Come Again

97

Chapter 1

The anti-Christ stood alone by the cold, gray water with his gaze focused on the horizon. The roar of a jet airliner broke his train of thought. He glanced up. Despite the dense cloud cover, he determined the plane was heading west to the airport.

He stepped back from the reach of the incoming waves. His black ensemble provided instant identification and immediate recognition, but as a symbol of peace, not the deliverer of divine vengeance.

God visited him long ago in the desert and burned His message into his untested soul with such force he carried its mark to this day. The ferocity of that exchange drove him to express his rage against the liars and false preachers in private, but his time to leave the shadows and unleash divine wrath was close at hand. Danger lurked only in the manner and timing of his revelation. He required a mandate and a platform to bring mankind the proper cleansing of fire and fear necessary to rid them of their abominable wickedness.

The days were coming when people would cry out their contrition and beg for absolution and release. The establishment of God’s Kingdom on Earth awaited, to be accompanied by the agony of laborious birth, and he would take his place as the beacon to which all must turn to endure and survive the terror they would encounter. He would be the standard bearer, dispensing mercy, not kindness, offering salvation, not comfort.

His destiny to be the tip of the spear leading the way drew near. The anti-Christ smiled at the simplicity of the will of God. He stood ready to accept his mission.

Chapter 2

Children die every day. They become statistics. If the child is yours, the statistic takes on flesh and blood and becomes personal. You rage against the hopelessness, but, in the end, you are only another victim of inevitability, another listless factoid.

I thought about the looming finality of my own child’s deathbed drama as I sat in a traffic crawl heading north on St. Claire to Lurie Children’s Hospital. The dates on my daughter’s calendar were running out despite the money I threw at the search for medical miracles.

The weather reflected my mood. March in Chicago is a mixture of iron-gray skies, dirty snow, and pent-up frustration born from enduring a winter destined to outlive the arrival of the Vernal Equinox. I reached the hospital, found a parking spot, and walked to the entrance.

My daughter, Melissa, was close to taking with her the part of me that mattered most. I dabbed my eyes dry on my shirt cuffs as I took the elevator up to her floor and made my way with a heavy heart down the bustling hall to the room where she lay in numb repose.

She slept lightly, her silky skin hugging her ninety-five-pound frame like Saran Wrap. She joked about slimming down to a Kate Moss appearance.

I stood by her bed, my heart breaking like arid clay. Is this payback for the last five years? I asked a God on whom I used the DELETE button.

I couldn’t say when I stopped praying, or believing. Perhaps I lost touch with religion a few months after a hit-and-run driver killed my wife, Jamie. She and I were raised Catholic and brought up Melissa in the same tradition. Although we weren’t zealots, we did attend church on a regular basis, dozing off during sermons delivered by priests who sounded like Kermit the Frog invoking, Oh, Lord, every few minutes.

I skipped one Sunday, then two. After a month, I developed a habit. Every week, I drove Melissa to a guitar mass, went to Starbucks, bought a coffee, and scanned the paper. I would check my watch every few minutes, retrieve Melissa, and take her to brunch. After returning home, we would go to a movie, take in a ball game together, or she would hang out with friends while I finished the New York Times Magazine and napped.

I sensed her desire to talk to me about my irregular religious behavior and other, hidden subjects, but I shut her wishes down fast. I hated doing it, but I danced with demons, and made her sit those dances out.

Now, standing next to her bed, powerless to stop the Leukemia spreading through her, I challenged God with a ferocity only a parent fighting for his child’s life would understand. I dared Him to put a value on Melissa’s recovery so I could pay it, even if the exchange was my life for hers.

I grabbed a couple of tissues, wiped my face dry, and sucked up my sorrow. When Melissa woke, she didn’t need to behold the image of a bawling father standing at her bedside.

I got myself together by the time she opened her eyes and gave her a smile that cost me almost everything left in my emotional reserve. She gave me one of hers in return.

Hi, Dad, she murmured.

I moved closer and kissed her soft, smooth cheek.

How’s my knucklehead? I asked as I placed her hand in mine and held on.

I’m so tired.

She reached for the remote with her free hand and raised the bed to a sitting position. I poured some ice water, which she gulped down.

She finished, smiled, and thanked me. I nodded and returned the empty cup to the bedside table.

We spent the next forty minutes being brave for each other until lunch arrived. She ate, not to satisfy her hunger, but to please me. She said a couple of her classmates would be coming by in the afternoon. I asked her if they were the usual suspects and she smiled. I told her I would bring a bacon cheeseburger and fries for supper. The hospital staff disapproved. Tough shit, I thought. Fast food wouldn’t kill her.

She drifted off to sleep and I left, gloomier than when I arrived. I carried myself like a fighter saving my energy between punches, hoarding my strength.

