Dear Readers: I'm a lazy Zen Buddhist. But, I've met the Devil of the devout Christians. Who knows what made him. Perhaps, chocolate halvah. This story is a long time acoming. Is it fantasy, vampire, chicklit or romance? Let me know.
Here t'is
Out, trespasser! Leave this body before you’re trapped, he thought, but it was too late.
“Daniel, what are you doing still here?” A man yelled at him. “Quit standing in the rain like a friggin’ turkey and go home!”
He looked down at the heavy book in his hands. What was he doing? The book, attached solidly to the phone booth by a thick metal chain, was alien to him. Just names and numbers in a meaningless blur. Then he turned toward the service station where he worked. It was crammed uncomfortably between two vacant hotels like an afterthought, like everything in that part of town, squeezed in where ever it would fit, including humans and air. The man standing in the dark doorway yelled again: “Go home Daniel, for Christ’s sake, before it gets too dark!”
“A great God has made known to the king what shall be hereafter. The dream is certain, and its interpretation sure!” He shouted in return.
The man shook his head mumbling something Daniel could not hear but could guess at. He chuckled. The man was his boss. The man thought Daniel was crazy, smart but crazy. Ha! Now all facts pertaining to his useless, godforsaken life flooded his brain. True, the forgetting had been a reprieve, albeit short. Praise God. But now he’d returned and on his horizon the shut down had begun. The lights, one after the other, killed. The pumps locked. His boss fleeing for the Bronx. “Go home! Get a beer,” the man yelled once again as he offed the final light, padlocked the door, and walked to his car.
A home. That’s what Daniel had been looking for. Well, not really a home home but a monk’s cell, cheap and anonymous, somewhere he could ponder the next move in his life of dedicated impermanence.
The rain fell in droplets smudging the ink and wilting the paper. There was something sacred about a book, especially a book filled with the names of the living and the things that gave their life purpose, a home, a profession, something permanent. To let it be damaged by the elements was clearly immoral so he stepped into the phone booth and closed the folding door, triggering a faint bit of light from overhead. It was not enough to read by, especially through lenses coated with axel grease. He removed his glasses and tried to clean them with his tee shirt. This effort brought his world into clearer focus yet triggered another dilemma. Where in Manhattan would he find a monk’s cell other than at a priory? Perhaps the YMCA? And if so, would it be listed under YMCA or Young Men’s Christian Association? A quick investigation proved it was under neither. He moved on to the Yellow Pages. Would YMCA be under Lodgings or Gyms? Nope. Wrong again.
“I’ll just dial directory assistance,” he said aloud as he sorted through his linty pockets for a dime or quarter with which to call the operator. There was no time to figure out the complexities of the phone book. The ghost ships had already begun their nightly prowl, floating up from the river and down the streets of the slowly dying looking for potential crew members. They (the ships) hid in the mist, only revealing themselves to those about to die, or so claimed the winos. So claimed the winos.
He found a quarter —Praise God! — and was about to use it when he heard a voice shouting. Hello? Hello? A shadowy figure stood in the mist near the pumps. Then, spotting the lit booth, the shadow moved toward it like a moth to a flame. Some poor creature looking for shelter, he thought as he turned his back. The phone booths made such a nifty escape from the rain.
“Don’t worry. When I’m finished you can have this shelter for the night. I’ll not fight you for it,” he said loudly without turning. It wasn’t that he didn’t care but night after night it was the same. No amount of God Loves You or Let Me Take To Shelter ever worked, despite his mother’s teachings.
The operator came on the line. “I’m looking for the YMCA closest to the East Village,” he explained.
The Chinatown Y on Hudson, he was told.
“Do they rent rooms?
She didn’t know but offered to patch him through.
Brring, brring.
He could feel the person on the other side of the glass burning holes into the back of his head. Turn. See me. Don’t worry, I’ll be gone soon. Don’t worry! Ten rings and finally someone answered. Yes, they had rooms. “Praise the Lord,” he muttered as he hung up and turned to face whoever waited.
It was a girl. A girl with a Botticelli face dressed in bell-bottoms and a pea jacket standing in the steam rising from the sewers. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen. Venus Rising from the Sewers on the Raw Streets of the Lower East Side.
© Copyright 2013 JTTwissel
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Halvah or Daniel Beloved of God
General FictionA former Jesuit attempts to rescue three young girls from the streets of Manhattan's lower east side and finds himself protecting them from an amoral con man. The devil? Perhaps.
