Try Fear (3 page)

We’d looked at the ground at the same time. Sister Mary muttered something about being late, and walked off.

I let her go that time. We hadn’t spoken about the moment since. But there was always a little thread pulled taut between
us. And I was afraid if there was one more tug the whole thing could unravel, in a way that was bad for both of us.

As usual, Sister Mary was in her sweats, with an OSU top (the orange and black of Oklahoma State, not the black and orange
of Oregon State), and a pair of well-worn Converse All Stars.

And elbows of fury.

Even though I’m six-three and Sister Mary a little over five and a half feet, you don’t want to get on her wrong side. Especially
when playing hoop.

You don’t often think of sisters of the Benedictine order pounding you in the paint or bodying you out of bounds. The Benedictines
follow the Rule of St. Benedict, which is supposedly known for hospitality. They are compelled to receive guests as “Christ
himself.”

Which is not a feature of Sister Mary’s game. Unless elbowing for Jesus is some form of acceptable piety.

Today, her game was extra intense. Her flashing blue eyes were concentrated, twin lasers. Even her short, chestnut-colored
hair had attitude this day.

She really wanted to win this one, more than usual.

I played ball in college and know my way around the court. I’m deadly from twenty, and dangerous from downtown. Even have
a spin move or two, and that after arthroscopic surgery on the left knee.

This morning, though, I could not get near the basket.

Sister Mary hipped me every time I got close.

At first, I laughed.

But then she started with the elbows and I got a little miffed.

“You trying to make the Olympic team or something?” I said.

“Bring it,” she said.

Bring it?

I tried, but I was off. Every time I put up a shot, I had this terrier nun in my face.

It was, in its way, admirable. If she had been a litigator, I would have approved. I would have wanted her in court with me.
I would have gladly let her cross-examine any hostile witness.

I staged a comeback and tied the score 10–10. “Are you sure you have the holy calling?” I said.

“You sure you want to keep playing?”

“
You
bring it.”

And she did. She backed me into the paint, the way Charles Barkley used to do it.

Then she tried a little Magic Johnson hook, and I blocked it.

That brought a cry of frustration from Sister Mary.

I got the ball. She was snorting like a bull. I guess I was the cape.

I stayed outside. At the freethrow line I faked right, crossed over, stopped, and put up a fadeaway. It was beautiful. Nothing
but net.

11–10.

As per the rules of one-on-one, I got the rock again. I took the ball to the top of the key and let Sister Mary check it.
She dropped it back to me.

And got in a crouch. Her lips were tight. Her eyes were beams of blue flame. I thought, if she’s this tough against sin, the
Church is going to be perfect in a couple of years.

Boom, I gave her my best move, a stop and go, and was on my way to the hoop. It would be one for the highlight film. I went
up.

And she undercut me.

Sister Mary Veritas, Catholic nun, speaker of Latin, gentle little lamb of the flowers of St. Monica’s, went low bridge.

I landed on the asphalt. Hard. Little sparklers went off behind my eyes. I couldn’t believe what just happened.

As I lay there, looking up at the sky, I said, “What was that?”

“Charge,” she said.

“What?”

“You lowered your shoulder.”

“What are you talking about?” My right arm was starting to throb.

“You fouled me,” she said.

“
I’m
the one on the ground!”

“Oscar nominated.”

Now I was hacked off. I scrambled to my feet. I’d started taking Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu at a studio in Canoga Park, and was thinking
about practicing a hip throw on this overexuberant nun. Instead I said, “What is up with you today?”

“What is up with
you?”

“You mean what is
down
with me, don’t you?”

“It’s my ball.”

“How can it be your ball when you almost broke my neck?”

“You want to play or not?”

“Not until we review the Geneva Convention.”

“Just forget it,” she said. She broke into a jog and headed off toward her quarters.

I
SAT ON
the edge of the court in some grass and weeds and looked at the sky. At least, in the immortal words of Randy Newman, it
looked like another perfect day.

When the sky is clear in L.A., when the sun shines in the winter, there’s no better place on earth.

That’s what I said.

