Gods Go Begging by Alfredo Vea Read Free Book Online Page A

given up considering such foolish things.
    “Hell, ten synchronous neurons could be an entire dream, a whole universe! She could be dreaming right now,” the assistant said to no one. “Their spirits could be searching for each other, maybe even linking up.” He heard his own voice coming back to him again and again as he looked down at Jane Doe number 37 and her lover. Before leaving the room he made his final entry:

    “The heart weighs two hundred eighty-three grams.”
    Even as he wrote, he realized with a sudden rush of terror that this career would stalk him; it would take careful aim at his native curiosity, his romanticism, his passion. For the first time in his life, he felt the full weight of his own heart. In time even his wife’s lovely ears would become unremarkable.
    “They both could be dreaming right now.”

2

    the house of toast
    Down deep in the restricted bowels of the Hall of Justice a small windowless cafeteria rang with sharp laughter. It was not the blithe, easygoing talcum and Rolex mirth of manicured civil lawyers that was swirled over heaps of greasy chow mein and between heated steam tables filled with glistening fried rice and orange-tinged meat-loaf. Nor was it the modest giggle, the discreet holy titter and righteous snickering of newly ordained assistant district attorneys that caused the overhead lamps and the menu board to shiver.
    It was icy gallows humor, foxhole laughter soaked with dolor and with the great relief that remains when hours and days of mental trauma are now only harmless memories, though still very painful ones. It was the numbed laughter of wary men and women who know that a recurring danger has passed … for the moment. This kind of solemn mirth did not occur very often. It was a periodic ritual with a liturgy that included obsessive declarations of worry, grief, and panic and an occasional word of joy. This rite of laughter was a rhythmic purging, a monthly concurrence evolved over time to match the phases of the moon, much as when the menstrual periods of a group of close female friends have slowly become synchronized.
    More often than not, defense lawyers met in this cafeteria to grumble about pro-prosecution judges, to wait nervously for jury verdicts, or to swig down cups of acrid caffeine and to bounce questions off the mind of a peer.
    “What will the jury think about these facts? My client is one of five Mexican guys arrested in a 1954 Nash Rambler parked behind the Sheraton Palace Hotel at three in the morning.”
    “There’s probable cause to arrest right there,” interjected a voice.
    “Suppose each one of the suspects had a flashlight, a pair of pliers, and a screwdriver in his pocket. Further suppose that one of the windows at the loading dock had been broken but nothing was taken. No prints were lifted from the glass or the sill. It’s all circumstantial, right?”
    But periodically, something more was called for. An organic imperative demanded ceremony: a formal gathering of warriors and a holy, saturnalian festival of sardonic humor. It was a profound act of ritual purification, an act of mending. It was incantatory, a precious rite of common healing. These war stories always began with the defense attorney’s preamble: “I once had this guy.”
    “I once had this guy, a fifty-year-old child molester who woke up one morning believing that a ghost was trying to rape him. This guy was so terrified of being sodomized by this ghost that he came to court with his left hand down the back of his pants and his thumb jammed right up into his asshole. I can still see him now,” said the laughing lawyer, “bouncing around the courtroom like a paranoid jumping bean, making sure his back was never turned toward the spirit world.” The speaker shook his head at the memory. “He was all right until some smartass bailiff told him that a pervert ghost could poke him right through the wall. When my boy heard that, his tiny mind just snapped in two. Within