Author: fsr2286
Last saved by: Katie
Company: UL Lafayette

Lou Gaglia

The Spy and the Priest

	There was no way the Russians were ever going to overcome the world unless they could overcome the United States. That was the firm conviction of all the Russian officials who gathered in the Very Important Room for tea and some Russian food which the author cannot spell, when, after Brezhnev, the clown of the bunch, amused them all by impersonating Ronald Reagan with a Russian lisp, they all sat down to the most dire business at hand—no, not which cakes to have at the next meeting, but the way to conquer the United States!

	It was the very gruff Ivan Spatulishnotshkutchkinitski who cleared his throat after the others had finally stopped drying their eyes and after a final whoop of laughter burst from them when Leonid accidentally sat in the strawberry crêpe suzette.

 	“Er, I thought this meeting was going to be important,” Ivan finally said. “For need I remind you, because we are in the Very Important Room, very important things must be discussed. If not, if we fail to arrive at one very important decision or discuss one very important subject—and not like last time, how the Mets will do this year—then we are in violation of the Kremlin!”

	“Okay then, Ivan, you party pooper,” yawned Dmitry, Brezhnev’s right hand man, “what’s important that can be discussed?”
 
 	“The United States.”

	“That was last time,” Dmitry said, snorting.

	“That was the Mets!” Ivan screamed, banging his fist on the Very Important Table. Everyone was silent; there was not one sound. All that could be heard, while they all looked, amazed, at Ivan’s red face, was the faint whistling sound of Brezhnev’s nose as he inhaled. 

	“Now, I have a daring proposition for you,” Ivan began. “If you will buy it—er, I mean, agree on it, we can conquer the world. It came to me while I was getting ready for bed last night. I took off my pants. Then I put them on again. Then, realizing my absence of mind, I took them off once more. Then again I put them on unthinkingly. I did this eleven times before finally going to bed with them on, too exhausted to try again. I said to myself, “We are a weak people, we Russians. Oh, we can blow the world to smithereens without having to tip our hats, but so what—the United States can do the same without tipping theirs. I speak figuratively, of course, for those of you I see trying to figure that out. There is one thing standing in our way, though. We cannot beat the United States because they have God and we only have the government. Oh, the government is a wondrous thing, I beg of you, Mr. Brezhnev, better, even better than God, of course, in a practical, efficient way, but—” (he cleared his throat loudly) “not when it comes to rolling in the bucks, not when it comes to popularity and glory. We always see it in the movies, how God is for the good old United States. They have all the religious leaders on their side and the Pope on their side. If we can understand why God likes them so much, if we can understand what makes God tick, we can beat Him. Once we knock off God, we can conquer the world!”

	“Very interesting, Ivan,” Brezhnev said after a long pause. “But you know I get big headaches when I think of God.”

	“You don’t have to,” Ivan said. His eyes were blazing now. He motioned at the door and a man appeared from out of the shadows, a slight man with greasy hair and bushy eyebrows and big eyes. “This is a spy,” Ivan said. “And he is going to find out about God for us.”

	All of the men stopped chewing their cakes simultaneously and turned their eyes on the spy, who bowed down slowly and said, “Gentlemen.”

***

His name was Yoramin Rhezvinkski, and he had been a spy since the age of six—not a professional spy, mind you, just a household one as a youngster. Such were his talents, however, at such an early age, that he drove his family half mad. As soon as he could write he was filling memo pads with the details of the events in his household and sending them to the Kremlin. Fortunately for Yoramin’s father, who described himself as being at his wit’s end every moment since Yoramin was born, the evidence against his family was not substantial. For instance, Yoramin noted that his father wore a moose head to bed. This did not draw attention from the government, although some members, including Brezhnev himself, wore a moose head to bed in anticipation of its benefits. There were none. Instead, when Brezhnev awoke the next morning, he thought he was a moose, and as he looked at himself in the mirror, he said, “At least it’s not hunting season; what a target I’d make in the middle of Moscow,” before realizing what was really going on.

	Yoramin became an exchange student and went to school in the United States for a year before returning with a sack of filled notebooks containing his observations, complete conversations with professors and students, and some jokes and riddles he’d heard. He sent these notebooks to Brezhnev, but Leonid, remembering his moose head scare, sent the notebooks back with a harsh warning not to send him anything again.

