegal passage if you don't stop playing games with me."

 Visible stiffing. Jonathan had no intention of throwing an old man in jail for trying to find a better place to lice, but it was an effective tool. "I have visa." Came the sharp bark.

 "Then why are you here? Why not get a job where you can make more money legally?"

 "My friends are all here."

 Jonathan lay out his hand. "Where is your visa?"

 "At home. I don't want no gaucho stealing it."

 Jonathan knelt beside him. "Tell me what you know about Raul, and then I won't give you a hassle about your visa. I have dinero, but it's only for you."

 The man snorted. "The hombres there kill you before you give money to me. They will steal it."

 Jonathan shrugged. "I'll take you for a good meal, then." That perked the man's ears. Jonathan was getting him where he wanted. "Now, what do you know about Raul?"

 "Many Rauls, so many. Puerto Rican? Forty? Dark hair, a little gray? Many Rauls I know. What else? Is he in trouble?"

 "Not by me."

 "So who are you? His protector? What are you going to protect him with, gringo power? Gringo power is nothing, nothing against a gun. He is safer here, whoever Raul is. No one knows anyone here. See? You know me? No. But out there, it is easy to get known. Where will you take him with your gringo power? To a witness place where he can get killed in the dead of night? Hah."

 "Where I hide him no one will know. He is in danger here. Besides, even you said. A Puerto Rican will get in trouble here for stealing work. If you have any concern for him, you will tell me."

 "I told you, many Rauls. Many with dark hair. So who is he? How is he different that I would know?"

 "He sings."

 "Sings?"

 "Yes."

 "Sings, like discotheque sings?"

 "No he sings—" Jonathan stumbled for a description---"sad songs. He sings sorrow."

 "And he makes money singing sad songs? Like country music where all the gringa girls blow their noses and weep?"

 "No. No money. He sings on the streets, and no one is there to watch."

 The man looked blank for a second then burst into recognition. "Oh! The celebrity. The one the reporters call the minstrel. That one?"

 Jonathan got excited. "Yes, him. Have you seen him?"

 His devil's advocate became sullen again. "They say he murdered holy men," he said with arms folded and eyes deep in space.

 Jonathan nodded. "Yes, they do say that."

 The man turned to Jonathan. "And you? Do you say that, too?"

 With the same tight expression upon his face, Jonathan this time shook his head. "No, I do not."

 "Why? Why do you say differently than your white friends?"

 "Because," Jonathan said slowly, looking out into yonder with Mr. No name, "I have met him. And I have seen killers. He doesn't have their eyes. He doesn't have the eyes of a killer."

 The man suddenly beamed, then returned to his indifferent slumbering position. Jonathan remained this time. No name spoke again.

 "He was here two weeks ago. A man named Hal comes here for farm help hired him. Harvest time and all, you know."

 "Have you seen Hal since then?"

 "He comes here every Thursday," the bland reply came. Today was Tuesday. Jonathan made a point of coming back in a couple of days. He turned to give No name his end of the bargain, but no name was sound asleep. Jonathan smiled as he went away, ready to go to the school to get Raven, the true love of his life.

THIRTY SIX

 Everyone was going crazy. The fortress was going crazy. The serfs were crazy. Shit was hitting more than fans this day.

 The media heard it first. It was a gem of fortune, which they snatched and pranced around with the glee of a child with his first toy. They enjoyed the squirming of their leadership and following. That was what they were in the business for, to make people uncomfortable. It made everything all that more interesting for them laboring of their petty words over midnight coffee.

 Breaking information in the Emmanuel attack had been divulged. Apparently there had been more than a fleeting relationship between the wicked minstrel and the Black Light Emmanuel, as he was being called now. There had been some dude, black, the source said the phone call sounded like, who'd rounded some facts on the good minister that had not been so holy. Drugs and murder. The minstrel and the fallen angel had been druglords. There had been fights over territory. Brawls in the streets. Then Abdullah Patrick, Emmanuel's pregnant lover, had been brutally beaten, then dismembered, digit by digit. A note had been scrawled in blood on the wall. It made vile threats that were unprintable in notable respectable media. The gist had been, this is punishment for a certain racial epithet for blacks going where they didn't belong. In despair, in a drug induced state brought about by grief, Jackson went to avenge the love of his life, and only in a state of temporary insanity brought on by such suffering, he took two women from the evil minstrel, and soon went to prison for his crimes where he was converted. And the vile minstrel, years later, still roamed the streets, burned from drugs and despicable living, a cold killer calling with his music, coming for the final, calculated strike against once who paid dearly for his crimes of passion and intense grief.

 The minstrel. He had no regard for authority. A hatred for God, life, and all things holy, that's what he was. Taking lives in scoffing manner of those righteous men who fought against his lifestyle and for things good. There was the implied question of why this injustice was allowed to take place. Right now, in the District Attorney's office in Harlem, the DA's press secretary was forced to answer hard questions like these. Why was the killer still at large? Why had they captured an innocent man just to shut up the victims' families and the public? Where was the manpower on this case? Who was assigned? How come Homicide had not contacted any of the victims' families since Velda had been released? How much longer was a community going to have to live in fear while an important law enforcement stood by?

 Russell Frawley watched the news conference on the group's TV. Each man had his own room, each with a small hot plate and twin bed. The bathroom was down the hall. There were showers where each man stared the other down. A pay phone was located at the end of the floor by the stairwell. Basically, Russell Frawley, Attorney-at-Law, graduate of Yale Law School, was living in a flophouse. And no Cindy/Addie to be found. How low could a man go?

 Each man had a different story as to why they were there. Not that anyone would sit down and have a conversation about their misfortunes, but if you listened, you could gather valuable keys to past lives from epithets such as 'fucking bitch', 'damn boss drinks but hell if anyone else does', 'damn landlord don't know what's good for him'. The atmosphere was pleasant enough, though, plenty of beer and pot to go around. Most times, you were just left alone, which suited Frawley just fine. Peaceful here.

 The DA's press secretary Elaine Weiss was having her ass kicked. She looked like a nervous bimbo. Frawley had always known she wasn't cut out for the job. She'd been given the job because she was a woman. In the middle of Minority Haven, the trendies in the DA didn't want to look like the fascists they were. So they hired Weiss. On a more extreme note, they'd released Velda

 Frawley's client was dead. And even though he hated the minstrel as much as the next person, he couldn't help but think that something that had been said in that holding pen that was related to his dead client.

 Certain kinds of people didn't commit violent crimes. This was one of many lessons learned on the streets, which carried over to the classroom as well as the courtroom. At one time, the upper class and the white race did not commit violent crime. Black and Hispanic did. Then, women did not commit violent crime. Men did. Then, minorities did not commit crimes. White people did. Now, it was known people in communities did not commit crime. Only unknown strangers did.

 It was crazy how easily people brought the horseshit stereotypes that the media threw out. So easy to pin the blame elsewhere. So easy to believe that the bad guy was somewhere out there, nowhere near here. You had to be able to trust the neighbors. But everyone seemed to forget, the bad guy had to live somewhere. Someone would be his neighbor. That seemed to be OK to most people, as long as they were assuaged that someone else was the neighbor.

 And justice had no justice. Conditional justice. It changed to suit circumstances. Some people were lucky to be who they were at the times they were. People like Joan and Velda. Some people were not as lucky. People like him. And this minstrel guy.

 He opened a new case of beer as he awaited the noontime news watching Jerry Springer. Jerry Springer, he knew about justice. Let mayhem rule. It was the only thing that ruled. It was the only god that he saw.

 The minstrel followed Raulita at a far distance, but close enough so he could keep her in his sight.

 She worried him. Over the years, it seems as though she had gotten herself in a life of trouble, away from love and away from God. Her rage he felt from her even as far away as he was. Such pain and suffering. He knew she had suffered. But what had happened that hardened her so? Growing up, she had been such a gentle soul. No more. Had the pain of those moments changed her forever? Or had she deteriorated little by little over the years? She did not have a father, and no mother there to shelter her. How Raulita must have suffered.

 Lupe had been the only love of his life. There was a vague memory of something else, of a life before her. Other girls, their faces. Somehow, the emotion they evoked had no effect on him compared to the beautiful Lupe. The face of an angel. A sweet innocent with a tomboy mind and a gentle soul. The girl who had became the only woman to own his heart and name. Then violence. Screams as she clung to him, for one last time before she was ripped from him, and Raulita right behind—

 Then silence.

 And then the pain followed. It exploded with the same magnitude that it had that night, as his head sank into deeper and deeper levels of pain as each ensuing blow fell; mercifully, unconsciousness came as the explosion in his chest made him fall. And like that night, an angel watched him; the angel of his mother then, and the angel of Raulita now, turning back to him to protect a worthless soul like himself.

 Cindy was making her way back to Manhattan. The numbered streets were coming. There was a climax of violence building up to their arrival, the numbing effect of their reality dwindling as the numbers fell themselves. Cindy was skipping through a park in Co-op Land. So artificial, this bland tribute to nature in the land of slime and concrete. So fake and unreal, its absurdity made the fugitive want to laugh despite her impeding danger.

 She sat in perplexity, a state brought on by instance fatigue and emotion. She should get to a drugstore and change her appearance. But soon, she would enter a land of danger. Right now, she could pass as Latina with her dark looks, giving her safer passage than if she were suddenly transformed into a Basinger or Kidman look-alike. Rape struck all women, but some made more visible targets than others. For now, Cindy was going to have to pass au-natural.

 Along the same line, Cindy had adorned appropriate attire for the escapade, carefully selected from the rare open Bronx Clothing Bin. Baggy jeans, baggy sweatshirts, wool cap and winter jacket. There was frost now forming on the streets at night, so Cindy was grateful for the physical warmth the tatters brought. The last few nights had been cold ones. Perhaps she should take a subway, at least to 96^th Street, where the cops started to bunch in droves on the subways. Then she could walk to Penn. Buy a ticket. In cash. God she hoped not to get robbed. To get out of New York. Outta here. It was like a dream.

 Her reverie broke like a balloon on nails. There was a wail, a piercing scream. A man's scream. Her heart palpitated. Fuck, not again. This mother was out for her ass big time. He probably worked for the police. Maybe he worked with Patrick. Maybe it was Patrick. He was out to see her ass fry—

 There it was again. Cindy managed to look because some wacko desire to witness danger. Addiction to the chase, the excitement. What enticed her to Patrick. What kept her alive now.

 In the dusk, a figure. He stood with his hands clutched to his head as though he was hearing an unbearable noise. His scream still resonated in the pink, dusk silence, even though no noise came from him now.

 He sat in a crouched heap, like a scared child. For a minute, even Cindy forgot her pain. Something told her to go to him. She listened, despite the cursing in her head demanding why the hell was she wasting her time with a loser like this when her life was in such shit shape—like, don't mind the speck in someone's eye when you had a plank in your own, something from back in the Bible days of childhood yore. Annoyed at herself for doing so, Cindy walked over to the father figure that represented the one that left her so long ago.

 She had to scream to get his attention. She grabbed and shook his arm to jolt him out of the crazy man state he was going through. When he looked in her eyes and recognized her, she tolerated being pulled into his arms in a crazy, crunching bear hug. Why do I do these things, she was thinking. I have enough problems of my own.

 So he was okay, she surmised as he held her at arm's length again. No injury. The crazy demoniac running around was not back for her. She was safe. She attempted to pull away from the man, only to find her breakaway remarkably easy. He was crying. Cindy was discovering that she had a conscience and couldn't very easily desert him completely. Sighing, she found herself next to him. He grabbed and held her tightly, and before she knew it, she was asleep right there.

THIRTY SEVEN

 When she was awake, the light was the same but the sky reversed. Dawn. She had slept right through the night. The earth was still. Nothing moved. Not even tree branches in the breeze. No noise but the sound of silence buzzing in her ear. Even her sleeping companion seemed to be lying like the dead. This kind of quiet brought no peace. She felt the eeriness inside her. Every nerve of her was on alert.

 She looked around her. It was difficult to make out the various shapes in the morning haze. There were formless trees, nearly stripped of life from autumn cold, stretching endlessly in one direction; cold blobs of concrete yawning into the distance behind her. Very much the same as last night. Something was different. She knew. She was nobody's fool.

 Then a whistle came. Bronx cheer, hah hah. Loud. It pierced. She froze as her brain screamed where her ears detected the noise. During her studies, the noise came again, like it was right in front of her. Then her eyes saw. He was waving at her like he was an old pal from high school. Someone was lying at his feet. And Cindy felt a cold hate that she'd felt for only two people in her life. She wanted to kill.

 The figure was gone as soon as he'd come, yet the immobile blob at his feet remained where it was. Instinctively, Cindy kicked at the minstrel to arouse him. They had to leave. He stirred, and with all the strength she could muster she hoisted him upon his feet. He was staggering, clutching to her, but moving. They could escape. Cindy felt a sigh of relief.

 So engrossed in her movement was she that she did not hear the arrival of the security vehicle by the body. The security guard caught sight of the suspected figures just as he got out to look at the gruesome sight. A man and his kidnap victim. The caller said a man and a woman. Dejected, he let it go—the police had a radio of them. With gross fascination, he caught a wild glimpse of what he'd only read in papers. The cross in the forehead. Hands folded in prayer. Three out of seven like that. The security guard was watching a little bit of New York History in the making. He had seen the seventh of what was now dubbed lovingly by the law enforcement as the Minstrel Victims, Inc. He felt like a national hero.

 The news was out in the fortress. Somehow, despite all their efforts, they had allowed a murderer into their midst. A town board meeting was called. Something had to be done. All in the high circle shook their heads before the commencement. Look what happens when the niggers come in. When he decide to be nice, they go and kill off women and children. And go and lie about it, to boot!

 Joan Taylor addressed the crowd. She had called the meeting in part to discuss the development of the Gateway Plan. As of yet, the community around Emmanuel Jackson's home had not been barricaded off. She had deliberately planned it that way, wanting to wait until the last possible moment before the Negro was permanently sealed in with all the hard-working people of Gateway, Bronxville, NY. Now, she was glad the project was taking longer than planned. She, along with her future ex-mother-in-law, had decided that there was no way that they could morally include such a lying murderer into their midst. His house, as well as nine others who were located in the far eastern corner of the establishment, were going to be cut from the plan. The board members, who were located on the northern border, would not be affected. Joan Taylor expected no hassle from them. As it turned out, she was right. They wholeheartedly agreed with her decision, in fact, Mr. Clyde Templeton, a retired international banker who'd been elected as a Republican village board official for years, expressed that if she hadn't brought it up herself, he would have laid it on the table. The rest of the Grand Knights of the Round Table nodded in unison. This grave matter of conscience had plagued them for days.

 So, it was decided unanimously. The eastern sector, which included an independent plumber, a district court judge, a Bronx accountant, a violin teacher, a divorcee living off her ex's money, a CUNY English professor, a Daily News journalist, an assistant DA, and a retired court clerk, were eliminated from the Grand Plan of Federal Protection. Taylor would confirm with the Westchester County that the zoning was legal, but now, officially, in the village of Bronxville, it was. And all were confident that the county would hold their position. They usually didn't get involved in these matters, the town quibbles. It wasn't their yob, as the Hispanics would say.

 No, it was the town's job. And right now, they were the town. We the People. Me, myself and I. They were representatives. In this line of work, it was euphemistic for eunuchs.

Now, the next issue. TO form a village police.

 This piqued their interests. The Royal Queen Joan Taylor smiled at her absolute power to manipulate their emotions at will. Ten middle aged men, each paunchier than the next one, at her beck and call. They were taken. They wanted her feedback. They were enthralled at the sheer genius of her logic. Inspired, she began her litany.

 "Three weeks ago, a valuable citizen lost his only child to a vicious murderer." She paused, dabbing her suddenly filmy eyes, and each person who was present was reminded that the humble speaker, who was also a valuable, venerated citizen, had also lost her only child to a vicious murderer—drugs. They bowed their heads in silence for him as well as the young life just lost. Joan Taylor began again once more.

 "When Mark Timothy Haines, Jr., was murdered it was in broad daylight with hundreds of witnesses. The killer was right there. They saw him. The New York City Police saw him. And yet, he escaped. His father is a renowned lawyer. He has worked out trades with our ambassadors. His dealings have prevented wars from breaking out. And this man, in his tragedy, has been jerked from here to California just because everyone thinks it's "cool" to be a liberal. Free the criminals and give them guns because two hundred years ago they were forced to make a living and get off their ass. Once the minorities"—no one could not hear the sarcasm in her voice, and they laughed--- "threw a little temper tantrum, everyone in the New York City Police Department sat on their butts. They're afraid to do justice to the citizens because some individuals"—the sarcasm again—"might hurt them. So Mark Timothy Haines' death goes unavenged, as well as the deaths of several other prominent members of our society. This cannot be tolerated. If no one will act for us, we shall act for ourselves. I vote to appoint our own private police. On Long Island, they have it all over the place. There is no reason why we shouldn't either. This way, we have our own protecting us, not lowlife minorities who are only in to shoot guns legally and who would bee more than delighted to see this community go to rot. I make the motion now. Second?" she asked with a hand in the air.

 "Mrs. Frawley, I mean Miss Taylor, I mean Joan" Tom Gray the financier raised his hand. "Election Day has just passed. Shouldn't this be an issue that is decided by the people at that time?"

 Joan folded her hands under her chin. She had watched over the years how the men of power spoke. She had been married to one—or at least, married to one who thought he had power. They would pause, reflect, allowing pregnant silences to cause anxiety in their audiences. Anxiety brought power to the instigator. Her final message would all the more have impact upon the hearers.

 "Mr. Gray—Tom," she began, mimicking his precious flustered statement, "what we have here is a state of emergency which has at the minimum lent a small panic within our walls. The urgent pleas for something like our Gateway Plan is representative of the upheaval that is being experienced. Drastic disasters call for drastic measures to solve them. This is one of those times. I'm sure, given the circumstances, the 'good people'"—she lent false pride to her voice—" would be more than happy to see their town government working so hard to protect them and their interests. When a maniac is loose, people look for protection rather than silly political squabbles. A private police force dedicated to their interests and only their interests will help quell that fear. But…" she raised her hands in mock defeat—"if you insist on the issue being voted upon, we could always have a proposal election. They could be held any time of the year, even now if you wanted it. We don't have to wait for a general election for something as vital as this. The people could decide now, for themselves, if they wanted to spend money on their security. Would that satisfy you?" The act of composure during the course of a confrontation. Another tool of power.

 Now a silence. Confusion on written on their faces. Joan felt annoyed. She should have known better than to expect compromise from middle-aged blue bloods. Everything was black and white to them. Duh, which way did it go George? She thought watching their bafflement, thinking of the absurd cartoon that Quentin used to watch---

 Quentin, oh Quentin. Such a young life snuffed out too soon. He would have been an adult now, a young man. Maybe he would have been married now, though she would have killed him for being so young, don't make the same mistakes I made sweetie—but a grandchild, maybe she would have a grandchild now, but now not ever. Why did Mark Timothy Haines have to die, why now when her life was coming together, did he have to die, leave her to mourn alone? Old love, memory died? Quentin—Mark, Quentin; the images were confused, fused together, shattering apart:

 "Why did it have to happen now?"
"Miss Taylor?"

 Startled back to the moment. Power to be attended to. Suddenly she felt hopelessly powerless.

 "Miss Taylor? Are you all right?"

 Templeton. The one who'd asked the first question. As sneaky as his namesake in Charlotte's Web—the first book that Quentin read by himself, oh God—she didn't trust him for a minute. Not his supposed concern for her, not his charming looks. A good friend of Russell's—no wonder. The two were carbon copies of one another's.

 "Yes. I'm fine," Taylor said with all the prim composure she could muster in a split second's time, an act she was quite used to pulling being a decoration in the World of Power. It worked well now that she was the spotlight as well.

 "Tom was just saying that he agreed with your idea. That he would like to second the motion. Right, Tom?" Templeton nudged a snoring Gray, who right now seemed to not be in a position to second anything, other than whether a catnap should be introduced to the minutes. When he finally erupted awake with a violent "Huh?" all his comrades broke out in a good-hearted laugh, the kind shared over a beer with your dearest of male friends. But Taylor found herself laughing with them. The camaraderie of the elite, the top echelon.

 "Mr. Templeton said that you would like to second my motion to hold an election on the proposed private police force. Is that true?"

