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"Does God love Satan?"
"What kind of question is that?"
"What do you mean ’what kind of question is that?’ It’s a question question."
"It’s a bullshit question."
"You’re just afraid of what derives from the answer."
"I ain’t scared of nothing."
"Then give me the answer."
"I don’t know the answer."
"Ok, then, I’ll give you the answer."
"What is the answer?" you ask.
"Yes." Phyllis removes the ice bag from your ankle and begins applying an elastic bandage.
You take the bait. "God cannot love Satan," you say.
"I knew you would say that," Phyllis smiles sweetly. "But you said it yourself. God is love. Therefore, God cannot not love. Therefore, God loves Satan."
"I also said that Satan is a fallen angel."
"I hope you’re not suggesting that God denies him love because he is fallen."
"Well," you can hear the uncertainty in your voice, "yes."
Phyllis’ smile fades a little. "You’re so easy," he says. He finishes the ankle and moves to the elbow. "We are all fallen," he says. "None of us are wise."
He looks you in the eye, and for the first time you can almost see an innocence there, an almost child like quality.
He cleans the gash on your elbow with alcohol, and slaps a bandage on it. "You should have both of these X-rayed." Then he says, "If he denies Satan love, he denies us all love."
"We are His children."
"Satan is His son."
"Satan is competing with God for our loyalty."
"Only because God allows it."
"God doesn’t allow it."
"At the very least, it is with God’s tacit consent." Phyllis continues, "I would argue that it is with God’s explicit consent, in fact, according to God’s plan. But that might be more than you can handle."
"Don’t fuckin’ talk down to me."
He puts his medical supplies away, and wipes the table. "I talked to the big bazooka today."
"What did you say?"
"Nothing. It’s what he said."
"Ok, what did he say?"
"He wants to come back."
"Do you want him back?"
"I don’t know. I told him I had someone new." He looks at you carefully to measure your response.
"This is awkward," you say.
"I thought you would appreciate the beauty in this."
You ponder a moment. "Do you want me to leave?"
"No."
"You can’t be asking for a commitment," you say. "What happened to honesty?"
"I want both."
"You can’t have both. There is no ’Shanti and Phyllis. We hardly know each other."
Phyllis pauses a moment. "He said something else. Something about the case."
"What?!"
"Simply that there has been a serious new development."
"What is it?!" you ask again.
"He didn’t say."
"Bullshit! Tell me what he said."
"What was it?"
You pound the table once hard with your fist, "Damn." You want to stand up and storm out, but your ankle hurts too much. "Are you being straight with me?"
"I never lie," he says.
You push yourself up from the table. "I’ve got to talk to Jean." You say, "when did you talk to the bazooka?"
"This morning," he answers. "That’s where I was when you woke up."
You use the cell phone to call Jean, and tell her to meet you at a rest stop on the road out of town. You hobble out to the car. As you pull away from the curb, you notice a car parked not far behind you with a person that looks a lot like Detective Middleman sitting in it. You pull up to the light at the corner, and signal a right turn. You look both ways, and turn on red. You’re heading for the expressway. There are so many questions you have to ask Jean, and you have to look her in the eye when she answers. Lawyers have a way of lying even when they don’t have to. This time you need the truth. What exactly did she find out at the police station? Who said what to whom? You need details. You need to know if she knows anything about a big break in the case.
As you approach the expressway, the car with the Middleman look-alike is a couple of cars behind you. That couldn’t be him for real, could it? You pull onto the entry ramp and hit the gas to merge. You quickly cruise over to the fast lane, pass a couple of cars, then pull into the lane on the right and slow way down.
The car behind you makes the exact same maneuver. But when you pull to the right, you make sure there isn’t enough room for him to pull in behind you. His momentum carries him almost up even with you. You look over quickly. It is Middleman. Where’s Jack? You dart into the lane to the right, and floor it. This lane is clear for a ways, and you are able to put some distance between you and him. The traffic breaks up, and there is a long space between the pack of cars you’re leading, and the pack ahead of you. You press the pedal hard. As you approach the pack ahead of you, you can see Middleman breaking out of the pack behind you. He’s closing in.
