The Good Luck of Right Now by Matthew Quick Read Free Book Online

“Drink.”
    I took a sip and felt the burn.
    He downed his in one gulp and his face reddened immediately.
    Mom would have said he “had the blossom.”
    “Bartholomew,” Father McNamee said. “Now that I’ve left the church, I need a place to live. I don’t even own the clothes on my back, technically. My rather well-to-do childhood friend is sending money, but it’s not a fortune. If you take me in, I can also offer you my prayers.”
    “You’re really leaving the church? You’re really renouncing your vows?”
    He nodded and poured more whiskey.
    “Why?”
    “Exodus.”
    “Exodus?”
    “Exodus,” he said.
    “Like Moses?”
    “More like Aaron.”
    Mom had read me biblical stories as a child and I had gone to church every week for my entire life, where I often read the Bible, so I knew that Aaron was Moses’s spokesperson when he led the Jews out of Egypt.
    “I don’t understand what you’re telling me,” I said.
    Father McNamee threw back another three fingers of whiskey and poured himself a fresh glass.
    “Do you ever feel as though God speaks to you, Bartholomew?” He searched my eyes until I looked down at my pizza slice. “Has God sent you any messages lately? Do you know what I’m talking about? Are you the answering machine recording God’s voice? Can you advise me? What has God told you lately? Has He sent you any messages at all—for me or otherwise?”
    I thought about The Girlbrarian first—and then I thought about you, Richard Gere, and the letter Mom left behind for me. I wondered if your letter could have been a message from God, even though you are a Buddhist. (Mysterious ways.) But I didn’t say anything about you to Father McNamee. I don’t know why. Maybe because he looked like a broken-into house.
    “I’ve watched you grow up,” Father McNamee said. “You’ve always been different. And you’ve lived the life of a monk, really. Always at the library reading, studying. Living a quiet, simple existence with your mother, and now . . .”
    He looked out the kitchen window for a long time, although there wasn’t anything to see, except the reflection of the ceiling light that looked like an electric moon.
    “Your father—he was a religious man. Did your mother tell you that?”
    “Yes,” I said. “He was martyred. Killed for the Catholic Church by the Ku Klux Klan.”
    “The Ku Klux Klan ?” Father McNamee said.
    “According to Mom.”
    Father McNamee smiled in this very bemused way—almost like he was being tickled.
    “What else did she tell you about your father?”
    “He was a good man.”
    “He was a good man.”
    “You knew him?”
    Father McNamee nodded solemnly. “He used to confess to me a long time ago. He was deeply religious. Tapped in. God spoke to him. He had visions. His blood runs through your veins.”
    “And my mom’s blood too,” I said, although I’m not sure why.
    Father McNamee had never spoken to me like this before, even when he was fall-down drunk. But Mom had often spoken of my father’s visions. She once told me that my dad would close his eyes so tightly that all he could see was the color red—and then he would hear the unknowable voices of angels, which he described as the high-pitched noise wind makes when rushing through leafy forests, only more musical and divine—and he could understand the angels.
    “She lives on through you,” Father McNamee said. “Your mother. That’s true.”
    When it was clear he wasn’t going to say anything else, I said, “Do you really want to live with me?”
    “I do.”
    “Why?”
    “God told me to do something a long time ago, but I’m only getting around to it now. Mostly because God is giving me the silent treatment at the present moment.”
    “What?”
    “Am I not speaking clearly?”
    “No. I mean, yes,” I said. This was a lot to take in. “What exactly did God tell you?”
    “‘Defrock yourself and live with Bartholomew Neil.’ Again, it was a long time ago. I think