Prodigal Son

even the most alluring were lacking in one way or another.

During his years of searching, Roy Pribeaux had yet to encounter one woman who met his standards in every regard.

He was proud of being a perfectionist. If he had been God, the world would have been a more ordered, less messy place.

Under Roy Almighty, there would have been no ugly or plain people. No mold. No cockroaches or even mosquitoes. Nothing that smelled bad.

Under a blue sky that he could not have improved upon, but in cloying humidity he would not have allowed, Roy strolled along the Riverwalk, the site of the 1984 Louisiana World's Fair, which had been refurbished as a public gathering place and shopping pavilion. He was hunting.

Three young women in tank tops and short shorts sashayed past, laughing together. Two of them checked Roy out.

He met their eyes, boldly ogled their bodies, then dismissed each of them with a glance.

Even after years of searching, he remained an optimist. She was out there somewhere, his ideal, and he would find her-even if it had to be one piece at a time.

In this promiscuous society, Roy remained a virgin at thirty-eight, a fact of which he was proud. He was saving himself. For the perfect woman. For love.

Meanwhile, he polished his own perfection. He undertook two hours of physical training every day. Regarding himself as a Renaissance man, he read literature for exactly one hour, studied a new subject for exactly one hour, meditated on the great mysteries and the major issues of his time for another hour every day.

He ate only organic produce. He bought no meat from factory farms. No pollutants tainted him, no pesticides, no radiological residue, and certainly no strange lingering genetic material from bio-engineered foods.

Eventually, when he had refined his diet to perfection and when his body was as tuned as an atomic clock, he expected that he would cease to eliminate waste. He would process every morsel so completely that it would be converted entirely to energy, and he would produce no urine, no feces.

Perhaps he would then encounter the perfect woman. He often dreamed about the intensity of the sex they would have. As profound as nuclear fusion.

Locals loved the Riverwalk, but Roy suspected that most people here today were tourists, considering how they paused to gawk at the caricature artists and street musicians. Locals would not be drawn in such numbers to the stands piled with New Orleans T-shirts.

At a bright red wagon where cotton candy was sold, Roy suddenly halted. The fragrance of hot sugar cast a sweet haze around the cart.

The cotton-candy vendor sat on a stool under a red umbrella. In her twenties, less than plain, with unruly hair. She looked as baggy and as simply made as a Muppet, though without as much personality.

But her eyes. Her eyes.

Roy was captivated. Her eyes were priceless gems displayed in a cluttered and dusty case, a striking greenish blue.

The skin around her eyes crinkled alluringly as she caught his attention and smiled. 'Can I help you?'

Roy stepped forward. 'I'd like something sweet.'

?All I've got is cotton candy.'

'Not all,' he said, marveling at how suave he could be.

She looked puzzled.

Poor thing. He was too smooth for her.

He said, 'Yes, cotton candy, please.'

She picked up a paper cone and began to twirl it through the spun sugar, wrapping it with a cloud of sugary confection.

'What's your name?' he asked.

She hesitated, seemed embarrassed, averted her eyes. 'Candace.'

'A girl named Candy is a candy vendor? Is that destiny or just a good sense of humor?'

She blushed. 'I prefer Candace. Too many negative connotations for a? a heavy woman to be called Candy.'

'So you're not an anorexic model, so what? Beauty comes in lots of different packages.'

Candace obviously had seldom if ever heard such kind words from an attractive and desirable man like Roy Pribeaux.

If she herself ever thought about a day when she would excrete no wastes, she must know that he was far closer to that goal than she was.

'You have beautiful eyes,' he told her. 'Strikingly beautiful eyes. The kind a person could look into for years and years.'

Her blush intensified, but her shyness was overwhelmed by astonishment to such a degree that she made eye contact with him.

Roy knew he dared not come on to her too strong. After a life of rejection, she'd suspect that he was setting her up for humiliation.

?As a Christian man,' he explained, though he had no religious convictions, 'I believe God made everyone beautiful in at least one respect, and we need to recognize that beauty Your eyes are just? perfect. They're the windows to your soul.'

Putting the cloud of cotton candy on a counter-top holder, she averted her eyes again as though it might be a sin to let him enjoy them too much. 'I haven't gone to church since my mother died six years ago.'

'I'm sorry to hear that. She must have died so young.'

'Cancer,' Candace revealed. 'I got so angry about it. But now? I miss church.'

'We could go together sometime, and have coffee after.'

She dared his stare again. 'Why?'

'Why not?'

'It's just? You're so?'

Pretending a shyness of his own, he looked away from her. 'So not your type? I know to some people I might appear to be shallow-'

'No, please, that's not what I meant.' But she couldn't bring herself to explain what she had meant.

Roy withdrew a small notepad from his pocket, scribbled with a pen, and tore off a sheet of paper. 'Here's my name — Ray Darnell- and my cellphone number. Maybe you'll change your mind.'

Staring at the number and the phony name, Candace said, 'I've always been pretty much a? private person.'

The dear, shy creature.

'I understand,' he said. 'I've dated very little. I'm too old-fashioned for women these days. They're so? bold. I'm embarrassed for them.'

When he tried to pay for his cotton candy, she didn't want to take his money. He insisted.

He walked away, nibbling at the confection, feeling her gaze on him. Once out of sight, he threw the cotton candy in a trash can.

Sitting on a bench in the sun, he consulted the notepad. On the last page at the back of it, he kept his checklist. After so much effort here in New Orleans and, previously, elsewhere, he had just yesterday checked off the next-to-last item: hands.

Now he put a question mark next to the final item on the list, hoping that he could cross it off soon.

EYES?

CHAPTER 6

He is a child of Mercy, Mercy-born and Mercy-raised.

In his windowless room he sits at a table, working with a thick book of crossword puzzles. He never hesitates