Sacred

“And Björk,” I said. “Explain Björk.”

“Well, I can’t,” she said. “But I’m sure Manny can.”

“Manny?” I said as the door behind me opened.

“Yes, Manny,” Ginny said with the hint of a self-satisfied smile. “Manny is one of our counselors.”

“You have a counselor,” I said, “named Manny?”

“Hello, Mr. Doohan,” Manny said and came around in front of me with his hand outstretched.

Manny, I ascertained by craning my neck to look up, was huge. Manny was humongous. Manny, I have to tell you, wasn’t a person. He was an industrial complex with feet.

“Hi, Manny,” I said as my hand disappeared into one of the catcher’s mitts attached to his wrists.

“Hi yourself, Mr. Doohan. What seems to be the problem?”

“Grief,” I said.

“Lotta that going around,” Manny said. And smiled.

Manny and I walked cautiously along the icy sidewalks and streets as we cut around the Public Garden toward the Grief Release Therapeutic Center on Beacon Street. Manny kindly explained that I’d made the common, understandable mistake of walking into the business offices of Grief Release when obviously I was seeking help of a more therapeutic nature.

“Obviously,” I agreed.

“So what’s bothering you, Mr. Doohan?” Manny had the softest voice for a man his size. It was calm, earnest, the voice of a kind uncle.

“Well, I don’t know, Manny,” I said as we waited for a break in the rush hour traffic at the corner of Beacon and Arlington. “I’ve become saddened lately by the state of it all. The world, you know. America.”

Manny touched the back of my elbow and led me into a momentary lull in the traffic. His hand was firm, strong, and he walked with the strides of a man who’d never known fear or hesitation. When we reached the other side of Beacon, he dropped his hand from my elbow, and we headed east into the stiff breeze.

“What do you do for work, Mr. Doohan?”

“Advertising,” I said.

“Ah,” he said. “Ah, yes. A member of the mass media conglomerate.”

“If you say so, Manny.”

As we neared the Therapeutic Center, I noticed a familiar group of kids in their late teens wearing identical white shirts and sharply pressed olive trousers. They were all male, all with neatly clipped hair, and all wore similar leather bomber jackets.

“Have you received the Message?” one of them asked an older couple ahead of us. He thrust a piece of paper at the woman, but she swiveled past him with a practiced sidestep that left his hand holding the paper to empty space.

“Messengers,” I said to Manny.

“Yes,” Manny said with a sigh. “This is one of their preferred corners for some reason.”

The “Messengers” were what Bostonians called these earnest youth who stepped suddenly out from crowds and thrust literature at your chest. Usually male, sometimes female, they wore the white and olive uniform and the short hair, and their eyes were usually kind and innocent with just a touch of a fever in the irises.

They were members of the Church of Truth and Revelation and unfailingly polite. All they wanted was for you to take a few minutes and listen to their “message,” which I think had to do with the coming apocalypse or rapture or whatever happened when the Four Horsemen descended from the heavens and galloped down Tremont Street and hell opened up beneath the earth to swallow the sinners or those who’d ignored the Message, which I think was the same thing.

These particular kids worked this corner hard, dancing around people and threading themselves through the weary crowd of pedestrians heading home from a day’s work.

“Won’t you receive the Message while there’s still time?” One desperately asked a man who took the piece of paper and kept walking, balling it in his fist as he went.

But Manny and I, it seemed, were invisible. Not one kid came near us as we approached the doorway of the Therapeutic Center. In fact, they moved away from us in a sudden wave.

I looked at Manny. “You know these kids?”

He shook his massive head. “No, Mr. Doohan.”

“They seem to know you, Manny.”

“Probably recognize me from being around here so often.”

“Sure,” I said.

As he opened the door and stepped aside so I’d enter first, one of the kids glanced at him. The kid was about seventeen, with a light freckling of acne across his cheeks. He was bowlegged and so thin I was sure the next strong gust of winter would cast him into the street. His glance at Manny lasted about a quarter of a second, but it was telling enough.

This kid had seen Manny before, no question, and he was afraid of him.

6

“Hello!”

“Hello!”

“Hello!”

“Good to see you!”

Four people were coining out as Manny and I entered. And God, were they happy people. Three women and a man, their faces glazed with joy, their eyes bright and clear, their bodies damn near rippling with vigor.

“Staffers?” I said.

“Hmm?” Manny said.

“Those four,” I said. “Staffers?”

“And clients,” Manny said.

“You mean some were staffers, some were clients?”

“Yes,” Manny said. Obtuse bastard, our Manny.

“They don’t seem terribly grief-stricken.”

“We aim to cure, Mr. Doohan. I’d say your assessment is a selling point of our operation, wouldn’t you?”

We passed through the foyer and climbed the right side of a butterfly staircase that seemed to take up most of the first floor. The steps were carpeted and a chandelier the size of a Cadillac hung down between the wings of the staircase.

Must be a lot of grief going around to pay for this place. No wonder everyone seemed so happy. Grief, it seemed, was definitely a growth industry.

At the top of the stairs, Manny pulled back two great oaken doors and we stepped onto a parquet floor that seemed to run for a mile or so. The room had probably been a ballroom once. The ceiling was two stories up, painted a bright blue with gold etchings of angels and creatures of myth floating side by side. Several more Cadillac chandeliers shared space with the angels. The walls bore heavy burgundy brocades and Roman tapes tries. Couches and settees and the odd desk or two occupied the floor where once Boston’s staunchest Victorians, I was sure, had danced and gossiped.

“Some building,” I said.