 "Uh. Police force." Gray said, straightening forward and pulling his suit jacket so it fit just so. "Yes, well. An election would be good. Yes. I second. Yes."

 Joan smiled a relieved smile, happy to adjourn the meeting now that her emotions were totally scrambled. Just wrap-up time. A date set for town residents to hear of the proposal. A discussion of how the Round Table of Town Board Members would disperse literature of the proposal. How it should be written up. Joan barely listened as she say in her cushy chair, watching the Town Clerk go through his motions of power.

Power. To make others do what you wanted them to do. She had done that tonight with her little building project. She captured them all with her words. Power.

 Powerlessness. Where was Mark? Quentin? Why couldn't they be there to live their young lives? She loved them both. But her love, no matter how strong, couldn't bring them back. Why had they had to be taken?

 Powerlessness.

.THIRTY EIGHT

 The house was a mess. Raven was crying. She hadn't been fed all day. He had been late coming home. And Ashley was nowhere to be found.

 Jonathan would come up to Raven to hold her, but she would scream whenever he touched her. Then he would pull away, and she would scream that he was leaving her. In sheer frustration at seeing his child so bafflingly troubled, Jonathan hastily prepared a can of ravioli, hoping the food would calm her down enough so he could discover what was troubling her so.

 He sat in a chair by the window while Raven quickly gobbled the food in the chair behind him, too exhausted to deal with the insurmountable tasks before him. He listened to her as he stared in the autumn beauty before him, but he saw no colors. His thoughts were nowhere near the present moment. He would think about where the hell Ashley could be, and why couldn't she have just stayed here, why was she so pissed at him when he was so good to her, and what had he done that she had such a vengeful desire to punish him with this chaos, and the pain of Raven. He wondered if Ashley hit her and he was livid. Raven still was eating.

 Jenny should be here. He felt like he was living Jenny all over again, but at least she had a good reason for her illness. She had suffered much through all the generations of her people. They all had. They were thrown to the side and forgotten. Jenny's pain was the pain of a noble people whose heart had been speared through with a poison knife. Her pain he could have compassion for. What she'd suffered, he could understand.

 But even in her pain, Jenny would never put her needs over that of her child. Even at her worst, Jenny would constantly be by Raven's side. She would always feed her, take care of her. She would never leave Raven alone. To her, a mother could never desert a child. But Ashley was not her mother, and in her present state, was making that difference clear

 He would take her and go. Leave behind this life and start anew somewhere far away, where Raven could be free and be herself without considering her weird or degenerate.

 Too smart. That was what Claire Thomas had said about her step-granddaughter. Too fresh, really, was what she meant. Raven would always pester her with questions—why were clouds gray, why was there hair on her neck, why did she wear funny hair when she went out when she didn't have it at home, and the best, how old was she. Claire Thomas wanted to forget that children had minds and spirits. They were a nuisance that she was glad to have completed and only occasionally wished to visit.

 Raven was looking at him. Her vibrant, wise eyes were sad. He had a sudden urge to run to and take her in his arms. But she was going to speak. He saw her mouth open in just a sliver, the way it did when she was thinking about what she was going to say. It was better for him to sit and wait. She had to be allowed to speak somewhere.

 "She was at my school. She came into the classroom and yelled. She smelled funny." Her lips trembled as she spoke. Jonathan wondered with anger what the hell his wife had said to her, and hoped vainly that it was someone else that Raven was talking about.

 "Who? Who yelled?" Jonathan spat before he realized he'd startled his own daughter.

 "Ashley. Your wife." Raven retorted. Ashley was what Raven called her. She knew her mother was someone else. It was the last part that had been said with spite. And Jonathan felt guilty enough to be bothered by her jab.

 "What did she say?" Jonathan asked, perplexed by the situation suddenly at hand. Raven didn't answer for awhile. "Raven?" he asked again, wondering if she was far away in a land where no one could hurt her.

 "Daddy?" She hadn't called him Daddy ever since she'd started school. He was both warmed and alarmed.

 "What, baby bunny."

 "Am I a nigger?"

 Shock reverberated through Jonathan as he watched Raven's confused face. "Where did you hear that word?"

 "Ashley said it. What is a nigger? Ashley wouldn't be so angry if it wasn't, right?"

 Jonathan didn't know what to say. The rage he felt was inappropriate to display in front of such a small child. As was the name she was called today.

 "So, am I a nigger?"

 Jonathan breathed deeply several times to compose himself before speaking. "No, Raven, you're not."

 "Is Mommy one?"

 What the hell had Ashley done? "No, Raven, of course she isn't."

 "Then being a nigger is a bad thing," Raven concluded. Her eyes were round discs of fear.

 Jonathan's blood rose at what she'd deduced. He couldn't have his child base her worth on the words of a drunk. "There aren't any niggers, Raven. No one is a nigger. You know how sometimes kids get angry and call each other names that don't mean anything except to hurt one another?"

 "Like retard?"

 Jonathan found himself giving a little laugh at such an innocent quip. "Yes. Like retard. Well, nigger is something like retard. People say it for the same reason."

 Raven looked confused. "But Ashley is a grown-up."

 "Yes, she is."

 "Grownups aren't supposed to say little kid things. They're too big."

 Out of the mouth of babes. "Sometimes, when grownups are not feeling good, like when they have had too much wine, they do things that don't seem so grown-up," Jonathan explained. Raven pondered this, then drank from her cup.

 "Where is Ashley?" she asked as Jonathan started surveying the mess of the house, wondering where he could find the energy to clean it all up.

 "I don't really know," Jonathan admitted. "I haven't seen her all day."

 "She's been acting weird." She reached out her cup. "May I have more soda?"

 "Sure," Jonathan complied, thinking about what Raven had just said. What was going on with Ashley? He was married to her and he didn't know. The charming girl had been replaced with a shrill hyena. But then, in the middle of all that, the sweet interlude when Velda had been released from jail. It was the first and only time in a year that she had been what she used to be. He'd suddenly had hope. For them, as a couple, for them as a family.

 And now she was calling Raven a nigger.

 "Daddy?"

 He looked up.

 "I don't like Ashley much anymore. I'm sorry. I know you love her. Please don't be mad at me."

 He went and took Raven in his arms. Not for the first time, father and daughter were in total harmony.

THIRTY NINE

 Emmanuel Jackson was sleeping.

 Casper Williams still watched him.

 For days, things had been exactly the same.

 Except for one time, which was when Emmanuel woke up for just the briefest time.

 The Puerto Rican nurse had been on duty, the one that Williams didn't like. She gave him the creeps with all the statues of Mary by her desk with the rosary beads around them. She reminded Williams of a voodoo practitioner that Williams tried to convert but failed. Williams tried to steer as far as possible from her. She seemed to now she made him uncomfortable, and went out of her way to annoy him. He tried to pay the blood of Jesus on all things in the room to offset her evil spirit. Yet, every time, he was beset by the instinct that told him they'd met before. He couldn't figure out from where.

 He'd been thinking of this as he watch her take his protÉgÉ's vitals when it happened. At first, he thought he was imagining things, until he saw the nurse's face drop. Then he knew what he was seeing was real.

 He jumped and grabbed Emmanuel's hand, hoping the younger man would see and recognize him. The nurse came and had a closer look, too. Emmanuel made the same noise over and over, more in terror than monotone mantra. He struggled, eyes open, as though he was trying to break free from unseen force. Williams put his ear closer so he could better understand what he was saying.

 Williams looked at her then back to his surrogate son. So much pain. He wished he could take Jackson's pain upon himself. Now he had a glimpse at how much the Lord really loved his Bride to take her pain of sin upon him on the cross, for he would feel better to suffer himself than to watch this writhing agony.

 "Little girl, I'm sorry," Jackson said, shaking his head back and forth in a frenzy. "Little girl, please forgive me—"

 Williams did not notice the slam of the door as the nurse suddenly stormed out.

 He was watching despairingly as his son slipped from him, even as he was calling and begging him to stay, back into the state of oblivion from which he came from.

 He sat by his son the rest of the night and wept.

 Carmen was angry. For days, it had been this way. Every day she went to work, she would see the figure of Emmanuel Jackson, and she would feel hatred. Ever since the day he had awakened to speak, she wished to pull the plugs which kept him alive. Every time she saw the sketch the implicated the one she had come to love as her own cousin, she wished to take from Jackson what had been taken from him.

 It was like she was right back to the night of horror she had lived through, when she saw the lifeless body of her best friend and the small child who had once been so young, innocent, and once so full of life. There were times when she saw Jackson and Raul clinging to life with the tubes that his would be-killer wore. She had nightmares where she saw Raul, Lupe and Raulita walking toward her when suddenly the three where shot in the head, only Raul kept walking word her, blood all around then suddenly staining a hand—her hand. And she would wake up in a sweat, nearly having to say an entire mystery of rosary before her nerves calmed down enough for her to go back to sleep again.

 Tony Velda had begun working as a security guard in the hospital. One day, out of nowhere, he'd appeared there. Carmen suspected that the Reverend Casper Williams had something to do with this move. She wondered who in the high place was so stupid as to employ a man as security guard in an area where lay a man he'd been once suspected of brutally attacking. And she wondered what kind of love Williams had for his surrogate son if he was so willing to put him in danger just to prove what a gracious man he was to the acquitted.

 Hector came over once a week. Prior to Emmanuel's attack, Carmen would be lucky if she saw him once a month, the Reverend Jackson had never been too fond of their Catholic ways. She was glad to see him, nonetheless. She bore no resentment at his weakness for the will of his employer. Too much had happened in her life for her to bear grudges over things that could be easily forgiven. She was too busy for grievances.

 He had spoken to the DA. Carmen didn't quite like the idea, especially when she realized that the lawyer would soon be knocking on her door. But Hector had meant well; he had seen the reporter on TV, had been old enough to understand that his aunt and cousin had been killed when it happened. He loved Raul. Raul had been the only one who could keep up with the energetic, athletic Hector. They'd spent hours together. He knew that even after the years of absence and life on the street, Raul was incapable of murder. He'd only wanted to help. And Carmen was glad for that. She wondered what he would think if she shared her suspicion of his beloved preacher to him. She was afraid that more blood would be shed.

 There were still news bulletins about Raul almost every night. No one but the religious societies were in a panic, unlike other times when serial killers randomly struck at large. There were actually a few people ready to cheer the killer on. Most people thought the religious life to be outside them, and some opposed them outright. One medical transcriptionist joked that he hoped he took out Jerry Falwell next.

 Still, a young boy had died the same way as the preachers had. Though vile, perhaps he could have changed his life around. So many turned their life around once the immorality of youth was gone.

 Sometimes, watching a scowling Velda, she couldn't help but wonder if he'd gotten away with murder.

 Whoever it was, was looking for some kind of revenge against Raul, directly or indirectly. Carmen couldn't imagine who would want to do that, especially since Raul had been out of the world for so long. Someone had either single him out randomly, or was bearing an old, old grudge.

 Tony Velda and Casper Williams were talking; actually, Williams was talking, Velda listening and seeming none to happy for it. He caught Carmen's glance, and looked away. A cop and a woman in a suit walked into the lobby, and Carmen felt her heart beating harder. She had told Linda Schumacher to call and meet her at home. Here was too dangerous. She became more aware of Tony's gaze as the lawmen approached.

 They were looking for a young woman who'd been admitted the previous evening for numerous contusions and lacerations to her entire body, looking to press charges against her boyfriend. The two lawmen commented on how proud they were of this young woman to have the courage to do what many women wouldn't. Such courage, they remarked, was something too rare nowadays.

 Courage. Carmen thought about that. If whoever that girl was with Raul would have enough courage to come forward, maybe this whole charade with the cops would end for Raul. The longer she waited, the more suspicious Carmen became of her. Maybe she was the murderer, using Raul as a smokescreen. She was either the only witness or the murderer herself. It was hard to prove cases without witnesses. The DA needed her, one way or another.

 The pictures of her looked so familiar. Carmen would watch the captions and wonder, maybe Raulita was alive? But she knew it was just that this girl looked like her. Could have been Raulita's twin. Carmen wondered what the girl's grammar school pictures looked like. She wondered if they were doubles—sometimes that happened, there was someone who looked exactly like you somewhere else in the globe. She wondered what they would think of if they ran into each other on the streets. No chance of that now.

 Raulita would have been twenty-nine years old now. Carmen wondered what she would have been doing; would she have had a husband now? Children? She had just started thinking that boys were cute. She had been so tiny, so unlike both her parents. Like a little china doll, she was. Somehow, you'd think that if you touched her, she'd break. But, she'd been out there, running and playing softball, skating with the energy of a long-ago Lupe far from Carmen's reaches. Carmen would watch her and have hope for Lupe, somehow, maybe, the energy that had been so contagious in Raulita would come back to her mother. But it would never be.

 She was crying. There was a tear on her cheek that had been born unawares to her, slowly trickling down its ill-fated path, a young woman holding a child watching it reach its demise on worn-out paper. She had been shouting; now she was silent, staring at Carmen with the look that told it didn't know what words to say. She turned and left with the child, shushing her every time she made a sound. Carmen watched them go. She didn't know what to say either.

 Looked at Cindy Diesposito Hughes' picture.

 Hope for courage.

 The minstrel was singing to Raulita. She was not there, but he knew, in spirit, she was. He knew she heard him.

 He told her about how David slew Goliath. Raulita loved that story. She was always small, and though they were innocent of sin, sometimes children could be cruel, and they would tease her. She would come home and cry, because she was afraid of the bigger kids. So he wrote a song for her, telling the story of David and Goliath, how young, small David killed a huge, evil giant. He told her in the long how, in the end, no matter how great and strong evil seemed or how small and weak good was, good would always prevail. God always would protect the weak. He would never fail them.

 But he, a mere human, he would fail. Did. His young wife had done more to save their daughter, than him, a huge man. She had kicked, thrown pans in their face, yet he had done nothing , his arms restrained by the two of them. They had laughed at Lupe, laughed at her bravery. Then they killed her for it. He would not watch, but he could hear. A long time of pain. So much pain she had to suffer, while he had none.

 Evil he did not understand. Why had it been done? Lupe had already lost Pablo. Too much on a poor soul. So many years, suffering—

 Memories came back of her. She used to play ball a lot. She taught Raulita how to play baseball. Before Pablo died, Lupe used to watch boxing with Raulita. The minstrel had never approved of his wife and daughter enjoying violence, but they always did anyway, and it made them happy. Raulita would bounce up and down with glee whenever a predator came in for his kill--- one, two, slam—down! Ten, nine, eight…one! And Raulita jumping so hard the floor shook. Lupe would take her in her arms, laughing.

Not much laughter later on.

 There was a friend that Lupe had. They'd been friends for many years. Carmen, he thought. Her name was Carmen. She came and fixed meals sometimes, would sit with Lupe on the fire escape. Raulita used to stare with fear at her mother. Carmen would come and tell her jokes. Happy memories, like the time she and Lupe led a march in the Puerto Rican day parade. The minstrel and the man she'd been going with cheered them on. Then Lupe tripped over her untied saddle shoelace, and presto, like dominoes, the whole parade landed in one big heap. Raulita laughed when she'd first hear this story, wanting Carmen to tell it again and again almost every time she came over. Each time Carmen told it, Raulita laughed. It was good to see joy in her face.

 Then they were gone. He woke up from the hospital, they weren't to be found anywhere. He'd had a vague memory of them coming with him,. When he was taken away, so were they.

 No one had news. He had gone to the desk, to every doctor he could find. No one would tell him where they were. He remembered tearing through every room on the floor, trying to see if, by any hope, they were there, waiting for him. He did not know if they were dead, or if they were alive. He could not put them to rest.

 She had left again, the way it was meant to be, he supposed. Going her road, to make her own path. She didn't need him anymore. Didn't want him. He was saddened as the last speck of her disappeared.

 He hoped that one day she would want him back.

FORTY

 The residents of the Bronxville Community were angry. Since the minstrel's public arrival, several new bums had arrived. Like the minstrel, they were impossible to get rid of. Put them in jail for a night, they'd be back the next day like nothing happened.

 They were impossible to help. If you offered them food, they would snap at you, implying that the offer was nothing more than an implication that they couldn't take care of themselves. Which they couldn't. If they could, why would they sleep on grates and eat from garbage cans. This was not normal. This as not civilized. Of course the sane residents thought that these people couldn't take care of themselves. What else should they think?

 And it was unnerving. People would be coming home from work in the November darkness to have one of these crazies walk in front of them, talking to themselves, cursing passerby. It was startling, particularly when there were no dark shadows to warn you of their presence. During the day, housewives/homemakers/domestic engineers/women-who-worked-at-home/soccer moms were harassed, afraid that they would be attacked and robbed and (raped) though no one mentioned the word, they knew that was what was meant by (attacked). Children were ordered to come straight home from school, often with anxious housewives/homemakers/domestic engineers/women-who-worked-at-home/soccer moms or, as the case may be, nannies/baby-sitters/childcare providers who were afraid to get sued if their charges had a speck of dirt on them, all waiting in their prospective herds at home, surrogate moms for pay on one side, real moms for no pay on the other. Well, the knowledge that one was a serial killer didn't help, and who could blame them. To them, it was as though madmen ruled the streets, and the good people were remanded indoors as prisoners.

 For some, the fear was not as strong. These were the ones with the knowledge that quite soon, they would be enveloped in walls of safety. Once more, control would be within their hands. For some, the knowledge was comforting news in time of unrest. For others, anxiety abounded. They would remember Mark Timothy Haines and the others before him and wondered if it would be too little, too late. For these people, the killing of Haines had crossed a line where no man was safe, all were vulnerable. There would be no safety until the walls were closed.

 And there were others with fears that paralyzed. They were the seven who had been invited into safety's grasp only to have the doors slammed into their faces as they accepted the invitation. It was a horrifying experience. They felt like they were innocent lambs being left to wolves. They would go to the town where the edges of serf blurred, and panic at the knowledge that this world was now their world. They didn't belong here among the ghosts and goblins. They belonged in comfort and peace. They had earned it.

 Emmanuel Jackson's house was vandalized. Nobody was sure how or when it happened. Everyone who was interviewed swore they heard nothing. It was damaged sometime between late Thursday afternoon and early Friday morning. Several windows had been broken, and someone had spray-painted some monstrous figure on the front door. Some were indifferent, some were terrified, both for the same reason—that the niggers had done it. For some, it meant that niggers couldn't even treat their won right, hell, look at the damage they did in LA. For the others, the niggers' mark had stronger, more terrifying implications—that they had come and attacked right next door. At any moment, they could be next. No security.

 Williams had gathered some of the congregation together to speak to the DA the Monday afterward Williams knew without a doubt that this was a hate crime perpetrated by the white folk of the town. They laughed right in the DA's office as several assistants stood around the coffee pot bullshitting about how flimsy people's alibis were. One guy killed his wife because she didn't put the dishes away the way his mother did. It had been his spousal right, he said. The Bible told him so, wives submit yourself to your husband. Guess he forgot to read the next paragraph that said for husbands to love their wives as Jesus loved the church. Oh yeah. Oops, sorry. Another robbed this white guy because he looked like the white guy that fired him, old geezer that he was. This nigger had made sure that justice was done. All laughed and turned.

 To face Williams and his angry followers. And there was screaming. And there was yelling. All watched as two screamed, black on white.

 When was Emmanuel Jackson going to be avenged? Hollered one.

 When everyone else was, the scream came back.

 The joy of modern technology: and instant picture care of Polaroid: the damaged house of Emmanuel Jackson.

Was this justice! They screamed.

 Was it justice that two women died at his hands? What a blessed preacher! What a holy man!

 Silence. God has forgiven him! Came the noble cry.

 Yeah, maybe then you damn well should forgive whoever did this to your friend. Hell, if God can forgive, why can't you, holy man?

 The blue shirts were coming. One of the spectators dashed away while the screaming was still not so dangerous. By now, fingers were poked in the opponents face. Look, whitey, this is a black man talking. Look, Negro, this is the white man talking.

 Tsk, tsk, tsk!! Not so nice for a preacher! The ADA yelled in victory as the blue shirts pulled her adversary away.

 Linda Schumacher saluted Casper Williams as he damned her soul in dismissal.

