Chapter 9

SOMEHOW I KNEW THAT the day would be anything but uneventful.

Something was happening inside me. I wasn’t in any pain. I didn’t feel queasy. I didn’t have cancer, God willing. I just had this feeling that I was no longer guiding myself; that the events of my life were being guided by circumstances beyond my control. Maybe this explained why instead of passing by the Saint Pious Roman Catholic Church like I had day in and day out for the past ten years, I acted on impulse, turned into the empty lot, pulled up close to the church doors and killed the engine.

I couldn’t honestly admit to being a believer anymore. But for reasons even I could not understand I opened the door, stepped through the vestibule, walked past the wall-mounted Holy Water decanter, past the marble Baptismal font, past the Christian magazine rack, past the padlocked poor box.

Stepping into the big empty brick and wood church, I was hit with the organic smell of smoke and incense. At the same time, I became engulfed in a kind of cold that wasn’t freezing, but that somehow still managed to penetrate my skin and bones.

I slid into a pew toward the back. For a split second I was tempted to kneel, but instead I chose to sit. I stared out across the pew, focused on the dimly lit altar, the focal-point-crucified Jesus hanging from the far back wall. The early morning rays that poured in through narrow, parallel stained glass windows bathed Him in blood red. The place bore a stillness that disturbed me. It was a place not of comfort or sanctuary, but of ghosts. Molly’s ghost.

I saw the spot where her casket was rolled to a stop by the black clad funeral directors, the place where my broken down parents stood beside it looking old and so forlorn in their grief. I could almost see the premature death painted on their faces—deaths that touched them both within one year of Molly’s. I saw the bone-colored casket like it was still there; still in place. I saw the friends and extended family who came to pay their respects. I heard the organ music and I saw the heavy-set, white-robed priest, beads of sweat dripping from his forehead as he blessed the metal casket with holy water.

I saw it all like it happened only moments ago.

For me, it had.

But that’s when I began to feel like I was being watched. By who or what I could not say. I begin to perspire, the droplets running down the length of my spine.

Paranoia took over. Paranoia and claustrophobia. I became convinced the big wood doors were about to slam shut on me. I had to get out of that pew, get out of that church—that house of ghosts. Standing, I slid out of the pew, but not without tripping on the kneeler. I fell down onto the carpeted marble. Fell hard onto my chest. But I didn’t feel any pain as I got back up on my feet, bolted for the vestibule, through the wood doors and out into the parking lot.

Standing by the open car door, I inhaled long, slow breaths and exhaled them.

What was happening to me?

Somehow I knew it was a question better left unanswered.

Back in the Cabriolet I started the engine, threw the gear shift into first, and burned some serious rubber on my way out the parking lot.

Time to refocus.

Concentrate on the present. Not the past. Not the future. Not on ghosts.

Turning onto Central Avenue in the west end of the city, I decided that I needed to do something to get my mind off myself. Something totally ordinary. Something calming. Do it before I was expected at the School of Art.

No more churches! No more ghosts! No more God!

When the neon sign for the Hollywood Carwash caught my attention, a voice spoke to me inside my head, told me to turn left inside the lot. I’m not sure how, but I knew immediately that it would do the trick. I hung a quick left, pulled into the open bay, set the tires on the tracks, threw the gear shift into neutral and let the machines take control.

Back when I was a kid, the last place on earth I might find calm and peace was a car wash. I had a real fear of them. The inside of a carwash was like being inside the belly of some mechanical beast. The carpet strips that hung down from the ceiling draped the car like live tentacles. Giant rotating bristle brushes tried to rip through metal, invade the interior along with an onslaught of white, foamy, alien goop.

That was back when I still believed in God.

Naturally Molly had no trouble going through the car wash when we were kids, the ear to ear smile she’d plant on her face made it seem like she actually enjoyed it. Meanwhile, I’d stand alone inside the waiting area, closed off to the soapy Buick and the industrial machine noise by a translucent Plexiglas barrier. I remember following the car and Molly’s distorted face all the way along the length of the car wash. From rinse to air-dry to Turtle Wax. I’d still be standing off to the side when the cigarette smoking, T-shirted men made a quick clean of the interior with their white rags, vacuum cleaners and bottles of sea-blue spray-on cleaner.

Not much had changed since those days, except that Molly was gone and now I occupied the car’s interior alone, feeling the bucking of the machines and the relentless spray of the water against the fabric ceiling. I almost hated for it to end. After all, I no longer believed in monsters and I understood the mechanical utility of machines.

Coming away from the air-dry, I threw the transmission into first and pulled up to the two men who would give the interior a swift cleaning. One teenage boy and a short, white-haired, white-bearded, slow moving man who looked like he might be pushing one-hundred. The old man smiled through all that white hair, asked me to step out of the car ever so briefly while they vacuumed the interior, washed the seats and windshield. In the bay beside me, a well-dressed middle-aged woman who drove a black Mercedes Benz was all worked up. She couldn’t locate her cell phone. She was sure she’d had it on her when she entered the car wash.

A big man in khakis and blue shirt that had the words ‘Hollywood Carwash’ stitched on the breast pocket assured her he’d do everything in his power to scour the car for it. Because after all it probably just slid behind the seats. He’d seen it happen “a thousand and one times before. Make that a thousand and two.” But she just made a face and with a dismissive wave of her hand, got back in the car and peeled out, no doubt on her way to purchase a brand new cell phone. When you’re rich, the cost of a new cell phone is pocket change.

As the two men completed cleaning the interior of the Cabriolet, I felt my jacket pocket for my own cell phone.

Yup, still there. I guess you could never be too careful about such things.

The old man smiled at me once more. He looked into my face for more than a few fleeting seconds, as if he sensed a familiarity. Getting back in the car I pulled down the window, reached out to hand him a five dollar tip.

Overgenerous?

Maybe.

But he seemed like such a nice old guy. It made me sad that he had to work at a car wash at his advanced age. He thanked me, asked me to have a nice day in a voice that was both soft and raspy.

I pulled out of the carwash feeling much better about myself. Hanging a quick left, I made my way for the downtown and the start of the rest of my life.