Page 74

“This is what we can become,” the minister said with a smile. “Powerful, unafraid, loving self and other…”

The white man, assaulted from behind by the white woman, yelled out a war cry and she had to grab him by his black hair to keep them both steady, undulating almost like a dance.

“… loving the child inside, the beast inside, the rain and sun, leaving the grave behind…”

If this was a choreographed sermon, they were all experts.

“… when you leave here tonight, do not return to the grave like some corpse laid out with gold coins on your eyes, some somnambulist told that they were nationalists, that they were capitalists, communists, royalists passing through life with eyes closed. No. Look into yourselves with the absolute certainty that you are made up of cosmic dust and what you know, what you are, is a legacy from God.”

Both couples had fallen to the floor. They were panting. I was breathing pretty hard myself. But I was on a mission. I looked at the organist until her eyes happened to meet mine. Then I cocked my head to the left and received from her a demure nod.

“Elephant Four Four Four,” the long-legged redhead, Chimera 27, called out.

We had been led from the nave into another large room where, one by one, names were announced from a small alcove. There our clothes were returned. This process took a while, so it made sense that some of the parishioners began canoodling in the far corners. I walked past a group of five people doing all kinds of things with their eyes closed and mouths slack.

At the half-door of the alcove, Chimera 27 passed me my bundle, purposely avoiding looking me in the eyes.

The exit door was on another street, an alley really. There were six black-clad guards there, making sure that the congregants were protected from predators.

Half a block up from the mouth of the alley, on the dead-end street, the organist was waiting in the recess of a utility doorway.

18.

MOUSY AND TAN, the organist looked to be on the younger tip of her sixties, except for in her eyes, which were younger still. These orbs were clear and expectant, welcoming and unafraid, exhibiting a world-weary innocence. She wore a white cotton dress, the hem of which did not make it to her knees. The fabric was decorated with large prints of bright-colored flowers. It was the kind of frock that a twenty-year-old might sport, but still, it was a statement that was undeniable and clear.

“Hi,” I said as body- and soul-worshippers passed behind me.

“Hi,” she hailed, looking up into my own personal brand of world-weariness. “You’re Elephant Four Four Four, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

“I’m Musica.”

I smiled and kissed her on the right cheek because it seemed that that was what was expected.

“Are you hungry, Musica?”

“Starving,” she said in an undeniably longing tone.

Felons Bar and Grill occupied the second floor of a defunct warehouse on Willoughby near Fleet Place. It was owned by a woman named Beatrix Lowland, who, it was said, had bought the storage facility for a song in the early seventies. Beatrix, now near ninety, I’m told, loved her father’s stories about the gangland era with its Cosa Nostra, Murder Incorporated, Owney Madden, and Virginia Hill.

The restaurant served Irish, Jewish, and Italian dishes from the old days and called all the bar’s liquors “bootlegged.” If you wanted someplace to go, this speakeasy wannabe was open till two o’clock every night, sometimes much later.

Musica ordered spaghetti and meatballs, and I had the one outlier on the menu—a double cheeseburger and fries.

“This is a wonderful place,” she said, injecting the dark excitement from the sermon into anyplace that it fit.

“Yeah. I’m actually surprised that you agreed to meet me. I mean, it kinda seemed like fraternization between parishioners and the staff was looked down upon.”

“You got that?” the organist asked with real surprise. “The audience—congregants—are not supposed to be told anything about the ushers.”

“Ushers?”

“Everybody who works for the church is called an usher, because we shepherd his flock toward God.”

“Well, it just seemed to me that he wanted the herders and the flock to be kept at a distance.”

“At a distance,” she agreed.