See, it’s days like this that bring out the envy in other cities. When we’re tossing Frisbees on the beach in the winter,
sub-zero curmudgeons dip their pens in bile and write things like Truman Capote once did—“It’s redundant to die in L.A.”

Or the wag who, no doubt with frostbitten digits, typed, “What’s the difference between L.A. and yogurt? Answer: Yogurt has
an active culture.”

Will Rogers called it Cuckoo Land. H. L. Mencken dubbed it Moronia.

I call it home.

Even though I’ve been beat up and beat down here. That doesn’t matter, because you can get beat up and beat down anywhere.
That’s the great thing about America.

But if it has to happen, it might as well happen in L.A. You can douse yourself in the Pacific or snowboard down a mountain.

You can regain your soul.

Which is not something I used to think about much. But I have been lately. Jacqueline thought about the soul and I want to
think she lives on, somewhere.

That’s why I’m reading Plato. I’d dipped in a little philosophy in college. It was kind of a goof then. Now it seemed to me
maybe those Greeks had a window on something.

Father Bob came out of his trailer, the only other one on the grounds, and joined me. He’s the only priest I know, the only
black priest I’ve ever met, the only one I’ve ever heard of who can play jazz drums. He was sent to St. Monica’s as a sort
of exile, having been falsely accused of sexual abuse. I helped him clear his name, but the archdiocese wanted this sleeping
dog to lie. Father Bob saw it as God’s plan. I didn’t.

“Game over so soon?” he said.

“What, were you watching us or something?”

“Just listening.” He sat next to me. He was in jeans and a black T-shirt. He looked like a Beat poet. He pulled some grass
and played with the blades. “You playing a little rough?”

“Me? That little nun of yours went all Spanish Inquisition on me.”

He tossed the grass in the air. “You need to cut her a little extra slack.”

“Maybe she needs to stop throwing elbows.” I was half joking, half not.

“Lighten up.”

“Hey, I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

I just looked at him. He obviously wanted to say something to me, so I waited for him to say it.

After another grass toss, he said, “I want you to consider something your friend Plato said. About love.”

“You’re bringing Plato into this?”

“You’ve been reading him, haven’t you?”

I nodded.

“Not all love is the same,” Father Bob said. “There is the love that the body longs for, which can also be called lust. There
is the love for another human being in a deep and meaningful way. And there is the love of knowledge and wisdom.”

“What about the love of good pastrami?” I said.

“Plato did not include that, though he well could have. What I’m getting at is that the love of wisdom is the highest and
best, because it directs the others. In dealing with Sister Mary, I ask you to be wise.”

“All right, you’ve tiptoed around this long enough. What’s wrong?”

“Sister Mary is quite vulnerable right now. She has an agile mind and creative spirit, as you well know.”

“And sharp elbows.”

“Be that as it may, she is under the all-seeing eye of Sister Hildegarde, and that is not a pleasant place to be.”

“You’re telling me.” Sister Hildegarde is the head nun of this little community, and she runs the place like Castro’s sister.

“I fear she is going to be driven from the community,” Father Bob said. “That she will be found to be ‘recalcitrant.’ It’s
a black mark for a nun.”

“Then we’ll take it to the archdiocese, like I did with you. We’ll fight.”

Father Bob shook his head. “It is much more than that. It strikes directly at her calling. This is what she may be questioning.
And you, my legal friend, complicate matters.”

“How?”

“You know how.”

I paused before answering. “You think I’m going to put a move on her?”

“Didn’t you once?”

“I showed wisdom and restraint,” I said. “The very thing you’re telling me to do now.”

“And you must continue to do so.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Then you are wise,” he said. “That’s all I’m looking for.” He stood up. “And now I’ll get ready to head down to the Sip with
you.”

He went back to his trailer. A man comfortable in his own skin. Something I was not. Did he really have a bead on the truth?
Or was it all just a happy illusion?

And is there anything wrong with that? If an illusion gets you through the day, big deal. If it puts an ice pack on the groin
kicks of life, why not?

I tried to argue myself into believing that, but something about illusion bothers me. I always want to know the truth.

They say the truth shall set you free. But sometimes it just elbows you in the chops.

