Nancy didn’t take care of it.
After I blessed her 2018 Tahoe in the parish parking lot, Macie or Matilda or whatever left and, on the way home or to the welfare office or wherever, the Tahoe with her inside dropped straight over a Loop 375 overpass guardrail at 60 mph. It fell fifty feet and landed on a hobo camp under the freeway.
Three people died. KFOX 14 and KDBC 4 covered it.
Everybody blamed me, like it was my fault the Mexican lady couldn’t drive right. Like the Lord would have granted my pleas anyway, even if I really meant it. Who am I?
She probably didn’t even have a license. Bishop Randy sent me a text that night on my Nokia brick.
“NANCY TOLD ME YOU MADE HER GET TAP WATER FOR THE BLESSING AND TRIED TO PASS IT OFF AS HOLY WATER.”
Randy writes in all caps when he’s angry.
“YOU REALLY SCREWED THE POOCH THIS TIME.”
I don’t know what that means, but it’s one of his favorite Andy Griffith-esque catchphrases. In his book, it’s profanity. Randy’s a fruitcake.
Never trust a reformed street whore is the takeaway, even when she swears to God he’s delivered her of her sleazy ways. People don’t change so fast after a lifetime of sin. She was probably fucking men for money before she got out of high school.
“THE CHICKENS HAVE COME HOME TO ROOST.”
That’s another one of the things non-threatening threats Randy says to convey anger.
I’m on probation indefinitely, he informs me in a formal reprimand hand-delivered at the parish by that slut Nancy who fucked me hard.
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Hell is traffic on a Texas interstate, in my Hyundai, which is less of an economy sedan and more of a mobile sweat lodge. Divine air-conditioning, which I think about often in great reverence, hasn’t blessed me since it went out the first month I got it.
I swear to God, I’ll swap baby Jesus in the manger for an AC unit this Xmas, in the hopes that Randy will take mercy on me, and repent for the piece of shit he forces me to push through town with his miserly bullshit.
In the next lane over there’s some upper-middle-class Homeowners-Association-treasurer-looking cunt in a late-model Toyota 4Runner in pearls. Her name is probably Kyli or Kayli, and when she signs birthday cards she makes a heart to dot the i.
I’m guessing Kyli’s on her way to spin class or something…somewhere with a lot of action to jumpstart her libido and break her out of that valium stupor, filled with sweat and estrogen and synchronized sexual energy, like when women’s periods align after they’ve been living together for a while.
Something primal, that touches something down there in the lower chakra, in a way the PTA meeting could never be. I’m not allowed to talk about chakras to Randy, who reflexively rejects them as apostasy.
Then, once the women have really gotten going strong and they’ve worked themselves into a tizzy — like the throes of an ancient dancing-for-rain ceremony in the nude under moonlight — the estrogen club gets interrupted by the cock in the henhouse. Enter the lifecoach/spiritual guru quivering with catlike sexual prowess to light the tantric slow-burn flame.
If it’s a yoga class, he bumps and grinds. Women get aroused by touch over sight, which I didn’t learn at seminary.
Once, a forehead-dotted Indian guy named Bikram Choudhury started a yoga cult from the ground up. By the end, he had a harem, and fucked all the best ones after class.
We don’t have anything like that at the parish.
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Maybe I let it happen, like a subconscious kind of thing. I saw it coming before she ever veered into my lane. I saw her yapping away on her cell phone, talking to her kids, thinking about the morning’s episode of The View, whatever.
“The greatest illusion of the day, which we suffer from” – this guy on audio book Bishop Randy gave me says, “is that we have free will. We don’t. We are the amalgamation of all our influences which have converged on the single moment prior to a decision.”
But Randy, I can hear myself saying to the Bishop, It seems, then, that we’re in the business of pardoning souls which never partook in the sinning. We’re either sadists or fools.
Yeah, I’m bitter about a lot of things. I used to feel other stuff besides bitterness, but that was a long time ago.
