 
MYSTERIOUS LOGIC

WILLIAM WHITE-ACRE

Copyright 2017 by William White-acre

Smashwords Edition

white-acre-wixsite.com/photography

*other books by the author:

Surrounded By Mythology

I. The Hero

True For X

Forgotten Faces

A Rush Of Silence

Heaven On Earth

Memory 2.0

Table Of Contents:

Chapter 1 Square The Circle

Chapter 2 The Forseti Society

Chapter 3 God Is

Chapter 4 Moral Slippage

Chapter 5 Germaine To The Pattern

Afterword

Chapter 1 Square The Circle

It is just after the eleven a.m. lunch here at the Riverbend Max Security Institution. We eat early because--actually I don't know why. Prisons have there own rules and, as I have found out now after so many years behind bars, belief system. Let me get this out of the way early. I am on death row. Neatly said. I killed a man. Two actually. I really want to concentrate on the first one I murdered though. The second one was what they like to call collateral damage and came later, after I had escaped from prison up in New York. Oh it wasn't really all that much of a jailbreak. Not one that would support the plot of a movie or anything. It amounted to carelessness on the part of the facility (Thanks go to an overworked corrections officer and a monumentally stupid kitchen supply company rep, who thought I was who I wasn't. Enough said.) and a stroke of good luck. I got out. Sneaked away. Absconded, if I want to throw in a thesaurus. On the lamb.

Unfortunately, for me and a certain unsuspecting police officer in the Volunteer State, I didn't fare too well. I had been behind bars for so long I wasn't prepared for my sudden freedom. Decades had passed and the world had moved on, apparently at some kind of light speed velocity. When I went in, Disco was still around. That probably sums it up. Jimmy Carter was in the White House. No PC's and of course no cell phones. Not to mention the Internet. People actually used pay phones to make calls away from home and their landline. Pay phones? Germs! And no Purell. No keyless entry. We actually had to use keys to open our car doors. Imagine.

It was a primitive world, one where you had to use a typewriter in order to complete your term paper. That is relevant because my personalized ordeal began in college, in New York City. My present situation, here in Tennessee, was a corollary to the event in New York. After escaping the pen in the Empire State, I made it as far south as Tennessee, where things ended badly. I stole a car. I ran from the cops. I ran over a police officer. I like to think I had no choice in the matter but then again you always have some kind of selection to make when fate and chance meet head on. Homicide by vehicle, with intent. The intent part is debatable. I certainly didn't harbor any homicidal intention when it came to one Officer Loften. He just got in the way. Run down. Left a wife, a kid, and another on the way. My trial went fast, blisteringly so. Kill a cop, it is a one way street to where I reside today.

If you wanted, and I don't know why you would, you can go to the Tennessee Department of Correction website and bring up my photo, a mug shot. Not flattering. I look like a criminal. Oh, wait, I am. That's a not so private joke around here. The link has my TOMIS number under my picture and my name--Barry Ashdown--because, realistically speaking, in here we are all reduced to six digits, numbers that specify our futures. Here on the Row you only find the ultimate deadenders, with no place to go but hell, if you ask most of the public, especially the people intimately touched by me and my colleagues in capital crime. The very Bible says we deserve to be done away with, and we are, even if it is usually set on a delayed path, passing through the labyrinth of legal trapdoors to get us to give it up and open our veins for the potion dispensed by a needle. Edgar Allen Poe would have to be dug up and called in to provide the proper amount of poetical lyricism to capture the mood around here in my temporary digs, the jumping off point for the afterworld.

As a side note, the brilliant minds in Tennessee have seen fit to give the executioner a choice of the needle or the chair, providing they committed their crime (s) before December 31, 1998. Alas, my crime didn't make the cut, so I have no choice but the needle. Good thing, I guess, since there has been some consternation by the state authorities as to the working order of old sparky. It seems the designer of the death machine isn't too confident it will get the job done. He has gone on record saying that the contraption may just cook the unlucky person who sits in it, leaving him brain dead with burn wounds. Burning at the stake would be more humane, or so said somebody connected to the decision making process that goes into this sort of thing. Killing immoral miscreants is some dirty business. As it is the state had been on a 40 year hiatus for (from) executions. Then they brought it back for the new century. Imagine hiring someone for that job. Who exactly designs death machines anyway? Do you take a course for that? Just wondering.

All of us here deserve what we get, I suppose. Maybe there might be an innocent guy hiding in one of the cells, the victim of shabby jurisprudence and vindictive prosecutors. It happens. So you read all the time. Wrong place. Wrong time. Dark complexion. Jury not of your peers. Defense team asleep at the wheel of justice. Impatient judge. Altered forensics. You name it. Then again, even though I don't interact with most of them on the Row, something tells me a goodly percentage aren't going to be interrogated by that angel--what's his name--at the Pearly Gates and will probably be on a non-stop flight going into a steep dive.

The laundry list of crimes, if you must know: Rape and murder, by knife, gunshot, murder in the multi-category, also infanticide. The rape is gratuitous, really. We kill people, making us, minus the military, a select group of psychos. We have taken a life, sometimes in duplicate. Snuffed out one of God's creations, making us kind of like anti-creators. Religion, more or less, is about life giving, injecting a level of spiritual meaningfulness into life in general. Close to something like that anyway. Hey, I don't say yes when they ask me if I want to be visited by somebody from the clergy. I don't. What for? Are you kidding? I am the one the men of the cloth warn you about. Right? The fallen angel speaks to me. In my dreams. His words rattle around in my brain, echoing loudly, drowning out all other sensible thoughts. I'm exaggerating. Although the guy in the cell adjacent to mine does have some doozy nightmares, complete with bellowing screams and fingernail scratching episodes on the cell door. Doesn't like to talk about them, to me or, apparently, whatever shrink the state springs for to come around and compile data on just how fucked up we all are in here.

Now, the psychologist I'll talk to. We get to be interviewed as we are shackled, handcuffed and told not to cause any trouble. Be polite. Don't act like an animal. A guard is posted nearby, alert to any transgressions. The last one was a woman, on loan from, I think, Vanderbilt. Pretty, in a I haven't seen a woman in a long time kind of way. Tall. Well coiffed, as they tend to be down here in the South. Honeydripper accent. Attired in no nonsense outfits that tells everyone she is all business. Skirt just below the knees. Solid colored pumps. Unrevealing sweater that hides what I am going to guess are C cups. Makeup minimal. Still, it doesn't prevent me from imagining her naked in all sorts of poses, mostly having to do with limber sexual positions. I am heading towards my 60's but a man can exercise his mind to ward off the advance of Alzheimer's. You must remember I have been locked up since I was in my twenties, early twenties. Priests have a more active sex life than I have had; and don't believe all those stories you here about carnal abuse in the pen. Never took it up the ass or the other way around. Not that it doesn't happen.

Believe it or not, here at this institution an inmate can earn his way into the relative good graces of the powers that be and be given privileges. You are classified on three different behavioral levels: A, B, and C, with A being the highest. You can actually have phone and visitation privileges. Some even get to work around the prison, which, to me, is taking rehabilitation practices way too far. We all killed people, sometimes brutally. I think we should all be locked away incommunicado until which time our brains atrophy and we start babbling incoherently. I say that because as a previous escapee I don't get any possible shot at privileges. None. I am kept locked down twenty-three out of twenty-four, with one hour for exercise by myself in a little courtyard. My meals are eaten alone, such as they are. If it sounds like I'm whining, I am. Give me the needle already. Let's see what this judgement day is all about.

I was on the run for exactly 21 days before it came to an end down in this shithole the locals like to call a little slice of heaven. There I was cruising along in my life sentence, with no possibility of parole, when I said to myself: Go for it. After twenty plus years behind bars it was time for some different scenery, even if I was a model inmate, trusted by all the CO's to do the expected thing. The stupid guard left the back door unlocked. The step van from the supply company, with lots of boxes to hide behind in the back, was waiting by the door. I snuck out and was on my way. No plans. No hours of prep. No accomplices. It was just happenstance. Me and my desire to see the outside world one more time.

Naturally I didn't know just how unprepared I was to be out there beyond those prison walls. Time had sped forward. The world was different from when I last walked a free man back in the 1970's. Over thirty years. A generation. It was as if I might have been a space alien dropped down on America in the new century. I knew from nothing, so one of my classmates back in college might say.

Somehow I avoided a gigantic manhunt for three weeks. To my surprise, I discovered that people don't hitchhike much anymore. I stole clothes from a house. Dumped my prison monkey suit. Jumped a train. Made it to New York City. Dirty and hungry, I panhandled for some money to eat. They still did that. Walked the streets, soaking up all the sounds, the sights. Back to where my first crime had been committed so long ago. The city wasn't the same, needless to say. Still dirty. Noisy. With that usual almost desperate sense of exhilaration going on. Yet there seemed to be another veneer to the visual feast. As if it had been layered over my memories of the city.

My time had been in the mid-seventies, before 9 eleven and that martinet mayor who thought he was in charge, but was only a shill for the corporate bullies who wanted to remake Gotham in their own image. The mayor at the time was different in that he was a facsimile of the old party boss, a guy who wanted to maintain the status quo and keep the city from falling into complete ruin. Not an easy task. Half of Manhattan was teetering, on the brink of being a runaway ghost town. Former thriving districts were now vacant, eyesores, breeding grounds for squatters and vermin. The city's ledgers were bleeding red ink, sucked dry by greedy merchants of labor and stealthy graft. Streets went unrepaired. Crime waves bubbled to the surface more and more frequently. The subways were no-man's land in many boroughs. Central Park shut down after dark, a sinkhole of crime statistics. Half of the Bronx resembled the remnants of a bombed out war zone.

It still had its charm, the Big Apple. Pulsating. Energy seemed to thrive on the visible decline, like a strain of bacteria taking down its host. The city that never slept was beginning to suffer from its insomnia though. Every day urban post-mortem's were written up by the bards writing for the local media, ready to be delivered when the time came for the eulogy no one wanted to hear. Even the President, Ford, the accidental one, had told the metropolis to give it up, throw it in. Then what? Nobody wanted to think about that. America without New York City didn't seem possible or even logical. Sure the Dutch had founded the place and then the British had renamed it, but it was quintessentially ours now. The cynosure of the melting pot, a place that set the standards for taking all those immigrants in and making them think like all the rest of us. I must say though, as was always with the city, after spending a few weeks there on the run, America ain't going to like what we are all going to look like in a decade or so; tower of babble on steroids, with all the requisite hassles of living among cross cultural clashes is not pretty.

My New York bespoke of the less than glorious Punk scene, where the East Village was a forgotten place grafted onto the West Village and they weren't too happy about it, almost like an ugly cousin. The Yankees still played in a ballpark that had history and the other pro teams didn't have to drive to another state in order to be the home team. The towers, of course, were still standing, having just been completed not a few years before. They, to me, were an eyesore, two large columns that said the architect wanted to make a statement but lost interest half the way through. The architect, Yamasaki, was from the Formalism school of art, where compositional elements trumped everything else. Don't ask me what that means? I hate art. They were perched down in the battery and reportedly swayed in the wind they were so tall. Big deal. Height doesn't make for creativity, or so me and most of my friends like to say, sniffing, snubbing our collective noses at the hubris of some idiot builder who threw up the monstrosity in record time. Then they came down and you can't say that anymore. I can. I'm bullet proof that way. Murderers can get away with more than just murder apparently.

Think about it. There was no SOHO or Tribeca. FiDi and NOHO, nope. The lower east side still reeked of past emigration waves. The alphabets were seedy, contaminated by blight and decaying walkups. The Bowery was still over run with bums in every sense of that word. You could get a room in a flop house hotel for ten bucks, if you dared. The proprietors sat behind thick plexi, trying to avoid eye contact as they took your crumpled bills. I know. I stayed in a few after all night benders and my friends wouldn't give me permission to crash on their couch. You at least only hoped to come away with some creepy crawlies and not a GSW or knife wound. Know that too, from personal experience. A Bellevue graduate once tried to stick me with a kitchen knife he had pilfered from a local sandwich shop because he thought I was there to kidnap him. Like he had any money. Thought he was an heir to the J.P. Morgan fortune.

Junkies ruled some of the narrow streets, frequently introducing you to the mechanics of a dog eat dog universe, where they wanted a source for their next fix. That being you, the guy with cash in his pocket. Sometimes even subway tokens would do. They could be exchanged for legal tender. That's right, the Metro system ran on tokens and not metrocards. Try carrying around a bunch of brass coins in your pocket for a while. Besides looking like you had a woody, they threw your back out of whack. The tokens did have a certain elegance to them though, with the distinctive Y cut out of the middle, like some long lost coin from an ancient realm. The fare was, if memory serves me right, all of 35 cents.

That 35 cents got you a ride on par with riding a thrill ride in some amusement park. Between quicksilver crime, person on person, and stoppages at any time of day, the subway system was a necessary evil for most New Yorkers. Above ground the buses were plentiful and, as usual, taxis made pedestrians fear for their lives, ever wary of being run over by those yellow tanks, the old Checkercabs, but, below, the numerous lines of the trains made for commuter movement in a city of such density. I took the trains religiously, having quickly burned that subway map into my brainpan, able to bring up what letter matched what train to whatever section of the city I wanted to go with ease. Like an idiot savant, or something, so said my friends. Ask Barry. Far Rockaway-Eighth Ave., A. Woodlawn-Lex. Ave., 4. South Ferry-Seventh, 1.

The talent served me well as I spent a large bulk of my time in the city on the move, going from roost to roost as it was. In my group of friends I was the only one not from New York City proper and therefore didn't have anyplace to fall back on when it came time for housing. Many nights were spent on those trains, zooming underground from point A to whatever other point it took to keep me out of the cold. You could ride the trains all night long, streaking along underground hour after hour, hoping the transit cops didn't interrupt your moving sleeping arrangement as you stretched out on those hard benches in a empty subway car, with the rocking train ushering you to sleep, serenaded by screeching wheels and muffled announcements over the intercom from the sleepy conductor. Train stops blended together. People shuffled on and off but by late night, after mid-night, you were left with an eerie underworld of flashing light and the prospect of unexpected injury at the hands of thieves and drunken dickheads out for some fun.

Never had a problem. Even the occasional cop on the beat just told me to move on. I would. There would be another train coming. Find a quiet car, hopefully not one where a homeless person had just been, leaving behind the usual toxic stench, a body odor that defied basic chemistry, like some fermented biohazardous material only a hazmat team could extinguish and remove. It was a refuge, simply. Not permanent.

My family was from Philly. We lived in a section of the city that liked to think it was impervious to the outside world. It was, for the most part. Working class standards applied, with most people putting labor in the word labor. Menial. By the hour. Skill set minimal. It was called Fishtown and it was a construct not of the city fathers but of a proximity to the Delaware River and the Shad fishing industry back in the day. It is now, or when I was growing up, predominantly a Catholic area, served by no less than three churches, where Poles and the Irish liked to worship. We were an anomaly of sorts because we were of British extraction and Protestant, not that we leaned religious or anything. My ancestors dated back to the 1800's there, being shopkeepers for the shipbuilding industry that thrived along the river. By the turn of the last century the Irish had pushed out most of the local population with British backgrounds.

Not my family though. They stayed on, living in a large apartment that my dad, to his credit, kept from falling into disrepair. Most of the landlords in the area were real estate bandits, eager to make a buck without having to foot any expenses. As childhood's go, I guess, it was okay. The parents were there for me and my two siblings, a brother and a sister, younger. We would all advance and get out of Fishtown, which, in itself, is an accomplishment because many of the people born there find themselves locked in, trapped by circumstances that are difficult to overcome. Of course my path wasn't exactly exemplary, even if I did break free. My brother and sister still live in Philly, but they have moved onward and upwards, as they like to say, one being an accountant and the other a nurse respectively. Good for them. Haven't spoken to them in over twenty years. Never did come to see me in prison, either one of them. Same for my parents. No bitterness here. I wouldn't come to visit me either.

My departure came right after my 18th birthday. I had made it through High School, barely, and was intent on going to New York City. Philly, being so close to the Big Apple, has always had an inferiority complex when it came time to share any limelight with its more famous neighbor. Sure Philly had a music scene and some sports teams that made some noise in their particular niches, a championship here or there, but it was still Philadelphia, Ben Franklin notwithstanding. We had the Patriot and founding father cred going on, sure, then again, so what. Liberty Bell? This is a city that put a statue of Rocky on municipal property. If that isn't embarrassing...then what is?

The city does have an Ivy League college but it is second tier and often confused for some other university with a better football team. Philly cheesesteaks. Hoagies. It's never good to be recognized for your handheld culinary items. What else? There might be something but, honestly, I can't remember any. It has been a long time.

My breakaway, such as it was, didn't take a major undertaking. You can get from Philly to New York on Amtrak in no time at all. Since I didn't own a car that was how I arrived, getting out in Penn Station as a young, naive teenager, walking around the Garden area taking in the sights. It wasn't my first time to the city, having been there a couple of times with my family on outings to see an aunt who lived on the Eastside, but not in a desirable location, more towards the East River in an area over run with Hungarians, I think. They had several bakeries that liked to make pastries stuffed with poppy goo. Pretty good. Sweet. Cheap.

I had maybe a hundred dollars in my pocket, hard earned funds from odd jobs in the neighborhood and squirreled away allowance. Me, the intrepid traveler, had no concrete plans but to see what New York was all about. Little did I know I would become infamous in a few short years, leaving the local media to throb with salacious stories until which time I was pushed off the front page and replaced by that insane bastard the Son of Sam. The New York journalistic world loved a good story, especially when it contained equal parts mayhem to accompany a serial and ongoing plot. My only mistake was to get caught too early, forcing the daily scribes to fill in the back story.

That part will come later. I don't want to tease the story but I do have to lay down an explanation. Presently, in my small cell, I am putting this whole thing to paper on a typewriter, one on loan from my lawyer, (Where he got it I can't imagine.) an earnest guy assigned to me by some do-gooder organization that thinks human beings shouldn't kill other human beings, even if it has been sanctioned by laws and a disinterested jury. They think I am, while not precisely able to be rehabilitated at least worth keeping alive to live in a concrete block for the remainder of my days; which is, with any luck, probably another ten years or so. Another decade. Could be less. Lots of cancer in my family. Dad died from pancreatic. Mom barely survived breast cancer before giving up when she was my age. Sis had an ovarian scare, I think. We don't talk. My brother is most likely still living, although he did drink a lot.

This writing exercise wasn't a popular idea around here. My lawyer had to go to the mats in order for me to start and complete my memoir. It seems some people--that would be you warden-- aren't too keen on having murderers exorcise their demons by telling all, and we certainly aren't allowed to have any recompense from it. Like what am I going to do with any money if I had it, providing the book did sell? Ever typed on a typewriter? Low tech is not the word. Smudged paper. Worn out ribbons. Typos. I don't know how the world existed before computers and I'm not even computer literate. Never touched one. A virgin. I'm worse than Rip Van Winkle waking up. Can't drive. Haven't seen a movie in two decades. The last TV I watched was on a 13 inch screen, in analogue. The only war I identify with was Viet Nam and I was too young to participate. Never used a microwave, or cell phone. Penicillin was the last anti-biotic I was prescribed. My fillings are all mercury based. The razor blade I last used before I started growing my beard had one edge. The last Pope I remember was Italian. There was an ABA basketball league, with teams in Kentucky, Virginia, Pittsburgh and St. Louis, and they played with a red, white, blue striped ball. Gas was under 50 cents for a gallon. People had pet rocks and weren't humiliated by that fact. It was a different universe.

Now, as the prison sounds around me echo in my ears, a mélange of closing doors, shouts, and compressed human energy, I type out my thoughts, a stream of consciousness that has the warden on edge and keeps my diligent lawyer busy. It is ironic to note that one of my ancestors was a jailer--gaoler--at Newgate Prison in London back in the early 1800's. I found out this little genealogical tidbit from a histo-psychologist one day during a therapy session. If you don't know, and I certainly didn't, a histo-psychologist delves way back into your past in order to examine your psyche, taking the whole Jungian archetypes a little too far. He had told me that my ancestry has as much to do with my current mental state as my immediate parents. If you say so. I lost count of how many therapists had a go at my mind over the years. There seemed to always be some bozo wanting to add me to their research. I found it a nice diversion, a brief escape from prison life, an easy way to entertain myself.

Anyway, inscribed over the front door to the place was: Venio Sicut Fur, which means something like I come as a thief. Back then, apparently, they hung people who stole, among other heinous acts committed on the accused. Burnings. Beheadings. Draw and quartered. They took their punishments seriously, often times leaving the remains out for public display. Nothing like a rotting skull for deterrence. Didn't work. The prisons were overflowing most times.

I wonder what my ancestor, a one Geoffrey Ashdown would say about me being behind bars, slated for execution. He would probably sneer and go off on our namby-pamby way of dispatching the guilty. Needles! Pish! Tie him to the rack and turn until quartered, mind the splattering guts. Got any available pikes to place his head on? Londinum, founded by the Romans in AD 47, then going on to be a cesspool of rife class warfare and percolating pollution, where the air was fouled by excrement, malleable morals, coal smoke, and blood. One of the few advantages of being interned for so long is that I have the opportunity to read. I know a lot of things, compliments of having been incarcerated for most of my life, where reading becomes the working substitute for living. Like having an ongoing education.

Reading is the gateway to many things, most undesirable. Back in my former prison it was responsible for a hefty percentage of half witted philosophers, the ones who had gotten their hands on elementary based philosophy books or, more often, religious oriented tripe masquerading as higher thought. Some were Muslim posers. Others, Christian apologists. With a few Eastern devotees for good measure. Not a lot of atheists, like me. Most people, just like on the outside, needed something to offer an explanation for why life, particularly their own, was so fucked up. God's plan and boy oh boy did you get screwed. Philosophical discussions in prison usually devolved into shouting matches, where you only hoped that a shiv wasn't coming your way when and if you got the polemical upper hand. In the shower. Down that narrow hallway that led away from the laundry room. Exercise yard, in the corner, the place that afforded your attacker an opportunity because of the blind spot that the guard in the tower couldn't see down into.

I suppose the prodigious reading by some was an attempt to avoid any self-judgment. Long term imprisonment is not only about the sheer act of acquiescence, and it is, but about the need to reposition a person's desires and expectations. You are interned behind solid walls and iron bars, made to sacrifice not only your freedom but all definition of autonomy. Monotony becomes your future. Physical limitations close in on you like a demonic geometric equation. Really, you read in prison to break the tedium of course, but you also read to have a mental reset of sorts, something to keep your sanity clicking. Being a lifer, facing nothing but a life span defined by official ordinances, I grasped whatever I could to still keep functioning.

I kept my mouth shut, mostly. Occasionally, when I was really bored, I would venture an opinion, usually laced with just the right amount of sarcasm. I was a lifer and most times got the benefit of the doubt. I had killed somebody. There was some street cred in that. In fact, I was a minor celebrity. Early on into my lengthy, permanent sentence, I had been feted by the media, the recipient of numerous invitations to spill my guts to a reporter, in print and on TV. I declined. There was one TV talking head, a woman of course, who almost enticed me to a sit down with her. I had been admiring her legs on TV for years. She had beauty queen good looks and smarts too, a combination that she utilized to climb to the top, appearing on some magazine style TV show weekly, with overly produced segments about anything from overseas coups to the heinous acts of the corporate world back home.

Couldn't do it. I didn't want to talk about killing another person, on TV, broadcast like some new rollout of a snack product. I knew I would be packaged too. There would be teaser advertising in the lead up to when they aired the interview. The interview itself would be heavily edited. I would probably come off as some lunatic, with a smile, sitting there avoiding eye contact with the camera, trying not to shake my manacles too loudly, while I furtively stole looks up her dress, wondering what those long, long legs would feel like locked around my waist. Her perfume would fill the small interview room like one of those air fresheners people buy to mask unpleasant odors seeping out from the kitchen. She always wore bright red lipstick so I knew I wouldn't be able to keep my eyes off what had to be pillow soft lips. I would leer without even knowing that I was, some homicidal loon too dangerous to be kept alive. Can't argue with that, I did get out eventually and commit another felony.

I begged off, several times. She was persistent, or, at least, her producer was, calling me numerous times, hoping to land me, the prize. In time, my notoriety waned and nobody called. Other killers came along, ones with more star power because of the nature of their crime. Then the whole sub-genre of murderers speaking out went bust. No one out there in the audience cared anymore about some psycho enacting ready made horror. Tastes change. It is the nature of the entertainment business. Nothing new. Soon I was safe to live out my life in obscurity, just another crime statistic for some criminologists somewhere to worry about as they forged a compilation of just how demonic the human race can be.

Chapter 2 The Forseti Society

The unexamined life is not worth living, so said Socrates. I think it was him anyway. Being eighteen when I arrived in New York, I hadn't done all that much examining, of any kind. Beyond scoring some beer for the weekend, I didn't seek out all that much. High School had been negotiated with a minimum of hassles, as I received my diploma entitling me to blue collar jobs or the military. In a word, I was lazy. Unlike my parents, who worked long hours and kept their belly aching under wraps most times, I didn't like to work per se. I had had a few part time jobs, ones that were easily ditched and left no lasting impression on me or, I imagine, the business I worked for. Most times I was a warm body that could complete a few simple tasks, preferably repeatedly and mindlessly.

I had fled to New York from the confines of Fishtown because I wanted to not only do something else but be someone else. It was a quest with inherently vague parameters. On one level I was being a teenager, adrift, able to ignore any yawning deficiencies in my plan. On another level I just wanted to see and do other things. College? My industrious siblings would go that route, carrying the torch for the Ashdown name more than adequately. Four more years of instruction, in a classroom, wasn't on my radar. I suppose at night when I lay down and before I drifted off to sleep, I imagined a future for myself. It was probably undefined, even indistinct, but I thought I would discover something.

My journey of discovery was unmoored for the first six months I was in New York City. It was all I could do to keep up with the city. Everything did seem to be on hyperdrive, as in some law of physics warped by an unknown particle, totally devoid of any formulas to explain it. I kept on the move, scoring work that was always temporary and off the books, living like an undocumented laborer. I was once paid, cash, to plug up a woman's toilet. Twenty bucks...and a bottle of expensive wine. True story. The guy who handed over the money wanted his ex-wife's bathroom to get flooded with poop. Gave me the keys to her place. Told me when she left for work. Instructed me on the finer aspects of a brownstone's aging plumbing. Even gave me a hand towel to do the deed. The bottle of wine, I grabbed that on my way out of the place, up in the 70's, between 2nd and Third.

I had met the man as we were standing on a street corner down in Murray Hill. He turned to me and said: "Wanta make twenty bucks?" I eyed him suspiciously, noticing that he fit the chickenhawk description, over forty, nice suit, beady eyes. I asked him what I had to do for the twenty and he laughed. Told me what my mission was, adding a few diatribes against his ex. "I want the bitch to sit on the throne, reach back, push the lever, then drown in her own shit," he explained, nodding, unable to keep himself from snickering. "Good luck calling the super," he added, rubbing his hands together in front of him.

We walked to a bar near the bridge and he told me the specifics of my vandalism, snickering continually. I disliked the guy immediately and only thought that his ex-wife was probably right in dumping him. Then again, I needed the money. A crisp new twenty for about ten minutes of labor seemed like a windfall I couldn't pass up. Besides, the guy bought me several beers in the course of our plans, huddled together in the back of some seedy bar, while drunks perched on barstools stared at the ugly images in the mirror behind the bar.

"You gotta sneak in the apartment tomorrow," he hissed, looking around at the boozy patrons, who were all well into another day of drinking and unconcerned about what we were talking about. "In the morning. Early. Can you do that." He stared at me for a moment, fidgeting with his drink. "She wakes up around eight. Always. Without fail."

"Hold on," I exclaimed, then lowered my voice and added, "she's going to be in the apartment when I break in? I don't like that."

He scoffed and stated: "Don't worry about it." He waved his hands in front of him, as if to say it was only a minor detail. "She sleeps like a rock--fucks like one too." He laughed ruefully, making a face at me. "No, really, the bitch sleeps with a sleeping mask and ear plugs. Usually takes something to sleep better too. Hates noises."

"So she's not going to wake up?" I asked, now unsure about my mission. I didn't want to have to confront an angry and frightened woman when and if she found a strange man in her place. "I don't won't to go to jail over this. Not for twenty bucks."

"Okay...look, how 'bout I give you thirty," he offered with a pained expression on his face. "Will that do?"

"What do you get out of this?" I suddenly asked him, curious.

"Get out of this?" he repeated, looking over at the bar tender, ordering more drinks with hand motions. "I get the distinct pleasure of knowing that that bitch has to clean up her own shit. She'll have to smell it too. For what she did to me...let's just say she deserves it. Get me?"

I didn't. I was young. My own parents squabbled occasionally but they were committed to each other, even if it might not have been gold plated love. I couldn't imagine my father wanting to do something this petty to my mother. For all of my father's failings he had never cursed at my mother. Their particular bond was a working relationship that included some degree of respect for one another.

"I get you, I guess," I muttered not all that convincingly. "Must hate her, huh?"

"You think?" the guy spits out, frowning at me. "So I need for you to meet me at this address, tomorrow." He started to scribble an address on the back of a Rhinegold beer coaster, then thought better of it and told me the address. "Remember it. You won't forget, right? I don't want to be standing there with my dick in my hand waiting for your ass."

Despite the image of him doing just that now in my head, I said, "Got ya. I'll be there."

Next morning, bright and early, while the garbage trucks were edging down the narrow streets of the upper Eastside, I showed up to find him standing where he said he would be. It was one of those tree lined streets that defy the pollution level of the city, a place that made you think that living in New York City couldn't be all that bad. It smelled of money and privilege, with well kept brownstones, their facades withstanding age with grace. I didn't have those exact sentiments then, of course, because all I wanted to do was make some cash and disappear. Another installment to keep me going in the city.

"Here I am," I sang out cheerfully as I approached him.

He was wearing an even nicer suit than the day before and seemed to be in a hurry. His beady eyes were darting here and there and for the first time I noticed he was probably an alcoholic, one of those functioning types that can hold down a job and still be in the bag by eleven in the morning. His boozy breath drifted towards me in the morning air as he greeted me gruffly. Down the block came a young woman dressed for work, shuffling along quickly, still swiping at her just washed hair as she went. I smiled at her and she gave me a look, a look that said all at once: You're kidding and get lost. I was used to that response. New Yorkers assumed the worse and were usually correct in that assumption.

The man turned his back to the young woman as she hurried past, stopping at the corner to hail a cab. He turned back to me after she had gotten in the taxi and said, "Ready for some fun?" He said this with a snarl almost, as he rubbed his hands together against the morning coolness. Spring was having a difficult time arriving that year. Not waiting for my reply, he added, "The place is right down there, two doors down, the red one. Second floor. I'm going to give you the key but you have to return it to me right when you get back down. I'll be waiting right here. Don't fucking run off with it. I got people." People, I thought, wondering what he was talking about. Maybe he was in the mob, or something, I don't know. Then again, wouldn't a mob guy put out a hit on his wife--something like that? I wasn't all that concerned because I wasn't going to be keeping the key anyway. Just give me the cash and I would be on my way. "You give me the key I give you the cash. Got it?" I nodded yes. "Go. Now. Wait. Here's the rag to stuff in the can."

"Okay, I go in, I stick this down the toilet--I split," I said to him, making sure what my mission exactly was, trying not to laugh at the absurdity of it all. "What if I get caught?" I asked sensibly enough.

The guy stared at me for a moment, then replied in a low voice because two people were walking by, early risers, apparently in route to the coffee shop on the corner: "You don't know me. Got that. None of this happened."

The first part was easy. I really didn't know him. He had never introduced himself, which was a reasonable enough strategy from his perspective. He certainly didn't want his ex to find out he was actively vandalizing the old homestead. The second part was more problematic, for me. What was I going to say? It was breaking and entering. Well, to be accurate, I did have a key but that was legal hair splitting of the highest degree, so I imagined some prosecutor crying out in response to my court appointed stooge's transparent dodges. She would probably scream and throw something at me, an ashtray maybe, while she fled out the door. The neighbors would be alerted to my unwanted presence.

In some neighborhoods of New York there was a definite vigilante spirit going on. Just a few weeks before this faux break in, a man in Queens had been almost beaten to death after he was caught slipping into a back window of a house where he didn't reside. Several neighbors, responding to a woman's outcry for help, descended on her property and seized the man in the act, pulling him out into the street so they could pummel him unmercilessly for over ten minutes. The intruder was only saved by an alert and responsive EMT crew, who arrived on scene almost immediately, whisking the beaten man away in an ambulance. Right to the hospital and after the staff stabilized him and repaired some broken ribs, it was off to jail.

That could be me. I was worse than just a petty criminal and transient, I was from Philly. Kidding. I was going to have to run down several flights of stairs and then on down the street. I might have been young and fairly nimble but who knew when you were going to come up against some dick who not only works out regularly but jogs too. I might get chased all the way down Lex or even over to Park, then what? Get tackled. Beat up. Held down until the police get there, while onlookers give me a swift kick just to alleviate their frustration for having to live in a city where the crime rate seems to be exponentially expanding. I would probably end up on the front page of the Daily News or the Post, mouth agape, bloody nose, with a caption that reads: TEENAGE VERMIN ON THE RISE.

I needed the money so any or all of those thoughts didn't immediately register with me. Besides, I was naturally adventurous. Going into somebody's home unannounced, surreptitiously, gave me a rush. My small scale deviancy allowed me to overlook any drawbacks. Soon I would have some extra cash and, hopefully, some laughs too.

"I'm gonna meet up with you over there," I assured him, holding out my hand for the keys, trying to seem confident in my larceny or, at least, vandalism.

He handed over the keys almost reluctantly, after he glanced up and down the street, twice. I gave him a little jaunty wave and he grunted in response. Across the street a man was just getting into his car, a late model expensive Euro brand. I glanced his way briefly then strolled to the front steps of his ex's building and swiftly passed through the exterior doorway, pausing only a split second to scan the windows in the brownstone to see if anyone was looking out. Inside, the building was stone quiet, except for the muffled sound of an alarm clock going off in the ground floor apartment. He had told me the building had been sectioned into several apartments years before and that his place was on the top floor. Even back then it was an expensive apartment, one that today would probably go for over three a month easy. Just living on that street alone was worth that, with those marvelous trees.

I hurried up the stairs, stopping at the next landing to listen for a moment. Nothing, just a half hearted bark from the apartment on that floor, as if the apathetic pet was going through the motions. Stranger in the hall, who cares? Up the next flight of stairs quickly then pausing at the door. This was the moment of truth. Up until now I was just a guy in the wrong place. I could easily backtrack and walk away. Offer a muttered excuse and be on my way. No harm done. Nice place you have here. Must have the wrong address.

I stood there and gently put my ear to the door. Listening. Quiet. He had told me she was a sound sleeper and never (ever, in ten years of marriage) got up before eight. Was a zombie before she had her morning coffee. Totally out of it before she had her daily injection of caffeine. I was putting my trust in a guy that offered me money to plug up his old toilet. It was like an off-Broadway play, hi jinx will ensue. Laughter. Guffaws. Applause. Some day I will look back on this and have a chuckle.

Now, though, I had to get inside. He had told me the key sometimes stuck in the lock and I would have to pull the door towards the jam a little bit then turn the key. He was right about that detail. I swung the door open partially, sticking my head inside the apartment to listen. All quiet. Nervousness eddy in my bloodstream. Even though I was used to living on the edge of the law this was different. Somehow it would have been better if I was actually there to commit a standardized crime, like bona fide theft. Take some jewelry, that would be vaguely glamorous. Money, in a safe, a little further down the scale of pilfering but still legitimate. How about a rare art piece, say an Impressionist painting? I would fence it to some shadowy character for thousands of dollars like they always do in the movies and then live a charmed life on the Riviera, sunning by the Med. with a "dame" sunbathing topless next to me.

No, I was there to stick a rag down the toilet bowl. I stifled a laugh then proceeded on inside, hoping the woman hadn't gotten a Doberman for protection since she got divorced. The wooden floors, polished to a high gleam, creaked a little bit so I stopped in my tracks. Listen. I thought I could hear music playing but then realized it was coming from the apartment below, some morning radio show. Even in the nice places in the city you had to put up with your noisy neighbors, I thought, grinning.

The bathroom was down the hall, on the right and her, the ex, was sleeping in the next room on the end. As I slowly passed the living room I glanced around, taking in the decor, which was very modern, with geometric symbols in loud colors. His wife must be younger, I said in a raspy whisper, looking around for any photographs on the walls or any place else. On the wall across from the bathroom there were several 8X10's hanging there. I paused a moment to take a look. Yep. His wife was a good ten years younger. Pretty, with long light brown hair. In one photo she was posing on a dock wearing white impossibly short shorts. In the background I could see the guy standing on the deck of a sailboat. He was smiling and giving a little wave with one hand, while holding a drink in the other. Happier times. The missus was also smiling, with a cigarette clenched in her right hand, holding a bottle of what appeared to be champagne in the other. Honeymoon?

The other photograph was a group picture of friends or family, all grinning at the camera in a setting that appeared to be somewhere in the mountains. Vermont? New Hampshire? There was snow on the ground and skis on their feet. The good life. How the other half lives.

Resisting the urge to take a peak at sleeping beauty, I entered the bathroom to do the deed. Immediately I could smell a female's presence, where a tidal wave of scents merged to form a miasma of odor. Shampoo. Perfume. Skin creams. Bath soap. Toilet bowl cleaner. Floor wax maybe. I stepped back for an instant almost as if I had been slapped. I doubted that even something as putrid as fecal matter would penetrate that onslaught of smells.

Time was passing. I quickly dropped the rag into the bowl and then realized I was going to have to find something to wedge it down into the trap. I looked around. Nothing. Come on, I thought. This woman has to have a plunger or toilet bowl brush. Something? There was no way I was going to be able to insert the rag deeper with my hand. With my luck I would probably get my arm stuck down the bowl. Man caught with hand in lodged in toilet after breaking in. I would be a punch line for the rest of my life.

I looked in a cabinet under the sink and found nothing. Then I remembered there was one of those built in wall spaces in the hallway, places people usually set up bookcases. This one actually had a sliding door over it. Bingo. All of her cleaning supplies, along with linen was stuffed in there. I found a plunger and scurried back into the bathroom. Taking the handle end I pushed the rag as deep as I could into the bowl. Then I wiped off the handle and put it back. Deed is done.

Pausing, I listened again. Quiet. Good. I started to retrace my steps but got as far as the living room when I noticed sitting on the counter in the kitchen was a bottle of wine. Although I wasn't a wine drinker per se, expensive wine could be used as legal tender for something. I quickly plucked it off the counter and tucked it under my jacket. Closing the door behind me, I flew down the stairs and on out into the cold morning air. It Takes A Thief had become It Takes A Vandal.

I deposited the bottle of wine in a half full garbage can a few doors down, not wanting the guy to see that I had padded my take, and headed for the corner. He was pacing back and forth, puffing away on a cigarette. He saw me coming and glanced up and down the street.

"Go alright?" he asked in a half whisper.

"Piece of cake," I assured him, grinning, like I was proud of what I had just done.

"Good," he announced, whistling suddenly. "Here," he said, handing over the cash.

"I gotta ask," I said, shaking my head, "what do you get out of this?"

"Get?" he stated, smirking.

"You aren't even there to see what happens," I exclaimed, confused.

"Oh yeah, in about," he quickly looked at his watch, "five minutes I'll be on the scene. There to see her totally freak out. That's right, this is the day I am supposed to drop off the check. Get it? I'll be there to see it all." Beaming, he added, "A whole new meaning to shit hits the fan."

I handed over the keys and told him good luck, then watched him make his way towards the brownstone. He waited at the door for a few minutes then went inside. I hustled down the street to retrieve the bottle of wine I had filched, then quickly hurried back downtown on the Lexington line.

It might have been karma or some loose facsimile but I was always falling into short term cash flows. Another time I literally caught a small yapping dog as it fell off a second story fire escape. Right in my arms. Other than pissing himself, the dog was okay. The owner, a stripper in a club near mid-town, cried out from the fire escape, thanking me for being a hero. She hurried down and retrieved her dog, urging me to come upstairs for a reward. I was thinking, understandably, since she was wearing a see through robe and not much more, that a proffer of carnal gratuities might be coming my way. Once we got to her apartment she asked me in, all the time mewing at her stupid little dog, which was still in shock judging by his almost catatonic state, she started telling me about where she worked and how she was late for work, etc. Then she has a revelation and asks me if I need a job or not.

I worked at the club as a barback for three weeks, raking in some substantial tips from the all woman bartending crew. There were other dividends too. Her name was Twinkle or her stage name was. Hated her dog but kind of liked her. Let me stay at her place for a few weeks, until which time the past due date came for our romance. It was mutual. Parted on amiable terms. She was in her late twenties. The decade gap in ages didn't make much difference, except that she was tasked with having to teach me at least some of the Karma Sutra. Kept the book next to her bed, full color page version. It all was bundled together to become part of my education.

New York at the time, as with many parts of the US, the drinking age was only 18. Old enough to die for your country-old enough to get stinking drunk. That was the refrain that was used back then. The draft, conscription, had only ended a few years before, taking away the rationale people my age at the time used to keep the taps open. It is safe to say you are not a responsible adult at that age, a time when, so studies show, the teenage brain is, more or less, a mushy quagmire of contradictory cerebral impulses. No matter. The city was going to swallow you whole regardless what age you were.

I kept my head above water some how. With a little luck and the ability to avoid the inevitable scrapes, I got along okay. New York, at the time, was ripe for picking if you didn't mind living an uncivic lifestyle. By that I mean an individual could partake of the urban scene like a person living off the land. Whole swaths of the city were practically abandoned. Slip below Houston and it was like slipping into one of those apocalyptic movies, the ones where the jurisdiction of law doesn't apply. You know, vacant city streets with little or no police presence. The few inhabitants live on in a no-man's land of bestial denial, one step ahead of chaos.

I might be amplifying a little bit. My memory is failing me sometimes. Then again, there was an underworld out there in existence. One example I might offer is the story of a friend of mine, acquaintance really because back then I seldom stayed in one place long enough to establish any friendships. His name was Gary. No last name. It wasn't uncommon to never exchange your last name. Didn't matter. He was tall, maybe six foot four or so, and skinny. Very. The man lived off Ritz crackers and peanut butter and little more. Remarkably, didn't drink or do drugs.

He had been living in a dilapidated warehouse down below Canal Street for nearly three years. It's called Tribeca now and might be full of million dollar lofts but back then it was a warren of streets that were physical proof of the aftermath of the changing times that had swept away functioning businesses' that bolstered the New York City economy, leaving behind the remnants, gaping seven, ten, twelve story eyesores from a bygone era. Manufacturing. Industrial. Textile. Gone, leaving behind so much commercial space to play in if you didn't mind living on the other side of being legal, stealing electricity here, squatting, poaching a still active water source there. The industrial base of the city had been vanquished but it had opened up other opportunities. This was a time right before the artists discovered the area and the land rush was on. Real estate value would, of course, soon skyrocket.

I met him in Little Italy, in an alley, behind a restaurant. He was what they call now dumpster diving. At the time, I was working a short gig at this restaurant, busing tables for little pay but great meals. Landed the job after I saw a sign in the window for busboy. Short hours. Meager paycheck. Few tips. Fantastic Italian food, with gut busting pastry. Worked there all of two weeks, long enough to make a connection that would serve me well for the next few months.

Gary had just climbed out of the dumpster, bag of bread in hand, when I walked out the back of the restaurant to dump the trash. He stood there towering over me, giving me this "dare-stare" as he called it. Used it effectively apparently because he had never been in a fight or even a scuffled before. When in New York there, inevitably, were going to be times when you had to resort to aggression to either get what you wanted or to prevent physical harm coming your way. It was a delicate skill, choosing fight or flight. In his case he just tried to back people down. He was six, four, and had the look of a person who lived on the street. Most people chose not to push their luck.

"Got a problem?" he snarled at me, clinching his right fist that he held down by his side, while the other one had a firm grasp on a Macy's shopping bag where he had tucked away his stash of discarded food.

I laughed and replied, "Don't think so."

"Good," he muttered, turning to go.

"Wait up," I called after him. "I got some day old cannolis and a few boconnottos here, if you want them."

He stopped in his tracks, swinging slowly around to face me again, then asked, "Chocolate filling?"

Gary might not have been a heroin addict but he liked his sugar. I smiled and opened up the garbage bag to retrieve the box of pastry, still untouched. Every day after work I went through this, depositing perfectly good food into the dumpster in the alley, guilty, knowing there were plenty of homeless people walking the streets who were hungry. It was the nature of the restaurant business. There was always leftovers, waste.

"Let me take a look," I announced, looking inside the box. "Looks like two chocolate and one yellow custard gunk. Not my favorite." Gary snorted and marched up next to me, snatching the box out of my hand. He about faced and hurried down the dark alley. "You're welcome," I called to his disappearing shadow.

I would encounter him several more times in the next week. Each time I would hand over the best of the leftovers: a really (really) good lasagne, still warm, some ravioli, no sauce unfortunately, and more sweets. Maybe I wasn't the local food bank but I was still finding a depository for the day's overage at the restaurant. Gary did get around to offering some gratitude, usually in a mumble before he slipped away again, vanishing into the night. It sure seemed that way. Later, after I got to know him better, I would find out that he seldom went out during the day and was adept at sneaking around the city streets almost undetected. Sometimes it was easy because most people saw another homeless man, a bum, and therefore that made him more or less invisible to almost everyone. Other times he just knew how to get around without being noticed, part of the proverbial background.

After I left that temporary job at the Italian place I would run into him again, also in an alley. This time I was cutting through from one street to another, in route to see an acquaintance, a person who promised me I could crash at his small apartment in Chinatown. He lived over a fishmonger's store and it smelled of rotting fish, but I was tired from having slept in Tompkins Park for several nights, afraid to sleep because of the junkies on the prowl after dark. Even a lumpy second hand couch seemed enviable when compared to a hard park bench. I could endure the stench for one night.

As I was passing through, hurrying through the dark alley, I heard a sound to my right. My senses went on red alert. Getting mugged in New York was more a probability than a possibility. I had gone unscathed but almost everyone I met had a story to tell. Lost cash. Watch snatched right off your wrist. Busted lip. Cracked rib. Purse found two blocks away in the garbage can, minus wallet and, of all things, brush. Survival tactics were often discussed, with not going down dark alleys almost at the top of the list.

I froze. Adrenaline peaked immediately. My breath came in short bursts, leaving me practically light headed. Run. Like hell. Don't look back. NYPD might find the body decomposing. Tucked behind a dumpster or in a basement doorway. What was left after the rats got their share.

"I know you," a voice called out from the dark and then I saw him, Gary, appear, illuminated by an overhead light shining down from a second story window.

After almost swallowing my tongue, whole, I said, "You. How's it going?"

"Not as good as when you worked at that Italian restaurant," he stated, before mumbling something to himself under his breath, like he was checking with an answering service in his head, checking his messages. "I miss that."

This was the most he had ever said to me and, somehow, it seemed like it might have been the most he said in a while. I let my heart slow, glad that it hadn't burst out of my chest, then said, "Sorry about that. I quit the job. Even delicious Italian gets old after you've had it so much."

He chuckled a little then announced, "Want to see something?"

This was an open ended question, one that could have all kinds of import, so I was non-committal and replied, "Like what?"

"Come on," he ordered, motioning for me to follow him.

Follow you, I thought, glancing up and down the alley. Do I really want to do that? I asked myself, reasonably enough. I didn't know this guy, not really. He was some dumpster diver, for all I knew about him. Maybe he did that in his spare time, in between knife assaults on the unsuspecting, disemboweling them with some meat cleaver or something. You heard stories. New York was full of the mentally unstable. And Gary certainly fit that physical description: dirty, disheveled, wild stare, and unanchored lifestyle. I was going to die.

"What is it?" I said, not without some trepidation sneaking into my voice box.

"Look," he announced, pointing to a street level window.

There was a soft glow coming through the window, barely penetrating the darkness. I crept closer, mindful of where and what Gary was doing to my left. Still, he was close enough that I could hear him breathing. I bent over and took a peek. Peek was the operative word. It was like a peep show. Remind me to tell you about my stint as a hawker on 42nd Street, enlisted to draw perverts into the gateway for porn, the peep show, only 25 cents and you got to see it all.

"What the hell?" I exclaimed, before Gary hushed me.

"Nice body," he stated.

It took me a moment then I realized we were witnessing a modeling session, the type where a girl needs some extra cash so she models for an artist. It wasn't prurient. It was art, even if she was naked, young and shapely. The artist had her seated on a stool, half facing him. To him, presumably, there was nothing titillating going on. To us, well, we were nothing but your average voyeur. Nakedness. Female form. Long blond hair. I was sure it was the most sexual stimulation at least one of us had in a long time.

"Pretty girl," I mumbled, stepping away from the window, feeling ashamed.

Gary took another look then spat out: "Artists. A pox on them! They are going to ruin it for the rest of us."

I wasn't sure what he was referring to. I wasn't a fan of art, per se, but I didn't harbor any anger for them either. Art, to me, was all about marketing, where a product had to be presented, sold. Creativity was only a small part of the process. I had worked on a catering crew one or two times at fancy gallery openings, lugging in crates of wine, all the while trying to remain invisible under orders from the manager of the gallery, a foppy prick who thought we on the catering crew were a step below rodents. Some of the art I saw for sale came as quite a shock to me. It was mostly paint splattering's, something a "sober monkey" could do in their sleep. I borrowed that phrase from a friend of mine, who I will talk about later. Some of the price tags on the pieces were astounding. That people had enough money to blow on something so nebulous was a revelation.

"Don't know any artists," I offered, trying to remain on his good side. I had seen how the mentally unstable could be, going off in an instant, set off by who knew what. I once saw a woman attack a man on a street corner, as she was shouting about fascists taking over the city. They might have been but she didn't need to punch a passer by in order to get her point across. "They seem to be popping up around here a lot."

"That's it!" he almost shouted, pumping his long arms up and down, on the brink of being agitated. "First that fucking SOHO and now down here too. They are going to drive us all out. With their...their money."

Clearly Gary was having difficulty articulating his diatribe, which, as I would soon find out, was out of character for him. He had a wonderful command of the language, as they like to say, able to expound on almost anything intelligently. That might have come from having gone to Penn, I guess, which was something else we shared in common, both being from Philly. More on that in a moment.

"Urban renewal. That's what they call it," I said with as much authority as I could muster, considering I had heard someone on the subway saying that to a person next to them as they discussed the renaissance of the Big Apple, a subject the newspapers in town never seem to tire of.

"Shit," he uttered, walking away a few feet before turning back around to face me. "Hungry?" he suddenly wanted to know, waiting impatiently for my reply.

"I guess," I answered since I was always hungry it seemed, which came with the territory when you were living a hand to mouth existence. Two days before, short on cash as usual, I had resorted to stealing a pretzel off a push cart up in mid-town, running, fleeing really because unexpectedly the owner of the cart gave chase. Had to run two blocks or more before he gave up. Couldn't leave his cart, his livelihood unattended. Felt bad about it. The cart owners were just eking it out, selling sodas, hot dogs, pretzels, street food in order to get by. I couldn't imagine what Gary had in mind, maybe boosting me up into the nearest dumpster, the one behind some French bistro that throws away lots of overage.

"Follow me, sir," he commanded with a verbal flourish, tacking on some other language at the end that sounded like French, could have been Italian. He led me down the alley, across the street, down another alley, over to the next block and finally stopping in front of what appeared to be a closed deli. New York had literally thousands of delis, of every description: Italian leaning, new American, German, Jewish-German, Jewish, south of the border, even Scandinavian. This one was in a part of town that owed its existence to a proximity to those two hated twin towers apparently. After dark, when all those minions on all those hundred plus floors went home, the neighborhood went to sleep, like somebody had turned off a switch. "Let me check something first."

"Yeah, you do that," I said, now full on skeptical about what he was up to as I watch him peer into the deli front window for a moment. I could hear him muttering to himself and was beginning to think he was going to break into the store, maybe throw a brick through the glass. I would be arrested for breaking into a deli.

"Tis good, my new friend," he said in a falsetto voice that closely approximated some British accent. "Right this way."

We went around to the back of the store, in another dark alley occupied by two vociferous cats that almost seemed to attack him. They scurried out of the dark and rubbed up against his legs, meowing wildly. Feral cats, and cats in general, gave me the willies. I found them creepy, with their attitudes and wily personalities. My mother had a cat when I was a kid and it never liked anyone in the family but her, often times sneaking into our rooms to vandalize our personal property, leaving behind urine calling cards or shredded clothes. My brother and I regularly plotted to off the furry fucker, tired of plucking its omnipresent fur off our jackets and having to clean up after it. No matter how many times my mother changed the litter box we always found deposits in our closets, little bon mots tucked up in shoes and, on more than one occasion, the desk drawer, right on my wallet. Targeted passive/aggression didn't get any more accurate than that.

"We having cat for dinner?" I cracked, drawing a savage stare from him.

"They keep the rodents under control--be wise," he declared, a short phrase I was going to hear often in the coming weeks. Miraculously, he then produced a picnic basket from behind a stack of some milk carton crates. That's right, picnic basket, one of those wicker type that you might see in an old romantic movie. Couple goes to park, she opens the basket and pulls out a full course meal, with wine, guy proposes in between bites of potato salad. Think Doris Day, for those old enough to remember her. "Let's see what we have here."

After he went through the inventory, including some meats I had never even heard of, he suggested we move on to more suitable surroundings. I was intrigued now. Closed deli. Stocked picnic basket. With wine. It didn't make sense; of course I first thought that just maybe old Gary was having a thing with the proprietor's wife, hence the food source. Then I looked at Gary, dirty, disheveled Gary and said that can't be possible. No way. New York was jammed with odd romance stories, I had myself been a participant in that, but what woman would bed down with him? Blind? Some disease took her sense of smell. He had pictures of her violating a door knob. I couldn't imagine.

"What gives?" I finally asked after we had made our way over near that old church, the name escapes me, the one that was still standing after those fucking towers came down. The very same church that everyone thought represented a miracle for not being destroyed, still standing, God's little gesture, a token of his guilt for having killed so many people. Sorry about those tall buildings collapsing. Here, I left this little church intact. Sure. That happened.

Gary, and we were now calling each other by our first names, best buds, bonding, breaking bread together (a dried baguette, to be precise), snarfing salami and other meats I couldn't identify, sat down on a bench next to the church, placing the picnic basket next to him. He looked up at me and said, "I liked to say it was karma but...it wasn't."

No further explanation seemed to be coming because he had already started to dig into the supplies, holding up a link here, a container of sauces there, examining, like he was some food critic from the Times. It was mostly abandoned down there back then, with most of the people having returned to their homes across the river in Jersey or the other way across the East River. Nothing went on there after dark at that time. It was before gentrification and development, where it was okay to live down by the financial district.

In between mouthfuls he suddenly launched into his personal bio, not that I cared, handing the entire bottle of French wine over. I was hungry. Food was on offer. I figured I wasn't going to be seeing him anytime soon after this. It was one of the stranger picnics I imagined I was ever going to have. Some dried, cured meat. Cheese. Crackers. Pate, kind of gross but too expensive to pass up. Sweet meats. Cookies. It didn't take long before I was stuffed, a rare occurrence.

"Used to live in Heliopolis," Gary declared out of the blue, smearing some more pate on a cracker and taking a bite.

Heliopolis, I was thinking, wondering if he was Greek or something, but saying, "Really."

"My dad was in the Air Force," he added by way of explanation, although it only made his comment more confusing. "Pilot. We didn't get along all that much. Hated the desert."

I was quickly learning that Gary was a fan of being terse. To the extreme sometimes. Why use a few extra words when the minimum will do. Did he hate the desert or did his dad? What desert? That was relevant why?

"That sucks," I offered, even though I really didn't give a shit, as I tore into a packet of cookies, with chocolate icing.

"Left Arizona behind, hitched to Philadelphia," he informed me in a monotone voice that almost seemed to echo up and down the empty street.

"Wait, Philly," I exclaimed, surprised.

"Yeah, I went to college there," Gary explained, sniffing at a jar of pickles he had just opened.

"You did," I said, wondering if he was putting me on.

"Never saw my family again. Left and didn't look back. Went to school. Got married. New life," he stated in a staccato tone.

So Heliopolis was, presumably Phoenix, I surmised, even though my knowledge of ancient Greek was non-existent. Something to do with the sun. He was trying to impress me, really. That was equivalent to telling a plumber you owned a pipe wrench. There was no point. I was an eighteen year old, soon to be nineteen nobody. I lived off my wits, street smarts honed by continual scrapes with the law and society's norms. Telling me you went to college didn't register all that much; and personal history was a non starter. People like us out there didn't much care where you came from and what caused your descent. Every one of us had a story, most with multi-layered sadness. Boo-hoo. Get over it.

Then again, Gary's personal bio was stocked with pathos, if I'm being high brow about it. Dead wife, fetus too. Estranged family. A continuing flirtation with madness. He was just rounding the age of thirty, a widower of some five years. She died in a home robbery, not six months into her pregnancy. Bludgeoned. Head trauma. Blood on the kitchen floor. Front door left open. He had returned home from work to find his wife dying a slow death. 911. Ambulance ride. Screaming sirens. His wife succumbed to her injury later on that night, just before midnight.

The perpetrator was never caught. There had been incessant questioning in the beginning from the Philadelphia Police Department. The husband was always a suspect. Gary had no one to lean on, no friends, just acquaintances from work. He had been a doctoral candidate at Penn, after having attended Swathmore College for undergraduate studies. He was on track to become a professor somewhere out there in the academic world. His field of study was social anthropology. He had done some undergraduate work in New York City in fact, studying changing social structures with urban renewal. Something like that. He had told me, twice, but I was basically an ignoramus back then and couldn't understand what he was even talking about most of the time. I mean this was a guy who said things in everyday conversation like: speciation, simulacra dynamism, all matter has gravity, complexity undiagnosed, etc. How this guy ever had a wife I'll never know.

So he was scarred, having come home to find his wife half dead on the kitchen floor in a pool of her own blood. Brutal. It took him another six months before he totally lost it. Walked away from doing his dissertation and migrated up to New York, back to the streets he knew from doing some of his research. Left, according to him, without telling his advisor at Penn. Poof, gone. All his belongings, furniture, unpaid bills, connections, went by the wayside. Tossed them over the side of a rapidly sinking ship.

That was almost five years ago at that point, when we were sitting down to our picnic dinner. His smarts had secured for him the contents of the picnic basket, compliments of the owner of the deli, who had a dense daughter who needed tutoring. Gary tutored. Gary got paid in food. It was classical bartering, a detail that pleased Gary, especially since the guy didn't have a cent to his name and hadn't , apparently, for going on four years. He lived off the land--streets, trading his savvy for what he needed, supplementing that with side trips to the dumpsters in a one or two mile square area, foreshadowing the freegan movement by a good decade or more.

