I just thought that, you know.
—Oh, I don’t have even the slightest idea where you’re going with this, Eugene.
—Anyone can get a rental car.
—Of course they can. That’s the whole point. Convenience, you see, matched with desire. It’s called capitalism.
—I thought, I guess, you wanted something, I don’t know, singular.
—Singular?
—Yeah.
Jon blinked.
—Singular.
—My brother’s on a fishing boat for the next four months.
—So this … mobile clown cutlery is at our disposal.
—Look, if you don’t like it, I can get you something different. I just thought—
—I know. Singular.
—Fuck it, I’ll take it back.
—No, wait.
In truth, there was something spectacular about it, if Jon was going to be honest about things. The car was gargantuan with a long sloping roof that ultimately made its way to a third row of seats near the back. The half-dome hood swooped down to meet the twelve-bar radiator with a thud that could have raised mountains. Eugene’s brother had gotten the optional fifth door that served as a convenient escape hatch in case of fire or police stop. And then there were those lethal protruding sideboards. Bisector, It Divides the Road, had quickly entered the lingo as Vivisector, It Dices Wide the Old. Uniambic perhaps, but accurate. Eugene’s as-yet unnamed brother had kept it spotless and buffed to a point where both the wooden and chrome parts shone with equal glare. Such a monstrosity could never have been called beautiful, but it certainly was something. Singular, indeed.
—I’ve either grossly over-estimated you, Eugene, or grossly under-estimated. Either way, I’m curious as all hell as to how things are going to go.
—So you’ll use the car?
—'Car’ doesn’t quite cover it, does it?
—You’re not the easiest person to figure out, you know that?
—You’ve no idea.
Jon opened the passenger side door. Eugene looked surprised.
—I’m driving?
—Wouldn’t you rather drive?
—Yeah, but—
—If I’m going to be seen in this Day-Glo meteorite, I think being chauffeured is probably the only route to take. Wouldn’t you agree?
—Whatever you say.
—That’s what an employer likes to hear.
Eugene shook his head. Jon smiled.
—Good. It’ll be easier if you think I’m loony.
—What’ll be easier?
—To City Hall, Eugene.
—City Hall?
—I have an appointment with the Mayor.
—The Mayor.
—Yes.
—Don’t tell me she’s—
—Yes, she’s the friend.
Eugene turned the key. A sound like a two-story house being shat out the asshole of a zebra ripped through the dashboard. Jon had to strain to hear what Eugene said next.
—She’s married, you know.
—Yes.
They exchanged a long look until Eugene finally shrugged, put the car in gear, and thrust off in a cloud of purple smoke.
23. Comfort for the Uncomfortable.
Jarvis Kingham’s lifelong intellectual ambition had always been academic theology and that he ended up a practicing priest instead was maybe not the ironic hair-splitting that some of his more cynical friends presumed. For was not active ministration simply theology in action? While he had moments where he wished he could spend more time with his books and while the vigor of some of his parishioners sometimes scared the daylights out of him – Head Deacon Theophilus Velingtham to name just one – the benefits, both personal and spiritual, more than rewarded the decision he had made to follow this slightly divergent path.
He actually remembered the exact moment. An already bearded seventeen year old, he had entered the Bondulay Divinity School up in the Mallow Hills southeast of Hennington, a place packed with seminary students, sand blown over the hills from the Brown, and really nothing else save for the occasional chuckwalla or poisonous rattleback. This was six years after Currie vs Madam Montez’ School for the Sensual Arts, so by that point female seminary students were fully integrated into school life. Celibacy rules, even the temporary ones among students not studying for the priesthood, were still in force – no court was ever going to have any say over that issue – but the number of ‘immaculate’ conceptions at the school among female students was less than the all-male faculty had feared and predicted. As a matter of fact, the salutatorian of Jarvis’ graduating class was the one and only Lyric O’Mahoneyham, overthrower-to-be of Archbishop Carl Sequin, and probably on her way to the Bondulay High Papacy had Hennington’s future not taken the route it did.
(At that point, though, that was all a good ways off – and still remains a ways off now, though becoming uncomfortably close for more vaguely clairvoyant Henningtonians. If Archie Banyon’s body had been more specific about what awaited, he might not have given up smoking after all.)
Jarvis toddled along unremarkably and had just begun his third year when he met the woman who should have been the love of his life. Her name was Diana. Long brown hair cascading in waves around a breathtaking face without a trace of make-up; a serious, challenging brow that let you know you had better have more to your argument than just opinion; a nose slightly too wide over lips slightly too crooked placed on a face just slightly too large. Diana was stunning, not in the euphemism-for-beauty way, but actually stunning, as in it was difficult to find words for small talk when you first met her and equally difficult not to feel like you were trying to squirm out of the truth when she questioned your ideas. Most of the cocksure, popular, handsome boys at the seminary were terrified of her, and there was more than one malicious and erroneous story floated along the grapevine by those who felt threatened, which was more or less everyone.
Jarvis, on the other hand, too engrossed in his studies and too chaste in his temporary celibacy vow to notice any female, wouldn’t have registered Diana at all if she hadn’t insulted him publicly during a History of the Sacraments seminar. The class had reached the contentious subject of Hildegard Robham’s schism from the Bondulay during the Gentlemen’s War. In the old story of Pacifism pitted against The Regrettable Use of Force, Jarvis had taken the mildly surprising but by no means unprecedented position of agreeing with Robham’s