I took a roundabout way back to work, delaying the moment of setting foot in the office and pretending I cared. I tossed aside my selfish melancholy in an instant and returned to planet earth. I owed the people working for me as much of myself as possible.

I approached Holy Name Cathedral, on State Street, between Chicago Avenue and Superior. On an impulse, I swung the car into an illegal spot across from the church and parked. I turned off the engine and sat.

I eyed the stone front and towering brass doors of the entrance to the hub of the city’s archdiocese. My thoughts turned to Hymie Weiss, one of the Roaring Twenties’ more flamboyant psychopathic hoodlums, gunned down on the steps of this building in 1925. Al Capone ordered the hit. George Moran’s mob staged a huge funeral.

I flipped on the blinkers, got out, and hurried across the street thinking about the irony of a crazy hood buying the farm in front of the church where he served as an altar boy. I’m a writer. I think about those things. Weiss was a gunsel. He thought about shooting people.

After ducking inside, I pushed the glass doors open and trudged down the aisle. A security guard sat at a desk on the other side of the nave. About a third of the way from the altar, I stepped into a pew, lowered the kneeler, and assumed the plaintive position. I folded my hands together, scared and alone. I don’t remember if I spoke out loud or offered my plea in silence, my head bowed, arms stretched out in supplication, pleading to a God I ignored because of Jamie’s death. I hoped He wouldn’t return the favor. I promised anything I could think of to make my entreaty stand out.

Have mercy, oh Lord, on a sinner like me, I begged, and, if it be your will, deliver my daughter from evil.

Chapter 3

Virtue wasn’t always its own reward, I thought, staring at the image on my computer screen. So, most of us engaged in commerce to make ends meet. Being good often meant being clever, not righteous. I needed a brilliant headline to make an ad be all the client could want. As always, the client would want more.

I flirted with the sample color photo of a red Ferrari and a model who was every schoolboy’s fantasy poured into a floor-length, body-hugging black sheath. She stood beside the car, her right hand holding up a bottle of Max Detailing Magic, her left hand touching the top of the windshield.

Hot girls and cars, a gratuitous but successful promotional tactic we employed every month as we put a car, a girl, and one of our client’s car care products in a riveting photo. The ad appeared in all the leading automotive buff books and men’s magazines. Sales rang through the roof. Next came a sexy online video with the same cast, portraying the girl as a racecar driver, chauffeur, business exec or mechanic, that would generate a million views, likes, and tweets and rake in even more money.

A headshot of Melissa sitting next to my iMac drew my attention. Her long, lustrous brown hair hung below her shoulders. Her late mother’s green eyes and upturned button nose hovered over a smile capable of melting the polar ice cap. I considered installing a moat the first time a boy walked up to our house to take her on a date. She convinced me to get real.

By the end of the first semester of her senior year, the doctors confirmed her lingering malaise as leukemia. So how important was a fucking headline?

I saved the file, punched up the email address of my top copywriter, Steve Vaughan, told him to lift my Hot Wax folder and make some magic. He would study the layout for five minutes and write better copy than Joseph Pulitzer.

I glanced at Melissa’s photo again. I loved her more than oxygen. If I lost her, I believed I would waste away at light speed. I forced the morbid thought out of my head. Commerce beckoned.

I own an ad agency, The Marketing Works. The shop bills about sixty million dollars a year, employs twenty-five people, runs as smooth as a monk’s shaved pate, and gives me and mine access to the good life.

Good, if you don’t count Jamie’s death or the cancer killing Melissa. My health was rock solid, so, I shouldn’t complain.

I stared out my windows. My corner office commands an east and south view of Lake Michigan and the jumble of elegant architecture buttressing Chicago’s front yard between Grant Park and Oak Street Beach. Ten years ago I thought this was heaven. Today? I didn’t give a damn.

I checked my computer clock. A lot of time remained before the executive meeting. I got up, opened the door, and stepped out into the realm of my personal assistant, Gina Spizzo.

Gina is a Northern Italian classic, with thick, raven hair, and deep, brown eyes, lips best referred to as risqué, and a body enticing enough to stop traffic or start fistfights. She’s young, single, smart, and articulate. She helps me avoid the mistakes I’m prone to make, keeps Melissa in the loop, and almost runs the company. She’s rejected my offer of a vice-presidency, insisting she can wield more power and serve me better as my assistant. She won’t sleep with me. I’m convinced she’s making the right decision. We’d never be able to work together again and I’m not sure I would find an adequate replacement.

She gave me a glance as I stood next to her computer.

Are you going to say something or just stand there?

Nothing to say.

You do this before every department head meeting. Why don’t you go to the bathroom and splash some water on your face?

I gave her a tight smile. Maybe a cold shower, I thought. I sighed, and went back into my office.

I meet once a month with my department heads, Gina, and our bookkeeper. We try to identify what we do well and what we don’t, hoping to eliminate avoidable errors. Overall success always remains out of reach.