 Cindy Diesposito was a hot platinum blonde on a train. Look out, Heather Locklear. She had traded in her tatters for a pink suit she'd found in the donation bin. Took a lot of searching to find a decent rack of clothes. She'd been lucky not to get caught. God forbid, a homeless woman taking clothes that were for the homeless. Sure, totally logical.

 She lay her head back in her seat. There was a passenger in the seat across from her who paid her no heed. It felt nice to not be noticed. She felt ordinary. She never knew what an extraordinary feeling it was to feel ordinary.

 Seventeen dollars extra. She'd spent five on a romance novel at the train station. Then she passed someone holding a tin can, wanting money for food. She'd used another dollar to buy him a cup of soup. He took her offering and smashed it upon the ground. She called him a fucking dick, and was pissed. So now, because of the crack-addicted bozo, she had eleven dollars left. Damn, she needed the money for cabfare to where she was going. What the hell was she doing, acting like a bored housewife panting over Fabio and pretending she was Mother Theresa when she couldn't get past being Mary Magdalene? Well, hell, she could walk. Not like she wasn't used to it, hah hah. What she really needed to do right now was eat. Anything would do. When she was famished, she couldn't think straight. The last time she ate was, God, she didn't even remember. She had no idea how she'd survived like this. She shouldn't question.

 There was a line in the dining car. Sighing, Cindy resigned herself to wait. She did not like the feeling that standing in line gave her. It made her feel trapped, especially as someone closed the line by coming to stand right behind her. She felt like an alien. Normal life was beyond her grasp at this point. If she stayed in it, it would take much getting used to.

 There were eyes everywhere. Cindy kept her guard up for any unusual signals. None were forthcoming. There was no sense of anyone watching her, or following her. Nonetheless, every time she met a stranger's eyes, she panicked. You could never trust the nice ones. Cindy found herself made paranoid by the experience.

 She'd walked to New York. One time, when she was sixteen. She'd been tied of the old life and the poverty. Somehow, living hungry on the streets didn't seem as bad as wearing her mother's hand-me-downs and not being able to go out with friends on the weekend because you couldn't afford it. Some priorities.

 She'd made it in a month. Man, her legs ached. When she got there, she stayed with a friend of hers from the old neighborhood who'd gotten a life. It had been so cool back then, going and hanging out in Soho and the Village. There had been no rules. Anything you wanted to do was fine, as long as it didn't inflict on the rights of others. You could have all the sex, booze and drugs you wanted. These things, to a wild teenager who wanted nothing more than to escape herself, were the important things in life. Cindy lived it up there. Men every night bearing gifts of drugs for her. She'd do lines and the ugliest guy seemed attractive, especially if the snow was good. School didn't matter. Neither did the future. The here and now with the glitziness and rawness of the early eighties, these were the happening things. Cindy felt like she'd arrived.

 Down in the Village was where she'd met Patrick. They'd hated each other at first, which was what she should have continued doing. Her first impression of him was that he was a stuck-up asshole. He dressed in a business suit, had his nose up in the air, and used five syllable words to describe himself. Cindy and Wendy both made fun of him. They mimicked his hand expressions. He would point in the air a lot when he talked. She and Wendy pointed, too, with their middle finger, that is.

 He saw them. He said fuck you, bitches. Cindy and Wendy oohed and ahhed in mock terror. Then he put a white bag on the table. It was the best damn coke they'd ever had.

 So they sat and partied. In the meantime, Patrick went into a sob story of how his big sister was hit by a drunk driver. He'd never thought once about driving home after getting bombed. Then he had to identify his sister's body because his parents were in Tahiti with his younger brother, and his other sister lived in Hawaii.

 Wow, Wendy cut in. Cindy, she heard the arrogance. Man it pissed her off, but man it turned her on. Sniff sniff, snort snort. Turn her on as his eyes blaze at his monologue was interrupted.

Yeah. Well, since then, Patrick never drove when he was drunk. Maybe once in awhile when he was stoned, because what was grass? But never when he was drunk. He used the subway instead.

 Cindy decided he had nice eyes.

 So they got drunk and stoned and high that night together. Wendy, she went and passed out, leaving the two of them to fuck and get to sink each other's tentacles into each other. Wendy, if she hadn't gone off and drank a bottle of tequila on top of it all, would have been there, and it would have just been a decadent and quick threesome that would have ended in a bad hangover. But that wasn't meant to be, and she wound up with a husband instead. Funny, how little things could wind up to be so important as to alter a life. In her case, it was a bottle of Cuervo Gold.

 So they got drunk and stoned that night together. She found out that he was from Boston. Even drunk off her ass she could hear him loud and clear saying cah instead of car. So they would up talking about the old neighborhood, even though that was the last thing in the world she wanted to talk about. It turned out that Cindy's next door neighbor had worked for his family as a maid. Cindy felt instantly paranoid that he would run back and tell her mother where she was. After all, he was an adult. He was nineteen. Adults pulled that kind of shit. So she told him she was eighteen. He believed her. So Patrick had spent most of his courtship—if you could call it that—thinking that she was two years older than she was. What a surprise it had been for him when they went for the marriage certificate and he discovered a nineteen year old bride instead of a twenty-one year old, meaning that for two years his ass could have been in jail just for fucking her. She got some beating that night, the third or fourth of its kind. Looking back, Cindy could hardly blame him. She would have beaten him up if he'd lied like that. She would have stood up for being fucked over like that. She didn't know what that said about her, that she agreed with a violent ethic, whether she was the victim or not.

 She'd slept with him that night, a good fuck. She was immediately hooked and couldn't get enough of him. Where he was, she would follow. He was staying in a loft on the Upper West Side for the summertime. She found herself gradually moving in one outfit at a time. Cindy had long since lost her virginity, but for the first time, she was mad in lust and love, And by the way he made love, so was Patrick.

 What had she loved about him. People used to ask that all the time of her, especially the ones who'd witnessed aspects of his rageful behavior. She would, in those early days, say it was because he loved her. Now, older and wiser, she would just say, she didn't know.

 Then in September, he was gone. Back to Boston in his grand mansion, probably with all the girlfriends he wanted falling at his feet. Cindy had always wondered throughout the summer why someone like him would want with someone like her. Many times, when he talked, she felt out of his league. He sounded educated. Unless he was high, which only was on weekends, he hardly cursed. With Cindy, every other word she said was fuck. Over the years, Patrick would degenerate, but then, he had the refined talk of educated Protestant ministers.

 And he was Protestant. Episcopalian, to be exact. They were so weird. Cindy was used to the Italian Catholics of her neighborhood. Everyone said what was on their mind. There was no bullshit etiquette protocol. But he was hard to read, like he had no feelings. They couldn't be expressed. Anger and joy looked the same on him—a calm, inexpressive stance. Everything had to be polite and perfect. Cindy wondered why she wanted this man. Yet his aloofness made her want him more. He would call, then not show up. She would wait for him, and feel like a fool for waiting for him, and feel like a fool for waiting for him, and yet feel helpless to do anything but wait for him.

 The first time she didn't wait was the first time he hit her.

 October: five months after they'd met and had the good coke and sex. He was back in Boston, and would call when he wanted to get together with her, which would be about once or twice a week, whenever he wanted. Cindy was beginning to get nervous about this whole arrangement; and Wendy was getting lame, too, wondering when Cindy was getting a job. After all, even free-spirits had to pay the bills. One time, Cindy had a job interview for this boutique. Unfortunately, Patrick was supposed to call. The job interview was for ten-thirty in the morning and Patrick was supposed to call at eight, which obviously from past experience didn't mean too much.

 And neither did it this time. Eight o'clock, eight-thirty, nine o'clock, nine-thirty. Cindy got angry. She had to make a choice. Patrick or the boutique. At ten-thirteen, desperation chose the boutique for her. In no way or shape did she want to wind up back home. She needed money. The job won.

 Patrick was a sore loser. When they played cards over the summertime with Wendy and everybody else, he would frequently lose, and then heaven knew no fury like Hughes scorned. He'd kick the table, call everyone including Cindy a fucking cheater, and twice threw glass pitchers of beer at the wall (Wendy quickly purchased plastic ones). Once time he almost threw his fist in Chad's face. Chad was this guy that Wendy was screwing, and he didn't put up with any shit. He jumped over the table and started beating on Patrick/ That didn't teach him anything. Next time was the second time that the beer pitcher was shattered. Nothing could scare Patrick when he lost.

 Cindy was home when the insistent knock came. The interview went well; she was to start work on Monday. Wendy had come home for a celebration lunch with her and had returned to her bookstore job an hour earlier. Cindy was busy smoking weed and having munchies and watching Erica/ Susan Lucci break yet another heart when pound, pound, pound, pound. Cindy nearly had a heart attack as she jumped to the door to see what the noise was all about. When she saw Patrick through the keyhole, she thought something terrible must have happened. And she was right.

 He shoved her against the wall by her throat when he came in, yelling in her face as she slowly choked. Then he smacked her, punched her in her gut. She lost track of where and when the blows fell. She felt powerless to fight back, she was in so much pain.

 It stopped because someone saw. Patrick in his haste to inflict his violence had forgotten to shut the door behind him. It was only when a hysterical "Omigosh," came from the hall that he bothered to turn and look at Cindy's neighbor three doors down. From there, he slammed the door shut.

 Cindy returned to Boston in grand style, albeit with physical agony. A stretch limo with champagne, which had its benefits in curing certain pains that she now felt. Patrick shoved a silk dress at her and ordered her to put it on, which she did in full view of the leering limo driver. She smiled and waved back. Patrick smacked her. The driver said nothing, but he kept his eyes on the road from that point on.

 Patrick had a penthouse. Beautiful view if one had eyes that were not so bruised so as to see the scenery. Patrick said they were meeting his mother. And tell two lies: they met at college and you fell down the stairs. Cindy was too dazed and numb to do anything but comply.

 Which she did for fourteen years—damn, that was a long time. But she never went hungry and never had to smell urine in the hallways, or on herself. For a long time, it was enough of a payoff.

 Cindy needed to know who she was. Thirty years was supposed to be a time of identity, but she assumed that presumption was based on people who'd led normal lives and who had some basic ground on which to make this grand breakthrough. She had nothing to base it on. She would have to start at the beginning. Which was why she was going home. What ever that was supposed to be.

 Thanksgiving had always been a time of celebration in his home. He had so much to be grateful for.

 This life he was given was a gift. God didn't have to have done so, he had seen fit to give him life on this Earth and one day to join Him forever in the glorious kingdom of heaven. Each year he celebrated this with Lupe and Raulita at Thanksgiving. The feast resembled life with all the treasures of the world to behold.

 He missed those times. Seeing Raulita again, he'd hoped they would come true. But it was not to be.

 He saw the men he usually saw at this time,. Last time he had missed work because he had been following Raulita. But he needed money to eat. And he would not beg. He would work for his food. He needed work. Among these men, he would find work.

 The man who usually was there by himself was there again, sleeping as usual. The minstrel began to walk away when he heard a voice behind him.

 "Raul!" The voice called.

 He had heard it often. Raul. Why, he was not sure.

 "Raul! Are you deaf, man!" the voice called out in Spanish. The minstrel turned to hear the voice. "Yeah, you. Come here!"

 Puzzled, the minstrel obeyed his command. Raul. It felt good. Raul. Him?

 The siesta man nodded at him as he stood in front of him. "You come for work this week, eh? We missed you last week."

 The minstrel nodded. "I was with my daughter."

 "Your daughter? Ah, how nice. My daughter, I haven't seen her for ages. She's in Hispanola. I hope to one day bring her here. You are lucky to have a daughter so close."

 The minstrel swallowed a lump that had suddenly formed in his throat. "Yes, I know."

 "There was a white man looking for you last week, amigo."

 "Al Greenwood."

 "No. Not him. But he looked for you last week, too. But I speak to you of a different white man."

 The minstrel felt confused. Did he know where Lupe was, or Raulita went? He felt an urge to see this man. Something told him that it was very important that he did so.

 "When will he come back? Do you know?"

 The siesta man shrugged like he was changing sleeping positions. "I told him to come back here today. So far, he hasn't come." The minstrel stopped for a moment to wonder who it could be. "Maybe he will come. Al Greenwood should be here sometime. Maybe, your mystery man will too."

 The minstrel nodded, thanking the siesta man. He hoped the white man would come soon. He had many questions to ask. Maybe, he would have good news to him.

FORTY ONE

 Jonathan felt haggard. He felt like an old man before his time. The past week had been insane for him. Raven had been sick with the flu, so Jonathan spent most of his time in the house. He would think the stress of Ashley's sudden disappearance caused Raven's sullenness, and then would wonder if her distraught had been the beginning of her illness, nothing to do with the trauma she'd suffered.

Jonathan spent the week grappling through the rubble that his wife had caused and sitting listlessly by his daughter's bedside. The Thursday meeting with Al Greenwood came and went without recognition. He spent the time worrying about his daughter. He couldn't bear it if he lost her, too.

 He only knew when Monday came because the Today show said it was. Today, he would have to start rebuilding his life. He called the ADA Linda Schumacher to find her brother Steven's phone number. Steven Schumacher was a respected divorce lawyer. He couldn't have his daughter cry like this anymore. She was the only gem in his possession.

 Still no word from Frawley. Disappearances were rampant in his life; first his key witness, then his boss and now his wife. If he didn't know better, he'd think he was wearing a repellent, he thought, the first amusing thought in almost a week. All these vanishings could give a man a complex if he let them.

 He felt some alarm when he called Linda Schumacher's number and got no answer. It was only seven-forty, but he had always known her to be a super early bird, always eager to try and make points with the DA to hopefully to get his backing for a nomination to take his place. She had the ambition he lacked. Ashley always said he lacked ambition.

 Maybe Linda was running late today, was his first conclusion, but when several more phone calls led him past nine o'clock, he became baffled. Something strange was happening. Yet another disappearance.

 Raven shuffled around the room, sniffling with a cold and restless energy. She would go back to school tomorrow. She was bored; not well enough to do anything constructive but too well to want to sit around and do nothing. It was frustrating for her, and she was complaining. Jonathan found himself getting impatient, at her rovings, on the verge of snapping at the daughter he treasured. He was as restless as she was.

 Local news. He wished to keep updated. He tried the radio but it didn't keep his eyes occupied. On TV, there was nothing but talk shows, which would stay that way until twelve. He wondered if they found the minstrel. Hopefully, he was still free.

 Finally, at twelve, there was news. More killings, domestic violence. It was easy to become immune to another's terror. So much dispassion, it made Jonathan angry.

 Then a clip came, no pictures. Easy to pass over in the midst of numbing violence. Linda Schumacher, assistant DA, the prosecutor in charge of the Minstrel Killings, had her legal duties suspended. The irony was not lost on Jonathan. Innocent until proven guilty, but this man was proven guilty without ever being arrested. How could she be in charge of a case that didn't exist? But she wasn't now. Something had gone wrong.

 There were angry people thronging around the courtroom. Too many important leaders had died at the hands of a maniac, the reporter shouted amidst the din. They wanted answers from a justice system that refused to hear them. They were angry.

This Thursday, Al Greenwood would stop by the illegals and look for Raul. Perhaps, Jonathan thought, he should get in touch with the man before then. .

 He called to Raven to get dressed. They were going to the library. She was quite excited at the prospect of an outing after a week of confinement. He had the Internet at home but he needed the change. Jonathan watched her glee and was glad for her. At least, if he'd failed at his own happiness, he'd been able to give just a little to his young daughter.

 They drove. Raven wanted to walk there but Jonathan didn't want her to get sick all over again in the cold. They said the temperature didn't make anyone sick, but he didn't believe that. Raven had been fine until she spent all day in-line skating outside. Theories changed all the time anyway. It was best to rely on parental intuition. There was a bond there that would be impossible to forget.

 They should go back out to Oklahoma for a vacation. Maybe for Easter, he and Raven would go. By then, whatever was going on with Ashley would be settled, and they could take a much needed break from everything. Jonathan hadn't been able to take a vacation for three years now, just trying to work enough to pay the bills and go to law school. The bar would be in March. He needed to pass this time. For the last two years, he'd avoided the prospect of failing again. Maybe he could take it in Oklahoma. He would probably pass. Each time he failed the New York one, it had only been by a little bit. Anywhere else, he'd be a lawyer by now. New York just seemed to make it tough all around.

 Raven made a dash for the young adult and paperbacks as soon as they entered it. Jonathan smiled again at her enthusiasm. He hoped nothing would ruin that for her. It made her so special. Only until she disappeared behind the rows of stacks did he go about his work. He missed her already.

 There were stacks of White Pages. Jonathan hoped that Al Greenwood was listed. It would make everything easy for him. HE took down the volumes for Putnam, Dutchess, Westchester, and, against his better judgment, took the Nassau and Suffolk volumes down as well. Greenwood was common but not terribly so. As Jonathan flowed through them there were ten or eleven entries for the name, but none that were helpful to him. No Al Greenwood, no Albert Greenwood, Alfred, Alfonse, or even A. Greenwood. He was out of luck.

 He sat with his hands in his face, burying his frustration. Out of the corner of his eye, just as he was getting up, his eye caught a stray issue of the Greenwich Times lying on the table. He stared at it, getting an intuition to once more check the phone books for Connecticut. He looked for the out-of-state—Newark, Bergen, Essex; everything seemed to be New Jersey. Jonathan began to wonder if this library realized there were forty-eight other states in the nation when he came across exactly what he was looking for. Greenwich/Norwalk area.

 Greene, Greenwich, Greenwood. He skimmed. Bingo. Second entry. Albert Greenwood. The only entry that would qualify, but it did. Jonathan felt his heart palpitate, not knowing if what he was about to do was the right thing.

 Walking to the phone, His heart thumped like crazy as he dialed the Greenwich number. Paranoid, his eyes darted about him, unconsciously searching the people about him to see if they were watching. In no way did he want this conversation overheard. This wasn't even his job. He hadn't passed the bar.

 Three rings, four. Jonathan got more nervous with each passing ring. He wondered if he was doing the right thing.

 "Hello?" A voice cracked from the other end.

 Jonathan was momentarily distracted. "H-hello. Is Al Greenwood there?"

 "Who wants to know?"

 Jonathan wondered what he should be saying next. He wasn't that practiced in talking. Suddenly he was speaking without realizing it. "My name is Joseph Pfeifer. I want to help and employee of yours named Raul."

 There was a silence. For a moment, Jonathan wondered if the line had gone dead, and nearly panicked. A snicker from the other end brought relief.

 "Raul. Now why would Raul need help? He's one of the most independent men I know."

 "Have you been watching the news, Mr. Greenwood?"

 "Can't say that I do, son. All they talk about is who got killed and who got mugged. Not much interest to me, I'm afraid. Say, who did you say that you work for?"

 "I didn't. I work by myself. I'm a lawyer's assistant."

 "Hmm." Another silence.

 "Raul has been wrongly accused of a crime. I was wondering if you could help me out."

 "What did they say he did?" Greenwood asked with a touch of amusement.

 "Murder, sir. He's been framed for multiple murders."

 "Murder! That's absurd. Who could come up with such a thing? He's the most religious man I know, saving up money for when he gets his family back—" Greenwood suddenly stopped, perhaps afraid that he was leading himself into a trap. "I can't imagine."

 "That's what I'd like to speak to you about. I would like to have him hidden." There. It was out. Jonathan's heart was racing. Planning to hide a fugitive with someone who had illegals. Jonathan could forget about the bar if anyone discovered this. And yet, it did not feel wrong. In fact, he felt a strange calm. Something had challenged him to take a side, and he had. And he knew he'd chosen the right one.

 Greenwood would meet with him. A diner in Westchester. He wanted to meet him before doing business, Jonathan knew. A man dealing in illegal endeavors had to be careful. A concept that Jonathan was going to have to learn to adapt to.

 He got off the phone and looked for a couple of books of his own. It had been awhile since he'd gotten into a good book; there never seemed to be enough time. But life had changed and his mind needed a refuge to hide in. The legal thrillers were the only thing that interested him despite the fact that they were not really escapades but extensions of his work. John Grisham's "A Time to Kill" and Richard North Patterson's "Private Screening" came off the shelves. Lawyers like him who'd gotten out of the business. Perhaps he should follow their example and write a book himself. The business he was in was too dangerous. Perhaps he should have not gotten himself involved with Raul the minstrel's troubles; after all, he had Raven to worry about. He was all that she had. What was he doing? If he went away to jail, who would take care of her?

