Decatur by Patricia Lynch

go without a goodbye either.”
    There was an electric pause, Gar chewed on his lower lip thoughtfully. “I did kinda want to have a conversation with the Monsignor before I left.”
    “He’s a wonderful person to talk to,” Father Troy sniffed, blinking his stinging eyes and putting back on his glasses.
    Gar put a hand on Father Troy’s shoulder then. “It’s okay there, big padre. It’s alright. I’ll at least stay the night.” Then without another word, he picked back up the duffle bag and trudged back upstairs.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Rowley’s Intuition
    The rain had finally stopped and the sunset was like buried gold in the thick grey clouds. The ugly modern streetlights weren’t on yet and Marilyn was waiting for Max just outside the restaurant doors in the amber light cast by the carriage-style fixtures that marked the Surrey’s entrance. Moths were already gathering and Marilyn’s cigarette smoke wafted up and their wings fluttered in a veil of yellow light. The pale green ’66 Impala came down the street slowly without headlights on and stopped across the street, almost a half a block down from the Surrey. The lights flashed once. Good, thought Marilyn, this one’s smart, no need to advertise their relationship, it would just cause more talk. She sprinted for the car before Scott could see out the front blinds where she went.
    “I’ve been thinking about our last session and I had a dream last night. I’ve had it before too. It was funny, though because I think this is the first time I really knew that I’ve had it before.” she said as Max steered the car slowly away from downtown towards the neighborhoods both fancy and shabby that extended west ending in Charlesworth campus.
    “Recurring dreams are usually about things deeply imbedded in your unconscious. What was it?” he asked, looking in the rear view mirror.
    “Why don’t you help me walk Rowley and I’ll take you some place where I’ve spent a lot of time. That way I can kinda work up to it to spilling all this personal stuff. It’s hard for me but I’ve got to try, right?” Marilyn pulled her cherry red cashmere cardigan tight around her black rayon uniform. The pearl buttoned sweater was straight out of the sixties but far better than anything she could have afforded new. Marilyn often shopped the garage sales in the four blocks of well-cared-for large older homes that bordered the poorer dilapidated North Street where her duplex was.
    Max parked the car in front of the white clapboard house where Marilyn lived upstairs. The houses were jammed together with little side yards running like borders between them. There weren’t a lot of trees, but sticker bushes seemed to be in front of every porch. The ugly streetlights on the corners came on making freakish shadows of low-hanging wires that crisscrossed the streets. You could hear basketballs bouncing on concrete now that the rain had stopped and through open windows smell a pungent weekday mix of cabbage and ham or chicken with Lipton onion soup mix and noodles cooking, along with the sounds of the Chicago White Sox game coming over the radios and TV’s.
    Marilyn used an old skeleton key to open the door to the duplex, it was a grainy walnut door with a round of glass and a very tired lace curtain stretched over it. The porch light made a little circle on the grey floorboards and Marilyn’s beautiful black wavy hair fell across her face as she opened the door. The contrast between her vibrant lush body barely contained in the red cardigan and black uniform, with the red, red lips and the mean, used-up neighborhood was not lost on Max. He felt almost like he was high again, a really good high where you realize how the sweet and the bitter make life worth living. The stairs were steep that lead up to Marilyn’s door and the hallway was covered in a faded green-grey wallpaper with garlands of yellow flowers. As they came into the hallway a dog barked twice and there was an angry thump