Pariah

below.

“That sucks,” he said.

“Well, what would you have done with it, anyway? Hung it over the mantelpiece?”

Eddie slipped a hammer out of a loop in his shorts. “I wanted to smash all its teeth out and then basically torture it for a while. Cut on it and take it apart and shit.”

“Oh. Sorry that didn’t work out for you.”

Eddie smiled and said, “Thanks,” not catching the unconcealed sarcasm in Dave’s voice. Eddie clapped his bud on the shoulder and said, “We can try another time, right, amigo?” Dave nodded. “I’m goin’ back down, you coming?” Dave shook his head. “A’right, catch you later, bro.”

Eddie trotted across the rooftops, then disappeared into the stairwell. As Dave stepped onto their roof, Dabney sat up and said, “Your homeboy is a goddamn lunatic, you know that, don’t you?” Dave nodded again. He was temporarily out of words. Words just didn’t seem to cut it right about now. Even “inadequate” seemed inadequate.

From his bed, Karl lobbed the Good Book across the room. What was so good about it? It was riddled with riddles, chockablock with useless parables. No wonder people spent their whole lives reading the same tome over and over and over again. No one could make sense of this, at least not in a practical, how-to-apply-this-to-my- daily-grind kind of way. Karl had always noted people reading the Bible in public, especially on the subway. Mostly black and Hispanic people, predominantly women, their brows always creased in intense concentration, and highlighter pens poised to accentuate key passages for future rumination. Maybe it was racist, but Karl had been then, and was now even more, convinced that though they read the individual words, the sum made no sense to these devout ladies and occasional gent. Karl had gone to college and couldn’t fathom half of what he read and reread.

Karl knew there was a God, but His guidebook was the work of human beings, and humans could seldom be trusted. It was a book created by committee, too, which also didn’t bode well. Karl had a rule of thumb: any movie with more than three screenwriters was likely going to suck. The stories in the Bible had been circulated plenty before they were set down in ink. It was like the telephone game.

Big Manfred had an LP called, Satan is Real, by these gospelers, the Louvin Brothers. Big Manny had found nothing funny about it, however, especially not its title. Satan was real to the old man, and there was nothing even remotely amusing about that. Sure, the record cover displayed a hokey image-the lily-white brothers dressed in snappy white suits in the flaming pits of hell, a ridiculous cardboard-looking red devil on the horizon-but the album’s message was clear: don’t sin, obey the Bible, be a good Christian. Simple as that. The weirdest part was the brothers looked mighty cheery as they simultaneously preached and roasted.

Karl rolled over onto his stomach to ease the knot there, a combination of hunger and disquietude. He hadn’t eaten in three days in protest of the food procured by Mona, but what if he was wrong? Maybe she wasn’t in league with Lucifer, in which case this boycott was in vain. Plus, if she were an emissary of the Lord, wouldn’t his hunger strike be blasphemous? It wasn’t like he could just ask her, either. If she were a hellish minion, surely she would lie and say otherwise. But if she was sent by God, she’d likely lie or evade the question, too. It was not for him, a mere mortal, to question divine intervention. And as sure as he was that God existed, he wasn’t as certain about Beelzebub. Karl always figured the devil was the invention of man, kind of a scapegoat for rotten behavior. Why be burdened with personal accountability when you could blame Satan?

“This is unbearable,” Karl moaned into his pillow. He dropped off the bed and assumed a posture of supplication, interlacing his fingers and tilting his head heavenward. “Am I being tested? I mean, wasn’t I being tested before Mona arrived? Isn’t this whole stinking mess a test? If I starve myself, isn’t that protracted suicide, which is a mortal sin? So, I guess what I’m saying is, I should eat, right? If Mona is here on Satan’s behalf, I’ll need my strength to outwit her, right? Or if she’s one of Yours, I should…”

What was the point? He gave up. No answer was forthcoming, ever. Maybe on Judgment Day. Karl wondered if the line into Heaven was like the ones at Six Flags. Each depiction he’d ever seen of the line to the Pearly Gates was evocative of the ones at every theme park he’d ever attended. Did technology in the afterlife move forward as it did in life? Had Saint Peter upgraded from The Book of Life to a computerized database? Maybe he just had a BlackBerry or an iPhone.

This was madness. What the hell was he thinking? Karl punched his thighs and attempted to refocus. He was out of practice in the hunger racket. He’d become accustomed to eating regularly again, and now, three days empty, he was going mental.

He stood up and did some jumping jacks and toe touches; grade school calisthenics. He looked in the mirror. Five-and-a-half-feet of solid dork. He trotted into the kitchenette and tore open a Slim Jim, devouring it in three barely chewed bites. Then another. And another. He attempted to eradicate the pungent aftertaste with two cans of Mountain Dew, then felt buzzy as the double shot of caffeine coursed through his system, accompanied by a volley of violent vurps.

An image of Mona popped into his forebrain, tan and bare bellied, radiant as Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus.” Karl snatched the Bible off the floor and contemplated swatting himself in the groin to subdue any impure thoughts. Sinners of yore were often self-flagellants. Did medieval times call for medieval measures of self-purification? The caffeine, the caffeine, the caffeine. And whatever dastardly additives there were in those Slim Jims. Oh mercy.

“Jesus H. Christ!” he groaned as he swatted himself in the ’nads.

31

“So what’s your story?” Ellen asked as Mona sat across from her. They were seated in Mona’s apartment, one by each window, Ellen slowly rocking in the Spiteri’s creaking old rocker, Mona motionless in her usual chair, feet propped on the windowsill.

“My story?”

“I don’t mean to sound confrontational. Or intrusive. I’m sorry. But yes, your story. Where are you from? Who were your parents, what is your background? Who are you, basically? How do you survive? How come the things don’t attack you?”

“I guess they don’t like me.”

Ellen frowned at Mona’s stock response. “No, I mean really. Okay, look, I don’t want you to feel like you’re on the spot. This isn’t an interrogation. Just two girls having a chin-wag, okay? Where are you from?”

“Here.”

“Here, where?”

“Around here.”

“Yorkville.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What street?” It’s like pulling teeth.

“Seventy-seventh. And Second.”

“Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. I grew up in Melville, Long Island. You know where that is? It’s near Huntington. I went to Walt Whitman High School. Where did you go to high school?”

“Didn’t finish.”

“I see. But before you didn’t finish, where did you go?”

“Talent Unlimited.”

“Really? That’s a performing arts school, isn’t it? You went there?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay,” Ellen said, stretching out the second vowel, and when that produced no elaboration, added, “And what did you take? What was your talent?” Did that come out sarcastic? This girl was unbelievable. She was the most unforthcoming individual Ellen had ever met and it was really trying her patience. But she’d break her, yes she would. What was her talent? Stonewalling?

“Singing.”