Hammerport

“Hi, Michelle, this is a nice surprise,” said Jack. “But I’m afraid Billy’s not in right now.”

“Please call me Mizzy, Mr. Gardiner.” Mizzy looked up at Mr. Gardiner with an open glare like bright headlights, lost and needy, that made him want to wince and avert his eyes.

Mr. Gardiner blushed. “Well, um, please call me Jack. Mr. Gardiner seems a little too formal, I think,” said Jack. “As I said Billy’s not in right now. I’m not sure where he is, you know.”

Mizzy was forlorn. “I see.”

“Is everything alright?” asked Jack. Mizzy hadn’t stopped staring upwards at him with those lost headlights. Please save me, he imagined they blinked in Morse code.

Her eyes moistened. “I really wanted to talk to Billy about something.”

“Look, Michelle, I mean Mizzy, is there’s anything I can help with? I’d grab Dawn if I could, you know a woman is probably better for a heart-to-heart than – “ he chuckled “ – an old man like myself, but she’s out at the moment too.”

“I’m not sure if I can go through with the marriage,” she said, collapsing into his chest in a fit of tears. “I’m so scared.” Jack couldn’t actually hear anything she said after that, but his shirt probably did. He took her indoors.

On the sofa, she poured out his heart to him, in between pouring out tears. The little girl was distraught. “I just don’t know if it will work, Mr. Gardiner,” she said. “Many marriages don’t work, I don’t want to be a divorcee by the time I’m 21. That would be just… just awful.” Jack thought she was twenty years of age which made divorce over such a short time span unlikely.

He sat beside her on the sofa with his arms stretched out far and wide, trying in desperation not to physically comfort her, because it just didn’t feel right. Meanwhile, she burrowed into his chest in emotional panic. He had always liked Mizzy but he did not know her very well. She had seemed quite self-confident but now it was a sea of tears. Where was Dawn when you needed her? Taking care of his daughter-in-law-to-be was the not the kind of thing he was genetically built for. He would have blamed his parents if possible, but they were dead, and it possibly didn’t top the list for Essential Qualities in your male offspring. He certainly hadn’t considered it for Billy. Maybe it was time to start thinking about such things.

“Mizzy, look at Dawn and myself. Twenty years of marriage and we’ve never had a doubt. Not a single infidelity. Not even a major argument. Marriage is certainly hard work and you’ve got to put some effort in… but I’m sure you’re the kind of girl that could do a great job. I doubt you’re going to be a divorcee in one year. That’s just crazy, Mizzy.”

Mizzy emerged from depths of his chest that Jack had no idea existed and said, “Do you really think so? Mr. Gardiner? Do you? Really?” What had been beautifully applied mascara had now turned Mizzy into a panda. Her face was soaking wet with tears and her eyes were bloodshot. There was even a little snot dribbling from her nose. The full force of this visage hit Jack hard, or perhaps it was Jack that was hard. It implored. It begged. Please help me, Mr. Gardiner. Please, I need you.

He surprised himself when his arms snapped out of their assigned positions attached to the sofa and moved to hold her gently. “It’ll be fine,” he whispered to her.

Her pupils dilated and piercing, she seemed to stare directly into his brain and rip out what was going on in there. “Do you really think so, Mr. Gardiner?” Her voice was barely audible, cracking over the syllables.

“I know so,” he said and moaned as he leaned into her face and took her lips against him, snot and tears intact. It was such a long time since he had felt such young flesh against his own and guilt fired through him for enjoying this forbidden pleasure. The guilt fired up something in his trousers too.

So they did it on the sofa. They also did it in the marital bed that was meant only for the marital couple. They did it in a motel room three times. Once they did it in the kitchen when Dawn and Billy were waiting for dessert in the main room, but Jack was not proud of this, because he was supposed to be a distance runner when it came to carnal athletics. Every single time she shouted, “Oh Mr. Gardiner,” he felt that what he was doing was incredibly immoral which made him ever the more insatiable to defile her young limbs.

