“Now I’d been with Anthony before, so Ray, he know the deal. The three of us was havin’ a good time. Ray be rubbin’ against me, I knew he was ready to do some business. Inside an hour, we get in his red Corvette, tool over to the Chinita. I ask him, Don’t you want to do better than this? He say, Baby, I’m in a hurry to get at you. Okay by me. I didn’t figure him to be a freak. I ask for a hundred dollars. Star like him can’t think under that. He pay for the privilege of bein’ a star. He took off his pants. I got to my underwear and next thing I know, he starts beatin’ on me. I mean, serious, usin’ a belt. I tell him to quit, he don’t need to be doin’ that. He say, Don’t tell me what I need! He throw me down on the bed, push my face into the pillow so I can’t scream, hittin’ me. Then he sticks his dick in from behind, finish in a hurry. Then he get up, go into the bathroom.
“When I hear him relievin’ himself, I jump up, scoop up all the clothes off the floor, and run out the room. I run to the office. Miz Chaney let me in, she by herself, lock the door. A few seconds later, Ray bust it down. Miz Chaney be afraid for her life, that’s the truth. He come at me, shoutin’ I stolen his wallet. Chokin’ me. Miz Chaney come up with a hand cannon, tell Ray to turn me loose. Next thing I know, there’s Ray on the floor, everywhere is red. It weren’t the worst time in my life, but it was sure the beginin’ of a downhill. I keep thinkin’, slide gotta stop sometime. I keep thinkin’, but it don’t really stop.”
Ray Sparks was half-seated on a nightclub stool.
“Who you looking at ain’t Ray Sparks, it’s the ghost of Ray Sparks. Here it is twenty years later, and I look the same, not like Revancha Lopez and Vermillion Chaney. You’ll have to decide for yourself if it’s a comfort to look like you did when you died on into eternity. They don’t look so good as me but they got to live a lot longer. What people do with their lives is mostly fuck ’em up. Almost no way they could do anything else. I always liked that saying, Give a man enough rope and he’ll hang himself. Just some folks got themselves a longer rope to hang with.
“People like to blame other people for their own troubles. Even me. One thing I picked up on recently-in eternity, all thoughts and things are recent-is how there is no particular way to avoid what you do or how you do it. It’s like waking up in the middle of the night, hung over, and snoring in the bed next to you is an ugly whore. And you think to yourself, this can’t be me, shacked up with some nasty skank. Me is little Ray, running with my dog down along the river. Seven years old, me and my dog running next to the river and it’s about to rain. Nobody bothering us. But no mistake, it’s you in that bed, feeling like a bomb gone off in your head, and it ain’t no cute puppy lying there. You got to ask yourself why, and then if you got a lick of sense, do something to change your situation. If you never ask yourself the question Why? then you ain’t got a chance. You got to be brave.”
“Don’t you be listenin’ to that man!” said Vermillion Chaney, who rolled herself up to Ray in her wheelchair. “Talk like he sang, smooth as silk. Didn’t shoot you on purpose,” she said.
“What do you mean, didn’t do it on purpose?” said Ray. “That was on purpose as possible to be. You shot me three times. Once in the back.”
“Pistol felt light as a feather in my hand.”
“You got to like pulling that trigger.”
“Light as a feather,” said Vermillion.
Revancha walked up to Ray and said, “I didn’t mean to steal your clothes.”
“Only my wallet.”
“Your wallet was up in those clothes somewhere. I would have left it, after I took what was owed me.”
“There is no such thing as an honest whore,” said Ray.
“Man gets violent, what’s a woman to do?” said Vermillion. “God put that gun in my hand, told me to use it.”
“Better leave God out of this,” said Ray.
“When I was a little girl, eight years old,” said Revancha, “Mamacita took me down on Mission Street to La Iglesia Espiritu Santu to pray for my father, who was in the prison hospital. He had got stabbed in the stomach in a fight. We didn’t know it then, but at the same moment we was in the church, he died. I liked lightin’ the candles.
“We was about to leave when a man comes in off the street, wearin’ nothin’ but dirty rags. Had a long beard. I said, Mama, look it’s Jesus Cristo! The man started blowin’ out all the candles, then picked ’em up and stuffed as many as he could inside his shirt. He looked up at the cross and shook his fist at it. He shouted, There’s no hiding place for the damned! Then he ran out of the church, droppin’ candles as he went.
“When Mama and I got home, we found out my father was dead. I asked Mamacita, Is Papa damned? No se, she said, I don’t know.”
“I heard that after I died,” said Ray, “there was a church created in my name. The Church of Ray Sparks.”
“You coulda been a saint, Ray,” said Vermillion, “but instead you was a fool.”
“I’d like to’ve gone to the Church of Ray Sparks, shown up with nobody knowing I was coming. Got up in front of the choir and sung, ‘He’s My Friend Until the End.’”
“There ain’t no such church,” said Revancha.
“Heard there was.”
“The devil got your ear, son,” said Vermillion, “way he go about flatterin’ folks. He do that. Vain man fallin’ for the devil’s malarkey, all that is.”
“What you had to go smackin’ me around like that for, anyway?” asked Revancha. “Use me so bad.”
“Standin’ in satan’s shoes,” said Vermillion, “even back then.”
“Man spoke the truth,” said Ray.
“What man?” asked Revancha.
“One you saw in church, stole all the candles. No place to hide.”
“John the Baptis’,” said Vermillion.
“I know him, I know that man.”
“How could you?” asked Revancha.
“Look at him, sugar, a child of darkness. All the devil’s children the same. Ask him can he sing, Revancha. Go on.”
“Can you sing, Ray?”
“’Course I can sing.”
“Tell him go ahead and try,” said Vermillion.
“Sing, Ray, sing ‘He’s My Friend Until the End.’”
Ray opened his mouth to sing but no sound came out. He tried again with the same result.
“I can’t.”
“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” said Vermillion. “You ain’t got no gift left, Mr. Church of Ray Sparks.”
Ray got up and walked away.
“Damn, Miz Chaney,” said Revancha, “that’s hard.”
“He ask for it.”
Revancha began to cry.
“Only time I ever have an orgasm,” she said, “is when I imagine the man doin’ me’s the one dressed in rags come in the church the day my father died.”
“God bless you, girl,” said Vermillion.
“God bless you, too, Miz Chaney.”