I stood up. Well, thanks, father.
He looked at my outstretched hand. You carry a gun, he said, easily, but youve not fired it. Put your behind back on that chair.
Do all priests talk like that?
In Ireland, yes. Youve danced around the tree, but shaken no apples. Shake.
I think I will have a bit of this. I picked up the snifter and sipped. Well Imagine that I were a Catholic
Im imagining.
In need of confession They always are.
And came here after midnight
An odd hour. But a candle was lit in each of his eyes. And knocked on the door
Would you do that? He leaned slightly toward me. Go on. Would you let me in? I asked.
I might have shoved him back in his chair.
Once, werent churches open all hours? I pursued. Long ago, he said, much too quickly.
So, father, any night I came in dire need, you would not answer?
Why wouldnt I? The candlelight flared in his eyes, as if I had raised the wick to quicken the flare.
For the worst sinner, maybe, in the history of the world, father? Theres no such creature. Too late, his tongue froze on this last dread
noun. His eyes swiveled and batted. He revised his proclamation to give it a new go-round.
No such person lives.
But, I pursued, what if damnation, Judas himself, came begging I stoppedlate?
Iscariot? Id wake for him, yes.
And what if, father, this lost terrible man in need should knock not one
night a week but most nights of the year? Would you wake, or ignore the knock?
That did it. Father Kelly leaped up as if I had pulled the great cork. The color sank from his cheeks and the skin at the roots of his hair.
You have need to be elsewhere. I will not keep you.
No, father. I floundered to be brave. You need me to be gone. There was a knock on your door I blundered on twenty years ago this week, late. Asleep, you heard the door banged
No, no more of this! Get off!
It was the terrified shout of Starbuck, decrying Ahabs blasphemy and his final lowering for the great white flesh.
Out!
Out? You did go out, father. My heart jumped and almost slewed me in my chair. And let in the crash and the din and the blood. Perhaps you heard the cars strike. Then the footsteps and then the bang and the voices yelling. Maybe the accident got out of hand, if accident it was. Maybe they needed a proper midnight witness, someone to see but not tell. You let in the truth and have kept it since.
I rose to stand and almost fainted. My rise, as if we were on weights and pulleys, sank the priest back, all but boneless, in his chair.
You were witness, father, were you not? For its just a few yards off and, on Halloween night, 1934, didnt they bring the victims here?
God help me, mourned the priest, yes.
One moment full of fiery air, Father Kelly now gave up his inflammatory ghost and sank, fold on fold, flesh on flesh, into himself.
Were they all dead when the crowd carried them in? Not all, said the priest, in shocked recall.
Thanks, father.
For what? He had closed his eyes with the headache of remembrance and now sprang them wide in renewed pain. Do you know what youve got into?!
Im afraid to ask.
Then go home, wash your face and, sinful advice, get drunk!
Its too late for that. Father Kelly, did you give the last rites to any or all? Father Kelly shook his head back and forth, wigwagging as if to sign
away the ghosts. Suppose I did?!
The man named Sloane?
Was dead. I blessed him, in spite. The other man?
The big one, the famous one, the all powerful? Arbuthnot, I finished.
Him, I signed and spoke and touched with water. And then he died. Cold and dead, stretched out forever, really dead?
Christ, the way you put it! He sucked air and expelled it: All thatyes! And the woman? I asked.
Was the worst! he cried, new paleness firing the old paleness in his cheeks. Daft. Crazed and worse than crazed. Out of mind and body and not to be put back in. Trapped between the two. My God, it reminded me of plays Id seen as a young man.
Snow falling. Ophelia suddenly dressed in a terrible pale quiet as she steps into the water and does not so much drown as melt into a final madness, a silence so cold you could not cut it with a knife or sound it with a shout. Not even death could shake that womans newfound winter. You hear that? A psychiatrist said that once! The eternal winter. Snow country from which rare travelers return. The Sloane woman, caught between bodies, out there in the rectory, not knowing how to escape. So she
just turned to drown herself. The bodies were taken out by the studio people who had brought them in for respite.