	This discouraged Yoramin greatly, and he walked the streets of Moscow, depressed. He had taken up with his parents again, but spent as little time as possible with them. Though despondent about his apparent failure as a spy, he would not give up hope and sent his notes to various government officials in the hope of getting noticed. They always wound up in the hands of Brezhnev again, and Brezhnev always sent them back with a stricter warning each time.

	Finally, Ivan Spatulishnotskutchkinitski turned up at Yoramin’s door one evening and described his scheme for defeating the United States through finding out about God and destroying Him.

	“I’m a spy,” Yoramin declared, “not an evangelist.”

	“All you have to do is inform us about what you find out. I have seen your work. You are very detailed and observant, and your jokes and riddles are excellent, but I saw nothing about God. I know He goes over big over there, so I want you to go back there, as a student again, and do your spying thing. I want the whole poop. Now… I’ve made all the arrangements. All we have to do is convince Brezhnev.”

	“You convince him. He’ll kill me.”

	“Don’t worry about the moose head incident. We’ll give you a fake name. How about Nikolai Ivanovich? He’s never seen you.”

	“Do you know what you’re saying?” Yoramin said, aghast.

	“No,” Ivan retorted.

	“If they find out, we’re both dead men. They have records, photos—”

	“Big deal. You naïve little spy. Brezhnev will never double check me. Me? Ivan Spatulishnotskutchkinitski? Now, come on, let’s go. To the Kremlin, and then… the United States of America!” Ivan laughed explosively, like a demon, his eyes wild, triumphant.

	“Just a minute. Could I finish my blintz first?” Yoramin asked.

***

	Before we learn of Yoramin’s adventures in the United States, let us have a look at poor Ivan Spatulishnotskutchkiniski’s fate.

	After having successfully convinced Brezhnev, and while Yoramin was on his way to the United States, gone for five hours already, Ivan enjoyed dinner over at Brezhnev’s Eating Room. He sat back in his chair and belched. Brezhnev, sitting across from him, belched too, and both men seemed to be admiring one another’s belching abilities. In between belches, however, Leonid surveyed Ivan carefully. Then, after musing silently for twenty minutes or so, he spoke:

	“The spy you introduced me to seems awfully familiar.”

	Ivan laughed loudly. “He is just your average run of the mill spy. He will succeed in his mission, though, I assure you, Leo. May I call you Leo?”

	Brezhnev growled.

	“I just mean, he is a great spy, Mr. Leonid—Mr. Brezhnev,” Ivan stammered.

	Brezhnev nodded, sinking his chin into his fist and staring into Ivan’s eyes. Ivan belched again, but Brezhnev did not stir. Ivan started sweating profusely as Brezhnev moved his eyes to within two inches of Ivan’s eyes and spoke slowly.

	“When you introduced this spy before, I noticed something very familiar about his manner of language. In everything he said, he seemed to have the idea that he wanted to prove himself as a spy. And when I mentioned the incident from long ago, when that crazy kid drove my colleagues half crazy with that story of his father wearing a moose head to bed, his choking fit was very suspicious to me.” Ivan had loosened his collar and looked at the ceiling, whistling to himself.  “As though he was not who you said he was,” Brezhnev added, with emphasis.

	Ivan fell at Brezhnev’s feet. “Please, Leonid! All I wanted to do was save the country. Nay, cause it’s triumph. I knew you wouldn’t approve of him, but he’s the best spy I’ve ever come across. I had to do it!”

	“You are a stupid man, Ivan. Why did you confess? You could have simply said, ‘I didn’t know who he was. He came to me and gave me the name Nikolai Ivanovich. How was I to know?’”

	Ivan looked up. “That’s right. What a blockhead I am. Then how about I say that? I didn’t know who he was. He just came to me—”

	Brezhnev waved his hand, shaking his head. “It’s too late, Ivan.”

