The cardinal was seated on the sedelia. No fewer than four priests, Friar Tuck among them, were putting away the Communion vessels, the chalices, the ciboria. Soon the time for private prayer would be over. Now His Eminence was raising his head. He would rise and the closing rites begin. Johnny had yet to say his Communion prayer. He must say it and he must say it now.
“Cure her, cure Dempsey,” he blurted out. “Make her well,” the words flung into the pew ahead of him. The man to his right and two men in front of him turned and looked. One of the men was the lieutenant. Johnny repeated his words, louder than before, and even more intense, as if his plea were to the men around him, that they must hear him and must answer his prayer. “Cure her. Please. Cure her.” He lowered his head. The men faced front. The cardinal stood up. “Let us pray,” he said.
Johnny raised his head just in time to see the mother lead the child out the great bronze door of the transept. The portal closed slowly behind them. He stared at the closed door, then at the empty place in the pew where they’d been. They were gone. And he had failed to ask for and receive their blessing.
2.
Stretched out on the wooden floor, Dempsey heard the rattling chains that told her the old freight elevator was on its way up to the loft. She closed her eyes. She’d wanted to rest a little while longer before having to tell Johnny about the latest symptoms that had sent her to the floor exhausted and twitching. The elevator chains continued rattling and clanking against the loose metal sides of the shaft, sounding more like the approach of Marley’s ghost than the coming of her brave and handsome Johnny.
There, a few inches from Dempsey’s nose, was the paintbrush she’d been using before the giddy rush of new symptoms had drained the energy from her entire body. The brush was one of her favorites, a red sable. She’d been using black paint—Ivory Black to be specific—and even though she knew the brush wouldn’t stiffen right away—she painted with oils—it was her habit to clean the brushes almost immediately after their use. She could at least put it to soak. Or better, she should get up and get on with her work. If she were to stop, if she were to stretch herself out on the floor every time some new wave of nausea or weakness or pain racked her, she’d never get anything done. Lying there, she told herself she was being indulgent; she was being lazy; she was giving in. Not that it would alarm or even worry Johnny to see her there on the floor. She’d explained to him that whenever she got tired, she’d lie down. When she was rested, she’d get up. Rather than expend the final ounce of energy walking to the bedroom or to the couch, she’d lie down in place—and afterward simply continue to paint or do whatever she might have been doing.
More than once he’d found her exactly where she was now, at the foot of a painting, sometimes with a brush still in her hand. He’d also seen her stretched out under the long worktable, under the clutter of paint tubes, solvents, brushes, and palette knives that were the tools of her trade. She’d been known to lie down in front of the kitchen sink, or near the clothes rack that served as a closet in their bedroom, her jeans taken from the hanger crumpled up against her chest there on the floor. She had assured Johnny that she never fell or fainted. She just kept a highly accurate measure of the strength available to her, using the final expenditure to get herself safely to the floor, there to rest or sleep or relax as her condition might demand. He must never worry. If he wanted, he could check her breathing to make sure she was still alive, but beyond that, he should pass her by and allow her to rise in her own good time. She was not, she decided, ready to rise. She’d clean the brush later, giving it an extra soaking as amends for the delay.
Slowly, carefully, the elevator door screeched open and knocked against its metal casing. The inner door to the loft itself creaked on its hinges, then slowly, carefully, the elevator door screeched shut and the loft door creaked and squealed while being closed. Johnny had seen Dempsey resting and was being considerate. If he would just slam both doors open and both doors closed, the noise would be over and done in a matter of seconds. Now it was going to be prolonged. No one is noisier than someone trying to be quiet. Even with the elevator put to rest and the loft door locked, there was the drawn-out squeal of the floorboards as Johnny made his way across the room. A less thoughtful step would have squeaked the boards and gotten it over with. But now Dempsey could hear the continuing protest of the wood as the foot went slowly down, then the repeated complaint as the foot drew slowly up. She couldn’t help smiling to think that if he’d just walk across the floor and forget about disturbing her, the entire ordeal would end then and there. He was finally on the rug.
Dempsey opened her eyes. Johnny had gone toward the table in the kitchen area. He’d removed his ribboned medal and was slipping down the knot of his tie. He hadn’t taken off his white gloves nor the beaked pie-shaped hat that made some people mistake him for a railroad conductor. Johnny slipped off the tie and placed it on the back of a chair. His hat he put first on the arm of the couch, then, worried that it might fall, on the couch itself. He unbuttoned his jacket, slowly, slid one arm out, then the other, and hung the jacket on the back of the chair. Twice he stopped in the unbuckling of his belt, and the zipper of his fly was lowered with such measured care that it became almost erotic, a growing tension preceding a longed-for revelation.
It was when Johnny was taking off his pants that his concern was brought to an end. Standing on one foot, he’d gotten his right leg out, but when he’d put the foot onto the floor and raised the other leg, some imbalance for which he wasn’t prepared forced him to hop around as if his lost equilibrium was located on one particular spot in the flooring and he was being compelled to find it assisted only by one leg and one foot. The hopping itself made little noise, although Dempsey could feel the reverberations in the floor, gentle momentary hums from the boards beneath her. But then, through some connivance of gravity and weight, a great spill of coins dropped from one of the pants pockets. Johnny accelerated the speed of his hopping. The coins, meanwhile, mostly quarters and pennies, rolled around, with one penny going back like a faithful pet to stop at Johnny’s toe. A quarter made directly for Dempsey as if it had recognized in her the one true spender for which it was destined. It aimed itself at her arm and flopped onto its back only after it had touched her hand. Dempsey put her head back down on the floor.
“I woke you up,” Johnny said. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. I was awake. You were being so quiet, I couldn’t stand the noise.”
He grinned. In his jockey shorts, Johnny seemed skinny, almost scrawny, and being six-foot-three didn’t help. He was now gathering his clothes, one piece at a time, no longer worried about being quiet—which meant he made no noise whatsoever. He headed for the bedroom, his socks padding across the floor, walking like a duck, as if he were flat-footed.
Dempsey put her head back down on the floor, hearing her hair crinkle and rasp as it rubbed against itself. She heard a drawer open in the bedroom, a door slam shut. “Someone took my last clean T-shirt.”
“I wonder who.”
Dempsey raised her head again. Johnny had magically located another clean T-shirt and was pulling it down over his chest. He looked fine. She had a particular fondness for the loose hang of the T-shirt, untouched by the lean stomach underneath. There was always room for her hand to slip underneath and enjoy itself in the wiry hair on his chest. Or she could anticipate a time when she might simply rest her arm across his stomach or lay her head in the hollow below the rib cage. She also liked seeing him in his socks. There was a coziness to it; he seemed more vulnerable, more comforting.