As for his sister the whore, as he became accustomed to calling her during one of his many long and forlorn walks, mulling over his troubles, in a family with parents who considered communication as secondary to (well, they never mentioned what it might be secondary to), and in whose home there seemed to be more silence than if they were all buried six feet beneath the earth, who went along their twenty odd years together in stiffly grim and mute conduct with each other, where everything concerning feeling was to be submerged, and learned, it seemed, by osmosis, or perhaps, in understandably emotional occasions, by the twitching of an eyebrow, she became immersed in her own world of feeling. One spring Sunday morning when she was ten years old, as she and her parents walked to their car after church, she announced that she wanted to go to Hell, saying in a playful but still serious way that Hell was the place for her. After beating her, her parents explained that she wouldn’t go to Hell because she was a nice girl and that only bad people went to Hell. “I want to be bad, though,” she’d said, and from then on was determined to have her way. She started to steal like her brother, but he called her a copycat so she stopped. So then, since sex seemed like the worst crime for a Catholic until marriage, when it becomes a pardonable crime, she tried to become a tramp, first looking the word up in the college dictionary, then asking her classmates what one acted like, and then trying to look like one and walk like one and talk like one so that by the time she was a teenager she was proudly announcing to her classmates, “I’m a whore,” and started to prove it to the boys whom she figured wanted to be bad like her, and therefore it was better to know them now anyway so she wouldn’t be seeing strangers in hell—wouldn’t have to go through all the trouble of introducing herself when she first got there.

Young Don wanted to be a comedian, but when he realized that he wasn’t funny at all, after he couldn’t make a bunch of very drunk friends even smirk at any of his jokes, he decided the best thing to do would be to at least be named after his favorite comedian. So he changed his name from Riccio to Rickles, thus also disassociating himself further from his thieving, whoring, silent family. He didn’t know what to do with his life as he reached adulthood. He was shy with women, couldn’t make anyone laugh, was a C average student, had no skill with his hands, and had a slight facial tic, so one day he decided that, what the hell, he would be a priest. The hours were good, and he would get to read all he wanted. Besides, it was a good way to get away from his crazy family.

Now, twenty years later, he was ready to quit, long tired of his priestly life. Besides, he’d found out early on that he liked women a lot more than reading anyway. He often changed clothes and hopped into his car or on a train, traveling hundreds of miles just to allow himself a glance at a woman. Even then, sometimes he would be recognized. “Hey Father, how you doin’!” a drunk man yelled at him on a NYC subway train after he’d sat next to and said hello to a pretty blonde woman.

So, rather than go on pretending and feeling humiliated (even the memory of the drunk man’s words made him shudder now) he decided to quit the priesthood. He would have to wait for Frank to finish the gutters and for Yoramin to heal and get out, but he was determined that he was going to leave his old life behind.

***

A few days later, a pre-occupied Don was taking a morning walk with Frank along the garden. Frank began to sing “I Wish I Knew” as they passed through a white trellis when a flash of light and an audible pop made them stop. Startled, they looked up to see a face hovering over the ivy with liquid-like undulation. “My God!” exclaimed Don, and Frank promptly ran away, yelling something about fixing the gutters.

“Are you my cousin Roy?” Don said. “Are you Roy? Roy, is that you?”

“No, it is not your cousin Roy,” said the face. “I am Ivan Spatulishnotskutchkinitski. Actually, his ghost.”

“Ivan who?”

The face sighed. “It’s not my real name. It was the name of a Russian comedian. Never mind. Look, I don’t have much time. I am looking for Yoramin Rhezvinski.”

“I am taking care of him. His jaw is almost healed. What is it you want?”

“If you’ll be quiet I’ll tell you. I don’t care about his jaw.”

The face of Ivan’s ghost hovered silently for quite some time, sinking slowly until it settled on a rose bush, springing up rapidly when it settled on one of the thorns.

“Well, what is it then?” Don Rickles demanded at last.

“Oh. I’ve… er, forgotten,” said the ghost shamefully.

“Well, maybe if you talk around it you’ll remember,” suggested Don.

“Yes, good idea. But… talk around what?”

“Talk about what you’ve forgotten.”

“I’ve forgotten what I’ve forgotten.”

“You told me you were looking for Yoramin Rhez—”

“Oh yes. Right. Well, I do know that I was killed because of him. Because, you see, I’m dead. And I’ll bet you can’t guess how I died.”

“I really don’t know.”

“You must guess!” the ghost of Ivan boomed.

“I don’t know. Blown up?”

“Wrong! I was shot. Shot by Brezhnev himself because I sent Yoramin here to the United States against his wishes.”

“Yes, I already know that Yoramin is a spy. And the government must be sending another spy after him, is that it?”

The ghost of Ivan sank onto one of the rose bushes again and remained on a thorn. “Then I’ve come here for nothing,” Ivan cried out mournfully. “I get one trip a year and I used it up.”

“No, yours was a very noble act, to come all this way to help a fellow spy.”

