Once we’ve ordered and the food arrives, there’s an awkward moment when Charlotte asks Carter to pray. The rest of them link hands. I stare at Carter’s proffered palm until he rests it on the table.
As he thanks God in heaven for his goodness and blessings, I think of the man crying on Dr. Hill’s leather couch at the loss of a child who probably never existed. Maybe the man is pure invention, too. Part of me would like to believe so, but then I remember that 832 number on Simone’s call log. Perhaps it was my voicemail message that prompted his appearance on the professor’s doorstep.
The reverend was right. Curtis Blunt said he had “discerned” Simone’s infidelity, whatever that means. My guess is he merely assumed the worst, knowing that when you do that, your future predictions are bound to come true. A prophet predicting doom will never be starved for an audience.
When the prayer ends and the others dig in, Charlotte smiles wanly in my direction, the way she does when I’ve intentionally excluded myself and she wants me to know I’m always welcome to reconsider. That smile only heightens my desire to be apart, but since I organized this get-together, I have to stick it out. In this company I’ve grown accustomed to being the odd man out.
After dinner, Charlotte volunteers to run Cavallo back downtown, taking Gina along so the three of them can continue their conversation about parents and children. That leaves me and Carter on our own. He’s silent as we drive through town, so silent I remember that our talk early this morning was interrupted before he could tell me the second thing on his mind. I remember why it was interrupted, too.
Afraid he’ll take the opportunity to open up, that he’s bracing for it even now, I flip on the radio and skip through a couple of stations, landing on a local call-in show where everyone’s still going on about the runoff election and Friday’s snow.
“Charlotte wants me to talk to you,” Carter says.
I study the lights in my rearview mirror. I shift lanes and the car behind me does, too. Carter shifts in his chair, pulling the seat belt away from his chest.
“You know it’s not my style,” he says, “to come on strong with the God-talk, right? But she’s worried and she wants me to say something. She feels like maybe, because of the stuff we’ve gone through, you’ll hear me out. She feels like you might not listen to her.” He pauses and waits for some kind of reply.
“Go on,” I say, adjusting the mirror.
“With the kind of work you do, the kind of things you see, there has to be a corrosive effect. You’re always in the presence of evil. When we met, I got a firsthand taste, so I think I have an idea what it must be like.”
I smile. “You think I’m corroding?”
“It comes off you in waves. When you look at people, it’s like you’re sizing them up for the casket.”
“Are you trying to hurt my feelings or something?”
“I’m being serious.”
“About what?”
“I just think. .” He grasps for the words. “You carry a burden, and I’m just saying, if you ever feel like you need to talk-”
“About what?” I repeat.
“The job. Life. Spiritual things.”
“I talked to a guy this morning, a reverend. He said he often had to ‘counsel’ people. Is that what you’re talking about, counseling?”
A defensive note creeps into his voice. “I think it might help. Charlotte feels like it might, too. She worries about you, Roland. She’s afraid that if you keep doing what you do, you’re going to lose yourself.”
“Lose myself,” I say.
Of all the people I know, I’m the least likely to do that.
“The thing about this job is, it opens your eyes to reality. There are certain truths I have to own up to, certain lies I can’t tell myself. Like Malcolm McDowell in Clockwork Orange, there’s no looking away. Everybody else, they can afford to deceive themselves about human nature and the way the world works. But not me, Carter.”
“I don’t think I’m deceiving myself.”
“People don’t. That’s the whole point. But they go on believing what they’ve been told, they keep voting and buying and praying, they live good lives surrounded by good people in a good world where everything is good. And they think when it’s not good, that’s the aberration. That’s the exception to the rule. But underneath, Carter, if you could turn this city upside down, you’d see it’s all rot down there, all corruption.”
“Of course it is,” he says. “Because of sin-”
“Carter, listen to me. You mean well, I realize that. But there’s no magic formula or platitude they taught you in seminary that’s going to turn me into one of you. It’s not gonna happen. You have no idea what I’ve seen and what I’ve done. Trust me, if you did, you’d be like me, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“I know it’s all rot and corruption,” he says, “and with what I’ve been through, you can’t sit there and say I’ve got rose-tinted glasses on.”
“That’s not what I mean.” I start to go on, then stop. What’s the point? “Why don’t we just drop this, okay?”
“How am I supposed to do that, exactly? This is my job, what we’re doing right now.”
“Maybe you’re the one who needs the counseling, then.”
“Probably so,” he says. “But it’s precisely because of the evil and rot that I have faith. Knowing that on top of all that, there’s someone loving and all-powerful who can bring good out of evil-that’s what keeps me going. Otherwise, I would be like you and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
The worm in my domestic apple starts to turn, and I imagine the conversations they must have had about me, the intimacies Charlotte unthinkingly revealed, and I find I do want to cut him down to size just a bit.
“Carter,” I say, “if there really was some loving, all-powerful force out there, I wouldn’t be hunting a man down for plunging a bowie knife in a woman’s chest and then stripping her and using her dead body as a pincushion. That’s what he did. He spread his fingers out on her skin and stabbed in between them over and over. One, two, three, four, five, six-just like that. And when he was done with her, he dumped her in the swimming pool and he posed her like she was nothing but a stage prop.”
He’s quiet now, but I can’t shut myself up.
“Now, what you’re saying is that, seeing something like that, I should be comforted. I should feel good knowing that as bad as it looks, it was all for the best. God was up in heaven watching it go down, and even though he didn’t lift a finger, he sure wishes us well. I’m sorry, Carter, but that doesn’t do it for me. If I believed that, I think I’d be miserable.”
“You are miserable,” he says.
“My point is, you’re out of your league.”
“Have you ever considered why God lets things like that happen?”
“No, Carter. I don’t believe I have.”
“It’s not that he doesn’t have the power to stop it, man. It’s just. . God wants us to choose what’s right. He could force us-he has the power to-but he also loves us and you can’t force love.”
“If you were taking a knife to someone,” I say, “believe me, I’d force you to stop.”
“You don’t get what I’m saying-”
“This isn’t new to me. My aunt was dragging me to church and force-feeding me the catechism before you were born, Carter. You think God could come down if he wanted to and make things right, but he doesn’t because he wants us to choose right of our own free will-is that it?”
“Only we don’t because of our sin.”
“Let me tell you a story,” I say.
We’re on Heights Boulevard not very far from home, so I pull into a convenience store parking lot, idling on the far edge next to the air machine, determined to get this over with before we pull up the driveway.
“A long time ago, we got this call. My old partner Wilcox and me. All we knew was that this woman had been talking on the phone to her daughter, and then there were screams and the line went dead. Patrol got to the scene and called it in, saying a guy had bludgeoned his wife to death in the kitchen, and they’d caught him out in the driveway siphoning gasoline out of his truck. You know what he was gonna do with that gas? Burn the place down. And he confessed to everything, right then and there. We arrived on scene and he was ready to give it up.