 Jenny's people was a proud people. They lived lives of principle, to build character was the highest, most noble endeavor of them all. When Raven was born, he was honored to raise her in that tradition. If there was someone in trouble, she should be raised to know that it was important not to turn your back on him, no matter who he was. Principle should come before personality and prestige; too many people lived for the latter and not for the former. Perhaps that was the reason why there was so much contempt in the world.

 Wednesday, this Wednesday he would go upstate. Sometime around lunchtime. Jonathan would have found it ironic if Frawley returned to work that day, expecting Jonathan to be a slave as usual. He wondered where Frawley was now. Which reminded him that he should call Linda again.

 The sun was almost gone when he and Raven left the library. Jonathan had mentally engrossed in a world where Jews were bombed for being Jews and trials hung because lawyers played upon race. He had come here for rest and escape, and yet the world he'd traveled to was no different from his own. Even in the world of fantasies, there was hate. He always tried to teach Raven to love. Where could he go to show her it prevailed?

FORTY TWO

 Russell Frawley had been feeling sorry for himself for too long. Three weeks in a flophouse with a bunch of drunks. A good lawyer like him shouldn't have to live like this.

 His sometime friend and all-round rival had been coming to see him, so often that Frawley found himself suspicious of Ray Spinella's motives. With Spinella, not too many things were free. Even sex came with price tag.

 Spinella brought beer, told Frawley that he should get a real apartment. Frawley got this lecture every time he was over, which was too often. But one time, the tenor of the conversation changed. He was on suspension. He really didn't know why this happened. Just the previous week, he had this lady Schumacher had been working on the minstrel case. Schumacher had told Spinella that she was going to recommend dropping charges against the hobo. There simply wasn't enough hard evidence to tie him to the case, she'd said. Spinella hadn't cared one way or another. He was sick of the niggers complaining an he rich assholes whining that someone hadn't been arrested. Their crimes weren't the only ones in this city.

 But now he and Schumacher were out of a job. Just out of the blue, the commissioner called him in and pit him on volunteer mandatory leave of absence, though Spinella didn't quite remember volunteering for anything. For not following through on police procedures, whatever the hell that meant. Spinella hadn't even bothered to ask. He hadn't come up with a booking, and he was a bad little boy for making terrible important people upset by his actions. One couldn't have that, you see.

 Frawley had finally called him just after the suspension. It had been broadcast all over the evening news. Now a few days later, the DA's press aide had finally addressed cranky media that had been knocking at the attorney's office night and day. No, the DA was not available for comment, but the press aid was willing to confirm the reports that Linda Schumacher, ADA, had voluntarily stepped down from her position. The DA hoped for her speedy return once the issue of the debate was settled. Not much was said about Spinella. Nobody wanted to now about a graying, paunchy cop anyway, Spinella complained. The sexy gal made better headlines than he.

 Frawley wanted him to go away. Here, Frawley forgot that he was a graying paunchy lawyer. He felt young again, like he did when he was a struggling law student. Those were the days; the keg parties all night, plenty of booze and pot to go around. Sometimes there were women; that had stopped, at least for awhile, when he met Joan. There had been only one woman since he'd gotten here, but he was satisfied. Funny, but the wealth that he'd been so terrified of losing didn't occur much to him. He had a lawyer, the best in the business. Already, he'd gotten the judge to throw out some of his wife's claims. There was ample evidence of her alcoholism and not one shit of his supposed abuse. His only witness was dead, an had been for ten years.

 So maybe he'd get back to work. Maybe not. His lawyer would get a good settlement for him. Marital assets, let's see. The home was in his name, and worth four hundred fifty thousand. IRA, also his. There was no kid for her to raise or put through college. But just in case there was some judge that bought the pity pot act of poor Joan Frawley having to sit on her butt and not earn a living while Quentin drugged himself to death, it was best to envision it being split in half for his own peace of mind. So, for him, two hundred. And the bank accounts, which totaled a little over two million. A million for him. Not bad. The way he was living now, it would last a lifetime without his ever having to go to work. So to hear about the minstrel guy screwing up everyone's life, he didn't care. Served them all for letting the right man go. He hoped Velda or the minstrel or whoever the hell it was off the holy hell bunch of them.

 Sometimes he thought of Cindy, AKA Addie. He didn't think of her as much as he used to, but maybe that was because he was drunk so much nowadays. Sometimes, he hated her. It was because of her that he'd been thrown out of his old life, while she was busy living high on the hog. Geez. An heir's widow. Well, maybe she'd be fucked over too. Joan fucked him over. Maybe she'd do the same to this Addie chick. Lately, when Joan said the word, everyone listened. Maybe she'd expose this Addie chick. Hell, she wasn't any kidnap victim. Anyone with an ounce of brains would know that.

 And yet, maybe there was a chance that he could win with this. Shit, if he proved Joan an incompetent, like a jealous wife, maybe he could destroy her credibility. He'd got back everything. It would be funny. Joan was going have to choose between the Cindy the kidnap victim or send the terrible Minstrel to jail, or Cindy the slut who her husband made a fool of with.

 Maybe he should get his ass back to work now.

 Carmen Sanchez sat in her apartment. She felt unsafe here with the guns just down on the street below, but now half as unsafe as she felt at work nowadays.

 There was a house for her now. The one on Rosedale. Fifty-three years old and she'd never owned a home. Some people would be buying a dream house in Florida at her age. But hers had always been a dream. So much work. If she thought of it, she could be envious of those who seemed to accumulate wealth just by their very touch. The devil could be sly with his temptation. Sin never presented itself in its true vile form when it first approached. There was always the lure of pleasure or power lurking somewhere in its confines. To have all the material comforts of this world and not work for them sounded liberating to her now. Sometimes, the pressure was just too much.

 Carlos was doing better. The news that his favorite cousin could still be alive sparked new life in him. He was brighter and more cheerful, not weighted down with the bog of pessimism that seemed to constantly accost him.

FORTY THREE

The Wednesday that Jonathan planned to meet Al Greenwood passed with little fanfare. Jonathan was grateful for the quiet so he could collect his thoughts, detach himself from the chaos surrounding him. There were no phone calls from irate clients like Mark Timothy Haines Sr. Marv Cohen and company. No harassment from Joan Frawley, or anyone linked with the Thomases. They had taken all their fanfare elsewhere for the day. Jonathan couldn't say he missed it.

 Linda was going to pick up Raven after school, so she would be okay . He was glad that Raven could have a female figure to look up to in this crisis of losing another mother. She and Linda seemed to get along well, more like buddies than anything else, because Linda was anything but maternal. It didn't make her a danger to children, though, and she sure as hell wasn't getting drunk around his daughter. Where Jenny had been passionate, and Ashley domestic, Linda was driven and analytical. Though at this point, neither one of them were even close to thinking of renewing their law school flirtation. And as long as the law said he was married, Jonathan thought of himself that way too. He saw no reason to start an emotional entanglement when he still was wrapped in another.

Traffic was light heading north, and it was two-fifty when he pulled into the diner off of I-84 in Putnam county, ten minutes early for his meeting with Greenwood. It was located on a state highway that buzzed with the anonymity and busyness that its proximity to the interstate provided. Jonathan wondered why a recluse like Greenwood would choose such a place to meet, but realized the randomness might set the perfect tone for their encounter. No one stuck around long enough to be known or suspected of anything.

The black Chevy pickup that Greenwood had described as his was parked in front of the diner window facing the highway. Both adjacent parking spots were empty, and Jonathan eased his Honda into the right one. As he looked up at the restaurant window, he saw a man in a booth watching him park. When he got out of the car, the man raised a hand in salutation. Jonathan could make out the balding and bespectacled man with a cigar, and recognized the man as Greenwood. He looked just as Jonathan thought he'd look: a man with a watchful eye on the world, removed and amused by it all. Jonathan returned the salutation and took a deep breath, passing several truckers leaving the diner who headed back to their rigs in their own destiny of anonymity. Jonathan wondered what destiny awaited him inside.

 The diner was mostly empty except for a few lone truckers sitting at the counter and several elderly couples in booths sitting together in silence watching steaming coffee like it was a tea reading telling them of their pasts. Greenwood was seated at the corner booth, still staring out the window as though he was looking for the next man he could point and recognize. He didn't budge until Jonathan actually sat down in the booth with him,

 you found the place all right," Greenwood offered as greeting.

 "It was pretty convenient, being off the highway."

 "I figured as much. Wouldn't do either one of us any good if I sent you to a place that you couldn't find. Al Greenwood," he offered, putting down his coffee and extending his hand. The other still held the cigar.

 "Jonathan Pfeifer," Jon obliged as they shook hands.

 "Nice to meet you, Jonathan." Greenwood pointed at the cigar. "I apologize in advance for the vice. Gave up cigarettes a couple of years ago, but I couldn't lick these,"

 "That's okay. I understand. My daughter's mother had trouble stopping cigarettes."

 "They're crazy to quit. Have you ever smoked?" Jon shook his head, as Greenwood took a long drag and exhaled. "Smart man. Do you want anything? Lunch? Coffee? I already ate at home. Bertha is the best housekeeper a man could have. I've had her since I lost Mary, my wife, two years ago. I never pass up one of her Southern cooking meals."

 Jonathan smiled. "I do most of the cooking in my house." A smiling dark-haired china doll of a server who heeded Greenwood's beckoning took Jonathan's order of coffee and bagel. Though this would be the first thing he ate today, he felt too knotted to be hungry. He hoped that by saving Raul he wouldn't be sacrificing Raven.

 "I'm glad you decided to come," Greenwood pronounced.

 "Why would you think I wouldn't?"

 Greenwood lifted his shoulder in what appeared more to be stretching than a shrug. "I couldn't judge how serious you were about Raul, or what you said about saving him. For all I know, you were just a mole from the INS, trying to get me to say something I shouldn't on the phone, and this whole meeting was a ploy."

 "And now that you've met me, you think I'm the real deal."

 "I have no idea. Though now that I've met you face to face, I feel more secure. I've noticed no unmarked cars accompanying you. But even if you are trying to set me up, I have no concern. I will only talk to you about Raul. And Raul is legitimate, being a Puerto Rican national. Maybe you can try to get me on tax evasion for paying Raul in cash. But see, you have no proof that he even is my employee. As far as I am concerned, this conversation is about the safety of my good friend Raul."

 "I was intending the conversation to go along that vein," Jonathan concurred.

 "Then we have a good basis to start with." The server appeared with Jonathan's bagel and coffee and proceeded to refill Greenwood's cup without asking. Jonathan was not sure if the implicit gesture was because he had been here waiting a long time or if he was well known here. Jonathan turned to the cacophony of servers titterring and felt the curiosity of his presence emanating from then, stealing glances at him but not Greenwood. He decided that his latter supposition was true, that Greenwood was a regular who had chosen the visibility in case he was being taken for a fall guy, and that he'd been mistaken on his earlier assumption that Greenwood sought anonymity. Despite his underhandedness and suspicion, Jonathan felt comfortable in Greenwood's presence. The liking he developed over the phone with him wasn't diminished the tenor of espionage.

 "Something wrong?" Greenwood intoned.

 "No. Not at all." Jonathan turned back to face him. "I just deduced that you must be a regular here."

 "Clever fellow. You must have noticed my cheering crowd over there. They seem to be amused by the ways of an eccentric old man."

 Jonathan smiled. "So you don't live that far from here."

 "Not so far. About twenty miles, which is nothing if you live in farm country. I come here once in awhile, to remember what city life is like."

 "And to get supplies?"

 "I have different places where I go." The pointed evasiveness indicated that Jonathan was far from truly winning Greenwood's confidence. He nodded in concession to this implicit message. He thought he saw Greenwood smile, though to most, it would seem a grimace.

 "So, you were saying that Raul is in trouble." Greenwood said with a smile and furrowed brow, as though the statement was a riddle he was still trying to figure out.

 Jonathian nodded, choosing not to address his incredulity he felt at Grreenwood's ignorance. Instead, he procured several newspapers, all with headlines or articles on pages 2 or 3 how Raul the Minstrel was a wanted man. Greenwood read every article, shaking his head, a tired expression etching into his face. "This is why I don't pay attention to the news. Everything they print is hogwash."

 "Raul has said nothing to you about this."

 "Not a bit. He definitely seems like he is unaware of any of this trash. I don't know if that makes him sound guilty or innocent. I've met some people on the lam in my time. Usually, they are pretty quiet. But generally they don't show up more than once or twice in the same place. Either way, they don't want to call attention to themselves. But Raul has showed up at the depot every week for several months now. He acts like he doesn't have a care in the world, singing songs, lighting up the place wherever he goes. Except when he talks about his daughter."

 "Raulita."

 "That's her. He says that they were separated after a break-in, and that he hasn't been able to find her. Is this article true? The one that says she is dead?" Greenwood indicated to one of the newspapers with his cigar. Jonathan nodded and explained the account that Carmen told him. Greenwood's eyes twitched a couple of times as he listened, emotion belying his impassive stance. He said nothing for awhile after Jonathan finished.

 "From what you say, they will stop at nothing to lynch this man."

 "He's already been convicted by most in the court of opinion."

 Greenwood leveled his gaze. "But not by you."

 "No."

 "Why not? From what it sounds like, he's been spotted at all three murder scenes with this woman Cindy Hughes. The Bonnie and Clyde theory wouldn't sound too farfetched to the outside eye. And wouldn't that be you?"

 Jonathan smiled. "Devil's advocate, aren't you?"

 "More than that, my friend. What I say about you could be true. And I wouldn't want to compromise the safety of my friend Raul."

 "His safety is all that I want to ensure."

 Greenwood cocked an eyebrow at Jonathan, who withstood the scrutiny by holding his gaze. After a short time, Greenwood nodded his head, as though Jonathan had passed some implicit test.

 "So, you want to ensure his safety and freedom. A laudable goal indeed, but how do you propose to accomplish it? And why involve me?"

 "Because you are only one of a few people whom Raul maintains regular contact with, and of that few, the only one with the means to protect him. Being that you are a farmer, and because of the employees you hire, I assume that you live in a fairly remote area. This would get Raul out of the limelight of the city, where he is infinitely more likely to get caught. There are regular calls to the media and law enforcement of people claiming to know his whereabouts, all so they can collect on a monetary award that the family of one of the victim offered, and their fifteen minutes of fame. Take Raul out of the center of things, and perhaps the media circus will dissipate. Then maybe law enforcement can get about the business of finding the real killer."

 Greenwood nodded. "You mentioned a monetary award. How much is it?"

 Was this just more of the devil's advocate ploy, or was Greenwood playing the naÏf for his own personal gain? This was dangerous ground. Jonathan believed Greenwood to be the real thing, but anything was possible.

"Jonathan my friend, I am just asking. Do you think a man such as myself who distrusts almost everyone would be interested in mainstream society's ploys? But you don't have to tell me if you think that I am lying to you."

 Jonathan hesitated. Greenwood wore a look of understanding. He was a man who seemed to live his life in suspicion, and obviously could see it in others. Jonathan allowed himself time before answering, letting the questions of doubt settle into the ashes before speaking. "The reward is up to a million dollars at this time."

 Greenwood let out a low whistle. "Talk about an incentive to greed. Which victim is this? The lawyer's son?" Jonathan nodded, and Greenwood snorted. "This is insanity. This man has done nothing but good, but yet people are still trying to malign him. That's why I stay in the country, away from people. People are nothing but a pain in the ass even when you try to mind your own business."

 Jonathan decided to question him on what he already knew, seeing how much he was willing to lie, or what his reaction to his own truth was. "You've always lived in the country?"

 "No. I'm originally from Newburgh. Then I lived in Albany, then just outside of Pittsburgh. So I speak from experience when I talk about the nosy neighbor syndrome."

 "So you haven't been in farming your whole life."

 "No. I was a steel worker for the greater part of my adult life. Then the industry gave me early retirement in the form of a massive layoff, so I decided to get out of the city and undertake my lifelong passion of working the land."

 "Considering the work you do, I am surprised you use your real name."

 "I do nothing to be ashamed of."

 "You sound fairly well-read and educated."

 Greenwood laughed. "Do you think that white-collar men such as yourself are the only ones who are college educated? I graduated from the University of Albany with a business degree. Met my Mary there, too. She was an English major who later taught high school. As far as reading, that is what I do in my spare time, rather than concern myself with the garbage that the news and TV put out." He picked up one of the newspapers, and referred to an article near one of the Raul stories, which purported that a married movie star was engaged in a lesbian affair. "Like this. I am sixty-three years old. Do you think I want to waste any of the precious time I have left on earth reading such nonsense?" He shook his head. "Perhaps if you come for a visit, I can lend you some real literature. I assume that your being a law school graduate, you read occasionally? I prefer the classics myself. Steinbeck is a favorite of mine. And you?'

 "I'm a bit of a Flannery O'Connor fan myself," Jonathan smiled, relieved that Greenwood had passed his own test, and that somehow the invitation indicated he had passed Greenwood's. The server came and refilled the cups without comment. She seemed the quietest of the gag of girls, and the most attentive. Greenwood had created a life of tranquil solitude for himself. Given his personal crisis with Ashley, Jonathan found it alluring.

 After they had sipped their coffee, Greenwood leaned into the table, lowering his voice. "I have to say your theory of holding Raul incognito is sound, except for two things. One, Raul is a free man, one who seems oblivious to the danger about him. I venture that he will be inclined to break out of any confinement, no matter how benign it might be, to look for his family, unless the full predicament he is in is explained to him. Which brings me to point two. I do not have the psychiatric skills to effectively deal with what the truth would bring, either the truth of the manhunt, or of Raulita's death. And I am more concerned of what that will mean for Raul than for myself. What do you propose to do?"

 "I've thought about that. I wouldn't want to traumatize Raul any more than he has been. But some of his cousins in the Bronx located me, which is how I found out about Raul in the first place. Maybe if you tell him that you've met someone who has information about his family, then he will stay."

 "Are these cousins Carlos and Carmen?"

 "Yes. Does Raul remember them?"

 "Yes, he does. His talking about them gave me a clue about his amnesia; at first he mentioned them vaguely, as though they were acquaintances he barely knew. Now he talks about them all the time, how he and Carlos used to pal around and how Carmen was such a bulwark for Lupe when their son died. And Raul is normally a very open person, so I didn't talk the process to be about trouble opening up. It seemed very likely there was a memory problem. From when he was shot, I take it?"

 "Probably. One of the shots was in the cortex."

 "He's lucky to be alive."

 Jonathan nodded in concurrence as he drank in his coffee. His thoughts were on what it would be like if he went through what Raul had, and had Raven shot right in front of him. He wouldn't even have to be shot himself to want to block something like that out.

 Greenwood took a long puff of his cigar, his attention fixated on the table. "So the plan is, when I get Raul tomorrow, I try and hold him over by telling him someone who has information about his family is coming. Correct?"

 "Correct."

 "And you feel that letting Carmen and Carlos telling the truth about Raulita will be the best course of action?"

 "They should at least be present. They know him better than we do."

 "Correction. At one time they knew him better than we do. Eighteen years of the nomadic life is bound to change a person considerably."

 "True. But they still have a better chance at it than either one of us."

 "And Carmen's being a woman is bound to help. I have never possessed the softer touch of the female creature."

 Jonathan smiled, thinking that Carmen was anything but soft. But she knew Raul. And loved him. He also smiled to think of what it would mean for all of them to be together once again.

 "So then, why don't I call you tomorrow, and let you know if Raul stays. I must warn you, that I won't prevent Raul from leaving if he wishes.

"Of course. Raul is not a prisoner."

 "At least not to us he is."

 Too many wanted him to be, Jonathan thought. That was the problem. It was like the world needed a scapegoat for its own pain. In this chapter, Raul was the one who got to go the guillotine.

 "So we have a deal then. I get Raul to stay, and then you can come, meet him yourself and bring his relatives. We'll take the situation from there."

 "I'm looking forward to meeting him."

 "Bring your daughter with you. It's good for children to see how others live."

 "She has been exposed to a lot of cultures. She's part Cherokee."

 "Ahh." Greenwood squinted at him. "From his mother's side."

 "Yes." Jonathan smiled.

 "You're not together with her?"

 "No, I'm not. I married someone else."

Greenwood nodded . "It happens. You can bring your wife, too. Why not? Maybe we can arrange a gathering for Thanksgiving. It's been awhile since I had a real one."