Jerry Dillon, our director of client services, directs the meeting. A short, wiry dynamo, with classic, well-defined features and a Julius Caesar hairstyle, he’s like a shark. If he stops moving, he’ll die. Jerry’s the reason we’ve got Hot Wax, America’s leading automotive aftermarket car care product line. He’s been racing boats, cars, and motorcycles for thirty years. He knows everyone in the business.

Today, he told us about a new tire compound Hot Wax wanted to launch. Even in my despondency, I laughed at his anecdotes. Jerry could talk a wolf pack off a meat truck.

While the others celebrated, I shifted back and forth between the roles of CEO and father. Only Gina caught me trying to kill the same time killing Melissa.

Chapter 4

That evening at the hospital, during our fast-food feast, Melissa appeared stronger; at least I thought she did.

Dad, she said between bites, Why didn’t you stay when you dropped me off at church on Sundays. Why drive off to read the paper?

I used the time I spent chewing to think of an answer she would accept. I couldn’t come up with one.

My mistake, Jelly Melly, I said, stuck with the truth, using her childhood nickname. I kind of lost touch with religion after your mom died.

Well, God doesn’t go away because you block Him out.

Phrased well for a high school senior, I thought. Melissa would make a hell of a woman. I stopped. Not at this rate. The sandwich tasted like cardboard. The Coke resembled engine coolant.

I guess I quit, I said, wadding up the remains of my food and tossing the unappetizing mess into the wastebasket.

Well, He doesn’t.

How can you be so sure?

I can’t say, she smiled, as only a seventeen-year-old girl with a secret can. The combination of her face and words tore at me.

I’ll make you a deal, Jelly. You get well and I’ll take you to church and stay, every Sunday.

She finished her sandwich. Most of her fries were gone too. I wondered if the improvement in her appetite came from increased hunger or from my foolish hope of remission. I let the thought go, took what was left of her meal, and tossed it away. The aroma of fast food permeated the room.

Is that a promise?

I nodded.

Okay, she said, beaming.

We enjoyed a concert on Palladia and a sitcom she liked on the huge flat-screen TV I purchased, along with full cable service. I threw money around like a pouting little kid, trying to retain a semblance of normalcy in her fading life. She almost looked healthy by the time I left.

I spent the rest of the evening moving around my empty house on autopilot. I turned on the news, checked ESPN for sports, and went to bed. With the only hope I still clung to, I repeated my prayer from the afternoon and rolled over into the Land of Nod.

When I woke, everything seemed different, from the freshness of the air in the room to the lightness in my soul and the bounce in my step as I got out of bed.

I walked to the bathroom, paused before the mirror, and examined the familiar image reflected in the silver-backed glass. Raymond Cass, six foot two, white male, thankfully in shape. Close-cropped dark hair, Euro trash beard and mustache, all laced with gray. Hazel eyes nestled beneath full brows. My nose bent a touch from a collision with a Little League fastball and fewer wrinkles than I deserved lining my face. My ebullience didn’t affect my appearance.

Chapter 5

I stopped by the hospital on my way to work. Melissa sat up in bed, alert and animated. She ate breakfast, remaining animated and awake as I left.

The Works occupies half a floor in a glass-and-steel high-rise east of Michigan Avenue, on Ohio Street. I pulled my Ferrari into the garage, gave the attendant a wink and a fifty – which carried a request of detail, please – and proceeded to the elevators.

Several employees greeted me as I made my way through the office to my hard-earned corner of hegemony. Casual Fridays at our place meant if you covered the naughty bits you passed muster. After spotting me, Gina got up, walked into my office, and commandeered a seat in front of my desk.

What gives? she asked, once I sat down. You resemble the old Ray Cass.

I am, the old Ray Cass. My next birthday isn’t far off.

Wrong answer.

Could be spring is in the air, or my heart is healthy enough for sex. Tell me what’s up?

She did. A bunch of whiny, ungrateful motherfuckers from a hard cider distributor, for whom we were winning the dominant share of the market, complained about serious issues with our creative approach.

They’re questioning the underwriting of the Bad Apples tour, Gina explained. They’re afraid the tie-in is negative.

They’re the hottest rock act in America. We’re lucky we got them to agree to the sponsorship.

They may be a little too badass for the client’s taste.

The client can drink only so many bottles of the product. The band’s fans will consume millions.

I told Gina to get our Creative Director, Gabrielle Dawson, together with the writers and art directors and meet Joan Schultz, the hard cider account executive, in the conference room at eleven to figure out the best way to convince the assholes in New York to accept our recommendation, then prepare a response to back up the proposal.

My phone rang. I picked up the receiver.

Ray Cass, I said, my mind a thousand miles away.

Good morning, Mr. Cass, Dr. Manning.