The day before Mizzy was supposed to wed his son, an event that Jack himself had difficult feelings about, the sheriff turned up at the door. Apparently Mizzy had accused old Mr. Gardiner of raping her on a regular basis, threatening to tell Billy if she ever went to the police. Oh woe she was and she could no longer bear the burden. She had cried as she explained that Mr. Gardiner had taken her against a tree once, which Jack was understandably upset about because he would have loved doing it up against a tree sometime. The police were quite taken with her story and those needy, imploring eyes swung their hearts.

It took a month for the whole thing to get straightened out without charges. Consequences were mandatory, however. Billy never talked to his father again. Dawn divorced him in months; twenty years of faithful marriage down the trash compactor. On the plus side, he discovered that deep down he was attracted to pliable, young women and hung out in disreputable bars earning the disreputation of the local lech, buying drinks for any girl who walked through the door and a little extra for any girl who worked through the door to his crotch. It was a far cry from his position as an upstanding pillar of the community, but he was comfortable with his new role. Mizzy had unzipped his trousers and the beast she had unleashed had no immediate plans for a withdrawal.

He heard some things. He heard that Dawn had put her vast alimony funds to good use, such as putting a hit out on Mizzy, changing her mind and paying for the hit to be stopped, then paying blackmail money to the hired/unhired contract killer who had said he had taped their conversations and would send a copy to her ex-husband if she did not meet his demands. The tape was extremely clear.

He heard that Mizzy never did marry Billy. Apparently, it was all too traumatic for her, even though Billy begged her to go ahead with the wedding to spite his father. Well, at least she never had to worry about the possibility of divorce.

“Mi-chelle! Mi-chelle! Mi-chelle!” her Mom chanted from the track’s edge. At the halfway point, Mizzy was the leader of the pack. “Come on, Michelle! You can do it!”

She could do it. Mom had drummed into her that second place is loser’s place; second place was not going to happen. It was more likely that Julie behind her in loser’s place would spontaneously combust and shower the spectators with human ash. Running every day without fail, aided by her Mom who held a stopwatch like she had a beating heart in her grip, the timings had got better each day. Fait accompli. Her feet rode the track with experience, propelling her ever closer to….

Now here was the thing. If she was victorious, she would definitely go forward to represent the school in the state tournament next year. Was she good enough for that? She could beat everyone here, wipe the canteen floor with them bringing out an unfamiliar shine in its surface. But all those other girls from other schools? She didn’t know any of them, their strengths or weaknesses. The finish line was not the line of victory; it was the divide between the certainty of success and the discomforting arrival of the potential to be second. If she made it over the line, her confidence could come to a sticky end. She needed confidence when she went to the prom, not this worry crawling around in her head like termites setting up shop. Eddie would say, hey, what’s the deal, girl? He wouldn’t want to do It with her. And It was more than merely important, It was of celestial significance. Global warming and the plight of the third world was hinging on It. Eddie was sooooo gorgeous.

Anxiety was issuing threats to her legs. Look, legs, her anxiety was saying, stop it, stop it yeah. Do you know what you’re doing? Huh? With its limited lexicon, it made its point.

And where the hell was Dad?

With that thought, her right leg went down sideways and her body pivoted around it, the sprinter becoming ballerina. There was a sound like she had crunched up some nachos, but these were nachos that were inside her leg. She collapsed two metres from the finish line like a building under controlled demolition, causing no damage to any of the nearby sprinters. Julie, after sprinting across the finish, did the Samaritan thing and checked to see if Mizzy was okay. Julie even said, with charitable concern, that Mizzy should not even think about going to the prom for the good of her legs and take it easy over the coming week. She said that, right there on the track.

