“Nah, it’s early.”
“I think the show times are over. I go to the movies a lot.”
“We could go to my place,” Cal said. “I have movies. I have a bottle of wine there. You like pinot blanc?”
“I don’t know.”
“Find out,” said Cal.
“Next time,” said Mandy. “I do have to go somewhere now.”
* * *
Mandy ducked into the church basement, found a seat. There was something seriously off about Cal. She could picture him a king in the Middle Ages: Cal the Seriously Off. What a waste of a slip. She didn’t want to be here at the meeting, either, really, but some inner instrument had guided her. She would never call it a higher power. Nor would she ever share with booze in her system. You had to honor the honor code.
Adelaide waved, pointed to a free seat beside her. Mandy shook her off. They all sat in the dark, dilapidated theater built by the church during more enlightened years, when some priest thought a sanitized production of Hair might lead bohemian strays to Christ. Some nights it felt as though the meeting were, in fact, an off-off-Broadway show, feverish, vital, undisciplined. Now the addict audience nodded along with the speaker, and when he’d finished, they took turns from the seats with their woes. Newcomers bemoaned their cravings for powders, begged for release. Old-timers droned on about their sex addictions, their divorces, how fat they’d gotten on red velvet cake.
A familiar voice boomed from the back rows.
“I’m Craig, and I’ve got five weeks clean!”
“Hello, Craig!” answered the room.
“And I plan to make it this time, God willing, one day at a time, but I don’t feel safe right now, in the only place I can ever feel safe, here with my Serenity Posse II posse. Why don’t I feel safe? Let me tell you a little story. Really, it’s more like a fable or a folktale. Once, long ago, this farmer worked his fingers to the bone so his son could learn to be a warlock at the castle. Every day the farmer’s son walked many dangerous miles to the castle for his classes, but one day a beautiful girl stepped out onto the path holding a magic potion. ‘Drink this,’ said the girl, ‘and you will feel so fucking good.’ Now the farmer’s son, truth be told, had dabbled in this kind of potion before, but he knew it was wrong and had sworn off it. This girl, though, she was so sexy, he figured, what the hell? Well, I don’t have to tell you the rest, do I? Except to say that the beautiful girl turned out to be an evil skeezy witch who wanted to gobble up the farmer’s son alive, which made the farmer’s son act out in some emotionally hurtful sexual ways he couldn’t control. The farmer’s son did make amends to everyone involved, except the witch. He can’t talk to the witch, because she’s evil and contagious with spiritual cancer. Yet here she is tonight, the skank, testing me, testing me. You want war, bitch? Let’s do it. Your lame, underdeveloped humanism is no match for my tower of higher power!”
Mandy rose, bolted up the narrow stairs toward the street. She could hear Adelaide scrape across the stone floor in her heels, but Mandy didn’t look back.
She went home to vomit the wine.
* * *
The next night, after class, Cal stood in the corridor. He pointed his chin and she followed him out to the street. It felt like a music video.
Old movie stars stared out over the leatherette couch, the television, a rack of video cassettes, a card table with a few chairs. Mandy didn’t get the old movie thing, but the posters looked classy in their frames. Gold trophies with karate guys obscured the dozen books on a lone shelf.
“Welcome to my humble abode,” Cal said. He laughed, and Mandy decided the word “abode” made it funny.
The wine Cal brought from the kitchen was cold and a little tart.
“Salud,” Mandy said.
“L’chaim.”
They talked about whether they were hungry and decided to order something later. Cal ripped open a bag of that intelligent popcorn.
“So,” he said. “What do you feel like watching? Something sad, something funny? A drama?”
“How about something romantic?” Mandy said, but Cal pursed his lips in a fretful way, and she regretted it. “Or a thriller!”
“I’ve got something,” he said, tucked a tape into the slot.
Mandy knew what he’d chosen from just a flicker of it. It was black and white, but it wasn’t old. She’d dragged herself to see this film after it won every award. She thought it might help her understand her father, but she’d left the theater after that sexy British actor kept shooting Jews from his balcony.
“I don’t think so, Cal.”
“What?”
“Not this. Let’s watch something else.”
“But this is the most important movie ever made. You can’t even get this at the store. I have a friend who—”
“Please turn it off,” Mandy said.
Cal paused it.
Any excuse could work. She just needed to get her jacket from the chair.
“It’s heavy, I know,” Cal said. “I’ve seen it dozens of times. I always cry.”
“Why?”
“Why? How can you ask that, you of all people?”
“No. Why have you seen it dozens of times?”
“So I can understand,” Cal said.
Now he stood, clenched and unclenched his fists. His arm veins twitched.
“So I can understand and get well,” Cal hissed.
He stared at Mandy, and she tried to get a read, as he might have put it.
Just a beating, or a bonus rape?
But then Cal relaxed, or really kind of deflated. His breathing slowed, and he kneaded his hands.
“Man, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” The jacket would be easy now. But how many bolts were on the door?
“I need to tell you something.”
“No, you don’t,” Mandy said. “It’s all okay.”
“I do,” Cal said. “Because there is something good between us and I don’t want to mess it up.”
“Everything’s fine.”
“Six fucking million,” Cal said. “How can it be fine?”
“Don’t forget the Gypsies,” Mandy said. “Millions of Gypsies. And gay guys. Union guys. Retarded people. Tons were killed.”
“Six million Jews,” Cal said.
“I know all about it. Is that what you wanted to tell me?”
“No,” Cal said, and told her what he wanted to tell her. When he was done, he took off his shirt and showed her the tattoos, the swastikas and iron crosses and even an ingenious Heydrich who sieg heiled when Cal flexed his deltoid.
“But you say you had no choice in prison,” Mandy said. “It was the Brotherhood or get the skiv.”
“The shiv. But no, Mandy. I believed it all. I was hard core. Even before the Brotherhood. That’s how I got to prison. I beat a guy almost to death. I thought he was a Jew. Turned out he was something else. Probably would have hated him anyway. Do you get it?”
“Get what?”
“What I’m trying to do.”
“Not really.”
“I’m confessing my sins. To you. I want to get better.”
“Are you even attracted to me?”
“Not in a healthy sense,” Cal said. “I mean, I definitely went out of my way to find the cutest girl at the JCC.”
“I’d better go.”
“Please, Mandy. Stay.”
“No.”
“I’ve got other movies,” Cal sobbed.
* * *
Home, Mandy found a message on her machine from the nursing facility. It was garbled because every message was garbled on this crappy old machine that Craig had stolen off a homeless guy’s blanket and given to her with great ceremony on her birthday, but she thought she heard the words “mild” and “stroke.” She’d have to wait until morning for a bus.
She called Adelaide.