He talked to the wall. Now he turned to gaze at me, stricken with alarms and growing hate. The whole thing lasted, what? an hour? Yet it has haunted me these years.
Emily Sloane, mad?
A woman led her away. An actress. Ive forgotten the name. Emily Sloane did not know she was taken. She died the next week or the week after, I heard.
No, I said. There was a triple burial three days later. Arbuthnot alone. The Sloanes together, or so the story goes.
The priest regrouped his tale. No matter. She died.
It matters a great deal. I leaned forward. Where did she die? All I know is she did not go to the morgue across the street. To a hospital, then?
Youve got all I know. Not all, father, but some
I walked to the rectory window to peer out at the cobbled courtyard and the drive leading in.
If I ever came back, would you tell the same story?
I should not have told you anything! I have breached my confessional vows!
No, none of what youve said was told in private. It simply happened. You saw it. And now its done you good to confess at last to me.
Go. The priest sighed, poured another drink, slugged it back. It did nothing to color his cheeks. He only sagged more awry in his flesh. I am very tired.
I opened the door of the rectory and looked along the hall toward the
altar bright with jewels and silver and gold.
How is it such a small church has such rich interiors? I said. The baptistry alone could finance a cardinal and elect a pope.
Once, Father Kelly gazed into his empty glass, I might have gladly consigned you to the fires of hell.
The glass fell from his fingers. He did not move to pick up the pieces. Goodbye, I said.
I stepped out into sunlight.
Across two empty lots and a third, heading north from the back of the church, there were weeds and long grass and wild clover and late sunflowers nodding in a warm wind. Just beyond was a two-story white frame house with the name in unlit neon above: HOLLYHOCK HOUSE SANITARIUM.
I saw two ghosts on the path through the weeds. One woman leading another, going away.
An actress, Father Kelly had said. I forget the name. The weeds blew down the path with a dry whisper. One ghost woman came back on the path alone, weeping. Constance? I called out quietly.
I walked around down Gower and over to look in through the studio gate.
Hitler in his underground bunker in the last days of the Third Reich, I thought.
Rome burning and Nero in search of more torches.
Marcus Aurelius in his bath, slitting his wrists, letting his life drain. Just because someone, somewhere, was yelling orders, hiring painters
with too much paint, men with immense vacuum cleaners to snuff the suspicious dust.
Only one gate of the whole studio was open, with three guards standing alert to let the painters and cleaners in and out, checking the faces.
At which point Stanislau Groc roared up inside the gate in his bright red British Morgan, gunned the engine, and cried: Out!
No, sir, said the guard quietly. Orders from upstairs. Nobody leaves the studio for the next two hours.
But Im a citizen of the city of Los Angeles! not this damn duchy! Does that mean, I said through the grille, if I come in, I cant go out? The guard touched his cap visor and said my name. You can come in,
and out. Orders.
Strange, I said. Why me?
Dammit! Groc started to get out of his car.
I stepped through the small door in the grille and opened the side door of Grocs Morgan.
Can you drop me at Maggies editing room? By the time youre back theyll probably let you out.
No. Were trapped, said Groc. This ships been sinking all week, and no lifeboats. Run, before you drown, too!
Now, now, said the guard quietly. No paranoia.
Listen to him! Grocs face was chalk-pale. The great studio-guard psychiatrist! You, get in. Its your last ride!
I hesitated and looked down into a face that was a Crosshatch of emotions. All the parts of Grocs usually brave and arrogant front were melting. It was like a test pattern on a TV screen, blurred, clearing up, then dissolving. I climbed in and slammed the door, which banged the car off on a maniac path.
Hey, whats the rush!?
We gunned by the sound stages. Each one was wide open and airing. The exteriors of at least six of them were being repainted. Old sets were being wrecked and carried out into the sunlight.
On any other day, lovely! Groc shouted above his engine. I would have loved this. Chaos is my meat. Stockmarkets crashed? Ferryboats capsized? Superb! I went