In the hospital, Dad said everything was cool and was really sorry he couldn’t make it because of the big business deal he’d pulled off with the Cartwrights, which meant the family wallet was going to be not just fat but obese in the years to come. Mom was more than cool, she was Titanic-sinking iceberg cold that her baby could not win one measly race, one measly race was she listening, and commented that Mizzy was the probably the biggest disappointment of a daughter she had ever laid eyes on. She did concede that Mizzy’s leg probably hurt a lot, so okay then, but at least Mizzy should stop crying like some silly teenage girl. Eddie came to see her once but thought that he might break Mizzy’s leg again if he took her to the prom and slept with her afterwards, so he did the right thing and took Julie to the prom and slept with her afterwards. Second place is loser’s place.

Mizzy was comfortable with her stalwart self-esteem and chose to end her athletic pursuits. Running every day would become something she had done in her youth, a pleasant memory. At every dinner, Mom taunted her with that memory by fiddling with the training stopwatch while they ate. Click, start. Click, stop. Click, start. Click, stop.

Winning was not important, knowing you could win or could have won was. And, not that it made her feel any better, oh no not at all, but that bitchwhore Julie got pregnant after prom night.

Of course, such a bright voice could only belong to the rector. Mizzy opened her eyes to confirm her guess. Yup.

He wore a black dress with buttons forming a line down the middle, a dog collar, and a small cross. He was built slightly better than she thought a man of God was likely to be. She also noticed a pair of luminous yellow trainers peeking out from beneath the dress, which could not possibly be part of the orthodox vestments. In his late twenties, he had a good head of blonde hair, but combined with piercing blue eyes, he seemed to possess something of an Aryan semblance. His smile was comforting.

Mizzy was uncomfortable with the black get-up; her local preacher had always dressed in a suit, like a businessman, a Godly entrepreneur who had once said, “You’re fired, you’re going to Hell, son.” Black might look good on the right woman at a party. In a church on a man? Get thee to a tailor and quick sharp honey. There was too much dependence on ritual and spectacle and not enough spirituality; why all these barriers between her and God? Couldn’t someone just give her a straight answer and tell her if God had given her a vision of importance?

“Hello pastor,” Mizzy said to the man.

“Pastor? Oh, please, dear, call me Tom,” the man in black said. It was a refined accent, distant from that Londoner trash, although it did sound condescending.

“Hello… Tom,” she repeated, less than enthusiastically although she offered him a free smile, with no strings attached.

Tom frowned, he obviously wasn’t taken in. “What brings you here, little lady? You seem unhappy.”

“Well that’s a bit of an assump–”

Tom blurted out, “Oh you’re an American! How wonderful. We do get a few Americans in here every now and then.” Realising he had interrupted her, the rector held a palm out and said, “I’m sorry, you were saying?”

Mizzy closed her eyes. “You know what? I am unhappy. You got me, well done, sir.”

“How formal.”

“Well fine, I’ll call you vicar.”

“Why don’t you call me, Tom, dear?”

“Why are you calling me dear, Tom?”

“Well, I guess I just don’t know your name. What’s your name?”

“Why do you wear a dress?”

“It’s not a dress, dear, it’s called a cassock. I know it’s not modern style, but I prefer it. Your name?”

“Mizzy.”

“What a delightful name, how American!” He put his hands together with a slap.

Mizzy was disconcerted by Tom’s emphasis on her American roots. No doubt if she said that she drove a car he would say, oh as an American you must drive on the right-hand side of the road. Maybe he might ask if she had a gun like all Americans have. If he did and she had, then she might use it.

“Does that really sound American? Mizzy? It’s what my friends call me because they think Michelle is a bit too formal. I mean if I had any friends these days, they would call me Mizzy. I think two friends is just a statistical anomaly. Doesn’t really demonstrate friends, right? It just means there are two people who are unluckily intertwined with your life. ”

“Well, Mizzy, what’s up? That is, if not having enough friends with statistical significance isn’t the problem.” Then he added in a crude attempt at an American accent, calmly, “Wassup, girl?” Mizzy could see he was just trying to be open and friendly but he was actually just trying her patience.

She shifted her butt on the pew, finding it hard and uncomfortable. She glanced around for a cushion but none were in evidence. “Oh I used to have friends,” she said slightly distracted, “but I can’t help blaming God for making things turn out this way. Who else would you blame for dreams of stigmata?”

