The Boo Angel

"A lost soul? How so?"

The priest sighed then turned to signal their waitress. "I think I'm going to need a drink. You? Need anything?"

"I could use a bite to eat, actually."

When the waitress came over to their table Taylor asked if they had anything to eat -- after the priest asked for a Drambuie -- and when she mentioned wurst and kraut Taylor seemed to think that was about right so he ordered a plate, along with some spicy brown mustard.

"What about you, Father?" the girl asked timidly.

The priest turned and looked up at the girl, his demeanor kind yet almost expectantly, and then he replied to her in perfectly unaccented High German: "Ich hätte gerne geräucherte Felchen, bitte."

"Danke, Vater," the girl said, her kind voice now almost an awestruck whisper.

"They've always had a perfectly respectable smoked whitefish here," the priest said as he turned back to Taylor. "I always have a little whenever I come back to Hamburg."

"Really? I'll have to give it a try sometime."

"I do love this city, despite all that happened here."

"I do too. Some pasts are more difficult than..."

"Yes. Precisely so. Yet there is a spirit in the air here. To say it is complex would be,,,"

"An understatement," Taylor said. Thrust and parry, the dance always the same.

"That was really something," the priest said, lost in thought but deciding to change the subject. "He's playing better now than he has in years. He must be ninety years old by now."

"So...you've been following him for some time, I take it?"

"Yes. Some time. His mother was...well, it's a complicated tale, that much I do know, but he was seriously injured in some kind of accident and didn't play for years."

The waitress brought the priest's Drambuie and Taylor thought better of it, asked if he could have another Tanqueray and tonic as well. The girl smiled and nodded genially enough before she walked back to her station beside the little bar, and though he watched her movement, he did so more out of professional curiosity than anything else.

"So, Father, should I know your name, or do we keep it simple tonight?"

"Oh, I am sorry. Andrew Kerrigan, Cynical Jesuit -- late of South Bend."

Taylor laughed. "I didn't think Jesuits were allowed to be cynics."

Which only made the priest laugh more -- and quite loudly. "Jesuits are born cynics, Mister...ah, I am sorry...but I didn't catch your name?"

"William Taylor."

"Not Bill, I take it?"

"Not Bill."

"Oh, yes, I remember now. William Taylor, number 55. Middle linebacker for the 'Niners. Two Pro Bowls and then a devastating knee injury -- against Dallas, was it not? MVP in your Rose Bowl victory against Notre Dame, if I remember correctly, and a defensive MVP the year you won the Super Bowl. And you were something of a celebrity around San Francisco for a while, I seem to recall."

"I'd hardly call it that," Taylor said, and yet, as he always did, Taylor looked away. Disinterested, you might say. Habitually so, even if his disinterest might have been an act.

"Involved with charities, too. Kids' hospitals, that sort of thing, at least I seem to remember something like that. Then I recall you won an Oscar not long ago, did you not?"

Taylor shrugged while he fiddled with a fingernail.

"You know, William, sometimes modesty is nothing more than pretense."

"I never liked being around braggarts, Father, and I've always assumed it's better to remain quiet about that stuff."

"But some people bask in all that reflected glory, William. Your accomplishments make them feel so important..."

"What?"

"Of course they do! There they are, sitting at a table with You -- so they must be Important too, right? Isn't that how the game is played? All those Pretenders? The Second Handers -- trying to grab you unawares and hang on for their free ride as long as they can? I don't tell me you've never basked in that reflected light, William!"

Taylor shrugged, yet he didn't disagree. "I guess that's just life, Father. The Haves and the Have Nots..."

"An equitable trade," the priest cried jovially, "And now, here you are making millions off of all the great unwashed? Isn't that a part of the game too? The reward, if you will?"

But just then their plates came -- and Taylor thought not a moment too soon: a plate piled high with sausages, another with sauerkraut and mustard for Taylor, and a nice filet of smoked whitefish for the priest.

"Vielleicht ein bisschen Meerrettich, bitte?" the priest asked the girl.

Who smiled and nodded before she left them to their food.

"You're not really the shy type, are you, William?" Kerrigan asked -- out of the blue.

"No, I suppose not. I mean...really...what's the point...? Odd, but I've never looked at fame and fortune in quite the way you describe," Taylor said, rejoining the string of their earlier conversation. "And I don't agree with the whole winner take all proposition..."

