Sacred: A Novel by Dennis Lehane Read Free Book Online Page A

and she seemed excited and freed of a great weight suddenly. “I get it.”
    “You do?” I leaned forward.
    Her eyes clouded over in confusion again. “No, I don’t.”
    “Oh.” I sat back.
    In the rear corner of the office, over Ginny’s right shoulder, a window rose. The cold, I thought suddenly. She’ll feel the cold air on her back.
    I leaned into her desk. “Modern critical response to the best of popular culture confuses me, Ginny.”
    She flinched, then smiled. It seemed to be her way. “It does.”
    “Utterly,” I said. “And that confusion leads to anger and that anger leads to depression and that depression”—my voice rose and thundered as Angie slid over the windowsill and Ginny’s eyes widened to the size of Frisbees as she watched me, her left hand slipping into her desk drawer—“leads to grief! Real grief, don’t kid yourself, about the decay of art and critical acumen and the end of the millennium and accompanying sense of fin de siècle.”
    Angie’s gloved hand closed the window behind her.
    “Mr….” Ginny said.
    “Doohan,” I said. “Deforest Doohan.”
    “Mr. Doohan,” she said. “Yes. I’m not sure if grief is the correct word for your troubles.”
    “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