 A real one indeed. "That would be great."

 Soon after, they shook hands and parted ways. Jonathan walked out after blessing the server with an extravagant gift of five dollars and watched Greenwood's pickup pull away. The sun was just starting to dip under horizon, a deep orange that reached out and licked the earth with its luminescence. He wondered what Linda and Raven were doing now, whether they were playing chess, or just sitting on the couch together reading. No matter what they were doing, Jonathan knew she was safe where she was, and felt a bitter pang of what he had lost with Ashley. The mention of Thanksgiving at the diner reminded him that this would be the first holiday alone for him. But there was only the future to look forward to, not the past. Perhaps today what he'd done here at the diner had invested into a better future, one step closer in the fight for peace. He hoped so, for his own sake. And for Raven's. To him, the future was all about her.

 He saw the farmer again. Always he smoked cigars. When he was very young, the minstrel must have smoked cigars, too. He had a vague memory of standing on a street corner with a couple of men, sharing times and smoking away. The minstrel remembered the laughter of one. There had been much pleasure in sharing laughter with him. The minstrel wished that he could remember him. It would even be better if he was with the minstrel now.

 So much time had disappeared. He had too few memories for one so old. He could see the lines that crossed his face when he looked in the glass of the stores he passed by, and he knew that his was not a face of the young. But his mind did. This question only came to him when he saw himself. It was like the Lord was testing him that something was not quite right. And yet, though he asked the Lord to give him strength to learn what that disquiet was, he never could quite figure out where the long gaps were. Sometimes, that made him sad. Maybe, if he had them filled, he could figure out what happened to Lupe and Raulita. But then, maybe God was protecting him from a truth too hard for him to face. He knew that God would not lead him into pain unless he was ready for it. He prayed that he had not hurt anyone. If he had, he prayed for their safety. And for their forgiveness. He knew God would give him the strength to forgive anything, and he knew He would give anyone else the strength to forgive him. Even Raulita.

 The farmer shook his hand warmly, greeting him in Spanish like he always did. He was a kindly older man. He looked like the Santa Claus that rode the sleighs in front of the stationary stores. He always made the minstrel feel merry. Like the way Christmas always used to be. Suddenly, he felt sad, wishing that Lupe and Raulita could be with him this Christmas. He thought he caught sadness in the farmer's eyes as well.

 Poncho watched them. Today, he acted strange. Usually, he was asleep, but today, he was awake and alert. The gringo, he was probably thinking of. But there was no gringo except for the farmer. Surely he was of no threat.

 The farmer said nothing to him in the car as they rode to the farm. This also was unusual. The minstrel turned to speak to him, speaking in the general terms of casual talk, the weather, Bertha's family. The farmer, he just smiled and kept to himself. Once, he turned to look at the minstrel. He thought he saw sadness in the farmer's eyes again. A strange feeling came over him; a voice telling him to pray; this voice the one he listened to without question. He did pray, no matter what the prayer was or who it was for. No prayer went unanswered in the Kingdom of God; no prayer with a holy heart would bring evil. In his mind, he prayed to the Holy Spirit while the farmer remained in his silence.

 Late afternoon sunshine rays seeped through the bare skeleton of trees by the time the farmer returned to the farm. The minstrel always relished the peaceful scene of the picturesque farm. He would like to live in a place like this with his family. The country always seemed bewildering to him. So quiet and removed from the noise he was accustomed to; all the people that swarmed about. Here, he felt like God Himself had been let go from a tight canister and burst into freedom. He smiled; the sight warming him as though he was standing right under their power.

 There was dinner waiting for them. The minstrel could smell it even as they were still in the truck. Smoked meat and vegetables, he detected. Last week, roast beef with potatoes. The farmer's maid prepared it for them from scratch. Like him, the farmer was alone, but like him this had not always been the case. There were pictures of a beautiful woman all over the place, from as young as when she wore a dress of white lace to a time when lines were crossed in the corner of her eyes, lines of wisdom that were the cover of a book not read. One time, she and the farmer sat facing each other in an embrace, laughing. Lupe and he laughed much in the early days. He wondered if he would have a chance to maybe laugh again with her, like the farmer almost had. The minstrel felt compassion for the loneliness of the farmer. He knew he was not alone. Jesus had granted him strength this far. Sometimes, he tried to tell the farmer this. He would just laugh, saying the God died the day his Mary went with him. Love, to him, that was the only hope he could have for this crazy world. And he had never found love again.

 The minstrel spent some time sitting by the fire. The farmer came in, told him to start working tomorrow. Today, they started out too late. With the sun setting so early now, there wasn't enough time to do things. He told the minstrel to sit by the fire, where he mesmerized for long minutes. One time, Peter sat by the fire, the night the Lord was betrayed. God let a sinner be warm by the fire even as He knew the sinner would fall, even as He knew his most precious son would die that night. When the minstrel thought of the Lord, he could only think of him as the giver of mercy, never as a judging being. Even when man did such harm, He still loved him, He still showed the way. God would give exactly what your heart's desire was. One day, he would see his loved ones. God knew his prayer. He would answer it. The minstrel knew that.

 The doorbell rang. At first, the minstrel paid little heed, knowing the maid would answer it, continuing to warm himself, but sat up when the doorbell rang a minute later. It was only then that he head the radio blaring loudly from the kitchen, so engrossed was he in thought. The music had a loud beat to it. The minstrel laughed to himself as he passed by to answer the door; it was so joyful to see someone so young. Age was inside one's heart; it was the heart that knew that it would be young with God forever or if it would decay into eternal death. Age could not be told by lines on faces.

 There was no peephole in the door. Back home they always used them. You never knew who was going to come to your door.

 He opened anyway. Who came here was the farmer's business. He wondered if it was another worker for tomorrow. The minstrel would be glad to have a companion.

 A tall blonde man stood before him, holding the hand of a little girl. Somewhere, he had seen this man; he was not here to work. And the little girl, my God—it was a dream. She was a grown woman now.

 "Senor Valesquez?" the man intoned.

 The minstrel jumped at the name. He'd not been addressed that way in years, and just in the moment's time he recalled what had been a known reality like it had been that way all the time. He smiled and nodded at the man, who at first seemed baffled by his reaction, then pleased. He held out his hand.

 "My name is Jonathan Pfeifer. I'm a friend of Al Greenwood's."

 "A pleasure to meet you both," the minstrel said, shaking the hand of the girl as well as her father. She had a strong grip for one so young. He felt a warmth of admiration for her.

 "I'm sorry I'm late. I was supposed to come yesterday, but I was held up at work."

 "What do you do?" They walked together to the living room. The minstrel was pleased that the gringo visitor could speak Spanish. So many didn't know the tongue that first settled here. It was a shame.

 "I work for a lawyer."

 "So you are not one yourself?"

 "No. I'm a paralegal, but I hope to be a lawyer soon."

 "You have a beautiful name. Beautiful bird. Much pride, a raven has. Much like you. You seem like a proud young woman. You must have been raised to have great courage." The minstrel caught a brief smile on Jonathan's face.

 "My mother is a Cherokee," Raven boasted fiercely, her back ramrod straight. "She lives on a reservation in Oklahoma."

 "Raul, I need to talk to you." Jonathan Pfeifer said.

 "All right."

 Jonathan Pfeifer stopped to tell Raven something in English before she scampered off to a nearby room displaying shelves and shelves of books, then sat down on the old-fashioned velveteen couch. The minstrel followed suit, sitting on the opposite side of the couch. There was a part that wanted to hope that perhaps that lawyer had found Lupe and Raulita, found them safe and sound. It would be good to know if his journey had ended. It would be good if he could just be with them again.

 "Is it about Raulita? Have you found her?"

 Jonathan Pfeifer's eyes faded for just a second, then his expression diminished into a mild smiling expression. "We're doing our best."

 "I miss her so much.

"We'll keep you informed. In the meantime, can you stay here in case we get an answer? Mr. Greenwood has said it is all right."

Joy flooded the minstrel. "That would be so wonderful. I don't know how to thank you. But," he thought with sudden despondence, "I have no way to pay you."

 "I have that taken care of," Jonathan Pfeifer said with a smile.

 "They are so wonderful. Lupe and I, we were like one spirit. She laughed, I would laugh. Her tears I cried. She suffered much for many years. We had a son who died. His name was Pablo. He looked like an angel from the moment I set my eyes on him, I knew his name came from above. He was with us for such a short time. Is it not amazing that someone who lived for only two months could bring so much that his gifts were greater than many souls who lived for many years?" The minstrel felt tears coming. Little Pablo, little angel waiting for him in heaven—the joy of it, one day to see him again. On that day, he would be blessed indeed.

 Jonathan Pfeifer stood by him. His gaze was lowered, his hand on his chin in deep contemplation. Both men sat in silence, a silent bond of affection somehow molded between them, a bond not even quite broken by the arrival of Al Greenwood in his flannel shirt and cowboy-like workboots. He looked like a gaucho, the minstrel thought with amusement.

 "Bertha the sweetie says dinner is ready," he said. "Fried chicken with dumplings and fried okra. You can take the woman out of the South but you can't take the South out of the woman. You all hungry?"

 "Of course. I always eat a good meal, especially when Bertha cooks it," the minstrel piped.

 "We all need a good woman to take care of us," Jonathan Pfeifer said.

 "Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em," Al Greenwood said with gruff humor. The three men laughed. "All humor aside. I would be lost without Bertha. When I lost Mary, I was a lost soul." Greenwood said as they got to the dining room.

"He sure was, and don't let him tell you otherwise," Bertha said as she set plates of food on the table, Raven sitting like a queen admiring her court behind one of the places, the sheer size of the chair dwarfing her majesty but making it no less impressive. The minstrel watched her and smiled.

 "Does Raven speak Spanish?" he asked her father.

 Jonathan hesitated for a second before answering, "No."

 "You never learned English, Raul?" the farmer asked him, still in Spanish. Jonathan Pfeifer spoke to Raven in English.

 Raul shrugged. "Let her be. The human spirit was not meant to be tamed. Jesus died so that it could soar higher than the angels. My daughter was much like her."

 "What was your daughter's name, Raul?" Raven asked. Her Spanish was perfect. Raul barely noticed the startled glances around the room.

 "Raulita. She was a beautiful little girl. Just like you."

 Raven sat straighter. "I'm not so little. I'm the tallest girl in my class."

 The minstrel bowed his head. "My most sincere apologies to the girl who is not so little."

 Raven was satisfied with the answer.

 For the rest of the meal Raven was constantly the minstrel questions, and he was all the more joyous to answer them for her. Her beauty of spirit gave him joy. It gave him hope for his own sorrows.

 After dinner, he sat by the fire with her and played folk songs on the guitar that the farmer owned. She delighted in his music. He could see it in her eyes. A thrill that he had not known for a long time soared through him. The greatest happiness was when he shared the love of his music and his God with someone else sharing that joy. This, and the love of his family, were the most valuable treasures of his life. He needed nothing else.

 When Raven was ready for bed, she asked if the minstrel could read her a chapter of a story by an author named Judy Blume telling a story about a girl named Margaret. He saw he words of the story jump from English to Spanish before his very eyes, but he thought he almost could make out what the English words said. Jonathan watched from the door, and when the minstrel finished the chapter, Raven was put to bed with warm hugs and kisses. He left her with a kiss on her forehead, and soon afterwards her father came out of the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

 "She doesn't say prayers," he told Jonathan.

 Jonathan did not meet his eyes. "No."

 "Why not?"

 "I don't know." He stopped. "It's not like I don't believe in God. I just don't believe in religion. That's what most prayers seem to be; religion."

 The minstrel shook his head vehemently. "That is where most people go wrong. Prayer has nothing to do with religion. Prayer is talking to God. God loves nothing more than to hear our voices speaking to Him. It is His delight to know the creation He loved wants to talk to Him and spend time with Him."

 "I never thought of it that way," Jonathan Pfeifer said.

 "Too many people think God is a fierce judge that is ready to send us to hell on a moment's notice, when all His Word says that He loved us so much that He gave His son to rescue us from pain."

 "But the Bible, I don't know. It's been translated so much though the years, and there are so many versions of it. I've never felt comfortable believing in something I couldn't really prove."

 "All the great religions are based on an idea of faith. Science is about what we can see. Spirituality is about what we cannot. And what is wrong in loving people and a creator that loves you? It could only make you feel better about yourself."

 "This is true, I suppose. But I can't get the idea of some guy saving me from my sins. I hate when people approach me with that, because they seem to say, if I don't believe exactly like them, my true nature is really evil. I can't accept that. It's like an overblown sales pitch."

 "Nothing that truly comes from God is evil, and we were made in His image. All that God did was rescue us from the evil influence of this world, the death, the pain, and the misery of sin. What could be more loving than that?"

 "I suppose you're right," Jonathan Pfeifer said with a smile. "Maybe if we all loved one another, the world wouldn't be so bad."

 "Yes," the minstrel replied. "I wish that was a reality."

 They were by the fire again. The farmer was snoring comfortably in a rocking chair, while Bertha was unsuccessfully trying to wake him up by trying to entice him with a plate full of piping brownies. The aroma was wonderful.

 "Drat," she said, "you know the mister is out when you can't even get him awake to eat his favorite dessert. And I just baked them, too." She sighed, then shoved the platter in front of them. "Well? Aren't you boys going to eat them? Don't tell me I went through all this hard work for nothing."

 The minstrel didn't waste a second. Lupe, she used to bake all of the time. Since she died, couldn't remember eating anything freshly baked anything out of the overran. Bertha made him smile, though he knew she didn't know it. A beautiful woman. Just like his Lupe. One day, he would be with her again.

 After devouring his half of the tin with Jonathan and the younger man departed for his own room, he drowsily lay near the dying embers of the fire, relishing the sensations of a cozy sleep falling over him. His last memory was of Bertha taking up the bin, bantering about what horses men could be, they ate so much.

 The minstrel fell asleep with a smile upon his face.

 Jonathan lay on the floor by his daughter's bedside, listening to the peaceful sounds of her breathing. The house, with an occasional snore coming from distant corners around the house, was quiet. A flock of birds charged above the house, heading to the south to escape the cold. Jonathan marveled then, thinking this was close to the first time he'd heard the flight of birds in the dark. A strange occurrence, much like the rest of the day's events.

 The dinner's happenings washed over him like a surreal impression as he wondered if he had really witnessed what he witnessed tonight, the strange conversation between two people who didn't speak one another's tongue, and yet out of nowhere spoke it fluently. He had no way of explaining it, and neither had Al Greenwood. It was, if he could say it, a miracle of sorts.

 He remembered the first time he'd heard a language that was different from the one he grew up with. It was in Little Italy; there had been several angry men in dark suits yelling at each other with strange words. Jonathan felt a flash of fear, like he had heard bad words that little boys like him weren't supposed to hear. His father had tugged at his hand to pull him away. Jonathan had gotten the feeling that the men were bad men, that those who didn't speak like him were different, people to be avoided. But somehow, he couldn't believe it, even then. He remembered playing on a swing in a park one time. He had probably been five or six then. A little girl came to the swing next to him. She was little, which meant she was probably four or so, and she had trouble getting any height on her swing. She saw how high Jonathan sailed, and began to cry. Jonathan felt bad for the little girl, so he immediately jumped off the swing in mid-air and came to her rescue, giving her one big push after another until she gleefully flew in the air. When she tired of the swing a few minutes later, they went and played on the slide, climbing up and sliding down until they fell on the ground, dizzy and laughing. It was then that the little girl's mother came running up to her, sputtering words that Jonathan had never heard before, the little girl responding in kind. She started to walk away with her mother, but not before she turned around and smiled, waving goodbye to him.

 There had been no language barrier then.

 Though young, the brief experience had taught the child that he was how similar people could be. He wondered why then, why language was created to erect walls that between people that weren't so different anyway. He was told that language was a symbol of unity for a country, and that the differences were there so each could be proud of his own territory. He was told to take pride in being American. Americans spoke English. But he thought of his little friend on the playground. She didn't speak English, but she seemed as American as anyone else he knew. He had liked her a lot.

 In Bible school, they studied the Old Testament. At one time, he was told that the world spoke one language, but the people had decided that they were as mighty as God, so to prove this they built a tower that reached the heavens. God punished the people by making them speak in languages that they couldn't understand. He showed them who was boss. He was told that this was why God wanted separatism. Because man was arrogant, he was denied to have equality amongst his brothers. The moral was, some were more equal than others.

But not tonight. Something extraordinary had happened tonight, something that transcended what usually happened tonight.

 Bertha said she was watching the Pentecost before her, when the apostles spoke in many tongues to the crowd. Each man had understood in his own language. The fire from the Holy Spirit came down on Pentecost. Bertha said she saw tongues of fire upon Raul and his Raven.

 Al said that she'd better check the flue.

 Jonathan started drifting off to sleep, lulled into a state of consciousness that blocked out all things about him. He felt nothing but peace. It was wonderful.

 He heard Raul's voice. Talk to God. He wants to hear from you. He loves you. That was why He made you. He wants your friendship.

 Jonathan rested in the peace for a moment longer, not sure what to do.

 Please talk to him.

 Jonathan started to think things that he was not aware of concentrating or generating from any particular place. I don't know you, he was thinking, but if you're there, if you are as loving as you say you are, I would like to know you. If you are as judgmental as I have heard, I will continue to not acknowledge you. If you are as you say you are, make your presence know now. Only then will I believe.

 He thought as he slipped into sleep that a warm, gleaming glow engulfed him. For the second before slumber came, he experienced the gloomiest feeling that he had ever experienced.

FORTY FOUR

 Emmanuel Jackson saw things.

 Sometimes he saw his physical surroundings, the monitors, the flicker of shadow by the windows, the flurry of whitish uniforms in and out of his room, the ever-vigilant figure of the brother in Christ who had adopted him as his own when he was just a spiritual baby.

 He would watch his presence, a presence as still as his comatose corpse, and wonder what it was that he thought about. Sometimes, he thought he felt what was inside his brother, and it caused him pain. He wondered if his brother hated him for his confessions, as he was sure that God hated him as well. This state of limbo where he saw but could not hear, this was the highest state of punishment that he could experience, to know the deepest of pain that he caused and yet unable to reach out and comfort, unable even to repent of the grief he caused. He watched raw pain live and fester, watched it take on a being that seemed to have no end.

 There were times when he saw nothing but the dark shadows of the night. Then he would wonder if he had been deserted forever, desolate murkiness his final resting place. Even when he screamed, he found no place of comfort.

 Then soon afterwards, he would slip into another vision, much in the way one movie clip changed to another. He felt very much as though he were watching a movie, something he was very much removed from, except what he was removed from was his own life. So removed was he from himself that he did not have the capacity to be afraid of this realization. It was like he ceased to exist, yet existed outside of all.

 Sometimes, the dreams that never ended came. Sometimes he would see the girl. He would be walking down a path of light, and she would stop him. Any attempt he made to get by her would cause a sudden force careening him backwards full force. Then the blackness would overtake him again.

 He learned to just watch. She was like an angel, a child bride in white, virginal pure. Silent, neither condemning nor forgiving, with gentle eyes, she stood her watch as he faced her, and sometimes he was perplexed with the sensation of total peace mixed together with an unsatisfied longing. To talk, ask forgiveness, was what he wanted. She did not let him speak. She would just stand, smile.

One time was a very different time. When he saw her, she gleefully beckoned him to follow her. He found himself following her automatically, not forced but not aware of ever telling his spirit to follow her lead. He was taken down a long hall of marble, the light becoming lighter as he proceeded, and he was filled with the inexplicable joy that after all his suffering, he was finally going to be permitted his eternal life with his Maker. Finally, it was here.

 But then, just as suddenly, with her palm raised in the air, she beckoned him to stop. Panicked, he wondered if this was the moment where the evil were shown for one glorious moment the vast wonders of God which they rejected then sent plunging to meet eternal destruction. What was left of his mortal heart thundered within him, the only indication that condemnation had not yet come.

 But instead, she took his hand, leading him to an antechamber just left of the light. The hall she led him down was dark so that all was visible were black shadows heightened against the bleakest of grays, and, though relieved that he had been spared fire and brimstone, he was awashed with bewilderment, wanting to scream at the powerlessness of his situation but unable to.