“Thanks,” Ivan’s ghost face said brusquely, rising. “I’d better go.”

“Wait!” Don called. “Could you just tell me—”

“I know, I know. What’s it like? They all ask that. Don’t you know that I can’t tell you, Silly? Just be a good person, dammit, and live well. Do your best and you will see. Yes,” the ghost mused, fading, “you shall see… (fading more) buddy… boy….” The ghost-face of Ivan rose slowly, bounced suddenly off the pavement, and then shot up and disappeared into the sky.

“Amazing!” Don shouted, already running. He ran past Frank, who was climbing a ladder, and into his house.

***

Father Don Rickles told Yoramin the spy what he saw while they sat in the kitchen and drank tea that afternoon, and Yoramin wept unashamedly at the news of Ivan’s death before realizing that he did not really like the man very much and in fact thought he was a lunatic.

“Yes, he was crazy, but he gave me my answer. I am quitting the priesthood,” said Don. “And, since they are sending someone to kill you, perhaps you would like to come with me.”

“You invite me even after the way I’ve behaved?”

“Yes, we are friends.”

“I am thunderstruck.”

“Then it’s decided. Get your things.”

“I have no things.”

“Then I’ll get mine.”

***

Father Don Rickles packed and changed his clothes. Looking into the mirror, he emphatically ripped the collar from his neck and threw it to the floor as Yoramin walked into the room.

“Are you sure this is what you want to do?” he asked Don.

“I am very sure. I am sad, but that only means a change is passing through me. It’s a good kind of sadness.”

“I never had a good kind of sadness, but I’m glad you’re sad and that it’s the good kind. I am sad, too. But I have the bad kind of sadness.”

“But you’re changing. Change is good.”

“You’re right, if it’s the good kind of change and not the bad kind of change. I was just a stupid spy before. But now the hell with spy work, the hell with my government. The hell with any government.”

Suddenly a voice boomed out from across the room. “Ah ha! Got you, you weasel!” There came the trampling of the voice’s owner struggling with coats and tripping over shoes in the priest’s closet before a man came tumbling out head first onto the floor. He sprang up, holding a tape recorder in one hand. “I’ve got your confession right here,” the man said to Yoramin.

“Do you need it?” Yoramin said in a steady voice. “Won’t you just kill me, confession or not?”

“I really don’t know. All I know is that I have one. I’ve never had a confession before and this is my—this is—Oh, dammit!” The man opened the lid of the recorder and turned it upside down, shaking it. “I forgot the cassette.”

“Who are you?” Don demanded. “Why were you sniffing around in my closet? And why are you wearing my hat!”

The man bowed. “I am Kirsinov the spy.”

Don glanced over at Yoramin and muttered, “Another one of you.”

“I was raised by government officials to be a spy,” Kirsinov continued. “I never even knew who my parents were. They were my fathers and mothers.”

“These are the men they pick to be spies,” Yoramin said to Don. “Imbeciles.”

“Quiet, Yoramin,” whispered the priest. “Can’t you see that the poor man is crying his eyes out?”

“I never saw my parents,” Kirsinov wailed. “They never let me do anything. I wanted to go out and play, but they’d say, ʻNo! Go tape somebody!’ Bastards! They taught me how to follow people and eavesdrip on people and lie and kill folks. But did they ever love me? No! My life has been such a waste. And if I don’t come back with Yoramin, they will take away my eyeballs.”

“How gruesome!” the priest exclaimed.

“Oh, no, no. We wear eyeball patches on our upper arm sleeves. See? It is our symbol. Anyway, I must have Yoramin, so let’s go. Put your jacket on.”

“You‘ll just have to kill me then,” Yoramin said. “Because I’m not coming. I just started living.”

“So have I,” announced the priest.

“Why don’t you start, too? Join us. We’re getting the hell out of here.”

“They’ll send someone else, though,” Kirsinov said.

“Let them,” Yoramin said.

A smile broke over Kirsinov’s face, and he tossed his tape recorder over his shoulder, smashing the priest’s bedroom window. Yoramin and the priest rolled their eyes at each other. Outside, Frank put his ladder down and walked toward the window. “I’ll fix it, Father,” he called.

***

An hour later, Don, Yoramin, and Kirsinov were on a bus to the Midwest where they decided to live. They moved every few months at first in order to make it more difficult for future spies to find them. As it was, over the next few years, many spies did find them, but each, like Kirsinov, ended up giving up spying and staying with the group. They grew in number. Many of them married, including Don and Yoramin, and they had many children who played together and went to school together and lived happily. Don landed a job as a stand-up comic in a bowling alley. With his mind clear he discovered he could tell jokes for the first time. His act became so funny and people in the back room laughed so hard that the bowlers often complained about the noise. Yoramin became a bus driver and named his first three sons Ivan before his wife complained. As for Ivan Spatulishnotskutchkinitski, he waited patiently for Brezhnev to die and then haunted him. It is an action-packed eternal thriller about one ghost haunting another ghost. But that is another story. The present one has ended.

Part 1 · Part 2 · Part 3