Mizzy thought that once the horse has bolted, there is no point closing the barn doors. When the horse has subsequently given a newspaper interview about how cruel an owner you’ve been and won compensation from you in court, you might as well sell the god damn barn or burn it down for the insurance money. Mizzy could never keep her mouth shut these days, so as she had started to tell Tom her worries, she might as well carry through and tell him the whole story. Yet again, she was telling a random stranger everything. She just couldn’t help herself.

Fortunately for her, Tom was a man of the Church and had to listen to her story. Unfortunately for Tom, he was a man of the Church and had to listen to her story.

Mizzy stared up at St. Benedict’s Church, knowing she appeared to be an American tourist in London to see the sights. She was unhappy with that label. People didn’t attempt to think that maybe she had come here to find something and she was almost out of her savings and down to her last loan now.

She would have to leave soon without any sign of the truth that had been calling to her. Her friends had challenged that it was probably just a wrong number and she should hang up the receiver and get on with the rest of her life. She didn’t have many friends anymore. Although she might have started out with Phoebe, Monica, Rachel, Chandler and even Ross, she was now just Joey, clinging on to the dying embers of fame with a humourless spin-off series.

Space in the City was a scarce commodity and so instead of billowing out horizontally, the white church reached up vertically, resembling a rocket with a bell tower instead of a space module. She sniggered, thinking that the stone rocket church might be able to launch into heaven and meet the Man himself. Or maybe it was a divine warhead, primed and ready to bomb the hell out of the non-believers.

Latin inscriptions above the door boasted divinity that the common man would not be able to comprehend and need the guidance of a priest to mediate with. Gargoyles roosted at irregular points all the way to the top, some grinning as if they were about swoop down and devour the brains of some unsuspecting American tourist, others impassive and menacing; she didn’t want to know what those ones were thinking about doing to her. She didn’t understand why holy places were so practised in the art of demonic sculpture.

It was mid-afternoon and there was no one inside that she could see. She stepped into its interior tentatively, glancing around just in case it was not a real church after all, perhaps just a historical cash cow that charged $5 a pop for a whiff of authentic musty air. She corrected herself, thinking that in London it would be £5, far too much money given the exchange rate. For £5 she would have expected a Disneyland amusement to be incorporated in the price of the entrance fare. Perhaps the rocket church concealed the Holy Hydroslide, in which you could experience the terror of slipping from Heaven to Hell.

The inside was larger than its outside dimensions had led her to believe. Countless rows of empty, wooden pews occupied its expansive volume. Solid, black pillars separated a dull, uninspiring marble floor from a tall ceiling which, to her disappointment, was not adorned with a fresco. A gargantuan organ squatted at the rear, with pipes that lurched out of his hind like the spines of some dinosaur. The spines had a brilliant lustre suggesting the organ was seldom used, lonesome and choirless. Narrow, rough hewn doors flanked the organ, leading to private destinations that the fold were not permitted to go; one of them probably lead to the gaudy pulpit that dominated the interior.

The pulpit was a platform with a shiny, golden frame that resembled the upturned ribcage of some animal and a brightly coloured tapestry was draped over one side of it. She couldn’t make the tapestry out; figures in movement, perhaps a cross was in there somewhere. The pulpit was higher than she would have liked and deduced that the congregation, if it existed, must suffer from a higher-than-national-average number of neck complaints.

Mizzy sat down, despite her fears that she might be charged £5. Outside there were City workers rushing to and fro between offices, projects and Important Meetings. Outside there were taxis and ostentatious cars bustling from one place to another frantic to arrive at destinations with the minimum of collateral damage. Here was the calm and the silence, a cloistered space that held the gift of the reflective moment. The only intrusion was a soft, inquisitive breeze, breathing upon her exposed skin. Peace.

She shut her eyes to contemplate. The troubles she had leapt from. The compass she was seeking. The sadness that was trapped in her eyes. Hello how are you today.

A voice, burdened with excessive joy, boomed over her. “Hello I said, how are you today?”