Grief Street

same lines.”
    “Did he?”
    “He talked about Shabbatai Sevi.”
    “Oh, and about the Doctrine of Universal Sin? A little help from Satan in the cause of people finding all that’s good and just and godly? Bloody fascinating ideas. People called Shabbatai Sevi mad. But who’s to say the writings on the walls of madhouses should not be heeded?”
    Father Morrison put down his mug. He had drunk little of his coffee, and it had grown cold.
    “Look now, I’ve the animals to tend,” he said. “We’ll talk later. You must be tired. Why not lie down for a while?”
    I took the priest’s suggestion. As soon as my head hit the stiff pillow, I began dreaming... of the painting by the heretic Petrus Christus that old Glick had described: all of us falling into hell, dropped from the bat wings of something evil that was present even at the assumption of the Virgin Mary, mother of God.

    It was easier than Ruby had expected. She had simply looked on the problem as a theatrical exercise and decided to play it out in a drop-dead red dress mood.
    Easy to play. But, as she would discover, hard to absorb. “Last time I’ll fit in this for a while,” she said right out loud as she primped with a lipstick in front of the mirror on the back of the bedroom door, admiring herself all tightly wrapped in Chinese red and uplifted as only a woman in the early blush of pregnancy can be.
    Then shortly after two o’clock in the afternoon, Ruby Flagg marched through the leather-paneled door of the Savoy bar, plopped herself on a stool, and made her audience drop dead. Including Johnny Kay, whose mouth flopped open as if it were a pop-top can.
    “So,” Ruby asked the bartender, “has your boyfriend found his angels yet?”
    “You’re Ruby Flagg, aren’t you? From the play.”
    “Oh good, you remember.”
    “Well, how are you?”
    “Anxious, Johnny. About angels. Like I asked.”
    “Stuart’s still working on it. It’s a process.”
    “Tell me something I don’t know.”
    “What are you drinking?”
    “Orange juice. I’ve decided to lay off alcohol for a while. Would you believe I’m expecting? As in baby?”
    “That would be a historic first for a customer of the Savoy.”
    Johnny produced a glass of orange juice.
    “My husband—you remember him?”
    “The famous Detective Hockaday.”
    “Famous? Do you know what fame is, Johnny?”
    “In the conventional sense?”
    “You’re hardly the conventional type.”
    “Then tell me something unconventional.”
    “Fame is proof that people are gullible.”
    “I like you, Ruby. And I don’t say that to all the girls.”
    “I like you, too. Know why? You’re the infamous type.”
    “If this was the other kind of bar, I’d say you came here in your painted-on dress to... How do I put it? Practice your flirtation skills?” Johnny lit up a Camel. “But you know the setup. So, Mrs. Hockaday, what are you doing here today?”
    “Being that I’m in a family way, I’m interested in families. All kinds of families. Yours, for instance.”
    “Stuart and me?”
    “You know what I’m talking about.”
    “Oh, the sacred family you mean. Home of all virtues, where innocent children are tortured into their first falsehoods.”
    “I’ll bet dropping the Kowalski wasn’t your maiden falsehood.”
    “Correct.”
    “Don’t be tight-lipped, Johnny, it’s unbecoming.”
    “What can I tell you? I had a mama and a daddy, my head was properly pulverized by the church, and we lived m Queens.” Johnny Kay laughed. It was his father’s laugh.
    Queens!”
    “The whole thing must have been as natural to you as a cage to a cockatoo.”
    “It wasn’t the apple pie...” Johnny Kay stopped talking. He puffed the last of his cigarette, and mashed it into an
    ashtray.
    “You were about to say?”
    “I had a brother.”
    “Had?”
    “James is dead. Jimmy he was called. I suppose you’ve noticed my old man’s about twice the size he ought to be?”
    “Yes. I always wonder what secrets a fat man eats.” ’ “That’s funny. When I was a little boy Mommy Dearest used to tell me Daddykins got fat because he ate up baby Jimmy.”
    “What really happened?”
    “I think Daddy went fat because he wanted to die about twice as fast as he ought to die.”
    “That explains your old man. What happened to Jimmy?”
    “I only hope it doesn’t happen to your baby.”
    “You want to tell me what that is, Johnny?”
    When he finally did, Ruby had to be sick in the