I don't know. There were people I met in my travels in the underbelly of the New York economy, oddballs, mostly harmless but strange. Gary was in a league all his own. I found myself liking the guy, which I couldn't say for a lot of other fellow travelers in the underground economy I met. First of all, he was honest, scrupulously so, like it was a creed of his to not trespass certain boundaries. Others like me out there, not so much. We were quick to seek advantage. It was about our own survival foremost. We lived without honor because it was just too damn inefficient to do otherwise, game theory personified. It was a luxury we couldn't afford. Like most things, we had to budget our responses to whatever we encountered. Had to. Otherwise we would have been swallowed whole by the city.

For the next almost two years I would go on to spend a lot of time with Gary, my mentor, until which time I was sent to Sing Sing. He never knew of my trip, literally, up the river, which is where the expression comes from. I'm sure he eventually found out about my other life, the criminal one. Eventually I knew he had to see the headlines on a newspaper somewhere in his travels around his little domain in south Manhattan. Must have. Even though I know he religiously avoided reading any media sources because he just wanted to live in his own construct, a place where he erected the barriers and maintained the status quo, like some latter day potentate. Worked for him, leaving him a buffer in order to not ever think about what went down in Philly that night. I couldn't blame him for that, for not wanting to relive a personal tragedy.

Gary had it all wired, as they like to say. He lived in a watchtower on top of an abandoned warehouse down near the financial district. It had been vacant for years, left to rot after some textile works went belly up, another victim of cheaper labor elsewhere in the world, I guess. The provenance of these former thriving businesses was a mystery. The buildings, aging and tired, were relics of a time passed, an epoch New York City transitioned through relatively quickly, in route to what it is today: the world's metropolis. As you walked those streets back then, though, it was almost as if some apocalyptic event had struck the city, leaving behind sudden devastation, even though the decline had probably happened in some slow motion and agonizing manner. Labor force let go. Bankruptcy knocking at the door. Banks left holding the note. Who knew? I saw it every day in my travels around the city and it always seemed mysterious, mind boggling, a cataclysm without explanation. Rich and poor, a juxtaposition made by God to prove a point. I stole that sentiment from Gary, a nugget from one of his more expansive moments.

His grief had led him to live as he was living. No less than three times he had "taken a walk," as he liked to put it, which was his euphemism for attempting suicide. George Washington Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge, and the Verranzano, they were the three bridges where he had made the trek in order to jump. End it. Admittedly the last one on the list was half baked because it was difficult to even get to the bridge from his roost in the city. Too many trains, a bus, the ferry, the logistics were daunting for him, requiring money that he didn't have. He had gotten as far as Staten Island, right past the ferry depot there before giving up. The other two jump off points were more realistic and he had gotten to the railings, perched, as he stared down into the water below. Couldn't do it. He had no explanation for why he couldn't take that final step, except to say that he wanted to live longer to punish himself for not being able to prevent his wife's death. Prevent your wife's death? You were at work. What could you have done? As with everything else, his mind worked in a circuitous manner, bouncing off cerebral bumpers like a pin ball machine before alighting on what he wanted to do.

His place on top of one of those buildings was, more or less, sanctioned by the owner, who lived in New Jersey, and prayed daily for a real estate turn around. It would come and he would reap millions, but in the mean time Gary was going to reside on top, riding that scary, rickety freight elevator to the twelfth floor, living alone atop the world, in a manner of speaking. I, personally, loved his roost. The electricity was unreliable at times and thunder storms could seem like Biblical events, but he was ruler of his own domain.

Watchman quarters or tank houses on top of buildings dated way back to the time when fires were prevalent and somebody had to be on sight to stand guard. The municipal code of New York City requires that every building over six stories have a water tank to supply a steady supply of water through gravity and for fire prevention purposes. A tank house was his domain, squatting, although he had actually met the owner of the building once, a brief encounter that was "both surreal and illuminating," so he told me. The owner, flanked by several of his flunkies, had run into Gary as he was exiting the building, sneaking out a side door so as to not draw any attention. As it so happens, the owner, a short guy, late thirties, the recipient of real estate hand me downs from his recently deceased father, was surprised to see someone coming out of one of his properties, although he shouldn't have been since he didn't provide any security to monitor the site.

"What the fuck are you doing in my building?" the owner screeched, moving to block Gary's path. "You squattin' here or what?"

Gary, as he tells it, eyed the man up and down, looking down at him from his height and replied: "The service is bad but I like the neighborhood."

It was a weak joke but the owner laughed, turning to one of his assistants and asking, "How much we charging for a night's stay?" The flunky sputtered, not knowing whether or not his boss was serious or not. "Never mind," the owner spat out, making a face. "So, the rats haven't eaten you alive yet?"

Gary felt around both arms then said, "Still got all my limbs."

"On drugs?" the owner wanted to know.

"Nope," he answered succinctly.

The owner stared at Gary for a moment, then declared: "If you accidentally burn it down, don't die in the process." With that, the man was gone, continuing on, doing his brief walk around for the month. The owner, flunkies in tow, disappeared around a corner and was on his way to the next property, hoping that in the event of any damage to this address his insurance would pay up.

Gary waved good-bye and had been there ever since, living in his little principality, his own royalty with no subjects. It suited him fine. Even though he was removed from the clamoring civilization so near yet so far away, he relished the quiet, the isolation. Except for an occasional run in with some drug addicts he was secluded, living alone, like some religious recluse intent on discovering the meaning of life.

I was privileged enough to be invited to his landing up among the clouds. The tank house was only a one room structure, with, unbelievably, a working bathroom, complete with one of those claw footed tubs you always see in old movies, the ones where you can luxuriously lounge in without crimping you back. It had been in some disrepair but after scrounging around in the building he had found plenty of supplies to do repairs. Except for where Gary had replaced some of the broken windows on the east side of the small house with ply wood, the home was inviting, cozy.

Being where it was, on top of a tall building, it was all about location. At night, due to the surrounding buildings being mostly vacant, it was a light void of sorts, darker than what you usually saw around Manhattan, producing a view of the stars on some nights. It was eerie, I won't kid you there, with the atmosphere of a slasher film sometimes. You were alone. Up there. With a large, giant empty building yawning with menace below your feet, floor after floor of dark corners and long hallways, where stray noises picked up menacing acoustics as they traveled up the air shafts and duct vents. I would have had to sleep with one eye open or at least a weapon of some sort, and I have slept in some pretty dicey environments.

The tank house had been already furnished with a small single bed, a table, with three chairs, a chester drawers, and a small roll top desk, all wood of course since they probably dated from the 1930's. It was a step back in time, back to an era when you worked paying homage to the inalienable credo that you, as an individual, weren't worth spit, just another appendage to the corporate tyranny that had just landed the nation in a financial shit storm. This was culled from Gary's words because I was blissfully unaware of history's machinations, just content to fight my own battles absent any sloganeering or philosophical justifications.

Our conversations mostly centered around the next source of a meal or him haranguing me on societal "lynchpins," a word he liked to throw around a lot when he got in a mood. Like I said before, he didn't speak all that much but when he did there tended to be a flood of ideas spilling out, almost as if he had stored them all up just to heap on me or any other unsuspecting sucker. Mostly me. Gary tended not to talk to many people. I was one of the lucky ones. I liked to think it was because of our Philly connection but that didn't ring true because his link to the City of Brotherly Love and mine were from different planets. His was strictly attached to academia and mine was from the streets up, directly linked to the working class sensitivities. We all thought those people, the ones who attended the colleges around the city, were fuckheads and shouldn't get off the Main Line. They didn't speak like us. They had money in their pocket. They were also the people with a voice, able to shape and mold things, the very same things that usually kicked us in the ass.

I didn't see him that way though. He was damaged goods, dinged by circumstances in life. Before his wife died he may have turned out to be one of them but I really don't think so. His pedigree was shaky anyway, being a military brat and all. Then again, once he attained all those fancy degrees he might have drifted upwards, finally alighting on that upper echelon. It might have been inevitable.

Now, at that time, he was the very epitome of a lost soul. Stuck on a rooftop. Looking out at the deteriorating cityscape. Waiting for the next electrical storm to wreak havoc, maybe end it for him. One lightning bolt away from ending his pain. He talked of this. About how the storms up there could be violent, like God himself was stepping in to tip the scales against him. YOU HAVE SURVIVOR'S GUILT! I wanted to shout at him but never did. No need to pile on. He had worked his omnipresent guilt into a suit of armor. It protected him. I know that sounds counterintuitive but I think it was true.

I don't believe a day goes by in my life that I don't think about Gary, that tall, lanky weirdo, with the long, scraggly hair and those blue eyes scanning his surroundings continually, as if he were on patrol and the enemy was hiding in the weeds, ready to pounce. Was he paranoid? Yes. Did he need to be institutionalized? I don't know. He wasn't harming anyone. In fact, he was doing a civic duty keeping an eye on a building that was undoubtedly a fire hazard. New York's history was full of fires burning down parts of the city. All cities were in danger of a stray spark doing damage. Lives could be lost. Property, especially the ones with historical importance, gone, up in smoke. Leave him be, I would tell myself after each time we met up, out for another excursion to find the holy grail of food for our perpetually gnawing stomachs.

In some ways Gary and I were a throwback to another historical era, a time when the very real chance of famine existed. We lived within a hunger cycle that most Americans don't experience. Not that there wasn't calorie intake to be had out there on those streets. Garbage alone could feasibly sustain you. It is just that we pared down our existence to function within our own definition of acceptance. That was what Gary would have said, applying his education to it, spiking it with anthropological nonsense jargon in order to make it more palatable to his level of intelligence, which was superfluous for me since I didn't need justification for being one step above a street urchin.

Our lifestyle was ironic in some ways. Food security, that concept anyway, was complicated in New York. In fact, crops grew out there in spots. I kid you not. Back then, as you went around the lower East Side, you invariably would come across open lots wedged in between buildings where gardens had been planted. It was a movement striving to take advantage of open space, tiny lots where a building had been torn down after being condemned and the rightful owner didn't have the vision or the wherewithal to rebuild. Sometimes the legal ownership of the property was in question or at best being contested and locked up in court in some mortal combat over rights. Into that vacuum entered some enterprising and, yes, optimistic dreamers.

Nowadays you hear about locavores and all but this was taking that quixotic concept to the extreme. These people were determined. They were growing crops in Manhattan, tended by ex-cons, reformed drug addicts, and latter day hippies. I liked that and so did, predictably, Gary. He would often volunteer his labor in order to bring in the next crop. It made you smile to think that rank urbanization could be turned back just a little. Not that I helped out any. I wasn't idealistic and really didn't like digging in the dirt to bring in some carrots, tomatoes or lettuce.

I lived by my wits and reasonably good looks, often times surfing new friend's couches or sleeping in out of the way places when need be. There were times I even stayed at Gary's place, trying to sleep in a hammock he had rigged up underneath the water tank. Bad for the back, although I will say it was cool sleeping out on the roof in the city, an almost other worldly experience. In good weather, that is. As can be expected, winter was the enemy. People froze to death out there on those streets or huddled away in abandoned buildings, shivering until they expired and were given some kind of peace.

There was the woman I once saw lying in an alley, face up, dead. She looked to be in her fifties, but could have been younger because living out there on the streets aged you rapidly. Disturbingly, there was no peaceful expression on her wrinkled face, just horror, almost as if she knew right before she kicked it that it was over. The end. She realized she was going to leave this earth on her back in an alleyway, probably over run by rats or insects. It was in a part of Manhattan that was deserted most times, left to wither, rust, decay and crumble to the ground. She probably thought no one would discover her body until it was too late. It too would be reclaimed by the tentacles of hostile natural forces. My good deed for the day. I found her. Called 911 on a pay phone nearby, directing them to her final resting place. One more Jane Doe to be buried in a pauper's grave.

At the end of the alley there was a shopping cart where she kept all her earthly belongings, a pile of scavenged junk, from old radios to moth eaten winter coats to stacks of wrinkled paperback books with the covers torn off. It was all the possessions she owned. Her life had been reduced to pushing around a cart piled high with discarded rubbish, leaving behind a trail of stench wafting along. I had seen it too many times to count. There was a legion of them out there plying the city streets, babbling to themselves, accosting pedestrians, begging, stealing, proving to the other side of society that they could exist in twilight, a place where sunlight never penetrated. Every day I was out there on that street I feared that I too would join them. My youth would soon be swallowed up, as I joined the brigade of the separated, divided from the normal, left to fend for myself in a opera without sound. I waited over twenty minutes, half an hour, until the police arrived and two disinterested cops got out of their patrol car to investigate. Predictably, they made snide comments about the corpse and reluctantly did their duty, apathetic about another wasted soul left to rot on the pavement.

I would say I knew sadness back then. It affected me to see how I was interacting with my surroundings and the cast of characters. Not even an indomitable spirit can take a hit all the time and not be rocked back on their heels sometimes. I was. Continually. Moving around the city in my world you saw people standing in lines on select days: free clinic Monday for the gays (pre-HIV) getting checked for communicable diseases after a weekend of unprotected sex, middle of the week Wednesday for methadone dispensing, so the junkies could ease off smack, or food day Friday for the hungry, a care package of eats to lend a hand in the nutritional deficit they were all facing.

On to the flop houses, where I bunked when I had a little extra cash, populated by destitute victims of their own desires and weakness, along with a Viet Nam Vet or two on disability, home from the war to face the rest of his life nicked, bruised, and defeated. Then there were the bums in the Bowery fighting, so far out of the mainstream that their fisticuffs didn't even attract a crowd. No one cared if two alcoholics decided to beat each other's brains out. Didn't register. Non-entities. Discarded needles in doorways, still dripping blood. Vomit from H overload caked on steps. Piss stains on brick walls from too much beer. It could be a visual overload and that didn't include the smell.

The Punk scene captured it perfectly, more or less. The music was raw, untrained, and visceral. Aggressive lyrics punctured the fabric of functioning society, but the most incisive characteristic was that the message had no message, except for maybe nihilism was its own reward. The was no ray of light. Nothing. Bleakness had its own beauty, even if it was impossible to enjoy or celebrate adequately. Another day, the next, the one after that, they were all doomed to be replicas, more of the same and God help you. Besides, god, pick one, wasn't of much use anyway. He had been sectioned into little pieces, watered down, held captive by competing interests, almost beat into submission by needy parishioners bent on extracting every thing from spiritual comfort to financial gain.

I had been to CBGB's before when my entertainment budget allowed it. Several times. Standing in the back as talentless bands foisted their idea of music on us, loud, incoherent, practically evil on some base level. The club was founded to offer a relatively wide variety of music genres but descended into the Punk bastion that it became, featuring bands where their names spelled it out for you right upfront: The Dead Boys, Misfits, and The Cramps. I, generally, didn't care for them all that much. Punks were born out of disillusionment; or that is what is popularly thought, the conventional wisdom relying on hazy memories and easy deception. I like to think it originated out of general apathy and a coterie of people disappointed by their general lack of talent. Can't read music or even play three chords on a guitar, call yourself a punk rocker, scream a lot, and snarl. It was a scene to endure. A hostile environment usually prevailed at their gigs, where people liked to demonstrate their frustration at the system out there that was controlling their lives by proving they could be atavistic, using short term violence as a statement. It wasn't comprehensible, really, just effective in getting you dinged up with a bloody nose or chipped tooth. That is why I stayed with my back to the wall, a defensive posture that kept me from an uninvited trip to Bellevue.

At times, you felt like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse might ride down 2nd Avenue, the multi-hued color of their horses blinding bystanders as they clip-clopped along. Gary liked to speak of them often, referencing the end of the New Testament generously, as if it were a blueprint for where we were all heading. It was his joke on us. He didn't believe any of it but found it highly entertaining. What he liked about Revelations was the finality aspect, where man was going to face it and God was going to deliver it. Conquest. War. Famine. Death. Neatly parceled, the Bible spelled out what to expect. Over time, such as it happened, the words in that book of the New Testament lost traction only because what the earth experienced was, in so many ways, much worse. Can you say Holocaust, among other things?

I would drift down to his building on occasion, sometimes because I had no other place to crash and other times just to see what he was up to. We had become friends in the way people do who exist on the periphery, outside the boundaries. Although our respective stance in society might have been slightly different, (I did work now and again), we still were outcasts in the narrowest sense of the word. There was nothing immediately redeemable about our position in the community. We didn't contribute in any concrete economic way, I guess. Gary certainly didn't, unless you count his more or less elastic bartering technique. Give a little, get some back sort of thing.

At least we weren't criminals, my petty transgressions not withstanding. He might have been a squatter, trespassing, but the owner did know about his presence on the property. Technically, I guess, he could have been arrested. I know I could have been on numerous occasions as I skirted the strict application of current law. Filching something here. Public drunkenness. Even the unforgivable crime of jaywalking. "Likeable reprobates," as Gary liked to say.

On top of that building, away from the city's clutches, I was able to decompress a little, leave the continuing struggle behind for a while. It helped. Some. Of course another day brought the same old problems but it was good to forget what was in store for me when I stepped foot out there again. New York was a city teetering, facing bankruptcy, a case study in debilitating bureaucratic lunacy, with a mayor way over his head. Everything did seem to be crumbling around you, with strikes going on and the federal government seemingly unconcerned about the fate of the country's most vibrant city. I imagined at the time that most Americans only sneered at New York's troubles, believing that the city got what it deserved for being such a wanton mess of excess. It was, from run away debt to decaying morals to a massively destructive case of hubris. Jazz. The Beats. Frank. Cosa Nostra. Disco, god save us. Skyscrapers. The Yankees. Wall Street. Ellis Island. Superman. Lady Liberty. Ticker tape parades. Bagels. It's identity was rapped up in any number of identifiers.

Up there, on the roof top, the two of us would sit and watch the skyline, day and night. Below, it would go on without us, like it did, with a persistent percussion. Treble. Bass. Thrumming. Rarely adagio. It was Gary's retreat that I took advantage of. He tolerated me for the most part. I wasn't his peer, not sharing in his level of education or even, I suppose, IQ; but we made it work simply because I knew when to listen when need be. It was a talent I had developed on the street, a vital skill for any person looking for what was going to be advantageous. With Gary though I just wanted to take a breather, catch my breath, enjoy the scenery.

"Never usurp God's power," he would say to me, usually with a wink, before he lapsed back into his usual reticence, a defense mechanism of sorts that kept him from having to breech the threshold of any escalating conversation. Not that we didn't talk because we did. Often, enough that he would lay on me his whole take on religion, love, the concept, even sports on occasion as he wasn't adverse to using the usual banal metaphor centering on athletics to make a point.

"Thought you didn't believe in God," I would counter, once in a while just wanting to let him know I was paying attention.

Gary stared at me for a moment, then took a drink of his just brewed tea, his favorite beverage, having given up on liquor of any sort a few years before, before continuing: "Creation myths fall into two categories, you know." As with many of his conversations, they lacked being germane; he seemed to have made the art of being pertinent obsolete. To my confused look, he added, "Our ancestors either fell from the sky or climbed out of the primordial slime." What, who cares? I was thinking. "It's like comparing time as a continuum or as...as sequential chain links. Something like that."

"Yeah, must be something like that," I mused, taking another slug of my Rheingold beer that I had brought along with me, turning back to stare out at the Hudson River you could just see through the buildings glistening in the moon light.

Gary lapsed back into silence again. I peered over the edge of the building, looking down at the street below, watching two winos make there way down the empty street, walking right down the middle. Their voices rose up on the currents then rapidly faded away. They were sharing a bottle, passing it back and forth, back and forth, while they staggered along, in route to who knew where. They probably didn't. When the bottle was finished, empty, they would change course, off in search of another liquid diversion.

At that particular time I was feeling down. You never really wanted to stop for a moment and take stock of yourself. Not now. Not next week. Not at all. Introspection was deadly. It made you face the evil juggernaut of regret. That was never a good thing. What could have been was an ideal that brought crushing pain, a mental whiplash. It was always better to be in perpetual motion, with no time to pause and think. Many people around the city were locked into that matrix and didn't even realize it or didn't want to.

Currently, at that time, I had been doing some scut work for a weasel who had several shops on 42nd Street. This wasn't the 42nd Street from the Warner Brothers 1933 film musical, far from it. The only singing and dancing was coming from the throaty arias the porn stars were putting up in the peep shows up and down the street. The street, and Times Square as a whole, had sunk into seediness, taken over by porn merchants giving the public, ostensibly, what they wanted: smut. Live sex acts. Brief porno films for a quarter. Hand jobs in the theater. For the connoisseur of fine depravity it was a gold mine, as it was for the owners too. Cheap pornography took off, leaving any pretense of sophisticated erotica to history.

I worked there. On the street. Handing out flyers to goggled eyed tourists and natives alike, mostly men of course. Come see. You won't be disappointed. Hell yeah, it's only a quarter, fifty cents if you want to see Lulu pleasure herself. Right there, on the other side of the glass, not inches away if you pay extra. We got "loops" too. Endless. Over and over. Just keep putting in those coins. Mags. Toys. Every sort of perversion you could ask for. Dog on girl. Girl on girl. Threesomes. Foursomes. Insertions. All holes filled. Splooge shots. Black on white. Asian. Chicks with dicks. I was a one man advertisement, hawking my boss' business relentlessly. It paid little and didn't improve my karma all that much, as it stripped away my soul bit by bit, flyer by flyer.

Military men on leave. Husbands bored with their fat wives. Cabbies on break. Businessmen slumming for the evening, hoping they wouldn't be seen going into a store front that had flashing lights and promises of ejaculatory ecstasy. Sometimes couples on vacation in New York, letting the moment get the better of them and their normal judgement. At least I didn't have to clean up the booths at the end of the shift, which was left to illegal's who spoke no English and wondered where and when the American dream got started. Mop. Bucket. Bleach, lots of bleach. Sterilize it and do it all over again the next day.

As can be imagined, the job had a healthy turn over rate. Handing out pieces of paper with block letters screaming out copulatory acts, with photos, wasn't something you wanted to put on your resume. Fringe benefits included invites from some of the participants in the live peep shows, usually women long on unwanted possibilities and short on unknown probabilities, which was how Gary might look at it, a societal snare just waiting to trap you. I, except for that one occasion in the early hours back in an empty booth, as a particularly comely female employee, the one absent ugly tracks on her arms and hastily applied tattoos, showed off her dexterity, with both hands. Suffice it to say that most of the girls who toiled in those grimy booths had a hallowed out, I'm damned for all time look, proof that life was about gloomy calculations. Anyway, as can be imagined, I was paid in cash and very little.

Life went on for me. I lived in a twilight world of small cash infusions, infrequent meals, and constant wandering. Manhattan was my universe, as I seldom went to any of the other boroughs, not for long anyway, long enough for the train to make its way back to the only part of New York City that mattered to me. Those people who lived, worked, and eventually died in the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, also that island out over there, weren't really New Yorkers, not true ones. I jest. My attachment to Manhattan was tenuous at best, fraught with separation at any given moment. There was seldom more than pocket change on my person, forwarding my presence to below the underclass status.

Autonomy was mine, though. Free to do anything I wanted to do, which usually meant surviving. Slather on as much of a romantic veneer as you want but it was still a volatile situation. Being a member of a subset of the poor brought problems, some urgent, others not so much. My health, being young, wasn't paramount. I didn't suffer from any degenerative diseases, unless you include an uncanny ability to be obtuse enough to realize that I was heading down a one way street to nowhere. No alcoholism. No addiction to narcotics. Mental health, holding. I was one of the lucky ones.

Gary, in exile on that rooftop, might have been teetering. He was, in some classic sense, nuts. He had lost a pregnant wife to a violent demise, scarring him forever. "There has to be a bridge between intuition and logic," he told me once in an almost beseeching tone of voice, as if my understanding his point was critical to my well being, his as well. It all, most times, harkened back to something he called the sociological complexity theorem, which seemed to plague his thoughts. Of course, at that time, fresh out of High School, I was totally ignorant of almost everything. Decades in prison, reading at will, would finally bring me within shouting distance of what he was talking about. "Don't forget religion," he tacked on, like a verbal period.

"Yeah, don't want to forget about that," I said, humoring him even though most of what I offered didn't seem to register at all, like I was there to serve as a silent sounding board. His idea, concept, of religion could be summed up in one statement: any religion that can explain creation simply, isn't complicated enough to believe in, while any religion complicated enough to explain creation isn't simple enough to understand. He would tell me that religions were all about mental diffraction and trying to describe the origins of our universe was foolishness because maybe there wasn't a point zero to begin with, just infinity. I guess he didn't know he was talking to a guy who was baffled about why algebraic equations had letters included with numbers.

Truly, even if I wasn't there Gary probably talked to himself or maybe the water tank that loomed over his little cottage perched on top of the building. He did mumble a lot, most times not expecting a reply of any sort. I can only remember snatches of our conversations and, as can be expected, have forgotten much of what he said over the years. Then again, I do remember some things with unusual clarity, which might be attributable to having been in prison almost all of my life, a time span that makes for concentrated thinking as you sit staring at the walls around you.

For instance, I do recall, with some reliability, that Gary never seemed to grasp (up there in his refuge of what might be thought of as reparative isolation) any sense of improvement. He wanted a sanctuary but only established a form of limbo, where guilt festered, growing more and more entrenched as time slowly passed. Yeah, I felt sorry for him. It was a luxury I had because, just passing out my teens, I had or could afford to believe that my life was in front of me. It wasn't; but I didn't know that at the time.

This was a time period in my personal history where the estrangement from my family deepened--hardened--leaving me on my own. In a year's time I had only returned to Philly once or twice for short visits, not that my family seemed to care. My siblings didn't have the time or inclination. Their brother might have been a short distance away but it might as well have been light years. I was sure that back home they, my family, seldom thought of what I was doing in New York. My father and mother thought their parental duty halted when their off-spring reached legal age. Their part of the social contract had been fulfilled. Another citizen has been hatched. Fly away fledgling.

Not that I wallowed in self-pity because I certainly didn't. I had set out for new frontiers, another route. Gary knew of my family history. He wasn't judgmental in any way, choosing to stay away from concerted mentoring. Although he was older he didn't see, in himself, a reason to offer advice. I didn't want any. My teenage brain wasn't really wired to accept any. Building blocks had to be sidestepped, climbed over, stacked, whatever. What I wanted from Gary, I guess, was a physical location to come to, a place where I could escape from the ongoing circus. He happened to be the caretaker. However, I will say that I liked him and his weirdness as much as I liked his residence. Living on the streets tended to make you calibrate your callousness, shaping your evaluations, leaving emotional factors to wither.

I still had some good times up there. Listening to Gary when he fell in and out of pensive moods, telling me about all sorts of subjects, particularly religion, his own whipping boy. God had, after all, taken his wife and child in one fell swoop. Gone. "People of religion have a preoccupation with metamorphically seeing the world around them," he would say to me, shaking his head yes, as if I might object to whatever he posited. I didn't. I was the perfect audience. "If Jesus could pull it off, so could they. I am going to quote the Bible and then I'm going to tell a tale, see if you can tell the difference," he'd say, giggling to himself, as if he were the only one who got the joke. Sadly, maybe religion, any religion, might have provided him with solace in his all encompassing grief, but he wouldn't embrace what he found to be lunacy.

He had once defaced the facade of a church in the Village, acting out, wanting to let the world know that he didn't approve of any organization that profited from offering spiritual sustenance to "deluded losers." Never got caught, fortunately. Remarkably, he had managed to stay out of jail all those years even though he was a trespassing vagrant with a penchant for pushing the boundaries of the law. Many times I wondered why he hadn't thrown himself off the ledge, ten floors up. Splat. End of despair. We never discussed that option simply because, for me, it was ludicrous so I couldn't even imagine. With him, I wasn't certain. There were no religious prohibitions but I didn't know how, philosophically, he felt. Cowardice? Perfect symmetry. Western. Eastern. Who knew?

There was times, I will admit, that I arrived at the building and gave more than a cursory glance towards the pavement in front, fearing that I might see a broken and crushed body prostrate on the ground. If I had come across that little piece of macabre theater I probably would have turned around and fled, not looking back. As mentioned before, I had seen death on the street but this would have been on a more personal level. I would have had to look into the shattered face of someone I knew. There, on that dirty street, I would have to see that final grimace and know that time does have an ending, that existence is prescribed by events whether of your own accord or not. Breathing, seeing, catching a scent drifting in the air, were only temporary.

"Go to college," Gary said to me one day as we were crossing the street, dodging a speeding cab.

"Yeah, right," I replied, making a face at him.

He was quiet for a moment, before we turned down an alley, in search of a box of books he had found by the curb and stashed behind a dumpster for safe keeping until he could retrieve them. Moving a few plastic bags full of trash, he pulled out the cardboard box and rifled through the contents, tossing some self-help books over his shoulder as he went, sending them spinning into the open dumpster where they thumped against the bottom. He grunted a few times, pausing several times to open a book cover or two. Finally he had a small stack tucked under his right arm and was smiling, something he usually did when he had scored on something he thought would be helpful to his living arrangement: slightly broken lamp, toaster oven, space heater, water bottle, pair of binoculars with a scratch on one of the lenses, etc.

"Open admission," he announced, kicking the empty cardboard box back behind the dumpster.

"What?"

"So you aren't much of a scholar but they now have open admission at the city schools," he explained, readjusting the books under his arm. "One day you might become a lawyer...doctor...anything."

He wasn't laughing so I figured he was serious and I said, "Costs money. You do realize that."

He waved his hand in the air and stated: "There's money to be had."

This sounded cryptic and unlike him, but I was now intrigued. I followed him out of the alley, in route back to his place, and finally I offered: "I could actually go to college. Me? How would that work?"

Thus it all started, as they might say in a really bad novel. My path, unbeknownst to me at the time, had been set. I was going to be a college student. The scholarly part was debatable. I know it seems incredible for someone to read this now, particularly if they are of college age or are parents footing the bill for a college education. Back then, in the early to mid-Seventies, it was possible to go to college and not rack up mountains of debt; and you could get paid for it. Nothing short of miraculous. TAP. BEOG. On campus employment. Weird, little known scholarships. There was a smorgasbord of options out there if you took the time to cultivate them. On top of that the CUNY system was cheap to attend. The credit hours were ridiculously inexpensive.

As can be expected, I was no scholar. In fact, I hadn't even taken the SAT's. Didn't bother. High School had been negotiated with the intent of doing as little as possible before exiting. I barely survived the cut. Now, so it seemed, if Gary was correct, I could maneuver my way into some tiny mound of largesse if I played my cards right. Apply here. There. Sign my name. Show up for some interviews perhaps. Look earnest. Lie, of course. I would and could be on the academic dole.

It would take a little organization, and Gary. He was the type. The man had organized all of his second hand books in a neo-Dewey decimal system. His boxes of tea bags were arranged according to whether or not they were herbal or not. Besides, I would need an address if I was to pose as an upstanding student to be. I had to be a person of record or on record. Believe it or not the postal service still delivered to the building, evidenced by the stacks of unanswered letters accumulating in the lobby mail box. It would serve my purpose: residency. I had been a bona fide New Yorker for the requisite six months but there was little to no paper work to prove that. The only spot in the city that remotely approached being a place of residence was a locker in Penn Station that I used occasionally when I had to stash some of my clothes because I didn't feel like carrying them around with me all day. A vagabond's life was, by definition, absent of roots.

Gary helped me through the what turned out to be painstaking process. I wasn't attuned to filling out paper work. Got bored easily. Didn't have the aptitude for accuracy. Had sloppy handwriting. Clerical endeavors were a disaster. He stepped in. Wrote them for me, including an essay I needed to land some funds from an organization that gave grants to prospective students in the field of police work. I know what you are thinking. Did he say police work? It was actually criminology to be precise. His choice, not mine. After looking over some of the college catalogues in the library, while patrons stared at us, I couldn't decide. All of the courses seemed like a foreign language and there were some of those too, like Sanskrit, which I had never even heard of and Hebrew, which Gary told me they spoke in Israel. It was hopeless.

Finally, he picked some college called John Jay. It sounded like a school for homos or something, a place where they might learn how to dance or cook, maybe design clothes. Gary assured me it wasn't but was for studying criminal justice. I knew it had the word justice in it but it still sounded kind of vague to me. Like he was from the college, he sold me on it, telling me they were a liberal arts college with an emphasis on the criminal justice end of things. Not that I gave a shit. I was going to siphon off some money. It was a long con, admittedly not something I usually did but a change of pace I wanted to pursue.

What Gary got out of it I don't know. It could have been his former teacher's mentality kicking in. He had been a TA and a lecturer and was on tract to be a full professor one day. Those instincts never dry up and die. I had become his project of sorts.

He had his work cut out for him. To say that I was undisciplined would have been a massive understatement. My ignorance was profound, along with my readiness for undertaking college courses. I was the poster boy for remedial classes. I was the typical product of an inner city public school education, twelve years of barely passable instruction, passed along to the next grade in order to make room for another dumbass to sit in the seat and pretend to learn. It was a failure of monumental proportions, society's joke on itself, with not only parents, teachers, and the individual to blame but also a mindset that believed changes in the social fabric couldn't possibly impact the learning process. Upheaval even in slow motion takes a toll.

Really, though, I had no excuses for my poor academic performance. I was indolent. I was apathetic. I was an idiot. Putting nothing in gets you nowhere. My parents were always too busy working to get involved, letting their kids find their way, which is, I suppose, good in its way even if it might take individualism a little too far. They had survived by their own labor, carving out a living as a member of the working class. Noble, in its way but, ultimately, self defeating in a culture that keeps score by the palpitations of sketchy financial gains and losses. Work hard. Show up on time. Punch a time card. It wasn't that complicated.

My siblings, as I said, broke through. They had careers, and families that they supported adequately. Good for them. They left Fishtown behind. I did too but my trajectory was just the least bit different. Leaving your old neighborhood in the rear view mirror doesn't amount to much when it's like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Burnt. Alive. Be proud of your achievements, so said one of my High School teachers, a guy hopelessly mired in a job that afforded him no respect and practically scraped away his sanity from day to day. I can only imagine what he thought as he looked out at his classroom each hour, 60 more minutes of anxiety inducing crap, with our faces showing mass discontent laced with rife boredom. We didn't care, knowing that life had been pretty much been decided for all of us. Most all would be lucky just to land jobs that paid a wage we could get drunk on, while the fortunate few might use family connections to slide into a sinecure city job, and for the rest of our predictable lives dream of a pension.

I still remember the teacher's name to this day: Mr. Gottlieb, a Jew. He taught in a neighborhood where Jews were openly mocked and thought to be not only insidious but somehow satanic. They were responsible for any number of historical catastrophes, from the crucifixion to the Black Plague. My parents were generous with their comments about the Chosen People, an anti-Semitic reflex they had learned on the streets growing up. Kikes. Hebes. The phrase "Jew you down" was also liberally applied to everyday transactions people found disagreeable. You would have thought a pogrom was in the works on any given day of the week. Of course some of the bigotry rubbed off on me but I never brought it into the classroom, mostly because I liked Mr. Gottlieb. He was cool in that way some teachers were back then, a 60's recruit, a guy you knew had probably attended Woodstock and dropped acid back in college. Being just shy of 30 made him young enough to be relevant to us too.

Back then, sometimes, after it happened, I wondered about him, whether or not he was sitting there one day reading the Inquirer or watching the evening news and reads or sees my story. Would the name register with him? He had so many students and I wasn't exactly noteworthy except for how many times he wrote on my tests or term papers: Need to try harder, a morsel of encouragement I secretly found endearing, if not preposterous in light of the fact that I had nothing else to give. I had peaked and he just didn't realize it. In the pit of my stomach I would feel a sensation that I soon realized was acid posing as regret and yes embarrassment, humiliated to know that somebody I knew found out about my crime. Mr. Gottlieb would, initially, be shocked to find out about a former student who had become a murderer, but it might soon give way to disappointment for him. I judged him to be that type of person, one to want the best for his students. He had always impressed me as a person who hadn't gone into teaching just because he couldn't find another job. It was a calling, as they say, a skill that is inculcated by perhaps nature as well as nurture.

"We got to be at the registrar's before nine," Gary informed me, eyeing me closely to make sure I was paying attention.

"Yeah," I mumbled, not sure at that point whether or not I was on board with the whole academic track he had steered me towards; also, it was strange to have him referencing time. The man didn't own a watch. True, there was an old clock he had liberated from a trash can over on Houston, a large monstrosity that ran a good ten minutes behind each and every day, with a cracked crystal but it was an imposing piece of furniture being that it stood almost five feet tall. He had tipped it over into a shopping cart and pushed it all the way to the building.

Not liking my response, he stated: "Get your head into it, now, please." The "please" was tacked on not as a courtesy but as a way of saying that he was close to becoming exasperated, which he often was with me. Most times, not always, he kept his condescension to a minimum, not seeing any point in denigrating me because it was counter productive. "This is going to open up new horizons for you."

I had heard him say this maybe a dozen times in the last week and really wanted to tell him my horizons were doing just fine but said, "I appreciate what you are doing for me." This sounded somewhat phony and pretty insincere so I added, "I'm going to give it a try but I can't promise anything."

He scoffed at my comment, then announced, "You are going to love it!" He seldom ever got excited about much and his enthusiasm seemed sad to me at that point. My failure was probably around 70/30 if I wanted to lay probabilities on it. "Books," he muttered more to himself than to me.

"What?"

He stared at me for a moment, something he did often as the wheels in his brain turned, then replied, "You are going to need books and we have to find a way to procure them on the cheap. They can cost a bundle sometimes. It is really larcenous how the publishers get away with it."

Books, I was thinking, knowing that I seldom read anything beyond comic books. I loved the superheroes series, grasping at little blocks of time lost in the world of Spiderman, the Fantastic Four or the X-Men. It was harmless diversion, even if it was cerebral reduction as it sucked the life out of your mental capabilities. The last time I had even picked up a book with any heft was back in High School and that was just to doodle in the margins as I leered at Peggy Lynch over in the next row, she of the short skirts and ripening bustline. It was too bad they had discontinued the Draft because I would have made good cannon fodder. I wouldn't have been worth wasting a tiny plot of land on at Arlington.

I resigned myself to the con, even though I didn't have much confidence that it would work. Papers had been filed. I was matriculated, much to my surprise, feeling that I was the ultimate poser, an imposter that couldn't possibly get by. Someone was going to notice. Fellow student. Professor. A tired petty bureaucrat with a keen eye, perusing my application and noticing that it was all bogus except for my name. I only wondered if they would pull me out of class one day, in handcuffs. White collar criminal busted, led away, saving the city thousands of dollars. Academia is safe again.

It didn't take me long to learn that higher education was mostly a racket, with so many students trying to score some loot in order to pay off the credit hours. From loans to grants to scholarships, we were all in on it together, all doing on the job training for when we actually had to step outside the campus and make good on our sojourn in study. For me, I wasn't doing that, not the last part. There was no job at the end of the learning rainbow. I was the miscreant there to "get-over," and hopefully leave no trace. I might as well have been wearing one of those black masks you see robbers wear in the cartoons.

Criminal Justice. Really. With the help of Gary, I filled out my class schedule, as he helped me through the Byzantine process of landing courses. Class full. Time conflict. Don't even know what that class is despite the title being two lines long. It was a hassle and apparently something college students had to do in order to participate. I was a novitiate. Fortunately my little helper guided me through it, finally beaming at the end as he held up the score card, proud that he had beat the system or at least fought it to a draw. I looked on, smiling sheepishly, unable to tell him that it was all a charade, not wanting to burst his bubble. His vision of me walking across some stage to pick up my sheepskin seemed to have picked up his spirits so who was I to crush them?

Classes loomed. Didn't Gary know I lived on the streets, most times literally. In the previous two weeks I had slept outside at least four of those nights, staking my territory in several different locations around the Alphabets. Except for some fucking Ukrainian loon hassling me about being on his property all had gone well. Admittedly, my standards were low. If I didn't get mugged in my sleep I considered it time well spent. Slumber was always at a premium. To date, I hadn't been able to do what some of the others on the street did and that was succumb to sleep anywhere, anytime. You would often see them fast asleep on park benches in the middle of the day or stretched out in the park snoring away, maybe catching some shuteye on a stoop or even dozing while standing on a subway landing. It was, apparently, a skill you developed over time.

How was I to keep up my studies on a regular basis? Two nights in a row I had slept sparingly on the trains, zooming under ground, lulled to sleep by the rocking cars as weariness eventually blocked out the glaring overhead lights and comings and goings of passengers. The screeching brakes of the subway I had long ago tuned out. It was just another mainstay in the city's cacophony of white noise. The decibels never subsided. We were all going to be deaf before long.

Personal appearance was another problem. My level of hygiene could be hit or miss sometimes. It wasn't that I was disgustingly repellant. I hadn't sunk to the level of the lower tiered street people, the ones who bathed about as frequently as never. Stench. Body odor that was radioactive and could clear out a city block. No, I hadn't reached that particular debasement yet. My image came off more as a bohemian than anything else. Wrinkled clothes. Uncombed hair, which was a little on the long side. Unshaven. Stain on my jeans, with a hole or two in the knees. Mismatched jacket. Nothing that would repel most people perhaps because I didn't stink. I washed, utilizing public toilets when needed or the personal bathrooms of my hosts when I was able to score a night in. It was all manageable if I didn't have a specific time table to adhere to. As can be imagined, when on the street you made your own hours. The concept of flex time took on a whole new meaning when you didn't have to be any where at any time.

"I don't know if I can do that," I announced, determined to be honest about my diligence level.

Gary stopped short on the street and stared at me, making a few people skirt around us on the sidewalk. I could see he was clinching his hands in front of him in a pose that I found humorous, like some statue or sculpture. He exhaled and stated: "You have to." That was it. Nothing more. He turned and started walking again, officially closing the subject.

John Jay College was a part of the CUNY system of New York City, an institution resembling an octopus, with lots of little colleges pegged on the city map, from Queens to the Bronx and every which way. It was a marvel of pedagogy, if you wanted your education to infiltrate every nook and cranny of the culture. Although none of the colleges were academic powerhouses they served their purpose and that was to educate the masses on the cheap. Want a college that concentrates on financial minutia, got that. How about Humanities? Visual Arts? Aforementioned Criminal Justice? Dog grooming, probably got that too. It was a vision laid down in the late 1800's, letting the city residents get some learning on the cheap. It worked, and it didn't. Lots of prospective students showed up, plunked down some dough then found they weren't college material, especially since they had rescinded the need to actually be qualified to be in college. That would be me. Open missions was one of those liberal ideals that corrupted the whole enterprise. Witness, me.

As a college, John Jay was laughable. I'm referring to the actual physical layout. There wasn't one. People in the witness protection program should take note. The campus was secreted in mid-town Manhattan, posing as an office building. No ivy walls or quads here. You weren't going to be taking any strolls down Greek Row, admiring old homes festooned with ancient letters and discarded beer kegs. You weren't going to be able to give it the old college try because there really wasn't a college per se. The city had leased a building or, perhaps, they had even bought one and propped up a working college apparatus. You weren't going to be going to the football game on the weekend to see your arch rival get beat, and by the same token you weren't going to be sleeping off a hangover at the dorm late. There weren't any, dorms that is. It was an urban campus and that was in name only.

None of this mattered all that much to me. That it was a commuter college was immaterial. So what if the college's main building had been a shoe factory before. I wasn't in it for the atmosphere. You weren't going to see me paralyzed by anxiety because I couldn't think of what fraternity to pledge. I realized that I wasn't going to look back in a decade and wonder when the college reunion was going to be held. I wouldn't be that guy who wears a faded t-shirt emblazoned with the college's logo on the front. (Side note: I did own, at one time after first arriving in the city, a t-shirt with the letters PSU on the front but tossed it after too many people wanted to know when I went to Penn State; I had purchased the shirt in a thrift store on Lex for cheap because I liked the color.) That wasn't me. Not quite.

Then again, it would have been nice to have a campus of some sort, nothing too big or anything. Come on. I mean it was like attending a seminar for your company when you showed up for classes. All us students, I suppose, not that I want to project, felt like we were posing as students. College life has to be more than racing to catch a subway then scurrying to a classroom that might be doubling as a meeting place for AA in the evenings. Really.

John Jay College was founded in the 60's, giving it zero pedigree. The main building used to be a shoe factory, as I said, and there was no campus per se, just a cityscape blurred image that happened to be near Columbus Circle. We were all there to, ostensibly, study in the field of criminology, intent on moving, with any luck, towards a law degree. For most of us, that was a pipe dream, otherwise why would we be attending a college with zero cred in academic circles, an institution that took just about anybody with a pulse. It was a commuter college with very little footprint in the city, nothing more; although I will say the courses were interesting, with exotic subject matter that delved into things like, for instance, Sociology of Deviance. Not bad. Even if your degree wasn't going to get you squat, it was still kind of cool, and cheap.

I still remember my first day. Burned in the brain. Small class room. Late arriving professor, a short guy, with a crew cut, former cop. Late fifties. Stood erect, like he was still in the military. Spoke in a beautiful Bronx accent, one that mangled vowels and sped through consonants like they were on an out of control conveyer belt. I don't remember what the class was but I assume it had something to do with police science, a field with a raging inferiority complex. Most of the people in that class that particular day were probably fantasizing about being lawyers one day and were just taking the first step in that direction. It was a step with a precipitous drop. The likelihood that any of them were ever going to be rubbing elbows with the words of Holmes or Warren was pretty remote. The college might have been named after the first Supreme Court Judge but it didn't mean squat in the pantheon of college law schools.

No problem, for me. Let them dream. Everybody needs a goal. I didn't.

"It went," I answered petulantly to Gary's question about my first day. He had insisted I stay over at his place the first couple of nights so he could monitor my progress or, more likely, keep tabs on me. "What do you want me to say? I showed up. Some guy who looked like a Marine jabbered for an hour, then I went to the next class. Another guy, another class room. Lots of blah-blah-blah. I got on the subway and came back here. Now I'm hungry as hell."

"Here," he said, handing over a box of Ritz crackers with the tell tale sign of being deposited in a dumpster recently, slightly crushed with an oil stain on the side. "Anything interesting?"

"To you maybe," I told him, grabbing the box out of his hand and devouring the entire box of crackers, chased by a bottle of hot ginger ale. "Waste of time."

"Expanding your mind is never a waste of time, Mr. Ashdown," he informed me in a clipped tone. Whenever he addressed my as Mr. I knew he was getting pissed. "You must try to be receptive. Let knowledge in."

This sounded kind of ridiculous, so I replied, "You're kidding. All they were talking about was...was hell I don't know. I tuned most of it out. Checked out the chicks. There's a couple. One black girl is pretty nice looking. Ever been with a black chick before?"

Gary recoiled a few steps then stared at me, letting me know that he found my question offensive, before saying, "Girls, you are looking at girls in your class? That is more than disappointing to me. I fear we have made a big mistake."

"You think so," I said sarcastically, laughing.

We had a few of these verbal standoffs, some escalating into shouting matches, which was odd because Gary wasn't the type to go off on people all that much. His existence in his little domain usually dictated his actions. As a street person we had to hone our skills and one of them was remaining invisible, bring no attention to yourself if possible. Being perpetually at a disadvantage meant that a person had to not make waves. You were forever worried about violating any laws. No cops. When you flaunt convention you have no advocates. Let us alone and we will go on our way. Just leave enough crumbs around for us to survive.

Sounds bleak but we had, for the most part, chosen our path. Not that there was a big fork in the road and we went this way or that. It didn't usually happen that way. Some of us were, without a doubt, crazy, nutty in almost every description of that word: bellowing at the heavens, paranoid, angry, delusional. Society has perhaps never quite decided what to do with its members that are lost to madness. Warehouse them. Ignore them. Stick them in prison. Let them roam the streets. Of course plenty of us were out there because of circumstances beyond our control, usually through bad choices fueled by addiction. Still others liked living that way, unable to live a 9 to 5 life.

What category I fell into I didn't want to think about. There were days I thought that I might just be slipping into insanity, particularly when I would wake up and realize I had just slept behind a dumpster. The low lights of my living arrangement made for some hard hits on your self-esteem. Then there were the times I was lost to alcohol fueled (or drugs) blocks of time, where the next morning's amnesia came as a blessing. Being unable to remember had its rewards. I had, also, made dozens of bad choices. To date, though, I had remained at large, on the streets, one step ahead of the authorities.

Now I was a college student. I was as mystified about my new status as I imagined my parents would have been if I had bothered to tell them. Need to know. Besides, I hadn't spoken with them in months at that juncture. My siblings had written me off right about the time I left for New York, deeming me incorrigible. They had thought I would end up in a series of dead end jobs, one small disaster away from small scale oblivion. I was the one to end up in Fishtown, seldom venturing out of the neighborhood. Bitchy wife. Two kids. Car broken down out front of the apartment, unable to pay for repairs. Too much time spent at the bar on the corner. Revolving gambling debts. Blow ups at home on the weekends. Physical abuse, probably with some black eyes, for me and my wife, who would necessarily be the type not to take shit from anybody. Both sets of parents wouldn't be offering any invites for the holidays if they could avoid it.

My leaving Philly hadn't changed any of their assessments about me, just moved it geographically. They didn't know the worst of it. I really don't know what any of them would have thought of my street life or even if they would have believed it. Maybe it was good that I spared them the details. My mother's maternal instincts would kick in and she would beg me to return home. Doubt it. Dad, he would label me a moron and be done with it. Sibling dismay would devolve into bouts of recriminations or something closely revealing concern. No. That wouldn't happen either. They would all give a collective shrug, proof that their apathy was derived from group think.

Didn't think about any of that though. Forward. Looking back was painful anyway. No need to dredge up memories. No medication for old wounds. I was in college.

Such as it was. Commuter colleges are like dress rehearsals of sorts. You attend classes but there is no...what? I'm sure there must be some French word for it but I can't think of it right now. It was more like showing up for a court mandated course. I had always imagined the college experience as being something on the order of a community atmosphere, where everyone felt connected as they strove to improve themselves. I could have gotten that idea from seeing my siblings brochures, with the photos of college students studying together on a leafy campus. It was a definitive picture being painted by the public relations departments. Couple, girl with books in her arms, guy with contented smile on his face, walking together, the photo throbbing with untold possibilities. Guy in class room, with the requisite beakers in the foreground as he studiously (and adoringly) stares at his professor. Athletics. Another photograph with musical instruments in hand. Logo, with inscrutable Latin inscription. Alumni name dropping. Juicy history, hopefully from the last century for more academic cred. Inclusion on some magazine's annual list. It all pointed towards a different world, another dimension that you too can visit and ostensibly be a part of.

The propaganda worked. Most every American High School student wanted to secure a passport that would transport them to the land of future privilege. A degree bestowed on you any number of advantages. Count them. I had never bothered. The horizons I saw didn't include four more years of droning words, written and spoken, that I didn't understand or believe in. I was a pathological underachiever, beaten down by a world view that relegated me and my kind to a section of society where the individual was to forfeit his standing so as to empower everyone else. Even though I hadn't read Brave New World at the time, and probably wouldn't have picked up on the implications anyway if I had, I was still assigning myself to a cubby hole already in the making.

That was sociological bullshit. Not for me. Critical thinking, analyzing, that was for suckers. Educated people, like Gary, were the overclass, if I may coin a term. I represented the other half. Columns on the social ledger were easy to read. Up. Down. Across. It didn't really much matter.

There I was though. Striving. Showing up for class, usually late but still there, taking my seat in the back, away from any prying eyes. Invisible. Breathing, but barely. Just one step away from CPR. I could read a schedule, the ones that Gary wrote out for me, often times with little notes of encouragement attached. The man was killing me.

An unexpected thing happened though, and without me realizing it at first. I made some friends. This in itself was odd. Take Gary away and I didn't really have any. Sure there were a few acquaintances, like the guy at the flop house in the Bowery who let me crash there if I agreed to do some custodial chores in return. We had shared a few beers here and there but our connection revolved around my ability to sling a mop and stomach the horror show in the bathrooms most Monday mornings after a weekend of drunks and stoned junkies. The lady at the bagel place in the West Village could be counted on as a friend in the vaguest definition of the word. We had an ongoing platonic relationship, where she mothered me, with fresh bagels, and I accepted her weird kindness. She would be the one the newspapers would ask when and if I ever landed on the front page, with large block letters spelling out my crime. "He seemed so nice, very polite," she would be quoted as saying, as she shook her head in disbelief, unable to digest the import of her thin connection to me. This very thing would happen, by the way.

Young people do have the ability to cultivate a string of friends, especially when you are in your late teens or early twenties. It comes easily when your vision of the next years of your life are compressed into fluttering images like some time lapse photography. No one thinks about a timeline that might include the next decade. Next week is too long to contemplate. As a result, first names are the anchors you hold on to, since family names smack of permanency. Celia. Martin. Jordan. Tony. They were all a blur to me. Faces to names. Names to faces.

I would soon add four: Gail, Willis, Jorge, and Eric. A quartet of students at the college, all from New York City, two from Queens and one from the Bronx and one from Manhattan. We first met in class, on a day when the professor failed to show. A harried secretary, none to happy, scurried into the classroom, cleared her throat, and announced that Professor so and so wasn't going to make it. Read this or that, through chapter whatever. And she was gone. There was a moment of hub bub from the class, then a quick exodus, on to other things before the next class.

"This sucks," Gail stated to no one in particular, as she fumbled in her shoulder bag for something, still muttering under her breath.

I had noticed her the first day of class. She was tall, close to six feet, with short hair. Pretty in an athletic way, like a female jock. It wasn't difficult to imagine her hoisting up a jumpshot or spiking a volley ball. She almost always wore construction boots, men's I presumed because I didn't think they made them for women. Body wise, she was nicely apportioned and, if the light was right, was probably capable of appearing sexy. She had gone past the tom boy look though. There were bars in the Village that I knew she probably frequented.

"Tell me about it," Jorge chimed in, slamming his book of criminology down on the desk hard, the one the professor had demanded we buy immediately, as if all the knowledge contained within had a short shelf life. "I came all the way down from the Bronx for this...and it's my only class today." He trailed off into Spanish, cursing. He was Puerto Rican and represented the flip side of all his other relatives, the ones that were in and out of Riker's Island, recipients of room and board for running numbers, B and E's, drug dealing, and in one shameful episode rape. Even though he had lived in New York since he was four or five years old he still had a heavy accent and wandered in and out of two different languages with ease, having perfected his Spanglish over the years. He kept his hair pushed back, straight back, and held into place with generous layers of oil. As stated that first day I met him, he intended on becoming a lawyer. The chances were probably nil but I had to give him credit for trying. It would have been easy to succumb to the siren call of the streets up there in the bombed out Bronx, a no man's land of urban devastation on par with anyone's worst nightmare. Whole city blocks were blighted beyond recognition, places where the police feared to go. "These fucking professors don't give a shit about us," he lamented, narrowing his dark, almost black eyes into slits, something he did often when he was trying to make a point.

"I hear that," Willis agreed off to my left, waving the pen in his hand in front of him. "Got two hours to kill now. Damn." He was black but from the middle-class and didn't like to be associated with his brethren all that much, the ones he called Nubians. Nubians? I would soon find out Willis had carved out a whole different world for himself in the urban setting, refusing to be stigmatized or stereotyped. His skin was charcoal black but he didn't share in the creed, so he liked to say. His parents were professionals who had migrated to Queens, bucking some of the sociological trends in the process. Even so, he wasn't climbing up the social mobility ladder very fast, judging by him being at what was basically a non-entity college. No Columbia. No NYU. No Fordham. It wasn't a propitious start to any future careers, despite what the admissions office might tell you.

Eric, the fourth member, exclaimed: "Man, I got up for this." He put his head down on the desk for a moment, groaning. He was handsome, with Nordic looks bequeath to him by a Norwegian father apparently. He was first generation, representing a tiny community of Scandinavian ex-pats in the city. Almost any current census showed that New York City had standing members from every corner of the world. Of the five of us, he was the brightest and probably didn't belong where he was but would have been a good fit at Syracuse, Rutgers, any other college with a pedigree, not some commuter college that had only been founded in the previous decade. Drugs, in a word, along with booze had reduced his academic credentials, whittling away at his resolve to become anything. Ambition was apparently inversely related to the times you got high. His last year in High School had been spent in rehab, funded by his father who had a high profile job at the UN. Being with us, Eric was slumming.

"Do we get a partial refund?" I asked, trying to be witty, although, as you know, I was there just for window dressing to keep the con going.

Gail looked over my way, eyeing me for a minute, like she had just noticed I was there and said, "Yeah, that sounds about right. Where do we go to get some money back?" We laughed together, sharing a moment of camaraderie seldom experienced at our college, where the students maintained separate identities away from the campus: Jobs, families, other alter egos. "My name's Gail," she announced, addressing me personally.

"Barry," I responded, hesitant to cross the barrier of anonymity. She reached out her hand and I shook it, getting a firm handshake in return.

"Name's Jorge," Jorge offered almost timidly, nodding in first her direction and then mine. Around us the class was emptying out, students fleeing, off to the rest of their lives. He glanced at the door and seemed to be deciding whether or not he wanted to leave as well.

Willis stood up from his desk, yawned, and declared: "Got any coffee shops around here?" Like us, he had never stayed in the area very long, showing up for classes then quickly departing, leaving little trace. The campus was totally devoid of any atmosphere, only sterile classrooms and mostly vacant hallways. "I need my fix for the day."

"There's one over by Columbus," Jorge suggested reluctantly, shrugging, giving me the immediate impression that he was either shy or not accustomed to speaking to strangers, outsiders.

"I gotta grab a smoke," Eric muttered, groaning, as he grabbed the sides of head, trying desperately to ward off a hangover headache.

And so it began. Our college friendship. Something told me though that we wouldn't be seeing each other down the road at any college reunions. They would become like work friends, people marching in formation beside you as you made your way from course requirement to course requirement. Accumulating credit was the Holy Grail of academia. It got you to your destination. That was our functioning bond. The contents of the college catalogue dictated the what and the where, the only real variable being the course load you were willing to endure.

We trudged over to the coffee shop, another archetypal New York establishment, with strong coffee, stale bagels, and cheese cake. Booths. Counter. Surly waitress. Greasy walls from short order concoctions. No pretensions. After settling into a booth, with Gail as my seat mate, we ordered some coffee and set in on mutual complaints about the city, about the college, about how we had all been dealt a lousy hand. It seemed to work for us.

I was, as usual, low on money, so I kept to a cup of coffee, while they plowed through some eats. The four of us might have been the only people on campus who actually connected. Other students came and went, choosing to remain unknown beyond their names on enrollment sheets. Professors were like monitors keeping vigil over study subjects, little more. Read. Write. Discuss. Go to the next level. It was like the application of some new conceptual model for education, where academic intercourse is secondary if not superfluous.