 Soon, they came to a door. He was unsure if he wanted to see what was behind the door, but the girl opened it anyway. He was assaulted with the bright light thundering at him from the other side. He tried to shield his vision but was prevented by her forceful pull, and before he knew it, he was outside the door, standing in the middle of a field showing signs of old age and impending winter. When he turned behind him, it was as though he had been there the whole time. There was no door anywhere near him.

 He blinked. The girl stood before him, smiling,. Though she had been leading him the entire way, he viewed her as though he had net expected her to be before him. She let him stand a moment to take him in his surroundings for a moment, and he saw acres upon acres of vegetables, dead, dying, or at the last minutes of fine ripeness for picking. In the distance, he saw a large white house. Smoke came from the chimney. As he stood, the sky gradually became infiltrated with different shades of pink, and finally a brilliant orange. Daybreak.

 An aura of light surrounded her in the dawn. Blindly, he followed the glow as it moved forwards, the house looming larger and larger. They traveled through the door as though they were transparent angels, and through the first floor until they came upon a long figure lying upon an old rug, reaching toward the empty fireplace as though grasping for warmth that wasn't there. He and the girl hovered over the figure, watching him sleep, watching him, as he huddled himself, and the tears that drew breath from his slumbering eyes, watching him, then knowing; knowing him.

 Memories became the conscious reality as he once more saw his past before him. Once again, the shootings played, each bullet hanging in suspended motion, torturing him of the knowledge of their eventual path. He wanted them to somehow fall to the ground, but they wouldn't. Slowly, they hit their targets. First, the little girl; one bullet and the life had exploded from her; he hadn't expected her, hadn't even known she existed, but she was a surprise and a mistake. A mistake instantly eliminated, from life, if not his mind. Then the bullets landed in the man's head. One bullet. Then two. Three, the final bullet.

 He lay in a mass heap not much different than how he lay now.

 There had been guilt for so long.

 He had wondered what had become of them. They had not stayed to see if the family had lived.

 Now he knew.

 He remembered the man watching him from the front of the abandoned church.

 He had not realized till then how badly he needed forgiveness for his deeds. Suddenly even this forgiveness on blood of the cross seemed to not be real for him. Nothing was sure after then.

 Suddenly, with no warning, he found himself whisked into the air at lightning speed. Faster and faster. No time to even fear.

 They came to rest in a place that went beyond the mere description of human vision. The peace he felt went deeper in his soul than he ever though his being could ever hold. So beautiful and wonderful. The smiling girl kissed him. Then without moving, the scene returned to the figure by the fire. Still smiling, she pointed at him.

 Then the darkness returned once again.

 His thoughts became clear as the blackness settled in. It was in the dark stillness that God spoke to him—he heard His voice louder than any tongues had prophesied in His name. He said that He was waiting for him. He said He loved him. When he could feel finished with his dark past, He said He would take him to the place of peace. He would guide His servant so that he could finally come home.

 And finally he rested, slumber within a slumber.

 .

FORTY FIVE

 Cindy DiEsposito Hughes had returned home.

 The bus passed by the university, now still as the bright minds of academia hummed away in all-night studies or orgies or the occasional sleep. She could have gone there. There could have been many things she could have done had she'd been willing to put some work into it. She had a high IQ as a child. The tests said so. Nearly a genius, she'd been declared. But her grades were low. No one could understand it. A bright girl like that should be getting the highest grades in the class. But she didn't want to do the work. Not after all the chores she had to do while her mother was out being a slut or whatever she did with her time. She thought, after al that drudgery, she was entitled to an easier life.

 Hah.

 Not that she'd been that unusual around here. Dropping out, teenage marriage and pregnancy were quite common for these parts. Here people dreamed abut graduating high school first before even daring to have a flash of a vision for college. Many of the kids were nineteen or twenty before they got out of high school, and a job at Wal-Mart was reason to celebrate. Many of the houses showed the tattered evidence of poverty, not unlike the black and Hispanic projects that she'd just fled. But here they did not cry of slavery because none had ever been slaves. No cries of white oppression; they were almost entirely white. And she was one of them, though she never felt like she belonged with them. She didn't feel like she belonged with any group. She never lived anywhere long enough to make good friends.

 . Thereafter, no food. Cindy quit school to work. Finally, she'd run away. Met the man of her dreams.

 Hopefully, he was dead too.

 The bus trip took forever. As usual, there was tons of snow on the ground and somehow seemed she'd gotten stuck on the bus driven by the driver's ed student. Cindy found herself knocked into a semi-trance by the monotony, numbed by the subconscious that refused to allow the memories to come back from each passing landmark—and old drugstore where she'd hung out and gotten drunk, the school where she saw her childhood friend disappear to Ohio with her family.

 God why was she here. What if Patrick was alive. What if they had fooled her, buying off the media like they always did. Couldn't a phone call have sufficed? Why she had chosen to come back here at all, she didn't even know.

 But yet, she had to. Had to see for herself that her life was really hers once more, though where to go with it, she didn't know. And to come back and show them all that, despite all they'd done, she'd survived.

 The bus stopped in Bath District, the grand center of Steuben County, at seven in the morning. After New York, she felt like she'd stepped into another world, one that had zipped through time to at least a generation earlier. It looked like something from Happy Days: a neighborhood drug store advertising a soda fountain for a dollar, a five and dime store, and a consignment shop. Bath courthouse, a simple brick building with arched gateways, stood proudly in the center, its only real activity that anyone outside of this place knew about the murder of a four-year-old one town over. There were churches lined up in a neat row on one side. Things were just as they always had been. The thought made Cindy ill at ease.

 Though she was in the same state, she felt like she was suffering from a sense of jet lag. The whole trip up, she'd hardly gotten any sleep. Strange to think that only ten house earlier she was in the Bronx. It felt like years.

 She was paralyzed here, afraid to move. Perhaps Patrick stood hiding just moments away. At any time, he could jump out and kill her. The street tough that had developed in her in Fordham was gone; gangsters she was not afraid of, but of Patrick Hughes III, she was, deathly so. Once more a victim.

 Movement behind her, the first human sound. She spun around, ready to kill at a moment's notice. An old lady with a cane greeted Cindy with a smile (in this city, old ladies could walk down the street alone at this hour—only rebellious wives and cute four-year-olds were in danger), walking until she disappeared into a grocery store that had just declared itself open by a brilliant red sign magically flipping open. The day had begun.

 Cindy still had some money. She meandered to a bakery where she bought a roll and coffee. The storekeeper eyed her suspiciously the whole time, his movements slow as he kept watch on her. Anger rose in her, and she kept swallowing, hoping the actions would keep her emotions at bay. It worked adequately enough. She wondered, as she left, if the guy had called 911 on her, or for that matter, Patrick Hughes. Cindy swore she'd never seen the guy before in her life.

 As she ate, she walked in the direction of a hotel she once knew of. There was no plan in her mind what to do, and she was too exhausted to think of one. She really was wondering why she was here to begin with. Life on the streets wasn't that bad. She was beginning to get used to it.

 Sleep evaded her even in exhaustion. Paranoia would not let her rest, despite her best efforts to rid herself of the emotion. She sat half transfixed before a diet of daytime talk shows, hoping to get a sense of other people having greater troubles than she, but everyone seemed so laughable, down to the battered wife who told Leeza that she was afraid of her husband, while the transgressor sat beside his wife, eyes transfixed to the ground. The wife couldn't be that afraid of her husband if she was willing and able to drag him on national TV and announce it to the world. Cindy would not be alive today if she had even tried something like that.

 That thought triggered a memory of the cemetery where her uncle-in-law was buried. Patrick had bought a plot for Cindy there just after they were married, so they could be together in death. Cindy had found it romantic then, an idiot fool who looked at the romance more than the practicality of things. A decade later, she was amazed at the prospect of a nineteen-year-old so casually preparing for her death. She wasn't well now, but she didn't know where she could have been back then. Today, she would have run out the door.

 Anxiety. The free-floating kind, where she couldn't define the cause. Let's see, she'd been on the streets for a year, in a violent relationship the previous thirteen, the witness to three homicides. Shit, no stress there.

 She'd seen three people die violently. The thought hit her as though it was the first time she realized this. It hit her somewhere between the Old El Paso salsa commercial and the clips to tomorrow's Carnie show. She had not given these people a single thought. One of them, supposedly had lived. She had never found out if he was still alive. Like Rhett Butler, she didn't give a damn. She hadn't realized she'd sunk so terribly low. Years of victimization had taught her to fend for no one but herself. Now, that was all she had. She felt incredibly lonely.

 There was an orange hue outside her window. Somehow, she'd gone from moping by the TV to blinking at the sunlight uncomprehendingly. Sunset? The clock read seven-twenty. Impossible, Cindy thought. At this time of year? No—it had to be that—

 Yes, she had. A whole day had passed. Good Day New York was cheerfully broadcasting sunny news of Christmas joy and anticipation in her face. Cindy snorted in derision and turned the shit off.

 She took a shower and looked in the mirror. Most around here remembered a short, black-haired bob with brown eyes. She had stolen somebody's prescription lenses, and that, topped with hair that hadn't been cut in over a year, plus dyed blonde, she looked like a typical corn-husker girl, not the exotic creature that had received whispers and snickers her whole life. Gypsy girl, she'd been called. She'd lived up to her name quite well.

 She breathed heavily as anxiety washed over her, the prelude to her venture outdoors. She checked out of the room and handed back her key, conscious of the leering desk boy with the drool over his face. She leaned over with half her bosom showing, handed him her key, their fingers just touching, then swished her way back from there, strutting her stuff in the best way she knew how. She could hear him whistle, but she wasn't offended. In her time, she fucked worse things.

 The cemetery was two miles from here, if she remembered correctly. That was where the Methodists were buried. Originally it had been built right in front of the church in the village green, but it caused too many fainting spells for the genteel ladies. Every time they went to the market a lady would be reminded of the fact that dear Billy or Bobbie or Cory was lying in that dirt, and darn it, she couldn't touch him, hold him dear God my Lord—so the town became a repository for regurgitated grief, not doing much for the tourism making its way from Corning to the Finger Lakes. The mayor wisely moved the cemetery to the country, doing well for everyone but inconveniencing the shit out of Cindy right now.

 The first time she saw somebody she thought she recognized, she was only about thirty yards from the cemetery. There were trees that she recalled from some vague unpleasant memory. She remembered a lot of shouting. She thought it was one of many lovely recollections from her colorful marriage, but the memory had the feeling of being older. She thought she saw the face of the crazy minstrel guy in the memory. Then she saw another face from long ago.

 Shirley Maples had lived down the street from Cindy when she lived with Patrick. Her husband was a disabled farmer who lost two of his fingers in a crop incident. Disability hardly covered the mortgage and taxes, so Shirley was forced to support the family by working sixty hours a week at the K-Mart in town. She spent her days serving warmed-over hot dogs to ungrateful customers and her nights serving a more demanding albeit loving seven hand and foot, but she never complained. Her face always looked like the sun on a cloudless day. To top it off, she had braved it out as one of the very first black women to stay in the area with white husband. This was her home, she insisted. There was nobody white, black, or polka dotted that would make her move until she was damn good ready. She didn't care about the snickers at her white husband. When the children called her daughters "zebra", she taught them to stand up for themselves. They should be proud. Nobody should take that away from them. Her pride made Cindy smile with there.

 "Cindy?" Shirley questioned, peering over her sunglasses. "Cindy? Is that you?"

 Damn, she thought. Cindy could kill herself for her own carelessness. Even in Shirley's presence she didn't quite feel safe. This was no time for pleasantries. She'd been gone for too long. God knew whose side anybody could be on.

 "No," she said, lowering her voice so as to disguise it, "I think you have the wrong person."

 "Cindy Hughes, you may fool everyone else with that Hollywood getup, but you can't fool me. You should know me better by this time."

 Despite herself, Cindy found herself smiling. Shirley Maples had a way of getting to the heart of things and warming them all up. For a brief time, Cindy almost felt at home, then remembering, started to turn away, unsure of where to go now that she'd been discovered.

 "Cindy, you're safe with me. Let me help you. Hell, you think I'd turn you over to anyone in this crazy place? Do you remember who you're talking to?" When she saw Cindy's hesitation, she approached her. "Look, I know you didn't have the easiest time here. If you need somewhere to stay, someone to talk to, I'm the one to trust. Where are you heading?"

 Cindy gestured with her head to the cemetery. Shirley nodded gravely, then gently whisked Cindy away. Cindy almost gave a vehement protest, but Shirley spoke first.

 "Old man Campbell died the other day. The funeral service will be arriving soon," she whispered, and that was all the explanation Cindy needed. Campbell was one of the private bankers that lived up by Mitchelsville. Bath's rich was dying off fast. "Did you eat breakfast?"

 "Not really," Cindy replied, suddenly feeling famished.

 "Then let's go to my house and get a real meal in you. Where are you staying? Do you have your things somewhere?"

 Cindy shrugged. "This is it."

 Shirley gave her a deep, knowing look before nodding toward a blue Ford wagon. "My car is over there. Let's get out of here before someone recognizes you that you would rather not see." And before she knew it, Cindy was whisked off the street and driven away, like an actor being shielded from crazed fans. Yet luckily, Cindy had not encountered any of her cheering crowd, thank God.

 The two women were silent for awhile. Shirley spoke first.

 "So what brings you back to Bath? I thought I'd never be seeing you again."

 Cindy smiled. "I guess I'm not really sure myself. How's Ted and the boys?"

"The boys, fine. Ted, well, Ted I have no idea and frankly I don't give a damn."

 Cindy jerked her head towards Shirley. "You guys split up?" Some things could still shock her, much to her surprise.

 "Mm-hmm," Shirley nodded matter-of-factly. "Imagine the satisfaction folks got out of that one."

 Cindy was silent for a moment. Old voices came back, old voices that she hadn't supposed to heard but heard anyway. An Italian and an American. What had they expected? As though somehow, a third generation Italian was less American than a fifth generation WASP.

 "Cindy? You all right?"

 She blinked. "Yeah. I guess so."

 Shirley smiled. "They all had you written off as dead around here. Least until the article from the Times."

 Cindy felt her blood run cold. "That so? You mean, everyone thought I croaked?"

 "Just about. It was the general consensus."

 "The Hughes? What about them?"

 Shirley shrugged. "They're too busy pretending to be upset about their boy to really worry about anything else. But they like the idea that you're dead. Otherwise it's a fight in probate court."

 Cindy observed this with an odd sense of relief. Maybe her running truly was over. It sounded too good to be true.

 Schoolchildren were assembling at corners, meeting friends from other buses. The elementary school was just two blocks away. Cindy recognized nearly all the faces, and turned her gaze away, not wanting more attentions than she already attracted.

 "Timmy and Joseph are gone already," Shirley informed Cindy as they pulled up to the house. "We'll have the house to ourselves nearly all day. Of course, you're more than welcome to stay here as long as you need. No one will bother you here. They don't bother with me."

 "I appreciate it," Cindy said, finding herself meaning it.

 "No one comes here anymore," Shirley continued as they got out of the car, a trace of bitterness in her voice. Cindy understood. She knew what it was like to be deserted.

 Shirley Maple's house brought back a flood of warmth mixed with anxiety. The exterior had changed a little, not quite the bright quaint ranch that Cindy had visited so many times over the years; the paint was chipping away, the curtains, the windows, a little yellow from the dirt of neglect; it looked the victim of premature old age. Cindy thought she felt some sympathy for it. She squinted at Shirley; wondering if there was any reflection of this devastation. None appeared to be evident.

 "Sorry about the house; I now it doesn't look the greatest," Shirley said, as though reading Cindy's mind. "Since Ted left, I haven't had the money or time to really keep up here."

 "How long has he been gone?" Cindy asked.

 "Oh, I have no idea. I've lost track by now. Let's see, you left when? a year ago? He left about two months after that. Yes, I'm pretty sure that's right."

 "Have you heard from him at all?"

 "Oh, he stops by every Sunday. His way of giving dues to God, I suppose. I make sure I'm never here."

 Cindy left the questions that she had spawned lie where they were. She did not want to hear of humiliation and despair. The little peace that she had was too fragile for that. The door creaked behind her as she shut it, and flapped back and forth a couple of times until it rested into place. Cindy stood watching it.

 "Here, let me put on some hot chocolate for you," Shirley said, busying herself in the kitchen, which was a small enclave next to the front foyer. "You're going to catch your death standing there. I'm surprised you haven't already. We've gotten two snows so far. Tonight we're expecting another one. Looks like we'll have another active winter this year."

 Cindy stood watching out the window. Sure enough, patches of melting snow lay scattered about the property, bare trees were scantily clad in white on their branches. She had not noticed it once since she was back. Only now she felt peaceful enough to sit quietly and look about her. Perhaps the house had aged on the outside, but inside, its warming charm had not changed at all. She was still safe here.

 "You see your mama yet?" Shirley's voice broke into the calm, as she poured chocolate into two cups on the end table which served as the dining room table.

 "No. No, I haven't." Cindy managed. Suddenly she was uncomfortable again.

 "Sorry. Didn't mean to bring up an uncomfortable subject," Shirley joined Cindy's gaze out the window. "Just that, I haven't seen her around for a long time."

 "Did you see her since I left?"

 "Once. In K-Mart." Shirley suddenly got up to grab the pots on her stove and put them in her sink. "She didn't say much to me. Just hi. I thought she might be worried about you."

 "That would be a surprise," Cindy muttered. Shirley appeared not to hear, at least not at first.

 "All mamas worry about their children. Sure, there are babies thrown in garbage dumps. Women have abortions for no good reason, sometimes just to keep a man. But a woman who labors, who's brave enough to sweat the tears, give years up just to put food on the table, just to make sure her child lives another day, that mama cares. I don't care what anyone says."

 Cindy remained silent. A parent's love was always real when they forgot what it was like to be a child. Cindy had given up trying to prove them differently.

 "I drove by there, you know, by your old house? Sheez, you think this hellhole looks bad? Looks like no one's been living there for fifty years."

 "Maybe she doesn't live there anymore," Cindy shrugged.

 "Maybe you should go see yourself." The two women held each other's eyes.

 "She doesn't live there," Cindy said. "Or else she'd be running all over the city trying to get money from her rich daughter."

 "Hmm." A statement, not a ponderance.

 The two women drank in silence. "Perhaps we could go there sometime, check up on things," Shirley suggested.

 Cindy did not answer.

 "So, what brings you here anyway?" Shirley proclaimed with sudden abundant cheeriness. "Coming to take hold of your fortune?"

 "Mm." Cindy replied with terse indifference.

 "You've become a legend here. Disappearing in thin air, then one of the richest widows here in Steuben County, then the next day an accomplice to a serial killer, then his kidnap victim. Damn."

 "He's not serial killer." Cindy put in dryly.

 "Yeah? And how would you know? You're a friend of his?" Then rumors are true, then. Which one, the first or the second?"

 "Neither." Cindy replied in the same bland voice.

 Shirley gave her a hard look. "Girl, you got to tell me what's going on. You hardly tell me anything. Hell, you even forced me to put two and two together about you and Patrick, how he used to beat on you and all. And it was the damn bruises that told me, not you. But this here black lady ain't no dummy. I ain't no fool. I could tell you what was going on better than you could tell me. So I know you've got some wild things going on in your fake blonde head. Damn, if you're going to eat my food, you better talk to me, girl. Now."

 "Where do you want me to start?"

 "Girl, I've got all day. No man is beckoning at my front door. Tell me how you finally got your butt out of that rich man's hellhole and how wit took eleven months to get two miles down the road into my kitchen."

 Cindy sighed. She told Shirley how she moved to New York, and how Patrick tracked her down, and how she moved on the streets, how she felt she had to move All that she told felt like a great weight being lifted from her, though terrified to speak. She had not spoken at length to anyone for months. But the last person she had was Shirley. A haven.

 "Girl, you lived on the streets now, didn't you?" Shirley said with a chagrined look. Apparently Cindy's expression gave her away; Shirley shook her head in what appeared to be dismay. "Damn, things must have been real bad for you to have to do that. If that boy were alive, I'd have him stoned. No, I'd stone him myself. That's not the way to treat a woman. Any man who has to beat a woman to prove himself should have his balls sliced off. That ain't no man."