***

	Ivan’s fate was clear, but for Yoramin, Fate was floating over and about his Being, calling itself Destiny and beckoning him to follow. So he followed what he thought was his Destiny to the United States, to New York, but he got on the wrong plane and landed in Chicago. When he finally reached New York City by train the next morning, leaving his Destiny behind to catch another train, he was determined to begin his mission immediately.  After buying a tea with lemon, he surveyed the sky, but found it looked no different from the sky in Russia. How else could he tell if God liked this better than his own country? He was stumped and considered giving up. “Me? A spy of the first degree, stumped?” he cried to himself. He wanted to dash his brains out on the sidewalk. But first he paced up and down the same city block for an hour, thinking.  He needed a place to stay, to sleep and eat and think and hide if necessary. And the city was no place to stay for sure. So he went to Long Island by train and slept in garbage cans for a couple of nights before he came upon a church, a large majestic building of white stone. Boy, whoever lives here must be loaded! he thought. He knocked on the door of a section branched off from the church. A man answered. He wore a black shirt with a piece of white towel paper wrapped and taped around his neck half-way up. He greeted Yoramin with a gap-toothed smile. “Hello, I am Father Don Rickles,” he said.

	“And I am Yora—I am Sam Jones,” Yoramin declared.

	“May I help you?”

	“I am poor and broke and broken-hearted and need a place to sleep.”

	“Why don’t you try the Salvation Army? What does this place look like, a hotel? Just kidding. Come on in.”

	Yoramin (disgusted, then put-off, then frightened, then pleased) entered and found himself in a small office with a white marble floor.

	“I have been sleeping in garbage cans. I have eaten nothing since coming from Rus—from, er, from the city.”

	“I see. Well, this is your home for as long as you wish. I need someone to talk to since Father Spuds Devlin left for another church.”

	Father Don Rickles began leading Yoramin through a hallway to a room. “I can never understand how anyone can leave places so easily, how people can change from one part of their lives to another and not be saddened over it.”

	“Unless there’s a woman who causes it,” Yoramin muttered.

	“You mean the leaving?”

	“Yes. I left my home because of a woman. Dark hair, dark eyes, a cute little mole on her cheek, a wonderful lisp. Five feet of sweetness, my sweet Katerina. I miss her. And she was going to marry me, but she married another man. A mouse of a man with an annoying mustache that I wanted to pull from both sides with all my might! He had a good job and a lot of money, so she married him. I had nothing, but she loved me! Me! And so I left because I could no longer stand the sight of her, or even of the same trees I saw every day while I foolishly believed she would marry me.”

	“I see.”

	“I hate her and all women, the liars! I want to catapult them all into the sea. All of them!”

	“Sam, no.”

	“Katerina first, and may she go the farthest and cause the biggest splash.”

	“Not at five feet she won’t.”

	“I’ll make her splash the most!”

	“You are too controlling, too bitter…”

	“Oh, you’re right.” Yoramin patted Father Don Rickles weakly on the shoulder. “You are right, my good Father. I’m really despicable, am I not? I loathe myself for thinking this way. She is the sweetest woman on earth and I love her. I want to bash my own brains out with a club!”

	“Oh no, don’t do—”

	“But I won’t because I love life too much. I love it so much I am always holding back tears of joy. The simplest things make me go to pieces. A leaf on a tree. Two sweet potatoes. A tic.”

	“I don’t underst—”

	“Oh, I don’t know how to explain. How can I tell you what’s in my broken heart! It would take ten years not counting meals to explain. I want to just pluck my eyes out!”

	“No!”

	“I want to smash my head into a wall! I want to pull a dumpster on top of myself! I want to extract… each toenail from my left foot one at a time in slow motion!”

	“Enough,” Father Don Rickles said firmly, switching the lights of the room off and on, off and on.

	“But you don’t understand. I just want to die!”

	“Die? Don’t say that. That’s all I need. Every day another funeral; each day another old man or woman dies with the histories of their lives still on their failing lips. I am tired of death. If  I knew I was going to be around it so much I would have become a doctor, or a cook.”

	“Well,” Yoramin started to say but an alarm clock suddenly rang loud and long inside another room.

	“I am sorry, but it is my bedtime,” Father Don Rickles explained. “We will talk more in the morning. I can tell we have much to discuss and many things to share.”

Yoramin nodded vigorously. “Good night, then, Mr. Jones, until tomorrow.”

	The priest left, and Yoramin paced the room, confused that the priest hadn’t offered him any food and that here it was, only eight o’clock, and all the lights were turned off and the priest was already snoring in the next room. Yoramin got under the covers of his bed and felt himself becoming droopy-eyed. He laughed to himself. I almost believed some of the things I was saying before, he thought to himself. In any case, it’s working…. Wait, what’s working! he thought suddenly and sat up, terrified, not knowing who he was. At last he remembered that he was a spy and settled down to rest. Before he slept, though, he snapped his fingers and cursed to himself in a low voice. “Forgot to ask him about God. Must remember to in the morning.”