To be honest, I was superfluous in many ways. The others in the group were contributing members to society, holding down jobs as they attempted to move up. Gail worked as a fork lift operator in a warehouse across the river, proving that she could compete in a male dominant arena. I was pretty sure she could kick my ass. Her ambition was to become a police officer but wanted to get "grounded" with an education first. Okay. Jorge held down a job working as a dance teacher, something I had a hard time imagining him doing since he seemed to be so shy. Apparently, most of his students were Spanish speaking; he functioned more easily in his mother tongue. Willis was a gofer for his dad in a store front law office in a neighborhood where the clientele were chronically short of cash to pay off the billable hours. His dad had gone to Brooklyn College, scored a law degree, and then established a law practice out of hard work and indomitable grit. I told them I worked for a rich man that was handicapped as a personal assistant, a man who lived on top of his own building in south Manhattan. Judging by their looks of either wonder or disbelief, I guess they thought I was at the very least novel.

That first day together we discussed a myriad of subjects, but always circled back to the college and our fantasy of graduating. The graduation rate at the college was low, doing the limbo low, mostly because the students were juggling so many responsibilities at once. It might have been also because we weren't prepared for higher learning. We probably wouldn't have been there at that particular college if we had done well on SAT's etc. You weren't going to find any former Honor Students among us.

I played along. Although, I admit, I was beginning to enjoy the time spent at the college. It was an unexpected feeling. Not once had I ever contemplated being in a class room ever again. Furthering my education had taken the shape of survival on the streets. Street smarts, they liked to call it, which really meant staying one step ahead of calamity. My dexterity at surviving was laudable but only seen within the confines of a warped sense of improvement. Know where to find a place to crash. Gossamer connections that allow you to procure some sustenance, like scraps of discarded food. Temporary employment, off the books, in cash, forwarding your short time future, one more day of competing. The goal was always the same, never changing. Twenty-four more hours.

My new cast of friends never knew about me, the real me. They didn't know that most nights I was bedding down in nook and crannies of the city or, if I was fortunate enough to have some bucks, in flop houses in the Bowery. Also, they knew nothing of Gary, my mentor, the crazy guy who lived on top of an abandoned warehouse. There were times I almost confessed but was pulled back at the last second by fear of my embarrassment. I didn't want them to pity me or see me in any other way than what they erroneously thought. To them, I was just a guy getting along, trying to better myself in any way I can, like them. My personal bio was purposely vague. I lived in lower Manhattan, in a dump. Worked temp jobs. Wanted to study forensics. Something like that.

Nobody asked probing questions. We all had secrets to keep. Besides, we knew that our friendship was contingent on attending school and was bound by the parameters of the next semester. Grades. Family upheavals. Money. Almost anything could upset the momentum it took to get through and come out the other side. With the exception of Eric, we didn't have any margin of error when it came to graduating. There weren't parents eager to sign another check for the registrar's office.

Eric, I will say, was the only one of the four that I saw outside of class. We would go on to "party" a few times in the few months that I knew him, meeting up in the East Village at apartments where parties took place. They were typical of the genre at that time, at least in that part of the Village, locked away in half furnished walk ups with graffiti on the walls half way concealing holes in the turn of the century plaster. Dirty unlit stair wells. Smells that can't be described. Leaks in the roof. Rorschach stains on the ceilings. It was a punk scene that had lost its way or, more likely, perfected it. Mainlining junkies splayed on the floor, mumbling to their god, while grating, loud music blasted away like artillery. Impromptu sex performed by emaciated creatures unconcerned about propriety or frightening communicable diseases.

"You made it," Eric had said to me the first time he invited me to meet him at so and so address, sometime after mid-night.

"Yeah, your directions were wrong," I told him, as he staggered up the steps, in route to another stage of ruin. "You told me it was..." I started to say to his back but gave up because I could see that he was already gone, lost to another fix. It was my first glimpse of his heroin habit, something he somehow kept under wraps at the college. We had all thought he was a drunk.

"Randy!" he suddenly bellowed out, gripping some man by the lapels of his leather jacket. "Where you been?"

"Around," the guy said in a greasy British accent, flicking Eric off of him like he was a bug. The Brit walked on down the steps and I heard him say to his companion, an impossibly thin girl with numerous piercings, "Some daft wanker, I don't know." The girl laughed and I could see she had bad teeth, crooked, and discolored. They eased on by me.

I had always wondered what and where Eric's disillusionment came from. His parents lived on the upper Eastside, 60's or 70's. I imagined they had a nice place on a nice street in a nice building. Working fireplace. Foyer. Set of French doors separating the dining area. Bistro around the corner. Butcher shop with fresh expensive cuts and a European working behind the counter greeting them in a wonderful accent. Custom tailoring on the premises at the dry cleaners down the block. Pastry to order at the tiny place with the mother and daughter establishment, the one where they stock hard to get chocolate from Europe.

I had never been to his home, having never been invited. Probably wouldn't have gone. It was always too painful to see just how bifurcated New York could be, divided along bank accounts: Old Money, New Money, No Money. In the next decade the city's mobility imbalance would only increase exponentially, leaving the middle-class sucking for air. Of course, it was obscene that Eric had anything to complain about and certainly he didn't have any footing when it came to squandering his advantage. He had gone to a prep school, one of the ones parents do hand to hand combat to get their kids into. His summers, as a kid, had been spent away at camp somewhere outside the city in locales that were fantastical to us, the city dwellers who rarely if ever got away from sniffing up the urban miasma of toxicity. He had a late model car that he never drove, keeping it locked away in a garage several blocks from his house, seldom taking it out because he found it so much easier to fall into a cab and go where ever he wanted, often collapsing in the backseat and letting his fate be determined by the cab driver's competence.

It was a different world than ours, especially mine. His attendance at college had been more of a compromise than anything else, the result of an ultimatum laid down by his father, an "or else" proposition that kept him from ending up out on the street. Eric had actually began his college career at a more respectable college but bombed out in the first few weeks when it was discovered that he was holding orgies in his dorm room. This had been told to me by him one night in one of his more lucid moments before whatever he was injecting or imbibing had taken its toll. Orgies? Titillated, I had to ask and he had said: "It would seem that at this esteemed University they frown on having prostitutes visit the campus grounds after hours." He did go on to elaborate and even though his slurred diction was hard to understand I gleaned that he had been caught not only with his pants down but with a "bevy of tarts in various stages of undress." The RA had reported him even though he had been bribed with favors of his choice.

There was something ribald about Eric, like he was reincarnated and his past life had been in Paris in one of the more decadent periods. It was difficult not to like him though, even if you sensed that he was hurtling towards the end, his end. You didn't want to get too close because you might get sucked along with him as he went over the precipice. Early on, Gail had tried to mother him some, first with none too polite coercion and then weak cajoling. Didn't matter. He still called her Pomona and she still would get red in the face, not from embarrassment but from anger. Eric knew his mythology, in this specific case Roman, and we were informed that Pomona was the goddess of fruit. It was ham handed and silly but the fruit reference clearly went to her sexual preference. Unfortunately, it stuck. As with most nicknames, it took on a life of its own and we started calling her that. At first, she was resistant but then she began to accept it.

That leads me to what our little group was eventually called: the Forseti Society. So named due to the fact that Forseti was a little known deity, the god of justice from the Norse end of mythology. Ostensibly, we were all there to pursue careers in the law arena or its offshoots. It could have been worse. Jorge and Willis wanted to call our little social club the Urians, after the code of Ur-Nammu, which was linked to the Kind of Ur back in the BC days. Bodily apertures aside, we voted to go with what we did. Good thing. In light of all the press my exploits garnered later on, that would have been pretty embarrassing for them. It was bad enough they had to endure microphones stuck in their faces by out of control TV reporters and hounded by journalists on deadline from the local papers, but adding bad puns was just being insensitive.

Like I said before, we weren't friends in the usual traditional sense. Our friendship pretty much started and ended within a two block radius of the so called campus. Besides attending John Jay, our only other thing in common was our ages. Only a few years separated us, with me being the youngest and Jorge being the oldest. We were a multi-cultural experiment, representing a couple of races, ethnic groups and second tier sub divided groups. With the exception of Jorge, we had been born in America and grew up to expect an unwavering adherence to a dream, or that might be the way Gary would phrase it. Me, I would say that we were spoiled mostly and lived on a steady diet of defined expectation, to include a perch on a rung in the middle-class. Not that I thought I would ever attain that. My months spent in New York had caused me to downsize any dreams. Acceptance of failure, as spelled out by my peers, was becoming a reality more and more each day. Better to not give it a thought and certainly don't try to analyze it. There was something to be said for ignorance. It gave the individual a sheath of protection against what was coming around the corner, and there were a lot of corners up ahead.

"Are you kidding me?" Willis exclaimed, flapping his arms and rolling his eyes like some mime on the street corner. By now we were used to his usual histrionics, as his well maintained personality, infused with a muscular sense of humor, often took over. He had been known to break into mimicry, imitating a famous stand up comic or current movie star to buttress his point. Unfortunately, he sometimes didn't really have a point, not one that we could decipher. "I got a C on my last test. Fuck me. I need to keep up my average for cum laude. If I don't..."

His voice trailed off as he shadow boxed a few times and did an uncanny rendition of Mohammed Ali in the ring after a victory, right down to the preening look on his face. Jorge and Eric exchanged glances, then Gail (Pomona) stated evenly: "How about just graduating?" Willis threw a few imaginary punches her way and made a face. "Really, get your degree then worry about everything else."

"Good advice," Jorge seconded, speaking in his customary quiet tone, like he wasn't sure we would understand his brand of English.

"My parents won't go for that," Willis shot back, looking at us like we were insane for even suggesting anything different. "Dean's list, man. Remember, my parents are still on me for not getting into a real college. Come on! If I don't get into some legitimate grad school--it's over."

"A real dooms day," I muttered, smirking, unable to relate to Willis' angst over what might happen years down the road. Immediacy ruled my world, not what could be in the offering after four years of college. "Talk about uncharted territory."

"For your information, Barry," he said, adding a sing-song pitch to my name, "I happen to know where I'm headin' and it ain't gonna be spending my time at CUNY." He gave us a look of horror and continued, "That can't happen. I would be disowned. As it is now my parents are embarrassed to tell people where their little boy goes to college. I think they change the subject or something every time somebody asks. Plah-eese."

"Should've thought about that before you pissed away your High School years, man," Gail said, grinning. "Kinda late now, right?"

"Didn't your parents go to a CUNY school?" I asked, confused.

"Right," Willis muttered, dejected, ignoring my question. "I'm still gonna do it though. Might take some time but I'll do it."

"I like the man's spirit," Eric chimed in, trying to slap hands with Willis, who only half heartedly participated. "I, for one, think you can do it."

"Shut up, Eric," we all said in unison, like a chorus, because if we agreed on one thing it was Eric happened to be a upper Eastside asshole, one of the manor born we all wanted to be and would probably never get near.

"You should have at least gone to Hunter," Gail joked, referring to the college in the CUNY system on the eastside with pretensions.

"My feelings are officially hurt," he announced, holding his hand over his heart. "I know when I'm not wanted." He stopped on the street and pretended to be going back to the college.

"We love you, man," I called out, laughing.

"Yeah, enough for you to pick up the check at the coffee shop," Gail exclaimed, poking Jorge in the ribs.

"Yes, the group wouldn't be the same without you," Jorge stated, motioning for Eric to come along with us.

"Man, the bullshit is getting so deep..." Eric sang out, grinning. "My expense account is your expense account, amigo."

We settled into a regular booth in the back, next to the pay phone on the wall, the one that seemed to ring incessantly, picked up by a rotating cast of employees fielding calls for each other. The coffee shop was owned by--only in New York--an Albanian, a guy who looked like a Gypsy and talked like a Teamster. He was short, stout, pushing forty, with a vanishing hairline and expanding hatred for living in the city. He had jumped ship decades before when he was only my age and stayed on. His sailing career had lasted all of two years, working in engine rooms, breathing stale, contaminated air while the deafening sound of the power plant reduced his hearing minute by minute. Today, there were times you had to repeat yourself a couple times for him to understand you. Between his rudimentary comprehension of English and the borderline deafness, it was like being in a bad farce, where the characters are always locked into a running gag of misunderstanding. Fortunately for him he had married an American woman ten years his senior and she ran the business with a competence he probably never would have dreamed of. They played off each other expertly, two people revolving around an unseen pivot point. Their marriage was a marvel of practicality, founded on need and expiring affection.

By now, after several months, they had grown used to us, the Forseti Society, even once offering up a tiny birthday cake when it was Eric's birthday. It was obvious the mistress of the coffee shop had a thing for him, lingering at our booth often, directing most of her conversation his way. He got free pie, enough said, while the rest of us got sneers and rapid insincere greetings and salutations.

It had become a running joke with us, which often times made him uncomfortable, even though he was more than comfortable being the center of attention. Eric was difficult to dislike, being good looking and personable. That made it all the more infuriating and disappointing to see him slide into sure oblivion. "People like him don't hit bottom," Gail had said to me one day as we were talking before class started. "Think about it for a minute. The guy has to have all sorts of support systems just waiting to catch his ass, right? Rich parents, with connections, works wonders. I can see him lying on some therapist's couch spouting out all sorts of shit while the meters running. He'll be okay, don't worry about it." I did worry though and I didn't know why. My life on the streets left little room for sympathy, especially for somebody up several rungs from me.

"What's the special today?" Willis wanted to know as we settled into the booth, while the rest of us jostled for position, not wanting to be on the inside since the booth only comfortably sat four people. The waitress, a thin girl with startlingly blue eyes and too long bangs, probably a struggling student herself judging by the paperback book of poems by metaphysical poets sticking out of her uniform pocket. New York was full of colleges and their enrollments added to the over all population, even though it wasn't considerable it was enough that you were never far away from another fellow traveler in the academic odyssey. Willis had been flirting with her for weeks with little progress, such scant progress the consensus among us was that she might be more interested in Gail.

"Coffee for me and a danish," Jorge announced, having just latched on to the word for pastry recently, finding it somehow exotic to say.

"What kind?" the waitress asked wearily, shifting her weight from foot to foot, almost like she had to use the bathroom.

Stymied for a moment, unable to name any particular types of danish, Jorge look at me for guidance then said, "Queso...cheese."

The waitress nodded, making a note on her pad then turned to me and asked: "You?"

I pointed at myself, laughing and replied, "Coffee and a slice of apple pie, thanks."

Not looking up, the waitress scribbled quickly and glanced at Gail and before she could say anything Gail said, "Coffee and some eggs, over easy, with toast. I missed breakfast this morning."

"Hash browns?" the waitress asked, glancing at Gail then looking away.

"Yeah, Pomona, want any fried potatoes with that?" Willis wanted to know, smirking. "A big girl like you has to eat."

"Fuck off, Willis," Gail declared, then immediately apologized for her language. "Don't listen to him, he's an idiot." The waitress smiled back at her for a moment then thought better of it and quickly about faced and hurried back to the kitchen.

"Is this how lesbos do it?" I had to ask, regretting I said anything almost immediately.

Gail, who was sitting across the table from me leaned over and hissed between her teeth, "Do what?"

I sat back a little further in the booth and replied, "Forget I said anything."
"I'll try and do that," she spat out, smacking her hands down on the table.

"Who would win between Pomona and Barry?" Eric wanted to know, giggling. "In a fight. Who would come out on top?"

"Gail on top," Willis mused, rubbing his chin.

"Get that image out of your head," she ordered, elbowing Willis in the ribs.

"I think Gail," Jorge chimed in, smiling at me, laughing. "She is muy strong, man. Barry, he..."

"Maybe they should arm wrestle," Eric suggested, smirking.

"When?" Gail asked.

"Donde?" Jorge added.

"How about right now and right here," Eric stated, clearing away some of the utensils on the table. "I'm taking bets."

As humiliating instances in your life go this one had the potential to be at or near the top. I was in the proverbial no win situation. If I beat her at arm wrestling it was no accomplishment, even less, and if she beat me it was full on humiliation mode. My mind raced to come up with a plan to get out of the predicament when the waitress arrived with our orders, saving me.

"Cora, bad timing," Willis announced, using the name on her name tag that she had already told us wasn't her name but the name that was sewn on the polyester uniform from a previous employee. The Albanian liked to keep overhead low and recycled the uniforms until they got so stained and faded his wife would succumb to complaints from the staff and the customers and ditch it in the garbage. Cora's uniform had faded to a aquamarine color harmful to the eyes. She forced a weak smile and plopped down a plate of eggs to the wrong customer and gave my pie to Jorge and his danish to me. It was more than obvious she had no aptitude for serving the public, a labor niche that was supposed to help her get through Barnard, so she would inform us later on, with the invaluable aid of an academic scholarship. Being from a small town in Upstate New York, it was all she could do to cope with the city.

Jorge and I switched orders and Eric exclaimed, "I like that my waitress is reading poetry from the 17th century. Kind of puts it all into perspective."

It didn't, of course, and Gail said so, then added, "I hate poetry."

If there was ever even the slightest flickering of mutual desire between the waitress and Gail it died at that moment, extinguished by raw truth. Poetry, for Gail, was a waste of time. Apparently, Cora thought otherwise, as she said, "That's sad."

"What?" Gail demanded to know in her usual abrasive tone.

Cora looked over at her boss sitting behind the register then back at us and replied, "Poetry is what separates us from barbarism." Said and done. She pivoted, turned, and walked back to the kitchen. We all laughed, except Gail, who was sputtering and cursing under her breath.

"Guess she told you," I said drawing a savage look from her. She immediately pushed her plate of eggs and toast away and placed her elbow on the table, coaxing me to do the same. "Okay, little weanie, let's do this. I am going to kick your skinny ass."

"Yeah, come on, Barry," Willis joined in.

"Shut up, you're next," she warned, shaking her fist at him.

"Children," Eric shouted out, trying to quiet us down before the owner or his wife came over to the table. We had already been warned several times in the last few weeks to keep it down. The Albanian had once threatened to ban us from the premises if we didn't shut up, telling us no politics. "Let me have some quiet time, please."

We were a strange group. Willis, the black man who saw himself not as a minority but an urban denizen of New York City, Jorge, the PR with the inferiority complex, unable to come to grips with his displacement from an island he barely remembered, Gail, the butch dike who happened to have an almost angelic beautiful face, and Eric, the man/boy of privilege continually bent on destruction. Add me to the mix and you had five people from disparate backgrounds thrown together only a city like New York could assemble. Our conversations dipped into politics occasionally but most times we probably just conversed on topical subjects and bitched about school: lazy professors, crappy prospects, tests, cost of books, the usual.

Religion, as a subject, didn't come up much. Of the group, I was probably the only budding atheist. Gail, judging by her infrequent comments on the subject, was most likely agnostic, which, to me, was weak, proving a person wasn't brave enough to either accept or reject the status quo of spiritual attainment. Jorge was a lifelong Catholic, which, in practice, meant that he took his indoctrination from his early years in absorbing catechism without giving it much thought. Mom. Dad. Everyone in his family knew their roles when it came time for the Church to provide them with a road map to salvation. Ancient ritual had been enhanced by a steady stream of saints, each one designated for whatever contingency was needed in life. He was prepared to genuflect when needed, simple as that. Giving any thought to religion was pointless. Willis was a little different in that while Christianity for the Black community had always been an integral one, the very essence in some instances, he gave it only lip service, choosing to keep it as an option if need be. This usually translated into regular visits to the church of his parents, particularly on holy days and keeping any judgements about the proceedings to a minimum. It wasn't productive to criticize obese Reverends who had gotten fat off the Sunday offerings. They held sway with much of the congregation, arbiters of the Holy Word. The Bible had seen them through the harrowing times of generations past, even if the very same God had put them in harms way to begin with. Last, Eric, the one you would have expected to be the most vociferous opponent of any organized religion. He wasn't. Religion, to him, contained some of man's best majesty, a construct that proved mankind could be lyrical in its pursuit of understanding. Something like that. When he got in an expansive mood words seemed to flow out of his mouth like a torrent of confusing ideas, even while he was perfectly articulate.

It was Eric who brought up the subject that day. He is to blame for my downfall. A sight he had seen that very morning prompted him to mention religion.

"You saw what?" Willis wanted to know, making a face.

"A monk," Eric answered, nodding his head yes to reaffirm his response. "Right there by Madison Square Garden."

"What were you doing down by the Garden?" I asked, because he lived up on the Upper Eastside and the Garden would have been out of his way if he was coming to class.

Eric raised his eyebrows at me, a signal to let me know he had been out on one of his endless side trips, this time Chelsea, another night time excursion about which most of the details had been happily forgotten. "Buying tickets," he muttered, smiling at me.

"What's a monk doing in New York?" Gail said, stirring some more creamer into her coffee, watching it swirl around in the cup.

"Well, it seems that the Padre was returning to his lair," Eric explained, laughing.

"Monastery," Jorge announced authoritatively. "I think on twenty-third street."

"Close," Eric said, patting his arm. "The friary is on thirty first street. Franciscans. You know, of St Francis of Assisi fame. Guy had on the...the garb...the cowl and sandals. Very medieval and all."

"That's weird," Willis mumbled, showing his disinterest, just another odd spectacle in the big city.

"Yeah, tell me about it," Eric exclaimed. "I thought I was seeing things. He passed right by me and I had to do a double take. The guy seemed normal."

"Normal," Gail spat out, surprised. "You talked to him?"

"Sure," Eric replied, shrugging. "I wanted to know what his story was. So I asked him."

"You asked some weird looking guy in a costume what his story was?" Willis interjected, now interested in the topic. "And?"

Eric looked at each of us one by one, trying to gauge the mood of the group, then said, "He told me he was a priest...and a monk I guess and lived at the monastery. It sort of boggled my mind for a second because I have lived in the city all my life and never knew there even was a monastery here. I knew about the moonies...and the Hare Krishnas...and maybe some other nutcases but this was news to me. Kind of cool. Monastery, right in Manhattan. Wasn't Father Tuck a Franciscan?"

"Who in the hell is Father Tuck?" Willis asked, chuckling.

"From Robin Hood," I informed him, pantomiming somebody shooting a bow and arrow. "And it's Friar Tuck."

"The things you white people come up with," Willis joked, resorting to his usual line of attack when he found the conversation slipping into territory he either didn't want to discuss or didn't understand.

"This conversation is now officially the strangest one we ever had," Gail declared, shaking her head.

"He was kind of fascinating," Eric stated in a serious tone. " I mean it. Imagine being not only a religious figure in New York City but a monk on top of that. A monk. With the long robe thing and the cross dangling down around your waist. Sandals. You are walking around thinking about whatever Franciscans think about and you're in the city for fuck's sake. Nothing pastoral. No spiritual connection what's so ever. Just skyscrapers and commuters in a mad dash all around you. Yet here you are," he continued, standing up to imitate the monk walking down the street, "doing your thing while the city buzzes all around you. Incredible."

We didn't share in his fascination for the monk. Just another sideshow. Every day in the city you saw strange behavior. It came with living in a locale with millions of people. Sheer numbers alone assured you of seeing something unusual on the street. Flashers. Bums peeing on the curb. Three card monte specialists ripping off the gullible. Chess games. Half dressed hookers on Eighth flagging down customers. Cops applying justice with night sticks on the corner. Stray dogs locked in mortal combat. Buskers singing off key. Acrobats doing hasty routines for coins. Drunken conventioneers blowing horns and making obscene gestures to hecklers of their respective party. Celebs hurrying along with their agents in tow. Wild eyed Cassandra's predicting doom as the end of the world was near, male and female, refugees from Bellevue on sabbatical. It was a steady stream of entertainment if you cared to be a spectator.

"We got that test this week?" Gail asked me for some reason, thinking I might be the best one to ask, which was silly since I seldom kept up with any of the mini milestones one needed to complete a course.

"What, you don't think a man in a monk outfit is interesting, Pomona?" Eric needled.

"First of all, stop calling me Pomona," she shot back, pointing a finger at him. "We get it, you know all about mythological crap. Second, who gives a shit about some monk walking down Broadway? Big deal. Get over it. Life goes on. Some poor schmuck happens to believe in all those fairy tales and lives in a monastery. Whoopee. Good for him. Maybe god will let him in heaven when his time comes. Bless his fucking heart."

We all laughed together at her expense which only made her angrier. When Gail got agitated her normally deep voice rose an octave or two, making her sound like some cartoon character. She fumed at the table. Jorge, taking up his customary position of peace maker, chided us for making fun of her. The tense moment quickly passed, as usual, evaporating, replaced by other things to talk about. As New Yorkers, we were thick skinned and it took a lot to rile us up; but this time Eric wasn't going to let the sight of seeing a monk on the street slip past.

"What's it like being a monk anyway?" he asked no one in particular.

"Maybe he wasn't really a monk," Willis suggested sensibly. "I mean what about that cowboy dude, you know, the one who walks around mid-town in his underwear strumming his guitar. He ain't no cowboy but he thinks he is. Cowboy hat, cowboy boots--not a cowboy."

"I talked to the guy," Eric explained, looking directly at Willis, who gave him a "so what" expression in return. "He told me where the church is. I've been by there. Never knew it was a monastery but I've seen the place. I know a church when I see it."

"Big deal," Willis shot back. "The guy was probably putting you on. I bet he was working as an extra in a movie being filmed around there. In between scenes."

"Sure," Eric said, snorting derisively. "The guy was legit--trust me. He even invited me into the monastery any time I wanted to talk."

We all hooted at that revelation, jostling each other in the booth, as we tried to picture Eric and purportedly a monk holding a conversation. Willis, as could have been predicted, launched into a routine with him playing both parts, an inquisitive Eric and a taciturn recluse, cloistered away in a mysterious monastery in the middle of New York City. He dutifully changed his voice for each part and had us laughing uproariously in seconds, so much so that the owner drifted over and hushed us, wagging his finger for emphasis.

"I think we should all take a field trip down to this supposed monastery to see Mr. Monk," Gail suggested, squelching another laugh. "Might be educational for all of us." In between giggles, she added, "Maybe we can see whether or not they'll take on Eric as some kind of apprentice. Can you see Eric as a monk. There wouldn't be any sacrificial wine left over for communion."

"Very funny," Eric stated almost angrily, not used to being at the butt end of our jokes, most times left unscathed because we didn't like to bite the hand that fed us with free forays to the coffee shop. "I told you what I saw...and what I know. You can choose to believe it or don't, I don't really give a shit."

"You're not Catholic are you?" I asked, not trying to needle him even though it came out that way.

"Yeah, I'm the one Catholic from Sweden," he answered sarcastically. "Hell no, we're Lutherans...nominally anyway. My parents are, you know, part time Christians. For the holidays. God stays locked away most of the year. We don't even think about religion really. Part abstraction. Part distraction. Secular Europe lives on in me," he declared, grinning.

"Then your parents are going to be shocked to find their son is going to be taking his vows," Gail quipped, laughing.

"Let it go, Gail" I warned, not wanting the subject to escalate any further.

"Do you think any of us could get by in a monastery?" Willis suddenly asked. "I know I couldn't."

"Ask Jorge, he's Catholic," Gail stated, jerking her thumb in his direction.

"So are you," he countered, eyeing her.

"Me," she scoffed. "Don't let my Irish last name fool you," she exclaimed in a dismissive tone. "My parents baggage, not mine. I left the church when they kicked me out of parochial school. Long time ago."

"Diddling the nuns," Eric muttered loud enough to hear.

"Play nice," she told him, shaking her fist in his face. "Religion didn't like me and the feeling was mutual. Good riddance. My mom, now she's a picture of...of religiosity. Is that a word? Still goes to Mass every Sunday. Dad, not so much, but I think he still believes all the bullshit, right down to the Pope being an agent of God. Sad but true. People out there still want something to help them cope with the fact they are fucked and need spiritual sustenance."

"Well put," Eric praised, applauding. "I couldn't have said it better."

"You are going to go to infierno," Jorge warned with a stern face. He mumbled something in Spanish and added in English, "You will change your minds when it is time."

"Time for what?" I asked trying to tone down my mocking demeanor. Jorge glanced at me and smiled sheepishly and decided not to answer. "This guy, Gary, that I know he--"

"Oh, jeez, not him again," Gail said, exhaling. "Is he your boy friend or something? You sound like a fag when you mention his name."

"Yeah, right," I replied, making a face at her, relatively sure I didn't have to prove my heterosexual inclinations with anyone in the group, especially her. "I was just going to say that he is one of those types who have become dependent on the one he believed harmed him to begin with."

"Huh?" Eric said mockingly.

"No, listen, God was his tormentor. He had taken his wife and his unborn kid from him. I told you about it. The story. His pregnant wife was killed in his apartment back in Philly. Anyway, Gary couldn't do harm to God per se but he could deny his existence, thereby extinguishing him...God."

There was silence at the table for a moment while the others let that little nugget settle in their brain pans. Then Jorge, of all people, said, "Could you repeat that?"

The others broke into peals of laughter, drawing the owner over again, who gave us another warning to shut up. Some of the other customers were making noise about being disturbed and others were oblivious. White noise in New York had such a large band that it took a great deal to bother some people. I knew it was my turn to get ridiculed, which was the normal procedure, a sort of round robin of verbal abuse we all suffered under.

"No, I couldn't," I said, laughing along with them, knowing my side trips into philosophical matters was routinely humiliating, a one way street towards confusion and self effacing backtracking as I bailed out on any attempts to explain myself. "I was trying to say that some people need a god in order to pin things on."

With tears in her eyes from laughing, Gail stated: "I think Barry should go in the monastery, not Eric. Maybe he could become the next St Francis or something. What do you think?"

"Sounds good to me," Willis chimed in. "I know you don't see too many brothers in those places, right? It's kind of a white thing."

"Oh, sure, make it all about race," Eric joked, elbowing Willis good naturedly. "If you became a monk then maybe your parents would finally respect you."

"Now you are hitting below the belt," Willis responded, smiling, even though the comment had hit close to the bone.

"I guess you gotta respect priests even if you don't believe in what they are doing," I offered, wishing immediately that I had been just a little more circumspect about what I said.

"Priests," Gail spat out, almost snarling. "Bunch of pansies in dresses. A pox on them. They don't deserve any respect--come on. Look what they do, nothing. They stand up there in front of a bunch of losers, wave around some smelly incense, tell you to eat the body of Christ, drink his blood, then they want you to tell them about all of your sexcapades at confession so they can whack off in the next booth. It's disgusting."

"Sounds like she's speaking from experience, " Eric exclaimed, grinning.

"Girl on girl," Willis said, nodding at Eric.

"Perverts," she exclaimed, shaking her head.

"What I meant was they spend X number of years preparing and go through the training to become what they believe in. That's admirable to me," I explained, trying to sound more emphatic. "Not many people can do that."

"What, be delusional?" Gail countered.

Jorge clucked his tongue at her and said, "They are holy men."

"What the fuck does that mean?" Gail asked almost angrily. "Holy men. Are you kidding me? They are guys who can't get laid." We all laughed. "My parish priest was this senile old prick who liked to smack kids with a ruler when they did something wrong. I'm glad all that training went into something."

"You Catholic kids had it rough," Eric offered, half in jest. "It's really incredible to me that religion can still be around after all these centuries, especially since all of the crazy shit went down over the years. You know what I mean, right? Holy wars. Burning people at the stake. Crap like that."

Jorge shook his head and said in a whisper, almost as if by raising his voice any higher the powers that be might over hear what he was saying, "Christo was good for the earth."

"Good for the earth?" Willis exclaimed, laughing openly. "Man, Jorge, some of the stuff you come up with is truly amazing. I mean how did this guy get into college?" His question hung in the air for a moment before he added, "You know I's just playing with chew." With Willis, he often times relapsed back into ghetto speak like he was speaking some sort of patois, before resorting to standard English again. He had told us once that his father used to smack him on the back of the head every time he uttered anything remotely resembling Black diction. "You do know Jesus Christ was a black man don't you. Dark skin. Kinky hair. Probably had lips bigger than mine too."

"Jews are black now?" Eric questioned, smirking. "Rewriting history are we?"

"The dude was from some place near Africa last time I checked," Willis stated defensively. "I don't think he had blue eyes and blond hair. He wasn't a Viking."

"Got me there," Eric replied, holding up his hands in surrender.

"He was a con man," I announced even though I didn't really have any feelings about Jesus or religion either way, besides thinking it was all a farce. It, to me, was a necessary evil that we all had to respect because it was ingrained in all of us. "How else can you explain so many people falling for his bullshit."

"Now that is a novel take on it," Eric stated, slapping my arm lightly. "Maybe he should write a book about JC...no, a play."

"Why are you so condescending?" Gail wanted to know, glaring at Eric. "Really. Why?"

"Didn't know I was," he shot back, returning her stare.

"Patronizing, that's a better word for what he does," Willis explained, pointing his finger at Eric. "It's because he was brought up that way. His people are all like that. They think they are superior to everyone else. He can't help himself."

Sputtering, Eric exclaimed, "What in the fuck are you talking about? I might talk to you like that because you are nothing but a phony: phony ghetto black, phony...phony student, the list goes on. Your problem is that you can't live with the fact that you have no background on the streets, in Harlem. You are middle-class with no credibility. Must hurt."

"How about I take you outside--in the streets--and kick your lily white ass," Willis threatened, clenching his fists.

"I've seen this movie before," Gail interjected, forcing a laugh. "I mean, come on, you guys are always posturing around each other, like two limp dick roosters. Neither one of you is authentic. Get over it. Eric, you can do drugs and drink yourself to death; while Willis there can pretend that he is Shaft or somebody else he thinks is blacker than him." We all laughed together because she was right. This very same line of conversation had unfolded dozens of times and each successive time nothing changed. "Shake hands or slap hands or whatever you boys are doing now to each other and make up. Life is just too damn short to have to listen to your shit all the time."

"Well put," I declared, clapping.

"Still say I saw a monk today," Eric muttered.

"Again with the monk," Willis cried out, throwing up his hands.

"How is the monk relevant to anything?" I asked, using a word I had latched onto recently, along with its cousin "irrelevant" because I liked that it yanked things into perspective easily without having to use much of a rationale.

"If you'd have seen him you would have known what I'm going on about," Eric answered, rubbing his temples with his index fingers in slow, methodical circles. "It was like a sign."

"A sign?" Gail asked, perplexed. "Of what?"

"I don't know," he replied petulantly. Willis made a circle around the side of his face with his finger to show that he thought Eric might be losing it. "It didn't make sense then and it doesn't now."

"You were high," Jorge slipped in the conversation, retreating back into silence.

"All systems normal," I quipped.

Eric glanced at me, the closest one of the group to him, and said, "It wasn't like I was seeing anything apocalyptic, you know, like the end of the world or anything. The monk didn't have a scythe in his hand."

"What's that?" Jorge wanted to know, confused.

We ignored him, as Gail leaned forward in her seat and asked in an even tone of voice, "You okay?"

Eric looked up at her and mumbled to himself, while I broke in with: "You are getting close to frying your brain. You know that, right? Can't go on doing what your doing and not expect to see the end of the world coming your way."

"Revelations," Willis stated almost solemnly. "One of my aunts is big on that. She thinks Jesus is about to arrive and boy is he pissed off. I mean it. People are going to have to pay up. No excuses."

Gail looked over at Willis and gave him a withering look then said, "Don't listen to him. He's an idiot. What you got to do is just slow down, Eric. Slow the fuck down. Simple as that. Take your foot off the gas pedal."

"I don't know what the big deal is anyway," I said, trying to sound non-chalant. "What's so scary about a monk--or religion for that matter. Bunch of crap. Who needs it? They rely on scare tactics, that's it." I was cribbing a little, borrowing from what Gary had been bending my ear about for weeks, regurgitating. "I feel sad, pity, for people like that monk who have to use religion in order to get out of bed in the morning. It's a weakness."

There was quiet at the table, while Eric gathered himself a little bit then said, "It takes courage to live like a monk, to separate yourself from what is going on around you, especially in a city like New York. Right? You have to have some kind of resolve."

"Resolve," I scoffed, laughing. "Are you kidding me. The guy's probably some loser who couldn't do anything else with his life. Join a monastery, big fucking deal. What's hard about that?"

"Think you could do it?" Willis suddenly asked, eyeing me. "I don't think you could do it. In fact, I'm positive you couldn't do it."

I don't remember whether at the time I felt the atmosphere at the table changing, morphing, but looking back I surely do. We were all equal opportunity offenders, comfortable with spearing each other verbally or otherwise when and if the occasion presented itself. With the exception of Jorge, who was generally along for the ride, the others saw it as sport, the singling out of the other members of the Forseti Society. Group think went only one way and that usually included tearing down someone else. Not that it was vicious or anything, just mischievous and mostly unforgiving. Call it an evolving system of hazing.

"Do what?" I asked, taking the bait like some starving and inattentive trout lunging for a pretty, sparkling fly. "Like I'm going to become a monk."

Our particular circular firing squad normally centered around short acting pranks, like convincing one of the others that a particular piece of homework notes was immaterial to their grade or assuring someone that the professor had indeed asked for them to meet him in his or her office after class to discuss their paper or it was necessary to attend a talk being held at City Hall by a renowned criminologists and so on. Mostly harmless.

Eric, at first slow to pick up on the spearing, piped in with: "I don't think you have the guts to become a Catholic." The gauntlet had been thrown down, now all they had to do was for me to pick the damn thing up. "Convert."

"Convert to Catholicism?" I asked, incredulous. "That's stupid. Why would I do that?"

"I think I hear fear in his voice," Willis said, making motions like a chicken and clucking sounds.

"Come on, guys, you know that Barry can't do that," Gail joined in, slyly laying the trap deeper. "He's a Protestant. He'll burn in hell if he were to convert. Nobody would want to risk that."

"Catholic...Protestant, no good," Jorge said, making a guttural sound as he banged his hands together, inadvertently adding to the spearing.

"Get real," I told them, sitting back in the booth and pretending to be watching the other diners.

"His spiritual grip is too fragile," Eric stated, stealing quick glances at Willis and Gail. "You guys shouldn't be challenging him on this kind of thing," he scolded. "It would take a strong individual to be able to pull it off, somebody who is not afraid of fucking with religion. Too risky."

"Yeah, you never know what might happen, do you?" she directed her comment at Willis, who nodded in agreement. "It would be a cool experiment though. Don't you think? Something I'd liked to do but since I was raised a Catholic then it wouldn't work; and you can't really unconvert can you? No, the conversion process is something only a person who is sure of them self, able to withstand the uncertainty and all."

"The Catholics sure know how to indoctrinate," Willis said, pushing back a smile. "I wouldn't want to go up against them, I'll tell you that."

"Father Mike," Eric offered, remembering the monk's name. "I forgot he told me his name when I talked to him. Nice guy. I still can't believe there are monks in Manhattan."

"It sucks to know that a monk is braver than me," Willis stated in reverential tones. "I admire that a man can be so religious in such a secular place."

"He lives in his own world, so what," I exclaimed, now totally drawn into the trap.

"A world that requires him to live within a strict regimen," Eric said.

"Big deal," I exclaimed, wanting to tell my unsuspecting classmates that I lived on the streets, an existence they couldn't conceive of.

"Think you could be a Catholic?" Gail said with almost a wink in his voice. "Not easy."

"Why would I want to become a Catholic?" I asked, suddenly irritated by the conversation.

"The challenge," Eric stated, looking at Gail for affirmation.

"Yeah, we Catholics got it tough," she confirmed, glancing at Jorge. "Lots of heavy lifting in the religious rules department. You wouldn't believe all the things we have to follow. Right, Jorge." He nodded yes even though it was obvious he was confused by the conversation. "I don't think there's any way an atheist like you could understand Catholicism. Too difficult."

They were firing on all cylinders now, playing on my insecurities while appealing to my sense of adventure at the same time. I know it all seems preposterous but at the time the eventual wager aligned with my lost sense of direction. Remember, I was rudderless for the most part, left to drift. I was just heading out of my teen years, on my own, living hand to mouth. The only real friend I had, besides my acquaintances at the college, was Gary, a looney hermit who had convinced me to go attend school even though I was the least likely candidate. Callow youth. Left with no working guidance. I was at the mercy of some guy who was trying to mitigate his guilt by cultivating a diversion--that would be me. Being his project, a fledgling student, helped him more than me.

"What's to understand?" I questioned with bravado, resorting to my street persona for a moment, right down to the blossoming New York accent, heavy on the vowels. "Bunch of ring kissing pussies."

Willis laughed and said, "Imagine seeing what it was like to be one."

"Like an experiment," Eric chimed in, keeping a straight face.

"No way," Gail interjected, shaking her head no. "They don't let just anybody become a Catholic. We got standards, you know."

"There must be a process to convert," Willis stated, rubbing his chin for effect. "People convert all the time. It happens."

"What are you people going on about?" I asked, forcing a snicker.

"Make for a good...you know, experiment," Eric offered in a serious tone of voice. "Unbeliever checks out the other side. It would make for a good movie, don't you think?"

"It would take some pretty big balls to do it," Gail said, nodding in Eric's direction.

"What, you think God's gonna come down and strike the guy dead or something?" I said, smirking. "It doesn't work that way."

"I don't know, man, I think it would be something to see," Willis exclaimed.

"What's it gonna prove anyway? That religion is a bunch of bullshit. I already know that," I stated, drawing a frown from Jorge.

"Might prove that religion is all a charade," Eric explained, seconded by Gail, who pounded the table top.

"Who doesn't know that," I protested weakly.

"Plenty of people, obviously," Eric countered.

"Think you could do it?" Willis suddenly asked me, moving the spearing along. "I don't think you could."

"Me neither," Gail announced, joining in the final assault.

"Sure he could," Eric chimed in, putting his arm around my shoulder in a false show of camaraderie. "Barry's knows what's what. Don't you?"

I pulled away from him a little, glancing around the table for a moment, a quarry with the first whiff of peril coming his way, and replied, "Do what?"

"Convert," Gail and Willis said in unison, a chorus of deceit masked by leering smiles.

"You want me to convert to Catholicism to prove a point. Am I hearing this right?" I inquired, trying to buy myself time to extricate my snared carcass from the trap.

Eric looked first at Willis then at Gail and answered: "Now that you say it out loud it does sound absurd but, you know, I think you can do it. You're the man for the job. I mean I would do it but with my condition it would be a disaster, right? I'd get stoned or drunk and be bounced right out of the program, so to speak. It would get messy. I'd just screw it up. Willis can't do it because he's Black and the Black community doesn't let itself be converted. Right? That would be problematic with the whole slavery issue and gospel singing and spiritual angle. Too many historical trapdoors to fall into. And of course Gail is already Catholic so that'd be counter productive. Forget about Jorge all together. Looks like you would be the best under cover agent."

The others nodded in agreement, with Willis adding, "Man, I get goose bumps just thinking about you infiltrating Catholicism. Real I-Spy shit."

The stone was being place around my neck at this point, as I muttered, "At the monk's place, the one Eric was talking to this morning?"

"Yeah, that works okay," Eric agreed, glancing at his co-conspirators. "I mean any Catholic church would suffice but the monastery adds a nice touch to the experiment. Don't you think?"

Thus was born the plot that would lead to the rest of my life, one of those decisions that keeps resounding through the years with repercussions. I had doomed myself. A fateful choice would direct me towards the end, which would ultimately unfold over decades, on a one way track to a ruinous future. Death. Trial. Prison. Execution avoided. Capital Punishment on the horizon.

Chapter 3 God Is

It was, simply, a wager, but with more portentous possibilities. I stood to make a hundred bucks in the process, a small fortune to a man who lived on a few dollars a day, tops. By now I had the city pretty much wired up, able to score on food in various locations when needed if I didn't mind discards or day old, as well as several crash places to lay my head, and, of course, there was Gary waiting in reserve if need be. I wasn't living the high life exactly but I was getting by. I was the embodiment of an autonomous person, the guy who lives without restriction, like some character from a movement novel, where the object is to confound the established norms and prove that existence goes beyond theoretical existentialism. Actually, it didn't mean any of that. It was plan B after there was no plan A.

Something as asinine and, basically, innocuous as a bet had landed me a future I could never have envisioned. Living as I did, with a street level view, you never thought of fate. Fate was for people who had choices. We, I, didn't have any or not any that created much breathing space. Every passing hour brought you closer to the next roadblock standing in your way, just waiting to thwart your progress.

"Might as well get started right away," Eric suggested in an enthusiastic tone of voice, one that dripped with insincerity. "Want me to go with you?"

"I would but church's and me don't mix," Gail offered, giving me a sad look.

"Same here, Catholic ones anyway," Willis joined in with, smiling at me. "You'll have to give us progress reports."

"We'll definitely be there for when you finally convert--the ceremony," Gail announced. "Got to make sure you actually win the bet and all."

"Yeah, we wouldn't want you to try to put one over on us," Eric stated, nodding at Gail. "Got to have some basic ground rules here, like you actually converting all the way. Probably with some taking of communion sort of thing. Right?" Gail nodded in agreement. "I don't know what's actually involved in all this conversion thing but I'm pretty sure you will have to complete some ceremony."

"Drink the wine, my man," Willis declared happily, rubbing his hands in front of him.

"First communion, as a Catholic," Gail stated, grinning at Willis. "Maybe they'll make him wear a first communion outfit. I don't know, can't remember what they do."

"You guys are enjoying this, I see," I said, now determined to take their money.

It started two days later, after a morning class, with Eric hailing a cab and riding with me downtown. We found the monastery easily enough, tucked away on a side street, not far from the Garden. It wasn't, as I half expected, walled off from the city like some medieval castle but built into the existing cityscape, blending in. There was a decent sized church with all the Catholic trappings and a facility in the back for the monks to reside in. My concept of monastery leaned towards the movies incarnation, with giant spires looming over the countryside and the incessant ringing of chants echoing off the thick stone walls cold from centuries of inclement weather. There would be nothing but stern faces peering out from hoods and piety so thick you could taste the institutional opprobrium coming your way for being an unrepentant and incorrigible sinner.

Not the case, as we quickly discovered walking into the receiving area adjacent to the church. To my surprise, and dismay, Eric insisted on accompanying me in to the next leg of my journey through life. I, in a word, felt ridiculous doing what I was setting out to do, but not for any impropriety I was about to thrust on the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Far from that. It was starting to dawn on me that I might be in for a long slog in order to win a bet. The hundred bucks was going to be well earned.

"Nice and quiet in here," Eric chirped beside me, proving that anybody, even him, could be annoying.

"I'm here now, so you don't have to stick around," I hissed in a half whisper, a leftover relic from my own brief and infrequent church attending days. "Thanks for the lift down here."

"No problem," he replied, looking around the anterior room to where all the action took place next door every day of the week. If we listened hard we could just make out the murmurings of a priest presiding over the mid-day mass; which was, in the interest of accuracy, not well attended. New York must have been a tough nut to crack when it came time to demonstrate Christ's influence on world affairs. "I think you should go with Father Mike. I liked him. Seemed like an okay guy."

"Thanks," I said, keeping my irritation under control, as I told myself he was there to make sure I went through with it. After all, money to him was a minor detail. This was a diversion he could enjoy, a long, elaborate source of amusement. "That sign says ring the bell."

The bell was rung, actually a buzzer of some sort which set off alarms behind the closed door to the cloistered area of the monastery. I don't know what went on behind that closed door. I wasn't privy to the monks everyday lives, how they got through another day of waiting for Jesus to come back, locked into a timeframe with no clock. I pushed the button. Out came a monk, dressed just as Eric had described, cowl, robes, sandals, giving off a whiff of the middle-ages. He was in his late fifties, smiling, and accommodating, not unlike a congenial desk clerk at a medium sized hotel.

"Father Mike around?" Eric asked before I could say anything. The monk smiled, nodded, then retreated back into the inner sanctum. "Good service."

"Are you doing this or me?" I exclaimed testily, giving him a look.

"Sorry," he muttered, walking over to a display of religious paraphernalia on the far wall, vespers, along with some bulletins about what the monastery was doing for the community, proving its value.

A few minutes later the door opened again and out stepped Father Mike. Straight from central casting. With a patchy beard. Rotund gut. Medium height. Smiling at us. I immediately sized him up like one of my next marks on the street, trying to gauge what approach I should use: confused, forsaken, maybe lost innocence. Recently. Need rescuing. The monk's wide smile was disarming me though, like a protective mask.

"Hi, my name's Barry," I said, launching into my routine, the one I usually used when I wanted to disarm my prey immediately, take them down swiftly like a predator in the wild. I stuck out my hand and added, "I didn't know who to turn to...to help with my problem. Not a problem really but more of a life adjustment." Part of me was embarrassed because I knew Eric was within earshot and was probably hearing me in my natural habitat, huckster, con man, disreputable.

"Father Mike," I heard Eric call out cheerfully behind me, followed by his footsteps echoing across the floor. "I met you the other day, on the street. Remember?"

The monk looked over my shoulder at the advancing guy with the greasy smile and almost took a defensive step back, a reflexive move he had probably developed after living in the city for a while. He had a confused look on his face. Eric launched into a congenial spiel, something he was particularly adept at; there was a reason Gail always told him he should be a salesman. The monk stayed on his guard for a moment, forcing a professional smile I imagined priests had to flash often in their line of work. Encountering sinners of every description was in the job description. Saving souls was messy work.

"Oh, yes," Father Mike finally offered as his memory caught up to the present, even though I wasn't sure whether or not he was just humoring us. Maybe he did remember Eric from their chance meeting on the street. Maybe not. "What can I do for you?" he wanted to know, wary of what we might want of him.

"I'll have to let my friend, Barry, fill you in on that," Eric stated, grinning at me, urging me to step up.

At that moment my decision to be conned by the Forseti Society never seemed so absurd. Really. A bet. To convert. Of course there was no thought of spilling that detail to the monk. That I was an imposter had to be kept on a need to know basis. Sure I was tinkering with the monk's defined mission in life but there was no need to bring him in on the wager. That would have probably gotten me some real live--and demonstrative--criticism, not to mention profanity, most likely uttered in Latin. The priest would have been well within his rights to show us the door. Religion was no laughing matter. Your soul was at stake. Not me, specifically, mainly because I didn' t think I had one or not one that mattered all the much. If it were a commodity the price tag would be cut rate, half off.

As I stood there looking at the monk, the priest, it suddenly dawned on me that I was being a jerk for insinuating myself into the confidence of a man who had devoted his life to a cause, even if that cause, religious as it was, more or less was ridiculous. By a lot of measures the Catholic Church meant something to a great deal of the world population. Who was I to be a provocateur?

In our little group we hadn't had many polemics about religion as a rule, just the usual bickering concerning our respective upbringings and how we were made to endure the almost mandatory brush with religious prerogatives. I had made my customary beefs, complaints of general dissatisfaction with the expected rituals a person was supposed to respect, silly prohibitions included. It wasn't anything constructive or remotely intellectual; in fact, it was anti-scholastic, not in any way founded in scholarly reading. To the contrary, it didn't have any foundation in Biblical critiques or elementary atheistic diatribes. I just didn't think a person should be told what and what not to do. Call it a teenage rebellion against authority.

I couldn't be the anti-crusader, some guy out there looking to do battle against an established religion, especially one that looked back centuries and had hundreds of saints doing their bidding. They even had the bones of Jesus secreted away, I think. Wars had been fought. Torture. Forced conversions. Me, I was going to waltz into a monastery, in New York City no less, and make a mockery of their belief system, one so ancient that Roman Emperors had seen fit to adopt it. This was heroic bullshit for an anti-hero type far more courageous than I.

"Hey, Father Mike," I offered up, feeling the priestly title stick in my throat for an instant, an alien form of address that seemed somehow inauthentic to me. "Eric told me about you and--"

"I did, Father Mike, and my friend here has a question to ask you," Eric interjected, telling me later on that he just wanted to make sure I didn't chicken out of the deal, wanting to put me on the spot so I couldn't back out.

The monk looked my way, waiting, giving me a quizzical look. Two parishioners came out of the church and swept by us, greeting Father Mike with a nod, before disappearing out the door. As they opened the door the street noises invaded the quiet for a moment then faded away when they closed the door behind them. I hadn't taken the time to practice my intro, thinking it was going to be straight forward, just another street con, something my skill set provided ample experience with. I could be glib, possessing a disarming charm when need be. It didn't come as easily as it did to Eric but then again he was never trying to separate people from their money.

"I was wondering if I could discuss something with you...in private," I suggested, avoiding eye contact with Eric because I knew he would think I was trying to be evasive.

"Oh come on, Bare, you can ask the father right here," Eric announced, slapping me on the back. "We're all friends here." This was said with a grin at the priest and a more stern look my way, as he let me know I was going to have to initiate the bet right then and there.

"I...I was just," I stammered, looking away from Eric and at the monk, who was puzzled and beginning to think we were either mentally unstable or bent on something larcenous. I immediately wondered if someone had ever tried to hold up the monastery. In New York you never knew. Little was sacred. Plenty of junkies I had encountered wouldn't think twice about filching from the offering plate. I could easily see one of them mugging the monk for that nice, big crucifix he had attached around his waist. Right to the pawn shop. Must be worth something to somebody. "I was thinking about converting to Catholicism and wondered how to get started in that direction."

"In that direction," Father Mike said, amused by my choice of words. "I guess you could call it a direction." We all laughed together, in on a joke that at least two of us weren't sharing with the other one. "We do have a procedure," the priest stated, pleased by his mild jocular tone. "I think I can help you with that."

All religions have a conversion process. It provided the lifeblood they needed to expand. The base of their religion could only go so far. Birth rates constrained growth to some degree. There was a reason the Catholic Church liked for their adherents to populate like rabbits: more "knee benders," as my father liked to call them. Despite this, I wasn't sure whether or not the monk was enthusiastic about taking another sinner into the fold. Most times, and maybe it was because he was a cloistered holy man, he seemed too damn collected, like he had profited from some weird little known Christian Zen or something. Christians, for the most part, were always hyper worried about judgement day even if it was in a subliminal way. Being calm was for those Eastern religions, where everyone thought they were always going to be given another chance to spin the wheel of fate. Come back as a prince, with bucks, making the next go round a lot more fun.

"How do we get started?" I asked, glancing at Eric, who gave me a quick look of approval, still believing that there was no way I would ever complete the task. Either I would bail on the dirty project or the Church would divine my subterfuge and probably have me crucified, possibly in the dungeon that was undoubtedly located in the bowels of the monastery, deep underground so no one could hear my screams for mercy as the subway trains rumbled by not feet away behind walls of concrete.

"Do you have time now for us to talk a little bit?" the monk asked in earnest, eyeing me closely, almost as if he were looking into my soul, if I had one. "We can go inside and discuss it."

Inside? I was thinking, looking over his shoulder at where he had appeared from, through a door that when closed seemed, to me, to seal off the outside world. I could have just been too paranoid. Paranoia was a common trait shared by all people who lived on the street, it came like a built in attribute, something that was going to save your life one day when you got into something inextricable. Eric couldn't stop grinning next to me. This was good fun to him. He was so positively jaded that it took a lot to amuse him anymore. The guy had done so many questionable things everything that came next was most times anti-climatic; and he was all of twenty-one, with two colleges attended behind him to go along with several trips to Europe and other locales around the globe. I felt sorry for him even as he stood there and used me to gain some entertainment, anything to ring a bell in his brain that would conceivably provide amusement.

"Go on, Barry, I got to get going anyway," Eric informed me, smiling at the priest. He then leaned in to whisper: "Have fun."

I glanced at him and muttered, "I'm still gonna do this, you bastard." He smiled at me and started for the door to the street, whistling to himself. I would have liked to smack him, a nice slap across the face, but instead turned to the monk and said, "I'm ready." This sounded too much like a man being led to the gallows, somebody resigned to their miserable fate, so I quickly exclaimed, "I'm gonna need some guidance on this." I hoped to butter up the priest and at the same time show him that I was prepared to be compliant, which is what I deduced being religious required. You were, essentially, laying down for a god, a powerful being, who was going to control your every move. Something along those lines. Time to forfeit your freedom of thought, let a religious canon of some variety do everything for you.

From the door, Eric called out: "Good luck." He managed to instill those two words with as much snarkiness as he could before disappearing outside. Even though I had no way of knowing, I was sure he stood guard on the street for at least a little while to make sure I didn't abscond away, running for my dignity if not my sanity.

I fell in step with the monk as we went inside to the inner sanctum, a place not many secular beings dared to tread. Okay, I am being melodramatic. Sort of. Passing that barrier was, for me, fraught with peril. Sure I was fulfilling my end of the bet and all but in doing so I was still going to have to face, you know, myself, not unlike in front of a mirror and examining your image reflected back at you. Right? Here I stand. Where exactly are my blemishes?

"Lived in New York very long?" Father Mike wanted to know as we made our way to a small room buried inside the building, one not unlike you might find in an office building. Small desk. Two chairs. Although the walls were totally devoid of decor. No tacky posters depicting middle-brow art. Thankfully no landscape paintings done by neo-impressionists unskilled with a brush. He motioned for me to sit down. "You sound like you might have a different accent."

Most people didn't mention my Philly accent, which could at times mark me as a Bridge person, one of the detested losers who came into the city for work or entertainment but couldn't cut it and chose to live in the suburbs. The accent had flattened in the short time I had been there but only because I consciously made an attempt to disguise it. By now I could mimic a Bronx honking accent or even a twisting Brooklyn one if need be but mostly tried to keep it neutral. It was better for maintaining my invisibility. "I'm from Philly," I replied, noticing for the first time the monk smelled of tobacco smoke, the rich, sickeningly sweet aroma of dried fruit. On cue, the monk pulled a pipe out of one of his pockets in his monastic tunic and began packing it with tobacco.

This scene, for me, particularly me who had little one on one contact with people lately except for Gary, was rife with awkwardness. One on one with a priest added another layer of weirdness. Then again, it was, in its way, an adventure. Remember, I was young and after a year on the street had developed an almost buccaneer's attitude. Part of me felt invulnerable and the remaining parts were just ignorant enough to not know when I was in a precarious situation. Not that the rotund monk posed any problems. What was he going to do to me? Curse me. Bring his god into it, or any number of idle saints loitering around in the vestibule. Although I will say even now I can remember the monastery giving off an eerie vibe, even though I wasn't on board with the whole purported omniscient nature of Catholicism. True it had done battle over the centuries against any number of heathen practitioners and won out, often times in a rout. I direct your attention to South America, an entire continent subjugated from top to bottom and many times against some pretty steep odds.

I wasn't thinking about any of this though. Not then. I was more concerned about presenting my case, as it were, which I had worked out in advance, a profile. Lost soul. Protestant forbearers. Weak in spiritual content and therefore not at all satisfactory. Needed help. That only the Holy Roman entity could provide. Don't lay it on too thick.

"Are you in school?" the jolly monk wanted to know, as he fiddled with his pipe while a blue haze drifted around his head, a toxic cloud of almost putrid sweetness, a potpourri of unctuous decaying petals.

