It’s been a few weeks since I’ve written. The last time I wrote we were on our way to bogus theater auditions where Sammy had promised a fabulous performance. Even Boyce said he was going to audition. On the way to the university, however, right on the interstate, we got a flat tire on Boyce’s van. It was raining pretty hard, and there was a good bit of traffic, so it took a while for us to get it changed. Once we knew we weren’t going to make it to the theater we started performing our auditions for each other in the rain on the interstate shoulder. With a jack handle in his hand Sammy recited an interview by Randy “The Macho Man” Savage. Whenever a car drove by Sammy would shake the jack handle and scream something about defending the intercontinental title. I went next, but even in the rain on the side of a busy interstate with Boyce screaming at lugnuts, I still got performance anxiety. So all I did was recite bird names again. Boyce went next. Apparently his audition was to tell a story that happened to him when he was a kid. Boyce’s uncle used to have a farm, and while he was visiting one of the cows began to have a baby. So there in the middle of the rain, Boyce told us the story of tying a chain around two of the calf’s legs that hung out of the mother, and how he and his uncle pulled the rest of the calf out. Around that time a car pulled off on the shoulder and rolled down the window to see if we needed help. Sammy made motions for Boyce to keep telling the story, so the good man’s question of, “Are you guys doing okay?” was met with these words: “Turns out there was a lot of blood that came with the delivery because she hemorrhaged, but it wasn’t too bad that we couldn’t eat her.” The guy in the car stuck his head out the window and said, “What?”, like maybe Boyce had said, “We could sure use some help, friend.” But then Boyce shouted, “She hemorrhaged a lot of blood but we still ate her!” Then the guy rolled up his window and drove away.
We never got to the audition because we were pretty satisfied with freaking that guy out who didn’t want anything but to help us. We went to a diner instead and let Boyce complain about his van and his job for a while. After a period of quiet while we were all eating hash browns and toast, I felt a hand on my shoulder. When I looked up it was someone I hadn’t seen in a real long time. It was Rachel’s old priest. He said my name real slowly, “Cyrus,” and then asked how I was doing. I told him I didn’t get to theater auditions because of a flat tire on the interstate, and Rachel’s priest looked at Boyce and Sammy kind of the same way that guy did who wanted to help us. Rachel’s priest said he hadn’t seen me in a long time, and that he would like to see me in church again. Then he nodded at us and started to walk away to the people he was leaving with. Then he stopped and said, “You know, Cyrus, I’m not mad at you. You’re welcome any time.” He paused, and like he was reminding me that I was soon to die, said, “Rachel would like it if you came.” So I told him—and Sammy said I was practically pointing a ketchupy fork at him—“You think you know what she would want?” He didn’t pause, and just said, “Yes.”
I said, “How cosmic of you,” and then asked Boyce, “So you're saying the wingspan of the Great Egret is over four feet,” because I wanted to fake that I wasn’t going to pay him any attention.
I should explain that it wasn’t long after I met Rachel that I could tell she was religious, or as my mother would say, “mummy-man for Jesus.” This is how my mother referred to religious people. All religious people. So when she was buying cigarettes from the Indian who had a little god on the counter, my mother whispered to me, “See all those arms on that thing? That’s a lot of mummy-man for Jesus.” When she watched a movie that involved a Jewish character, she said, “You can mummy-man for Jesus all you like, Shalom the Great.” The first time Sammy ever heard my mom say that, I thought he was going to have a heart attack. My mother hated Sammy a scary amount, but Sammy still loved her because she said things like “mummy-man for Jesus” about religious people and called books “heap-a-shits.”
When I realized Rachel was religious, I told her I’d like to be a gladiator for Jesus. She didn’t know what I was talking about, so after around five or six times of trying to remember what uncool teenagers called their religion at the Sleep Center, I finally just asked her to go to church. She picked me up in her car that Sunday morning which was pretty awesome, but there were other people in the car so that wasn’t great. But the other people in the car were married, so it was easy to imagine Rachel and I married then. The first incident came when the priest was talking to the people and he said that some Jews tore up a guy’s roof to lower their friend to see Jesus. And I don’t know why but I thought that was a little funny. I think most religious stuff is pretty funny or stupid, especially Janice at the Sleep Center who tried to tell me about hell and how much pain is there. Janice said she’s worried I’m going to hell and then she said she loves me. I laughed hard in her face for a second, then told her anything Loki’s daughter can throw at me would be easier to take than not having Rachel around.
Anyway, when the priest said that thing about the roof I thought he was making a joke. I didn’t think it was very funny, but I wanted to be polite, so I laughed really hard. No one else did. So I got confused and announced, “I’m not laughing because they’re Jewish.” Then some people laughed. Things only got worse when Rachel went up to get some bread and wine from the priest’s goblet that looked like it came from an estate sale at Gandalf’s summer home. She didn’t notice I guess, but I got in line a few people after her. When I got up to the goblet the priest looked at me funny, and I didn’t understand. So I pulled out my wallet and showed him my driver’s license. That made him look at me funny even more, and then he told me to go sit down. He said it politely, so I wasn’t sure what he wanted from me. Was it a suggestion to sit down, or was it a request for me to reach out and take that big goblet from him? I don’t know why, but I picked the latter and grabbed the goblet. But then another guy took it from me and someone from behind the line walked me over to Rachel and asked her if I was retarded. He asked Rachel real sweetly—which made it worse, since the guy wasn’t making fun of me but seriously thought I might be retarded.
Rachel was mortified by the whole thing. She spent a good bit of time before we went home speaking with some of her girlfriends. They must have told her what to do because when she dropped me off at the house she said, “Cyrus, you know I’m not looking for anything romantic.” I told her I was gay and then tried to explain what it is I find attractive about a man, but she told me to stop. She told me that if I ever wanted to see her again I’d have to get it through my head that nothing was ever going to happen. I said okay. I tried to say it real charming so she’d kiss me afterward, but she didn’t. She apologized for what happened at church, said it was all her fault, and that I could come back if I wanted.
When Rachel’s priest walked out of the diner that night Boyce and Sammy asked how long I was going to need. I said a few weeks.
P.S. It’s not all her fault. It’s his. And no one gets to come back.