The last thing I’ll remember, from this afternoon, is Kyli or Kayli’s indignant moisturized face when I swerve into her lane. I never swerve back to correct my breach of her space, the front left tire on her Escalade rolls over the right side of my hood, and we cut to black.
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When I was a kid, other kids asked me if I was a Christian. Everybody said yes, because we wanted to feel included, but I don’t know how many of us really felt like Christians.
The Pledge of Allegiance was the same. Mrs. Teacher Lady’s voice, the Voice of God, beamed itself from the intercom into every classroom in the building to start each day. All the boys and girls, hands over their hearts, made a public offering of their allegiance and gratitude to the Nation they loved. I don’t know how many of us really loved it.
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Me and the yoga bitch were alright, but the Hyundai was totaled, and the archdiocese decided to take the loss out on Randy’s parish budget, which he blamed me for.
I explained to him that a bird could’ve shit on the car and totaled it since it wasn’t worth a fuck to start with, but that wasn’t convincing apparently.
As punishment, I was to be shipped off to the Archdiocese of Bangkok – for what exactly, I wasn’t sure, but I guess some mandatory proselytizing to the chinks was on the agenda.
“One failed breathalyzer this, one insubordinate comment to Bishop Somchai, one gambling problem you drag into God’s House, and you’re done. Your visa’s gone, your apartment’s gone, the whole nine yards. You understand me, buster?”
“Buster” is Randy’s favorite way of calling someone an asshole minus the profanity, because he doesn’t have the testicular fortitude to upset the Lord, who, he reminds himself as much as he reminds his flock, is always watching.
“Finished. Kaput,” Randy continued. “Your father’s goodwill has run its course. He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, But he who confesses and forsakes them will find compassion. Let this be your wakeup call.”
That’s Proverbs 28:13 – “He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, But he who confesses and forsakes them will find compassion.” Randy loves quoting Proverbs. He outsources all his profound reflection on thorny moral dilemmas to the Good Book.
The flight left two days later, with me on it. I read on the internet the chinks had invented alcohol too, or maybe the white man gave it to him, which was a relief. There was this stuff called Hong Thong an expat guy on the internet said was legit. Plus, he added, you can buy it at 7-Eleven, which are everywhere. Hong Thong sounded so racist I thought it was a joke, but he was telling the truth. Asian stuff always has ridiculous names so it’s hard to take anything serious.
Some stuff happened and the abstinence thing didn’t take. Ten days later, I failed the second test Bishop Somchai gave me, which he administered every day per Randy’s request .14 ABC. Not really drunk, but drunk enough for Randy to call me.
“You don’t learn, do you? You’re going to be out there on the streets of Bangkok, done, with no friends. All alone.”
Whatever Randy says, my father’s goodwill won’t run out.
It’s like the Russian elites. They might get banished to Siberia for a while, but they’re still in the club. Odds are, they’ll be back in Moscow after the next coup.
You could bet on it.
I explained the Siberia analogy to Randy, but he didn’t appreciate it. The nuns sucked his sense of humor straight out of him, and now he’s got a God-sized hole there.
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“We have a Consequences Chart for you now,” Randy announced in an email after my first breathalyzer failure. He CC’ed Nancy on it, which really grinded my gears.
The Consequences Chart went like this:
Breathalyzer Failure #1: One-week suspension, paid
Breathalyzer Failure #2: One-week suspension, unpaid
Breathalyzer Failure #3: One-month suspension, paid
Breathalyzer Failure #4: One-month suspension, unpaid
Breathalyzer Failure #5: Indefinite suspension, unpaid
I rewrote the chart with a new consequence and sent it to Randy:
Breathalyzer Failure #1: One-week suspension, paid
Breathalyzer Failure #2: One-week suspension, unpaid
Breathalyzer Failure #3: One-month suspension, paid
Breathalyzer Failure #4: One-month suspension, unpaid
Breathalyzer Failure #5: Indefinite suspension, unpaid
Breathalyzer Failure #6: Transfer to Siberia
Randy didn’t respond.