His question caught me by surprise. Before hand I had decided to not include that part in my pseudo bio, thinking it might be too invasive or close to the truth. No, I was going to be some schmuck working in a deadend job with little prospects, single, and going nowhere. Truth be known, I wasn't going anywhere but he didn't need to know the specifics of my incomplete life.

"Uh, thinking about it," I managed to answer, cursing myself for not being more mentally adroit. It was inexcusable particularly since I lived off my wits almost everyday of the week. "Trying to get motivated in that direction." This sounded purposely vague and I hoped that he didn't think I was being evasive. I needed for this pre-interview to go well. Neutralize him, a voice in my head was demanding. "I wanted to get my other problem out of the way first...before I tackled my future." Good. This sounded right, with just the correct amount of neediness but not too desperate or looney.

Father Mike nodded and played with his pipe, fussing with the bowl for a moment before saying, "We all need to...to establish ourselves with God." This sounded like some pretty rarefied bullshit but I let it pass. "I want to ask you some questions about your background, your religious background. How much of a grounding do you have in religion. That sort of thing."

Now I wished I had boned up on religion in some way. Practiced. My religious background had been basically nil. It wasn't that my parents, and family as a whole, were raving secularists but that they just took having a god look over us as a given. The specific religious superstructure was, for the most part, immaterial. Being nominal Protestants translated into taking for granted the end game. Blah. Blah. When the time came we would all drop to our knees and suddenly develop some keen expertise when we needed to pray. Forgive me for this. Forgive me for that. Point me to those lovely clouds where the angels like to hang out. It was finely applied ignoring taken to the extreme. Don't bother me. I won't bother you. Until which time it is necessary. If my parents could have bottled the philosophy or at least promulgated it effectively that might have been millionaires, like those idiots you see on TV raking in the bucks with an 800 number flashing at the bottom of the screen.

I had to think for a moment before finally replying: "Sketchy. My parents weren't into organized religion all that much. I did get baptized in a church though." This last statement was to let the monk know he wasn't dealing with a practicing pagan. Our version of pre-heaven earth might have some divergent ideas but I was still grasping for forgiveness from the tripartite version of the godhead. I sure didn't want Christ's suffering to have been in vain.

Father Mike muttered to himself for a moment, then puffed on his pipe, sending out more billowing smoke dense with a choking floral scent. "I see," he finally said to me, frowning almost disapprovingly. "Protestant. No exact denomination." He said it like I was some mutant he was going to have to send to the lab for molecule rearranging. "What brings you to the Catholic end of things?"

I was beginning to see that this monk knew how to turn a phrase when he wanted to. He might have been living a fundamentally cloistered life but he did get out once in a while. World events might have not touched his life with any direct immediacy but he did interact with what was going on up and down the block. New York's pulsating vibrancy could hardly be overlooked. He got out once in a while; in fact I would soon learn that he partook of the real world on his days off and yes even monks get time off from the soul saving business.

"I...I don't know, really," I answered, realizing I had to do better. This monk wasn't going to be a push over. I needed to woo him or at least his church. Flatter him, a voice told me. Tell the monk how his chosen branch of Christianity is the bona fide one, not those other imposters. Throw in something about the Pope being on a first name basis with God. These ridiculous thoughts tumbled around in my head because, ultimately, I was there on a bet and on its face it was all totally ludicrous. Really. I was converting to make a hundred bucks. What rabbit hole had I fallen into? "I thought I needed to find the most legitimate religion." This sounded a wee bit too strident. Sure Protestants were usurpers and plagiarists but don't suck up too much. "There has always been something, for me, about Catholicism that I found, you know, authentic. I can't really put my finger on it but it's like a feeling." That's right, fall back on vagueness and just a little morsel of sycophancy. Don't sound too nutty. Keep it grounded.

The monk eyed me for a moment, chewing slowly on the pipe stem clenched in his teeth, then mumbled something inaudible before saying, "A feeling." He tapped the pipe contents into a small trash can he had pulled up by his chair. I watched him as he busied himself with cleaning out the bowl. Meticulous. Why not? The man lived in a monastery and although they might have been taking up space in the middle of Manhattan their sense of time was contained within canon law and some clock with soundless ticking. "We might have some work to do. With you. I wonder if you can commit yourself to doing it."

Now he was impugning my character or at least calling my diligence into question; of course he was right on the money. I looked and, to him probably, smelled like a slacker. Looking at me you didn't see a guy who was going to go the distance, not in life and certainly not in attaining the magic position of being on God's roster with the real religion. Couldn't blame him. I, in his shoes (sandals) most likely would have told me to take a hike. Beat it. Hit the bricks. There's a Protestant church right down the street. Can you sing? I think their choir needs a baritone.

"I think I can," I declared, adding just the right amount of enthusiasm and sincerity. "I have given this a lot of thought over the months. This hasn't been easy. I--"

"This might take months, you know," he warned, eyeing me closely, scratching at his incomplete beard. "We are going on a journey here."

Journey? I thought, almost laughing. Somehow the monk had veered off into new age speak and sounded like some guru who might have wandered into the wrong sanctuary. "I can do it." This was stated with resolve, the very same tone I used when I wanted to close a deal out there on the street, bring a con to a plateau of completion, when you finally land the sucker involved. "I want you to guide me through this. With your help I think I can finally realize my...my spiritual direction." Now who sounded like the guru moron? I was kind of floundering because I just didn't know which tack to take with this monk. He was a cipher of sorts. All of the usual touchstones involved with fooling your mark didn't necessarily apply with him.

Father Mike leaned back in his chair and exhaled deeply, looking up at the ceiling, as if he might be trying to draw some inspiration from the confines of the monastery. Didn't monks chant incessantly so they could build some sort of prayer shield, like in a science fiction movie? It was group hysteria on a small scale, a force field of pious intent. "It might be a challenge but I think, with work from you, we can get it done." He then inexplicably reached out and smacked my hand a la sports team camaraderie. Hesitantly, I smacked his out stretched palm. Modernity knew no bounds. What next, showering together in the locker room or sitting in the whirl pool soaking our aching knees from genuflecting too much?

Our first meeting concluded soon after that. I was on track to become a Catholic. I had a sudden desire to call my parents and tell them that I was going to become a "Mackerel snapper" as my father liked to call them. Fish on Friday, get it? Just how surprised would they be? They would probably be more surprised that I called them at all. I had long ago become the brother, the son, they didn't speak much about. To anyone. Aunts. Uncles. Grand parents. The next door neighbors who never hardly spoke to us anyway because my dad made it known that he didn't like the smell of their Polish dinners wafting into our apartment every fucking Sunday, right after mass, a greasy assault that required a blunted sense of smell to endure. It was folly to think about telling them. They wouldn't get the joke. My brother might, but then he would think I was being frivolous with my time.

Right outside the door, as I stepped back into the 20th Century, leaving the monk to reside in his time warp compliments of the Vulgate version of the Bible, stood Eric. Standing guard. Making sure I wasn't going to pull a fast one on them. This was, in a way, humorous, but also annoying. The stupid bet must have been more important to him than I realized. Poor Eric, so much going for him and he couldn't cope with life unless he was pushing the boundaries. He had become the proverbial young man whose biggest fear was monotony. He just couldn't stomach everyday life.

"How'd it go?" he asked cheerily, trying to appear non-chalant, unconcerned.

"Go?" I shot back. "I just sat down with some weird fucking monk for twenty minutes. What do you think?"

"Don't bite my head off," he countered, smiling, working his usual charm. "It must have been at least educational, huh?" He was squelching a laugh now, beaming at me, enjoying himself. "Wish I could have sat in on that interview."

"Why didn't you just do it yourself?" I wanted to know, frowning back at him, irritated. I wasn't used to having people know my business or even having continuing contact with the same person for that matter. Often times a voice in my head would want to know whether or not I was slipping into a gray area, a realm of self with an emphasis on the self part. "Nice guy, the monk, but man I'm going to have a hard time going through with it. The converting."

"You can do it!" Eric announced in a loud voice. "I know you can. Just think, you will be entering an area--an experience--that a lot of people don't get to do. It should be illuminating for you. Hey, how about a drink to celebrate your new journey. I know a bar right around the corner I used to hang out at. Let's go."

It was, as Gail was often telling me, difficult to dislike Eric. Just as I lived off my street smarts, he lived off his effervescent charm, something he had cultivated early on so it seemed. Combine that with his money and good looks made for a dynamic combination. I followed him down 7th Avenue and on further into Chelsea. At the very least I was going to get some free drinks and, if I worked it right, food. We were all using each other in some way or other.

Lately, my time on the street had been kind of perilous. As usual, I was living like a nomad, roaming from neighborhood to neighborhood, existing on connections. My last job or at least the hazy concept of employment, where I got paid, in cash, to do something, had been with a guy I met in a bar over in Alphabet City, which were the seedy narrow streets of New York lore, dating to when Manhattan was first being born. Waves of immigrants had wandered through: German, later Jews, Irish, then Italian, and by my time PR's had arrived. It had also been a red light district in the past. The area had been a slum when the word wasn't in popular usage. As histories went, there wasn't much to recommend it. Me, personally, I found it had character and that character wasn't something to brag about. Now, as I understand it, the place has been gentrified, with rising rents and a night life. Hard to believe.

My link came through a man I met in a bar, a seedy, smoky watering hole with a one eyed bar tender. No kidding. He wore an eye patch to hide where, so goes the legend, a knife had plucked the eye ball out in a scuffle at the bar. Leave it to me to frequent places with that kind of pedigree. It had started out innocently enough. Like it always did.

"You take this to him--no ask," the man seated on a park bench out in Coney Island hisses at me, glancing up and down the beach several times. "I give you this." He held up a small wad of cash clenched in his fist. His eyes narrowed for a moment then he added, "You don't fuck this up, yeah."

I had come to this nexus in time and space, not to mention circumstance, by being approved by a man I worked for in the porn industry. This sort of networking seldom ended well, buffeted by the long reach of elementary illegality. If the general precarious nature of who you were dealing with didn't interfere then the cops would, providing they too weren't in on it, whatever it might be. A city the size of New York City offered any number of avenues to take for larcenous activity and many of the activities required a road map to route your way through often times Byzantine like mazes of cross cultural and ethnic differences.

Case in point, the man, a Ukrainian, sitting on the park bench by the sea, old, wizened, deadly, so I was told by my boss on 42nd Street, along with this morsel of advice: "Don't fuck with him or he'll cut your balls off and make you eat them." I didn't plan on it. I was just the errand boy, a WASP playing go between for the international cast of criminals who needed to start some kind of detente so they could further degrade the city with their contraband. Ethnic cooperation was needed, apparently. I was to help broker the peace between rivals. Carving up territory in the city was deadly business, in more ways than the obvious. Drugs had broken down the social fabric, insidiously seeping into almost every aspect of the social contract, corrupting everyone from the Police Captain with the sterling public image on TV to the labor organizer and onto to the friendly shop owner filling his balance sheets with excess cash showing up in stacks of twenties wrapped in a brown paper bag.

I had been offered the job by my boss. Like others, he was peripherally involved, making his cut by doing what was necessary to keep the whole game afloat. Peeling off wrinkled bills along the way helped grease the wheels that kept turning and turning. "This'll be good for you," he had told me one day after laying out the terms of my agreed upon mission, a short trip to one of the other boroughs. As he was telling me I already had the train connections in my head, lines and letters dancing around like an impossible to forget commercial jingle. What he meant to say was that if I didn't do what was asked of me was the exact opposite. You learned to read or hear things like you might be seeing them in the mirror, where everything might be reversed in that bizarre other world.

I agreed, telling my boss, the guy with the bad hair piece and cheap suits, the one I had seen on more than one occasion getting blow jobs in his office while he casually told me what was scheduled for the day. He was a porn merchant who liked to sample the merchandise, a revolving chorus line of disadvantaged girls either strung out or heading that way. He usually found them around the Port Authority Bus Station, sometimes scoring on too young ones just arriving from the hinterlands, wide-eyed and vulnerable. At one time he had actually tried to train me to be a predator but I didn't have the necessary aptitude for the job. Working a con almost always required the con man not feeling any empathy for the mark. I would take one look at those unsuspecting girls and lose my resolve almost immediately. My fecklessness almost cost me my job and, as a result of me being so inept at the task, I had been demoted back to handing out leaflets again after being promoted up one or two rungs.

The man, my boss, was a weasel but a dangerous one. He wasn't as much of a gangster as he pretended to be but he did have the ability to make somebody's life hell, if not over. There had been hints of this and that, mostly dropped comments about so and so and how they might be gathering flies at the land fill over in New Jersey or where ever New York sent its trash to biodegrade. Decomposing aside, I didn't fear him physically because he was pushing fifty and looked like he had never exercised a day in his life. There were plenty of times I had wanted to pop him one, right in the nose, but resisted out of raw fear of retribution. My life was difficult enough without having to worry about being visited by some of his goons in a dark alley. Me disappearing wouldn't raise any alarms. Just another vagrant gone. Don't even need to cross him off the list because he's not even on it.

I kept my perspective on an even keel. No deviating. Just do what is expected. Rules to live by.

"How will I know which guy it is when I get there?" I wanted to know, which seemed reasonable enough.

"You'll know, just go to the place I told you," my boss said, almost exasperated. "He'll have something for you. Now go. Go!"

A female employee was just coming into the office, summoned presumably by him. She worked the peep rooms and was, for his stable, quite nice looking. Blond, natural. Barely legal. Slender, but with assets. Good teeth. No track marks, not yet. This was all short hand for an earner, someone the boss would coddle within reason. We exchanged glances, two young people passing, both caught up in something we couldn't control. As I closed the door I heard him ask her if she wanted to move up. Her specific trajectory would of course only include prostitution, with a high end clientele. Getting bopped for big bucks as opposed to having the dregs of humanity ogling you through a smeared, stained plexi-glass window while you disrobed and diddled yourself. The money would be good, besides probably some extra benefits as in an apartment provided, but then again unlike the peep booths you were going to get touched, not stared at. It would be a decision she was going to have to make. I had made mine and was in route to that other New York City, the one I seldom traveled to purposely.

I had found the bar my boss informed me about and gone in, still marveling at how the city could be sharing time and space with a beach. It was almost as if I had been plopped down in a science fiction movie and New York had been passed through a broken prism. I could smell the ocean. Salt air. It was kind of intoxicating. Back in Philly, my family weren't beach people. We didn't travel to the Jersey shore all that much. Maybe a few times but not often enough to form any childhood memories. There were no family photographs of the Ashdown clan frolicking in the waves or anything. It all seemed somehow alien to me as I walked down the boardwalk and entered the bar. Truthfully, I was nervous. My boss hadn't told me exactly what I was going to be doing. Need to know. Wiretaps. Surveillance. They were always a threat in their world. You had to assume somebody was trying to build a case against you.

As a result, I hadn't even been told what the man's name was. Instead I had been instructed to walk in this bar and ask the bartender, the one eyed guy, one thing: "Do you have any Russian vodka?" Really. It was a Russian bar. Safe bet they had it; but that wasn't the import of my request of course. I would ask. The bartender would look me over with his one good eye. It would start the sequence, like a countdown. Signals would be made, unbeknownst to me. Finally I would be told to go and stand by the park bench outside, away from any eavesdropping.

"Nastrovia," I heard a man cry out in the back of the dark bar, even though it was only eleven in the morning. Glancing quickly, not wanting to make any sudden moves, I saw the man toss back a glass of said vodka, presumably Russian. There was some verbal exchanges in Russian, could have been Ukrainian. I then hurried out of the bar and went to my rendezvous point, and waited.

Ten minutes later, after I guess they had surveyed the area for undercover cops or whatever, my contact showed up. He was an old guy, in his 70's, besting the life expectancy of Slavs by a good decade or more. Like most of his countrymen, he was solidly built, with a broad face and a full head of hair that was mostly white. Tiny, and yes beady, crystal blue eyes glowered at me as he walked up and sat down on the park bench. It was late summer and still hot on the beach. All around us people were enjoying their walks along the boardwalk. Nothing was amiss. Coney Island had beckoned us all out to soak up some of the outdoors.

"You sent here for me?" the man said to me in an accusatory tone of voice, as his eyes danced around, taking in his surroundings. I nodded yes. He said something in his native tongue then switched to English and stated in almost a whisper: "You do this. Take to that fucking spic. Nothing more. Nothing less."

He seemed to be speaking like he was reading from a telegram. I almost chuckled at how funny it sounded but thought better of it because laughing at the wrong time and place could get you killed, so I was told by my boss in my briefing before coming out for the meeting. He had also told me to be deferential to the contact, implying that I should be obsequious to a fault. After all, I was nothing but a messenger boy. I didn't need to be coached. I knew a dicey situation when I saw one.

"I got the address," I informed him, while he stared past me at a family sitting on the sand not twenty feet away. The mother was playing with an infant, holding him up and cooing into his face.

"Don't say noth-ing to the grease head, you hear me?" the man spat out, turning away from the family tableau over my shoulder for a moment, letting the smile that had formed on his face drift away. "Let him talk. Give him this." He handed me a package wrapped in butcher paper. Really. For all I knew it might have been some entrails ripped from one of his latest victims, another disloyal compatriot. Proving a point in the most salient fashion would have been just this guy's style, along with close range gunshots to the head. "Got that?" I nodded yes, unable to muster up enough courage to actually speak at this point. The old guy nodded back at me and struggled to his feet, muttering to himself as he winced from the pain of old age or, just as likely, past injuries sustained in his line of work: knife wounds, broken knee cap, fractured ribs, the list might go on.

I watched him hobble away, quickly followed by what I took to be his two body guards, young guys, burly, intense, with angry and intimidating stares for anyone around them. They went back into the bar, leaving me with the mysterious package. I tentatively felt it, massaging around the edges like a kid trying to discover what he was getting for Christmas. Felt like money. Wads of it. Neatly bundled into bunches that I could probably live comfortably on for quite a while. A fleeting thought dashed through my thoughts and was then extinguished by fear and reason, maybe not in that order. Stealing this stash would land me in a world of shit. There most likely wouldn't be a place in the world I could hide. Exaggeration? Perhaps. Maybe I could have found some buttfuck town in some hick State somewhere to live out my life in. Mayberry. Hooterville. There was no way I was going to take that chance. With my luck I would probably get mugged on the subway and been on the hook for it.

Back to Alphabet City, that wasteland. I found the HQ for the gang masquerading as a so called social club, complete with a sign out front saying so: The Taino Social Club. It was a front for their operations, the command center for distributing the goods in that section of Manhattan. Dispensing illegal drugs was a marvel of planned distribution, proving that making money creates its own momentum. Laws were no impediment.

As I walked up to the Taino Social Club two guys were sitting outside drinking beers. They were seated at a card table where dominoes were spread out. Numerous empty beer bottles littered the sidewalk around them, all potential weapons to bash me over the head with, not that they probably weren't armed in other ways. I took the stereotype of Ricans bearing knives seriously. They took notice of me approaching and quickly took up defensive postures. One guy dropped his hand down to his waist band and kept it poised for action, so I imagined. Not knowing what to do, besides grin like I might have been lobotomized that morning, I called out a greeting.

"Whatch you want?" one of them asked in a defiant tone, obviously used to being hassled by the cops. That they thought I might be a cop of whatever description was amusing to me but I didn't laugh or give any indication that I was there for any frivolous reason.

"I got a package for Juan (Juan, really)," I called out, slowing my walking pace a little and holding out the package.

The two of them traded comments in Spanish for a moment then one of them hurried inside the club. I was left to stand there awkwardly, like some rookie UPS guy making his very first delivery. There weren't going to be any signature necessary. The other guy stood up and continued to eye me suspiciously. Now I knew why they had sent a third party to make the transaction. There wasn't a whole lot of trust going on. We faced each other, mute. Two kids, street urchins, passed by and almost immediately picked up on the vibe, quickly hurrying away for fear of being in some kind of cross fire. You learned early in New York to pick up on the signs.

The other guy reappeared and called out: "Wait a sec." He stood on the steps going up to the building and surveyed both sides of the street, up and down, even the rooftops. You could never be too careful. Might be a set up by the cops. Could be a take down by the competitors, seeing that internecine warfare was a continual problem in their business. Who knew? When, apparently, the coast was clear another man appeared, walking down the steps slowly, with deliberate strides, pausing at each step for dramatic effect. He was probably in his early thirties, trim, wearing a button up shirt unbuttoned all the way, revealing some inexpert tattoos etched across his chest, mostly in Spanish.

"Got something for me?" he said in a surprisingly soft voice. I nodded that I did and he snapped his fingers impatiently for me to hand it over but not to him but to the other guy, who scurried forward to take it off my hands.

Not knowing what else to say, I muttered: "Thanks." My job was done. Time to exit. As much as I hated to turn my back on these guys I knew I couldn't backstep my way down the street. No, like a man swimming in the ocean at night, waiting for that fatal bite, I was going to have to walk away and hope for the best.

"Hold on," the head honcho ordered, holding up his hand in a stopping motion. One of the other guys scrambled over next to me and stood there, letting me know that I hadn't been cleared to leave, while the other one took the package inside to, presumably, count the bills. Great, now my life depended on the Russian's skill at arithmetic. A few hundred short. Twenty. Here comes the beat down. Moments passed slowly, very slowly. I tried not to make eye contact as you might not want to do when encountering a predator in the wild. Look away. Admire the turn of the century architecture. The sky sure is blue today. The okay was given from the doorway. Bank it. Another infusion. "Later," jefe announced, releasing me. I tried not to run down the street.

Just another adventure, so Gary would say later on when I finally got around to telling him, leaving out some details to protect him, and me. It was easy for him to say. The man never, or rarely, got out of his zone. He had carved out an existence and was managing to stay in the boundaries, even if time wasn't on his side. He knew, even if he didn't want to admit it, that his life style couldn't continue indefinitely. Things, even then, were changing. Real Estate, the holy grail of progress, was going to take off eventually. New York never rested. It was always churning.

I hadn't told him about my ludicrous bet. No need for his judgmental whimpering, which is what it would have descended into. He had a stake in my improvement now, felt obligated to finish the mission. It was a laughable ambition for sure but I didn't want to riddle his already fragile outlook on life any more than it already was. Did I? No. I couldn't do that to him. Besides, I liked him, liked in a way a good friend might, one willing to overlook certain frailty and flaws. We both had plenty.

I would keep it to myself. I was used to living on parallel tracks. Adopting personas came easily when you were on the street. One day I might be an ordinary college student and the next a hustler on the street, or at night sleeping with a female acquaintance, enjoying the fruits of mutual need and the next evening bedding down in the tunnels under Grand Central Station, an underground denizen in the world's capital. Done it. Slept in a card board box on an abandoned subway platform buried so deep below the surface that history had forgotten of its existence. A twilight world of moles and trolls, a miniature city of homeless people driven below ground in order to survive. Living off water from dripping pipes, handouts, money pooled from panhandling on the streets above, sharing meals cooked over fires, ignoring the fallout and fear of asphyxiation, bedding down next to people with a code dictated by deprivation and despondency. Knowing that the next morning it was going to take an hour or more to wash away the smudged residue on your face from the grime, oil, and dirt of the tracks just to half way appear normal again. It was going to take longer and longer for your eyes to readjust to the sunlight each time you popped up from your exile.

In my travels around the city I had come upon the underworld community by accident; although in time their existence would be found out and posted by some nosy reporter from one of the New York newspapers, one of those phony human interest stories that are heavy on sentiment while they lay down some unpleasant but subtle judgments. Later on, about ten years or so I think, there was a documentary about the tunnels over by Riverside, full of close up camera angles and disturbing interviews with people detached from casual reality. That wasn't this place though. Over there was relatively over air, al fresco in comparison. These were the real mole people. Live underground for a while and see just how much mental stability you can maintain.

My introduction to the tunnels under the city came as I was passing through Grand Central Station, in route to something or other. I caught a glimpse of a couple making for the end of the tracks. Roaming anywhere near the tracks could be a death sentence, from getting hopelessly disoriented in the dark and being run over by a speeding train to being fried by the electric third rail. I was curious to see where they could be heading. I tailed them. They were locked into what seemed to be an argument and didn't seem to notice me behind them. Casually, like they might be strolling down Broadway, they went deeper and deeper into the gloom, right into the dark, scary bowels of the city.

After what seemed like a long while they popped out into a larger room, almost cavernous by comparison to the train tunnels, dimly lit by overhead lights still hanging on after all these years. Electrical circuits were operating, so it seemed, even though the city must have abandoned the tunnels a long time ago. The bigger shock was that there were actually people there, in residence so it seemed judging by all of the makeshift domiciles. I saw card board boxes taped together into odd geometric shapes and sizes, along side some little homes built out of wood paneling of some sort, all snug together like some extended suburban development. A community spirit was alive and well.

It didn't take them long to discover my presence but they weren't hostile. One man, black, approached and wanted to know what my business was, but he asked in a perfunctory way, as if I might be some traveling salesman trodding into the neighborhood. I can only imagine he must have deduced that anyone foolish enough to penetrate their village must be simpatico on at least some level.

"That one of those damn reporters again?" a woman's voice called out, grumbling under her breath.

"Don't think so," the man standing before me answered, turning to face me again.

"Just curious," I explained. "I'm always looking for a place to crash--that's all."

"Says he's looking for a place to stay," the man said over his shoulder, then unexpectedly sticking out his hand, smiling. "Name's--" I didn't hear him correctly because of a passing train overhead drowning out his voice. "I can introduce you around."

There was quite a cross section of people down below, with a little of each ethnicity and gender represented. What they shared in common, besides rank penury, was the desire to remain apart. Simple. Not confusing. Almost all of them had tasted normalcy at one time or another, with jobs, families, problems, tiny triumphs, but it all came to an end. Sometimes it might have been cataclysmic and other times more gradual, like continual friction wearing away a surface. I didn't take inventory. My street instincts kicked in and I remained on alert, as I worked my way into their confidence, all for a place to come to when need be. It was just another landing spot I tried to maintain around the city, some five star and others not even a one star rating. I had slept in lofts. I had crashed in doorways. I had even, once, bedded down in a gigantic place on Fifth. It came after a party, one where the host had taken advantage of his parents being out in the Hampton's and the ingestion of drugs led to any and all barriers being lowered. The next morning the doorman, loyal to a fault, had awakened me early so I (along with a half dozen other outsiders) could be evacuated down the freight elevator before the heir apparent's parents showed up.

Like a blinking light, so Gary like to say of my life. Perpetual motion was more than a physics ideal. Movement. I had to keep changing and exchanging my environment, partly from necessity and almost always because of circumstance. There wasn't stasis, to put it in a fancy way. Opposing equal forces worked to keep most objects in that state. Not for me. I might have been going against the grain but it made for an acceleration rate that kept me ahead of myself, not unlike some character in a novel that lives in a world that is closing in on itself. Sleep was at a premium. Never slept. Hours were compressed, lost to uncertainty.

I could partially decompress when I was at Gary's refuge. Up there, away from the street, figuratively and otherwise, I had the opportunity to let him stand guard. He never slept but for different reasons. Slumber brought sounds, voices, cries of anguish, ripping his fortifications to shreds. He did call out into the night sometimes, but it wasn't something I hadn't heard before. People on the street often relived their past, fleeing personal demons.

So I was juggling several different personas at the same time. It was something I could pull off most of the time. Being streetwise lent a certain mental dexterity to your personality. It suited me for the most part. Being young, I was able to adapt quickly, readjust my bearings when need be after mini-failures and there were always those. Setbacks weren't taken personally. No need to wring your hands over something that was out of your control. Keep moving. Live off the city. Take what you can.

The taking part came in flurries sometimes, leaving the inevitable gaps, times when you would have to hold on until the next infusion of luck. Often it was dumb luck; of course by being resourceful you could make your own luck or at least improve upon it. Gary, for instance, utilized his environment efficiently and it supplied him with what he needed. Others, they didn't fare all that well the majority of the time, resorting to organizational handouts from civic groups bent on improving our lives. They meant well but were often hindrances, allowing the cops to herd us toward their outstretched hands or something like that. I seldom, if ever, fell back on soup kitchens or homeless shelters, which were often havens for the worst element of our kind.

Anyone could fall victim to some of the small scale savagery that occurred at these quasi-government run facilities. Gary had told me tales before, some that even if he had embellished a little still made for frightening experiences. He had once told me about a run-in with a wild eyed crazy guy toting a hammer in one of the shelters, who was going around late at night bopping guys on the head as they slept. Turns out he had been released from a mental institution and was convinced that everyone was out to kill him so he was going on the offensive before they all got him. A few cracked skulls later the lunatic was finally subdued by the bleary eyed staff awakened by the screams of pain coming from the dormitory. The guy with the hammer was only two beds away from Gary when they finally brought him down, two staffers and a couple of homeless men, all scrambling to get the hammer out of the crazy guy's hand.

Humanity, at the bottom, wasn't pretty. It was, in many ways, atavistic, shorn of most all social proclivities some of the time. Hunger. Addiction. Mental illness. It could be a witch's brew of disassociation, resulting in an unhealthy amount of aggression as compensation for starting down low and working your way up. Not that that was any excuse. It wasn't; although desperate personalities could and were pronounced, like on steroids, amplifying all of the severely worse attributes and qualities. Raging inequality, that was how Gary liked to phrase it. I wasn't so sure. Rich. Poor. In between. There were assholes represented every where, any time, any place. For me, I didn't need to attribute it to sociological machinations or festering envy. All I needed to do was recognize it when it presented itself to me so I could avoid the fallout. Dodge. Side step. Work it to my advantage. It was all in how you responded. Intellectualizing about it didn't do them or me any good in the end.

"You don't look any different," Gail chirped as I sat down for our usual Monday morning coffee break, which was usually our liveliest because we had the weekend to talk about before we started in on our bitchfest about the college and our academic careers.

"Oh, yeah, right, he started his...his converting thing," Willis muttered, glancing at the menu the waitress had just dropped onto the table, before hurrying off to grab a plate of toast and eggs for the guy at the next booth staring into his coffee. "Check for any sign of the stigmata."

"Somebody paying attention in history class, I see," Eric declared, laughing. "Public education wasn't lost on you."

"Fuck off," Willis sneered, tossing the menu aside because he always ordered the same thing and didn't need to look at the morning special of the day.

Jorge looked at each of us then said hesitantly, "I don't like this. It not good. No good." He waved his finger in my direction then continued, "I don't want to sit next to you. Bad things are going to happen to you." He motioned to Willis to change seats. Willis made a face at him then finally got up slowly, sliding his cup of coffee across the table and sat down next to me. "Mucho thank you."

"Dee-nahda," Willis replied, grinning at me, as he nudged me with his elbow.

"Sure you want to sit next to me?" I asked him, smirking. "Could be dangerous."

"Maybe God'll come down and strike you and get Willis too. Two for one," Gail exclaimed, giggling. She thought for a moment then added, "I hope this isn't gonna fuck up our karma or something like that. Man, I didn't even think of that."

"You like the smell of tuna," Eric stated, shaking his head, snickering. "I don't think God is too enthused about you anyway. Right?"

She shook her fist at him and said, "Oh yeah, he just loves you. Right?"

"Children," Willis said, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I gots a headache today. Too much partying yesterday."

The customary bantering tapered off when the waitress reappeared to take our order. The regular waitress was gone, another statistic for the turn over rate. Willis asked where she was and was told: "How in the hell do I know?" Fired. Returned to her hometown up State. Better job. The subject was dropped as we confused her with our orders, which she scribbled down furiously in her check pad, grumbling the entire time.

"You do understand the concept of tips, right?" Eric asked her, flexing his charm. She stared at him, snapping the chewing gum in her mouth, one hand on her hip, a pose she kept in reserve for when she needed to put her customers on notice that she wasn't going to take any crap. "Just checking," he finally muttered when it was obvious he wasn't going to get a response from her.

Half way through our breakfast, after Willis had filled us in on a wedding he had attended on Saturday where the festivities, at least for him, extended way into Sunday night, Gail asked, "So, are you going to become a monk or what? Please tell me you have seen the light."

I looked up at her for a moment, as I munched on a piece of toast Eric had bequeathed to me after he decided that he wasn't all that hungry, and replied, "Yeah, you are looking at the new convert to be at the so and so monastery. What is the name of that place anyway?"

"You better find out," Eric warned, licking some butter off his fingers. "I mean if you are going to be giving up part of your time there it might help if you knew what they call the place."

"I'm sure it must be saint this or that," Willis said, trying to get the waitress's attention to order more coffee. "No, our lady of...of whatever. Catholics are so predictable."

"Like you Bible people aren't," Gail snapped defensively.

"Bible people, is that code for colored or something?" Willis shot back, eyes wide for emphasis. "Tell me you didn't just say that."

"Say what?" she countered.

"Infierno," Jorge said under his breath, looking away, muttering to himself.

"Protestant dipshits," Eric offered, looking at me, then shifting his eyes in Willis' direction.

"You know of what you speak," Willis exclaimed, laughing. "Like I believe in all the bullshit in the bible. What a crock."

"So what do you have to do to convert, Barry?" Gail asked me, eyeing me closely, trying to force me into answering truthfully.

"I don't know yet. I only had one meeting with the monk. Give me a break," I answered, trying to sound more exasperated than I really was. Actually I wasn't sure where I stood with Father Mike. We have left off with a lot of unanswered questions, one being just when I would launch my quest to become a Catholic.

"That's fucked up," Gail said, lowering her voice so the owner wouldn't hear her. "There has to be a, you know, game plan."

"It's not a football game," Eric chided.

"What do you know? You were a lacrosse weanie," she joked, grinning at me. "Or was it golf team?"

"What's it called?" Willis suddenly asked, scrunching up his face in thought. "Cat...catechism?"

Gail hooted and announced: "Baltimore Catechism. That's right. You are probably going to have to memorize that. You are in for some real fun now. I can remember--"

"I guess it didn't work on you," Eric told her, leaning back against the booth seat back, satisfied with his comment.

Gail started to return his fire but said to me, "Let me know if you need a study partner or not. I can probably get you through the hard parts. And, by the way, in case you aren't picking up on my sarcasm, I'm not going to help you. I don't ever want to see that fucked up shit again. Not as long as I live. If you want, you can have my old rosary. Might help you get through it all."

"Am I hearing this right? You still have rosary beads. Now that is funky," Willis stated, surprised.

"She probably still has a picture of the Pope over her bed," Eric said, trying not to laugh. "Maybe she's confused by the dress he wears, I don't know."

Gail shot him the finger and said, "I don't think there's any way Barry's gonna fool them, the Franciscans. They are gonna smell his atheist ass a mile away. Trust me on this. These guys know their religious shit."

"He didn't seem suspicious, and that was with Eric hanging around too," I assured her. "We had a nice chat. I told him that I needed something extra in my life, etc. He looked like he fell for it. What can I say, I'm good." This boast sounded a little too close to home, to my true identity that is, so I added, "A bet is a bet."

"Anybody ever tell you you are warped, man?" Willis stated, giving me a funny look.

Our little Forseti Society meetings were one thing, followed by blocks of time in class, listening to professors drone on about subjects I was only slightly interested in, but going one on one with a monk about something as life changing as conversion was totally different. Long cons required stamina, along with the maintenance of a persona over a certain length of time. I had to keep telling myself that there was no victim here. No harm done. Just an extended prank. Insert laugh, at the Catholic Church's expense. The monk wasn't busy anyway. What did he have to do all day? Chant. Pray. Sanctify some more hosts or cheap wine. It was like being on vacation, permanently.

I knew. A part of me realized it was, at the very least, a really good example of bad taste. That didn't concern me though or I told myself that. It was a hundred bucks and bragging rights. There was a challenge to it and it would also prove to them and myself that I really didn't respect counterfeit doctrine that preyed on the weak and inattentive. Just because it had been around for so long didn't measure up to even a basic impulse of reason. As can be imagined I didn't put that much stock in it. Logic and reverse apologia would come later, after years in prison communing with books that in my youth I had never bothered to read. All reasoning was moot anyway. I had been challenged. I was going to make a stand, show my resolve. Psychologically, I guess, it showed that I had to prove myself, to them and to me.

Father Mike, to me, was a waste, some guy who traded in fantasy. The limitation of human perception, like two mirrors facing each other, mesmerized by their own reflection, aided in his deception. Tell them anything in order to assuage their fears. Like some kind of parallel realities going on out there. It was all going to end. Some day. Better be prepared. "Religion is hegemony in its rawest form," Gary often stated, as if he might be reciting from an imaginary manual. There was nothing abstract about it. The very components of organized religion held a narrative arc that took the believer on a ride through a relativistic universe, where the uninitiated were shit out of luck. You know you are in trouble when the prevailing zeitgeist extends out beyond 2000 years.

Fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding), so it goes in Latin, and I promise I won't be spewing any more of that dead language. The monk had told me that, probably hoping to either impress me with his linguistic skill or intimidate me, maybe both. Because some monk a thousand years ago mumbled something doesn't make it applicable to anything, in my opinion. Sounds good. It went over my head anyway. Nice try. I could tell by the look on the monk's face that he thought it had landed, like a right cross to the chin, a knock out punch. It hadn't. I might have had a glass jaw when it came to some things but not about religion. You weren't going to be finding me thanking god for this or that, ready to approve of the job he was doing.

As we sat there going through the conversion process, one that he had conveniently streamed lined because he surmised my attention span was limited and he didn't want to lose another pigeon, all I wanted to do was tell the jolly monk what I was really thinking. Come on, we are living in modern times. Religion is mostly about what inspires us and what scares us. On the other side of the canonical ledger is what comforts us and what seduces us. It's a tidy package that incorporates a managed attack on our psyche more than our soul. Spiritual health is only secondary in importance. I think Gary had it right when he said to me one day: "Christianity is the worst kind of celebrity worship." Let me just say, I concur. Jesus was a rock star and his lyrics tended to be remembered.

Of course Gary would also go on to say things like: "The cross was perhaps the most ingenious totem ever invented. It's portable, practically indestructible, and, best of all, a magnet for empathy. Dangle a man from it, hanging in agony, and you've got an icon for the ages. Makes some fine jewelry too." Gary wasn't subtle. If he knew what I was doing, even as a bet, he would have been disappointed and angry. He thought Catholicism particularly vile, likening it to a detested brand name, a product that millions identified and were also associated with. When a religion is the standard bearer then it takes on a whole new aura, a mystique. As marketing goes, you can't get any better than that. It was nice to know I was mocking the best, the leader of the pack. Didn't matter, he still would have been pissed off about my trivializing a world religion, making it the butt of a joke. Religion was serious business and needed to be shunned, not ridiculed for sport.

I still had to complete the course, endure the catechism procedures. Converting was about leaving one self behind and adopting another. As a streetwise punk, I was used to adapting, shedding identities quickly if need be. I could do a Bronx accent when needed. Longshoreman, heavy on the profanity, no problem. Wall Street slick, it wasn't my best pose but I could pull it off. By now I wasn't above tossing in some Yiddish for effect. Then again I had to con a priest, make him believe I was on board with his set of rules, the ones that were going to make me acceptable to angel's cruising souls up for renewal.

I came to like our sessions together at the monastery. It surprised me how much I got along with the monk. Father Mike was easy to like. Overweight. Garrulous. Good thing he wasn't a member of an ascetic order. I couldn't imagine him in one of those monasteries where the monks aren't permitted to even speak. Wouldn't work. I got the impression the monk loved to communicate. Nothing wrong in that.

I still wondered what he did with his time. Several times I had seen him on the street, usually around Madison Square Garden. It made me wonder why I had never noticed any monks in the city before. I mean you really couldn't miss them. There they were in their get-ups, looking all medieval and all, like extras from a Robin Hood movie. Father Mike was always moving along the sidewalk, walking with a calibrated pace that seemed to be linked to his chosen spiritual occupation. The man had all the time in the world. I envied that he had found his niche in the universe.

I hadn't and probably wouldn't. Life, for me, was going to be one long hustle. Deep down I guess I knew this; but it wasn't something I liked to think about. I was young. There was really only time to think about the next twenty-four hours in front of me. On the streets you had to abide by compressed circumstances, leaving little room for expectations.

Although I was enjoying chatting with the monk, I was still having to endure the conversion process. At the same time I was getting contrarian views from Gary, the adamant atheist with a chip on his shoulder. "Groveling is man's destiny," he would say to me (bellow actually), with his voice echoing in the canyon of empty buildings as we stood on the roof staring out over an eerily quiet section of the city. His face would be flushed from his verbal exertions. "Bravery is only measured by the level of obstinacy, or how any one person can defy him." We both knew who "him" was.

"Like an addict feeding the next dopamine rush, people need what organized religion can offer," Gary declared, looking up at the dark night sky for a moment, pausing to catch his breath. It was times like this that I really wanted to tell him about the joke I was involved in. Part of me thought that he just might be amused that I was going undercover in the Catholic Church. The monastery part would only be a bonus. "Searching for salvation...idiotic," he muttered, leaning over the edge of the building to look down at the street below.

I didn't put up much of a fight, not against Father Mike and not opposing Gary. There were different dynamics working there for sure but it didn't really matter. I wasn't prepared for intellectual verbal battle. I wasn't equipped back then to go toe to toe being that I was armed with nothing but my street smarts. Now, after years and years of being an autodidact, availing myself of countless books from the prison library, I might be able to measure up. Maybe not.

The monk only wanted to prepare me for the conversion. That he was doing it in a non-conformist manner was immaterial. Fortunately, he went easy on the Biblical pabulum, adhering to the Catholics usual distaste for regurgitating the in's and out's of Christ's message from second hand sources. Long ago Rome had decided to stay away from that time suck because after you have codified what needs to be disseminated everything else is non-productive. True, if only in a streamlined propaganda sort of way.

One or two sessions in, the good monk threw the Baltimore Catechism over for his own set of rules and regulations, telling me: "Here's the booklet but don't feel like you have to spend much time reading them." He dismissed them with a wave of his hand, almost smiling mischievously at me in the process, like we were both in on it together. Now, if I were to be transported back in time I would have probably said something like: "Glad you dropped that shit and the Biblical BS too because you know the Gospels were written by fantasists who wouldn't have been able to pick Jesus out of a line up." It would have been a good throw away line perhaps, something to show that I wasn't an intellectual light weight and knew my Saint Anselm from my Saint what's his name.

I suppose I could have said it even back then since Gary was always going on about how the Bible was a jigsaw puzzle of contradicting storylines. "The Gospels are a mess, Barry, right? The only consistent thing is Jesus-Yeshua-being baptized by John the Baptist. By the way, if he were alive today would he have that written on his business card?" As jokes went, this was one of Gary's better ones. He seldom ventured into humor territory. Then there would be things like: "Come on, Christ is conceived by a spirit, or some such nonsense. Really? Is that the best they could come up with? You don't believe that crap do you?" I would shake my head no, most times emphatically.

"The level of absurdity is out there," he declared, eyes wide, arms extended to his side, as he slowly worked himself into a frenzy. "They actually have divisions of the some religions arguing about where the Holy Spirit originates. I'm not kidding." He continued in a gravelly voice: "Did the Holy Spirit come from the Father by himself or from him and the son? Are you fucking kidding me here?" Gary only used profanity when he was deep into another tirade against god. "The Church, capital C, split up over that? That's like debating the presence of air. Feel free to laugh. Holy Spirit? Trinity? I think God's fucking with us." If you hadn't noticed, God, for Gary, was nothing less than his arch nemesis.

"What is it I always say?" he wanted to know, which left me flummoxed because other than railing against god he didn't say all that much. "Organized religion doesn't want you to venture too far from the corners of your imagination." I tried not to look him in the eye when he got that determined look, which wasn't far off looking demented or, at least, unhinged. "No. What they want you to do is just the opposite. They want you to accept what they are peddling. Don't ask questions. Close down your mind." Gary was now nodding along to his words, something he often engaged in when he was doing his version of pontificating.

Hearing this shit was the backdrop to my encounters with the other side. There I would be sitting with Father Mike, comfy, sucking down the free soft drink and nibbling on crackers or whatever he showed up with from behind the closed door leading to the monastery, the off-limits section. We would chat a little about contemporary times for a short stint, then he would ease into the matter at hand, bringing another soul in for a landing on the right runway.

The monk would begin by banging his pipe gently against a small trash can he had slid up next to his chair, depositing some used up burnt tobacco bits before packing another bowl. At first sitting so close to some stranger was difficult for me, because I was use to keeping my personal space maintained at all cost. On defense at all times. You learned that early on out in the streets. It didn't take long though for me to drop my defenses. I mean if you can't trust a monk in a monastery, who can you trust?

Back then, as I mentioned, I was more of a reflexive atheist. I saw God, and religion, as a weak attempt at overcoming mankind's insecurities. Now, after years of self-educating scholarship, I know what terms monophysitism and miaphysitism mean when applied to Christianity, i.e. Christ may or may not be of two properties having to do with divine and human, proof that religion can be impossibly stupid. I'm pretty confident that today I could hold my own in a debate against almost any representative of all mainline beliefs, be it Islamic, Judaic, or Christian. Hey, I spent five years sharing a cell with a Muslim, putting up with his daily prayers at all hours of the day. I know what it's like to go toe to toe, verbally, (sometimes physically when I inadvertently crossed the wrong boundary and got punched for offending them as a proxy for their God), with zealots bent on leveraging a way towards the good graces of their god. Done my time in the trenches.

That came later though. To Father Mike, I was just clay to be worked into another adherent to his way of doing religion. Out there in the world it never stopped. Competition was fierce. Islam. Hinduism. Buddhists. Other branches of Christianity. Everyone was competing for souls. I had fallen right into his lap. Another soul eager to find his way. Of course it wasn't really like that. No. I was an imposter. There to make a mockery of the process, prove that seeking God was tantamount to being mentally unbalanced. It was all a charade. Everything. All of it, from the gaudy decor in the church to men wearing cowls and sandals, secreted away behind walls, mumbling to their god, and on to the money changing hands to keep the whole enterprise up and running.

There really wasn't going to be an expose. I wasn't some underground journalist trying to make a name for himself at the expense of a bunch of losers who needed sustenance from a dead language and men in dresses. Didn't care. I just wanted to beat my friends at their own game. Simple as that. If it meant I had to sit and listen to some guy who had decided at one point in his life that he wanted to remove himself from society at large, then let's do it. I'm game.

That prevailing attitude was there before I sat down and started hearing: "Think of the Trinity like the 3 forces of physics." This was said to me by the monk with a straight face. Not a hint of irony. No sly grin, like he might be letting me know he was only kidding. Science. Religion. Very compatible. Go hand in hand, most times. I apparently concealed my bewilderment at his comment adequately because he continued with: "Electricity can produce magnetic fields and magnets can produce electric current, these two things can produce light. They are all connected." He stated this factoid, smiled, and was obviously proud of himself. I imagined him fantasizing about receiving the Noble Prize for science does religion, a new category just instituted by the committee that decides such things. He would fly over to Sweden, give a speech, pocket the prize money to be donated to his brothers at the monastery, maybe buy some more incense or new smocks to wear around the city. The possibilities were endless.

I had demonstrated a convincing interest even though it was wholly artificial. I didn't know why he was taking this approach with me, except to say that he knew I was young guy and maybe thought he needed to offer a more modern angle on the conversion business. Modern times called for modern methods. He lived in New York City and, presumably, hadn't been hatched at the monastery, so he was exposed to outside influences. In our time together I would glean some info about his past, back when he wasn't actively trying to see the world circa 14th century or so.

Today, I suppose, the monks are probably doing the social media thing and have profiles on Google. After all, God made the internet. The sketch I had made of him, drawing on comments here and there, was that he had been born in New Hampshire, near the Mass. border, and was in his mid-thirties. One brother. Older. Parents not so devout. Sexual proclivities sublimated, presumably. Most likely a virgin, since he did say he had entered the seminary at an early age, destined for the priesthood, before taking the side track to a monastic order. Still got ordained. Wouldn't say where. Occasionally went around town in civilian clothes, incognito so to speak. Liked to see what the other people out there were doing with their lives. At first this mini-confession had sounded, you know, creepy, but then I thought about it for a while and thought it was kind of endearing in a way. Kept him attuned to his congregation's moods, like product research.

"Half of infinity is still infinite," Father Monk would go on to say (posit) at another session, still beating the drums for science and religion to meld into some sort of simpatico juggernaut that was going to not only take over the world but explain it simultaneously. Unfortunately, for him, I only thought in terms of city blocks, leaving time and space distinctly non-abstract. Inches. Feet. Yards. Philo talk, even if it leaned towards the physics end of things, was pointless. Besides, what was he even getting at?

I'll tell you. This amateur philosopher/physicist was trying to prove to me that there had to be a god. It goes without saying that it wasn't just my garden variety god but his version. Really. We had gotten on this track because I foolishly said that there were times I thought I didn't believe there was a god. I had said this to make him take me more seriously, put some effort into it. Bad move. Father Mike then spoke about configurable delineation and dimensional horizons, all of which made no sense to even Einstein if he were alive to hear some chubby priest attempting to establish the existence of God.

To be honest, who created the universe was a whodunnit I couldn't care less about. All I knew was that I was nothing but a pawn in the scheme of things, pretty much like everybody else. God, most of them it seemed, were malevolent bastards, totally undeserving of being worshipped. You didn't need to be a scholar to see, discern, the world was fucked up and whoever might be pulling the strings leaned towards the sadistic side of things. Read the Bible. Koran too. Spite. Vengeance. Lots of payback. The sequel, the New Testament, didn't help much either.

Yet here I was. Once a week, sometimes twice, I was meeting up with a monk--ordained priest--and pretending to be accepting the tripe that was issuing forth, as they say. Sure it could be entertaining on some levels, even authentically humorous. I mean really, Christ did that? I kept my solid opinion of the proceedings to myself. Mostly. There were times when I would offer up some mild criticism, masked with a nervous laugh, but Father Mike let them pass. Somehow I was a soul that was worth cultivating: young male, with breeding potential. In time, so it was hoped, I would sire children and bring them too into the fold. The little known secret out there was that the Church, with a capital C, was dying. Slowly. The congregation was drying up, only partially replaced with people of color from south of the border. I represented the other half. Already the masses were being offered in Spanish, bringing new meaning to that whole vernacular thrust of the liturgy that left Latin in the dust.

As I would sit there, so close that I could often smell what the monk had for lunch, there were times I felt sorry for the guy. He meant well. Even though he lived in a world of imaginary images, ones that shaped his outlook on life and every thing that went with it, he still kept his influence within the walls of circumscribed beliefs. The propagandizing was, for the most part, benign. Later on, decades, the Church would begin to stick its nose into political machinations, with the Bishops tossing out threats against potential candidates and their stand on abortion, etc. This was made all the more ludicrous by the fact that the rank and file of the Holy Roman Church had long since begun to pick and choose among canon law, accepting and discarding according to what they thought fit their particular lifestyle. The Church writings might not have been a menu but the practitioners sure acted like it was.

Immaterial, so I thought. It was all a game to me. When you perceive that there is little to no future awaiting you then things change. You can afford to gamble, be reckless or at least that is what you tell yourself anyway. I know I did. Routinely. Life becomes a sliding scale of decisions, all affected by how it is going to immediately impact you. That they don't teach you in school. Rules don't apply. It is almost as if anarchy had been codified.

I often wondered whether or not Father Mike and I could have been friends. Was that even possible? If we had met outside of the confines of the fairy tale he was living would we connect at all? I would probably have hustled him somehow. He could be an easy mark. After all, the man did believe that some Jew in the desert died on a cross for him, among others. With that degree of gullibility I would have crushed him and not missed a beat. Then again, he was likeable. I had, on occasion, pulled my punches with some people. Not that I was susceptible to sentimentality or anything like that. Being, basically, heartless came with the territory on the streets. I wasn't mugging people out there. Don't get the wrong idea. Theft is theft though. The fact that it didn't come at the end of a gun or knife only changes things a little bit. Money, property, dignity still changes hands. You didn't need the services of a clinical ethicist to tell you that somebody had been wronged.

We didn't think about that all that much though. Out there on those New York streets legions of disreputable characters were enacting crimes everyday, every hour, some wearing suit and ties. Our individual acts of perfidy roiled the population and left a stain that couldn't be lifted. Psychologically, physically, even spiritually the citizenry was taking a hit. Remember, this was New York City circa mid-Seventies. Fear. Displacement. Fiscal ruin. It all stalked the city, like in a comic book where the super hero has been vanquished. No Superman, Batman, or even any of those lesser known ones. There had been talk of the city defaulting, inspiring more anxiety, just another layer of disquiet. Even the NYPD couldn't be trusted, having, to some degree, thrown in with the venal side of things. Scandals seemed to rock the men in blue on a regular basis, with the usual response from city hall being the usual song and dance about internal investigations appeasing less and less of the public each time another untimely revelation about the newest transgressions reached the newspapers.

And then I met Isaac. I like to phrase it that way, it being the single most drastic (and dramatic) event that essentially changed my life. Life is like that of course, where fate proves its mettle by untangling the intricacies that make up the connections which in turn provide the superstructure to our personal histories. Something along those lines anyway. I'm sure there are physicists out there who could devise formulas and or theorems that might perfectly describe what is going on when you, the individual, meets his or her future track. Tract? We are all dancing together here on earth and the music score is often never heard. I may be channeling some of Gary's nonsense here but damn if it doesn't ring true.

"I want you to meet someone," Father Mike announced one day at our customary get together, another installment of the conversion process that was, evidently, advancing nicely. "He is an interesting guy. I think he might be good for you."

For me? I was thinking, wondering what in the hell the strange monk had in store for yours truly. "Oh yeah," I tossed out, not sure whether or not I should protest in a feeble effort to thwart any social engineering the monk might have in mind. I mean did I really need to meet anyone to accomplish the goal at hand? Give me Catholicism, let's get on with it. There was no need for any hand holding. I got it. Christ. Cross. Virgin. Kneel. It was pretty simple. At least he wasn't trying to be a match maker of some sort.

"He might be a good mentor for you," the priest suggested, smiling from behind his omnipresent pipe. "Yeah. I have given this some thought and it might work out for the best." He paused a moment to smile at me before adding, "For the both of you."

"Really," I mumbled, instilling my one word response with as much skepticism as possible, while my mind had latched onto his last sentence. What, was the guy unstable or something? whirled in my brain. Symbiotic relationship floated to the foreground, mostly because I had just been studying it in one of my college courses. He helps me. I help him. We both become better foot soldiers in the battle against the creeping tide of uncertainty and general all around apathy that lurked just outside every church's door.

"I have already spoken with him, Isaac, and he agrees with me that it might...facilitate matters," Father Mike declared, lighting his pipe again after examining the contents for a moment. A cloud of unctuously sweet smoke billowed towards the ceiling, where it would linger for what I imagined might be days. To me, the entire interior of the church was beginning to reek of pungent stink, like being locked away in a closet full of dying flowers. "He was properly converted here, at the monastery," the priest continued, sweeping his arms out in both directions.

Properly? I thought, wondering what he meant by that but then again these Catholics could be proprietary when they felt their specific brand of Peter's brain child was being challenged. "Another notch in your..." I started to say but quickly decided against it and clammed up, smiling back at him. "Sounds okay," I replied instead.
"The three of us can meet next time you are here and we'll go from there," he offered, eyeing me for a response, almost as if he were expecting me to tell him to fuck off. Sometimes my street persona was difficult to turn off and people were expecting the worse from me.

"We'll see how it goes," I managed to say, trying to sound, if not anything else, at least reasonable.

"Time to adjourn for the day," Father Mike declared, as he usually did, gathering up his props: several books of instruction, pouch of tobacco, dedicated pipe lighter, rosary, and can of soft drink, easily as ubiquitous as pipe and crucifix with beads. I was being dismissed. He was a busy man. Religion, particularly Catholicism, ran with metronomic precision. Hewing to a timeworn formula established hundreds and hundreds of years ago took a certain degree of stamina, that and a belief that it was all going to be worth it in the end. Come Judgement Day all of those hours and hours of adhering to a principle--the principle--would pay off. For whom?

I didn't like this new wrinkled in the conversion process. Not at all. It posed undetected problems down the road. My wager, the bet, was beginning to take on unexpected hassles. At first, after I had spent a little bit of time with the monk, I thought I could get in and out with ease, just another long con. Then, unbelievably, I began to look forward to my sessions with Father Mike. Although he wasn't old enough to be my father, he could easily fit the older brother mold. My siblings, for the most part, thought I was a nuisance and, truthfully, a waste. One more blot on civilization they would have to step over so they could proceed with their lives. They didn't know the half of it. In a relatively short time they would be denying they were related to me and wished like hell they could legally change their family name. That would come later.

The appointed time approached. My weekly meeting with the monk, on Mondays, came after two of my classes: Criminology 101, (good to know what law enforcement was up to when you spent most of your time dodging the long reach of such), and Composition and Ideas, (one of those courses colleges are good for, where nothing learned is applicable to anything). Usually these Monday sessions were a grind with Father Mike because after the weekend I was desperately trying to revive myself from two days of hustle on the streets or partying, that and two classes tended to wear me down. Playing a part can be exhausting. My campus identity took work, along with the general all around level of deception.

I got there late. Relying on the subway back in the 70's could be a hit or miss proposition. The MTA was always working on the tracks which wreaked havoc with the time schedules, as can be imagined. This line, that line, it seemed one or the other was shut down for repairs. As a result, I got there about ten minutes late. Isaac and Father Mike were already deep into a discussion of some sort, locked into a conversational whirlwind as they sat close to each other, not a few feet apart. As I walked in Father Mike was gesticulating, waving his pipe in front of him, talking about some saint or other, some church personage who had done the miraculous and been anointed in a long distant century. Two weeks after I had gotten involved with this project I was dismayed to learn that the Catholics liked their saints, which were legion, all with a story to tell or, in my case, study. Come on, they had a saint against hemorrhoids, Saint Fiacre, who was Irish and lived back in the hundreds, even before the first millennia got kicked off. I would eventually learn of Isaac's patron saint, Jude Thaddaeus, one of the original disciples and a good guy to have when you are facing desperate situations. The monk insisted on me adopting Saint Wolbodo as my guy because he supposedly helped students. He was Dutch or Flemish and I wasn't even sure what or where the Flemish came from. It was truly nutty.

So the Catholics had a roster full of guys, and some girls, who lent a hand when it came time to endure what their God had birthed, sort of like assistants. It was a marvel of delegating, another extension of His might, even if it seemed to prove that He wasn't and couldn't be all that omnipresent if the Man had to rely on proxies. That was the way I saw it anyway, always eager to punch holes in the story that had lasted thousands of years, even if it had undergone some tweaks here and there. I didn't like to accept that I was part of the cast and the director was, apparently, one of those hands-off types who don't feel it's necessary to step in all that much in order to set things right.

"Oh, he's finally here!" Father Mike exclaimed, spying me in the doorway, small day pack slung over my shoulder, weighted down by several text books, all dutifully smudged with sweaty finger prints by at least two former owners. One previous student had doodled on every other page, some scatological in nature. I imagined he (or she) had probably bailed on their studies and gladly sold the books for some extra cash. "I was just telling Isaac here that you are never tardy but..." the monk announced, rising to his feet and letting his words drift off.