The oncologist. My stomach formed knots and I forced myself not to speculate, but wait for the message before reacting.

I don’t know how to explain this, he continued.

Try the direct method, Doctor.

I clenched my teeth, hoping against hope. I caught a glimpse of Gina. Her concern appeared as much a part of her face as her matte make-up.

Well, Melissa’s white-cell count is up twenty percent.

His words stopped the flow of my anxiety. I sagged with relief.

Excuse me, I said, my voice hoarse, sweat rolling down my spine. What did you say?

We went through the test twice.

My daughter’s improved?

Yes.

More calls must be on his schedule, I thought. Not all of them would involve good news. I needed to close out the conversation.

Will I be able to visit her at lunch?

I don’t know why not.

Thank you, Doctor, and, God bless you.

I put down the phone and focused on Gina, who showed me living proof water-resistant mascara is not just for weddings and funerals.

Melissa’s made a comeback, I said, unable to hold back my own tears.

Chapter 6

I couldn’t keep my eyes off the clock. The morning seemed locked in slow motion. When I ran out of patience, I rushed to the hospital.

Melissa was out, undergoing more tests. I waited as long as I could, left a note, and headed back to the office.

I took the service elevator to our floor and tried to sneak past Gina, while she talked on the phone. She spotted me and waved, indicating her need to speak to me. I nodded and went into my lair to calm down.

I sat down, turned, and leaned back, studying the lake and its environs. As I forced myself to slow down, I got the sense of being away for a long time and coming back to find things the same, yet different. My energy levels soared. I anticipated the potential challenges of the job instead of dreading the hours spent in dismal toil.

For some time the work began to seem monotonous; the problems trivial; the concerns childish; the crises silly. Now, my eagerness returned with a vengeance.

I loved what I did: going head-to-head with demanding marketing directors; the short life span of a flight of commercials; the unexpected curves tossed at me. I thrived on the frantic pace and the pressure to get the message just right. I might peddle my muse like a slattern, but I earned courtesan rates and, if the clients behaved, they got a kiss on the lips and the time of their lives.

Did this constitute a mid-life crisis? Was I too successful, took too much for granted? Offers to buy the agency were on the table. If I sold my shop, I’d give Gina, Jerry, and the others their pieces of the action and semi-retire. With enough money to take care of Melissa and me, I would be free to do what I wanted.

A knock on the door preceded Gina’s entry. I turned around.

A visitor awaits you, she announced.

Not today, Gina. I’m busy.

Oh, you’ll want to meet this one, she said, daring me to refuse.

I hated this game we played. She liked boxing me in and I refused to try to escape.

Okay. Show the son-of-a-bitch in.

Flashing a silly smile, she left. I wondered what nonsense could be afoot.

She returned, ushering her mystery guest into my office. I brightened like an emerging sunrise. One of the most beautiful women I ever beheld stood before me.

Her thick, butterscotch hair framed a face no one would find out of place on the cover of Vogue. She wore a fitted mint green jacket and a slim yellow skirt ending an interesting distance above her knees. Elegant, tan legs led to multi-strap suede heels, completing her ensemble.

I got to my feet, hoping my mouth wasn’t hanging open.

Allow me to introduce Hope.

I walked around my desk and stopped a couple of feet from her. She offered her smooth, warm hand. I acted like a Victorian matron with the vapors as I shook it.

She’s here about your daughter.

Gina’s words killed my daze.

A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Cass, said Hope, in a well modulated, cultured voice.

Me, too, I said, wary.

Gina offered something to drink. Hope declined and Gina left, grinning like the village idiot over my reaction. Hope waited until the door closed before speaking.

I represent a potential client, she said, handing me a business card containing her name, email address, and the company name, INRI.

I reached back, dropped her card on the desk, grabbed my coffee, and led her to a grouping of leather furniture in a corner of my office.

Let’s sit down, I said, regaining my presence of mind. We positioned ourselves across from each other, separated by a sleek, modern coffee table.

May I call you Raymond?

That’s the name my folks gave me.

I took a sip of coffee. How did Melissa fit into this?

I’m here to discuss a promise you made during a recent prayer of supplication.

How the hell did she learn about my Holy Name visit? Her remark made no sense. I stalled for time.

How about lunch? I’ll invite our director of new business to join us.

As long as we eat here, and only the two of us.

Jerry could wait, I thought. This might get personal.

Okay, I said. I needed to learn how she found out about Melissa.

I asked Gina to order Dim Sum from across the street and told Hope I was all ears. She crossed her well-shaped legs and rested her hands in her lap. We sized each other up. I wanted to get to the point, but I didn’t want to be the first to speak. I waited.

I represent a powerful, popular figure who’s also disliked and reviled.

Sounds like a typical success story.

He’s planning a comeback.

From what? How did Melissa fit in?

"Does your client want to