The waiting room at the infirmary was full and he and Jody stood outside where no one could hear them. "Now, listen," Jody said. "Now, before you get upset listen to me. Don't say nothing until I stop talking. I quit the university yesterday. Now, don't say nothing. I know you're not going to like it because you got this father image thing about me being a big success in the world, but wait until I tell you my plan. Don't say anything. I said don't say anything. Graduation is planned. Nobody but us in the school knows what's going to happen, but you will in a few days. Listen to this. The cardinal, the cardinal of the diocese, is going to come here in a helicopter and present the diplomas to the graduating class. I'm not shitting you and don't ask me why. I guess the cardinal's some kind of a relation to somebody in the university, but it'll be great publicity and that's what's going to happen. Now, one of the dudes in the class is the chaplain's assistant. His name is DiMatteo. He's a very close friend to me. So he's in charge of all those dresses they wear on the altar, you know. So what he's got is a red one, in my size, a perfect fit. He's going to give it to me. So when the cardinal comes there'll be a lot of confusion. So I'll hang back, hide in the boiler room, get into my red dress, and when the cardinal celebrates mass I'll get my ass on the altar. Listen. I know what I'm doing. I know. I served on the altar beginning when I was eleven. That was when I was confirmed. I know you think they'll catch me, but they won't. At mass you don't look at the other acolytes. That's the thing about prayer. You don't look. When you see a stranger on the altar you don't go around asking who's the stranger on the altar. This is holy business and when you're doing holy business you don't see nothing. When you drink the blood of Our Savior you don't look to see if the chalice is tarnished or if there's bugs in the wine. You get to be transfixed, you're like transfixed. Prayer. That's why it is. Prayer is what's going to get me out of this place. The power of prayer. So when the mass is over I'll get in the helicopter in my red dress and if they ask me where I'm from I'll say I'm from Saint Anselm's, Saint Augustine's, Saint Michael's, Saint Anywheres. When we land I'll get out of my robes in the vestry and walk out on the street. What a miracle! I'll panhandle subway fare up to 174th Street, where I got friends. I'm telling you this, Chicken, because I love and trust you. I'm putting my life in your hands. Greater love hath no man. But don't expect to see very much of me from now on. This dude with the red dress likes me. The chaplain brings him in food from the outside and so I'm taking the electric plate. I may never see you again, Chicken, but if I can I'll come back and say goodbye." Jody then put his hands on his stomach, stooped and, groaning softly with pain, went into the waiting room. Farragut followed, but they didn't speak again. Farragut complained of headaches and the doctor gave him an aspirin. The doctor wore dirty clothes and had a large hole in his right sock.
Jody didn't return and Farragut missed him painfully. He listened through all the million sounds of the prison for the squeak of basketball sneakers. It was all he wanted to hear. Soon alter their parting at the infirmary he was given the ditto sheet to type announcing that His Eminence Cardinal Thaddeus Morgan would arrive at Falconer by helicopter on the twenty-seventh of May to present diplomas to the graduating class of the Fiduciary
University. He would be assisted by the governor and the commissioner of correction. Mass would be celebrated. Attendance at the ceremony would be mandatory and cellblock officers would have further information.
Toledo mimeographed the ditto but he didn't overdo it this time and there was no blizzard of paper. In the beginning the announcement had almost no impact at all. Only eight men were going to be graduated. The thought of Christ's Advocate descending from heaven onto the gallows field seemed to excite no one. Farragut, of course, went on listening for the squeak of basketball sneakers. If Jody came to say goodbye it would probably be the night before the cardinal's arrival. That gave Farragut a month of waiting to see his lover and then for only a moment. He had to settle for this. Jody, he guessed, was thrashing around with the chaplain's dude, but he did not experience any real jealousy. He could not honestly guess at whether or not Jody's plans to escape would succeed since both the cardinal's and Jody's plans were preposterous, although the cardinal's plans were reported in the newspaper.
Farragut lay on his cot. He wanted Jody. The longing began in his speechless genitals, for which his brain cells acted as interpreter. The longing then moved up from his genitals to his viscera and from there to his heart, his soul, his mind, until his entire carcass was filled with longing. He waited for the squeak of basketball sneakers and then the voice, youthful, calculaledly so perhaps, but not too light, asking: Move over, Chicken. If I waited for the squeak of basketball sneakers as he had waited for the sound of Jane’s heels on the cobbles in Boston, waited for the sound of the elevator that would bring Virginia up to the eleventh floor, waited for Dodie to open the rusty gate on Thrace Street, waited for Roberta to get off the C bus in some Roman piazza, waited for Lucy to install her diaphragm and appear naked in the bathroom door, waited for telephone bells, doorbells, church bells that told the time, wailed for the end of the thunderstorm that was frightening Helen, waited for the bus, the boat, the train, the plane, the hydrofoil, the helicopter, the ski lift, the five o'clock whistle and the fire alarm to deliver his beloved into his arms. It seemed that he had spent an inordinate amount of his life and his energies waiting, but that waiting was not, even when no one came, an absolute frustration; it took some of its nature from the grain of the vortex.
But why did he long so for Jody when he had often thought that it was his role in life to possess the most beautiful women? Women possessed the greatest and the most rewarding mysteriousness. They were approached in darkness and sometimes, but not always, possessed in darkness. They were an essence, fortified and besieged, worth conquering and, once conquered, flowing with spoils. At his horniest he wanted to reproduce, to populate hamlets, towns, villages and cities. It seemed to be his desire to fructify that drove him to imagine fifty women quickening with his children. Women were Ali Baba’s cave, they were the light of the morning, they were waterfalls, thunderstorms, they were the immensities of the planet, and a vision of this had led him to decide on something better when he rolled naked off his last naked scoutmaster. There was a trace of reproach in his memory of their splendor, but reproach was not what he meant. Considering the sovereignty of his unruly cock, it was only a woman who could crown that redness with purpose.
There was, he thought, some sameness of degree in sexual possession and sexual jealousy; and accommodations and falsehoods were needed to equate this with the inconstancy of the flesh. He had often overlooked anything expedient in his loves. He had desired and pursued women who charmed him with their lies and enchanted him with their absolute irresponsibility. He had bought their clothes and their tickets, paid their hairdressers and their landlords and, in one case, a facial surgeon. When he bought some diamond earrings he had deliberately judged the sexual mileage he could expect from these jewels. When women had faults he often found them charming. When, while dieting rigorously and continuously talking about their diet, they are found eating a candy bar in a parking lot, one is enchanted. He did not find Jody's faults enchanting. He did not find them.