"Glad to finally have the opportunity to meet you," the man said directly to me, offering his hand. I noticed the accent right away, trying to gauge its source: Europe, Germanic maybe. "I hope Father Mike has been gentle with you. He can be a task master when he wants to be. I know from personal experience."

Father Mike scoffed, laughing, then I said, "He has been...been pushing this meeting for quite some time," I offered, wishing I had phrased it a little bit more elegantly. "I mean...I think he has some doubts about me, about my ultimate conversion."

The monk eyed me for a moment, momentarily taken back by my statement, then stated: "He exaggerates, don't you Barry. Let's not give Isaac the wrong idea," he said with a trace of defensiveness edging into his voice. "Our progress has been exemplary, I think."

Our, I thought. "It has been a journey," I said, which sounded phony to me but they didn't seem to take it that way. I was sure they were getting a whiff of my insincerity. How could they not? I was an imposter, a living and breathing charlatan. Lightning bolts were in route. Step back. "I am eager to finish," I declared, taking a seat on the other side of Father Mike. Little did they know I just wanted to cash out.

"I can tell you that Father Mike has brought me peace...peace to my soul. Finally. And yes, it has been a journey. A long, long one," Isaac said in a solemn voice, one that seemed to be just on the edge of quaking. Suddenly it felt like I was attending a funeral. Who died? Little did I know.

"You have been incredibly strong, Isaac," the monk stated, reaching out to give a quick squeeze to Isaac's arm, while I couldn't help but wonder who was supposed to be helping whom.

Isaac was, I judged, in his fifties, maybe early sixties. Even though he had Semitic blood he looked like a Euro. Ashkenazim had mixed their blood so often the sands of the middle-east had long been bleached out of them. New York City was awash in them, it being the largest outpost in the world for Jews outside of Israel. Big noses. Swarthiness. Horns. It didn't apply. Blond. Blue eyed. Tall. Short. Skinny. Fat. It made you wonder how Hitler had rounded up so many because they were almost perfectly camouflaged. Isaac had been one of the ones rounded up. He was a holocaust survivor.

This I found out later, of course. He didn't much like to talk about it, as can be expected. When you have been to hell and back it isn't usually something that is the topic of the day. In fact, my first clue came when I saw the tattoo, the numbers inked into his skin, right there on his forearm. Five lifetime digits, a constant reminder that he had been selected to die by a death machine with such precision and systematic cruelty millions would perish. It boggled the mind really that mankind could foster such hatred and diabolical evil. European Jewry had almost been entirely extinguished. I don't think school text books or even documentaries can capture the horror that man can inflict on itself.

I was young then and, frankly, unconcerned about any genocide that had taken place over there on another continent, thirty years removed. The Nazis were monsters who were cinematic fodder for any number of movie studios, goose stepping caricatures who embodied the bad guys, easy to dislike. We won the war. They lost. We bombed the shit out of them, then liberated the camps. All is well. We Americans were there to tidy up the scene, make it better. History could be tied up with a bow.

If I had come across any other holocaust survivors in New York, or Philly for that matter, I was none the wiser. Just another Jew. My attitude probably wouldn't have been reset all that much. The acts of terror they had escaped from didn't register all that much. Like a lot of others, I was unconcerned about what had occurred in that previous generational upheaval. I didn't even keep up with my own generation's war over in Southeast Asia.

"You converted too?" I said, more a comment than a question.

Isaac looked over at me, smiled briefly, and replied, "Yes, a few years ago."

"He was an excellent student," the monk interjected, grinning, looking at his former pupil, beaming. "It was a difficult transition, for sure, coming from a Judaic tradition. "

Jew to Catholic, I thought, contemplating the theological hurdles that must have been completed in order to come out the other side of things. It didn't seem possible. Crossing from Protestant to Catholic was bad enough, with plenty of pitfalls, but coming from Judaism seemed impossible. Jesus might have been a Jew but that part of his bio had long since been extinguished, expunged. What exactly made this man convert? I wondered but was too bashful to ask.

"I was wandering in my own desert for answers," Isaac exclaimed by way of explanation. "I needed help."

Help, I thought. No Jew I had ever come across wanted to become a Christian. They were either staunch secularists, people who didn't have time for religion as a concept besides anything otherwise, or happy with the status quo, compliant with the religious practices, holding up the traditions when need be if not totally immersed in the rituals. Swapping religions wasn't on their radar. Jews, as a rule, had a healthy skepticism when it came to Christians and what they were capable of. Pogroms still echoed in their consciousness. Forced conversions. Papal bulls handed down detailing what need be done about the Jews. Organized slaughter came from many different directions. Being a Jew meant having to always look over your shoulder, it seemed. History hadn't been kind.

It was clear that Father Mike didn't want to hit me with the specifics all at one time. Isaac's personal history was heavy on drama, with the requisite tales of loss. No need to concern me with that at this time. Best to have me meet a fellow traveler, even if we weren't coming from the same starting point and not heading in the same direction. Isaac was there for moral support, someone to offer a helping hand along the way to becoming a person of grace or some such religious nonsense. My soul, ultimately, was there for safe keeping. As to Isaac, a survivor, what guilt he had to assuage or what grace he needed to cultivate I couldn't imagine. The man, if any one, had built up enough religious chits after what he endured to cruise through the rest of his life. He had stared down the very essence of evil. Didn't god, the God, owe him something? Not the other way around.

I can say now, as a confirmed non-believer, especially after years spent in lock-up and reading my share of tomes dealing with the origin of the universe and God's role in it, he didn't create anything. It might have been primordial plasma, synthesized atoms, or maybe a stew of high temperature fairy dust. Man from the beginning has been buffeted by creation myths, usually attributed to some omnipotent somebody. It was a simple way to dispel any doubts and fears. Sure scientists have their theories, with photons and charged particles, but smug clergy can always say that God created that too. It is treadmill logic, where ideas keep spinning but they never go anywhere. To me, Isaac had jumped off the speeding treadmill, hoping to land on solid ground. How he decided on Catholicism was a mystery, even though he would tell me later on: "Barry, sin is perpetual and I needed to comprehend it." That is the way he talked, like someone reciting some obscure lines from some forgotten poem.

If I was confused by Isaac's choice, I didn't let on. On the street you were always neutral, ever ready to lean one way or the other, what ever was advantageous. He would also talk of collective consciousness that could be guided by a few determined outcasts, apparently unable to abandon his brethren like Jung and Freud as he delved into psychological mumbo-jumbo. "People, like animals or perhaps insects, are spectacularly attuned to realizing that the whole is better than the parts," he said to me, with his pinched European accent fondling the words, squeezing each of the syllables lovingly. I guess he was talking about the herd instinct and how man tended to glom onto what a few were espousing or something, as he added with a wink: "Not unlike a flock of bird wings flapping."

The man had gone in one end of the Nazi torture chamber and come out the other side. He was one of the relative few. Countless others had perished, often under the crushing weight of boundless agony. Everyone has heard the tales and, if not, have seen a movie or two devoted to the subject. It wasn't one of mankind's finest hours. There had been a systematic and really well organized attempt to rid the earth of an ethnological component, one that the Germans (and by that a really large slice of the population) were intent on eliminating. It was madness elevated to the highest degree.

I suppose only a few groups of people out there can really relate: Cambodians, Tutsis, maybe some indigenous tribes here and there. Most of us can only marvel at the sheer import of having a nation rally behind some evil stooge and then go along with his instrumentation of terror. Of course Isaac would reveal this factoid to me later on, after we had gotten on friendly terms, two converts out of our element. Little did he know, for I wasn't about to ever tell him that I was an imposter, there to more or less mock his chosen religion if not religion as a whole. It was nice and all that he found peace within the confines of a religion grafted onto the backs of his ancestors. The man had enough problems and didn't need to hear about how he was, in all probability, sticking it to his former religion by accepting succor under the skirt of some guy in Rome who came from a long line of the same that had inflicted some pretty lasting damage over the centuries to the Jews. No need to remind him of that.

Isaac needed something to assuage his mind when memories flooded to the foreground and threatened to overwhelm him. He had seen death close up, real close. More on that later though. At the monk's suggestion, Isaac had been asked to sit in on several of our sessions, there to, I guess, add his two cents worth on what to expect when you are finally accepted to the one real Christ and not that phony one you had been giving lip service to all those years. Father Mike loved the Tridentine Mass and, by extension, so did Isaac. Old, dead languages spoke to him. The man did know some Hebrew, dabbling in it before Israel appeared on the scene.

One positive note in having another person sit in on the sessions was I didn't have to listen to Father Mike pontificate about things like: "Did you know the Big Bang theory originated with a Jesuit priest?" This was said with his usual cheery voice he used when he didn't want to sound too condescending. Too bad his query went into the black hole that was my understanding of science. I would invariably smile back at him and wonder why the monk always seemed so defensive about his religion and its standing in regards to the cosmos or what explained its origins. It was so unlike the Protestants, who were readily content with saying God did the deed--no questions asked. The monk was always trying to lump rank biblical mysticism with quantum theory or whatever the scientific community was selling. "Really," I would usually say, feigning interest, as I immediately wondered how he was going to explain Noah and the flood thing. Perhaps there had been a Franciscan monk who had been an oceanographer.

During these particular meetings, while I sat there uncomfortably wedged in between a priest and a fervent convert with a story to tell, with some damn earnest praying going on not a few yards away behind those thick monastery walls, I often wished for the monk's sake that there was a simple formula he could write down on paper to prove the existence of god. Call it the universal law of creation. His equation would have all the right x's and y's, all in a long line that could easily be digested, needing no conceptual backstop to make it understandable. Like E=mc2, the formula would roll off even elementary school kids' tongues, jabbing a stake in all those loud mouthed atheist hearts. End of story. Give it up. Admit it. You were wrong and all those Christians were right.

God did his thing and then rested on the seventh day. Got it? No, I didn't get it. Not by a long shot. Most times I sat there listening to him lecturing about the essence of things like "agape," pausing to let me know it was a Greek word, adding more evidentiary items on the convert's agenda. This is where Isaac was a good team player, piping up to offer some real world experience that might bring it home for me. I repeat, the man had survived the camps. Still. You think god is a good thing? If it was possible to have mental palpitations then I was having them as my mind just wanted to explode from frustration.

Perhaps I should have been agog at these revelations delivered by a portly monk smelling of cheap pipe tobacco but I wasn't. First, I was a functioning dunce. Second, narcissism came naturally to me, leaving little leftover for a busy body god. My innate intuition was well developed after my time on the streets and I had an intractable skepticism working, almost like a suit of armor. No matter how many times the monk--and Isaac--wanted me to ingest his religious propaganda, an equal amount of time I was going to reject it. I saw uniformity in the world and it came in little chunks of measurements that required a person to gain advantage. Easy to understand. Not need to cut any Gordian Knot in order to reduce any complexity. This understanding of my direct contact with the cosmos made it difficult, as I sat there between them, a well meaning but truly unaware monk and a damaged soul in that room so close to the vestibule, to not feel sorry for them. I felt superior in a way because I knew man's weaknesses and God's strengths were in a stalemate and nothing was likely to change that.

It was obvious what was wrong with Isaac. He had demons to exorcise. The trouble with the monk was he thought by glomming onto some garden variety science he could prove to himself that what he was doing with his life wasn't a charade. As some kind of amateur theoretical physicist or whatever he could massage the message or something like that. I mean, why was he always trying to shoehorn science into theology. It was a neat trick if you could do it. You can't. Not really. They are mutually exclusive, religion and science. Father Mike deemed it necessary in order to convince me that god and quantum mechanics were in harmony.

As with science, there is most times a constant, particularly mathematics; you can guess what the constant was for the priest. Jesus was the nucleus. None of this sophistry mattered. I don't care if he conjured up a panel of dead men: Einstein, St Thomas, Newton, and Aristotle. God, any god, just wasn't applicable. Not to me; and especially not to Isaac, who had seen the worst of what his god could do. Hypothetical or otherwise, this supreme being wasn't doing either of us any good. I was wonderfully unfettered by any set of religious sponsored prohibitions and that included some guys drawing inspiration from a book written a very long time ago. Relevancy had a way of dictating my actions. Values. Mores. Credo. They might as well been apocryphal, handed down by addled elders gasping to stay alive. Besides, with Isaac, it should have been a total rejection of a godhead, one that rained down such despicable, immoral crimes.

Then again, I guess Father Mike was just doing his job, bringing aboard another sucker. He wanted me to, essentially, jump ship, defect; of course he was working under the understanding that I believed what the other side, the Protestants were hocking. Poor guy. I had deceived him adequately enough to make him think I was actually out there walking around with some working delusion about God being a personage I had to heed. Some old man in the clouds was watching my every move. I needed to be convinced to accept the Catholic ethos, their way of adjudicating living life. Pretty straight forward. Take the border line mysticism, along with the set in concrete theology ( Vatican II notwithstanding) and rely on faith.

During our sessions Father Mike talked about esoteric stuff a lot. I wish I could have been able to tape record them. I could listen over and over to the portly monk telling me about anthropic this or that, all the while sounding like he was trying to convince himself more than me. Religion, once you strip it down to its core, is really about capitulation. You, the believer, have been gamed by the system of reckoning: we all are going to be judged. Perhaps, and I am only speculating here, that was what motivated poor Isaac. His religion, the one he was born into, didn't offer any sort of refuge. He needed assurance, something for his mind to latch onto that would let him forgive himself for his actions during the war. Arm chair psychology probably but I couldn't climb into his psyche. I hadn't been there when the Nazis came for him and his family, herding them into box cars, taking them to the camps, the weigh station before death.

The Final Solution. The Germans have a way of assigning, labeling actions, plans that need to be implemented. Very organized, with a penchant for recording everything. The anti-Semitic menace was easy to foster in a Europe raised on pogroms and the Inquisition. Jews had horns. They were the Devil's henchmen, and, don't forget, they had killed Christ. The fact that it had, apparently, been the Romans didn't matter. Guilty by association, or something. The German people sat by while the Brown shirts and then the SS went about their dirty business. Hard to say what any other culture or nation would have done. Best to keep quiet.

Isaac was from a shtetl in Poland, or at least his family had been. His father was a respectable man, working nine to five in some burg, while his mother kept house. The information I received from him about his past was sketchy at best. The man didn't want to talk about some people who had died horrible deaths, while he skated away, ultimately to America. That was a whole other story, his journey that took him from a war torn continent, through relief agencies and several other countries, before landing in New York. He spoke all of five English words, none pronounced correctly so he told me with a grin. He was in his twenties then, young, relatively healthy, at least physically, and ready to embark on another life, leaving what he had experienced behind him.

I suppose they might have support groups for people like him, the ones who have seen a few rings of hell close up. Holocaust survivors do fit into their own distinct category. Wholesale genocide done with an apparatus such as the Nazi machine brings new meaning to immorality. You really couldn't craft a word for it. It was the nadir of civilization. No religion could bring us back from the brink of dissolution. Well, Isaac, after some hands on research, decided on Catholicism. Hitler was Catholic, nominally anyway; and if rumor is to be believed, marginally Jewish. That really completes the circle.

I felt bad that Isaac began to take his mentor duties too seriously, for, as you know, I was a fraud. In time, our dual conversions would work to unite our destinies, Isaac and me. Some time later, after I had gotten to know him a little, it would dawn on me why he had selected the Catholic way as his path to salvation: confession. Hey, I could imagine what Isaac's trip to the confessional booth was like. The dutiful priest, undoubtedly bored by listening to so many mea culpa's about curse words and petty violations, probably didn't know what hit him. Some man, with the heavy accent, unloading mountains of emotional plaintive's, might take down some of the more inexperienced priests, the ones who doled out elementary measures in order to do penance. They might think the man on the other side of the partition needed some psychiatric help, maybe even Sigmund himself.

Isaac had lived in a hellscape that included the deaths of his family and other relatives, with a few friends thrown in as well. He had been one minuscule part of the bureaucratic killing machine. Just a minion. He still carried that fact, as it seemed to hang around his neck. Accepting Jesus, the Roman version, was his pathway to salvation, not unlike so many other hopeless humans eager to find an explanation for why living life was so fucked up. Isaac had taken what god could dish out and come away intact, or at least in one piece. Confession, for him, offered a brief respite from his mental agony. Seeing death on a daily basis had baked his brain, leaving a stubborn residue to cling to his memories.

Others had succumbed to suicide or booze in order to get out from under their personal grief. They were a select fraternity, the ones walking around the world wearing their serial number tattooed on their arms. Etched in their skin, boring down to their very soul, they were scarred for all time. No therapy was going to make them believe humans were destined to get it right. A few mistakes along the way couldn't explain away the psychic pain. Some moved to Israel, believing that by surrounding themselves in kind they could insulate the boundaries around them. Others escaped into foreign countries, losing themselves in a different culture in a quixotic attempt to leave it all behind on another land mass all together. Still others reached for undistilled hatred in order to get by, fueling their recovery with raw internal aggression against them, the Germans and anyone who remotely acted like them.

I would hear one of Isaac's confessions, the one that would set me down the road towards my own ruin. Father Mike, the modern priest, even though he belonged to an ancient order, let his city surroundings influence him a little too much. He had suggested a group confession, something the Church wasn't sold on but never the less turned a blind eye to at the time. The monk could never be described as one of those renegade priests you hear about, you know, the type that foments revolution in some small village down in South America, blending Marx with Jesus expertly. I just think he thought, at the time, that I might be more comfortable doing the confession thing with an audience. Kidding aside, I don't know why he suggested it but Isaac agreed to the arrangement.

Confessions, by my way of thinking, were personal, very much so. You sat there in that weird little booth, cleared your throat and your mind, then let fly. Let the crap fall on the priest's ears. He was the one getting paid to hear confessions. It was in his job description. As human communication went it was pretty straight forward. Spill it, then get your punishment. Arcade games were more complicated. My take on confessions as a concept was simply this: one confession is too much and a thousand is too few. I stole that from AA or something. The Church was in for the long con for sure, and the confessional was proof of that. I guess it worked because the Catholics were formidable. They had beat back opponents since Roman times. Kings had bowed down to the Pope, proving that they really did run the world.

When I started the joke I hadn't ever thought about confession. Protestants didn't go in for that sort of Christian mechanism. It smacked of some sort of paternal headlock. We were free to screw up, just as we were free to burn in hell. Our transgressions were between us and the Lord, with Jesus as intermediary, Trinity notwithstanding. Now I was going to have to openly play along with the game. Since beginning my ruse I hadn't even set foot in a church. I expertly lied to the monk, telling him I was attending mass here and there, eagerly anticipating the day I was going to be able to accept communion and be one of them. He bought it. I suppose he just wanted to believe that I was progressing towards the final threshold and he was the guide.

"Comfortable?" Father Mike asked me, giving that whimsical grin that he liked to use to let me know that he was simpatico somehow, even if our backgrounds couldn't have been more different. Age. Hometown. Belief system. The list of our differences was vast. "Good," he announced after I had given him the thumbs up sign.

"Don't be nervous," Isaac offered, smiling at me, somehow worried that I might have a panic attack or something. Little did he know who he was dealing with, a seasoned con man and street hustler. "My first time was...was a disaster. It was," he admitted, chuckling, glancing at the priest for confirmation.

"He resorted to speaking in Polish for a while there," the monk informed me, laughing. "I thought I was going to have to go get a translator so we could finish the confession. Remember that?" They shared in a laugh, two travelers in the name of Jesus, and that Pope guy of course. "Anyway, we got through it and Isaac has become, you know, committed to his pathway now." This sounded vaguely like some tag line you might hear from some cult or something and I tried not to look alarmed, suppressing my bullshit meter as much as I could. "There is no time limit so don't feel like you have to speed through it."

"Okay," I said in a low voice, one that I hoped wasn't going to reveal that I was conning them and thought they were both idiots for believing that some Jew in the armpit of the world had been chosen by god to absolve us of the sins god had freely bestowed on us. My mind hurt when I thought of the absurdity of it all.

I had to go through with it though. It was vital that I receive the Eucharist and to do that I had to confess. Throw it out there for one of god's minions to collect, thereby saving me from myself. If you hold back during the confessional experience then you have to confess that you didn't confess correctly. You see my dilemma and where I am going with this. It is a spinning wheel, a perpetual stripping away of your...what? Discretionary thinking. Will? It is, so I was told by the monk, "an examination of conscience." You mean thought control, don't you?

It all didn't matter. What they believed, in Rome and everywhere, was fraudulent and so was I. A marriage made in heaven, me and the Catholics, both working the angles. I had to do it. The Forseti Society demanded that I stand up there in front of some random congregation of believers and receive the body of Christ, a tiny hor d'oeuvre that made me one of them. Then I could collect. There would be mocking but they would respect me for going through with it. Such perseverance.

Father Mike, with the open, face to face, confession dynamic, was on fairly solid ground here. From Canon 964.1: The proper place to hear sacramental confessions is in a church or oratory. Thus we got our communal confession. So the priest might have extrapolated from Canon Law just a wee bit. He wanted me to feel comfortable in my new religious skin. Besides, there were parishes out there where communal sin busting was all the rage, along with hip, young priests and guitar playing at mass. Vatican II had unleashed all manner of creativity, bringing different tactics to bear in order to attract the people. The Church had been dying a slow death for centuries, ever since that Teutonic turd Luther opened his big mouth. That wasn't my problem though. Mine was more immediate.

"I am going to have Isaac start," the priest announced, looking towards the Pole, adopting his more serious expression, the one he used for sin busting.

Isaac nodded solemnly and edged to the end of his chair, then began muttering. It was, for the most part, incomprehensible and I thought he might have reverted to Yiddish or Polish again. Then I could make out "Forgive me" and "it has been" filtering into the quiet room. I thought for a moment he might slip to his knees but he remained perched on the edge of his seat, with his eyes almost all the way closed and his hands clasped together in the usual prayer grip. I just hoped I wasn't going to get the giggles.

Isaac went through a laundry list of sins, most benign by my standards. I could see that he had become expert at this confession ritual, easily enumerating transgressions. I tried to listen closely, hoping to get some pointers on what I was going to say when the time came for me to duplicate the feat of baring my soul to an emissary of the Supreme Being. I would have to clean it up a little bit. There would be no mention of that quid pro quo sexual exchange with a girl at the Peep Emporium just the other day. Quick, messy handjobs were definitely on a need to know basis; besides, could that really be considered pre-marital sex? I also wasn't going to be mentioning the slightly dangerous rip-off of my neighborhood pusher's stash. While theft was technically verboten, it had come at the expense of a dickhead who liked to physically intimidate one of my friend's hopelessly hooked on his product. Sin happened on a sliding scale sometimes.

I was currently squatting in a run down building in the East Village, where the reach of the law had been negated by years of abandonment. It was an urban wasteland for the most part, a place only junkies and the fucking Punks liked to inhabit. That the Punks were often times also the junkies made it all the more critical. We were all in that forgotten neighborhood living at the tipping point. The only rule was there wasn't any. I had personally seen beat downs and probably eventual murder, because I kept my head down and never (ever) stuck around to see the final act. Just a week before I had witnessed two guys beating a junkie in an alley, wailing away, all the while laughing maniacally. The Punk credo, such as it was, lent a hand in demonstrating that society was precarious. Nihilism was its own reward.

Living in a neighborhood where there seemed to be a new social paradigm took getting used to. Basic, unrelenting illegality created a bare bones set of morals, ones that adhered to the ebb and flow of illicit commerce and unadulterated personal power, almost like anarchy had been implemented for some unseen experiment. You got yours, that was the cardinal rule, even if it was just a miserable portion. Dickens squared comes to mind.

I was hanging out in a walk up with no electricity and very little running water. Maybe a dozen people came and went in our little version of Shangri-La, where having a roof over your head meant that you were barely existing. The building, with the flaking paint and warped door jams, gave off more than the usual odor of backed up toilets and mildew. You could smell creeping death.

Melodramatics aside, I had befriended one guy, Slice, a moniker he got from his propensity to use the switch blade he kept in his pocket to bolster his side of an argument. It was all a very dark West side Story vibe, if who ever wrote that was trying to capture the vacant, yawning aspect of living in a modern hellhole. Slice was entrepreneurial enough to sell smack, managing to keep himself high in the process. Not that his small business didn't suffer from supply and demand hitches. He was often strung out in between fixes and damn difficult to get along with. He occupied the top floor of the building and ruled like some power hungry despot, keeping two henchman on retainer to dole out beatings when need be. Fortunately, I was usually in his good graces, having developed a knack for dealing with people riding horse. My little talent kept me out of trouble.

Anyway, this tiny kingpin was, as I said, a monster. He extracted sex from waifs he took in off the streets, stringing them out on heroin until which time he didn't need them any more. Along with that he would launch into temper tantrums at any moment, which usually resulted in somebody getting bruised and battered, if not by him then by his muscle. It was all small time. There were no mafia pretensions. With the way the East Village was at the time domestication of the urban spread had been marginalized, leaving a vacuum. The Punks, with their bad music and piercings, filled part of it, while other miscreants took up the slack. It made for a miasma of unlawfulness.

I was crashing on a lower floor of the building, residing with a street friend, a girl. She was from the hinterlands, having washed up in New York, the proverbial stereotype, right down to arriving at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, gateway for so many lost souls. Being on the cusp of being legal, I waved any restrictions about legal propriety. We had a fluid relationship, one in which the both of us knew that circumstances were always changing, continually. Monogamy wasn't a concept that was practiced all that much in our socio-econ level anyway. I knew, as did she, if the time came that some unknown benefactor offered something better than it would behoove us to gravitate towards it. Simple math.

Then she got hooked. By who you can guess. His close proximity probably made it inevitable. So did the perspective sexual favors. She was bartering what she had. Slice was nothing if not proprietary and was soon appropriating her for his needs. This, as can be expected, pissed me off, but I wasn't crazy enough to confront him. My only recourse was to filch his goods when the time presented itself.

Thinking no one would be foolish enough to steal from him, he kept his stash in the fridge. I knew this because I had attended a few of his parties and witnessed him dipping into it to keep things going at his little soiree. Per usual, the festivities were heavy on rotten music played on a boom box, the latest tripe from the newest Punk sensation, and lots of nodding. Heroin made for full scale zombies, where bodily functions slowed down to a low ebb, riding dangerously close to coma territory. One night I just waited to everybody had done their fix and slid into the twilight consciousness that was their high. I casually walked into the kitchen, plucked out the paper bag full of the H and made my way out the door. None the wiser. Ended up dumping the junk down a sewer grate a block over. Although I knew it would only make a slight dent in his business, I only wished I could have been there when he came out of it and found his smack all gone, disappeared.

My turn came soon enough, right after Isaac finished with a flourish, as he held back some tears ineffectually, receiving his hard earned penance from a suddenly somber Friar. The confessional homework seemed odd to me but it did seem to boost Isaac's spirits. I had known Isaac at this point for a few weeks and I still couldn't believe he had chucked away his heritage for some pointless attempt at salvation handed down by a guy who wore a beanie. Didn't compute.

"Barry," the monk intoned, for once empty handed, as his pipe lay on the coffee table between us, still smoldering. It was like a prop and I couldn't imagine him ever pulling off the holy man routine without it in his grasp, as he puffed away like some wheezing bellows.

I sat there mute for a moment, unsure how to proceed. It was decidedly anathema to me to admit to anything. My mind, especially after being on the streets for a couple years, was hardwired to dissemble as a reflex action. Owning up to whatever you had done could get you pounded by who and whatever entity you had ripped-off. Best to lie. Me, I don't know what you are talking about, that was my usual first response.

"Okay," I stammered, stalling, before adding, "Bless me..." I came clean about little and nothing, mostly innocuous stuff that wouldn't offend anyone. Judging by the look on the monk's face he was disappointed. He had wanted me to step up. Tell all. Spill it. Surely somebody like me had done something offensive to the Church, and God. Give it up.

Isaac was staring at me, narrowing his eyes, zeroing in on my cowardice. He knew we were all sinners, that everybody sinned. I was expected to offer my best transgressions, like it was some kind of competition. The monk could hold up score cards to see who got the perfect ten. Father Mike was squirming in his chair a little, trying not to coach me too much. This was to become second nature to me, a regular event or so I gleaned from my prepping. You had to build up those conscience muscles so they can take mental abuse. Unload. Let the confessional process be your guiding light. I, really, didn't know what was expected of me. Seldom was I this clueless about anything. I lived by my wits. What angles were working here?

Father Mike mumbled some Latin, or it sounded like it might be, while Isaac wrung his hands in front of him. Thinking for a moment, I gave it another try and mentioned some more sinful trivia, careful not to reveal too much. Throw in some sexual escapades, a voice in my head was saying. Mention the time you bopped the cashier at the movie theater, right there in her ticket booth, from behind. She did work at a porno theater, one that had flickering lights on the marquee out front telling all the world--at least those passing on 42nd Street--that inside they could see triple X cinema, full insertion. To completion. Might that titillate the priest, make him wonder what those others out in the real world were doing with their time on earth: jog his desires somewhat. I didn't want to be responsible for that; and who knew how Isaac would take it?

Eventually the communal confession limped to a finish, with the priest passing on some instructions for me, which seemed to please only Isaac, who smiled at me knowingly. We were now, or pretty close to it, members of a tight fraternity. Get those sins out there. Let Jesus examine them. See, it wasn't difficult after all, I imagine him saying to me as we strolled away from the monastery, glowing from our mutual bond in the name of Catholicism. Man, I knew I was going to really feel sorry for the guy now. It didn't make sense. Go back to a synagogue! Run. At least Jesus was Jewish. You didn't need this one off poseur religion. Do you? At least Hebrew's not a dead language.

The date of my final conversion, and first communion as a bona fide Catholic, was fast approaching. Most of the members of the Forseti Society had forgotten all about the bet; except for Gail (Pomona), who couldn't wait to see me taste the blood of Christ, in her words. I had boxed myself in, hamstrung by my unconscionable need to win the bet and basic avoidance. I, simply, could not bring myself to abandon Father Mike and Isaac, leaving them stranded, emotionally and otherwise, the victims of a tawdry joke perpetrated by a guy who harbored a distaste for god and organized religion. At least Gary knew nothing of my cruel shenanigans. On several occasions I had come close to telling him but thought better of it. Although he detested religion, I was pretty sure he would find what I was up to objectionable. He was one for mocking God and all but he reserved the right to maintain his distance from it all and he certainly didn't believe in ridiculing it so openly. I suspect he probably didn't see any point in tempting whatever gods there might be out there. No one needed anymore bad juju than they already had working.

"So, it was fantastic wasn't it?" Isaac announced, as we made our way down 7th Avenue, heading south. In a perverse way, we had become sort of friends in the last few weeks, often going off to a coffee shop in Chelsea to unwind after my sessions. I glanced at him and noticed he was eagerly awaiting my reply. "Father Mike is very astute...don't you agree?"

We had this type of conversation before. Isaac was of the opinion that the monk should be canonized, immediately. He was a miracle worker. I smiled back at him and said, "Pretty amazing."

This comment seemed to please him and he let out a muffled whoop, something he liked to do when and if he found little aspects of living worth while. "I always feel so...so...so cleansed afterwards. It is a truly marvelous experience. Agree?" He looked closely at me, waiting for me to second the motion. With Isaac, speaker of three or four languages, often times he would speak in a weird shorthand, distilling sentences down to the bone. "Incredible?"

"Yes," I replied, smiling back at him, still unable to believe this man had survived many harrowing months at Auschwitz, "it was unbelievable. Very gratifying." My lies swept over him and he nodded affirmatively, picking up his walking pace like he always did when he was excited. Just a tiny trace of regret seeped into my mind as I tried not to think about deceiving such a kind, innocent man.

The week before Isaac had invited me over to his apartment for dinner. This development I didn't like. Father Mike had forced us on each other and I would have preferred we kept our distance. Just meeting up at the monastery would have sufficed. He could mentor me there, with the priest's supervision; and the close quarters of a small apartment quite honestly freaked me out. I will admit to having visions of chicken hawk action too, a scenario where I was the prize and having to fight my way out of a dramatically embarrassing situation. I was no hustler, even though I had been propositioned several times by lecherous older men in need of their brand of sexuality. I leaned decidedly in the hetereo direction. Honestly, I don't know what I would have done if the time came and I needed to forgo any qualms about crossing that boundary. Fortunately, my time on the streets never devolved to the point that I was that desperate.

Isaac didn't seem like any predator. He just seemed to be a guy lost in a universe that had abused him within an inch of his life and he was just trying to cope. There was a profound sadness to him, which was etched on his face, grief and regret molded into his expression. Even if I hadn't known about his past I would have probably still sensed something amiss. You didn't need to see that tatt on his forearm to know the man had done his time.

"Come in-come in, Barry," Isaac had declared when I made my appearance, after several excuses had postponed the inevitable. That damn Father Mike had brokered the deal, practically making the arrangements himself. I could still hear his words echoing in my ears: "Go, you'll enjoy yourself. Isaac is a fascinating character. Enjoy his wisdom." I edged into the small apartment, one of the many around the Murray Hill section catering to young professionals as they set out on their prospective careers.

"Nice place," I offered, listening to the plumbing in the walls compete with the Mozart playing on an ancient stereo in the corner.

"Rent control," Isaac stated proudly, the real Holy Grail of living in New York City. "Do you think you would like some wine?" Sometimes Isaac's interrogatives had a way of wandering, probably the result of his mind filtering through the grammar rules of so many different languages cluttering up his brain. "I only have some bad vintage, unfortunately."

His apologetic tone almost made me laugh, particularly since I hated wine in general and certainly wouldn't ever be able to even guess the provenance of any wine. At least it wasn't that god awful Jewish wine, opaque and heavy on sugar. Isaac had forsaken his Shabbat rituals long ago. "Got any beer?" I asked, forgetting my manners and showing my youthful penchant for self-centerness.

"Beer...of course," he replied enthusiastically, scurrying into the small kitchen, where I could hear him rummaging around in the fridge for a moment. "Rhinegold...another Jewish elixir," Isaac called out from the kitchen doorway, holding the bottle of beer in front of him. "A gift from my neighbor. I never drink beer," he informed me, pinching the word in his mouth and making a face. "I did some handyman chores, nothing elaborate, and she gave me beer. It was a barter--a trade." This tidbit seemed to amuse him and he laughed, while he got that far away look in his eyes for a moment, like he was in a trance or something. I couldn't imagine what went on in his head half the time.

"Long as it's cold," I stated, trying to be the good guest. All in all, I didn't know how to behave around people. With me, it was more like being with a domesticated wild animal. Sit down dinners never happened. I ate on the run, always. Breaking bread with others was rare. Most of my encounters came in a haze of felony inducing drugs or booze, where the participants weren't interesting in ingesting nutrients of any sort. Polite conversation was utilitarian for the most part, offered up in order to accomplish a self-derived goal.

As we sat there at his impossibly small table, close, after bending our heads in prayer and then crossing ourselves, I tried to think of the last time I had what would pass as a home cooked meal. Of recent, I had pilfered some leftovers out of a fridge in an apartment on the Eastside, 80's. I had met some girl at a party. She had been slumming and was well into an expensive H habit, something she was managing to keep away from her rich parents out in Connecticut. She was supposed to be attending college at NYU. She took me home with her and promptly nose dived into unconsciousness as soon as we got to her place, collapsing on the couch. I rifled her drawers for whatever I could get and then sat down and ate most of the food in her kitchen. Now that I think of it, that didn't count as home cooked anyway because most of it was from a chic deli around the corner. It was definitely a step up though because I usually ate a slice or grabbed a bagel, or maybe a dog from a cart.

Isaac had prepared some kind of Polish food, a culinary assault that I could smell the minute I stepped into his building. He told me what it was called in Polish but the word was lost to my awful ear for foreign languages and whining violin strings in the background. It had cabbage as one of the ingredients, that my nose could attest to. There was mystery meat; not pork, something Isaac still couldn't bring himself to eat, maybe one of the few Jewish prohibitions he was sticking to. It tasted timeworn, like it had passed through a lot of turmoil on a continent from far far away. I jest. Not bad. Not a favorite but not gag inducing either.

While he fussed around me like a hen, I ate, enjoyed my beer, and tried not to be rude. My next dilemma was the time limit, as in how long was I expected to stay? I didn't know what the rules of etiquette were. One hour. Two. Two and a half. God, not three. Isaac was a nice guy but there had to be limits. I decided to play it by ear and see how it went, all the while telling myself it would be over soon and I would never see him again. Been nice. See you.

"I have rugelach for dessert," he declared half the way through the meal. "There is a bakery that makes superb rugelach. It is here on the Eastside. Marvelous." He winked at me and I got a shiver up my spine, as I tried to remember if he was a winker. Had he ever winked at me before? "I think I have another beer in the refrigerator."

I got to be overreacting, I told myself, holding up my hand and saying: "No more for me, thanks. I don't like to have too much beer," I lied artfully. "You are a pretty good cook, Isaac," I offered, rubbing my stomach for emphasis and then thinking better of it. "Old recipe, huh?"

"My mother's," he explained, then launched into the contents of the recipe and the preparation, right down to the stove setting and measures. "There was a time when I thought I would never be able to eat," he continued, grimacing. I thought he was going to be telling me about some gastro problem he had at one time, ulcer maybe, but it was the opening salvo. "When you are in fear of starvation, then it all comes into focus." This was the pensive Isaac, not the usual laconic, slightly morose one.

"Really," I offered, the usual retort by Americans when they are either not listening or couldn't give a crap. Apparently, Isaac had been storing up a boat load of angst and whatever psychological term I can't think of right now because he unloaded on me. Out came all the details about his life back at "the camp." I didn't need to be a wizened historian to know what it meant to be hunted down, interned, and then systematically eliminated. Thousands. Millions. Butchered like so much carrion.

"Everyone I knew died," he said in a tone that spoke of heinous acts and scant retribution.

Let it be said here that Isaac didn't often reference his time spent back in the camp. Never, really, except to condemn almost anything Germanic. That's understandable. Man gets taken from his home, put in a drafty boxcar, offloads in the dark, under the harsh spotlights, with dogs growling, barking, trying to take a nip, and then gets greeted by some black suited Nazi with an officious but hostile attitude. What was that like? Don't know. Few people do, just the survivors of the horrorplex. I had never asked about it, not wanting him to have to dredge up old psychological wounds. Father, gone. Mother, gone. Sister. Brother. Cousins. You get the idea. He is the only who walked away from the killing machine.

Auschwitz. The name denotes the work of the devil. Organized right down to the serial numbers, complete with work sheets for all the chemicals used to annihilate a good percentage of Europe, including besides the Jews some Gypsies, political types, priests on the wrong side of the secular model being put in place, crazies, disabled, etc. Eugenics can be a messy proposition when you have to cull the herd in order to perfect the stock.

It boggles a person's mind now and even then I suppose. One nation set out to eradicate a segment of humans they saw unworthy to live. No need for their vile genes spreading anymore. Even god had turned his back on them, otherwise how do you explain Jesus. Right? They had horns, tails, and smelled bad, with hooked noses. Start with the locals then work you way outward, taking in every nook and cranny of the continent. We have a plan with a catchy name: The Final Solution, or, if you like in German, Die Endlosung. Isaac got caught up in the web.

As he told it, he was a teenager living near Warsaw when it all came down. Germany invades Poland. World War II kicks off. The Nazis easily over run his country. The Poles are quickly subjugated. Then the fun starts. Time to get rid of the vermin.

Isaac and his family, ordinary middle-class folk, are made to wear gold stars on their clothes, and eventually herded into ghettos so the Germans can keep tabs on them. They are made to live in a twilight existence where they are neither recognized citizens or in fact human. Pests. With pests came eradication.

"I don't actually remember the first time...or the day we were made to move to the ghetto," Isaac informed me in a strained voice. His voice trailed off for a moment before he said, "We were all afraid. I had to comfort my younger sister, while my parents led us down the stairs and out into the street, where there was a truck waiting for us. All of our neighbors were being rounded up. It was quiet. No one made a fuss."

"Nobody complained," I exclaimed, surprised.

He looked at me for a moment then replied, "Oh no, we knew what the Nazis were capable of. Just the week before a man had been killed and his body hung from a light post for questioning one of the officers. Shot in the head."

I was dumbstruck for a moment, stewing in my general ignorance of the time and place. Sure I knew about the camps or at least had a vague understanding. This was the first time I had ever heard from someone who had been there and seen the implementation of evil. Isaac absently tapped his fork on the table, as he stared out the window for a moment, lost in his painful memories.

Although I knew of his past I had never really pieced his violent and cruel history together. Isaac had been a young man then and was now old to me. There didn't seem to be a possible connection. World War II was so long ago that it didn't seem relevant to anything, like some musty time from a dog eared history text book. My father had been too young for the war and even got out of going to Korea. Militarism didn't exist for my family. We lived in an insular world tucked away in Philly.

"I can't believe you had to deal with that," I offered, not knowing what else to say, immediately wondering how Father Mike dealt with it. Did the priest counsel Isaac in any way or did he just rely on platitudes from the shelter of his monastery, all wrapped in Catholic missives?

History told the story later on. The Polish Jews, like so many across Europe, were transported to the camps, the next step in the process. Isaac would go on to tell me of how cold it was in the drafty box cars and what his first reaction was upon arriving at Auschwitz-Birkenau. There were times he could still smell the smell, the one that continually wafted over the camp, a sweet putridness, the result of burning flesh.

"At first it had felt so wonderful to get out of those railroad cars," he told me, letting a wan smile creep to his lips. "Several people had died in route," he added matter of factly, as if he was only reciting data.

The Schutzstaffel made them all line up next to the tracks, which was the beginning of the sorting process, where families would be separated, never to see each other again. It was at this point that Isaac's life passed through one of its most pivotal moments. Women and children in one line. The old in another. Able bodied men in another. He was young, healthy, attractive. The math worked. His last glimpse of his mother and sister came and went, as they were led away. To be gassed. Capricious fate had torn them apart, leaving just Isaac. His father would be routed towards a work camp, spending several weeks toiling before his trip to the gas chambers.

"You don't have to talk about this," I suggested, hoping to extricate myself, and him, from an ordeal neither of us probably wanted to endure.

He waved my comment away and stated: "I have to release it from my mind sometimes."

"If it helps," I said doubtfully, unsure what he needed from me beyond just listening.

Isaac had joined the undesirable mass of humanity, the Roma, the homos, rebellious Poles, Jehovah Witnesses, priests who didn't get the Nazi form of religion. All were slated for death at one time or another. There were no lucky ones but there were some, the sonderkammando, who awaited their fate while enjoying relative comfort. Comfort? They were given better rations of food, and allowed to reside in separate barracks, all to keep them fit to do the grunt work of removal. Disposing of dead bodies required organization and a skill set that included, besides brute labor, mental blinders. You were expected to complete the task all the while knowing that the ashes you scraped from the crematorium ovens, destined to be dumped in the Vistula River, might be your neighbor, mother, father, wife. Child. It required a shrunken conscience and a highly developed sense of self-survival.

Your labor kept the machinery going, as the ovens burned around the clock, every day. Bodies piled up continually, small mountains of twisted limbs and torsos, gyrated into peculiar shapes in the last throes of life. The sondercommandos had several different chores to complete, from removing clothes and shoes, to be shipped back to towns in Germany, to shaving off hair that would end up in munitions to keep the war effort going, to extracting gold from teeth, along with jewelry, to manning a high powered fire hose to wash away the accumulated excrement from the expiring bodies.

The incinerator room was more than five hundred feet long, so he would tell me in a vacant voice, with his eyes closed tight for a moment to ward off the memory. Even now, decades later, his thoughts could return him to the death camp. He could still hear the immense iron doors closing, sealing more people in their tomb, as the gas pellet was dropped from above. They actually had signs greeting the doomed, in German, French, Greek, Hungarian, a multi-lingual send off before death.

Auschwitz was an area of violent juxtapositions, with well tended grass, pathways, trees, along side sturdy brick walls housing the ovens. It was befitting, because life at the extermination camp spun on in fits and starts of incongruity, fertile ground for absurdity as the men lived in relative comfort, using belongings purloined from previous arrivals so as to brighten up their accommodations. Of course, as they all instinctually knew, their time would also come. The sondercommandos had expiration dates as well. The SS only kept them on for a designated time period, then they too would be replaced by other Jews willing to extend their lives for a little longer, hoping that their actions wouldn't forever stain their souls.

Isaac told me this historical madness and, being young and self-absorbed, didn't digest all that much of it. Of course I knew a colossal wrong had been committed but it was removed by distance and time and therefore marginalized in my awareness. Even though I had a budding friendship, however bogus, with someone who had experienced the atrocities, I was still basically unimpressed. Not that I didn't sympathize. He had endured the worst. I wished him the best and hoped that he would be able to live out his days without the onerous weight of consciously remembering what had occurred. That, as can be imagined, was a tall order. The man was consumed with guilt. That evening I was about to hear about the different permutations of that guilt and how they had captured his life in a strangle hold of psychological trauma.

"I was a pipel," Isaac intimated in a forlorn tone of voice, giving off that damned stare again, one that I knew I wasn't to forget about for some time.

"A what?" I asked reasonably because I had never heard the word before and wasn't at all sure I had heard correctly. As mentioned, Isaac was foreign and his adherence to English grammar often wondered off a little bit into other linguistic frameworks.

A pipel, as I was to learn, was a gofer, someone who cleaned boots, clothes, and whatever other menial tasks that needed to be done. That was the official version anyway. Sometimes they were sexual companions too, often young boys abused by pedophiles that the SS seemed to have a lot of, almost like it was part of the job description in order to put on the jet black uniform with the snazzy buttons and creepy medallions. I was now beginning to see just how many layers of guilt Isaac was harboring in his conscience. If I was to guess, I would say that he wasn't a homosexual. He had taken the shortest route offered to him. When death stalks you there are often only a few avenues of escape.

Now I was really uncomfortable. Before, when I thought I might be on the dessert menu, I just wanted to make it known that I didn't partake of any same sex activities, and now I had to listen as he spilled it about how he had been made to genuflect before the Iron cross, if you know what I mean. Fortunately, Isaac didn't provide too many details. He didn't have to really. I got the picture. Some officious monster wearing the matching logo on his lapel had made him his slave in exchange for his life. Even trade? Bartering broken down to its essence? I didn't want to contemplate too much about any of what went down.

Isaac had been spared the machine blast that would end it, consumed by fire as his body was reduced to ashes. Death before life or some other such poetical nonsense. While the other "lucky" Jews were herding his brethren into the chambers, and still others cleaning out the ovens, he would be at the beck and call of the Oberschaarfuhrer of the crematorium, an odious man with a penchant for efficient cruelty. The symmetry of their relationship, however warped, had a certain degree of purity, two people exchanging goods.

I was decidedly out of my element. I didn't operate in such confined circumstances very often. Emotional shrapnel was not what I encountered all that much. I kept apart from entanglements. It was never in my best interest. Now, as I sat there wondering how I was going to extract myself from the situation, I just wanted him to stop talking. Just stop. I didn't want to know how he had survived in a cauldron of death, giving himself to a man who was responsible for the extermination of his people. I didn't want any of that psychic burden to splash on me.

"You know, Barry, I will never...never forget the simple pleasure of a hot shower," Isaac announced, suddenly shifting conversational gears on me, to which I was infinitely grateful. "Yes, I will never take it for granted. The others--back then--they wanted their booze...and delicacies. For me the panacea was the hot shower. Isn't that peculiar?"

"I like a good hot shower," I replied inanely, not knowing what the man wanted to hear for me.

He nodded in agreement and said, "Some things remind me of that time though." He had slipped back into that place again for a moment. He frowned at me but it seemed more like he was looking through me, right back in time, across the ocean, on into Europe, finally alighting on that spot in his memory, right within those barbed wire fences and brick walls. "Whenever I hear a fan going, you know, the whirling blades, I think about the ventilator motors of the crematorium." He made a strange noise as he tried to imitate the sound. "It was a steady staccato, thrumming...thrum-thrumming. You see, I have no fans in my home. None. I don't like to hear the sound."

My immediate thought at that moment was that this man was never going to be helped by his conversion gambit. Never. He could partake of communion and go to confession forever and he was never going to be able to put any of it behind him. Years on a shrink's couch probably wouldn't help either. He was damaged goods, as they say. Broken. Just hanging in there. Sure he had made his way out of the camp after the Soviets liberated the remaining skeletal souls left standing in Auschwitz, going through several refugee camps before finally landing in the US. His own personal Diaspora had gotten him to New York City. Others had gone to Israel or maybe South America. In many ways America was the promise land. Isaac would mask his psychological scars and make it, working as a technician who crafted artificial limbs for the unfortunate. It was asymmetrical kismet in a way, with him providing a better life for those people who had met misfortune in one way or another. He didn't explain how he got into the work but it had helped him adjust, even though he would never seek out another to start a family, choosing to live as a semi-recluse as he toiled at his job.

Happenstance had dealt him a winning hand but it had come with a high price. Isaac had gotten off that train and as the others were assigned a column to get into, one for worker drones, another one to the right for medical experiments in vivo conducted by the infamous Dr. Mengele, or the other for immediate remediation, fate had delivered him into the clutches of the man with the leering smile. He had been there at that juncture, a place biologists might call depression of speciation, the low point of evolution. All of Father Mike's religious bromides weren't going to put him back together again. It was all areligious what he had experienced. No words assembled and stuck in a book were going to absolve him and no routinized worship would appease his guilt.

I knew this now if I didn't know it before. If I had been a normal human being, one that was existing in a normal framework maybe, I might have lent a hand and tried to do what I could to blunt the pain. Excuses aside, I was not equipped for any of this. I doubted many people were. What behavioral repertoire could get you past all those psychological landmines?

Chapter 4 Moral Slippage

I was still making my usual visits to see Gary. Ours was a strange relationship. He, as usual, was still borderline nuts, sitting there on his rooftop redoubt, winding down the clock as he waiting for his demise. I jest. Sort of. The man was still in the throes of grief, not unlike Isaac and it made me wonder why I had to put up with these two guys. I had my own problems. Yet, still I came to visit. I didn't know why really, just that his company offered me some kind of escape; even after listening to conversational items such as: "It is always about concept and embodiment" or "You have to compress Maslov's hierarchy by totally removing the middle levels of needs."

Gary was almost always going on about some sociological problem or another, telling me that he had to take out friendships, family, and of course sex in order to cope. That and self-esteem too. Only then could you exist out there in our world. He had been lumping the two of us together for some time, adding another strange layer to my life. I had no friends to speak of and the idea that he might be my only one tended to depress me. I didn't want to think about why I traveled down to no-man's land to hear and see him drift into his usual bouts of deep reflection, just another defense mechanism to ward off the truth of the matter.

"Barry, Mr. Ashdown, what you need is a state of homeostasis...maintain a balance," Gary had told me more than once, which was his way of keeping me sane while I negotiated the streets. My balancing act was always perilously teetering. With the monk, I had certainty that came from belief, belief in a fairy tale that any elementary numerical analysis would tell you was bunk, nothing but a cosmology with a foundation of imaginary wishes. Then there was Isaac and his creep show history that was always bubbling below the surface. Apart from that but still in the mix was the Forseti Society, my ersatz coterie of friends from my bogus college life. They were like some demented Greek chorus playing in the background, needling me continually, perpetually. I just wanted to keep it all going, maintain my baseline existence such as it was, living from meal to meal and hoping to find a place to sleep for the night.

One of the last times I saw Gary he was bent over his makeshift desk writing on some butcher paper he had scrounged up somewhere. At least it was clean and not stained with pig's blood or something. The man wrote constantly and as a result tended to write on whatever he could find. In his little hut there were reams of different types of paper, from toilet paper to envelopes to spiral notebooks he had plucked from the trash still bearing the former owners name or traces of past homework, with little scratches of math or scribbly block letters written in hesitant arching strokes. Often times I would find menus stacked on his desk, where you could barely make out the entries for all of his hastily inscribed words of wisdom blanketing the type. There were even discarded cereal boxes turned inside out with his neat almost minuscule handwriting embossed on the slightly stained cardboard box. It, the words, was all going towards his ultimate manifesto that only could and would be published post humously.

I think it might have been my very last visit when I noticed he had nailed a wood sign over the door to his hut on the roof. He had spray painted: WELCOME TO NEW YORK'S TERRA INCOGNITA. I guess he really was master of his domain. That he was acting more squirrelly than usual, which was saying a lot, didn't really register with me at the time. We were deep into one of our usual discussions, one sided to be sure, when he walked over to the edge of the building and began shouting at the street below. This wasn't unusual. He liked to address the city at large, always one to look for a bigger audience. Often times he would lean over the edge until I would have to beg him to step away, fearing that with all of his usual wild gesticulating he might slip right over and go splat. Another deposit for the sanitation department to worry about. This particular diatribe seemed to be all about the end of the world judging by some of his references to the last chapter in the New Testament. Apparently, so it goes, it was him and me against the rest of the world and we had to be combat ready. To that end, he had begun to assemble a small arsenal, scavenging up some discarded tools for weapons and old spent fire extinguishers. I didn't want to ask what they could be used for or what possible effectiveness they might add to the coming battle. Better to remain mute.

We had morphed into the "remnant tribe" by his estimation, living off anything of symbolic value. Don't ask me. Everything from now on would have to be from "a post-modern posture" and that everyone else would begin to choke on their abundance. Believe me, I am paraphrasing here but you get the gist. I should have called the men in the white suits. New York was where "it" would all begin, Armageddon supposedly; and here I thought Jesus' second coming was going to happen in the middle-east somewhere. Silly me. It, the Big Apple, was the place that all the big appetites were residing, so they had to be the first ones to go. I didn't want to tell him that he lived off their leavings and that without all their waste he couldn't have furnished his lair or even resided where he did, not to mention the bounty of leftovers he found in the dumpsters.

"You can't know the speed and the direction at the same time," he warned me, wagging his finger. I nodded in agreement because I hadn't a clue what he was talking about. "There's been a tectonic shift...it's coming," he declared ominously, as he climbed up on the wall and unsteadily began to walk along the edge.

"Hey, Gary, buddy, you might want to get down from there," I exclaimed, shocked by this new development. He had never done any death defying stunts before now.

He laughed at my comment and shouted out: "The cataclysm is upon us!"

I wanted to ask him where but said in a concerned voice, "You might slip and fall."

Gary ignored me and shouted again, this time saying: "One day we will all make the proverbial Faustian bargain."

I just hate it when intelligent people go nuts. There's all the literary references and the pop physics too. It hurts your brain while you have to grapple with the emotional end of things. I didn't know what to do. As a street person part of me was thinking if he jumps or falls I get some nice digs and as a more sentient human being I was thinking I had to do what I could to talk him down. Then again, you can't really talk to somebody who has gone around the bend. Can you? I wasn't trained for this, to say the least. Not that I didn't come into contact with crazy loons. It happened all the time on the streets. New York was full of them. Sometimes I thought half the city was populated by people who needed to be committed.

How was I going to defuse the situation. I had never had to intervene with Gary. He usually talked himself out or got distracted by some fresh food he had found, maybe a half eaten dinner from a reputable restaurant. I half listened. He blathered. We broke bread. Enjoyed the night air. Tried not to think about tomorrow. The formula was simple.

Gary didn't fall, or jump. He was unexpectedly nimble as he almost raced around the perimeter wall, all the while raging about some spectral future that was waiting around the corner. It was anti-climatic. He tired of his rage and got down, walked over to a hammock he had strung up on the roof and fell into a deep sleep, spent by his harangue. Whew. It was over as soon as it had started. Right about then I told myself I wouldn't be coming back to his roof top shangri-la.

On the college front I was getting along okay. Not that attending a sub-par college was all that taxing. Besides, it was all for show. I got my money, delivered to a mail box in Gary's building, a remarkable feat compliments of the wonderful US postal service. Not having a fixed address had never been so easy. I, Barry Ashdown, lived nowhere--and everywhere, a neat trick that kept me ahead of the game. Then again, I did have to show up, participate to a certain degree, and keep it all going. That required my usual adeptness at guile and a modicum of charm. I could live different identities, like some slumming spy or something.

The Forseti Society was never the wiser; not until (that is) my story hit the press. What? My classmate did what? I could imagine them saying singularly and maybe in unison too. Their bewilderment would soon be replaced by anger, an anger they didn't know where to apply. I had never done anything to them but deceive each one, like a multi-pronged con. Hey, I wasn't even a student, maybe in the official sense but not really. I couldn't help it if they weren't observant.

My second to last time seeing all of them didn't come at our usual haunt, the coffee shop, but at the ersatz ceremony held at the monastery church. There was still the matter of the phony conversion to contend with, something I almost bailed on several times but kept up. I wanted to shame god, let's call it that. That I was willing to waste the monk's time and entrap an innocent like Isaac in my deception didn't matter, not to me. I was going to win the bet. They of the Forseti Society were going to have to eat crow and marvel at my stamina when it came to carrying out a ruse. Thank you very much.

"What time?" Gail asked again, still fumbling with her purse in search for some gum, the go to method of staving off cravings for most ex-smokers.

"I told you, the eleven o'clock mass. Listen much?" I replied, exasperated by her inattention.

"So you are really going through with this?" Eric stated, half questioning and half insinuating.

"Yeah," I said, giving him a look, one that told him I wasn't kidding.

"You are one strange dude," Willis announced, motioning for the waitress to bring him some more coffee. "I know I couldn't go through something as fucked up as this. Man, you are messing with the cosmos here."

"Oh, please, the cosmos," Gail exclaimed, making a face at Willis. "Like god's gonna come down and kick his ass or something. You really are simple sometimes, Willis."

"Say what," Willis almost shouted.

"You heard me. I think Barry is a brave soul. I do," she stated, slapping at my arm affectionately. "Look at him, the man doesn't know what he's getting himself into and here he is, right here, thinking he's getting over. Uh huh, we'll see."

"What the fuck does that mean?" I wanted to know, glancing around the table as the buzz of the coffee shop echoed in my ears. The short order cook's voice could be heard yelling out to one of the waitress to pick up her order in the background. A police siren screamed past on the street, then faded away as the police cruiser turned the corner and went downtown.

"I think what Pomona here is trying to say is that you may or may not have committed some kind of mortal sin but in the end is it really worth it. On a human level as well as a religious one. You might piss off a priest. You might screw up your karma. You might even have just slammed the door to the Pearly Gates. Quite a risk to take if you ask me."

"Really, you guys are something else. You got me into this mess to begin with," I complained.

"We did?" Willis stated innocently, looking around the table with a big grin on his face.

"My...my soul is in your hands," I protested half jokingly.

"Don't think so," Gail said, grinning. "This mess is on you, my man."

"Hubris, perhaps," Eric announced in a forced British accent he liked to use when he was trying to be funny.

