Fresh off the press. Written this morning, checked over this lunchtime, on the site in time for tea. The title came from a sentence in Elmore Leonard’s “Touch”. The Only Living Saint came out of the reverie that sentence brought on pretty much fully formed. It helps that I like the idea of a sage hidden at the back of an old diner doling out advice.
And sometimes, something a little more direct.
“I gotta problem, Saint Charlie.”
No sense of ritual or liturgy, but somehow everyone that makes their way to the back right hand booth of the Heaven-Scent Diner on the corner of Delancy and Chrystie begins with those words. Inevitably, they feel like they’re interrupting important business, and just as inevitably, Saint Charlie will do nothing to alleviate that feeling.
He will have been reading the sports section of The Times, or working on the Extreme Suduko, or just staring at that weird stain on the ceiling tiles that looks a little like the Virgin Mary if you squint real hard through one eye.
But as soon as a visitor approaches his booth, Saint Charlie will roll his eyes and let out an exasperated huff. He will normally close his battered Black & Red notebook with a business-like snap, then roll his gaze up and down the visitor, and God help you if you utter another word until he’s done scanning you.
This gives the supplicant a chance to look at The Only Living Saint. This chubby, sour-faced, ageless little man, in his acid-green polo shirt with the faint traces of a spaghetti sauce stain on the collar, this petulant, irascible gnome with a face like a pale horse chestnut, this cheapskate with breath that could set the D-train to a screaming halt, and eyes the colour of the sea on the hot summer day at Coney Island, the kind of day that could entice the bridge and ferry girls out of their clothes and into the water. Eyes that, unlike the rest of him, give you an idea of why he is who he is.
After the laser-sharp examination he will dig in the top pocket of his shirt, and pull out a wrinkled cheroot. He will light it, with a great deal more fuss than the operation deserves, with a heavy gold Zippo engraved with the Ave Maria in a tight script font. It’s a special blend of tobacco, shipped in monthly and held for him at the Greek tobacconist a couple blocks west. It smells like horse manure and mesquite, and Saint Charlie will wrap himself in the pungent smoke before he offers his opinion.
Because believe me, all the flimflam with the stogie and the irritation at being interrupted, that’s the misdirection that any true magician finds as natural as getting up in the morning and brushing his teeth. The supplicant was spotted as soon as he opened the rattling glass door of the Heaven-Scent. Somehow, Saint Charlie always knows. It could be pointed out that the only people who come to the Heaven-Scent apart from the regulars who have been coming there since the diner opened somewhere towards the end of the Pleistocene Era are there specifically to see The Only Living Saint.
He’d shrug that argument off as irrelevant. Don’t matter how he knows. The point is that he does, and that any little illusion that adds to the reputation he has to keep up is worthwhile.
If you get yourself a rep as a miracle worker, then the last thing you should do is disappoint. In this game, people take disappointment badly.
Take this guy. Tall, thin, nervy. A loose collection of sticks held together with twine and good intentions. Straw-blond hair disappearing off his temple like it’s got somewhere much more interesting to be. Sad eyes. Sad, wounded eyes. Here was a guy who knew disappointment. It had been with him all his life, a whisper in the air, an ache in his molars. It hangs on him like a bad suit.
He twists his knotty fingers into a tangle in front of him, and waits for Saint Charlie to finish up with the cigar, and get on with not living up to his expectations.
Saint Charlie puffs out a cloud of dung-rich smoke at the scarecrow. “I gotta dispensation,” he grits, waving the stogie around like a magic wand. More ooga-booga. Saint Charlie needs another ten seconds or so with this guy. There’s something deeply, horribly wrong with him, and he’s having problems digging it out. “You know, from the Pope. That Italian guy with the hat?”
This much, at least is true. Whatever Saint Charlie did to get his canonisation, and hoo boy, are there stories about that day, the card game the Pope took with the one guy he really shouldn’t, that thing with the locusts over St. Marks, whatever, he’s wheedled some fairly hefty favours out of the Vatican. City Hall have bent over to every single one of them, good Catholic boys and girls that they are. He gets to park where he wants. He gets a fifty per cent discount at any Denny’s in the city. Most importantly, thanks to him, the Heaven-scent is the one restaurant in the city where a guy can light and enjoy a fine cigar without the cops hauling him off to Leavenworth. It’s an important freedom, and one Saint Charlie indulges in with active enthusiasm.
Saint Charlie tilts his head, and gives the scarecrow the full-bore power of his blue, blue gaze. The guy shrinks back a little. Not a vampire-in-the-sun flinch, but enough to know that Saint Charlie was done with the preliminaries. It was showtime.
“Girl trouble, right?” says Saint Charlie.
The scarecrow goggles. It was, to be fair, not a hard guess to make. Saint Charlie’s greatest hits usually concern either the heart or the wallet. A heads-or-tails proposition, and to be frank the two are often interconnected. All the same, he’s got the scarecrow’s attention, and now he can pull off the real work.
“Yes, Saint Charlie, yes. I do everything for her. I work all the hours God gives us, I treat her good, I buy her gifts and flowers all the time, and now she says she wants to leave. And I’ve tried, and I don’t know what else I can do…”
His voice, dry as bone, cracks a little. A single tear breaks from the corner of his dishwater brown eye, and runs down his cheek. He swats it away, irritated.
