"I'm going for a walk."
"Suit yourself."
"If you had eyes in the front of your head-let me finish. I'll be calm. I'll say it calmly. Tim is not just a religious figure; he speaks for thousands in the church and outside the church, maybe more so outside. Do you grasp it? If he tumbles, we all take a fall. We all are doomed. He is almost the last one left; the others are dead. The thing about this is, it isn't necessary. It's like he decided. He saw it and he walked right at it; he didn't duck and he didn't fight-he embraced it. You think this-what I feel-is because I had to come home on the train? One by one, they got every public figure and now Tim hands over the keys, hands them over under his own power, without a fight."
"And you want to fight. Me, if necessary."
I said, "I see you as stupid. I see everyone as dumb. I see stupidity winning. This is not something the Pentagon is doing. This is dumb. This is walking right at it and saying, 'Take me, I'm-' "
"Jealousy," Jeff said. "Your psychological motivation is all over this house."
"I have no 'psychological motivation.' I just want to see someone there when the firing ends, someone who isn't-" I broke off. "Don't come around later and say this was done to us, because it wasn't. And don't tell me it was a complete surprise. A bishop who has an affair with a woman he meets in a restaurant-this is a man who just finished backing over a gasoline pump and drove happily away. And the pump came after him. That's how it works: you flatten some joker's pump and he runs until he catches up with you. You're in a car and he's on foot, but he seeks you out and then, all of a sudden, there he is. This is that; this is someone chasing us down and he will catch up; he always does. I saw that pump jockey; he was mad. He was going to keep running. They never give up."
"And you see that now. Due to one of your best friends."
"That's the worst kind."
Grinning, Jeff said, "I know that story. It's a W. C. Fields story. There's this director-"
"And she isn't running any more," I said. "She caught up with him. They're renting an apartment. All it takes is one nosy neighbor. What about this redneck bishop prosecuting Tim for heresy? What would he do with this? If someone is after you for heresy, do you bang the next broad you meet for lunch? And then go shopping for an apartment? Look." I walked over to my husband. "Where do you go after being a bishop? Is Tim tired of that already? He got tired of everything else he ever did. He even got tired of being an alcoholic; he's the only hopeless drunk who sobered himself up out of boredom, out of a short attention span. People generally will their own misfortune. I see us doing that now. I see him getting bored and subconsciously saying, 'What the hell; it's dull putting on these funny clothes every day; let's stir up some human misery and see what comes out of it.'"
Laughing, Jeff said, "You know what-who-you remind me of? The witch in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. "
"What do you mean?"
"'Who, like dismal ravens crying, Beat the windows of the dying.' I'm sorry but-"
"You fool Berkeley intellectual," I said. "What horse's ass world do you inhabit? Not the same as me, I hope. Quoting some old verse-that's what did us in. They will report when they dig up our bones-your dad quoted the Bible in the restaurant the same way you're doing now. You ought to hit me or me you. I'll be glad when civilization ends. People babble out bits of books. Put on Sticky Fingers-put on 'Sister Morphine.' I can't be trusted with the stereo at this moment. You do it for me. Thanks for the joint."
"When you've calmed down-"
"When you've woken up," I said, "it'll all be over."
Jeff bent to search for the record I wanted to hear. He said nothing. Finally he had become angry. A dollar short and a day late, I thought, and at the wrong person. Like with me. Destroyed by our giant intellects: reasoning and pondering and doing nothing. Nitwits rule. We squabble. The sorceress in Dido; you are right. "Thy hand, Belinda, darkness shades me; on thy bosom let me rest: more I would, but Death invades me-" And what else does she say? "Death is now a welcome guest." Shit, I thought. It is relevant. He's right. Absolutely right.
Fiddling with the stereo, Jeff put the Stones' record on.
The music calmed me. A little. But I still cried, thinking about Tim. And all because they are stupid. It goes no deeper than that. And that is the worst of it all, that it is that simple. That there is no more.
A few days later, after thinking about it and making up my mind, I phoned Grace Cathedral and got an appointment to see Tim. He met me in his office, which was large and beautiful, in a building separate from the cathedral itself. After greeting me with a hug and kiss, he showed me two ancient clay vessels which, he explained, had been used as oil lamps in the Near East over four thousand years ago. As I watched him handling them, the thought came to me that the lamps probably-in fact, certainly-did not belong to him; they belonged to the Diocese. I wondered what they were worth. It was amazing that they had survived all these years.
"It's nice of you to give me some of your time," I said. "I know how busy you are."
The expression on Tim's face told me that he knew why I had shown up in his office. He nodded absently, as if, in fact, giving me as little of his attention as he could manage. I had seen him tune out that way several times; a part of his brain listened, but the greater part had sealed itself off already.
When I had finished delivering my set little speech, Tim said gravely, "Paul, you know, had been a Pharisee. For them a strict observance of the minutiae of the Torah-the Law-was everything. That particularly involved ritual purity. But later-after his conversion-he saw salvation not in the Law but in zadiqah, which is the state of righteousness that Jesus Christ brings. I want you to sit down with me here." He beckoned me over, opening a very large leatherbound Bible. "You're familiar with Romans, four through eight?"
"No, I'm not," I said. But I sat down beside him. I could see it coming, the lecture. The sermon. Tim had met me prepared.
"Romans five states Paul's basic premise, that we are saved through grace and not by works." He read, then, from the Bible he held open on his lap. "'So far then we have seen that, through our Lord Jesus Christ, by faith we are judged righteous and at peace with God—' He glanced up at me; his gaze was keen and sharp. This was Timothy Archer the lawyer. "'-since it is by faith and through Jesus that we have entered this state of grace in which we can boast about looking forward to God's glory.' Lets's see." He ran his fingers down the page, his lips moving. "'If it is certain that through one man's fall so many died, it is even more certain that divine grace, coming through the one man, Jesus Christ, came to so many as an abundant free gift.' He looked further on, turning pages. "Yes; ah. Here. 'But now we are rid of the Law, freed by death from our imprisonment, free to serve in the new spiritual way and not the old way of a written law.'" Again he looked further along. "'The reason, therefore, why those who are in Christ Jesus are not condemned, is that the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death."' He glanced up at me. "This goes to the heart of Paul's perception. What 'sin' really refers to is hostility toward God. Literally, it means 'missing the mark,' as if, for example, you shot an arrow and it fell short, too low, or went too high. What mankind needs, what it requires, is righteousness. Only God has that and only God can provide it to men ... men and women; I don't mean-"
"I understand," I said.
"Paul's perception is that faith, pistis, has the power, the absolute power, to kill sin. Out of this comes freedom from the Law; one is not required to believe that by following a formal stipulated code-code-ethics, it's called-one is saved. That position, that one is saved by following a very intricate, complex system of code-ethics, is what Paul rebelled against; that was the position of the Pharisees and that's what he turned from. This really is what Christianity, faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, is all about; righteousness through grace, and grace coming through faith. I'm going to have you read-