"If I burn in hell you are all going to be right next to me," I exclaimed, forcing a laugh.

"Not me," Jorge said, shaking his head no. "I no want anything to do with any of this."

"That's right," Eric said, slapping Jorge on the back. "He is exempt from God's wrath. He is also a Catholic too. That stands for something."

"So am I," Gail joked.

"Doesn't count," Eric countered, pointing his fork at her. "You don't participate in the biological process. You have already been eliminated."

"Eliminated from what?" she asked, smirking.

"I think you know," he replied, eyeing her.

"Well, enough bullshit. Are you guys coming to the ceremony or not?" I wanted to know.

"Wouldn't miss it," Eric responded, smiling at me. "You are not going to find better entertainment anywhere in the city and it's free."

"I don't know," Willis said, shaking his head slowly. "I ain't never been in no Catholic church."

"Same god," Jorge interjected then turned his head down and stared at the table as if he might have said something untoward.

"That's debatable," Eric muttered.

"I'm in," Gail announced, winking at me. "Do they make you wear some stupid outfit or anything. If so, I'm bringing a camera."

"No, stupid, I don't have to wear any outfit," I responded, laughing. "It's a regular type mass, with me as the main attraction. I get to take communion for the first time as a Catholic."

"Whoa," Eric said, exhaling. "Now we are treading into some uncharted waters here. I mean you might have some serious indigestion from imbibing Christ's blood."

Jorge said something in Spanish then added, "I don't believe you guys." He crossed himself then crossed himself again for good measure.

"Don't you have to eat the body too?" Gail asked, grinning. "I always used to like those little wafer thingees."

"Yeah, I get it. Body of Christ. Blood. I didn't start the fucked up ritual, remember? There's going to be the usual mumbo jumbo during mass, kneeling and all, then I get up there and the monk does his thing. Presto! I'm a Catholic. It's all pretty dumb."

"Hey, don't you have to be christened too?" Gail wanted to know.

"No," I shot back.

"I think they should make him wear a little white dress like when the babies get christened. They could spill some holy water on his head and say a prayer. Hey, don't you need some god parents too?" Gail said, giggling uncontrollably.

"We could be his god parents," Eric stated in a solemn voice.

"I will be the one laughing when you guys cough up the bread...right in my palm," I declared, holding my right hand, palm up, in front of me.

"What a moron," Willis called out and they all laughed.

"Still, he did go through with it," Eric stated, nodding in my direction. "Gotta give him that."

"I bet he still doesn't go through with it," Gail challenged. "Nope, the day of the ceremony he is gonna wake up and realize he is an idiot and won't be able to go through with it. What do ya bet?"

"I'll take that bet," Eric said, reaching over to shake her hand across the table.

"How much we talkin?" Willis wanted to know.

Nice friends. They wanted to take bets on a bet. It was gambling mania on a new plane. These people, I might add, would go on to lead productive lives later on, all except Eric. He would end up dead under the Westside Highway, killed under mysterious circumstances. Just another statistic in New York City's ledger before the crime rate would precipitously decline. Gail wound up living in California working for some non-profit. Willis would graduate and go on to, believe it or not, law school and end up working as a public defender. Jorge, as far as I know, would return to Puerto Rico or was it the DR? Not one of them would contact me later on, after I was infamous.

The date drew near. I had agreed to my final conversion step to be held at a quiet off day mass, one celebrated in the late afternoon so the Forseti Society could all attend and it wouldn't conflict with their schedules. Isaac had insisted that he wanted to be there too. Father Mike wanted it that way. We could lend each other support or so he had said, what ever that meant. I was beginning to have some pretty strong misgivings about the whole thing. Besides, did I really need one of the Forseti Society members to blow it all up? I could easily imagine that stupid Eric piping up during the ceremony. He would be probably drunk, and stoned, as he stood up in the middle of the ceremony to shout out some silly anti-religious diatribe. What about Gail? Could she be trusted to keep her mouth shut? Sure she wouldn't have the temerity to interrupt the proceedings but she could very well offer up some biting commentary after the fact, right in the monk's face for instance. Willis? Who knew what he was capable of? As to Jorge, he probably wouldn't show up, too afraid of the consequences of monkeying around with one of the Pontiff's representatives.

I had picked a Thursday or rather after we meshed all of our schedules it was the only day that worked for everyone involved. There was no backing out now. "Are you sure this crazy shit isn't going to splash on the priest?" Eric had asked me the day of the big event, as we were walking away from campus after our last lecture. I had looked at him, noticing that he didn't have his usual I don't give a crap about anything look going on, and replied, "Like how? He's a monk for fuck's sake. He's pretty much bullet proof, right?" Eric had given me a look, one that told me even he was squeamish about messing with the cosmos.

We were taking the train down to the monastery together. The others had agreed to meet there in front of the church. I had been spending the last few hours trying to figure out how I was going to keep them from meeting Isaac. It was going to be unavoidable. There would be hasty introductions, with many (many) pitfalls. I would say they are my classmates and that they wanted to see me take the step towards...what? Usually glib, with always an answer for anything, any angle, I couldn't think of what to say. One of them was sure to pry into Isaac's involvement in the escapade. He would be unaware of course, just a dupe along for the ride. I wanted to shield him from the nasty truth, such as it was. No need to pile on, to make his life any more questionable.

"Listen guys," I called out to the group after we were all at the meeting place, "I got to lay down some ground rules here. Right?" I looked at each of them individually, making sure they were listening to me, including Jorge, who had showed up after all, to my dismay. "I need for you to be on your best behavior. Listen to me on this. If I am going to pull this off I can't have you idiots making a scene. I have done my bit, now you have to do yours."

"Did he just call us idiots?" Gail joked. "This from a guy who takes a bet as dumb as this."

"We promise," Willis declared, laughing merrily, so merrily I could smell beer on his breath.

"You smell like a brewery," I protested, sensing where this was all going to end up.

"So," he shot back defensively, "I stopped at a bar on the way. You think I am going to go into some funky Catholic church sober and listen to some priest tell me about Christ? Come on!"

The others laughed and Eric stated: "I give you my solemn promise. No, I will take an oath that I will not impede this lunacy."

"I am going to sit away from you," Jorge announced, stepping back from the group. "It is a mass."

"Yeah, so what?" Gail exclaimed, shooting him a look of disapproval. "Mass is nothing but--"

"I bet Gail hits her knees the first time everyone else does," Eric exclaimed, snickering. "Reflex action."

"How much?" Willis wanted to know, fumbling in his pocket for some loose bills. "It's not like she has any practice doing that," he added jokingly. "Get it?"

"Yeah, we get it," I said, corralling them and trying to move them away from the door to the church.

"Your sexual jokes are lame," she shot back, pointing her finger at Willis.

"Are you sure she is even allowed in this church?" Willis continued needling.

"Yeah, like I'm any worse than him," she said, jerking her thumb in my direction.

"The fires of hell are going to be pretty busy for sure," Eric said, winking at Jorge, who moved another step or two away from us.

I then herded them into the church, making sure they took seats towards the back. If you don't know, Catholic churches are beacons of either gothic or Byzantine gaudiness, sometimes both. The interior gives off a vibe, one that tells the worshipper they have entered the zone, a place where institutional subjugation had best be adhered to. Kidding. Unfortunately, as I entered the church I soon realized I had another pressing problem.

Not once in the previous month or so had I attended mass. As hard as it might be to believe, I had always begged off sitting through mass at the monastery, telling either Isaac or Father Mike that I preferred to go to mass at St. Patrick's. I had made up some silly backstory about how I liked the old world atmosphere of the cathedral, which was, in its way, indisputable. The cathedral looked like something from the Old Country, with its sweeping ceilings and massive size that seemed to oppress you as soon as you stepped into the foyer. You could play basketball inside, full court.

The church harkened back to a day when man wanted to make sure mankind knew who was in control. Large. Imposing, with bombastic architecture born of blood and treasure; a visual statement like no other. For me, it was perfect. I had told the monk on several occasions that I was heading to good old St. Pat's for my weekly infusion of Catholic indoctrination. I didn't call it that exactly of course, but made sure that I was dumbstruck by the beauty of the monstrosity on Fifth Avenue, even though I thought the gothic wet dream was an eye sore. It worked. I quickly got him, the priest, off my back about attending mass as a warm up for the real deal.

Unfortunately, now I had a problem. I really didn't know what was expected of a parishioner during the actual mass. I knew there was some kneeling involved but I hadn't the slightest idea what was required of me. Father Mike and I had gone over the finer points of the communion etc., with Isaac pitching in to give me pointers, giving me at least a vague working notion of what to expect. Other than that, I was going to have to improvise.

Then Isaac showed up. He was almost beside himself with excitement. We were two souls in a sea of sin. We were the lucky ones. Outside those church doors there were plenty of people who weren't so fortunate. They were ignorant pagans. Poor bastards. The two of us had a leg up in all those eschatology matters. Luckily, he hadn't seen me with the others.

Isaac and I had our moments in the monastery chapel together on occasion, usually with him standing there awestruck, hands at his sides, head slightly tilted upwards. For a Jew, he was adept at the signing of the cross thing, even adding on that Latino kissing of the fingers at the end. Me, I would clumsily wave my hand around, most times forgetting one point of the cross in the process. He never seemed to notice. It would have been embarrassing to have to be tutored in something so marginal in relation to the larger implications of my conversion.

"Don't you just love the religious tchotchkes?" he had whispered to me one day when we were cutting through the church, in route homeward. "It is an art form like no other."

He was referring to the decor presumably, heavy on decorative gold and death, with any number of holy relics on display. Art appreciation aside, I said in an exaggerated whisper: "Yeah, they are something else." What I really wanted to say was: "Are you kidding me? It looks like Vegas for the holy."

To Isaac, this was the final attainment and I am quoting him now. I didn't really know what that meant and didn't want to know, except to say that if it got him through the day then go for it. That he did. I wouldn't have been surprised to find out he wanted to become a priest or at least a brother. If Paul could do it. Peter. Pick one.

I had been told to take a seat towards the front, close to the aisle. That way, when Father Mike called me up, I could readily bound up there and make the transition, going from a sinner and member of a poser religion to the rightful place in the religious derby going on outside those doors. That I was making a mockery of the entire enterprise didn't matter. Not now, not at this juncture in the eleventh hour.

My college compatriots were sitting in the back pews trying not to laugh and make a scene, something beyond their immediate abilities. Gail was snickering, holding her hand over her mouth, while Willis and Eric continually elbowed each other in a fit of sophomoric glee at seeing me go through with it. I am sure they thought it would never come to this. No one would be this stupid or irreverent. The irreverent part was causing Jorge a minor nervous breakdown out of fear, fear that he might be an accomplice to the tweaking of God's nose. Me, I was trying to remember what the monk and Isaac had coached me on: how not to screw up such a solemn transition.

The mass droned on, grinding, filling my ears with the almost mechanical religious pursuit of inculcation. Centuries had gone into the rote homily, even if the local vernacular had replaced the dusty Latin. I heard some of the words coming out of Father Mike's mouth, but mostly sat there dropping to bended knee when required as my mind reached out for some semblance or, better, mental posture in order to best afford myself some kind of relief from what I was about to do. Was I not about to be the paramount example of the iconoclast? Some renegade atheist out to mock the Christian world order? Better yet, would I pay a price for my impertinent transgression?

"Look out for lightning bolts," Gail hissed, her dramatic whisper reaching all the way up to the front pews, with her incisive New Yawk accent penetrating almost every ear drum.

Now I knew that any minute the monk would stop the proceedings and demand to know what was up. Why were four people sitting in the back offering a running commentary? The congregation would turn, as one, and stare at my friends, frowning, showing their disapproval with a collective scowl. Eric, of course, would stand up and give an explanation, thereby outing me as the imposter that I was. Father Mike would be incredulous at first, then saddened, before the other parishioners would take matters into their own hands and attack me. I would be pummeled by old ladies with arthritic hands, along side the occasional kick from several of the men out there. Fortunately for me the mass goer's average age was north of 50. Truth be told, the Catholic church was literally dying, slow but sure.

Father Mike didn't miss a beat as he glided through mass, something he had done countless times before, so many times in fact that it must have been imprinted on his brain like pictographs on stone. I envied him that, the ability to do something over and over again without the pain of boredom shutting down his mind. It was a skill in its way.

Every so often Isaac would lightly touch my forearm, a reassuring gesture that I suppose he thought I might need. In the last few weeks I had often wondered about his conversion, from Judaism to the world's numero uno Christian bastion. It was probably a good thing all of his relatives had died in the Nazi camps because they most probably would have been disappointed in him. One didn't abandon their cultural and religious orientation, especially if you were Jewish. What would Moses say? Hadn't they wandered in the desert for decades just so they could call themselves Jews? Poor Jerusalem had been plundered twice, thrice, all to be brought back, restored to the true monotheistic way of doing things, with temples and dietary prohibitions thrown in too.

I tried not to look over at him, thinking it might cause me to jump up and flee, right out the door. Never look back. I didn't want that on my conscience. Not really. The man had endured enough in his life. He didn't need me undermining his choice in religions. Best for him to grasp at whatever got him through to the next twenty-four hours. If thinking about gold plated religious paraphernalia and the bios of saints did it for him, so be it. I didn't need to be there to bring it all down.

It was time. Isaac nudged me a little and I stole a glimpse of his face, so close yet really so far away. He smiled at me, his face reflecting all of the built up adoration he had stored for his new savior, that guy hanging from a large cross behind the altar. Slowly I rose to my feet, not hearing the words of introduction flowing out of the monk's mouth. What I heard was a wise crack from Eric, something about a lamb being led to slaughter, if I might paraphrase a little. The congregation were standing now too, turning an eye to the soon to be newest member of a select group, the ones who had an advocate on retainer for Dies Irae.

I willed my legs to take me up to the front of the church, closer and closer to my final trespass. Father Mike had stationed himself for easy access. There was to be some words spoken, some words of import apparently, and then the deed. I would partake of my savior's body parts. Host=body. Wine=blood. It was a simple recipe. Somehow I hadn't really thought out this part, the part where I actually came on board. The fruition of a con, such as it usually worked out, normally meant I would abscond with some kind of gain, leaving the mark unaware. God being god, with the omniscient thing going on, I wasn't likely to skate away undetected. I had been in some sketchy situations before but this one required more than I was prepared to supply.

The priest, now in his mass garb, with the pipe stored safely away, greeted me with a colloquial greeting that seemed totally out of place in the current setting. He smiled behind his beard at me, trying, I guess, to set me at ease. I only wished that I wasn't giving away the fact that this was, in real terms, my first mass. The machinations had me baffled for the most part and I felt like a dancer at an audition trying to learn the steps before the choreographer discovers that I am a dud. Just that morning he had conducted my final confession before the big day, a one on one session in the more conventional setting. I like that it had a degree of privacy and I didn't have to avoid eye contact and all, as I unloaded some more bullshit about my sins and the eagerly awaited sin busting remedies. It was all to serve as a primer for my communion, easing the way for the coming applied transubstantiation.

There was some more garbled religious tripe, uttered like in some bad Shakespeare play where the audience is struggling to follow along with the out of date dialogue. The monk took up the chalice thing and a plate of crackers, etc. I partook. Oh, wait, I forgot to mention that Father Mike had applied some gunk, goo, to my forehead and muttered some religious password in order to let me pass over to the other side, anointing me for entry. It was a metaphorical horror show. Gail gave a hoot in the back, while the others sat back and shook their heads in unison, to the end believing I would never go through with it. No one of sound mind would tempt fate so brazenly. Life was hard enough without thumbing your nose at management.

Smiling, Father Mike congratulated me and I was sent on my way, off to wreak havoc under the aegis of Christian fallibility. Afterwards, Isaac rushed me, along with a few of the aging types in the pews, eager to offer up congratulations. I felt like it was my birthday and, I suppose to them, it kind of was. On that day I had been reborn, able to live a new life. That I thought it was all hogwash didn't need to be mentioned. Not that the Forseti Society didn't get their licks in, as they too surrounded me to offer their own compliments on my courage to take the big step. Jorge, to his credit, hung back, dipping his hand in the holy water more than once to cross himself, almost as if he believed it might protect him more.

The deed was done; and I had some cash in my pocket, not that it would stay there very long. Money and me always parted ways quickly. I was never used to having more than a few bucks on hand. I could live with very little. It was an talent of sorts living like I did, living on the street and off the leftovers deposited all over such a large metropolitan area. Naturally, I invited the Forseti Society out for a drink, on me.

There was a seedy type bar not far from the monastery, a place Eric and I had retreated to on occasion. It was of no known reputation; that is to say unlike so many bars in New York, the ones that gladly trumpeted their affiliations with whatever ethnic or national connection, this one was devoid of any posters depicting the homeland from yonder or bright colored national flags tacked on the wall or even any bogus cocktails or elixirs that purportedly made the citizenry back over there dead drunk all the time. No, this one had grease stains on the ceiling and a long, long bar of solid wood, with the obligatory mirrors fastened directly in the drinker's line of sight so they could closely watch themselves slip into inebriation all along the way. It was small and claustrophobic and had a smell that Eric had labeled "marinated hopelessness." He liked it immediately.

"How's it feel?" Willis wanted to know after we settled at the bar, five abreast, deep into our first drink, boiler makers all around, including Jorge who generally hated liquor.

"Feel?" I mused, still thinking about how I had blown off Isaac back at the church, telling him I had already made plans with my friends when he asked about going out together to toast my new direction on life. "Oh, you mean about now being a Catholic. Great, it feels great. I can now sleep at night knowing Jesus has forgiven me."

Willis guffawed at my comment and pointed his finger, telling me: "You are one crazy mutter-fucker. I'll give you that. I know I wouldn't mess with any of that mojo stuff. Not me."

"Pussy," Gail interjected, leaning over to give me a quick hug, "he is my hero."

"Hero?" Eric intoned, standing up to get the bar tender's attention for another round.

"Hell yeah!" she almost shouted out, kissing me on the cheek. "Man takes on the absurdity and wins."

"Wins what?" Willis asked no one in particular, staring at his empty shot glass. "As I see it the man just stepped in it...up to his eye balls."

"What's you talking 'bout?" Gail spat out in mock Black diction. "Really. You are so stupid sometimes, Willis. Just because you are too scared to say anything against a religion that kept your people in chains for centuries."

"Shut the fuck up," Willis replied, making a face at her.

"I have to be proud of this guy," Eric announced, grabbing up the shot glass the bartender had just placed in front of him. "He said he was going to go through with it and damn if he didn't. That, my friends, is some admirable shit, for sure."

"I don't like it," Jorge stated, trying to tell the bartender he didn't want any more booze.

"Who cares what you think," Gail declared, winking at the apathetic bartender, still perturbed by having five rowdy customers drop in when his shift was about over. He ignored her and she turned to Jorge and motioned for him to drink up.

Now that it was over I felt deflated. I had accomplished nothing but to upset the little order of the universe that I operated in. Isaac, and to a lesser extent, Father Mike deserved better. The priest was just doing his job and the Jew was trying to cope with the rest of his life. I was the interloper. I had crashed the gate.

"Toast!" Eric commanded, holding up his shot glass. We all lifted our glasses, while the bartender retreated to his corner at the other end of the bar, muttering under his breath, returning to reading the Daily News sports page. "To a man that doesn't let petty conventionality get in his way and picks fights with a higher power...one that will undoubtedly smite him when the time comes."

They chuckled and Gail said, "Smite?"

"There will be a reckoning," Willis said ominously. "Count on it."

Jorge sneaked crossing himself, mumbling in Spanish, then said in English: "I feel bad about this. Hasta Luego. See you at the college." He slipped off the bar stool and quickly left the bar.

"Ruined his day," Gail exclaimed, stifling a laugh.

"He seems to have taken the proceedings pretty hard," Eric declared in a mock British accent.

"Fuck him, if he can't take a joke," Gail said, chugging down her mug of beer.

I didn't know it at the time but this would be the last time the Forseti Society convened with the full membership in attendance. My life, as if foreshadowed by one of Willis' comments, was about to descend into chaos and then the end of life as I knew it. Little did I know little indexes of fate were about to effect my future.

Eric and I went on to pull an all nighter, taking us all around his usual haunts, from the upper East Side and on down to, of all places, South Ferry. It was there I would awaken to a dog licking my face and a bewildered old man standing over me asking if I was alright. Groggily, I took stock of where I was face down under a park bench, with a bottle of expensive champagne over turned next to me. Eric was nowhere in sight. The last thing I remember was entering some apartment building in the east 80's, going up in an elevator a really long way and then seeing the East River glistening in the night. Stray images came briefly to mind. Girls half dressed. Someone playing a piano. Might have been Eric. Singing. Dancing. Pounding on the door. Running. Falling.

My knee hurt and a cursory examination told me that I had a hole in the right knee of my pants. A pounding headache was preventing me from completely opening my eyes. The man walking his dog moved on, shaking his head, too elderly to offer up a lecture on my recent and apparent debauchery. I sat on the bench and took inventory, scanning the park to see if Eric was around. Except for the man and his dog, along with a couple walking by the waterfront, it was empty. My face hurt, literally, where I imagined a punch had landed the night before. I couldn't remember getting into an altercation but with Eric anything was possible.

At this juncture, even though I was curious, I wasn't sure I wanted to know what had occurred. Just another lost block of time in the city. It wasn't like it hadn't happened before. As to sleeping in the park, it was my method a good deal of the time. Park benches. Alley ways. Subway. Even on the beach at Far Rockaway. Being out of doors during slumber time was normal operating procedure for me.

"Set the over turned cart upright," so Gary would probably say, one of his usual comments on getting on with your life. Easier said then done. I had a class in less than an hour, one that I needed to get to so I could maintain my standing at the college and keep receiving my puny stipend. I then hustled to the IRT line, hoping to catch the express all the way uptown, getting off at Columbus Circle. Although I had done a bad deed the day before, I still had to keep my bare existence functioning. Don't look back.

The train was packed with commuters as it sped along. I stood there leaning against one of the grimy poles, right next to a woman who kept shrinking away, trying to prevent any incidental contact with me. I was sure I smelled of booze and must have looked like a vagrant, with my hair matted down, torn jeans, and soiled jacket. Other people's reactions didn't register all that much after the time I had spent on the streets but I had always hated being on the subway in close proximity with the public, the very same people I was living off and, usually, scheming to steal from. I tried smiling at her and she shot me a look, the typical one that told me she thought I was a degenerate loser, a smelly derelict and can't the mayor do something about letting my kind on the trains.

I had missed the morning session at the coffee shop with the Forseti Society and I doubted Eric made it as well. Who knew where he was? Sometimes he would disappear from class for days. Then again, he did seem to manage to show up eventually. His partying stamina was world renowned, able to keep late hours with little or no effect. Willis was in my Friday class and he clucked his tongue at me when I entered, just making it in front of the professor, a former prosecutor who generally hated his job and in turn all of us, the same guy that had called us "cretins" when we didn't know the least bit of case law. I had visions of running a game on him just to show him how stupid he was or at least gullible. I just couldn't figure out how to do it without implicating myself in the process.

"Man, you look like a bag lady," Willis hissed at me, shaking his head and holding his nose. "Smell like one too."

"Fucking Eric...he got--"

"Say no more," he said, cutting me off with a wave of his hand. "Man's crazy."

"My head's killing me," I whined.

"God's punishing you already, man," Willis said in a strained whisper, looking up at the front of the classroom to make sure the professor hadn't started his lecture for the day.

Normalcy returned slowly. My classes took up some of my time, while I practiced my trade here and there around the city. A few weeks passed. I had found a comfortable place with a woman over on the Westside, up near Columbia University. She was older, maybe by ten years or so. Worked the front desk at one of the hotels around mid-town. We had met in Central Park. She was walking her friend's dog as a favor. The dog got loose. I retrieved him, getting bit for my efforts. She apologized profusely. I didn't get rabies. She had assured me the mutt had all his shots. It went from there.

She had a small place in an area bracketed by the cool side of Broadway and the creeping tide of Harlem. It was in a building undergoing some transition, giving off just a hint of conflict between the long time residents and the newer ones, the ones who liked to play music heavy with a conga beat at an unacceptable decibel level. Noise, just sheer sound, was often the harbinger of things to come when it came to future squabbles and hassles. The city was a gigantic acoustic drum anyway, giving off heartbeat altering rhythms any time of day. Me, I just moved on when it got too aggravating.

As usual, our romance lasted only a short while, long enough for her to determine that I was, basically, devoid of much ambition, with little or no future. My pretty face, such as it was, only took me so far. Sex. Some laughs. It all had a shelf life.

Sometimes it ended amicably. Other times it didn't. It mostly depended on just how much she could tolerate about me. Cash pilfered from her purse, arguments that seldom had any intellectual content, inconsiderate, too much booze and or drugs on the premises, brawls with the neighbors--at two in the morning, it all worked to make the living arrangements difficult.

"Good riddance," she shouted out just before slamming the door in my face. Prior to the final kiss off I had found my belongings tossed out on the street, deposited there from the fire escape outside her bedroom window.

"I'm going to miss you," I called out through the door sarcastically, while one of the neighbors, a old woman who lived across the hall, peeked out her door, staring at me. "It's just a misunderstanding," I joked and the woman quickly shut the door and I could hear her locking the two or three locks in quick succession.

It was always hard when I was forced back onto the street. You got lazy and comfortable very quickly when you had a roof over your head. The transition back to living on the move was traumatic in some ways. Shelter really was a formidable motivator. Still, I couldn't toe the line in any way and be domesticated. You are: a jerk, bastard, thief, asshole, like a wild animal, shit, and the list went on. I had heard it all, even the one from a girl who called me: sad. That one hurt the most, like she had the benefit of psychoanalyzing me.

There wasn't anything to psychologically apply here. I was a mutant, another item on the name calling list I forgot to add. I didn't belong. I wasn't really a member of the society. Outcast sounded somehow romantic. Living on the fringes didn't make you any better, superior in a way that could be the end product of philosophical musings. I was just a hustler with questionable morals.

Then I ran into Isaac again. Isaac, it took me a minute to realize who he was when he saw me on the street by Madison Square Garden. The night before I had scored a quick gig working the Garden as a non-union stage hand for a show, something I was paid for under the table so as not to stir up labor trouble. Coincidentally, I had crashed out in a dark corner backstage that night with no one the wiser. It had rained all night and I had managed to keep warm and dry, wrapped up in some old, itchy curtains stacked in a stair well.

My conversion was almost a month before and it seemed like an eternity. I had almost forgotten all about it. I had worked a month to blow the bet money in one night. I wasn't sure about the return on my effort but the fun quotient worked for me. Isaac crossed the street in a mad dash to catch up with me and if I had seen him coming I probably would have ditched him immediately. As it was, I was deep into a muffin I had purchased from a stand just inside the train station, starved from not having eaten since the day before.

"I can't believe it, it's you," Isaac called out, running up to grab my hand, at the last minute deciding not to hug me.

My brain took a minute then I placed who he was and said, "Oh, yeah, how's it going, Isaac?"

"Great," he said effusively, shaking my hand with vigorous pumps, not wanting to let go. "What has been going on with you?"

He finally let go of my hand and I replied, "Not much. Good to see you...but I have to be some where. I'm kind of late." I hoped the brush off would work but he just stood there and grinned at me. "I hope everything's going okay."

"Just great," he told me, glowing. "I can't believe I ran into you, Barry. Me and Father Mike were just talking about you today." Today, I thought. "I just saw him," he informed me, pointing in the direction of the monastery. "He wondered what you were up to. He thought you might come by for mass sometime."

"Mass?" I mused, looking around like a criminal on the run. "Oh, yeah. No, still going up St. Patrick's. I like my routine," I explained, hoping to sound truthful or at least plausible. "Great atmosphere there, you know."

Isaac beamed at me then said, "Oh, I know. Wonderful. You must come to mass with Father Mike sometime. He would really like to see you."

This sounded like an invitation of some sort so I replied, "I'll try to do that. Sometime."

"Good," he told me hopefully, bouncing on the balls of his feet with excitement. "We must get together. Are you still attending that college?"

"College...yes, yeah, still there," I replied. "Look, it's good to see you but I really have to get going. Listen, I'll drop by for mass. Maybe on Thursday."

This seemed to please him and he exclaimed, "Very good. I go to the afternoon mass. I will see you there."

Not likely, I thought, as I walked away, trying not to run. I glanced back once as I crossed the street and he was still watching me. I don't need this, I said to myself. I hadn't thought about my little play acting in weeks. It had been forgotten about almost entirely. Go forward. You never had the luxury of looking back when you were out on the streets. Damn. I made a mental note of staying away from the Garden area. No need to increase the odds of running into either Isaac or the monk.

Didn't work. That is to say my staying out of their usual territory wasn't effective because several weeks later Isaac showed up at my college. Right there, in front, waiting for me was the man I hoped I would never see again. Ever. I didn't need to be reminded of what I had done. Okay, God stop punishing me, I thought as I plastered a fake smile on my face and greeted him, pushing my total surprise into the background. How in the hell did he know I went to college here? echoed in my brain. I must have told him somewhere along the line, which is, for me, not good. I usually kept my whereabouts unknown, better to stay ahead of any unforeseen unpleasantness coming my way.

"Hello, Barry, good to see you," Isaac began, shaking my hand formerly, like we were meeting there for some business appointment.

"Isaac...hey, what are you doing here?" I replied, trying to sound as friendly as possible, while excuses to get rid of him assembled in my mind immediately, all the while hoping no one from the Forseti Society appeared to add to my dismay at finding him on my turf.

"I must speak with you," he said in almost hushed tones, darting his eyes around nervously. "It is very important."

This sounded more than just ominous, like maybe he knew of my chicanery and some Catholic Church SWAT team was in route to take revenge on me as we spoke. "You okay?" I asked him, stepping off to the side so the other students could pass by us. "What's wrong? You look like something's up."

Isaac glanced back and forth a few times then said in a whisper, "Not here. We must go outside to speak in private perhaps."

"Perhaps," I said with more ironic intent than intended. "Come on. We can go to the park if you want. I'm done for the day with classes. Okay?"

"Good," he muttered, heading towards Central Park.

I felt like some spy about to accept some dossier with Top Secret stamped on it. Isaac threaded his way through the pedestrians, staying mute, which, for him, was unusual. He was one to like to chat, at least to me. Seldom, if ever, did he go several steps before offering up comments about almost anything, always wanting to gauge my response. I had assumed he was intent on pre-conversion discovery, where he determines whether or not I was worthy of being a Catholic. I wasn't immune from paranoia. Part of me believed that he was a plant sent there by the monk. I had to be vetted, right?

When we finally reached the park he gravitated to a section where no one was around, except for a nanny in charge of a little child in a stroller some distance away, too far to be within earshot. Stopping, he turned and scanned his surroundings for a moment. Now I was beyond perplexed and had begun to think he was having an episode of some sort. Finally, the travails of World War II had broken him completely and he was sliding into madness. I was starting to think of ways I was going to get him down to Bellevue: Subway, cab, certainly not a bus. I didn't have the cab fare and I doubted he did either.

"What's going on?" I wanted to know, feeling I had to step up and get the conversation on track.

He looked around one more time, squinting against the afternoon sun, then replied: "I've seen him."

"Who?"

I noticed him rubbing his hands together in front of him, still glancing around us. "The obershaarfuhrer," came the answer, not that it was at all illuminating for me.

"What the...who?" I exclaimed.

He shushed me, then tried to explain as best he could, slipping in some Polish, German, and what all in the process. I was brought back into his life at the camp, Auschwitz, back to the confines of open criminality that had forever scarred Isaac. Apparently, so he tried to assure me, he had seen the man who ran the "krema" that had reduced so many of his people to ashes. On the streets of New York City Isaac had seen the man strolling along, out in the open, free. No guilt. No retribution. The man had defied the long hand of God.

"I saw him," Isaac repeated defensively, now clinching his hands in tightly wound fists at his sides. "It was him."

"So," I said, regretting it immediately. "I mean, what are you supposed to do about it? Didn't he get jail time or something back then? Before? At the Nuremberg trails?"

He scoffed at my comment and said, "Not everyone was tried. Some escaped. They should all burn in hell."

That was about as forceful as I had ever heard him. The passage of time had worn down his resolve if not his anger or so it seemed. He had become a man who not only accepts but ignores his past, better to get by. No. No one could ever get past that, I thought, eyeing him closely, trying to see whether or not he was going to slip into some kind of mental breakdown. I didn't know what to say.

"Shouldn't you maybe report him to the authorities or something?" I asked, hoping to appear like I was on his side.

He glanced at me then said, "Yeah. No." He muttered something in Polish then added, "I must do something."

"How about the Israelis?"

"Ah yes, they would be interested," he agreed.

"They tracked down that guy all the way to South America, right? Got his ass too. Zip, right to Israel," I declared, mostly fuzzy on the details but vaguely remembering something about some Nazi being executed for his crimes.

"I know, yes," Isaac said excitedly, closing his eyes for a moment, as if he might be imagining this character from his past being picked up by Mossad agents and spirited away to Israel to stand trail, then put to death. It was a delicious imagining. "What if he got away?" he asked me, concern spreading across his face.

"I think you can trust them to get the job done," I said reassuringly. "It's what they do."

"He must not escape," Isaac stated adamantly.

That very statement started it all. I can say that now with certainty. Looking back, that short conversation in Central Park was my downfall. We, Isaac and I, had reached that nexus, the place where your decision makes your future. Most people might never enter that place, as they meander through life, lurching from milestone to milestone, until which time they cash in. Others, like the two of us, take that fork in the road and it all begins to unravel. Next stop: ruin. There is no roadmap to consult. Sure there might be an inkling of things to come even as you follow the route, but you are locked in, secured by hesitancy and weakening resolve.

We all face our moments of desired revenge, from petty to maybe the more grievous. On that scale of things, Isaac had some legitimate reasons to want to exact some kind of pound of flesh type of thing. The man had been slated for death, that had only been postponed after he agreed to squander what little dignity and integrity he had left in order to breathe another day. He had been there. There being the point where you are faced down by impossible odds and some animals bent on your destruction. Imagine yourself in line, waiting, shuffling forward with the rest of the lost beings, all awaiting the same fate. You, and your religious compatriots, all share the same destiny: extermination.

"I know where he lives," Isaac suddenly declared, with his eyes narrowing and his fists clenched.

"You what?" I exclaimed, truly surprised. ""Have you been following him or something?"

"Yes, of course," he replied matter of factly, like it was the normal thing to do in this situation.

"Look, Isaac, if this guy is who you think he is...then he might be dangerous," I told him, stepping closer so no one passing within earshot could hear us talking. "Think about it, for Chr--heaven's sake. The man would be a member of the SS, right? Might have guns hanging around. He'd probably have no problem using them either."

His eyes widened for a moment, then he said, "I am not afraid of him. Not now. I will kill him."

He stated this and immediately I thought it was his sometimes erratic use of the English language, then I could see in his face that he meant it and that it was future tense. It was now obvious he had made plans and, to my horror, they might include me. Otherwise, why was he telling me this? Furthermore, what about the monk? Wouldn't this come under the heading of confession? As in: didn't he have to tell Father Mike that he was planning on offing some guy because he thought he was a Nazi from his past? What he had in mind was pretty high up on the mortal sin's list.

Isaac was reverting to his Judaic roots, taking Leviticus over Matthew, throwing over Jesus for some old fashioned eye for an eye. The Law of Talion had merit in his estimation. What had happened at the Konzentrationslager gave him permission. Old Testament versus New Testament didn't apply. Death was met with death and it was going to be on his terms. All those harrowing months at Auschwitz, day after day of helplessness, had to be expunged, purged. Psychologically, he was going to climb back up out of the hole.

"Slow down," I said, with all the implications of what he was proposing to do dashing through my brain. I didn't know how to respond to what he was proposing. My suggestion of going to the authorities seemed baseless now. It had become raw, unadulterated reaction, where you took no time to analyze what you were about to do. I hadn't been there. I did not climb down out of that drafty, cold boxcar and get in line to be selected for my own demise. Winning the death lottery, however temporary, didn't remove any sense of violent retribution. It wasn't me who had been forced to shine the shoes of a man who day in and day out was responsible for ordering the deaths of so many, making sure the residue of the human remains were spread to the wind in an attempt to leave no trace. "Man, we got to talk about this. What about Father Mike? Maybe you should go see him."

Isaac seemed to recoil for a moment, literally stepping back, then said, "He does not need to know."

"Yeah, I think he does," I told him. Searching for something else to add, I used my trump card and stated: "What about confession? You can't avoid it there, can you? Right? Father Mike will know."

A look of consternation flashed across his face for a moment, then he replied, "I have not done anything. Just thoughts."

"Sinful thoughts," I said, hanging on to my slim advantage, trying to use his new religion against him.

He thought for a moment, then exclaimed, "I do not think my thoughts are a sin at this time."

As with most people, Isaac could excel at rationalization when he needed to get over any particular psychological hurdle when need be. It worked for all of us at sometime or another. What I realized was the train had already left the station. Isaac was going to commit an act that he believed fervently would gain him some degree of tranquility, perhaps quiet all those voices in his head. Mother. Father. Sister. Brother. The list goes on. They would all be avenged.

The man's name was Oscar Becker. At least that was the name he was going by now. According to Isaac, his name had been: Johann Kruger, another Schutzstaffel thug who was hardly holding up the vaunted herrenvolk or master race narrative of the Third Reich. Before the war, Kruger had been an apprentice butcher in a small burg outside of Berlin. His singular skill at being less than squeamish about being elbow deep in blood served him well in the new Nazi regime. Promotions followed quickly after the invasion of Poland, landing him in the new camps set up to eradicate all standing problems in the suddenly growing German territory. With the temperament of a medieval executioner, he had attained his true calling of annihilating a significant portion of Europe.

It was the mid 70's, some thirty years after the war, a generation. This suspect fit the profile, at least chronologically. He appeared to be in his late fifties and his other identity had been in his twenties at the time of the war. There were other identifiers too. One doesn't become a member of the SS and not leave some kind of trail. Isaac did his homework, driven by his hatred and a desire to get even.

"You come and you will see," Isaac declared, urging me to lend a hand in his mission to right justice, a man out for revenge.

You might think that the Nuremberg Trials took care of all these loose post war ends. Not so. Numerous faithful Nazis escaped prosecution. True, some were imprisoned and some hanged. Others slipped through the judicial cracks, returning to their lives, even going on to lead perfectly normal lives. There is an argument to made that the entire country of Germany should have been punished for harboring and making possible Hitler's maniacal pursuit of crimes against humanity. Couldn't and didn't happen. Of course, their country was a shambles after the war and they did pay a price to some degree. Still, some of the worst actors in the heinous drama absconded away, gone, to live another day.

If you needed proof that life was inherently unfair, that would undoubtedly do it. It did for me. I, like most, wanted to see justice done. Execution was too easy for those vermin. They had started a world war, then instituted wholesale genocide, all while saluting a lunatic with a funny mustache. Only God could come up with something so insanely wicked.

Now I had been enlisted to help. What Isaac wanted me to do was anybody's guess. This was before the internet age, so when doing any recon work you had to put some effort into it. Fortunately, Isaac had the time and energy to mount a personal investigation; and he was driven by an over all sense of gaining some kind of vindication. Guilt, melded with burning revenge, has a tendency to become combustible. He had almost fetishized his new birth as a Christian and now he was going to have to compartmentalize his fresh set of burnished morals in order to complete his new found direction.

Let's be honest here. Nazi hunters have their own cachet, an appeal that crosses all kinds of boundaries. They were doing the world's dirty work, something that the civilized people were either too preoccupied to do or apathetic about. Finding old farts who had committed atrocities required a certain sort of stamina, where you had to maintain your sense of outrage so as to overlook the fact that your prey had aged himself out to some extent. The crimes against humanity they had enacted had been decades before, when they were in their twenties, thirties, even older. Capturing frail, elderly men wasn't all that satisfying. Gray wisps of hair. Wrinkles. Bent spines. Infirmities. You had to have resolve. No mercy. These very same men had been the ones who carried the assault on civilization, piece by piece, dissembling mankind as they pursued their goal of elimination.

My first glimpse of Herr Oscar Becker made it easier. He wasn't teetering on a cane or being helped along by some irritable day nurse. Isaac had pointed him out to me as we lurked near his apartment building in Murray Hill. He looked fit for his age, which had to have been around sixty. We watched him closely, undetected, as he made his way down Third Avenue, walking at a brisk pace. Our target was in route to work. To my surprise, Isaac had informed me that he worked at the NYU Medical Center as some kind of clerical worker. Office work. "Germans are so good with numbers, you know," Isaac added superciliously, trying to keep his anger at bay. I watched the German proceed on downtown, stopping once to buy a newspaper at a news stand, chatting with the proprietor for a moment.

By now, Isaac knew the man's routine almost completely, telling me that he had logged plenty of time on his one man surveillance. He kept a small spiral notebook on hand, continually jotting down details of the target's activities. He lived alone. Didn't entertain. His apartment was on the second floor, facing Third Avenue. No pets. Ate at a small coffee shop for breakfast several times a week. Worked steady hours, and took lunch at a small deli almost every day at approximately 12:30. Seldom went out at night, but when he did it was to go to a bar over on Lexington Avenue, in the forties, not to drink but to play cards. He played in a loose knit bridge club, comprised mostly of men his own age, and foreign. Isaac wasn't sure if they were all German or not, telling me: "Wouldn't it be wonderful if I had discovered a nest of German fugitive war criminals?" Just seeing the glee in his eyes told me this line of private investigating was good for his soul, even surpassing the jolt of bliss he got from kneeling before a Christian god.

It did seem like a predetermined course of events had aligned and Isaac was being given the opportunity to get some pay back. He had seen the man walk by him in a city of millions. Right by him. Oscar Becker, or whatever his real name was, wouldn't have remembered Isaac so easily; after all the man had been instrumental in killing thousands of innocent victims, so many that all those faces soon blurred into one perpetual tapestry of death. For Isaac, it was different, vastly different. He had seen that very same face for months. Each morning brought another twenty-four hours of killing and that man had been there on his post, issuing orders, sniping, adding little demonstrations of encouragement with the riding crop he always carried, deftly applying whacks to the back of head of those Jews he hated so much. Isaac had been the recipient on many occasions, too slow to respond to an order, unable to overcome a momentary hesitation when seeing mangled and twisted bodies being introduced into the insatiable fire of the crematorium.

That face, although weathered by time, was distinctive to him. For years and years it haunted his fitful sleep. The pursed lips as another order was given. Lifeless eyes, devoid of any sentient responses. Slap. Slap. As the riding crop beat slowly against his palm, tapping out a staccato to keep time with the disposal of the mounting corpses. In go the bodies. Out comes the ash. As your nostrils filled with the constant pall hanging over the camp, giving off the detritus of consumed flesh, you were perpetually fighting off rising nausea.

I didn't doubt that Isaac would not forget the purveyors of death. Ten years. Twenty. A half a century. No amount of passed time could fully eliminate what had been burned in your memory. You can not ever forget your tormentor no matter how much distance is placed between you and the event. Isaac would not have to work hard to convince me of his cause.

What did I think? I mean did I believe he was the guy, the bastard who might have been a war criminal? I honestly didn't know. I will admit to being skeptical to a degree. Really, the guy, a former Nazi, played bridge. That didn't compute for me. Somehow I couldn't imagine anybody from Hitler's band of assassins being remotely human. When you thought of Nazi Germany you mostly thought of a lot of people Sig Heiling! and wanting the Jews to disappear. The Third Reich, eventually, was going to be a group of blond, blood thirsty mutants determined to rule the world. One of Hitler's inner circle had supposedly said the regime would last a thousand years, give or take a century. It didn't.

The more I saw of this guy, Oscar, I couldn't picture him wearing a jet black uniform and doling out orders to clean up the mess the dead bodies were making. I don't know what I thought a monster like those camp officials would look like but this person didn't fit the bill. Sure he seemed a little strange, with his almost solitary lifestyle, seemingly devoid of any family life. He kept to a schedule. He didn't maintain any relationships to speak of outside of work responsibilities and impersonal encounters. Then again, I was describing Isaac. He too lived that way. No prying relatives. No fellowship per se.

Was that an irony I couldn't overlook? Two people from the camps, coming from diametrically opposed positions, had ended up at the same station in life. Alone. One step away from confronting their past. The perpetrator and the victim, another example of God's diabolical sense of humor.

"How long we gonna stand here and watch?" I whined, hands deep in my pockets, hunger gnawing at my stomach.

Isaac shot me a look of mild disapproval, then replied, "Not much longer. He will come out. You will see."

By now, after several weeks of tailing the target, all the while sneaking around like two figures from some Pink Panther movie, I was starting to get used to the drill. Lucky for us, Oscar seemed to be unconcerned about his shaky identity. He didn't act like any war criminal should, or so I had mentioned to Isaac several times. He would look me in the eye and tell me that I was naive, that this man was a master criminal who believed he had fooled the world. Apparently he had because he was living in plain sight, right in Manhattan, held a job, and was working towards a pension.

There he was. He exited the small bakery where he often stopped to pick up some pastries, french, with lots of decadent touches of sugary icing. Oscar was a fan apparently, often seen coming out with a small bag of goodies. Somehow this small detail of the man's routine irked Isaac, something about back in the camp the oberschaarfuhrer was always confiscating the sondercommando's sweets for himself. They were fed well to keep their strength up for the tasks at hand but this man thought they didn't deserve any confectionary. Something like that. With Isaac, when he slipped into one of his muttered rants, it was difficult to understand what he was saying most of the time. Polish, Yiddish, German, any number of languages might be inserted to make his point to himself as he relived the scene in his head.

I didn't begrudge the man his pastry runs. The guy seemed almost normal to me, if not kind of pathetic. He was borderline eccentric maybe and lived a mostly harmless life it seemed. The more we kept up our surveillance the more I started to believe he wasn't the guy Isaac thought he was; and if he was then part of me wanted him to suffer in silence doing nothing until his time came to kick it. His life, as far as I could see, was boring, not unlike living behind bars. The extent of his universe encompassed no more than a dozen city blocks. His level of joy was minimal. Card games. Pastry. Sun up. Sun down. His life grinded along towards an inexorable conclusion. Welcome to the human race.

This assessment was stupid on some many levels. Laws, absolutes, had consequences. He might have nearly aged out but he was still responsible. A generation had passed, one that didn't include the descendants of what might have been. Family trees had been not only uprooted but rendered asunder. Gone. Destroyed. Snuffed out permanently by a band of psychotic eugenicists. Punishment underpins the foundation for civilization. A code has to be established, then adhered to. The mechanics don't have to be sophisticated. They just have to be implemented.

I was easily influenced, even if I resented Isaac for dragging me into his drama. Plenty of times I had wanted to tell him I wasn't going to participate any more. My life was precarious as it was. I didn't need to be caught up in some two man dragnet. Report the guy, I wanted to tell him. Do it. Call the cops. The Jews. The man was living in a city with millions of Jews. Somebody out there would answer his call for help, probably kidnap Oscar right off the street and spirit him away to the Holy Land, where he would get his. Why all the cloak and dagger stuff?

Yet I didn't do that. I went along for the ride, as we sneaked along the busy streets, dodging other pedestrians, keeping our eyes on the Nazi as he went about his daily activities. You can say that when the hypothesis is already believed to be true, then you have a bias built in. Scientific discovery takes a hit. Isaac, who had an excuse like no other, let cognitive prejudice over rule any sort of possible rational result. Me, I had no excuse.

Was this guy with the sugar addiction really part of the voracious lebenstraum, another German eager to rule all of Europe and the world? He looked more like the office drone that he was, henpecked by office regulations, bored, silently counting the minutes pass on the clock every day. Paperwork ruled his life, along with probably some bitchy woman office manager, who liked to lord it over him, the only male in the work force on her floor. I'm projecting here, because I had neither seen the inside of his work space or even worked a clerical job of any kind. My work history had large gaps and usually leaned towards being paid under the table for short time labor.

The leap had to be made eventually. Subconsciously, I realized this. Somebody was going to have to flip the switch sooner or later. I wasn't going to. It wasn't going to be me who suddenly said: Time to get the fucker. It was going to have to be Isaac. He would have to make the call, if not all the plans. Abduction. The inevitable face to face moment. Recrimination, with blubbering. Execution.

Old Testament rules. Remember that, I could imagine Isaac stating. The New Testament was way too spineless for this sort of action. You have heard that it was said, `AN EYE FOR AN EYE, AND A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH.' "But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. That was that wimpy Matthew, in 5:38 and so on. The old school Jews saw it differently. In Exodus 21: 23-25, they put it out there: But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise. No gray areas. Nuance is for light weights.

Isaac was definitely abandoning his new religion and reverting to good old fashioned Judaism. It worked with the profile he was working on, the one where he was the avenging angel. He was going to be swinging a scythe. One less German in the world. Give me some spiritual recompense for all those souls lost back in the war.

It all seemed somehow tidy. Bookends. Man kills thousands. Man dies for his deeds. I wasn't going to analyze it. Not me. I wasn't a thinker, one to ponder the intricate nature of man's actions. On the street you tended to live by a set of rules that were always advantageous to yourself. Everything was rigged against you anyway. You had to shave the corners when ever you could. Judgment, with a capital J, normally didn't come into play. Rules, laws, petty ordinances, they were for suckers; and they most times benefited everyone else. Not you.

"I have thought this through," Issac announced, as we were walking in Central Park. He had showed up at my school again, for the third or fourth time. "I will not ask you to do something that you do not want to."

"Really," I said, half sarcastically.

He winced for a moment, as if I might have insulted him, and continued, "I have a place."

"You have a place," I said, trying to conceal my surprise. "For what?"

He glanced around us for a moment, watching a couple skate by on roller skates that had of recent plagued the park, mobs of so called hipsters gloaming onto the latest fad to take hold across the country. They zoomed by us, laughing, holding hands as they went. I detested them for their convivial attitude and blossoming fellowship, eyeing them and hoping they might be tripped up by the uneven sidewalk. Their laughter faded away quickly in the distance.

"I think you know," he countered, narrowing his eyes at me.

I certainly had an idea but I needed for him to say it, even describe what he wanted to do. It was necessary for both him and me. "No, I don't," I replied stubbornly.

He sighed heavily and said in almost a whisper, "I am going to do it. Soon."

"What?"
He sighed again, looking around us for a moment, then answered: "Justice."

"Then you mean you are going to call that Weisen...heimer guy or whatever his name is and let him look into it," I said disingenuously, smirking, knowing full well that Isaac had already decided against contacting the famous Nazi hunter's organization.

"There is no humor here," Isaac protested, with a hurt look on his face. "I do not believe...I don't think this is funny." He trailed off into Polish for a moment then added, "Death must be met with death."

"Can't argue that," I told him, having not once given much thought to capital punishment and all its pitfalls. That was for sociologists and even though I was currently studying criminology I hadn't encountered that subject yet in my studies. Beheading. Hanging. Gas chamber. Electrocution. Mankind had long ago determined plenty of ways to even the score.

"Good," he said resolutely, "then we begin tomorrow."

"Whoa!" I exclaimed, genuinely shocked. We had been tailing the guy for weeks but somehow I had never placed myself at the business end of doing anything about the crime in question. "What are we talking about here?"

"I have a location...not far from where oberschaarfuhrer Kruger likes to walk," Isaac explained. "It should be relatively easy to subdue him...then take him to the location."

This information bounced around in my head for a moment, and I was thinking about what place he might be talking about. The convoluted conversation continued on for awhile, telling me little. Isaac's plan, such as it was, seemed to be half baked at this stage. Fueled by his unquenchable desire to see justice done, he hadn't managed to apply much logic to the problem at this point. Not that he hadn't given it some thought though, because he clearly had. The man already lined up a staging area, some empty store room in the basement of a building under renovation along the route that the victim took every day to and from work. We were to abduct the Nazi off the street, drag him into the building under construction and do the deed. The deed. What exactly? Were we expected to extract a confession from the man? Then what, assuming he admitted to his purported crimes? We were to be judge and executioner, was that it?

I had lots of questions, as you can imagine. I was no avenger. If any thing, people out there would have me in that building, demanding restitution for all I had done for the last two years. Isaac had, if there was one, the high ground here. He was the injured party, as the lawyers like to say. If he could, I suppose, he would have liked to kill the guy several times over. One agonizing death for each relative that had perished at the camp.

We put our heads together and came up with a plan, one that would, in the end, succeed far better than expected. Me, I thought we would probably botch it immediately and have some scared shitless character running down the street screaming for his life. Then we would have to hope that he didn't get a good look at us so we could melt back into the background. No harm done. Nice try. Time to report the bastard to the authorities.

Didn't happen. No, we turned out to be surprisingly good at our new found craft. As it turns out, kidnapping somebody off the street turned out to be pretty easy. We had decided to nab him when he was coming out of the bar, after he had a few, tired from hours of playing bridge. A little tipsy, with his legs stiff from sitting for so long, proved to be the deciding factor in getting him under control so quickly.

Our minimalist plan, such as it was, depended on Isaac distracting Oscar long enough for me to sneak up behind him and slip a hood over his head. Although the guy had an inch or two on me and probably a few pounds too, it was the element of surprise that counted the most. I also was quite a bit younger. That helped. Still, I kept imaging him struggling and putting up a pretty good fight, while I wrestled with him as I tried to get him down the steps and into the building. Isaac had suggested I whack him over the head with a mallet or something, applying the first blow as I was tightening the hood around his neck. The mechanics of this seemed confusing, and daunting. I might have been a thief some of the time but I wasn't into strong arm tactics.

Back at Isaac's small apartment, we had rehearsed the nabbing numerous times, running through the elaborate steps over and over. Isaac played the victim, while I worked on my technique, trying to speed up the process and perfect the abduction. After several dry runs, which seemed more and more like a strange burlesque routine than anything else, I had decided to go with: Sneak up behind him, bag over head in one motion, then a hasty head lock. We were hoping that essentially blinding him with the hood would do the immobilizing trick right off the bat, then I would apply the muscle aspect, steering him right down the steps. If we did it swiftly it might just work. If not, I was prepared to run and run fast. Isaac, at that point, would have to be on his own.

A day was selected. We met an hour before the designated time. Isaac had reconnoitered the building, making sure there were no squatters or, worse, security detail on the premises. I, personally, had slept in buildings just like this one. Many times they were relative havens for people like me. Empty. Unguarded. With no residents to worry about. I had once crashed in one in Chelsea for almost a month. It had been kind of drafty but convenient, except having to make sure I got up before the work crew got there in the morning. Never went detected.

It was a go. All clear. Next, all we had to do was stake out our positions and wait. We knew that Oscar would appear soon enough. While we were waiting I had slipped up to the entrance of the bar and taken a peak in the window in the door, just to make sure whether or not the victim was sticking to his routine. There he was, deep into another hand, glass of schnapps by his side. Could have been anything but Isaac insisted the man liked his schnapps, another convenient identifier. I gave Isaac the high sign and he waved from his position down the street.

Night time in New York gave off pupil damaging light at all hours. Garish light from thousands of sources up and down the street made for a dodgy situation. Fortunately, right in front of the building under renovation it was partially dark, due to the electricity being turned off. This gave us a sliver of pavement to stay concealed if we acted swiftly. We only hoped there wouldn't be any other pedestrians walking in the vicinity when Oscar exited the bar in route home.

I was getting nervous as I waited. We were heading into felony territory and I still didn't know what Isaac had in mind. Part of me believed that all he wanted to do was scare the guy, extract a confession, then turn him over to the authorities. Not that there wasn't a little voice in my head saying he's gonna kill him. I didn't want to think about that; and I wasn't at all sure I was prepared to step up and prevent that from happening. I couldn't see myself getting in the way of a man's desire for revenge. Who was I to stop that? Any morality play was almost irrelevant, rendered moot. Did a man's crime have levels? Were there attributes of a crime that made it beyond any measured punishment?

My legs were tired. That day I had stood on 42nd Street for hours handing out porn flyers to unsuspecting passersby, while they avoided eye contact and veered away from me like I had a communicable disease. The porn industry was, in a way, like a disease, as it continually threatened to take down its host by reducing any degree of decency every day, 24/7. I was being paid a few bucks cash and needed it to eat. The college stipend was long spent. While I waited, I practiced a few more times dropping the bag over the victim's head, hoping I had it down cold.

Isaac was standing in the shadows, a few steps down into a basement of a closed boutique, one of the ones New York had too many of, with inexplicable styles and merchandise you couldn't imagine anybody ever buying. Unbelievably, there were only a few pedestrians passing by. Now we just had to wait.

Not long. It turned out to be an early night for Oscar. He appeared on the street suddenly, stopping for a moment to button up his coat against the cool night air. Adrenaline instantly peaked in my blood stream, as I watched him draw closer to my position. I heard Isaac hurrying up the street, trying to be ready for the initial assault.

"Excuse me, do you happen to know what time it is?" I heard Isaac asking, his voice piercing the darkness suddenly.

Oscar stopped abruptly, apparently surprised by the question or maybe a man materializing out of the dark in front of him. He fumbled with the sleeve on his coat so he could see his watch, totally unaware of my presence behind him. I sneaked up quickly, raised the hood, then dropped it over his head, immediately yanking down hard. Isaac glanced up and down the street for a moment, then rushed forward to help me subdue the victim. We half carried him down the few steps and on into the empty building. Shocked at first, the guy began to protest and then fight back. By then I had him in a head lock and was dragging him back into the room we had previously prepared. He tried to shout out but his cries for help were partially muffled by the hood. Just to be safe, I punched him a few times on the side of the head. This did the trick. He shut up immediately.

We had set up a chair in the middle of one of the interior rooms of the building, one that was furthest from the street. Isaac had brought along a battery operated lantern, the type that you might use on a family camping trip. It gave off a feeble amount of light and gave the room an eerie atmosphere, just one more aspect of fear for our prey. A wooden chair we had found behind the building had been set up in the middle of the small room, along with some duct tape to serve as restraints. I physically guided our victim onto the chair, while Isaac began taping him to it as fast as he could. Then I swiftly removed the hood and stuck an old sock into his mouth to keep him quiet. Remarkably, it took only minutes to complete the task at hand.

Both of us were breathing hard, from exertion and nervous energy. Oscar was beginning to push his bewilderment to the background and was starting to let his outrage take over. I wasn't sure if he suspected that he had been discovered, that his true identity had been revealed and he was now facing the ultimate retribution. He had lived so long in the shadows that maybe he didn't believe anybody would ever unravel the mystery of Oscar Becker. His eyes, wide with fear, did show that he might expect the worst.

He begged to know what was happening but his words were lost because he was effectively muffled. Isaac and I caught our breath for a moment, then smiled at each other. We had done it. I held up my hand for quiet, while we listened for a moment. There didn't seem to be any activity out on the street. No unsuspecting neighbor had seen the abduction. The usual noise that was New York City went on unabated. No sirens. No calls for assistance. Just the usual.