 Cindy felt emotion well up in her. Anger, despair, venom; they all reared their head and then sunk into a soup of rot within her. She was glad for the ensuing silence; it kept what little control she had together. She wanted to strike at anything she could find. Slowly, she fought herself just as she had over the years. Soon, she was in control; the control that had enabled her to think for her survival. When she was, she spoke one question. "How did he die?"

 Shirley looked sharply at her. "Shot himself. Thinks its murder. In the heart. Why?"

 Cindy ignored the question. "When did it happen?"

 "About nine months ago. Big news around here with the funeral and all. Gave everybody something to do for three days and something to talk about after church for weeks. You would've been a real celebrity. They all think he offend himself for love. Me, I think someone offend him, with the drugs and all. I though, was in a vast minority. Of one," Shirley said with a smirk of derision. Cindy barely noticed. She found attention focused at a small speck of dust in the window sill.

 "I didn't hear anything about it," she said to the speck. "I heard about it only a month ago. I though he just died."

 Shirley shrugged. "The Hughes are small potatoes in the Big Apple. Who cares about a guy with ten million dollars when you can hear about the Trumps?"

 "Was it open or close casket?"

 "Open. Pretty poor taste, like it was some kind of media gimmick. All the reporters gawked at him. One even tried to get his suit open. Guess he needed some wild photos for his gallery or something. Tell you, the Apple ain't the only place where the sickos lay the roost."

 Cindy say quietly, her senses numbing. "You saw him?"

 "Sure did. Tell you, I hated the guy for how he treated you. But damn, to see that shell lying there, it was like, I couldn't wish that on anybody ever again. I just hope he made peace with the Lord before that trigger took his life. When I saw him, I prayed that whoever had the nerve to do that would meet his justice. No one has the right to take life but the One above.

 "What do you want to do now?" Shirley asked.

 Cindy felt a slight edge of panic, hoping that all she had to do was say, watch TV, but she knew that Shirley wouldn't ask a question like that. And a vision of her long lost father, then mother, then the minstrel went by her. Too much to do. She wished back for her short time with her midnight job in the diner. Life had seemed so much simpler then. Now, with the old memories came the responsibility of someone else's life on her hands. It felt overwhelming.

 "Rest," she said. "I just want to rest."

 Shirley put her hand over hers. She said nothing.

FORTY SIX

 He walked around the house early the next morning. There was snow; the first he'd seen this year. There were still orange and red leaves hidden by white splendor on the trees. It was a marvelous sight to behold.

 He went outside and sat in the snow. So quiet, so vastly empty, yet he did not feel alone, or lonely. He was wrapped with a warm blanket of love. Forever did he have his Friend.

 Perhaps today he would make breakfast. The girl, she had the Spirit with her, bless her. Today was Sunday, he believed. She could have rest. Him, he always rested. God saw to that. Today he could be a servant.

 The heat inside was a joy after the cold. So fortunate was he to have friends who cared for him so. To be able to live in such luxury, he though as he scurried through the numerous pots and pans, preparing the meal. He did not deserve this; there were so many that he met that more deserved to be where he was today, like Sunya, the girl he'd met with four children—she'd spent so much time working to feed them, kept them warm with no home to come to, and Carmen, his dear cousin trying to keep Carlos out of his trouble, his rabble-rouser cousin, and of course, Lupe; he prayed that she was warm.

 He turned before he saw her, sensing her presence. "What are you doing?"

 "Making breakfast," he replied, smiling.

 "With tomatoes?" she scrunched up her nose.

 He nodded. "Tomatoes, onions, some chili powder and jalapeno cheese mixed with eggs. Except I don't think Mr. Greenwood has Jalapeno cheese. We might have to settle for cheddar."

 "I like cheddar. What's jalapeno?"

 "Jalapeno cheese is a spicy cheese. It's my favorite one."

 The girl wrinkled her nose again. "I don't like spicy food."

 He smiled. "So I'll cut down on the chili powder just for you. Deal?"

 She smiled for the first time. "Deal." She sat down at the table. "My dad makes fruit pancakes on weekends. From scratch. Totally homemade."

 "What kind of fruit pancakes?"

Raven shrugged. "All kinds. It depends on what's fresh. One time he took me to pick strawberries on a farm. Kind of like this one. Then we made pancakes."

 "Well, then, next time I'll make pancakes."

 "Okay. But I like eggs too. I just wanted to tell a story."

 The minstrel chuckled. No guile yet in this child. "Stories are good for the soul." He went back to cooking and the girl separated the sections of the newspaper and began reading one.

 In her sorting, one section fell open to an article. The minstrel suddenly saw a rude sketch of himself staring back at him and stopped his cooking to read it. The words of the article, which were in English, hovered back and forth between his native tongue and the adopted language of his adopted home. The article remained in Spanish for a short time, then reverted back to English. The minstrel, at first panicking that the article was lost to him, was startled to find that he could understand what he was reading, as he was when he was six and reading books from the mainland's authors on the island he had called home. He felt like a part of himself had been reunited with the rest of him. He wondered if the article contained good news for him.

"She's a smart girl," he said to the father.

 "Too smart. Sometimes I worry about her."

 "That's your job. But she will be all right. She has fire."

 "Yes. Something like her mother used to be. Then, well-"

 "She died."

 "She, had a drug overdose. She never was the same after that." Raven saw her once and she went berserk. I couldn't take her again."

 "She was Cherokee?"

 "Yes. Three-quarters."

 "The tribe wanted to take care of her, I'm sure."

 "Sure. Of course. But I wanted to stay with her. And after losing Jenny, I couldn't stay there. So one day I took Raven and packed all I could into the trailer, and came back here. I never could go back."

 "You did what you had to."

 "Sometimes I wonder if I made the right decision. Life was good there on the reservation. Hard, but good. I would wake up every morning with joy. There was a river right outside my window, and I would feel like the world was rushing in to greet me. The world felt alive. I don't feel the same way about here. It is gray and rotten here. It smells of death, and it is as if everyone here thrives on it. Things of life are sissy here."

 He shrugged. "And who cares?" Do you live your life for them, or for you?"

 "Sometimes I don't know. Things are so confusing here. I don't know what I'm living for. Things were clearer to me back then."

 "Your spirit lies everywhere. Everywhere you go, life can be found. If you have to turn a rock over to find gold, isn't it worth the toil?"

 "Sometimes I get weary. No one else tries. Why should I?"

 "Because if you live your own life, it matters. Live for yourself and God so you can sleep well at night and face God with a clear conscience. Isn't that reason enough to try?"

 "And what about Raven? She has a chance. Children are still pure. If you don't have the strength to do it or yourself, do it for it. Let her grow strong through you. God always gives rest to the weary. Ask him for help. Try it once. No church, no religion. Just in your time, ask for His help. You'd be surprised."

 He watched Jonathan as he stared into space. He felt compassion for him. He had been through so much, and God seemed far away to him. He had seen it so many times before. It was hard to believe in the light when nothing but darkness seemed to reign. Faith could be hard to come by. It was like a friend letting you down.

 They all were seated at the table. He was happy to serve them here. Seeing them all before him gave him a profound sense of joy. So much love was here. He was fortunate.

 Prayers, they were always answered. As he led in grace, he prayed in his mind for his friends gathered. He knew that all would be well in the end.

The Frawley home was silent tonight. It had an abandoned echo emanating from each of the rooms, as though no life existed there, the artifacts all remnants of a bereft museum. It was a collection in mourning.

 Included in the set was a lone motionless figure sprawled on the verandah. Next to her was her companion, a half-filled bottle of Seagrams Seven. Somehow her fingers knocked it over. Little by little, the life ebbed from the bottle and it became as vacant as everything else.

 Nothing had gone as planned for the lone figure. When she tried doing the right thing, what was best for everybody involved, everyone turned on her. Destroyed her plans. Threatened to demolish her artwork, including the exquisite bustheads of the American presidents. And, to add insult to injury, they had fired her. Fired her! From her own committee! The shi- no, the jerks. No use to sink to the cretins' level.

 And why? Because the shi- no, jerk Haines were cut off in the final plan? She was accused of having no compassion or concern for those who had suffered. Didn't she want to protect those who had been so savagely devastated? She had been attacked. Did she not care?

 And where were they when her son died? She'd shot back. When the savages (like Jackson) had poisoned her precious Quentin with drugs. Where were they then? Because he was a shy child, he did not matter, just the life of the captain of the football team? Who the fuck did they think they were! And she'd marched out with her dignity in hand.

 Until she came to her empty house. The beautiful old-fashioned, spacious barren house. Not even Quentin wanted her. He rather follow the blacks and let them take his life, just to be away from her. No one wanted her. She was alone.

 The rain fell, but she did not hear it. She heard nothing, hopefully ever again. No more did she want to be tortured by everyone about her. Never again did she want to wake up.

 Wishes sometimes did come true.

FORTY SEVEN

 Cindy sat alone in the kitchen as Shirley Maples left for work. She sat thinking. It was the longest time she sat still with her thoughts that she could remember. For her whole life, she had been running. When she was a child, from her mother's upraised hands and the lewdness of the constant stream of men that flowed by in her mother's life. In school, from those who called her a Guinea bastard. To New York, for a better life. To Patrick, for security. From Patrick, for the same reason. It had never seemed safe to sit still.

 But here she was. In many ways it felt scarier than when she ran from Patrick with a bat in hand. She did not know how to sit still. Being alone in silence was terrifying.

 But necessary. She was going to have to decide what to do. She couldn't stay here forever.

 She could start over now. The realization still hadn't hit her. At any moment she expected Patrick to break the door down and come after her with a butcher knife. It never happened. With that not to worry about, Cindy was unsure of what to do next. Once she'd passed by a mirror. Nothing reflected back at her but a sketched image of herself. All this time, she didn't even know who the hell she was, let alone make something of her life.

 Cindy wasn't a caretaker or a fixer. Never in her life had she sought out to save anyone. And yet here she was, faced with the decision to save the freedom of someone, someone she hardly even knew. Though somehow she felt she knew him, like she knew him forever. And he stood at the brink of being convicted for crimes he didn't do. That she knew he didn't do. That she could save him. Christ.

 She would be in the spotlight again. Too often, she'd been the center of attention, at home and in school. For being too promiscuous, too wild, too drunk. She never felt she could be herself without a spectacle of attention demanding her to change to suit their needs. She was never in her wildness trying to get attention. She wanted to be free. And it was happening again, exactly the same way.

 So was it worth letting this guy go to jail and possibly fry, so she could be free. Or rather, was she willing to become a media trap so this guy could live.

 She sighed. She decided to take a walk. She didn't feel trapped here, for although this was a small town and she was in a house that had aroused much curiosity, most of the houses were spaced far apart enough so she could escape through the back door without much notice. She was still leery about being recognized on the streets, though, the last thing she wanted to deal with in her state of mind was a run-in with the Hughes'. Si she stuck to the mountain in Shirley's back yard.

 Cindy had gone there a couple of times before she was hiding out. She'd go there to run from the clamor of the kids and from Shirley and Bill's yelling, not caring if it was Niagara Falls or a garbage dump. It was the only place where she felt alone.

 But today she was alone, and there was no one to run from, and it was what struck her for the first time was the grandeur of this mountain that she'd seen probably a hundred times before. She never noticed how many different greens the foliage held, how grand and magnificent it looked in size, or even the snow that rested upon it when most of the other snow had melted away. She wished she could memorize the picture, so she just sat and stared. She was unaware of how long she stood there; when she snapped to attention, she realized there were tears streaming down her eyes. Annoyed at herself, she brushed them away. It was just a mountain, after all.

 Breathing in deeply, she began her journey. Not many people climbed here. There were rumors of snakes and bears living there. Cindy had never seen them. She assumed it was just because she was female that people told her to stay away from the mountain. Women were supposed to preserve strawberries for the annual festival, clean and raise babies here. Not here. Neither had her mother.

 The sun was nearly above her when she first turned to survey her progress. She was more than halfway above. Amidst other green peaks she saw tiny specks of what was the town, a couple of minute colored dots scurried back and forth. She suddenly felt very small.

 There was a whole world down there, she thought. So busy with the day, and yet the rest of the world lay still, untouched. It breathed a life of its own, without her, without anyone else. She wondered how much of what they all thought was important didn't matter after all. Or what she thought, either.

 Suddenly she felt very silly. All this time she'd been so afraid of being hunted down from every corner, and now she wondered how many people noticed that she had even left in the first place. Somehow, because the two most significant people in her life, her mother and husband, had been obsessed with her, everyone else had to be too. Watching the world buzz about with her unnoticed, she had to laugh. No one cared that she was here, she laughed. No one knew, and no one cared. Her nemeses were dead. So now she was free. She could do what she wanted now. What a scary thought.

 The smell of evergreen enchanted her. She watched her breath as she exhaled. She remembered as a child waiting for the schoolbus on cold winter mornings, blowing air, pretending she'd blew a puff of smoke. She smiled. She felt like a child once again.

 Feeling her freedom, she knew what to do now. She felt exhilarated and alive, like nothing could touch her. She was free now. And she knew that whatever happened because of her decision, free she would remain.

FORTY EIGHT

 Carmen was busy washing her husband when she heard the news on the radio.

 There was the girl, the rich one, wearing a fur coat and chic sunglasses, talking into the camera. She looked like a movie star. Carmen found it hard to believe someone like that had ever been homeless. But she said she had, and almost everyone seemed inclined to believe her. Someone that beautiful could say they were a space alien and would be believed.

 And so now, because of that, three months of chasing after Raul was over. He was free now, at least as far as the authorities were concerned. The girl said he'd saved her life. So now he was a folk hero. When he'd healed a pregnant Puerto Rican girl, that hadn't counted. Neither had this girl, white as she was, until they discovered she was an heiress to a million dollars. It was all so sick. She cursed, and quickly prayed to the Virgin to ask God for forgiveness.

 This had been happening to her a lot. Her nerves had been on the verge of snapping ever since she had last spoken to Jonathan Pfeifer about Raul.

 Carlos watched the TV with her in the silent state he usually held now, except Carmen saw tears form in his eyes. She quietly dabbed at them without comment, thought it was her eyes that were watering now. Carlos said that he would like to see Raul again before he died. Every day, Carlos had been getting weaker and weaker. Carmen found herself not knowing where to place her mind. Everywhere there seemed to be anxiety and uncertainty. There seemed to be no escape.

 At ten-thirty that night, the phone jarred her out of a sound sleep. Carlos cursed. Carmen blinked her eyes open, shutting off the TV which had been left one when she drifted off. Again, alarm. No one called here that late unless it was an emergency, especially since their kids moved out and lovelorn beaus with them. She wondered what could be wrong now. She wondered if Raul was dead.

 It was Jonathan Pfeifer. He had found Raul. Yes, he was fine. They were staying at a farm in Connecticut. He asked her if she wanted to come and see him, or would it be better if Raul came to them.

Carmen thought for a moment. More than anything she wanted to get the hell out of the Bronx. A trip to a remote farm sounded delightful. Carlos would have to swallow his pride and let her drive.

 So yes, she excitedly told Jonathan. Yes, she and Carlos would be there. They would leave tomorrow. Thanksgiving was just three days away. Oscar and Camille were planning on dinner for them, but Carmen knew that Camille would want to see her Uncle Raul. She felt such joy that she wanted to leave right away. It was all she could do to make herself try to lie in bed and relax with herself.

 It was impossible for her to get a decent amount of sleep that night. If Carlos was well, she would have shaken him awake with the news. He would have lifted her in the air and hugged and kissed her. She knew that tomorrow when she told him the news, he would smile, he would hold her hand, knowing that the journey had finally closed.

 But there would be joy to celebrate. Finally, the lost pieces of their life would be found and put in their rightful place. She felt oddly out of place as well as elated.

 She talked to Lupe. The priest had told her that Lupe was in a place where she couldn't hear her, but Carmen felt better when she talked to her. She was sure that Lupe heard her in some way, even if it was God Himself relaying the message. Carmen was sure that God would do that. He was the only One who truly knew what her pain had been for so many years.

 She shared her excitement with Lupe. She felt a sense of Lupe sharing her joy. Carmen thanked her for keeping an eye on Raul. She was sure that Lupe had spent a lot of her time bugging God to keep Raul safe. That was what Lupe was like. She fought like a demon for whatever she thought was important. Even as an angel, Carmen was sure it was still true.

 She woke up to Carlos wanting breakfast. At first, she felt the sensation of excitement without remembering why. Then, it came back. She made the announcement to Carlos that they were leaving for Connecticut today, because, she said quickly as Carlos' face darkened, Raul was there.

 Carlos almost got another heart attack, he jumped up so high from excitement. He grabbed her and kissed her like she was his bride once more. They both cried and talked at the same time, not knowing what they were saying but understanding they joy they both felt.

 They were on the road less than an hour later, their daughter and granddaughters stuffed in the Rabbit along with three suitcases and two dogs. Shayna, the youngest, was excited to meet her great-uncle. Sonja was silent, but Carmen could see the smile on her face even as she stared out the window.

 She was nervous the whole time driving there. What would she say to him after all this time? Would he even remember her? Obviously he hadn't recognized her at the hospital. To Carlos, she reminisced about the days when they all lived together as a happy family. Carlos and Raul would bet on boxing, except whoever lost got to fix the light bulb. Carlos became quite an expert changing light bulbs and fixing sinks.

 Andi talked about how Raul taught her chess. They used to use chocolate and vanilla wafers for pieces, and whoever won got to eat the other's king. Andi said after three or four games, Raul used to pretend he had a stomach ache, then they used to eat up all the other pieces. Eventually, a few months later, she started winning stomach aches. She never felt proud of stomach aches in all her life.

They picked up the boys by the Bruckner Parkway. They looked like Cub Scouts on their first camping trip. When they got in, they started singing songs Raul taught them. Carmen thought she'd forgotten them, but she remembered. Deep in her soul they had remained. But their soul was not to be abandoned. They remained alive and well, only hidden in the darkness. She sang too, and forgot her worries, just like it had always been.

The snow began just as they crossed the border to Connecticut. It was white and soft. Carmen had never quite remembered it being so pure. The houses were bigger, the yards wider. She tried not to feel anger that it always seemed the rich were treated to beauty, and worse, forgot to be grateful for it after awhile. She heard the laughter of her family behind her, and was reminded that she was rich in many other ways. She wondered how many of the rich people here could hear the laughter of children. They were too far away from each other. Maybe all they heard was the stony silence of their own rich prison.

Carlos and she fought over directions once they left the interstate, which always happened when she was driving. Make left here; no, I can't, that's a Burger King; make the left anyway; then she would pull over, grab the paper, he would jam his foot onto an imaginary brake, bracing himself for the accident that never happened and the tirade she would leash afterwards.

But today, she said nothing. She just took the sheet and read. Sonja offered to read it. And Carmen gave it to her. There was no argument about the subject, and the singing resumed. Today, nothing could shatter the joy.

It was one o'clock when they entered the road. By then, the snow was almost blinding. But no one, not even Carlos told her to stop. Carmen doubted she'd have listened if they had. She felt removed from the bickering that constantly lived in her home, and the misery and drudgery that went with it. That seemed unreal and foreign. What lay ahead, only that seemed real.

There it was, the red number looming bright red in the white winter shadows. It stood out like a beacon from the Lord. Tony told jokes, but Carmen could not answer him or laugh. All she could focus on the sign.

The long windy road seemed like it would never end. Carmen nearly wanted to scream with anticipation. She did not listen to Carlos' backseat driving. She talked to Lupe instead, and told her of her fears. She talked until she somehow got the car parked alongside what seemed like a huge mansion, and only then she felt better. The cheers coming from the youngest ones shattered her own thoughts. Somehow, she felt as though nothing unusual was happening at all.

She was startled by the abrupt approach of a man, who turned out to be Jonathan. He greeted her with a big hug and kiss on the cheek, and bravely shook Carlos' hand afterwards, despite the evil glare that Carlos wore.

"How are you? I was worried about you guys driving. The snow was a surprise to everyone."

"My wife can drive fine," Carlos defended righteously. Carmen had to laugh.

"Let me help you guys with your stuff. And who are these fine people?"

Carmen introduced their family, only to be cut off by Carlos. "This is all nice. But we can do this later. Where is my cousin?"