"Nor would I," the priest sighed, smiling while doing his best to walk away from Taylor's unintended ironies. "So, tell me about Sweden? A new film, you said? But first, how is your sausage? It looks rather good..."

"Decent enough, thanks. And Sweden is always delightful. I love it there, even in winter."

"Yes. Nothing at all like Los Angeles, is it?"

Taylor looked up and thought about that for a moment. "I love LA, but the wildfires are really getting troublesome now," Taylor replied blandly, "and there are other problems..."

"Yes indeed. Not to mention all those pesky homeless encampments next to the Maserati and Porsche dealerships down off Little Santa Monica," Father Kerrigan said -- as his fork skewered the pale flesh of the fish on his plate -- though he was still waiting for his horseradish.

Yet Taylor only nodded, as if Kerrigan's sarcasm was merely a pedantic, if too obvious, observation, self evident in the extreme and so not really worthy of further comment.

The priest sighed before he took another bite of his fish. "So tell me, William, I'm curious. Have you read Faust?"

"Faust? Goethe, you mean? No, never got around to that one. I do recall a movie, I think it was Tombstone? One of the writers told me that key elements of the timeline were developed with Faust in mind."

"Tombstone?" Kerrigan grinned. "You mean the Val Kilmer film? Faust in a western? Good grief!""

"He was in it, yes. Val Kilmer and Kurt -- oh, what's his name. Kurt Russell, right? Yeah, the Russell kid. There were, well, there are a bunch of references to Faust in the narrative arc."

"The narrative arc?" Father Kerrigan said, smiling broadly now. "What on earth does that really mean, William? I mean, really mean? That seems such a worn out phrase these days...!"

"Oh, don't you know?" Taylor said, genuinely shocked. "Tell you the truth, Father, I'm not really sure I know myself, but all the writers seem to use the term every time they're pitching a screenplay to the development team, so Hell, it must mean something, right?"

"Just so," Kerrigan said, smiling again, enjoying this jock's passive-aggressive ignorant-arrogance almost more than was healthy for someone his age.

"Yeah, just so. I mean...an arc even sounds impressive, ya know?"

"It certainly does, William. So, speaking of arcs, are you familiar with the concept of fallen angels?"

"Angels? Fallen angels? You're referring to Lucifer, right? To Satan, to the devil and all that stuff?"

"Stuff indeed, William! Truer words have never been spoken."

Taylor shrugged. "My mother was into all that stuff, at least she was near the end."

"Your mother? Really? Tell me about her..."

"Yeah? Well, I really don't know much about that, Father. That was her little part of our universe, but not really so much when we were growing up, ya know? Everything we knew about Satan probably came from The Exorcist, ya know?"

"We? You have brothers and sisters?"

"I had a brother, yeah. He stayed on the ranch after I left for LA, wanted to take over the business after the parents were gone. I guess you could say things didn't work out the way he thought they would..."

"Oh? And what happened to him, William?"

Taylor looked away, still trying to push those unwanted images from his mind's eye, even after 25 years. Still unsuccessfully, he admimtted. "He got drunk one night, Father. He was driving back out to the ranch in a snow storm. Happened coming up to Lavina, bad intersection out in the middle of nowhere. Braked too hard I guess, rolled the truck. Had the window down a little and his head got caught between the top of the window and the truck's roof -- as it collapsed. Popped his head like a zit, his brains landed out in the snow like fifty feet away from where the truck stopped rolling, and that was that."

"How'd your parents take that, William?" the priest said, taking in the vacant denial fixed like a wedge inside Taylor's lost soul.

"Dad...he...uh, well, he had a hard time with all that stuff. Kind of came undone. Never the same after that, ya know?"

"And your mother?"

Taylor shrugged. "Dementia, or maybe it was Alzheimer's. She'd already pretty much come undone by then, and Dad ended up putting her away up in Lewistown."

"Lewistown?"

"That's where the state hospital is, on the way up to Great Falls."

"And...is she still there?"

Taylor shook his head. "She died," he whispered, "a few years ago."

"And your father?"

"He passed away a few months after she did. Couldn't take being alone, I think."

"Oh? Where were you?"

"Africa. Working on a film."

"When did you last see him?"

"At Frank's funeral, I guess."