"I think it's okay," I whispered to Isaac, stepping out into the hallway to take a look towards the street. "Coast is clear."

Isaac said something in Polish, then turned to Oscar and said, "Ah, Herr Kruger, zo, you have come to live in the weltstadt," he mocked, referring to NYC as the world city in German. "But I have found you." Oscar protested but his words were snuffed out by the gag. "Maybe you should begin to pray, Herr Kruger. Nine, Gott can't hear you now," he taunted, as he smacked him across the face with a riding crop he had pulled from inside his coat.

"Where'd you get that?" I wanted to know, unhappy with this new development, then remembering Isaac telling me that the oberschaarfuhrer had always carried a riding crop to dispense beatings with when he wanted to torment the camp inmates.

"Where is your fuhrer now? Where? The fish begins to stink from the head," Isaac declared, laughing, as he lightly tapped the crop in the palm of his hand.

"What's going on?" I demanded to know.

Isaac shot me a look, then said, "I think Herr Kruger knows the answer to that. Don't you." He tapped Oscar on the top of the head, making him flinch. Holding the end of the riding crop under the guy's chin, lifting his head up slightly, Isaac continued: "You probably didn't think you would ever see one of us again." The man's eyes grew wide with fear, as he struggled against the duct tape. "You, you have no soul," Isaac said into his face, smacking him again across the face.

I stepped forward and grabbed Isaac by the arm, pulling him back. He pushed me away. I didn't know what I had expected to happen but now that it was I wasn't sure I wanted to be a part of it. In my head I was cursing myself for being so stupid, so naive, indifferent. This was one of those crucible moments you might hear or read about. Biblical. Tracing man's descent into hell, with no exit strategy.

"I thought you were going to just question him," I told him, hoping to get us back on track.

Isaac stared at me for a moment then said, "Yes. Of course. He deserves that." The last statement was said with sarcasm and a little chuckle, as he applied a generous layer of black humor to the task at hand.

"Get on with it then," I exclaimed, realizing that if anyone could be forgiven for any animus towards another human being, particularly one he thought was one of his former tormenters, a man who had been there to enforce the set of regulations that were the underpinnings for the death machine, it was Isaac.

Isaac then raised his left arm and pulled up the sleeve on his jacket far enough to see the tattoo, the six fading numbers etched into his skin, and held them under Oscar's nose. "I see this everyday," he almost shouted, waving the riding crop around. "A number from the devil himself," he announced, mixing in some Christian theology I suppose. "Teufel," he spat out, poking Oscar with the riding crop in the chest. "Devil." Oscar wagged his head around for a moment, trying to speak. Isaac reached over and plucked the sock from his mouth. Just as he was beginning to shout out he whacked him across the face again. "Be a good German, Herr Kruger. Do as you are told," Isaac mocked, laughing. "If you continue to shout I will continue to hit you. Say, Ich verstehe. Say, I understand."

Oscar looked over at me for a moment, then Isaac guided his head back with the riding crop. "I understand," he said in English. "What do you want of me?" he wanted to know, fearing the next blow from the riding crop.

"You, Herr Kruger, are not asking the questions," Isaac ordered, tapping him lightly on the top of the head. "That is for me to do."

"Let's hurry this up," I demanded, walking back out into the dark hallway to look out towards the street.

"Sarah...Hania...Tobiasz," Isaac recited, leaning over to stare directly into Oscar's face.

Confused, Oscar said, "Yes...what? I don't understand what you mean."

"Ah, he doesn't understand what I mean," Isaac stated, looking over at me. "They were my family, Herr Kruger." He poked Oscar in the chest with the riding crop, then hit him across the face again. "My mother and father, and my sister. They died at Ausch-vitz! Gassed. Then cremated at your krema. One of thousands you disposed of."

"I don't know what you are talking about," Oscar protested. "I am not German. I am Swiss."

Isaac laughed at this comment, then slapped him again with the riding crop. "Arbeit Macht Frei," he shouted into his face, with his angry words filtering through the vacant building, before finally dying out in the empty rooms.

"Fuck, Isaac, keep your voice down," I told him, again looking out towards the street, fearing the worse. "You are going to get us caught."

Isaac ignored me and said, "You are a barbarian, a Nazi--"

"No, I-I am not German," Oscar insisted again. "You have made a mistake. I am not who you think. My name is Oscar Becker...from Bern. There is a mistake."

"Nein, mien freund, you are a savage...a beast who killed my family and thousands of others," Isaac shot back at him, sticking the riding crop up against his cheek. "You have lived free long enough. You must pay."

If the guy hadn't gotten the import of what was going on to this point he got it now, as he started to squirm and struggle against the duct tape, wild eyed, knowing that he was dealing with certain death. "No...no, you have the wrong man. I am Oscar Becker. He looked over at me and called out: "Please, sir, you must believe me. I am from Switzerland. Look, back at my home I have a passport...from Switzerland. I will show it to you. You must believe me. I am not a German."

I started to say something but Isaac cut me off and declared: "The trial has begun, Herr Kruger. I am your judge and executioner. What do you have to say for your crimes against the Jews and all humanity? Confess to God. Don't hesitate. Maybe there is still time for mercy."

"You are mistaken," he whined, looking over at me for help.

"There are many many souls on your conscience, Herr Kruger," Isaac told him in a solemn tone, edging closer, tapping the riding crop in the palm of his hand.

"Isaac," I called out, pointing at my watch, trying to hurry him along, still believing that he was going to have his fun and then we would call the cops and have the guy taken away.

"How did you manage to escape?" he asked, slapping the guy across the thighs hard with the riding crop. "Tell me. Why did the Russians not grab you? Please tell us. I want to know how you slipped away while the Third Reich was disappearing. No trial for Oberschaarfuhrer Kruger. Why? You killed so many. Did you ever hear their cries in your dreams? How long did it take for you to stop smelling burning flesh? And the ash, did you ever wash it away...off your bloody hands?"

"Please, I beg you, I am not this man," Oscar pleaded. "I am from--"

Isaac reached out and whacked him across the face again, sending the man's head back violently. Blood trickled out of his mouth, spilling onto the collar of his coat. I knew I had to stop it but didn't know how to. Isaac had a maniacal look on his face, as he let decades of survivor guilt ebb, replaced by the sheer power of vengeance. He probably hadn't felt this alive since before he entered the camp.

"Herr Kruger, you must be mistaken if you think that the court believes you," Isaac mocked. "Like all good prisoners you must be...marked. Just for clerical purposes," he continued, taking out a cigarette lighter from his coat pocket. He then pulled out a small screw driver and started heating it in the flame of the lighter.

"I don't like where this is heading," I told him, nervous, now sure we were both going to end up in jail.

Isaac turned to me and stated: "You have done your duty. Please yourself, but you can leave if you want to."

Besides being handily dismissed, I probably should have taken him up on the offer. I didn't. Somehow I couldn't. I had come this far. I was an accessory to the crime in any event. There was no turning back.

"Just get on with it," I muttered, stepping back out into the hall, as if by leaving the immediate room I was absolving myself from what was going on.

"Herr Kruger, I have a serial number for just for you," he announced, smiling, sliding the sleeve on the guy's coat up enough so he could apply the hot edge of the screw driver to his skin. "This might hurt a little," he mumbled, as he stuck the sock back in his mouth. His muffled screams echoed for a moment in the small room. "Six...six...six," Isaac recited, laughing, as he wrote out the numbers with the hot screw driver, stopping once or twice to reheat the shaft.

"Jesus," I muttered, more to myself than to Isaac.

"Now you are a number too, Herr Kruger," Isaac mocked, yanking the sock back out of his mouth.

"You will pay for this...you, you Juden bastard," Oscar snarled, spitting out his words.

"So, now we hear the real person inside, not the Swiss," Isaac called out to me, laughing. "Doesn't like being branded."

"I-I demand you release me," Oscar exclaimed.

"No, you demand nothing," Isaac shot back, whacking him in the back of the head. "Did you think I would ever forget that face of yours? All those mornings at the Krema, with you strutting around, making sure we burned more and more of the bodies. 'Snell, hunde', isn't that what you would say to us, Oberschaarfuhrer Kruger? Of course, there was a schedule to keep. Bodies in. Bodies out. Dump the ash in the Sola River. Hurry. Must make Himmler happy."

"Damn, I can't believe you burned the guy," I said from across the room, shaking my head. "I don't think he's ever going to confess to you. Let's just turn him in and let them take care of the rest."

'No," Isaac yelled out defiantly. "He knows what he has done."

"I have done nothing," Oscar persisted.

"So far you've just proved that he hates Jews...who doesn't?" I joked.

Placing the riding crop under the guy's chin, he said, "I know this face. How could I forget? For weeks I saw it every day. This is God's way. He placed him here for me. I must do what needs to be done."

"I am a religious man," Oscar stated, beseeching. "I too believe in your God."

Isaac whacked him again on top of the head and said, "You have no God. You have only Hitler."

"I am not a Nazi. You must believe me," he pleaded.

Was he Johann Kruger? I wasn't sure. At times, he did sound convincing. I might have thought he was a Swiss citizen caught up in a terrible case of mistaken identity. It had been a long time since the war. Maybe Isaac was influenced by his psychological state of mind. Grief. Guilt. The passing of time. For all I knew Isaac might be bonkers. He had converted to Catholicism. How sane could the guy be?

"I don't know, Isaac," I said to him, jerking my thumb in the guy's direction. "Are you sure you know what you are doing here? I mean, think about it. It has been a long time since you last saw the guy, right? People don't look the same after so many years."

"No!" Isaac shouted, pointing the riding crop at me. "He is Helmut Kruger. I am sure of it. No mistake. He was there. I remember like it was yesterday. You know nothing. You were not there."

"No, I wasn't there," I admitted, stepping back a step. "I just think, you know, it's best to be sure about something like this. That's all. You don't want to make a mistake. Do you?"

He ignored my remark and said, "Justice."

Right about then he start muttering under his breath, as he paced back and forth for a minute or two, slapping the riding crop into the open palm of his hand. I went back out into the hallway again to check on the street. When I came back in I got my first glimpse of applied retribution. Isaac had placed a clear plastic bag over the guy's head and taped the end of it tight around his neck with duct tape.

"What the fuck?" I called out, shocked.

"I want to watch him take his last breath," Isaac stated, planting himself directly in front of the man, who was now struggling to breathe. Gurgling noises filled the small room, as Oscar wrenched his head around, jerking, trying to dislodge the plastic bag.

"Man, you've totally lost it," I muttered, trying to decide whether or not I should intervene.

"I want to see you die, die like all of your victims...all those innocent people," Isaac stated, poking him in the chest with the riding crop. "How does it feel to die?"

"What's that smell?" I wanted to know, looking around the room.

"My own personal Zyklon B," Isaac answered matter of factly. "Eye for an eye, just for you Oberschaarfuhrer Kruger."

"Smells like shit, like bleach or something," I mumbled, holding my nose.

"Ah, kitchen cleansers can be dangerous," Isaac exclaimed, laughing. "Breathe it in, Herr Kruger. Feel it in your lungs...like so many Jews did before they died. This is your final solution."

I had seen a dead body before, like I mentioned before, but I had never seen anyone die before, not in front of me, in real time. Although I saw decay every stinking day in New York, people one step away from that last fix or so close to the wrong end of a crime spree, this was vastly different. The guy's eyes, before so wide with fear, then burning with anger, had now shrunken into his skull, leaving just slits to announce his resignation. If he had been who Isaac thought he was, then he had extended his run, a man destined for Hades. By all rights, he should have been tried then been visited by the hangman. So many blameless souls had perished, done in by a malignant set of beliefs.

It seemed like he took an exceptionally long time to die. In reality, it wasn't long at all. Minutes. As the witches brew of chemicals got sucked into his lungs and he tried to expel them by coughing, the air slowly ran out. It was a race to a finality. Then it came. He wheezed his last breath and his head slumped forward. Isaac took the riding crop and pushed his head up so he could examine the death mask.

"Good," he mumbled, then drifted off into what I took to be Polish. Could have been a prayer in Hebrew.

"We gotta get out of here," I offered, pulling on his coat sleeve, but he didn't seem to want to leave, as he drank in what he had done. I had never dreamed of these eventuality, choosing to think that we would extract the information then call in the cops. Now we had to disappear, leaving our handiwork behind. I guess I had never included a scenario in my mind where we would be two fugitives running from a murder charge.

Chapter 5 Germaine To The Pattern

So said the prosecutor. The title of my last chapter is taken from the transcript to my trial, as in some kind of pattern I displayed as a renegade vigilante out to correct the wrongs of the world. Yes, it was laughable, but, apparently, effective. Although who I killed made me a hero to some, I was still breaking the law of the land. Being righteous doesn't make you above the law. The prosecutor said that too I'm sure. I really don't remember because most of the time I sat there in that court room in lower Manhattan dumbfounded, totally bewildered by the change in my circumstances. Now I was being portrayed as some kind of mastermind avenger. I think you and I know that I was far from that.

How were you caught, you might ask? It's called finger prints, which I left--like an idiot--right on the chair where the victim sat. Didn't take long for simple forensics to find that out. I was also in the database, thanks to being busted before for vagrancy. Booked and finger printed. Right on file, with the obligatory mug shot, the one where I am squinting into the camera after sleeping off another night of bingeing. Bed head. Unshaven. Confused. Blinded by the fluorescent lights. Not pretty.

It took them over a month to find me though, even after my mug shot was plastered on the front pages of several newspapers. I did have longer hair in the photo. That and I was adept at living in the shadows of a big city, one that I knew fairly well after being on the streets for two years. Being suspect zero in a murder makes you highly radioactive to say the least. It didn't take the Forseti Society long to realize they had a criminal in their ranks, like immediately. "That can't be you," Gail cried out one morning as we were walking to class together, having run into each other at the subway stop. She promptly showed me the Daily News front page, with me plastered all over it. She had just picked up the paper at one of the news stands at the station and seen my name in large letters.

My college career had just come to an inglorious end. "I'd like to explain...but I gotta go," I had exclaimed to her, quickly disappearing into the crowd near Columbus Circle. Everybody wants to be famous, I guess but it was sure good to be anonymous before. I fled to Gary's perch, knowing that he never read newspapers.

To make matters worse, originally the press and the cops got it wrong. They thought a heinous murder had been committed against some innocent guy. Kidnapped. Tied up. Tortured. Then executed. It went kind of like that in the press. Might be the work of a serial killer. Some psycho on the loose bushwacking pedestrians. Right off the street. No one is safe. In fact, the cops instituted a task force to not only investigate the murder but to canvass all neighborhoods where vacant buildings were having construction done. Of course, the murderer had to have a MO, one that included dragging people into abandoned buildings and snuffing their lives out after branding them with some hot pointy object.

As you can imagine, the press went insane. For an entire month, until they caught me, the city was treated to daily headlines about how the one man crime wave was going to alter history somehow. The media hyperventilated for weeks, with each fresh news cycle adding more slow motion hysteria. The cops didn't help either. They tried to keep a lid on the whole thing but only ended up making it far worse by appearing to be concealing facts the public should know about. It all fed on itself.

My life became like that of a hunted animal. I used to be, mostly, invisible. Just another unfortunate trying to get along. I lived on the margins, like an apparition, only appearing when I needed to. Now I feared being discovered whenever I had to go on the streets. At Gary's, I was more or less safe; although the cops had sent around some government types to look the place over once. They poked around but Gary scared them off by his usual erratic behavior, never letting them even explain what they were doing there in the first place. I doubt he would have believed them anyway. He called them drones, worker bees, demanding that they leave the premises. Surprisingly, they did, checking the property off their list.

The building was in a twilight district, a place where nothing happened but decay. So I was relatively safe there, but I couldn't exist just staying there. My checks had stopped from the college ruse of course and I needed to have some money coming in. I lived on very little, yet I did need something to survive. Spot jobs were out of the question now. My face was well known and even though I worked mostly in the underground economy, an environment where very little was asked, no one wanted to be associated with a guy wanted by every police entity in the tri-state area.

I went to bed at night trying not to think about two things: what my parents might be thinking and when they were going to capture me. It was no fun being thought of as some lunatic at large. On top of that, Oscar Becker, aka Johann Kruger, was being portrayed as some poor, unsuspecting slob out for an evening stroll when it all came to an end. His bogus Swiss passport or papers held up at first. They interviewed people at his work and they gave the predictable answers to all the asinine questions. Yes, he was a quiet guy. Never had a bad word for anybody. Kept to himself. Good worker. Contributed to the coffee fund regularly. Always on time. Yeah, he was German, I wanted to scream out.

Johann Kruger's identity wasn't revealed until I was rounded up and only then after I made a stink about the reasons for him being in that abandoned building. Some Jewish groups perked up and they did some digging. Turns out, Isaac had been right all along. He was the satanic oberschaarfuhrer after all, the guy who disposed of thousands and thousands of human remains, all the while happy about it. Documents were produced because everyone knows the Germans, particularly the Nazis, just have to have documentation for better efficiency. Layer after layer of proof came pouring in, including photos of the guy in all his glory, wearing the jet black uniform of the SS. All the investigating was off the books and took time though and wasn't sanctioned by the Justice Department, who saw only a slam dunk case in the docket.

Didn't matter, even though it did ameliorate my guilt somewhat when all the details finally did surface. Of course this was after I was convicted. The man on the street went from thinking I was some crazed killer to maybe he did a good thing. My court appointed lawyer, before he was replaced by some expensive one funded by a Jewish organization, tried to run with the new unfolding narrative but was mostly ineffectual. He was some overworked numbnuts anyway, a graduate of Brooklyn College; not that that is a knock on that specific law school.

The end to my time on the lamb came suddenly, as they all probably do. After a month dodging the inevitable, with a good portion of the law enforcement establishment believing that I must have moved on to another city or location, because nobody would be stupid enough to stay in the locale of their crime, I had grown weary and not wary. I let my guard down, I guess. I had grown a beard, such as it was, and my hair was shorter but old habits die hard. I still visited some of the places in the city where I knew I could score what I needed, like food for instance. As can be expected, tips had poured into the police hotlines ever since my face appeared front and center in all of the media. There were plenty of people who knew me well enough to pass on tidbits of my whereabouts. It took them four weeks to piece together a profile.

I only went out at night, thinking that the darkness would help to conceal my movements. Three weeks in, I had exhausted many of the nooks and crannies that I felt safe going to. When you are a fugitive your mindset shifts somewhat. No longer do you take for granted ordinary things, like getting a cup of coffee at that coffee shop you frequented often or crashing in that building in the East Village you know has absentee owners who don't give a crap about the status of the place. My parents had been on TV, for Christ's sake. My mother had begged me to give myself up, with a chorus from my siblings echoing: We would just like him to turn himself in. People, New Yorkers, normally fearless, didn't want to walk the streets alone for fear of being branded and then suffocated. I had become Jack the Ripper, minus the blade, and I had only participated in one murder.

Only? It was surreal, to say the least. I longingly looked back on being a non-entity, back before when I wasn't infamous. Dangerous. Look out. You might end up suffocated in some basement somewhere. No one was safe. Of course, it was all preposterous. I was harmless, mostly. Sure I might con you out of your lunch money but I wasn't a killer. I was a hustler.

Being on the Wanted List is an eye opening experience. Gone are the times you casually stroll into a deli and order a sandwich, hold the pickle. Around every corner is a potential betrayer, somebody who recognizes you from the six o'clock news or the New York Post front page mug shot, the one with your eyes half closed. You begin to imagine everyone is on to you, just waiting to run to the nearest pay phone to call the hotline, the one that was offering up some reward money. "I just saw him buying a slice on Broadway, mid-town," the frantic voice on the line would shout. Then dozens of cop cars would scream to a stop out on the street and there I would be, pizza sauce dripping down my chin, captured. Guns drawn, the pigs would seize me, wrestling me to the ground so they could slap the hand cuffs on. I would instinctually pretend to be somebody else but the jig would be up. Off to jail, where all the officers in the precinct would crowd in to take a peek at the latest psycho.

I never stopped being nervous, unless I was hanging out at Gary's place. He knew nothing of the crime that had been committed. Current news was of no interest to him. He lived in a bubble of myopia; and yes I lifted that phrase from someone else, just can't remember where or who. The world, according to him, was destined to end anyway so why bother with the present details. Everything was going to close in on itself or some such nonsense. Despite having heard him expound on mankind's untimely conclusion, I really couldn't remember how or why it was coming down the pike. It wasn't some religious cataclysm but rather a general all around diminishing of the societal superstructure that would presage the ending.

If you are wondering about Isaac, don't. Never saw him again. Skated away. Emigrated to Israel and, as far as I know, lived happily ever after. In prison, I received a post card from the Holy Land, Jerusalem to be precise. It had a picture of the Old City taken with the sun going down in the background, with the Dome of the Rock shining brightly, religiously I suppose. He didn't say much. Just that he was having a good time and the weather was nice, concluding with a small addendum about how he was praying for me at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Poor guy never did know that my conversion was a hoax. I liked the paradoxical aspect of him, presumably, fleeing to Israel but still remaining a Catholic. At least I assumed as much. I tried to imagine him genuflecting before the alter, the one so close to the site of his savior's ultimate demise.

So he had jumped on a plane and got out of Dodge, all the way to where it all began, so to speak. No more inquisitions, pogroms, or holocausts. He had insulated himself with his fellow Jews. Smart move, particularly in light of what happened down the road. When Oscar Becker turned out to actually be one Johann Kruger there was no way Israel would ever extradite him to the US. Are you kidding? Jew kills Nazi. Hurray! Give him a medal. It would never come to that. Isaac would die a free man, finally removing the shackles on his psyche in the process. Over the years I would often regret not being able to speak with him again.

No, I never harbored all that much animosity towards him. Talk about counter productive. We had done a horrible thing together which was only mitigated slightly by the inherent circumstances. Playing executioner was never about righting a wrong for me. For him, yes. I was just a stupid bystander for the most part, an ignorant fool who didn't offer up any resistance. What I did do, inadvertently, is give a man a little slice of peace and tranquility for the remaining years of his life. Life in death or something close to that.

Does that alleviate some of the social harm done from my breaching the judicial contract we all depend on? Probably not. One man's death usually doesn't upend the civic order. It might cause some fraying around the edges, I guess. Sorry about that.

It was on a Tuesday and I remember the day because I was walking by a coffee shop where I used to frequent and in the window they had a hand written sign written in wobbly letters saying: french toast today. The special on Monday was omelets. Wednesday--pancakes. Thursday--scrambled eggs. Friday--waffles. I really liked their french toast, big slices of Italian bread from a bakery in Brooklyn, with hash browns if you wanted them, all for peanuts. New York was one of the most expensive cities in the world but you could always find steals to get you by. I paused long enough to look in the shop, longingly I might add because I had stopped going into eateries for fear of being discovered. The waitress, Milly, saw me. We had a complicated history, one that included time spent under the sheets and her demanding that I stop "playing with her heart." She lived in Queens with her parents and was trying to keep up, having battled drug addiction twice. I was exactly what she didn't need in her life.

I hadn't noticed her behind the counter when I looked in the window, grabbing a little vicarious thrill from seeing a patron stuff some french toast in his mouth, as the syrup dripped off his fork onto the plate. Startled, alarmed by seeing and recognizing me, she slipped into the kitchen and called the cops. The police had gotten so many tips from unreliable sources they were at first reluctant to pursue her lead immediately, but when she assured them she had once dated me then they jumped right on it.

As it went down, I actually heard the sirens approaching; but when in New York you learn to disregard sirens for the most part because they are so common place. There is always something going on somewhere in the city, from fires to accidents to crimes. By the time I reacted they had me boxed in, even though I had run down an alley and gotten to another avenue. I ditched my jacket I was wearing in a dumpster in the alley as I ran but two pedestrians on the other side of the street pointed me out as I hurried across town, trying to blend in with the flow. Two of New York City's Finest pursued me, radioing as they went.

The chase was on. I knew the city pretty well, probably much better than the average beat cop. I lived on the streets and had gone up and down places most people try to avoid. Running from the cops is an adrenaline rush like no other, even mainlining drugs. Your adrenal glands are pumping like mad and your body starts to respond with some almost bestial impulse, like all those eons ago when your biological predecessors were building up their genetic code as they fought and killed mastodons. I ran like hell.

They finally cornered me in the basement of a tenement in the forties, eastside. I had slipped in a door left open by the super, who had gone upstairs for a moment to bring down some trash from an empty apartment he was cleaning out. I don't know how they saw me. I thought I had sneaked in undetected. At first, I refused to come out of a utility room I had barricaded myself in, hoping to stall for time as I tried to pry open a small window that probably hadn't been opened in twenty years. It had that type of glass in the window with the wire embedded in so I knew breaking it wouldn't get me far. Just as the cops thought they were going to have to force their way in, I gave up.

The bewildered super was standing, mouth agape, as the cops took me into custody, leading me out a side door and right into a waiting squad car. The big manhunt was officially over. The killer had been caught. Arrested. Soon booked. Locked away for arraignment. The Police Commissioner could breathe easier knowing that his job might not be on the line anymore. The mayor was happy. New York could go on with its business absent another crazy on the streets creating havoc. All had returned to normal.

It hadn't. Not exactly. I was in jail and the press went to town on that. I was the lead in all the newscasts, nationally too. The arrest itself was fodder for the media. The only thing missing was guns blazing and blood on the pavement. The two cops who did round me up improved their careers immediately and would get glowing commendations. I was like an instant career booster.

Down at the 17th Precinct things were buzzing. Reporters had to be pushed back out onto the sidewalk to keep them from over running the building. I had been read my rights, thank you. At first, being savvy about police procedures, I had refused to talk at all. No need to aid in my own destruction. Several cops had attempted to pry information out of me but I held firm. A one detective Woski had tried to be my buddy, telling me that he wanted to help me the best way he could, while another cop, detective Helms, thought it best that I "give it up now." This give and take went on for a little while since I hadn't really requested an attorney. I was too dazed to think straight at that point, as everything seemed to swirl around me.

It was a circus. Even though I hadn't at first revealed who I actually was, never carrying ID as a rule when I roamed the streets, it was apparent they had their guy. I wasn't fooling anyone. I was the killer who had taped a guy to a chair, beat and branded him, then placed a plastic bag over his head so he could stew in some toxic brew as he breathed in his last breaths. Why? Good question. Motive? Did I have a vendetta? Are you an enforcer for the mob? Did the victim owe money? What was your history with Oscar Becker? There isn't some homosexual angle to this is there? What? Those numbers you burned in his skin, what do they mean? Devil worship? Is this some satanic cult thing? Do you have a psychiatric history? What chemicals did you use? Where do you know the man from?

On and on the questions went, as I sat there wondering what to do next. I wasn't offering much in return, just listening to them pepper me with asinine questions. The cops were giddy, charged up since I hadn't asked for my lawyer. They believed I was going to fold up and reveal all. I was determined to leave Isaac out of it. He had been smart and escaped. I didn't want to penalize him for my stupidity. I knew I was going down for it.

At first, I did imagine me explaining away the finger prints, telling them that I had crashed in the building but that became untenable pretty quickly when they produced my prints on the tape as well. My damn footprints were in the saw dust on the floor from all the construction going on and I was still wearing the same shoes, my usual Adidas, size ten. I had no chance.

I was done. Cooked. Open and shut case. The public was relieved.

They booked me and then put me on ice in a holding cell to await arraignment. I got my court appointed lawyer, like I said, and the machinery of the justice system kicked into high gear. I was top priority. The mayor wanted me tried and convicted, like yesterday, so the city could return to normal. I think King Kong hanging off the Empire State Building caused less fuss than my case. Maybe it was the peculiar circumstances of the crime that stirred up the people. It wasn't as if I had sliced and diced the guy. As murders went, I thought it was kind of on the mild end of the spectrum.

Passing through what seemed like countless temporary cells, in route to my future home up in Ossining, I got a close up view of the penal system in all of its glory. Not pretty. Over worked staff, from lawyers to bailiffs, made it all function in fits and starts, with the inevitable delays built into the process. Even with my notoriety I had to often sit in cold cells waiting for my fate to be decided, hour after hour. They had purposely separated me out from the general population in the first stages of my incarceration. I was at risk, so my lawyer told me, as he fumbled through his thousand and one legal papers, trying to overcome his mounting lack of experience with sheer energy and youthful stamina.

I wasn't impressed. I knew it was over. Clarence Darrow couldn't help me. The fact that some inexperienced and under achieving Public Defender was representing me didn't make all that much difference. The DA was going to have an easy time of it when we eventually stepped into that court room, the one that was going to be inevitably packed with curiosity seekers. There was going to be a gaggle of reporters, all stepping over each other to get their story. At least there wasn't going to be any weeping relatives in the gallery, sobbing along while the state produced their expert witnesses detailing how I was on the premises and had to have done the crime.

Motive? Yeah, where exactly did that fit in? What was my motive? My own lawyer had asked me that, as we sat in a side room facing each other over a small metal table, with his bulging briefcase spilling out an overflow of files. He had to rifle through a half dozen before he got to mine. Really, I thought. Like this isn't going to be the biggest case of your career. Come on. Get it together. I don't care if you got your JD from the back of a magazine.

"Mr. Ashdown...I...I have your paper work right here," he announced in a squeaky voice that betrayed just how nervous he was. I didn't know whether or not he was frightened of me or just overwhelmed by the task at hand. "I am going to go over what's going to happen next--okay? This is probably going to go fast once we get to the arraignment part." He stopped to peruse the file then said, "This judge is all business."

"Does that matter?" I wanted to know, even though at this stage, after having been verbally prodded by the cops and left to languish in a dirty, foul smelling holding cell for hours, one that smelled of week old baloney and piss, I really had given up all hope.

He ignored my question and plowed on, locked into his routine. The mechanics of being a trial lawyer demanded a person adhere to a schedule that was perpetually being adjusted, like some cosmic joke was being played on you. Laws were impermeable until which time they weren't, so said my next lawyer, who I will get to in due time. So all those classes I was taking at John Jay were a warm up for the eventual slog through applied absurdity that awaited anyone who dared enter into the realm of the legal system. I get it. Now.

All the Forseti Society members were to become zombies if they pursued their goals, the ones defined by all those vaguely esoteric courses in the college bulletin. You too can become a member in good standing of the exclusive club. Lawyer. DA. Court reporter. Judge. Corrections officer. Cop. All you have to do is take: Critical Thinking and Informal Logic, Social Stratification, Social Deviance, Risk Management, Justice Planning and Policy Analysis, Psychology and The Law, Ethics and The Law, Urban Anthropology, and Introduction to Police Studies. I felt truly sorry for them.

Applied justice, in whatever form, is messy. Bickering and squabbles started almost immediately upon my capture. Everyone wanted a piece of me. I was happy to oblige. It was true I felt guilty about my involvement in the guy's death. I was still holding to Isaac's having fingered Oscar as being really Johann. I kind of had to make it all go down easier. Still, part of me thought that just maybe the guy had been who he said he was, just some poor slob caught up in a terrible mistake. Could be. I didn't really know. If so, then I was the demon seed everybody thought me to be. Oscar could have been back in the Alps yodeling to his heart's content.

The actual arraignment was a zoo, with standing room only. The Judge, a tiny man with thick glasses, who had to sit on a phone book up behind the big ass desk he was presiding from behind, didn't care for all the noise in his court room, twice banging his gavel to shut everybody up, before issuing a threat to clear the room if everybody didn't sit down and shut up. He cursed right about then too, creating a ripple of snickers in the back from the unruly reporters. As arraignments go, my was pretty straight forward. There wasn't going to be any bail (not that I could have afforded any) and the rail road tracks to prison were already greased up. The different opposing parties went through the motions, while the hobbit behind the bench blew his nose several times and acted like he would have rather been anywhere but there.

I paid attention for the first few minutes, sitting there, in chains, trying to follow along. Then I gave up and scanned the court room, exchanging stares with several of the media types, especially this one woman I recognized from the six o'clock news. To show how small a universe we live in she had once interviewed me on the street one time, right in Times Square. I had been handing out flyers for some peep show shithole when she came up and asked me some questions about the decline of 42nd Street, something like that. It was the usual counter human interest story the networks were fond of doing when they wanted to be socially responsible about the local environment. The narrative spoke for itself. One look down 42nd Street told you that the social fabric had been ripped, with the wall to wall emporiums of porn; her words if I remember correctly.

She gave me a quick, professional smile, the one she used to get a story when she needed one. Of course I smiled back, just managing to hold back a wink. Like so many women from the interior of the country, she had come to New York to tackle the big time. So far, she was succeeding, using her good looks and malleable ethics to accomplish her goals. A little cleavage. Blond highlights. Quick with applications of makeup in a moving van. Targeted flirting. Maybe a hand job or two in offices several floors up in the building. You had to be professionally compliant to get anywhere.

My fresh out of law school lawyer tugged on my sleeve to get my attention, thereby returning me to my immediate fate. He whispered something in my ear and his syncopated Brooklyn accent hummed so loud I failed to understand what he was saying. It didn't matter. He had just informed me that I was being remanded to...and I stopped listening all together. I was led away and the court room burst into a small riot of noise that was finally extinguished by the closing door behind me as I was led down a labyrinth of hallways, back to yet another cell. Empty again, although across the hall I could see another holding cell filled to the brim with other losers in the criminal justice derby. One of them was yelling for one of the bailiffs to do something about the over crowded conditions. It didn't take long to realize I was the cause of them being stuffed like sardines in a cell full beyond capacity.

"What the fuck's going on, man!" one of the criminals screamed out, now guilty until proven otherwise. "That guy's got the whole cell to himself. Can't you mutterfuckers do something about that?"

An officer poked his head in the door at the end of the hall and yelled out: "Shut up or I'll take away your dinner." This had the desired effect and he closed the door.

"Like I really want one of your fucking dried up baloney and cheese sandwiches," somebody yelled out and the others agreed.

I, personally, was hungry, haven't not eaten since the day before. On the run, I hadn't had time to hit my usual haunts to score something to eat. One could easily live on "day old" in New York, from pizza to bagels. You weren't going to starve. Now a baloney sandwich sounded good, even if it wasn't on wheat or rye, pumpernickel. My first day in jail and already I had alienated my future peers. The police weren't taking any chances with me, not wanting me to end up a casualty in one of the holding cells. Good call, because I had already witnessed two fights in the other cells. Put a bunch of criminals in close quarters and you are bound to end up with violence in one form or another. Tempers flaring. Racial tension. Alpha males staking out territory. It was all a witch's brew of possible problems.

This little foray into the underground of society, the place where those that didn't play by the rules got segregated from the others, was just a taste of what lay ahead for me. A tune up. The side show across the hall, with men locked up together, confined, behind bars, was the opening act to my future. It wouldn't be long before I would see close up just how much prison was nothing more than an organized bestiary, a place where someone had once written could only be referred to as: Into the mouth of madness. That described it effectively. Even though I was only in the minor leagues, before being called up for the majors in Sing Sing, I knew when those bars closed behind you it was essentially finished. All of your senses told you to accept your fate. The smells, the sight of reinforced concrete , the sounds of men in slow motion anguish, the very touch of cold iron in your hands as you grip those bars that make sure you are separated from everyone else, it all makes up the tableau that is your existence.

I wasn't there yet though. Sing Sing, with all of its pedigree in the penal world, making you tremble just a little bit, waited. Next stop, up the Hudson, right on the river banks. Like going to the prison colony Ivy league. Such pretty surroundings. Love the drive up in the Fall. That was all in the near future.

"What's the plea?" the Judge asked again, peevish, not the least moved by having such a notorious case fall onto his docket. Just another miscreant of some kind. Murder. Ho-hum.

"Not guilty," my hopelessly overmatched attorney replied gamely, while the gallery openly laughed.

The Judge tapped his gavel a few times petulantly, casting an evil eye in their direction, then declared: "So it is."

His words sounded weary, as if he might have been on his perch there steering justice for way too long. He notched his eyebrows for a moment, fingering the paper work on the desk, absentmindedly wishing he wasn't there. Years of judicial turmoil had worn him down, buffeting his idea of what man should be striving for. Law, in all of its confusing permutations, now seemed ludicrous to him, especially after it had been shape shifting itself for generations, gaining almost a new identity with each newly arrived decade. It was tedious, basically. Not in anyway noble. He couldn't remember the last time he hadn't let the snotty nosed prosecutor cut corners or on the other side of the divide the counselor weasel out of some legal cul-de-sac. If he hadn't, the system would screech to a halt. Do I hear a plea? he really wanted to shout out for all in the courtroom (and city at large) to hear. Court proceedings were for suckers.

I was that sucker; not that I wasn't complicit or anything. Guilty as charged. Then again, there is guilty and then there is guilty. Might I ask what Isaac's moral standing was exactly? Can you really selectively apply the law? Besides, isn't Isaac kind of exempt in a way? The questions of philosophical import rattled around in my basically ignorant mind. I guess I had always wondered if society was capable of any extemporizing when it came to any sort of moral calculus. Anyway, none of that directly applied to me. I had breeched the membrane surrounding an obvious criminal act, one that made certain laws kick in. Of course, as I sat there in that crowded court room all I wanted to do was jump to my feet and scream out: "I did it for all the Jews who died in concentration camps!"

This angle of attack had been suggested to my lawyer, who eyed me like I might have a screw loose. All he really wanted to accomplish was to get through his appearance in the arraignment then let the system do the rest. I was already in a free fall in the courts, dangling in mid-air like some cartoon character, before I crashed to the ground. It was all a formality. Soon, the DA would serve up a plea bargain on a platter, trying not to grin as he did, knowing that another notch would go up on the board back at the office in the win column. All was right in the jurisprudence universe, including him being re-elected in the next election.

Things never seem to work out in the end, not for all of the New Yorkers who wanted their crimes self-explanatory, easily digested and dealt with. I was to become the fly in the proverbial ointment but only after the fact. Just another victim of that damn Hobson's choice, you know, where they tell you: Take it or leave it. The DA informed my incredibly inept lawyer that they had a deal for me. Such a deal. No court time, with the media circus and awful details of my crime revealed for all to see, including my family. Spare them by all means. Not that they gave a shit, except the part where my father wished he could change the family name. It seems anonymity is a great attribute for most people.

The legal wrangling and one sided discussions, where my inattentive lawyer would pay attention long enough to accept the offer, took place rapidly. No need to let the media build up a head of steam. The City Hall and Centre Street were in lock step on this. Put it to bed. Nothing to see here. Just us doing our jobs. Routine. Commit a crime, you do the time. My speedy conviction would make everyone look good; except, of course, my representation, such as it was. He really was in a classic no-win situation anyway. Nobody likes a defense lawyer until they need one, so the adage goes. They represent slimeballs, trying to hold up the other end of the adversarial system. Pat him on the back for doing a great job and with relatively little pay.

"I'd take this if I was you," so said my attorney, with his obnoxious Brooklyn accent echoing in the small conference room we had retreated to so he could give me the latest news, while just outside some correctional officers stood guard at the court pen trying not to listen through the door. "You aren't going to do better, believe me."

I didn't. I didn't believe anything he said, to be honest. He seemed slippery to me, like a good con man might. Take him out of the ill fitting cheap suit he was wearing and I could easily see him on Prospect Avenue hustling something. Now he was hustling me, right to jail. "Sounds...sounds like I'm getting screwed here."

"Nah," he protested, smiling his usual greasy smile. "Look, you done something that, you know, isn't going away. Am I right? There are people out there calling for you to be strung up. Trust me on that."

Again, I didn't. Even though I had been relatively isolated from the news I doubted that many people were that invested in my demise. Murder in New York, ho-hum. Just another day in the naked city. He also neglected to tell me about Furman v Georgia, where the Supreme Court took issue with Capital Punishment. New York state had put old sparky on hold ever since. New York, by the way, was one of the first State's to switch to the electric chair for their preferred execution method, leaving the rope behind. Right in my future home, at Sing Sing. All the lights in Ossining must have dimmed for that one back then.

Even though my options were nil, I still wanted to see what was available. As to my legal privilege of being tried by a jury of my peers, well bring it on. I could do court. The proceedings might be entertaining and if it gave the Mayor heartburn--sorry about that. I had no plans to grandstand or anything but just maybe the people should hear what was going on in that small room in that empty building. Then again, I didn't want to implicate Isaac in any way and I wasn't sure if I could carry off the Nazi hunter bit. Me, out to avenge all those Jews who died didn't seem very plausible, and I knew the press would have a field day with that angle. I was good but probably not that good.

My stupid lawyer was pretty much right. I had no options. After being so accustomed to living on the streets, always maintaining a low profile just to stay ahead, I couldn't see myself front and center. Otherwise, I would have been handing out interviews like candy, whetting the public's appetite for more, more from the lunatic who killed a man with a plastic bag after branding him with a red hot screw driver. As weird sideshows go, it would have been entertaining.

"How many years again before parole?" I wanted to know, finally letting the enormity of my act sink in.

"Twenty to life," he said evasively, knowing full well that the fine print meant that I was never, ever going to see the light of day again. I would die behind bars, right there on the Hudson, just another statistic.

"I'm still young," I muttered hopefully, trying to imagine me leaving prison after so many years, creeping past middle age, alone, unable to believe what the outside world looks like. No one would remember what I had done, just another murder buried under decades of news stories far, far more interesting. I would be unskilled when I got out as when I went in, except for maybe I would have adopted Christ as my savior finally, especially since it got my parole bumped up a few years after the glowing report from the prison Chaplain. The group effect of Christianity, magnified so much in the pen, where Christ is eulogized and then romanticized, would have the desired effect on me. I would have forgotten just how feeble mankind was to need an eponymously named religion in order to assure themselves it is all going to be worth it. I jest.

"Sure...it will all work out," my idiot lawyer told me, already thinking about the next case in his head, the one where a guy was caught stealing women's shoes from the YWCA; I know because I had taken a peek when the file fell open on the desk.

Another successful plea bargain. "Goody," the judge actually said, happy to oblige in the interest of efficiency. The legal mumbo-jumbo rang in my ears as I glanced around the court room at all the curiosity seekers. Some of them, I was told by one of the bailiffs with a judgmental sniff, come to trails all the time just for something to do. Really, I had told him, wondering which ones. Could have been that woman towards the front, right side, with the large purse filled to overflowing with lunch. Come prepared. Might be the guy in the back, left side, who always wore a three piece suit but looked like he might have escaped from a nursing home. He had a vaguely wild eyed look about him and seemed to be mumbling to himself a lot of the time. For them I was just another act on the bill. The case was really immaterial. Just passing the time before I die. I doubted they even knew what the particulars of my case were.

I stood up, faced the judge. Clack. Clack. The judge pounded his gavel lightly, and said something that I really didn't even hear, even though he had just passed judgement on me, setting the course of the rest of my life in a few brief words. My lawyer solemnly said something along the lines that he hoped I would be okay on down the road and I was then led away by the bailiffs, off to be fitted with my transport chains for the trip up State. As I was exiting the courtroom I got a glimpse over at the prosecutor's table and they were high fiving each other. Why not? It had all been so easy. Some woman in the front row behind their table was wiping away a tear. I had always believed she somehow must have known Oscar/Johann but wasn't sure. Our eyes locked on for an instant and in that brief interval she looked more sad than revengeful.

Although the criminal justice system usually moved on at a glacial pace, not this time. Record time. Front page news. The DA was assured to be re-elected. Job well done. Everyone can feel good about themselves. Not so fast.

There always has to be a problem, one that makes the system whole. This time it was some inquisitive, nosy Jewish guy from, of all places, Dallas. Like a lot of people in the country, he had seen my arrest, taking a casual interest in the proceedings. Apparently, so he told the local news in Texas, something didn't seem right. Really, why would some loser like me kill somebody for nothing, especially in such a bizarre fashion. Maybe it was the victim's Germanic name or something else, anyway he decided to do some sleuthing on his own. Turns out, his uncle or cousin had done some clerical work for one of those Jewish organizations that track down Nazis on the run. He contacted his relative, ran it by him, and they decided to take a look at this Oscar Becker character.

Now this in itself was novel because most people in New York thought of the victim as this poor unsuspecting guy who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Oscar had been portrayed in the press as just a simple guy from Switzerland going about his boring life, harming nobody. Who doesn't like the Swiss? Skiing. Cough drops. Chocolate. Like to stay neutral. It made the crime all that more heinous.

Data bases were checked by the Jew from Dallas, and with the help of his relative some details started to pop up that didn't look right. Like, for instance, Oscar's original entry visa seemed fishy. Then even his identity started to not hold up to scrutiny. There were no birth records back in the Swiss Canton of any Oscar Becker. The organization that hunted down numerous Nazis over the decades went on red alert. More research into records from Germany turned up one lead after the other, ultimately landing in Auschwitz. And there were photographs. The krauts were always taking pictures to commemorate their accomplishments. There he was in grainy black and white: Oberschaarfuhrer Kruger, standing at the entrance, omnipresent riding crop in hand. Just like a recruiting poster for future SS recruits to marvel at. He even had this sly smile on his face, as if to say that by joining up with Himmler's gang you are going to save the Fatherland from itself.

As can be imagined, this created a stir, especially when the Jew from Dallas started in on some interviews. He had compiled lots and lots of documentation to back up his story; but it was the photos that did the trick. Gradually, I went from being some dangerous psychopath to some kind of overachieving superhero, able to seek out then snuff out Nazis lurking in our midst. Yeah, I had done society a favor by getting rid of Kruger. Auschwitz survivors came out of the woodwork to tell their tales and to indict, post-humously, Herr Kruger. Their angry stories spoke of inhuman cruelty, wholesale death, and deprivation, attributing it all to the faux Swiss citizen with the sordid past.

I liked to say I was vindicated but that wasn't possible when you are sitting in a cell up in Sing Sing looking at a long stretch going all the way out to infinity. Realistically, I couldn't take credit because I had only been there as a spectator, even if I was the muscle that delivered Kruger to his death. My guilt was tangible if not credit worthy. I had watched as Isaac took the man's life, looking on while the guy gasped then took his last agonizing breath.

"Got a visitor, Ashdown," the CO called out, interrupting my thoughts as I lay on my bunk staring at the ceiling, trying not to let my depression mount.

I had turned down all requests for interviews, happy to slip away into abject seclusion, holed up in a cell that was going to be my home forever. The CO's had treated me as they would anyone else in the general population, quick to enforce the rules and just as quick to overlook them if they thought it would make things run more smoothly. Although we, the inmates and the correctional officers, lived confined within material boundaries, there did exist a fluidity of sorts. The penal system was a social construct that existed for the purpose of separation, supplying a barrier to keep us from them. Still, rules and regulations were always made to be manipulated, and they were to an extent. In a way, we were all in it together. They watched over us and we endured it.

"No visitors," I replied, closing my eyes, hoping to conjure up memories of my former life, zeroing in on a particular time and place.

"Who knew you were such a Nazi hunter," the guard said, not without sarcasm. "You Jewish or something?"

What the fuck was he talking about? I asked myself, then said, "Who is it?"

At that point I hadn't seen any news about myself and certainly nothing about the developments concerning Oscar. In reality, at that time, I was a minor celeb in the prison but it was fading rapidly, soon to be replaced by the next lunatic criminal with a much more lurid crime. The guards thought I was some mentally unbalanced inmate and for the first few weeks kept an eye on me, afraid that I might be some minor league mastermind type who could potentially prove to be a problem. Laughable sure, but it happened that way.

"Some guy from some Jewish club or something...how the fuck do I know," the guard answered peevishly. "Get your ass up."

I will admit that I was intrigued at this point so I agreed to meet with him. Glad I did, sort of. It didn't help me all that much but it did reveal Kruger to be what he was. That accounted for something. Even though there were rumblings about my plea deal being somehow revoked, they never got off the ground all that much. The DA's office just wanted to turn the page. Move on. Nothing to see here. Needless to say, they were reluctant to reopen a case after it had been adjudicated. Bad policy.

"Yeah, you wanted to talk to me?" I began when I saw the guy who had come to visit me. He was dressed in a suit and seemed frightened, way (way) out of his element. "Who are you?"

He told me his name then said, "I know who Oscar Becker really was." He let this sink in for a moment, looking around him at the other inmates yammering to their wives, girl friends, moms, etc. "His name was--"

"I know what his name was," I said, happy that the truth had finally come out. I was also happy to see that Isaac had been right all along too.

"I know what or how you did what you did was...you know...not legal, it was still the right thing to do," the man said in almost a whisper, wincing. "Johann Kruger was a very bad man."

I nodded then said, "You get the goods on him?"

The man nodded yes then produced a thick folder and pulled out a few photographs. He held them up so I could see several of them. At this point I started to realize I might have made a mistake in agreeing to meet him because I didn't have a good cover to go by. If he started asking me questions about how I knew Oscar was actually Johann I wasn't going to have any good answers for him. I wasn't sure how I could bluff my way through it. I knew very little about how the Nazi hunters worked. Isaac hadn't needed any documentation research. He recognized the guy. That was all he needed. I had no idea how I was going to fake it.

"He had fooled everybody," the man announced, shaking his head. "I don't know how you were able to discover his true identity."

This comment was an opening, meant to let me start supplying some of my tricks of the trade. Yet I didn't have much to deal with. What did I know about Nazis in hiding. Nada. The only thing I knew about the Germans came from bad World War II movies. Scholar I wasn't. I had relied solely on Isaac's discretion and I wasn't about to give him up now. That would have brought a firestorm down on him and Israel. Not that the rest of the world really gave a damn. I'm sure there are some people out there who thought the entire German nation should have been put on trial.

So I mumbled a little, stalling, then said, "Just luck."

The man stared at me, clearly wanting more. There was nothing to give. Zippo. My conning days were over. I was sitting in a prison, looking at a long stretch with probably no parole. Come on. What was I going to get out of it?

"Luck," the man repeated, confused. "You must have known something about the man...this Kruger. Right? I mean, you know, his background or something."

Finally I said, after thinking for a moment, "I got a lead from somebody--who shall remain nameless."

"Oh," the man said, exhaling, leaning closer, hoping that just maybe I might give up my contact. "Another German?"

"What?" I spat out peevishly, now getting irritated, with him and myself for agreeing to meet with him in the first place. "No." I knew I couldn't give up Isaac's nationality because somebody like this guy might be the type to do his homework, eventually finding something out about my past that might link me to Isaac.

He saw that I was adamant about not giving up my source so he announced: "You don't belong in here." He glanced around and continued, "You should have been given a medal."

I suppose he thought he was cheering me up but it was having the opposite effect because recently it had dawned on me that by accepting the plea I had screwed myself royally. If only the info about Oscar really being Johann had come out earlier I might have been able to work a better deal. The State of New York wasn't going to let me skate but they might have been pressured to give me a lighter sentence. Killing a wanted war criminal counted for something, especially in a city with millions of Jews. I could have worked that angle easily.

"Lot of good that would do me," I exclaimed sourly.

He gave me a sympathetic look then told me: "Listen, the organization I am working with is hiring a lawyer to see if they can reopen your case." Surprised, I stared at him for a moment to try to gauge his sincerity, to see whether or not he was just trying to make me feel better. "They think they might get Henry Linzer." The name flew over my head and my non-plussed expression on my face must have registered because he added, "He's a heavy weight in legal circles. Won lots of difficult cases. Says he might take the case pro bono just so he can make a statement. Something like that."

I was definitely interested now. I leaned in and asked, "When's this all going to happen?"

"Soon," was all he answered, as he started to put his files away.

"Great," I muttered, knowing instinctually that it wouldn't do me any good to get my hopes up. Prison life shaped your mental outlook, continually instructing you that horizons were forever, or so said the inmate who had the cell next to mine, a guy who had strangled some guy in a bar over a pool game loss and was looking at life. He also simultaneously read Metaphysical poetry and Marvel comics. Mixing Donne and Spiderman made him whole, another proclamation of his. He was in his sophomore year at Columbia when he killed a man. As inmates went, he wasn't bad; although it took me a good month or two to get over the fact that I was sharing space with an unrepentant murderer.

The interview was over. We parted ways, with me being led back to my lifetime confinement and the amateur Nazi hunter returning to a hero's welcome back home in the Dallas Jewish community. Nothing would come of the fantasy where some high priced lawyer would swoop in and shake things up, altering the course of my personal history. Behind the scenes some feelers were put out but the DA wasn't biting. I was behind bars for a reason. There were a few columns written about my fate and communal sympathy offered up, all to no effect. The only thing that gained traction was a mild rehabilitation of my reputation. I was no longer the crazed loon, out to wreak havoc. No, I was the noble guy who wanted to extract the ultimate retribution. The Jews did everything they could but make me an honorary Jew. Why not? I was already a phony Catholic. By the time I died in prison maybe I could join up with the Nation of Islam too, make it a full sweep of all the major religions.

Joking aside, I settled in for the long haul. I might add that even with my newly established rep my family never contacted me for a visit. My mother did write, once, to tell me that she hoped God would be merciful when the time came. Thanks for that. Nothing at all from my siblings. The Forseti Society didn't show any loyalty either. My God, couldn't they have at least dropped me a card or something? Nothing. I guess having me as a friend was a bad career move. Best to keep it on the down low.

So I soldiered on. Days and days, (don't forget those long nights too), were spent developing a method to cope with the dreary, monotonous routine. My prison life was an individualized epoch, one, I might add for clarity, of my own making. Do the crime, do the time. It was equitable in a sort of philosophical fashion, a warped quid pro quo that makes society keep from devolving. I was happy to hold up my end of the bargain, surely. When choice is taken away from you there becomes a strange interlocution, almost like a new language. Dialogue between the CO's and the inmates is minimized and the rapport between the inmates themselves is shortened to compete with the time intervals allowed by the rules. We all live in a compressed environment that shelves normal discourse for expediency, an irony of large proportions since we have nothing but time in here. The calendar might as well be some Mayan construct because our little measure of history is determined by scheduled meals, lights out, and the hallucinatory prospect of parole.

We, all of us in this storied facility, are of another culture, a different society unto itself. You out there clothe us, feed us, and supply housing, all in the hope that we remain apart from the other community. Yeah, rehabilitation is a catch word that might be bandied about but it is hollow and has no substance to speak of. Nice concept. On paper. I can remember hearing a professor giving lip service to it back in my brief college days but even then it seemed gratuitous, just something to say in order to appear modern or dare I say it progressive. No, we were incarcerated as punishment with the expectation that we would become some other communities problem when and if we were ever released.

I didn't fall into that category of course but others did. There were plenty of short timers, relatively speaking. Five to ten, ten to twenty, shorter maybe with the ever expected parole hearing at a future date. Meanwhile, bide your time, stay cool, don't cause problems. Inmates being what we were that wasn't always possible. Four months into my sentence there was a large scale riot that quickly progressed into a standoff, with hostages. Those idiots over in A block took some CO's and roughed them up a bit, taking out some petty grievances with a few well placed punches to the head of one particular guard with a penchant for minor sadism. He liked to take away earned privileges when he was feeling particularly mean. As can be expected, inside you lived for tiny advantages, anything to help you cope.

It all ended with a flurry of negotiations, culminating in some concessions from the Warden. Then we all went back to being lost souls, living on the treadmill to nowhere. Weeks passed before the Warden quietly rescinded the order and we were back to square one again. This ain't no democracy or so said one of the Co's, with a grin, as a few inmates silently marked him for future payback when there was another revolt among the population.

Taking one's freedom, as society does, requires the fortitude of will needed to design a prison system to keep the order intact. Sing Sing dated from the 1800's. It had a pedigree of distinction. Ever hear the expression: Up the River? Comes from being sent thirty miles up the Hudson to my present address. Another historical note, the Rosenburgs had been executed there back in the 50's. It had an infrastructure that spoke of bad corrective measures, with menacing stone walls and ghosts of infamous inmates lingering on the grounds. The physical layout was intimidating for a first timer to say the least.

Then again, incongruously, the prison had what they called the RTA at the time, which was a program to rehabilitate inmates through the Arts. Huh? They actually had workshops centered on thespian techniques. Feel free to laugh, or cringe. It was obviously a manifestation of some progressive agenda. In fact, my alma mater had once evaluated the program and found it useful against recidivism. Not in my experience. Doing Shakespeare wasn't going to change any of my peers, I can assure you of that. It was just a way for the inmates to "get over," another dodge.

Methods were always being offered up. Just another stab at correcting the historical challenge we all face. Prisons have been with us since time began. It is unavoidable. I think in the time I spent at Sing Sing there must have been dozens of new programs instituted to improve the correctional experience, from working through the Arts to group interaction therapy. All along the US would go on to have the highest rate of incarceration in the entire world. Be proud. Please, don't get me wrong. Most of us here belong behind bars. Believe me. I am not going to bullshit you about that. What I have seen in here is best kept in here.

So I was locked away. For life. My future was to spend the rest of my days confined, fulfilling a standardized routine that was developed to keep me from harming you and, hopefully, not myself. All too soon my unusual brand of celebrity faded. I was forgotten by the media. Occasionally, I would receive notices from this or that Jewish organization, usually disguised as pabulum handed out to further their particular cause but almost always included some praise for my effort in the ongoing battle against anti-Semitism. In my lonely cell I would take a bow, as I crumpled up the communique and tossed it in the garbage.

I was no crusader. I was certainly no hero. I was some dupe who had participated in an almost ritualized murder and paid the price. Sure I had taken a Nazi out of circulation, even though he was retired from committing atrocities at the moment. My freedom was traded for this, forfeiture of a normal life. Worst of all, in some ways, I couldn't reveal anything, like one of those phony exclusives you might see on cable news. The end might come for me without having the opportunity to set the record straight. Although, and this is a weird aspect of my ordeal, time was on my side. Isaac was going to die soon enough and then I would be able to tell all; but would it even matter by that point?

No, it wouldn't. Years down the road I would be some number in a prison, long forgotten. Who would care? Isaac, in death, wouldn't need to have his reputation burnished. I imagined him going to the grave content in the knowledge that he had gotten a little measure of pay back. The prevailing sadness would always be there but at least he had been able to strike back. Taking out one of the bastards that caused so much sorrow accounted for something. Sometimes as I lay there in my bunk I wondered how he was doing over there in Israel. Did he return to Judaism? Visit the Wailing Wall like all good Jews? Establish some hybrid religion with a sturdy bridge between the two competing theologies? The card he sent me was from Jerusalem so I guess he could access the two religions in an interchangeable religious dance of doctrines, like a pious minuet. I hoped he was happy or at least kept his demons at bay.

Little solace for me though. The years unraveled before me. I negotiated my way through the usual internecine warfare that was lockup, building alliances as I went. The murderer in the next cell proved to be a valuable ally because he was, essentially, crazy and most inmates feared him. Unfortunately, he spun out of control five years in and was transferred to the nut house wing, unable to function and keep to the rules. He quite nearly killed another inmate over--and this will put it all into perspective--pudding, as in he wanted somebody else's. The fight started right next to me and I got to see a man's eyes nearly pop out of his head while he was being strangled at my feet.

