Ray Bradbury - Long After Midnight

They all thought for a while, as the ambulance purred between quiet palisades and now quiet sea and maybe two of them thought fleetingly of their wives and tra*ct houses and sleeping children and all the times years ago when they had driven to the beach and broken out the beer and necked up in the rocks and lay around on the blankets with guitars, singing and feeling like life would go on just as far as the ocean went, which was very far, and maybe they didn't think that at all. Latting, looking up at the backs of the two older men's necks, hoped or perhaps only nebulously wondered if these men remembered any first kisses, the taste of salt on the lips. Had there ever been a time when they had stomped the sand like mad bulls and yelled out of sheer joy and dared the universe to put them down? • And by their silence, Latting knew that yes, with all his talking, and the night, and the wind, and the cliff and the tree and the rope, he had gotten through to them; it, the event, had gotten through to them. Right now, they had to be thinking of their wives in their warm beds, long dark miles away, unbelievable, suddenly unattainable while here they were driving along a salt-layered road at a dumb hour half between certainties, bearing with them a strange thing on a cot and a used length of rope.

"Her boyfriend," said Latting, "will be out dancing tomorrow night with somebody else. That gripes my gut."

"I wouldn't mind," said Carlson, "beating the hell out of him."

Latting moved the sheet. "They sure wear their hair crazy and short, some of them. All curls, but short. Too much makeup. Too—" He stopped.

"You were saying?" asked Moreno.

Latting moved the sheet some more. He said nothing. In the next minute there was a rustling sound of the sheet, moved now here, now there. Latting's face was pale.

"Hey," he murmured, at last. "Hey."

Instinctively, Moreno slowed the ambulance.

"Yeah, kid?"

"I just found out something," said Latting. "I had this feeling all along, she's wearing too much make-up, and the hair, and—"

"So?"

"Well, for God's sake," said Latting, his lips hardly moving, one hand up to feel his own face to see what its expression was. "You want to know something funny?"

"Make us laugh," said Carlson.

The ambulance slowed even more as Latting said, "It's not a woman. I mean, ifs not a girl.-1 mean, well, it's not a female. Understand?"

The ambulance slowed to a crawl.

The wind blew in off the vague morning sea through the window as the two up front turned and stared into the back of the ambulance at the shape there on the cot.

"Somebody tell me," said Latting, so quietly they almost could not hear the words. "Do we stop feeling bad now? Or do we feel worse?"

Nobody answered.

A wave, and then another, and then another, moved in and fell upon the mindless shore.

Have I Got a Chocolate Bar for You!

It all began with the smell of chocolate.

On a steaming late afternoon of June rain, Father Malley drowsed in his confessional, waiting for penitents.

Where in all the world were they? he wondered. Immense traffics of sin lurked beyond in the warm rains. Then why not immense traffics of confession here?

Father Malley stirred and blinked.

Today's sinners moved so fast in their cars that this old church was an ecclesiastical blur. And himself? An ancient watercolor priest, tints fading fast, trapped inside.

Let's give it another five minutes and stop, he thought, not in panic but in the kind of quiet shame and desperation that neglect shoulders on a man.

There was a rustle from beyond the confessional grate next door.

Father Malley sat up, quickly.

A smell of chocolate sifted through the grille.

Ah, God, thought the priest, it's a lad with his small basket of sins soon laid to rest and him gone. Well...

The old priest leaned to the grate where the candy essence lingered and where the words must come.

But, no words. No "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned..."

Only strange small mouse-sounds of ... chewingl

The sinner in the next booth, God sew up his mouth, was actually sitting in there devouring a candy bar!

"No!" whispered the priest, to himself.

His stomach, gathering data, rumbled, reminding him that he had not eaten since breakfast. For some sin of pride which he could not now recall, he had nailed himself to a saint's diet all day, and now— this!

Next door, the chewing continued.

Father Malley's stomach growled. He leaned hard against the grille, shut his eyes, and cried:

"Stop that!"

The mouse-nibbling stopped.

The smell of chocolate faded.

A young man's voice said, "That's exactly why I've come, Father."

The priest opened one eye to examine the shadow behind the screen.

"What's exactly why you've come?"

"The chocolate, Father."

"The what?"

"Don't be angry, Father."

"Angry, hell, who's angry?"

"You are, Father. I'm damned and burnt before I start, by the sound of your voice."

The priest sank back in the creaking leather and mopped his face and shook his senses."

"Yes, yes. The day's hot. I'm out of temper. But then, I never had much."

"It will cool off later in the day, Father. You'll be fine."

The old priest eyed the screen. "Who's taking and who's giving confession here?"

"Why, you are, Father."

"Then, get on with it!"

The voice hastened forth the facts:

"You have smelled the chocolate, Father?"

The priest's stomach answered for him, faintly.

Both listened to the sad sound. Then:

"Well, Father, to hit it on the head, I was and still am a ... chocolate junkie."

Old fires stirred in the priest's eyes. Curiosity became humor, then laughed itself back to curiosity again.

"And that's why you've come to confession this day?"

"That's it, sir, or/Father."

"You haven't come about sweating over your sister or blueprints for fornication or self-battles with tie grand war of masturbation?"

"I have not, Father," said the voice in remorse.

The priest caught the tone and said, "Tut, tut, if s all right You'll get around to it For now, you're a grand relief. I'm full-up with wandering males and lonely females and all the junk they read in books and try in waterbeds and sink from sight with suffocating cries as the damn things spring leaks and all is lost Get on. You have bruised my antennae alert Say more."

"Well, Father, I have eaten, even- day of my life now for ten or twelve years, one or two pounds of chocolate. I cannot leave it alone, Father. It is the end-all and be-all of my life."

"Sounds like a fearful affliction of lumps, acne, carbuncles, and pimples."

"It was. It is."

"And not exactly contributing to a lean figure."

"If I leaned, Father, tie confessional would fall over."

The cabinet around them creaked and groaned as the hidden figure beyond demonstrated.

"Sit still!" cried the priest

The groaning stopped.

The priest was wide awake now and feeling splendid.

Never in years had he felt so alive and aware of his happily curious and beating heart and fine blood that sought and found, sought and found the far corners of his cloth and body.

The heat of the day was gone.

He felt immensely cool. A kind of excitement pulsed his wrists and lingered in his throat. He leaned almost like a lover to the grille and prompted more spillage.

"Oh, lad, you're rare."

"And sad, Father, and twenty-two years old and put upon, and hate myself for eating, and need to do something about it."

"Have you tried chewing more and swallowing less?"

"Oh, each night I go to bed saying: Lord, put off the crunch-bars and the milk-chocolate kisses and the Hershey's. Each morning I rave out of bed and run to the liquor store not for liquor but for eight Nestle's in a row! I'm in sugar-shock by noon."