"Frank was your brother, I take it?"

Taylor nodded. "That's right."

"So, if I've got this right, Frank died before your mother went to the hospital?"

Taylor nodded, not quite evasively but even so he was growing visibly uncomfortable now.

"So tell me, William. Do you think a person can die of a broken heart?"

"You mean, like, some kind of psychological thing...like a collapse?"

Father Kerrigan nodded.

"I suppose that's possible, but if so I've never heard of something like that happening."

Kerrigan nodded again but still he remained silent.

"I guess maybe I could have spent more time with him," Taylor added, but the priest could see a certain indelible insincerity in the man's eyes, like some kind of hardened inability to understand another human being's need, and that basic failing had been permanently etched inside the man's soul -- and probably before he'd even been conceived.

"But...you were working on a new film? Right?" the priest added, coaxing Taylor now.

"That's right," Taylor sighed. "Dad understood all that."

"Understood?"

"The money involved. The risk."

"So, money was important to him?"

"Yes, of course."

"And to you to, I take it?"

Taylor looked at the priest and smiled. A hard smile, almost hurtful. "Certainly, Father," Taylor said. "I am, after all, only human."

And Father Kerrigan smiled too. "Excellent!" the priest said as he slapped the tabletop. "A man should know what he's all about! Now, how was that sausage!"

They said their goodbyes after the pianist's second set, and Taylor walked out into the night feeling pleasantly numb from his third gin and tonic. He passed garishly lit windows that framed pink neon ladies of the evening, yet all their plaintive entreaties left him feeling little more than cold and resolutely alone, like he had grown too old for all these kinds of things. For all these human kinds of things. Because after all...they weren't selling sex...they were working a con for some easy money, and all he felt was hate.

But...wasn't he doing just that very thing? Didn't that priest as much as say so?

And as he passed window after window he wondered why that had sprung to mind. Why was money so central to everything we did? And why was renouncing money so central to...

He stopped as he came to a very strange looking window, indeed.

There was a woman inside, but her room was a dark space unadorned by light, and not even shadows seemed welcome there.

He could just make out that she had blond hair, and that her skin was ferociously pale. The space around her eyes had been airbrushed -- like something out of the old, original Blade Runner film -- only this girl was dressed in purest white. Stockings, garters, heels -- and maybe even a g-string, but he couldn't be sure -- because everything was pale off-white in her ambient shadows, pale yet almost lavender. Yet she was selling the purest white, he thought at once, because she was selling little pieces of her virginity in the darkest part of her little room, and what was that if not pale?

"What are you staring at?" the coiling blond hissed.

"Oh, I'm sorry! Was I staring?" Taylor said as he walked past her window without stopping.

"And rude, too! You won't even stop to speak to me?"

"Why would I do that?" Taylor said as he stopped and turned to face her.

"Simple politeness? To another human being, perhaps?"

"But why...you're...a prostitute?"

"Ah, so, am I therefore sub-human? Not worthy of even a modest 'Hello, how are you?'"

"Well then, hello, how are you?"

"I am fine. And you?"

He looked at the hooker, this ur-woman, not at all sure what to say next, or even if he should say anything at all. He didn't feel like being pulled into whatever con she was playing, but the simple fact that she was almost surreally attractive might have had something to do with the things he suddenly felt. "I'm not sure," he said at last.

"Not sure -- how you feel? And how is that?"

"I've just spent several hours talking to a priest. I found it very unsettling."

She watched his hands now. Deep inside his trouser pockets, fingers twirling like tumblers inside an iron vault door. "Unsettling? Did the priest speak in truths to you?"

"'Speak in truths?' Now there's an odd thing to say?"

She smiled, but -- in truth -- he could hardly see her features -- hidden as she was in the peculiar near darkness of her lavender shadows. "Odd? Perhaps that is so, but isn't that how our priests talk to us? In the hard absolutes of faith and redemption? In the hard truth of human existence?"

"Ya know...I think I've had enough philosophy shit for the night. You have a good one, alrighty?" He turned and started to walk off into the pale slanting light and lavender shadows surrounding her little window-like fortress, glad to be done with her -- and that fucking priest! -- when he heard a crisp snap...like she'd just snapped her fingers...and -- at him!"

He turned and glowered at her.

"Why did you leave me like that?" the woman said, her eyes locked on his.

