F. Paul Wilson - Reborn

But he wondered: Had Dr. Hanley possessed a seething core of violence like his own? Had he managed to lock it away as Jim had?

He turned his thoughts back to Bill who had been a valued member of the team as well but had never really been one of the gang. When locker-room talk turned away from school and sports and got into who had been the latest to feel up Mary Jo Munsey, Bill faded away. Still, he had been somewhat of a regular guy. He could work miracles with carburetors and would go to parties and CYO dances and dance with the girls, had even dated Carol fairly steadily for a few years. But he had always seemed one step removed from the crowd, always slightly out of tune with everybody else. One of those guys who heard a different drummer.

Some of the guys would tease him for being such a square, but Jim could never get into that. He had always liked Bill. He had been able to discuss things with Bill that he could not even approach with the other guys. Heavy stuff. Ideas. They both were voracious readers and so they often discussed books. He still remembered the long arguments they'd had over Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged when it first came out. They rarely agreed on anything—that was what made the conversations so stimulating. Bill was always on the up side. Idealman, Jim had called him. And Bill had dubbed him Cynicalman in return.

Initially Jim had been stunned to learn that Bill Ryan had joined the Jesuit seminary after high school. "I thought you were going to be a mechanic!" he remembered telling him jokingly. But after thinking about it for a while, he had concluded that he should have seen it coming all along. He knew that Bill believed in God and Man, and in Virtue and Decency being their own rewards. Believed it then and believed it now, apparently. There was something refreshing about that in the God Is Dead age.

And now he was at St. F.'s.

Funny how things ran in circles.

"Good to see you laugh, old buddy," Bill said finally.

"What do you mean?"

"You've been pretty glum for a guy who's just become filthy rich."

"Sorry about that," Jim said, knowing it was true and regretting it. He hated being a wet blanket. "Yeah, Hanley attached a lot of money to my name in that will. Just wished he'd attached a couple of extra words along with the dough."

"Like 'my son'?" Bill said.

Jim nodded, glad that Bill was tuned into him. That old rapport, that static-free FM wavelength they used to groove on was still working.

"Yeah. Those would do just fine."

"I don't think anyone will doubt you're his son."

"But that's not enough. I need to know it all. What's my nationality? When do I salute or puddle up? Do I stand for the Marseillaise or weep at "Danny Boy"? Should I have a swastika hidden in the bedroom and do secret Sieg Heils every night, or should I be trying a few years in a kibbutz? If I came from Hanley, where the hell did he come from?"

"Judging from your dietary preferences," Carol said, "you must be part Italian."

Bill said, "At least you know who your father is. Was. Obviously he never forgot you."

"Yeah, but he could have legitimized me in print."

He felt Carol's hand slip over his. "You're legitimate to me," she said.

"I think you're pretty legit too," Bill said. "What else do you need?"

"Nothing." Jim couldn't help smiling. "Except maybe figuring out who Mom is."

Bill glanced heavenward. "Lord, teach this man to let things lie… at least for tonight!" Then he looked straight at Jim. "After that I'll do anything I can to help."

"Great! What say we blow this place and head for the Village. It's amateur night at the Wha?"

4

Café Wha?—Greenwich Village

Bill shook his head to clear his buzzing ears. The Wha? was a long, narrow room; the stage was set in the center of the left wall. A Lovin' Spoonful-type quartet that billed itself as Harold's Purple Crayon was carting its equipment off the stage to make room for the next act.

"Loud, but not bad," he said to Jim and Carol. "The harmony was pretty good. And I liked that washboard jug-band number."

"They're not going anywhere," Jim said, quaffing the rest of his bottle of Schaeffer. "Some Stones, some Spoonful, a little Beatles, a touch of the Byrds. I liked them, but they're not commercial. No definite sound. A mishmash. But better than that first group putting Kahlil Gibran to acid rock. Whoa!"

Bill couldn't help laughing. "Jim Stevens, World's Toughest Critic! Gibran's not so bad."

Carol touched his arm. "Let's get back to what you were saying before the band drowned us out. About going up to New Hampshire. Do you really think McCarthy's got a chance in the primary?"

"I think so."

He reached for his beer, not because he had to have a sip at that moment, but to remove his arm from contact with Carol's hand. It felt so nice there, so soft and warm, awakening feelings better left asleep. He glanced at her.

Carol Nevins Stevens: Girl, did I ever have it bad for you. Movies, holding hands, an arm over your shoulder or around your waist, good-night kissing. No further. Puppy love. Now you're a woman and your hair is longer and your figure fuller, but your smile is as dazzling and your eyes are as bright and as blue as ever.

Bill knew she was going to be a problem. Already was. For a couple of nights now, increasingly erotic thoughts of Carol had kept him awake way past his usual bedtime.

Through his years in the seminary he had struggled to condition himself into an automatic observance of his vow of chastity. To become, in a sense, asexual. It hadn't been as difficult as he had thought. At first he had taught himself to approach it as a form of daily Spannungsboden , a self-imposed delay between the desire for something and the act of reaching out for that something. Day after day, he would put off today's sexual desires until tomorrow. But tomorrow never came. The Spannungsboden was interminable.

Over the years it became easier. It had taken time, but now he could reflexively wrap up temptations or potentially troublesome urges and channel them off into oblivion before they could find purchase in his consciousness or his libido.

So why wasn't it working with Carol? Why hadn't he been able to keep her from wandering in and out of his mind since he had seen her last week?

Perhaps because Carol was from before . No woman could find a place in his feelings today, but Carol had lived in that private interior garden before he had erected the walls. He had thought his feelings for her long dead and gone, but apparently it wasn't so. There was still life in those old roots.

Isn't it all foolishness, this celibacy thing?

How many times had he heard that question—from others, from himself? A hostile someone had even quoted Marx to the effect that it was easy to become a saint if one did not want to be a man. Bill's answer was a shrug. Celibacy was part of the package, part of the commitment he had made to God—you give up power, wealth, sexual involvement, and other distractions in order to focus your energies on God. The self-denial tempers the faith.

Bill knew the depth of his faith. It infused his heart and soul and mind. He prided himself on being neither a heavenward-gazing ascetic nor an overgrown altar boy. Both his feet were planted firmly in the real world. His was a mature, intellectualized belief that cut through the fairy tales and myths and Bible stories. He had read the lives and works of the saints, and de Chardin, of course, but he had studied Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Camus, and Sartre as well.

He had handled them with ease. But could he handle Carol?

"I don't trust McCarthy," Jim was saying.

Bill had to laugh. "The return of Cynicalman!"