L
ATER THAT MORNING
, Father Bob and I entered the Ultimate Sip.

Pick McNitt’s place is in a strip mall on Rinaldi. Pick spent some time in a sanitarium, where Father Bob first visited with
him by walking into the wrong room.

They argued then and have been friends ever since.

I pay Pick a little chunk each month for the use of the Sip as an office. And for a P.O. box in the little franchise Pick
owns next door.

“Well there they are!” Pick shouted as we walked in. “The two most misguided men in the city and county of Los Angeles and
perhaps in the whole of civilization.”

He was spoiling for a debate, as usual. He was wearing his standard Hawaiian shirt, double X. With his bald head and full
white beard, he could have been a Santa too. The Christmas spirit was getting a real going over with Pick and Carl Richess
as reps.

“Two specials,” Father Bob said.

Pick said, “There is no greater business than knowing thyself, as the divine Socrates said.”

“Didn’t Socrates commit suicide by drinking your coffee?” Father Bob winked at me as he took an Arturo Fuente cigar from his
shirt pocket. He doesn’t wear the collar on the street.

Pick himself smokes a pipe. Inside. He is on a one-man resistance effort against L.A. County smoking ordinances.

The Sip is adorned with scads of framed political cartoons Pick has drawn over the years. He did an especially wicked Nixon,
but his Bill and Hillary Clinton make me crack up every time.

Pick delivered two Gandhi Lattes to our table. He sat, putting down his own cup of joe. He slid it toward us.

“Smell that,” he said. “It’s Joan of Arc.”

“Joan of Arc?” Father Bob said.

“French roast,” Pick said. He took out his pipe and packed it from a leather pouch. As he lit up he said, “Anything more on
the death of God?”

And so it began once again. Wimbledon. I leaned back in my chair and listened.

“Greatly exaggerated,” Father Bob said.

“It’s in all the papers,” Pick said. “Just look at the evil out there.”

“The acts of evil men prove only the existence of evil, it doesn’t—”

“Then God cannot be good,” Pick said.

“At least now you admit God exists.”

“I admit no such thing.”

“Of course you do,” Father Bob said with a glint in his eye. “You are arguing that the existence of evil isn’t compatible
with a good God. Okay, then it may be a bad God, but there is a God. We can argue about his character, but not his existence.”

Pick blew a plume of smoke my way. I fought it off with my hands and a few coughs.

“I’m with Bertrand Russell,” Pick said. “If I face God after death I will tell him, ‘Sir, you did not give us enough evidence!’
”

“To which he will reply,” Father Bob said, “ ‘You chose to ignore the evidence you had.’ ”

“And then what? God sends me to hell for that? For eternity? Because I didn’t see enough evidence?”

“It is not good to ignore evidence. Any decent lawyer will tell you that.” Father Bob smiled at me.

“When you find a decent lawyer,” Pick said, “send him over.”

“Aren’t all the lawyers in hell?” I asked. “Isn’t that the old joke, where is God going to find a lawyer?”

“Better to reign in hell,” Pick said, “than serve in heaven.”

Father Bob took a puff on his cigar. “When he starts quoting Milton, I usually take my nap.”

The door opened and a skinny, ponytailed guy of about thirty walked in. He wore a white T-shirt with a sprig of cannabis on
it. “I’m looking for the lawyer,” he said.

I offer free legal advice on Saturdays, for the benefit of the poor St. Monica’s sends my way. But word has gotten out, and
all sorts of wonderful clients seep in throughout the day.

Pick McNitt has taken to calling me Forrest Gump. Because, he says, I never know what I’m going to get.

Boy howdy.

I
TOOK MY
place at the table in the far corner, by the magazine rack. Pick, who is the only receptionist I have, told Mr. Ponytail
to ride on over.

“My name’s Only,” he said.

“Only what?”

“Just Only.”

“Only the Lonely?”

“Right on,” he said, and laughed. Sort of a snort laugh. As he sat I caught a whiff of the Mary Jane.

“This is free legal advice?” he said.

“The Sisters of St. Monica’s are raising funds for their homeless shelter,” I said.