If you could see a time elapse movie of my life behind bars it would feature stupefying boredom, in which the hours pass slowly as I am trapped beyond the rhythms of nature. Take away easy access to simple sunlight and you have mounting neurosis. Sure I get to go out into the yard almost daily but that is a poor substitute for the real thing. My view of the sky overhead is defined by a perimeter wall, complete with guard houses perched up there manned by trigger happy guards. I exaggerate a little. The guards posted up there, with the convenient gun turrets strategically placed, are mostly as bored as I am, always one yawn away from a full on nap; or so I imagine as I glance upwards and wonder what their lives are like.

At least when I was incarcerated, at that point, I was used to not having friends per se. In prison, you don't really have any. You don't really form any bonds to speak of, excepting the usual alliances. We are all broken human beings in one way or another. Some more than others. What we do share in common is the preternatural bent for skirting the rules, if not ignoring them all together. Our sociopathic instincts serve us well inside. Then again, we are all playing by the same set of rules, the ones that don't exist. It is an existential conundrum.

Yet we do have our tribal hierarchy working, mostly along racial lines. It makes for a shifting playing field where brute force equals numbers, if not sheer border line havoc. Party A crosses party B, Party B enlists party C, and then it all plays out in small scale skirmishes, often enacted while the CO's blithely turn a blind eye. It is feudal in a way and shares in the Middle-ages bent for aggressive posturing and Machiavellian maneuvers, all settled by a beat down or stabbing. It is elemental. The social order boiled down to its essence. Maybe that is why there are so many studies about prison life in existence. We are the guinea pigs. A captured study subject. Easy to watch.

After my escape, as I was on the run, I got to see the night sky for the first time in many years. It was almost cathartic. Stars, the moon, were on display. Simple pleasures. Deprived of nature for so long, I was mesmerized. As you know, by looking at a star, even with the naked eye, you are witnessing history. That tiny bit of twinkling light has traveled across space, a long, vast journey that is a representation of what is truly ancient, defining our insignificance. Decades in the pen had blunted my senses, dulled them to the point that I responded only to flickering fluorescent light and grimy walls. It was as if I had returned from a very long voyage. Time had continued but I had not.

Even though there had been rumblings, the usual prison rumors about me making parole, I had to run, to escape. It was an opportunity. I had logged the time. My crime was softened, refashioned by the distance of time. Model prisoner. Not hostile. No destructive behavior. Progress has been made. So I thought the parole board might be saying in their deliberations, as some of them might have even been thinking the guy he killed was a Nazi anyway. Give him a break. Didn't matter. I hadn't changed after all those years within those prison walls. I was still impetuous. I just wanted to walk down a street, look in a window, smell the unconfined air. I took the chance, another leap.

I'm sure there must be some Greek philosopher who could encapsulate my predicament with some pithy words. I needed the Gods to help me now. Going from one prison to another is an adjustment that most people couldn't fathom. Prisons all have there own personality of course but they do pose the same dilemma for their residents. I am now on Death Row and with that comes many different aspects of mental turmoil.

Prison life here in the Volunteer State is nothing but exhausting monotony. Sameness. Waiting for the hands of the clock to traverse time. Your mind has to be impervious to depression, able to ward off despondency on the hour, every hour. Each of us here try to escape our assigned fate by taping up a photo of a relative or a picture of a pastoral scene, something to divert our attention, crass and cliched stimuli for impoverished imaginations. Most of us, if not all, have lived way past our usefulness to society.

Probably a few of us have succumbed to fairy tales and tried to believe that somebody would forgive us. Talk about sad. I didn't. Before, with the Nazi, it didn't much matter. A despicable human being had been eliminated. Job well done. Now, with Officer Loften, a life had been taken that made an impact. He was, so the court proceedings revealed, a husband and father of two. Church going. Even coached Little League Baseball. Survived by a wife and two children. Those are words that haunt me at night, as the overhead light, the one that is always on, hums along like a demonic metronome, making sure that I have to mark every last second of my dwindling time on earth.

I still had shreds of logic bouncing around in my brain, a slowly unraveling string of reason. Although hope had been all but stymied, I chose not to reach out to the spiritual life preserver tossed to me by pastors trolling the institution in search of souls to save. It felt like hypocrisy or, at least, dishonesty. What if Father Mike was still alive? Would he offer solace to the one he brought into the fold, able to summon up enough liturgical magic to bring Jesus on board to save one of the flock? How would that confession go? Pretty big sin. Might not come back from that one. Remember, Christ died on the cross for people like me, right? He didn't get all those splinters for nothing.

Take a life, taste the strife. There could be no amelioration. My betrayal of the community trust needed to be punished. Fine. I'm okay with that. It was cut and dried. Neatly packaged.

Even though all of us have legal transgressions in our past, we now live in an environment of moral authenticity, a conceptual place brought to fruition by society's imperatives. We are violators. Nothing less, probably a lot more. At one end of the spectrum you might strive to experience the idyllic; me and my compatriots resided at the other end. Dutiful poets couldn't capture the allure of what it meant to have capitulated to a human's vilest character trait. There was no imagery to elicit, just a void without redemption. True, some of us had found a religious failsafe, as mentioned, grasping at words spoken by clergymen who patrolled the prison corridors, hoping that their deed could go undetected by God or at least mitigated. So while men of the cloth extolled their God's wisdom, I turned away, choosing to accept the secular version of Judgement Day.

That would be execution by the State of Tennessee. I'm slated for the needle, which is the humane method of execution in modern day America. Hung by the neck, fried by electrical current, choking on gas fumes, they were rapidly fading away. In its way, that method is kind of anti-climatic. Lying on a gurney, hooked up to IV's, makes for a feeble way of getting rid of a problem. No dramatics. Hanging, now that had panache. You had the whole entrance thing, with the marked man having to walk up to the platform, all the while with the rope dangling down with a noose on the end. It also had the added bonus of usually taking a little bit of time to complete the task. The sound of the trap door giving way. Dangling feet. Jerking spasmodically. Sometimes the giving way of the bowels. Messy.

Gas chambers were, in their way, kind of sterile, looking more like a diving bell than a contraption for ending a life. There were little portals to see in, to check on how the death thing was progressing. Chemicals had to be procured and dispensed adequately. It was more labor intensive in its way, not to mention the damn chamber had to be up to code. The witnesses got to see a man choke to death, slobbering, instinctually trying not to breathe in the poison gas. It had the whiff of some scientific experiment gone wrong to it.

The electric chair was more diabolical, with head gear that had to be fitted and always had a Frankensteinian theme going on about it. An oversized wooden chair had to be specked out and built. The administering of electrical current had to be pinpointed, directed at the skull area for best results. You didn't want to broil the person being executed. Some electrical knowledge was desirable, of course. You couldn't just pull a switch and expect to accomplish the goal. Like with the gas chamber, there were, regrettably, some errors in the process, resulting in small scale events that left the criminal half dead; it was the half alive part that troubled the authorities of course. I think they had an amendment about cruel punishment that ended up being considered.

Nothing was perfect. In fact, throughout history capital punishment had always had its problems of implementation. Take the British, for instance, they liked to whack off heads to get the job done. The executioner wasn't up to the task every time, leaving a battered and bruised neck, sometimes with a half detached head. The crowd might have loved it. More whacks. The French had the guillotine but it had its own problems with rolling heads when they bounced out of the basket conveniently placed at the bottom. Firing squads worked for the most part but they required a team of executioners to participate and who wanted to rely on someone's marksmanship? Killing the human body is simple in abstraction, I guess. There is forever going to be complications and the stray outlier, the one who just gets lucky and doesn't die. Applied destruction, even by the State, has to strive to be perfect or at least competent.

Having drugs course through my body wasn't a bad way to go. Don't particularly like needles but beats a noose or wired beanie on my head with thousands of volts sparking away. The gas chamber I am ambivalent about. I do remember Isaac telling me about the bodies he had to deal with after they were gassed. Judging by what he said, it wasn't pretty. Lots of agonizing breaths before you kicked it. Doesn't matter. I don't have a choice.

There hasn't been an execution here since 2009, some black guy who killed several people. On Deathrow, I'm not the oldest, beat out by another loser by several years. He's been locked up here since the 1990's. Me, I have been fast tracked, right to the front of the line. Killing a cop will do that. Being a former escapee, from Sing Sing at that, I make most of the CO's here nervous. Nobody wants to have their career dinged by some jackass who gets lucky and slips away. Not likely. To my knowledge nobody has ever escaped from Death Row. Really. Even Houdini couldn't pull that off. This facility is like a prison within a prison. Has to be. We are all the hardcore, sharing one thing in common and that is homicide. Just a fun fraternity of murderers.

What is life like for an inmate on Death Row, you might ask? Compressed, that is the easy answer. Your sentence defines everything. Back when I was a lifer, marking time, waiting for the end to never arrive, I at least had a truncated life. Here, you don't have anything except for the expectation that the slow wheels of applied justice will soon enough catch up with you. Even after a decade on the Row waiting for the needle, ten years to let apathy set in, you are always one step away from being selected. As all those appeals work their way through the system, you sit there trying to ignore the inevitable.

For me, it was relatively swift. Just a few years. No one had the appetite for the appellate process. Get it over with. Let the widow and those "younguns" have closure. I mean who is going to stand in the way? Apparently some bleeding hearts, who filed several motions of whatever to stop my execution. They did it on their own, just a legal reflex of sorts. I didn't petition anybody. I also didn't try to prevent it either. Best to just stay out of it.

Didn't matter. Several judges and State boards, or whatever, rolled their eyes and rejected them all. Much to my dismay. I really shouldn't say that because at this stage I didn't really care any longer. Get it over with, that was my sentiment mostly. After having lived in prison for so long, totally missing out on most of my life, I just wanted tranquility for my aching soul. If that meant I had to die to achieve it then let's do this. Bring on the lethal injection gurney.

It was easy to be nihilistic if you were me. My world had been reduced to functionality as designed by people following orders from experts in segregating good from bad. That left very little else. Although I had encountered guys behind bars who could exist in a mindscape they had conjured up, a separate world that gave them sustenance when needed as they watched the days turn to months and then on into years and years, I wasn't built like that. I needed something else, another set of stimuli.

"Got some news for you," one of the CO's hissed at me one day, stopping at my cell to grin at me, trying not to appear as if he might be gloating. "Get ready to pump up those veins." He chuckled at his turn of phrase and walked on.

This particular CO was a prick, quick to hassle us on the Row and assured in his righteousness. Of course I knew what he was referring to, even if he had broken protocol and passed on the official notice out of turn, a job the Warden was tasked with doing usually. "About time," I shouted back at him, mustering up some false bravado.

Death stalked all of us here, a fact that couldn't be ever overlooked. It stalked the hallways every moment of every day. We had all killed and therefore we were to experience the same, sooner or later; and that included the guy in the far cell who kept going on about some DNA Project that would over turn his conviction, snatching from the jaws of State sponsored revenge. Sure. Like that is ever going to happen. I assumed all of us were morally compromised and guilty as hell.

The warden did appear later that day, a nice man with sad eyes, who told me almost apologetically that I had been slated to die. Tomorrow or the next day I was to be moved and the three day death watch clock would be started. For months I had gleaned from lawyer visits and others all of the specifics about the final days. It sounded like a play by one of those British playwright's, the ones who were so concerned with man and his existence. Out of seventy seven or so death row inmates I had been selected for the privilege of being executed. It was like winning a warped version of the lottery. Couldn't we just draw straws instead? I actually joked to my lawyer later on, after they had moved me over nearer to the execution chamber.

Seventy-two hours. Your whole life is distilled down into mere hours. Waiting, anticipating that final sunrise, you are locked into the countdown. Outside those thick prison walls people are going on about their business. Almost no one is paying attention to your plight, except for the people directly affected by my actions. I killed a man, ran him over. He died in the ER, mangled, struggling to breathe through a tube stuck down his throat. My pseudo hero status was forever revoked the moment I lost control of that stolen car and collided with that officer. After the car wildly careened off the road, coming to a stop against an oak tree on that lonely country road, and the air bag crashed into my face, I was surrounded by a dozen cops, guns drawn.

No one knew I was no desperado, but simply a man trying to stretch his boundaries under the blue sky dotted with clouds. I had seen the road block up ahead, several police cruisers at odd angles across the highway. Over the rise in the road I drove and there they were, poised to halt my progress. I had stopped in a convenience store on down the way for some snacks, using the money I had panhandled way back in Philly. I decided to skip New York and headed on to Philadelphia, returning to my hometown after so many years. Why? I no longer had any connection to the City of Brotherly Love. None. Parents dead. Siblings scattered. I couldn't even remember the street names any more.

I had no plan. I just wanted to be free or at least not restricted. No razor wire. No impenetrable walls. Free of any routine. For so many years I had dreamed of being on the outside, away from my fellow transgressors, once again an individual and not a number to be counted twice a day. I had a first name. I had a last name. The calendar didn't rule my next whiff of expectation.

It was fun for that short time on the run, even if I was being hunted down. Again, after all those years inside, I made the nightly news. There my aging face was, on the front page of the papers and on the tube. I had come so far to return to the beginning, so it seemed. Armed and dangerous, which was laughable because the only weapon I had on me was a small screw driver I found in the glove compartment of the car I boosted in DC. Some idiot had left it running right in front of Union station while he ran in to pick up his wife. I saw him coming back with her, dragging her luggage along as I sped away. Nice car, and it took me several miles to figure out how to drive again. Not like riding a bike. I hadn't driven a car in almost thirty years. Ran over a curb on my way out of the parking lot.

Full tank of gas too. I made it on into Virginia, making a quick pit stop to swap out the plates with another parked car. It had been so easy. He would report his car stolen of course but I would be on my way. Before long I was cruising through the Shenandoah Valley, following 81 south. A small, persistent voice in my mind was telling me that it wouldn't last long but I just wanted to enjoy it while I could.

Interstate 81 had taken me on through the famed Cumberland Gap, where I headed west on I-40. I was low on gas and money by this point. Nashville was up ahead. I had no plans really but I didn't really want to see the home of Country Music. I had seen several Highway Patrol cars when I was heading south on 81, so when I got to I40 I decided I best hit the side roads. This was my fatal mistake, for both me and Officer Loften.

I had gotten off I40 and turned onto to 141, Trousdale Ferry Pike. It was a side road that fed into Lebanon, Tennessee. What I didn't know was some passing motorist had seen me. Unlucky for me, the guy had just come down from DC where some witnesses in the parking lot of Union Station had told the cops about what they saw at the train station. Several cops patched together the details and discovered who the car thief might be. Security cameras did the rest. Police bulletins were updated in every direction.

I might have been locked away for a long time but I was savvy enough to disable the GPS device in the car, knowing full well that the cops would zero in that as soon as they could. What I couldn't do anything about was the reach of social media. Never before has a fugitive been at such a disadvantage. There are so many avenues for somebody to receive the news. Every story gets play in lots of different venues. It was no wonder a guy passing in his car noticed me, put two and two together, then used his cell phone to call the cops, allowing them time to set up the road block and wait for me to come to them.

Sometimes at night I have nightmares about the crash. Funny, I never had any bad dreams about the Nazi getting killed. The nightmare always includes a stopframe of the initial impact, where my head jerks forward and out of the corner of my eye I can see a blur fly by the car. I know it is Officer Loften being tossed to his death but my mind seems to pretend that I don't realize what is going on. I usually wake up right about then. While awake, I play that scene in my mind too, even though I try not to think about any of it.

The end came quickly. I was on the lamb only for a week or less. Still, it was a tremendous sensation to be out and about, able to breathe free air again. Decades in prison had left all of my senses atrophied, shriveled up by the same environmental conditions, year in and year out. I couldn't stop looking up at the sky, at the clouds in particular. I almost drove off the road several times when my eye wandered to look over at the Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance. Nature was on full display and I was trying to vacuum it all up.

I was snatched out of the wrecked car by two cops, while their buddies held me at gunpoint. They roughly tossed me to the ground, injuring my shoulder. Amazingly, I hadn't sustained hardly any injuries from the crash. Handcuffed, they dragged me into a waiting squad car, hurling me in the backseat. The whine of an approaching ambulance echoed down the road, coming closer and closer; but it was too late for the fallen police officer. Thousands of pounds of metal had destroyed his body, leaving behind a shell of life that would perish in a short time.

Meanwhile, I was injected back into the justice system machine. Different State. Same results. Another overwhelmed public defender appeared to take my case, while the two jurisdictional entities fought over the rights to me. The State of New York already had their go at me. It was time for Tennessee to step up. The governor went on record early, calling on the death penalty right away. As far as I could tell the rest of the Tennesseans concurred. It was an easy call. I was a felon, on the run, who had murdered a policeman. In legal circles I was about as open and shut case as you were ever going to find.

The jury found me guilty after only deliberating maybe twenty minutes, a token amount of time to demonstrate just how civic minded and unbiased they were. The reporters in court barely had time to catch their breath before the verdict came back. That I was a goner was preordained. They already had a cell made up for me on death row. The dutiful jury could barely keep their eyes off my veins, looking for a good one to insert the needle. Half of them wanted to slap on one of those rubber band tourniquets to pump up the selected vein. Make a fist. You can relax your hand now. Might feel a pinch. I could suggest you dispense with the alcohol swabbing. Seems superfluous.

I knew I was done. It didn't merit any protests, legal and otherwise. I wasn't going to stand up in court and yell at the jury, or the judge, screaming about the injustice being served up. The philosophical question of executions in general was beside the point at this stage. It was biblical and made sense to the average person. Sin couldn't be readily abolished but it could be managed; or at the very least commandments might be highlighted more effectively. Besides, it made most of the people fell better about themselves in some sort of warped way, like by taking a life you evened up the win/loss column a little bit. Then, really, it wasn't about attrition, was it?

Officer Loften dies. I die. Life goes on. Until the next time we call on some unsuspecting citizens to do their duty and pass judgement again. Answer the summons. Show up. Get selected. Listen. Merge your minds. Decide. Call in the doctor on call to officially pronounce the death. Safe again until the next time.

I liked to joke with my lawyer, a slumming neophyte from Vanderbilt, thrown into the mix because he had student loans to repay. All he really wanted to do was return to his ass crack hometown in the mountains and be a contributing member of the community, teaching Sunday school on Sundays, hunting during deer season, watch Vandy football games on Saturdays, and impromptu sex with his High School sweetheart he married his sophomore year of college after she got pregnant. He told me this as we sat there in the holding cell strategizing about my defense. By the way, their was no defense to speak of, except for him standing up there and lobbing casual objections while the prosecution grinned at each other in an open display of their confidence.

My fifth or sixth year in prison I came upon a book by Kafka. As you can imagine, I wasn't a literary type, barely reading anything beyond the newspaper. In the book he, or the character in the book, is on trial and everything is screwy. No charge. No one trying him, per se. My trial was just the opposite. It was definitive, with a cast of characters and charges. My lawyer, always quick to put me at ease, forever showing his Southern politeness, as if at this stage in the game I could ever be offended, wanted to assure me that he was doing everything he could to defend me. I would laugh because it was beyond comical and tell him that I wasn't stuck in some Kafkaesque scenario. This would confuse him and he always came back with another apology. I did ask him if he believed in the death penalty and he thought for a moment, weighing his words, and said, "Society needs a mechanism...and..." His sentiment went unfinished. I bailed him out by saying: "Laws have to be enforced." This was sufficiently vague to release us from the conversational pain.

For almost two years now I have been living in a tiny space within a confined area. My world is defined by a rectangular shape. I don't want for anything but breathing room. I'm fed. I have my own toilet. I get access to some reading material. There is a roof over my head. True I am devoid of companionship, platonic and otherwise. Not that I made all that many friends back in Sing Sing either. At least there I did get to play cards once in a while with somebody and shoot the breeze. Here, I am slated to remain semi-isolated, left to my thoughts, which is punishment in itself.

Fortunately for my sanity I did have contact with somebody. Her name was Lisbeth Wilson and although she wasn't one of those prison groupies you hear about, the ones who are infatuated with men behind bars, she was interested in my case, if not me. Not me personally but rather what I represented to her. I was, in her words, "an enigma." I wasn't. I was some dumb guy who made bad decisions and paid the price. It wasn't all that intriguing, not by a long shot. Prison was full of guys like me, one bad move away from another kick in the face. She had contacted me through channels and said that she wanted to write a story about me for her blog. Okay, I thought when I heard from her, even as I was beginning to write my own story. Who better to tell it? Anyway, the blog part wasn't impressive; although I would later learn that she wrote free lance for several magazines and newspapers about any number of human interests stories.

At first, when I heard some woman wanted to contact me, I figured she must be one of those jail house women, the ones who seek out men in prison to communicate with. They were legendary around prisons, usually sad women with at least some psychological problems going on. A lot of us inmates mocked them but were grateful for any attention from the outside. I, personally, had never cultivated any of those types of relationships, even though I had had plenty of opportunities over the years of my long term incarceration. In fact, this one woman from Watertown, New York had hounded me for years before finally giving up. Her letters, written in her neat block letters, kept arriving for over a year's time. I did write back to her once but only to tell her to please desist. For a while she even included photos of herself, along with her two children. She was divorced and, so I imagined, very lonely up there near the Canadian border. I felt sorry for her, which took some doing since I was locked up for life.

"Hello, Mr. Ashdown," her voice oozed over the phone as I stood there wondering what life had done to some woman to make her want to actually talk to a convicted killer. She was southern, that was obvious by her accent, and young. I tried not to imagine what she looked like because it was both borderline perverted and far from constructive.

"Hi there, you must be Lisbeth," I cooed into the phone, always one to seek out the angles. "You said something about writing my story," I offered, hoping we could talk for a little while because it felt wonderful just to hear a female's voice.

"Yes, yes I did," she replied and I could hear a dog barking in the background. "Stop it now, Henry," she shouted out, apologizing immediately for the interruption. I asked her what kind of dog it was and she told me it was a mutt rescued from the pound.

"It's not all that interesting," I offered with false modesty, wondering at that time whether or not she was going to turn out to be just another pen pal eager for another outlet to gain attention.

"I think it is," she stated and the earnestness in which she said it surprised me. "I have done some digging and you have lived quite...quite an interesting life," she continued, and I heard her shush the dog again. Silence filled the line for a moment, while I decided what to do, whether or not I wanted her to tell my story about me. "I...I think I can fill in the gaps in your personal history," she claimed, as she breathed into the phone.

"Gaps?" I inquired, confused.

"Yes, you know, your life as a young man...in New York City, and so forth," she explained, as I delighted in her accent and sheer femininity. "I have done some research and there seems to be a great deal to say about what led up to your first conviction. I think people would want to know about that--don't you?"

I thought for a moment, letting her words sink in, then replied, "I don't know. It has been so long since I thought what other people might think about anything." I chuckled for a moment, then added, "I have been a non-entity for so long. It's hard to explain what that feels like to somebody like you. Anybody, really."

There was silence on the line again for a moment, then she said, "I can see that." I heard noises in the background and it sounded like she might be in the kitchen. "With your permission of course, I would like to detail both crimes and how they have impacted you...and society. I know it sounds kind of grandiose or something but I think there is something there to work with. I do." A utensil clattered to the floor and she cursed under her breath.

"Are you cooking?" I asked, trying to imagine what it must be like to prepare a meal in your own kitchen, having the luxury of deciding what you were going to be having for dinner.

"Sorry 'bout that," she apologized. "I'm making myself one of those frozen dinners for one in the microwave. They are kind of gross but easy to whip up. I didn't mean to be rude or anything."

"No, no, don't worry about that," I assured her, laughing. "The first time I used a microwave was when I broke out. Stopped at a convenience store and made a fool of myself by completely blowing up some Mexican thing. It exploded all over. The guy behind the counter only laughed and told me he didn't care because he was quitting the next day. That's the way it was for me when I escaped, like some alien from outer space who just landed on earth. It was weird."

"See, that's a good piece of narrative I could work with," she informed me. "Have you ever read any of my work? I mean it doesn't matter but if you did you might get a better sense of what I do. I know I'm not one of the big journalists out there but I do have a niche. I don't do, you know, filler reporting, if you know what I mean." I didn't. "I like to take time on a subject and then go at it. It's kind of old school now but I think it needs to be done. Some of the writing in my blog represents my best work. In there, I get to dig in then get...get a better feel for the subject. No deadlines hanging over me, and no agendas to keep to. You know what I mean, I'm sure."

I really didn't. My reading list leaned towards old books that found there way into the prison library, which usually meant dusty copies of forgotten classics or out of date legal tomes. The Internet age had passed me right by, along with all of the trappings that went with it, like fragments of the splintering media apparatus. Online magazines had become the lifeblood of so much modern communication that it was dragging along the corpse of old line purveyors in its march to the next stage of information. Technology bent the curve. Somebody like Lisbeth could sit on her futon in the living room and electronically toss out the next influential morsel from the hinterlands; in this case we were talking about a small apartment in Chattanooga. She had gone to college at the University of Tennessee, at Chattanooga and never left town afterwards, never wanting to return home to Johnson City. I couldn't blame her for that after having driven through and gotten a look of the place myself in route to my downfall.

Pieces had been written about me before of course but they had always been non-participatory ones, where I wasn't consulted and the results spelled out the degree of my depravity in usually colorful detail. Even after it was revealed that the victim had been who he was the stories weren't all that revelatory when it came to acquitting me or at least mitigating the crime. The Jewish press had been kind but still reserved, particularly after time went on and hunting down Nazi war criminals faded in the public's consciousness. One year, five or six years into my sentence, there had been an article in the New Yorker or New York magazine. While not exactly flattering, it did seem to point out the symmetry of the crime as it related to the death itself. Not many people wanted to drum up much sympathy for a man who had been responsible for so many deaths and the disposal of the evidence in such a manner.

That didn't matter now, not at this juncture in my story. I was now a cop killer and with that came a whole new set of vilification. It was easy to hate a person who killed a cop, especially one with a family to include young kids. Most people just as soon see me hung, so I imagined and was seconded by my ever candid attorney. He kept no secrets from me. Being Public Enemy Number One, even for a short stint, had a way of redirecting your self-esteem.

"I don't get to read all that much--not online," I told her, sighing into the phone. I didn't want sympathy but I did want her to know that I was isolated, for a reason. I was a murderer.

"I see," she said and for the first time a trace of sadness seemed to seep into her voice. She recovered quickly and announced: "Maybe I can print out a few of my articles and have you take a look. Would that work for you?" The microwave binged in the background and I could hear her moving around the kitchen. The distinct sound of a refrigerator opening and closing drifted through the line. I so wanted to be there, in that kitchen, having a meal of my choice, sitting down alone with nothing but the sounds of an empty house echoing. "We can make this work," she said, hoping to sound encouraging.

"Why?" I suddenly wanted to know, letting a lot of nastiness slip into my one word question.

"Why?" she repeated, taking back for a moment. "I thought you might want to have, you know, like, your side of things come out. Wouldn't that be something you would want?"

Her question hung there for a moment, as I listened to the subtle sounds of death row penetrate my thoughts, the continual clanging of metal to metal contact, along with a chorus of sibilant complaints by a group of men destined to an artificial death. "I don't know, to tell you the truth. I mean does it really matter? To anybody? I'm ordinary really. Just a guy who was responsible for two deaths. Hell, I'm not even a serial killer or anything." I laughed uneasily, even now on death row unable to relinquish any sense of embarrassment.

Lisbeth forced a laugh and said, "It's interesting to me."

This was a form of narcissism, I thought, replying, "That's your problem." This was said in a tone of levity that I hoped she got over the phone. We didn't know each other at all. She could have taken it the wrong way.

"I'm taking notes. I just put down: Has a sense of humor," she joked and I heard her wonderful laugh, light but full bodied at the same time. "But if you don't want to do this I respect that."

This sounded almost like a ploy, maybe something she had used before to help along another one of her stories, one of the ones she wrote about some human interest story that required some painful extracting from a victim or survivor. Still, I liked that she was working me. I could relate to that. "Give me some time to think about it. I mean you could always do the story without me and--"

"I won't do that," she insisted. "That's not what I do and it's not who I am."

This little bit of bluster, the laying down of a credo, touched me even though I knew it was probably bullshit. She did seem sincere though. "Integrity, is that what I'm hearing?"

"Am I hearing some kind of mocking?" she countered.

It was probably right about then that I knew I would agree to her terms and participate in the little project. Who knew? It might be elucidating and educational, for me and society. Anyone on death row needed some introspection to get through the rough patches. I didn't have religion to fall back on, like so many of my cohorts here.

Lisbeth was a link to the outside world. I had my lawyer of course but he was only doing his job and was, frankly, running on auto pilot. He could, so I believed, represent somebody in his sleep. Not that he wasn't diligent about doing his job, but he did tend to subconsciously write off some of his clients as being in the hopeless category. I fit in that category perfectly. There was no coming back from what I had done.

So Lisbeth was going to be my personal biographer, even if it was only going to be an article that hardly anyone would read. I didn't mind. It was nice just to have her around for a little while; although I would only get to meet with her twice, the other exchanges coming over the phone. She was thorough, I'll give her that, wanting to delve way back into my past. My boyhood didn't seem all that relevant but I humored her with details she asked for, for example anecdotes about my family I hadn't given much thought to for years. They were mostly musty stories about what all families experience, from overbearing parental control to open warfare with your siblings. She called it my protohistory, jokingly.

I liked her. She was smart, quick with a laugh, and not bad looking in a plain sort of way. Women had long ago fallen off the radar for me but she was engaging and, like so many from the South, a competent conversationalist. She was also a pro and knew how to do her job. Interviewing people came second nature to a person with her background. I imagine she could pry information out of just about anybody with ease. It wasn't long before I let my guard down and gave up everything she wanted to know.

It poured out of me, so much so that it started to get embarrassing. I hadn't spoken about my life in New York to anyone. My code prevented it. Talkative hustlers don't get very far. Not Gary. Not the Forseti Society, nobody knew of Isaac. Father Mike knew only half the story about one of his converts. I knew. It was our secret and although Isaac had since passed away, I was reluctant to tell all. It somehow didn't seem appropriate. My secret had stayed intact for decades.

"So tell me about your life on the streets," Lisbeth had begun one session, waiting patiently for my reply. It was our second and last face to face. Earlier I had complimented her on her outfit and how nice she looked, slipping into my old ways, forever greasing the path to an advantage. To her credit, she wasn't buying. "I want to know what a day in the life was like for Barry Ashdown. The more detailed the better."

"Really, are you sure?" I countered, smiling, making a fool of myself because my ability to charm had long ago been diminished. She nodded yes, as she checked her recorder to make sure it was working properly. I looked her up and down, remembering how just that morning I woke up anxious to see her. Our first meeting had gone fine, with the both of us mentally circling each other as we scoped out the battlefield, the playing field we were going to be playing on. It wasn't her first time visiting somebody in prison so she was at ease in the surroundings, not intimidated by the oppressive rules and constant vigilance of the correctional staff hovering nearby. I had wanted her to be at a disadvantage in the beginning, allowing me time to gain a foothold so I could manage my confidence as best as I could. "Those years in New York are a long, long time ago," I added lamely, hoping I was going to be able to meet her expectations.

She tapped her pen on the notebook opened on the desk and said with a smile: "Take your time, Barry. Regale me."

Regale me, echoed in my head for a moment, as I thought how that sentence sounded. She had pulled it off without the slightest hint of condescension. She's good, I thought, then said, "I don't know where to begin." The previous interviews had centered on my sister and my brother, so much so that I was sure she was assembling some psyc file, one in which I was abused by my family therefore it was no wonder I was so fucked up. Also, the last time I had talked about my life in the Big Apple was with an inmate I liked and that had been more than a decade ago. He had been the closest to a friend that I ever had behind bars and he barely listened or tolerated my stories. He was in for doing some of the mob's messy work and didn't much fancy other people's adventures around New York. He had been born and raised in the Bronx so he had seen it all, so he said.

"Pick a day, any day, and tell me what you did. From the moment you woke up," she encouraged, smiling. "It doesn't have to be earth shattering or anything. I just want to get a feel for your life there. I want to know what it was like living in New York in that time period."

Now she was making me sound like some bit of antiquity, like one of those geezers spouting off for an historian's history class, an oral perspective. I had the stories, plenty. Whether or not it was relevant I wasn't so sure. Nobody wanted to read about a killer's bad experiences, particularly if they were being used as an excuse. I mentioned this and she assured me that she wasn't taking that tact. No. She said that as far as she was concerned I had committed the crime regardless of what in my life preceded it. No excuses.

"I like that," I told her, and she grinned back at me, while I noticed for the first time that she was wearing a necklace with a pendant on it. Looking closer, I saw that it was the infinity sign. I had to ask and she told me that it didn't stand for anything in particular, just a trinket she bought at a small boutique. I wasn't sure I believed her and wondered if it was some cult symbol of some sort. My mind was racing as I tried to get a handle on the dynamics playing out. "You don't have to sugar coat anything with me," I assured her. "If you are for the death penalty and think I'm getting what I deserve, that's okay by me."

"Noted, I have your permission to hate you," she teased, laughing that laugh I had first heard over the phone.

Our working relationship jelled quickly. I talked. She listened, and recorded, adding tidbits here and there to keep me on track. I'm sure the CO's thought it was all bullshit, just another dodge or some liberal crap to gum up the works. Though generally professional, several of the guards had whispered to me that they thought my approaching execution date couldn't arrive soon enough. In the mean time, they were going to see that I was fed, housed, and ready for the needle. It was a contradiction that I found hilarious and not the least bit confusing. I wondered what it was like after work for them, when they returned home to their families and tried not to speak of their work day, more hours on the clock keeping society in line.

Surely they had to think about the ramifications of their employment. They worked on Death Row. Put that on your resume. Where do you see yourself in, say, five years? I want to be right where I am, here, making sure criminals get the right meds, if you know what I mean, I can only imagine them saying to the confused HR guy. Did you actually strap them down? the guy would probably want to ask but thought it too crass, vulgar maybe. What was after work bull sessions like? Did they head to a local bar and talk about how so and so crapped his pants or pissed himself while he was waiting to get the needle? Did they suffer from anxiety, the CO's, some kind of one off PTSD?

Speaking of meds, by the way, there was some part of the Bill of Rights that spoke about cruel and unusual something or other. All of the States were having difficulty acquiring the necessary drugs to get the ultimate job done. It seemed that a German manufacturer didn't want their product used for capital punishment. It was propofol, an anaesthetic in wide usage, that was the drug of choice evidently. The Europeans frowned on final elimination being that they were apparently more enlightened. Some Department of Corrections around the country had gotten their grubby hands on the stuff illegally but had to return it because of a general shortage by hospitals who might just need it more than a prison. More roadblocks to execution were thrown up by the FDA as well when they blocked the drugs from getting into the hands of the executioners. On top of that the secondary drugs had gone out of circulation. You couldn't even mix up a deadly cocktail anymore.

I don't know what Tennessee came up with but it looks like they got creative to get the job done. Who knows, they might just be going to inject me with anti-freeze. Merciful executions seem, to me, to be just the least bit ludicrous. What, does it make the citizens feel better about themselves? Having me expire on a gurney, while the witnesses watch me calmly go to sleep, appeases their sense of unrighteous guilt, I suppose. Hang me. Zap me. Gas me. Even shoot me. It all results in the same thing. I am going to hell and it will probably be a non-stop flight.

I live with that, the realization that I have done wrong and must pay for it. I could have sat it out up in Sing Sing. Become one of those geezers I used to see shuffling around the yard waiting to kick it. Some of them had been in there for so long they didn't know what decade it was. They no longer had any reference point. No bearings to orient themselves. Presidents had come and gone. Fads too. Sports dynasties wilted, then disappeared, replaced by new upstarts with legends to build of their own. They were all hollowed out human beings, existing, waiting for the next meal time. It hurt to see them, physically. That was going to be me. It was me. Taking that chance at escaping seemed perfectly logical. Hell, doing otherwise was foolish. There it was for the taking, a chance to see what I had been missing all those years.

"I got the message," I told Lisbeth over the phone, waiting for her canned response, one that I knew she had been practicing to say ever since I had agreed to participate in her little project.

There was silence on the line for a moment, then she said, "We knew it would come."

The finality of her statement almost made me break out crying. I wasn't one to cry. I kept a resilient sense of courage as backup when times got tough, which they often did, especially of late. Crying was counter productive anyway. "Still a kick in the gut though," I countered, forcing a laugh.

She started to laugh then caught herself and said, "No more visits then, huh?"

"Thems the rules," I joked, thinking about how we on the Row had been advised many times about the procedures that defined our last days on earth. "The warden seemed genuinely upset," I told her. "Could have been faking it."

"Not everybody is cold hearted," she counseled. I could hear her quelling some tears. "This is hard," she finally said in almost a whisper.

"You're telling me," I shot back, trying to sound cavalier or, at least, flippant. "I hope you got everything you needed--for your project."

"Can I call you back," she suddenly said, with her voice breaking.

Here is my checklist for the Deathwatch period of three days before I get the needle: toothpaste, toothbrush, bar of soap, TP, writing paper, 3 envelopes with stamps, one pencil to be returned to the CO when not used, religious materials (N/A), one TV outside the cell, meds if needed, one newspaper. All the comforts of home.

My cell, the last real estate I'll ever stake a claim to, is a 8 by 10 space with metal furniture, to include bed, desk, stool, shelf, sink, toilet and shower; and I do get the luxury of a small window. The view sucks but it's somewhat of a luxury. From now on I'm incommunicado until I, you know, die. No interviews. No Lisbeth, who took it way harder than I did, if that is possible. I suppose I had resigned myself to it a long time ago.

I get fed and a set of clothes to be buried in. Nice. I can make a few telephone calls if I want, within reason. No calls to any 900 numbers to hear my last strains of libidinous pleasure. I'm kidding. Wouldn't work out anyway because I am under supervision 24/7, right up until they take me to the execution chamber, which is conveniently located near my cell. Let it not be said the Volunteer State doesn't have this all down to a science. It costs about a hundred bucks a day to put me up on the Row, money well spent if you believe in Capital Punishment.

All of my remaining phone calls have been to Lisbeth. Needless to say, I have had absolutely no contact with my family. No exchanges of Christmas cards. No pictures of my nieces and nephews sitting on Santa's lap. I'm that crazy uncle nobody wants to talk about. When I die they will have been rid of me but not the legacy. For that, I am truly regretful. I never wanted to put a blemish on the family name. Couldn't help that. I made choices that hurt a lot of people.

This book, such as it is, will have to end soon. Through grit and a resoluteness I didn't think I had, not to mention the mental acumen, I have managed to complete my story. To a point. Inevitably, I can not finish the task. The CO has informed me that he will have to confiscate all writing materials in one hours time. After that, it will have to be my thoughts that carry the day. Some pesky publisher, or at least he says that he is, even if I imagine he is some wantabee, has lobbied to have the rights to my words. What he will eventually do with them is anybody's guess. I have never actually even met the guy. Lisbeth had agreed to be the go between, transferring the pages to the outside for me. Not that the warden liked it too much, as he tried to stifle my attempt at creativity any chance he could. People on Death Row should be silent or so it goes. Quietly take your medicine. Then die.

I will hold up my end of the bargain in due time. Lisbeth and I agreed that she would write the afterword or epilogue to my book, for obvious reasons. Unless I shout out from the beyond, I won't be communicating much longer. So, a few more words and I will turn it over to her.

Let me say here that I am truly sorry for having taken Officer Loften's life. When I steered that car off the road I never intended to hit anyone. I would like to make that abundantly clear. His widow, and the kids, will forever be scarred by my heinous act. If they believe in their religion, and I am assuming they do, then I will pay on down the road, for eternity. Little consolation I realize but there it is. As to my sideways avenger duty, it needs no apologies. Perhaps I will meet up with the Oberschaarfuhrer in the afterlife, who knows? We will undoubtedly circulate in the same social circles.

Being regretful, so it seems, has little rewards at this stage. I write this as the final hour approaches rapidly. My last meal, by request, was a simple hot dog, with mustard, fries, and a coke. No dessert. My thoughts were heavy, as can be expected and I just wanted it to be over. The majority of my life has been spent in prison, so I have virtually no reference points to draw from. The world has gone on without me, so to speak. I can offer nothing at this point and most wouldn't expect anything from me. That is as it should be. My impact in history has affected just a few, even if it has been monumental to some, life altering. When that drug concoction enters my blood stream I will begin to die, but my tiny legacy will unfortunately reverberate. Let my death bring some measure of peace.

Afterword:

It is difficult to write this, let me be clear about that up front. I was asked to add a concluding note to what was a strange and yes twisted story. In the short time I got to know Barry Ashdown I learned that he was not a monster in a classic sense, but rather a person who entered prison as a boy and left as a man executed for his crime. There are really two stories to tell. In the interest of being concise, I will distill my experience down to the period that I knew him.

Let me first start with this statement: We all have to exist under a set of implicit premises and explicit laws. Without getting all philosophical, you have to think, at least once in a while, about the moral imperative we all put stock in. Political systems and even economic systems function within a given structure and if having some of the people in the populace put to death translates to perpetuating the standing societal edifice then it has to be done; only don't advertise it too much. Lethal injections, or other methods, doesn't make for a Chamber of Commerce moment. For many, their default position is to give a nod to the state machinery that decides the fate of their fellow citizens, seldom--if ever--choosing to give much thought to the underpinnings that go into taken a life.

While writing this story I was confronted with a disturbing trend. It seems, after talking to plenty of people in the region of the country I reside in, accepting executions as society's right is codified in our DNA somehow. Sure, there are some who might blanch at the very concept, the idea that we can decide to end another's life, but it seems to be a distinct minority. Most lean towards the other end of the spectrum, while not exactly eager to vocally support the legal status quo they remain steadfast in their belief that moral trespassers so marked by the legal system get what they deserve.

This is a tidy imprint on people's conscience, the ability to condone state applied murder since it is once removed from them as the individual.

Although I only knew Barry for a relatively short time, I think I knew him pretty well. My takeaway from our time together is complicated by my own views concerning capital punishment. I, in a way, see its societal value, but only in a strictly psychological sense, and by that I mean it only serves as an outlet for group revenge. This serves as a release for the people, one that might prove to them the community is well served by issuing penal dictums that result in the Biblical symmetry of deaths being exchanged, one for the other. Perhaps it is primordial.

Philosophy aside, I came to the story as a person brought up in a Pentecostal household, where the Bible served prominently in our lives. I have since left that particular outlook on life but it still lingers in my way of thinking, not unlike a hard to eradicate stain. Retribution is taken seriously. On any given Sunday I heard all about our vengeful God and how it was going to impact our lives until which time we made it into heaven, if we did. I still live in the South and am continually exposed to the same outlook, a vision of sin being managed by the Ten Commandments.

With all of this baggage I still have my doubts about the death penalty, seeing it as, foremost, inexact, which is, if you think about it, silly. If anything is exact it is death. The criminal justice system, as I have discovered in my career of reporting on stories dealing with crime and punishment over the years, is anything but precise. There are glaring inaccuracies accompanied by short cut taking and out and out ineptitude, resulting in raw injustice. I have seen it up close, with details so disheartening that the average person would be hard pressed to not want to scrap the whole system and start over; but I won't go into detail on any of that now.

My mission here is to give the reader an inside look of what it is like to attend an execution, for one, and second to describe Barry Ashdown's last minutes on earth. He had told me to write about it any way I wanted to, to hold back nothing. "Be macabre, Lisbeth," he had told me with a grin, a personality trait of his that showed me just how much of a charmer he could be when he wanted to "work an angle," in his words. I liked him. We had a wonderful working relationship. That's not to say I would have liked him in a different setting and that is not mentioned to imply that I thought he was in any way dangerous. Then again my assessment of his level of guilt is immaterial.

When I first spoke to him over the phone I had no preconceived ideas about him or how the story was going to take shape. In my work I didn't usually go in with an agenda of any sort. It was counter-productive to do it that way most times. I had a bias of course but in my professional life I learned to keep them under control for the most part. This story was different in some ways because when I began to write it I had no destination in mind. I wasn't sure whether or not it would fit into my blog, where I kept my opinions to the forefront, or perhaps it would work better as a magazine article, with all of the necessary boundaries that came with that venue. In a way, I was just trolling for a story that might prove to be workable.

In the end, my decision was superceded by Barry, who asked me to write this afterword, an addendum of sorts. He wanted a conclusion to his story that wasn't possible for him to write. I was glad to comply, mostly, even if it undermine my effort. I agreed to do it in a moment of weakness, a betrayal in some ways of my journalistic integrity. It was obvious I had gotten too close to my subject and subject matter, violating elementary rules of reporting. Staying objective is one of the most difficult things to do. After the first few interviews with Barry I knew it was going to be next to impossible to maintain a safe distance from the internal aspects of the story.

Let me begin at this juncture by mentioning the method of execution, lethal injection. It is purported to be a humane way of extinguishing a life. Simply put, you are put to sleep. The injected drugs slow every thing down in the body and you expire. There is no intent to inflict agonizing harm. The designated person to be executed slips into their last slumber, while a select group watches. It is all recorded, later filed, then kept for posterity, if you can call it that.

There were hitches in the process all across America in recent times. Sodium thiopental, the sedative used in combination with others when administering the lethal cocktail, had been banned. The barbiturate was used to induce comas sometimes in hospital settings, but along with pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride death was sure to follow. I don't want to think about the thought process that went into devising a concoction to end a person's life, where efficiency and result were paramount. Logistics had to be taken into account, as well as the application and placement, with IV's and tubes, as well as position. It was all beyond "macabre".

So I could best write the afterword I was going to have to be a witness to the execution. Barry had requested that I attend, setting off a bureaucratic tussle to get me included on the guest list because I wasn't either a family member of his or his victims. Although I am reluctant to admit that I was curious to see an execution, (call it my reporter's need to know), it was still a difficult task to complete. I wouldn't necessarily say I am the squeamish type but this came under the heading of ghoulish. Apparently, numerous states have trouble getting a lineup of witnesses to agree to sit passively by and watch a person being killed; while they might agree with the death penalty in theory they don't want to see it come to fruition in real time. These states with reluctant citizens actually advertise for an audience, so they can fulfill the civilian witness laws on the books that provide this little wrinkle in the capital punishment process.

In its way, I am almost like an agent of the state in this execution show. My reporting really doesn't slow it down or speed it up, but I still can't help but feel a degree of responsibility however oblique it might be to the final act. This is collective guilt working I realize, even as part of me likes the fact that certain serial killers or other death row criminals with equally heinous records are slated to meet their demise; and I will also admit to wanting some of them to face other less humane methods when the death warrants are issued. I am human in that way, wanting inhumane things to happen to other humans.

"I hope I see Isaac one more time...before I head south," Barry had said to me the last time we talked, a short conversation as he was being prepped for his final hours.

"You never told me whether or not you actually believe in a heaven or hell?" I asked, trying to sound flippant as I fought back a few tears, even though I assured him I wasn't emotionally effected by the drama.

I could hear him breathing on the phone for a moment, with some jail house noises filtering in over the line, then he finally said, "I thought I might find religion of some sort the closer to, you know, but I really haven't. It's nice to think I might see him again though, just for a moment or two."

He had ordered his last meal of a hot dog, with mustard, Pepsi, and some fries. For dessert he wanted to have lemon meringue pie but they didn't have any. I had always thought that was a myth, the whole last meal idea. As we talked and the minutes ticked away I couldn't help but think about him sitting there in his small cell trying not to think about what lay ahead, just hours now. How would you be able to eat anything? Time would forge ahead, bringing you closer and closer to the needle. The next time I would see him he would be in the midst of the countdown, as his time dwindled faster and faster. Where would his thoughts go? What did you do mentally to prepare yourself?

By now, he was used to being confined, so that aspect of his last hours wouldn't be different for him. Barry often spoke of imprisonment in our interviews, referring to it like more of a concept than what the majority of his life had been. "Inside," he would say, always with almost a smirk, as if only he knew the punch line to a joke no one else had heard before, "we are all tiny worlds spinning, spinning, creating our own gravity." Every penitentiary had there philosophers of course, men (and women) left to their own mounting thoughts, but Barry never impressed me as someone who delved into any deeper meanings about matters, especially the ones beyond his immediate control. So I wasn't sure at first what he meant by that statement but then, later, it dawned on me that the inmates might have been "inside" yet they still had to dwell in a universe with a time spectrum. My response on most occasions when he tended to get circumspect was to tell him I couldn't imagine what it was like to be locked up day after day and years on end. He would smile and tell me, leaning in to talk in a mock confidential tone: "We are all predators, you know."

He was never threatening, let me just say that here so there will be no misunderstanding our working relationship. Although he had spent most of his life living in close quarters with violent men he remained remarkably normal. After decades of being incarcerated his demeanor was pared down to a working set of quirks that shaped his personality. By that I mean he used his native talent with guile when needed, and only resorted to any displays of aggression when and if the situation merited it. The Darwinian struggle in prison shaped you and you learned to survive any way possible.

I recorded all of our conversations and frequently referred to them for guidance later on, something to anchor my direction when considering which way to go with the article I was writing. It was safe to say not many people wanted to hear a sympathetic tale about some death row occupant destined to die. We in the public didn't have the time or necessary sympathy for that, and empathy was totally out of the question. It was difficult I admit to remain removed from the story at times, being drawn in by his stories and not only because he was a skillful story teller and, yes, a gifted con man. After you have talked to a person slated to die for even a little while your perspective shifts. You exchange greetings, sit across the table from them, notice their fleeting tics or the peculiar inflection of their voice when they want to make a point, all attributes that contribute to the profile that is forming in your mind as your personal prejudices do battle against stereotypes and pre-conditioned ideas of what you thought a killer might look and act like.

It's difficult. You draw on your stores of professionalism and hope you can maintain some sort of distance from the subject. Then find yourself drawn in, like falling into an abyss. There is nothing to grab a hold of. You ask more questions. You get more answers, each one more discombobulating than the last, as your mind scrambles for mental footholds to regain your balance. It is not about you, a voice is telling you over and over again, as you try to concentrate on the story.

"The story will come out," I can remember Barry telling me, nodding. He had hoped I would help get his book published or at least looked at by someone in the publishing world. I had agreed to help in a weak moment, which later I realized had been orchestrated by his sly manipulation. At the very least I would post it on line somewhere, fulfilling my promise as best I could. At that point I hadn't read any of it because he refused to hand over any sample chapters, choosing to keep them to himself until after his death. In some ways this was fortuitous because revelations about Isaac and his first conviction would have bogged us down in his early life, never moving on to the crime that landed him on death row.

To date, his book has been read by relatively few but the revelations about Isaac have been noteworthy, reported on by numerous media outlets. There has been talk of a movie being made as well, all of which would have probably thrilled Barry. Even though his brief cause celebre decades ago never really materialized, there are some people who have a favorable view of him, the ersatz Nazi hunter. I have been contacted by a producer who has connections to someone who bought the rights to Barry's book, who is seeking information on his last days in jail. Full disclosure, I have been offered remuneration for my contribution to the project.

There was more than a little trepidation when I was selected to be a witness to the execution; of course as a journalist you have a heightened sense of curiosity. I had never spoken to anyone who had actually been on site when an execution was going down. It wouldn't necessarily be something you would want to brag about, I suppose. Even in a professional capacity it had a warped aspect to it. Seeing someone being put to death had psychological ramifications that I didn't want to think about.

In the lead up to the execution I had interviewed people of authority in the correctional department, trying to get their perspective of what had been finally unleashed by the Supreme Court decision and subsequent state level activity. The Justices had given the green light, making it okay for the state to take a life, and don't think I wouldn't have liked to be eavesdropping on those discussions going on up at the court behind closed doors. Almost all here on the local level voiced no objections about the death penalty, seeing it as a natural extension of the correctional mission. One bureaucrat, who asked to remain anonymous, told me with a faint smile: "It's like getting rid of a tumor. It has to be done." In a way, it was surgical, the state's scalpel was the needle.

Although state sanctioned killings do generate plenty of criticism, one being the safety concerns when using unproven drugs. Pentobarbital, long used by veterinarians to euthanize animals has been selected as the drug of choice. "Put me down like an animal," Barry had said one day after I informed him of the pharmaceutical change by Tennessee due to the shortage of other drugs. "Sweet irony there, right?" he continued, grinning at me. "I am an animal to them." I hadn't responded, growing more and more closed mouth as the date and time drew nearer.

The day of the execution I was close to exhaustion, having not been able to sleep for the previous two nights. Without realizing it I had invested too much of myself in the story, even though I was still on the fence about the legitimacy of capital punishment. Barry and I had become friends in a way, two people on a short journey. Now though I hadn't anticipated just how soul destroying having to witness an execution was going to be.

We talked as if nothing was coming, almost like two characters in a bad novel, where the protagonist is unaware of his pending fate. Our conversations revolved around trivial things mostly, only interrupted occasionally by the stark truth that lay ahead. In the background, there were people trying to orchestrate an appeal, but it was only the rudimentary and reflexive thing to do. The dye had been cast. Voices raised in protest were being duly drowned out by the crushing ordinariness of the criminal justice machine. Filing a motion was futile. The legal march inexorably moved forward.

Every contingency was thought out by the prison system; except that there was no way of allowing for the actual impact of the event. Seeing a man lying on a gurney hooked up to IV's awaiting his death was, in a word, ugly. It spoke of community degradation and couldn't possibly be glossed over by Biblical passages or any long ago enacted codes of law. There was almost a seething pettiness to it, even if some of the victim's family were in attendance to see justice completed.

The heartache in that witnessing vestibule was palpable to be sure, but I couldn't help wondering what end was Barry's death going to accomplish. Not moments before I had entered the room, the last one to do so, filing in behind the victim's family, several reluctant officials bound by the state to be present, and two other reporters trying to look solemn but you could almost smell their giddiness at landing a story so packed with unusual novelty and a guard. We had been briefed before entering the room, told what to expect and what was expected of us. The victim's family, his widow and brother, had said nothing, maintaining their stony expressions even as the widow wiped away a few tears. What was the etiquette of such an event? It might not have been out of the question for the widow to sob openly, tears of joy and sorrow simultaneously as her husband's murderer was vanquished at last; while the brother shouted out obscenities at the prostrate form waiting for the administered drugs that would end his life. BURN IN HELL! we all might be thinking.

As the proceedings got underway, I looked over at the widow to my right, hearing the first sounds of quiet sobbing and wondered if I was going to see any glimmer of satisfaction on her face. The brother had a grim look on his face and he was clenching his jaw. I couldn't help but wonder if they knew who I was, the woman who had been interviewing the killer, putting his words into print. Did they think I was sympathetic to him, that he shouldn't be executed? The brother had glared at me for a moment or so it seemed. I would have to be the focus of their attention because Barry had no family members present, since they had long ago abandoned him, written him off as a menace to society. I was the only one there for him and it made me self conscious. I wanted to tell the widow and the brother that I wasn't sure about what I believed in this case, even if it was obvious that Barry was guilty. There had never been any doubt about that, I thought as I took a seat towards the back of the small room, not wanting to be in anyone's line of sight. Every fiber of my body wanted to be out of that room, away, far away from what was about to occur. Glancing at my watch, I noted the time, just past midnight. The execution had been schedule for the morning of the 18th. It had been purposely vague. If the state of Tennessee was worried about any disturbances by demonstrators they didn't need to. When I had driven in there were two people with signs proclaiming Capital Punishment as inhumane. They were completely swallowed up by the press on location to record Tennessee's first execution in a long time, with their cable hookup vans blocking the entrance to the prison. It would turn out to be a non-event as most Tennesseans yawned at the news of someone being put to death for their crimes.

One of the officials sitting in the front row fidgeted in his seat, glancing around the small room, fighting the urge to speak to his partner unlucky enough to having been ordered to attend. The guard kept a close eye on us, expecting the worst apparently. My palms were sweaty and an unexpected sense of dread was starting to rise up inside me, and I hoped I wouldn't get sick. The moments ticked by slowly.

Then we could hear some commotion in the hallway and the door we had been staring at since we entered opened. A guard stepped into the room, quickly followed by the gurney being pushed by another guard. The widow gave a little gasp then caught herself, as the brother set up in his seat. What appeared to be some kind of technician of some sort busied himself with the IV's attached to Barry's arms, while they positioned the gurney in the middle of the room and locked off the wheels. I doubted Barry could see us from the angle he was lying at and I suppose that was by design. In a peculiar way it was like visiting someone in the ICU unit.

At that point I had an almost overwhelming desire to call out to him, to ask him what he was thinking, as my instinct to get it on the record merged with my emotional need to see if he wanted something. There was some small talk traded back in forth between the staff that we couldn't hear and then the door opened again and the warden stepped into the room. He took out a piece of paper and took up a position next to the gurney, close enough for Barry to see him easily. Then he read out the death warrant in a slow, methodical way, before asking whether or not Barry had any last words to say.

Somehow I hadn't thought of this wrinkle in the process and had never asked Barry about it. We spoke enough that I hadn't given much thought to what he might want to say just before he died. His book contained over a hundred thousand words so I wasn't sure there was much else to add; but it was to be his last utterance. I gripped the notebook in my hand tighter, and leaned in to hear.

There was silence for a moment, with the warden fastidiously putting the death warrant back into his pocket. Barry tried to raise his head for a moment then exhaled deeply, before saying in a voice strained by emotion: "Is this what they call eternal sleep?" There was nothing else. True to character, he had wanted to be sarcastic and end it with a question, realizing that nothing he said was going to alleviate the pain being felt by Officer Loften's death. It sounded callous but I think he saw just how inadequate his death was going to be as a palliative for anyone's grief.

The drug was started almost immediately after that. Barry seemed to flinch a little bit at first then it was over. I took note of the time, surprised to see that almost fifteen minutes had elapsed. An oppressive silence had descended on the small room. Over the intercom we heard: Ladies and Gentlemen, the execution of Barry James Ashdown has concluded. Time of death is 12:51. Please exit in an orderly fashion.

"Yeah," the brother intoned, clinching his fists in front of him.

I don't believe there is any more drastic anti-climax than at an execution. The final curtain drops like a anvil. We filed out slowly, trying to avoid eye contact, hoping that the stink of witnessing a man die wouldn't leave a stain on us. The two officials hurried away, while I hung back, letting the widow and brother have a moment alone. He comforted her then they too left the prison, returning to their lives that had been so abruptly interrupted.

Barry Ashdown was cremated, per his request and his ashes deposited in an unknown location. He had suggested they be flushed down the toilet but were probably tossed in the prison garbage system. An inglorious end to a ignoble life, I can imagine him characterizing or summing of his life. My story was swallowed up by an ever churning news cycle, lost to another round of Hollywood gossip or political scandal. We had become a nation of prisons, with an inmate population to match, so the death of another criminal didn't sound any alarms. Soon I would move on to my next story, with little time to spend looking backwards. Yet I knew there was going to be times when I would remember what I had witnessed and hope that it wouldn't be long lasting, yet I knew the execution was burned deep into my awareness, something I would have to carry with me for a very long time.