He cleared his throat, now -- suddenly -- feeling more than a little angry. "Because I really don't feel like having a goddamn Princeton Debating Society marathon with a mother-fucking whore standing out here in the snow!" he bellowed. "Does that make any fucking sense at all to you? Am I being clear enough for you?"

She seemed to recoil under the weight of his assault, the fury behind his words tearing into her like physical blows, and quite unexpectedly he watched as she turned and began to cry. Gently at first, and when she realized what was happening she ran off into the back rooms of her little flat, leaving him standing there in flat-footed, open-mouthed wonder.

"Imagine that," he sighed inwardly. "A hooker...with feelings."

He walked over to her little window and peered inside. He saw a little sliver of light coming from under a closed door on the far wall, then...out of the corner of his eye...he saw an arm...from, he guessed, another hooker's window, flinging something his way. Some sort of liquid was arcing through the air, headed his way, and he suddenly realized it was too late to react.

Piss, and a lot of it, rained down on his head and shoulders, and the acrid odor was instantly recognizable. He looked down and shook his head, then he stepped closer to the now abandoned window and knocked on the glass.

Another arm appeared from yet another window, and another cup full of urine headed his way, but he stepped clear of this assault before he walked back out into the light to address this shooting gallery of well-armed whores.

"If any of you does this to me again," he began, pointing at the first woman who'd pelted him, "I will see to it that you feel some real pain. Tonight." He continued to stare down this first woman as a third cup of piss arced in from behind, and this huge colloidal mass splashed all over the back of his head, running down his neck and then under his shirt -- as a new, uncertain gravity took hold of events. He reached in his coat and took out his phone and began photographing each laughing woman, and each obligingly flipped him the middle finger before flinging even more piss his way, cackling as he simply stood there, their pee raining down all around, and over, him.

He brought his phone up and punched a number, then he put the conversation onto the speaker before he turned up the volume.

"This is 11-780. In Hamburg tonight."

"Yessir. We have two teams on you, and they report matters are getting a little out of hand on your end."

"Is that so? Well, let you team know I do NOT appreciate your team letting this happen. Be that as it may, I'd like your team to wrap this up for me right now. And right now wouldn't be too soon," he said -- just as he noticed a pimp of some kind coming out of one of the shadows.

"Yessir. What did you have in mind."

"Something on the severe side, maybe just a little short of too much. Something no one around here will soon forget...if ever. And there's a pimp headed my way..."

"Yessir. On him."

By the time he turned to face the whores again all their windows were slamming shut and their garish pink neon lights were flickering off. The pimp was now, however, face down on the pavement, both legs broken, an arm too.

And William Taylor smiled.

But then, for the benefit of whoever might still be watching, or listening, he gently, almost smartly said: "You can run, ladies, but you can't hide."

Then, as he didn't want to endure the humiliation of a taxi ride, he walked to the Marriott with his detail trailing a block behind. Seething. All the way. As a light snow fell on his piss-soaked shoulders.

And while he didn't notice the woman following him in a taxi, two members of his security detail most certainly had. Their 'Client' was a Big Deal and now he was mad -- very mad -- because they'd fucked up.

And that would not, could not happen again. Not on their watch...

His detail let him out at the front lobby entrance, and the woman followed him inside. She kept a discrete distance, but she made it onto the elevator with him. And with two members of his team.

By the time Taylor pulled the wallet out of his jacket and held it up to the door to his suite, the woman was just a few meters behind, while the two members of his security team were right behind her. By then she was looking nervously behind as she walked up to Taylor, and now she appeared to be more than a little scared.

"Could I speak to you?" she said to Taylor as his door popped open.

"Ah. The philosopher-whore, and imagine my surprise, how complete you've made my evening," he said, now addressing the two armed mercenaries watching over him. "Imagine that, gentlemen. She wants to talk to me, in all my piss-stained glory. Me. I am flattered."

"Please," the woman continued, "I would like to apologize."

"You would? How interesting. I was thinking that maybe you'd rather go up to the roof and enjoy a complimentary flying lesson. Think you could arrange that for my apologetic friend?" he said to one of the men, the one with the Walther in his hand.

"Yessir," the lead mercenary said, doing his best not to grin.

"Please?" the woman asked again, only now she was almost on the verge of crying. "I'd really like to speak to you."