Carmen looked at her husband. The whole ride, he'd showed little emotion. Though she knew him well enough to know he hid almost everything inside, she was still startled to witness it. His emotion jarred her out of her plaintive state, and once more she was overcome by the emotion she'd been so much trying to hide. She felt her blood churning and her heart pumping within her throat. She, too, wanted to see Raul as soon as possible, if only to rid herself of the horrible emotion she felt inside. "Besides," her husband was continuing, "I'm freezing my ass off. I'm a sick man, you know, but what do you care. Let's all have a family reunion in Alaska instead."

"All right dad, I'll get you inside," Dominick put a reassuring arm around his father, guiding him to a house and gave what seemed like a wink back to everyone else. The snow was too blinding and Carmen was too nervous to pay any attention, least of all to her husband's incessant complaints to which she turned a deaf ear most times over the years.

"Come. Let's go, Raul is inside," Jonathan touched her shoulder, leading her and the rest of the entourage into the house.

"How is he doing?" Anna asked.

"All right. He just came back from a walk." Jonathan, who sounded reassuring in his lawyer's voice to the others, rang doubtful in Carmen's ears. She knew him well enough to hear the hollowness.

"In this weather? He must be nuts," Shayna exclaimed.

"He's lived outside for a long time. And be nice. He's our uncle," Sonja instructed.

"You'll love him, too," their mother, Maria said. "He was my favorite uncle."

"Why?" Shayna asked.

"He was like a big grown up kid with a big wise heart," Maria explained, "and he was the best cook, too."

"Hey," Carmen interjected, smiling.

"Well, next to your grandmother, of course."

"Can he make good dessert?"

"Ay, ay. You haven't even eaten lunch yet. Shut your mouth about dessert until you have some decent food in you."

"Mama, I'm cold."

"Yeah, Mama, so's Papa."

"Ay," Maria exclaimed. "Let me go ahead of you," she said to Carmen, "if you don't mind. This crowd will dive me crazy otherwise."

"No, go ahead," Carmen insisted. "I want to talk to Jonathan for a few minutes, anyway."

She watched the brood scamper toward the house. The snow had abated to some random flurries. It almost seemed cheerful to be outside right then.

"You've raised a wonderful crew," Jonathan asserted.

"Ah, wasn't my doing. Must have been the good Lord."

"Oh come now, take some credit."

"Okay fine. They're great people. All my doing with a lot of butt-breaking effort." She smiled at Jonathan. "Happy now?"

Jonathan returned the smile. "Very." They started walking toward the door. "Your husband didn't seem very thrilled by me."

"Don't mind him. He's just a typical possessive Puerto Rican. I can say that."

Jonathan laughed. "Do you want to talk on the patio? It's heated and enclosed. Probably warmer."

"Don't worry about me. I'm so cold that I can't even feel my hands anymore. It doesn't make a difference to me. I just want to talk to you about Raul before I see him."

"Mm-hmm." Jonathan said, or at least Carmen though he said. The wind howled. Carmen was in another world. The wind was more of a nuisance than cold producing for her.

They walked around the house in silence. Carmen felt that the gray wood-shingled house would go on forever. She wondered how a farmer could afford a house like that when she'd been struggling so hard just to keep an apartment. Her irritation was making her cynical even at the very man housing and keeping someone she'd thought long dead. God help her.

The porch was nondescript, with worn down screen protected by glass. Inside were three wicker chairs and an old chaise lounge. It smelled like mold and mothballs. Carmen found herself thinking of the cooking smells that constantly pervaded her home, and how happy her home could be when it was full. This room felt lonely and cold. She longed for the bright colors of home. Maybe the Bronx was gray, but the people made it colorful, in more ways than one.

"How long has Raul been here?" she asked as she sat down.

"For about two weeks," Jonathan said. "Al Greenwood was Raul's employer. I found out about him by chance."

God works in mysterious ways, Carmen wondered. "How did he find Raul?"

"Among the illegals. Al Greenwood likes paying in cash, and he doesn't have enough of that to give to an American, especially full-time employment. So he goes and finds an illegal."

"But Raul isn't illegal. He's Puerto Rican."

Jonathan shrugged. "Who's going to know? It isn't like they check for identification to get workers."

"How much does this Greenwood person give?" Carmen found herself getting indignant.

"Better than most. Fifty a day, two days a week, meals and room included. But a hundred a week isn't enough for most Americans, especially with no benefits, so he just gives to who's willing."

"Why didn't this man find a home for Raul? Who would allow someone they knew to walk the streets?"

"He tried," Jonathan explained with a shrug, "but you can't force someone to do something they don't want to."

Carmen was horrified. "Raul is a family man. He's not some kind of hippie nomad. What is this man talking about?"

"He said he needed to find his family."

And Carmen remembered the Raul who demanded where his wife and daughter were, and how not long after that dreadful night, he left the confines of the hospital in search of the family he lost. And reluctantly, she understood.

"I'd say Al Greenwood kept good tabs on Raul, considering," Jonathan said in a quiet but definite way.

"Why did something like this have to happen to a man like Raul?" Carmen said angrily. "He was more than a good man. He tried to save people from a life on the streets. Then his family is killed right in front of him, and he spends his life like one of them. Why the fuck did it have to be like that?" She almost swallowed her tongue at the rare expletive, but not with the sudden rush of anger she felt. She didn't care of her Christian virtue.

Jonathan sighed. "I have no answers," he said after a time. "Why is the mother of my child locked up in a nuthouse? She was fierce, hardworking, and incredibly kind. What did she do to end up like that? One night of quaaludes and whiskey? Worse people have gotten away with more. A lot more. So why her? Why Raul? I have no idea." He was silent for awhile. "I suppose one day we'll just have to wait for God to explain. After all, He has all the answers, right?"

"He damn well has explaining to do," Carmen said with more vehemence than she intended.

Jonathan shrugged. "Maybe he has nothing to do with it. Maybe there is evil so we can know the good. Maybe there's an evil force trying to get us to blame God so we hate Him and become evil, too. Maybe God is what brings out of the situation and makes us stronger."

"I don't know," Carmen said, suddenly irritable. She decided to change the subject. "How long have you and Raven been here?"

"Since last Thursday night. She's been having trouble the last week or so in school, so I decided to take her out for this week. They have off for Thanksgiving this week, so she won't miss that much. We'll go back after the holiday."

"She seems like a very smart girl," Carmen said.

"Too smart." He paused for a moment. "This is what I wanted to talk to you about. If you hadn't grabbed me, I would have grabbed you."

"I had a feeling you wanted to talk to me," Carmen put in.

"Raven didn't realize that Raul has amnesia. And even if she did, smart as she is, I don't think she'd fully understand what it means. So what happened is, as she was talking to him, she told him that Lupe and Raulita were dead."

"She knows Spanish? He seemed stuck in Spanish at the hospital." Jonathan hesitated. "Somehow they were able to understand each other's language. I'm not sure how that happened."

The Holy Spirit will give gifts, Carmen remembered a voice in her mind. Sometimes gifts of tongues, sometimes one of teaching, sometimes of healing. Sometimes for interpreting. Carmen began to feel uncomfortable. A feeling of what was not quite eeriness and not quite awe washed over Carmen. For a moment she sat in a flabbergasted, unthinking state, then turned to look at Jonathan. He was rocking in his chair, staring out onto the snowscape. She sighed.

"Is Raul all right?" she asked.

Jonathan smiled a smile that was weary and sheepish. "He's in mourning."

Carmen smiled. "I wonder if he'll remember me now."

"I don't think anyone ever told him that his family was dead, at least before my daughter did."

"He never got to see the bodies," Carmen recalled. "By the time he woke up, they were waked and buried."

"So he never buried them."

Carmen shook her head. "No."

They were silent for awhile. Carmen felt herself once more engulfed in the pang of grief that never quite seemed to go away. She tried to swallow it down; what kind of comfort or inspiration could she be to Raul when she couldn't overcome her own sorrow? She almost could feel herself laugh. She stifled that, too.

She jumped at the sound of Jonathan getting up. "Well, are you ready to see your cousin?" he said, offering his hand.

"Yes. I'd better go inside anyway. Carlos is going to think we ran off and got eloped," she managed an attempt at humor. Jonathan smiled in deference as he led her inside on his arm.

Carmen hadn't known what to expect when she saw her husband's cousin, whether he'd be sitting broken in a chair with sorrow, or somehow dumb to the world in his innocence. Instead, he was talking amiably to Carlos while surrounded by the children. A young girl she'd never seen was sitting on his lap. She could see the brightness of the girl's eyes. For a moment, she felt as though she'd gone back in time, that Raulita was sitting on her father's lap once more. But then she remembered, and instantly began to cry, and it was Raul who was comforting her. Gone were her plans to be the comforter, for her tears had won. She felt his sobs with her. They were crying together. She was unaware for a long time of anyone else with them. The long silence reminded her. She looked up to see six pairs of eyes upon them, Jonathan looking sadly out the window. The six pairs were glassy with their own tears. Jonathan's were filled with a sadness which seemed to fill him, pregnant with pain but refusing to leave its host.

Then he held her out from him.

"Carmen," he said. "It is good to remember old friends."

She smiled, wanted to cry again. So many emotions. He was here. She had been recognized. So many thoughts. Too many at one time.

"Carlos, my cousin," he embraced her husband. He looked at Carmen. There was fire in his eyes. "It is good to have my family. Even if some are in heaven right now."

There was water where the fire once was.

FORTY NINE

A snow was falling. The bleak gray of dinginess was cleaned into angelic white.

He spent each night talking to Lupe and Raulita. When he spoke to Jesus, he would tell Him to give them messages. He still loved them. Now that he knew where they were, he wished to join them. His greatest joy was to be with the Lord and his family, resting in eternal peace. What he needed to do here, he was nearly done with. Tomorrow, he would complete what he needed to do. Then, whenever He was ready to take him, he was ready to go to Him.

He was going to live with Carmen and Carlos in their new house. It had just been closed on, just after Thanksgiving. He had never lived in a house. At the Thanksgiving dinner, he rejoiced, and he cried. There had been so many people he had met over the years; from squatters to aliens to women escaping the beasts of home, and none of them had seen a spread as fine as this, nor had they been fortunate to have the friends he had. Even with all that had been taken, much had been given to him. He felt like David, a sinner that had been truly blessed. The snow that fell cleansed the soul. He felt rich indeed.

By the next day, the snow had melted.

Jonathan went with Raul to the hospital the first day he was home. When Raul said to him that he wanted to see Emmanuel Jackson, he was baffled. When he told him that it was because Emmanuel needed to be forgiven by him before he could leave this earth, Jonathan was astonished. He could not imagine forgiving anyone that even touched his family, let alone take their lives. Even Carmen protested. After all, he had just learned that his family was killed to begin with. Going to see their murderer and forgiving him seemed like sheer lunacy and pure impossibility to Jonathan. He wanted to react with anger like Carmen, trying to pretend he was protecting Raul from some unseen harm, when in reality, he knew that Raul of all people needed no protection, and in truth, he was jealous. He wondered how it was That Raul was rewarded with such a rich gift of serenity, one that he had no comprehension of. He wondered why he, why all people weren't like Raul. And even his jealousy, he knew, made him even a little less like the person Raul was, and yet, he was unable to stop himself.

The hospital ward was deserted and still when they reached it. It was just around dinnertime, and any who were visiting was probably sitting in the hospital cafeteria gaining what strength they could. The nurse at the front desk hardly glanced at them. Raul Valesquez was no longer a subject to be gawked at, but he was impressive. His hair, which he'd cut over the years himself, was groomed so it was full, yet short enough for any military officer to give a nod of approval. He looked modern yet adult in brand new Levi's and a corduroy jacket. His cowboy boots added tow inches to his already immense height. Proud looking even when he had been estranged, he now looked almost regal. Power radiated from him. Jonathan felt diminished just being in his presence.

He asked the nurse for Emmanuel's room. It took the nurse a few seconds to recover from the awe before she could answer. She still had her eyes on him as they left. She hardly even noticed Jonathan. And Jonathan always thought he was such a handsome guy.

Jonathan felt himself getting butterflies in his stomach as they approached Emmanuel's room/ He peered inside, not knowing what to expect as he looked in the room. The unassuming mass of white blankets and tubes embarrassed him, partially because of his phobia, and the intrusion of privacy he felt he was violation. It was hard to believe the small bundle under the sheets was either the murderer of two people or a charismatic religious leader.

Raul motioned to Jonathan to stop as he began to walk in the room. Jonathan steeped back, unsure, yet relieved. Unsure because he didn't know if he should leave Raul alone in a situation like this, relieved because he really didn't want to fulfill that role seeing the lifeless lump under the covers. Raul silently closed the door behind him. Jonathan stood outside the room and waited.

He looked back into the room before he began to pace back and forth. Hen he was two doors down, a security guard passed by Emmanuel's room without so much as a glance. Just three weeks earlier, the room had been mobbed with security, partially because of the media that hounded the room, and the demand by the influential blacks for security to protect its hero. But now, it was different. A hero couldn't be someone who killed a good man's wife and daughter before his very eyes. Even the media were repulsed. Raul Valesquez was an enigmatic hero. The media wanted him, but they couldn't find him. And they would never think to find them here.

There was an old woman looking at him, straight through him. She sat in a wheelchair, her gaunt skeleton bent inquisitively to greet him. He smiled at her, and she squinted. Jonathan made a move to talk to her, but she wheeled away into her room. When Jonathan looked into the room which she disappeared, there was no one there, just a TV in the corner of the room, playing "I Love Lucy" reruns to itself. In his periphery, Jonathan caught the glance of a fallen pitcher of water. He hesitated for a moment as canned laughter filled his ears, wondering if he should get a nurse or not. Then, he acted, compelled by a tiny force within him. Silently, he mopped the tray with a washcloth that was near the pitcher. Then he took the pitcher to a sink just outside the room, somewhat leery about walking into the bathroom, not knowing what he'd find. Silently, he put the pitcher back on its tray. Still no sound form any of the rooms.

He went back into the hallway to look for a chair. Exhaustion was suddenly setting in. He could find none. Slowly, he made his way back to the waiting area, feeling more and more drowsy with each step. He barely made it into a chair before dropping into sleep.

After what seemed like seconds he was jarred awake, alert as though he'd slept for hours, though after looking at his watch, he was aware he'd slept for only twenty minutes. The room seemed lighter than before. As he stood there, he basked in it, feeling a deep sense of serenity that he'd never felt before. He smiled.

He went to see the old lady. He passed by Emmanuel's room. Raul was crying, holding Emmanuel's hand. But the amazing thing, was that Emmanuel was awake with him, crying into his shoulder. Awe-stricken, Jonathan stood for awhile to watch, then just as mesmerized, walked away.

He looked down the corridor for a brief few seconds before remembering his purpose. He moved without being aware of moving, and he was by the old lady's room again.

There was no movement, just as before. The TV was now playing "Leave it to Beaver". With some trepidation, he went to the bathroom and knocked. No answer. He carefully opened the door to find no one there. He turned away and surveyed the room. There was an object on the tray next to the pitcher. Jonathan went to it, looking into the pitcher as he approached. It was empty. A glass that was nearly empty was next to it. The object next to it was a perfect white lily. Jonathan picked it up and looked at it, somehow realizing that it was meant for him. He looked around the room once more, and his feeling was confirmed. He took his gift and left, feeling shifted into a state of mind that seemed free but unfamiliar to him.

Raul was standing by Emmanuel's room, waiting for him. He looked at Jonathan with bemusement.

"Tienes novia?" He still spoke Spanish with Jonathan.

"It seems so," Jonathan said with one last look at Emmanuel. The man was peaceful, almost seeming like he was restfully sleeping rather than in a painful coma. He felt himself torn between compassion and hatred for this man. He looked at Raul, who was watching him with a smile. He sighed, feeling himself guided to the figure lying on the bed, going through the door and confronted with his presence. He watched the man, and from somewhere inside him, a voice asked for Emmanuel to have peace. He could feel the compassion in him quelling his anger as the voice spoke. Without thinking, he placed the lily by his pillow, and left. He never saw Emmanuel Jackson again.

And with that, Emmanuel Jackson left this world. He had been forgiven, and went to make peace with the God that he'd asked into his life fourteen years earlier. And like David and Moses, fellow murderers who'd come to love God, he knew in his last moments that though man may have deserted him, God would never leave or forsake him. In his last moments, even after all the years of preaching and proselyting, this was when he truly learned what power God's love truly had.

Cindy DiEsposito and Russell Frawley were living in style.

Joan Taylor Frawley had disappeared into nowhere, and Frawley pulled had disappeared into nowhere, and Frawley pulled strings to get an unresponsive divorce a little earlier than the seven years needed for abandonment—namely, six years and ten months earlier. Because she was gone, he got everything—the two houses, the three million dollars, the works. He was a man of stature, in a place to meet the likes of the rich widow Hughes, as well as to snatch her next to her heart—actually his bed. Business was booming once more, though the Pfeifer kid was no longer with him. He didn't need him. He had Cindy to be his secretary, and damn, what a secretary she was. She turned heads, brought in business. Everyone wanted Russell Frawley to represent them. He was back on track.

Unfortunately, he'd been stuck with the Haines case. No evidence, no leads. Plus it was a prosecutor's case. He'd make no money on it. The neighbors found a new black kid that they thought did the crimes. First Velda, then Velasquez, now some Victor guy. The Case of the Lethal Veez. It was the never-ending bullshit story of New York. Their money would find someone else to put in jail, even though the right man was probably free. The first one was free because he was black. The next one, because he was some kind of hero freak like Jesus. Someone else would go free, and someone would be convicted because he was white and wouldn't get a break because of some bullshit idea of white power, or some black guy would get it when people got sick of the bullshit, or some in-between that checked other would get it because only white and black mattered. That was how it would be.

He soon put the house on the market. His ex-wife's abandonment led the formal end of the Project though work had disbanded much earlier. Demolition crews came to knock down the wall with the Presidents heads. He didn't feel unpatriotic about it, especially when William Jefferson Clinton's head bit the dust. He authorized the wreck, and it gave him pleasure to undo the insanity hid ex created. All this fighting, it was bullshit. He was too old to carry on with it. He could die any day. Hell, even his son was gone. You never knew. So why waste it on shit that never would be resolved? He could tolerate the newspapers, even the late great Emmanuel Jackson's house having swastikas painted on it. That was just childish. A form of freedom of speech. But when the barbed wire popped up where the ex's project left off, well, he'd had enough. He told Cindy he would move to Florida in his other house, where people had more common sense. She said she'd go with him. And so one day he drove to Florida , in a Winnebago pulling the Mercedes with its bumper stickers saying, my other car is a Yugo, and don't like my driving call 1-800 eat shit, with a beautiful brunette holding his hand, and the hot sun on him while everyone was freezing their asses off in New York. He took a swig of Perrier, the pure drink of his new life, and said, damn, it felt good. And he knew that, with all this, that he had arrived.

He remembered all of the life that he lived before coming here, sometimes with awe, mostly with reverence. For all this time, he had been protected. God had chosen that one moment to reveal what had been hidden. He was not angry at God for deception, but humbled at the love of His protection. Every day since then, he visited Lupe and Raulita at their graves. His heart still felt like breaking every time he wanted to reach and hold them, knowing that for right now, he could not do that. But he knew that they were being held in the palm of the one God who had loved him so tenderly for so many years, and he knew they were in good hands. He knew, too, that one day he would be with them.

CONCLUSION

Cindy received the phone call that Raul Valesquez died on Holy Thursday three and a half years later.

 In his fifty-six years, he had lived a rich life, richer than the jewels she now owned, richer than those who might live thirty years longer than he. But they were all here; gangsters, homeless people, squatters, church elders; Latino, black, white and everyone in between. He welcomed them all, even as she knew he was not her to physically greet them, he welcomed them all. Some knew him for the forty months that he had been a deacon, going to the streets to love the people that no one else wanted, giving them food, talking to them, and daring them to be their friend. Some knew him as the hero who had healed a beaten girl and who had been acquitted after evil tried to nail him down. Some knew him as a teacher whose love could melt the coldest soul.

And some knew him as the friend who they had loved, those that he would have called friends. They stood together long after the minister had left and the others departed for lives they knew they had to go on with. She was among them. They stood together, she, Jonathan, Raven, Carmen, Carlos, Cindy, Russell. That was when she began to cry. Jonathan pointing at the sky. They all looked, to be greeted by a rainbow so glorious it seemed to stretch forever in the sky. And the wind blew through the trees, he was there, and that forever, the minstrel would sing his songs for all the world to hear.