Off in the distance, the road curves wide to the left. There is a large wooded area on the right, and farm land on the left. A house and barn and silo sit off in the middle of the field. The house is flanked by small clumps of trees.
Near the horizon, you can see traffic on the median strip. There are three police cars with red and blue flashing lights chasing another guy in your direction. The ground in the median must be bumpy, because the guy being chased is bouncing almost out of control. To stabilize his ride, he pulls onto the shoulder of the oncoming traffic. You hit your brakes, and the brake lights on all the cars ahead of you immediately go on. Somebody in the pack loses control, and swerves to the right. The car two cars ahead of you swerves to the left to avoid hitting him in the rear, and swerves directly into the path of the police chase. All you can hear is screeching rubber. The two cars crash head on so hard, that they bounce straight into the air about fifteen feet. The sound of crushing steel and breaking glass on impact puts a lump in your stomach, because you know no one could have survived the hit.
Right before your eyes, the order that was traffic flips into chaos. Cars are hitting each other and spinning out of control leaving glass and twisted debris in their wake. The pickup truck directly in front of you crashes into one of the two cars that crashed head on. As he hits, the rear of the truck rises up high enough for you to see everything from the front axle to the muffler. You are pressing the brakes as hard as you can, but you feel as if the car is not slowing down at all. You can hear your own wheels crying to stop, but the car feels like it is on ice. As the truck ahead of you begins to come back down, your fear is that you will slide under it and be crushed. You are squeezing the steering wheel with all your strength. The truck slams down missing your car by about six inches. Still sliding forward and swerving to the right, it slides into the next lane, and clips the car beside you. That car swerves into a concrete embankment. The truck spins enough for you to see the kid that was driving. He’s about nineteen, and he is dead. The grill is crushed next to the windshield. The engine is sitting in his lap. His truck slides off to the right and rolls into a ditch.
All of a sudden, the road ahead of you is clear. The chaos continues in your rearview mirror. Middleman is taken out by a wheel flying into his windshield. It crushes the glass on the passenger side forcing him to lose control. His car swerves to the left, then to the right and spins around. The car is facing the opposite direction. He pulls off the road. You take your foot off the brake, and ease it over to the gas.
"You little dick sucking prick! He was out there waiting for me."
"No," Phyllis says. "We didn’t talk about you. He didn’t know you were here."
"You’re a lie," you say. "I’m getting the fuck out of here."
"Don’t go," he says. "You are safe here. I swear."
"Now can I trust you? You led him straight here."
"No, I didn’t."
"Then why was he here? How did he know how to find me."
"Maybe he didn’t. Maybe finding you here was a lucky break."
"You mean ...."
"You got it smart guy."
"I don’t want maybe," you say.
"Maybe is all there is."
"Bullshit!" You say, "some things are certain."
"If certainty existed, there would be no need for faith."
"You are so full of shit," you say.
"So name something that is certain."
"That I cannot trust you."
"But you can."
"How can I?"
"Judge me by my actions."
"What actions?"
"By what I did this morning."
"Ok, I’ll bite."
"I went to tell the bazooka that I never wanted to see him again."
"Why did you tell him that?"
"It was a leap of faith."
"To what end?"
"I don’t know," he says. "That is the essence of faith."
"You’re an idiot! You can’t have me. So by cutting him loose, you have nothing."
"It is not certain that I cannot have you."
"That part is certain."
He looks at you as you arrange the stoneyness in your face for emphasis. He blinks once and slowly smiles. "So what are you going to do?"
You pause. "I have no options."
"You have two options. You can go or you can stay."
"What changes if I stay?"
"Nothing," he says. "If you stay, I will fix some food like the dutiful wife that I am."
"... that you want to be."
"You pick your words, and I’ll pick mine."
"And the bazooka?"
"He knows better than to bother you here. You see, he’s still in the closet. He can’t even send that flunky Jack, because even he doesn’t know that Arnie is gay."
"And if I go?"
"You’ll be gone."
You ponder a moment. Then you say, "I hate this."
He says, "I’ll slip into something nice."
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