Saint Charlie leans forward, his stogie glowing like a taper.
“Son,” he says quietly, quietly enough that the scarecrow has to lean forward to hear him, “if I knew how women work I wouldn’t be a saint, I’d be a millionaire. You sound like you’re doing everything right, as best you can. Sometimes that ain’t enough, and sometimes it’s too much. But if it ain’t right for her, she’ll go. And if she needs to move on from you, you can’t make her stay.”
Something lights in the scarecrow. A spark of understanding, of wonder. Of fear.
“No matter how much you want it, you can’t force her to be with you, Warren. There’s more pain down that path than you can see. You’re blind to the consequences, and all I can do is show you how bad a mistake it is to take that step.”
“But, Saint Charlie, I need… I love her…”
“I know that. I do. But listen to me, kid, and this is important.”
Saint Charlie reaches out, and places one fat palm over the thrumming knot of nerves that the guy who hasn’t even yet questioned how Saint Charlie knows his name is using in place of a hand. His touch is very warm, dry, and soft as a girls.
“Warren, you can’t make Maria stay. You think you can talk her out of packing her bags and if not, then maybe there’s another way you can be together. And that way won’t work. Trust me. I know. There’s no peace for you at the end of that road. No sympathy. No understanding. Nothing but punishment.”
His eyes were darkening as he spoke, storm clouds rising until there was nothing left but darkness. At the same time, his grip tightened. He felt the tendons in Warren’s hand bulge. Warren sobs, half in pain, half in recognition. He’s been made. Saint Charlie has seen straight through him to the cancer at his core.
“She says I’m no good…”
“If you go through with it, she’s right.” Saint Charlie’s black gaze is a still pool, and Warren thinks for a moment that he could fall into it and be lost for ever. He’s teetering on the edge of an abyss, and Saint Charlie gives him a long hard look at it.
“Last chance, Warren.” Saint Charlie tries to keep his voice gentle, but he can feel the tension rising.
Tears flood freely down Warren’s face. His shoulders slump. He’s done. It’s over.
“Ok, Saint Charlie. Ok, if you think it’s right.”
“That’s good, Warren. That’s fine. So you won’t need the gun, then.”
Warren jerks like he’s been shot. He looks at Saint Charlie, at that impenetrable black gaze, at the endless dark horror as his command. He is nothing against that, a pin-drop in a thunderstorm. The illusion of choice in the matter that he brought to the Heaven-scent Diner, that The Only Living Saint would give him advice that he could accept or ignore, is gone. He is at the mercy of greater powers.
Trembling, Warren reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket pocket. He draws out a small, snub-nosed pistol, a J.A .25 Auto. A Saturday Night Special. He gently places it on the table in front of Saint Charlie. Saint Charlie makes every effort not to look at the thing, sitting like a cockroach between them.
“I’m sorry,” Warren whispers. “I’m so sorry. I just didn’t know what else to do. Can you… will you forgive me?”
“No,” Saint Charlie says. Warren swallows, and fresh tears start.
“I can’t forgive you for something you didn’t do, son. Thinking ain’t doing. You can walk out of here now, and forget you ever considered doing… whatever it was.”
“But the gun…”
“What gun?” Saint Charlie says mildly. Warren looks down. The pistol is not on the table anywhere. Warren takes a step back, his mouth moving wordlessly.
“Go,” Saint Charlie says. “Take a walk. Think about what’s just happened. Let it go, and move on. Let her go, Warren.”
Warren just stares for a moment, not knowing what to do. It’s as if he’s wandered up a mountain by accident, and now he’s hit the summit he’s got no idea which way to go next. His gaze is fixed on Saint Charlie, on his eyes that are that Aegean blue again. Saint Charlie smiles mildly, just a guy in the back of an old diner who smokes a lot.
“See you later, Warren.”
Warren jerks into life, a puppet yanked on invisible strings. “Bye, Saint Charlie,” he says, and blunders away, bereft, alone, and saved.
Saint Charlie lets out a long, slow breath, and lifts the napkin by his cold cup of coffee. The gun is under it, waiting for a violent or desperate heart to bring it life. He gestures to Darla, the waitress. As she ambles over, he lifts the gun by the trigger guard with his pen. He’d rather not touch it.
“Get rid of that, Darl,” he says, still looking at the door.
Darla plucks the gun from the extended Parker, and it vanishes into a pocket of her apron. She too looks out towards Delancey Street, and the untangling figure stumbling away.
“That was harsh, Charlie,” she says, her voice molasses and chocolate. “I know about the piece, so don’t you look at me like that. But even so.”
Saint Charlie resists the temptation to roll his eyes. Darla would be able to sense that too.
“Saint’s privilege. Sometimes, all you gotta do to save a sinner is scare the ever-living crap outta him.”
“Even so,” Darla says. “You didn’t have to let him run off like that. You could have bought him a coffee.”
“Hell, no,” says Saint Charlie. “The coffee from this joint? Don’t you think he’s suffered enough?”