***

	Yoramin slept until noon the next day, more weary of traveling than he had let himself believe. When he finally roused himself, he realized that the priest wasn’t anywhere inside, so he walked around the building. As he went along the garden he heard someone singing a God-awful rendition of “But Not for Me.” He followed the voice to the other side of the building and spotted Father Don Rickles near some hedges with a disheveled man with a hangdog look and awful posture booming out the end of the song, holding the final “me” for more than twenty excruciating seconds. The priest, spotting Yoramin at last, smiled and waved Yoramin over.

“Did you have a nice sleep?” asked the priest. “This is Frank. Frank, this is Sam.”

Frank belched, barely acknowledging Yoramin, and started to wander away before turning. “I’ll fix your gutters today, Father.”

“Thank you, son.”

Yoramin glared after Frank as he slouched away. “What a drunk. He’s not going to fix any gutters.”

“He is one of God’s children. I think I can help him. He fixed a crack in my sidewalk a year ago and has been staying here ever since. We’re both Mets fans, you see—”

“The Mets are very important,” said Yoramin with conviction.

“Er—yes, yes, of course they’re important,” the priest conceded. “But the scriptures above all, you know.” He trailed off.

	“It seems as though you have your doubts,” observed Yoramin as they began to walk.

	“What do you mean? I have no doubts. Doubts about what?”

	“It’s just that it seemed to me just now that you were trying to convince yourself that the scriptures were more important than the Mets—or to baseball in general, let us say.”

	“That’s absurd, Sam,” scoffed the priest, picking frantically at freckle on his hand.

	“Well, let us say that the Mets were in the World Series—which is laughable with the state their pitching is in at the moment—but let us say this is true... are you going to say that someone coming to your church is going to think more about the scriptures than he will about the pitching matchups?”

	“He can think about both,” the priest asserted wisely.

	“Yes, but what I’m saying is that people don’t really care about God the way they used to. Well, I don’t mean ʻcare about.’ I’m sure people don’t worry about God catching a cold, for instance.”

	“They should.”

	“Yes, but I mean that people aren’t as afraid of God as they used to be.”

	Father Don Rickles stopped walking suddenly and clenched his fist. “That is certainly not so! They’d better be afraid, or God will come down on them with all the fury He can muster and—” The priest bit down on his lower lip, clenching both fists now and falling to his knees. Frank, walking with a ladder near the side of the church, looked over and put the ladder down.

	“Or else He’ll get them; He’ll get them for sure!” the priest spat out, pounding the walkway with his bare fists.  Frank began to walk over to them but the priest looked up suddenly and waved Frank away. “I’m all right, Frank,” he said, and Frank stepped uncertainly back to his ladder.

Yoramin was completely taken aback and gently took the priest by the elbow, helping him up. He could not believe that he’d seen such fury in this gentle man’s face and decided not to provoke him any further. “I would just like to hear more of what you have to say about God,” Yoramin whispered in a very gentle voice. Frank put the ladder down and started walking over again, but this time Yoramin waved him away violently with two hands and Frank went back to the ladder.

***

	The two men sat in the kitchen over tea. The priest seemed to have calmed himself. “Never mind about that outburst before,” he said. “I would really rather hear you tell me about your life. What do you believe is important in this life?”

	“I don’t believe anything is important,” Yoramin replied. “I have gone through twenty-five years of life, not very long to most people, but to me it is enough to realize that nothing has meaning. Love is an empty word.  To love a woman is impossible. They are terrible. Men are terrible. We are all terrible, filled with such ugliness and nameless fears. Yes, love is impossible.”

	“What about love between brothers?” the priest asked.

	“Big deal, brothers!” Yoramin’s emotions now began to get the best of him. He’d forgotten that he was a spy on a mission and began to spill out all that was in his heart. “It all means nothing! We will all die whether we love or don’t love, and loving causes pain, even if we love but mere brothers. Life is meaningless, I tell you!”

	“Why is it meaningless? Why is love impossible? Is it that woman again? This Katerina woman.”

	“Don’t even say her name!”

	“There’re plenty of fish in—”

	“I don’t want to hear that fish talk! How do you know anything at all, priest? Have you ever loved a woman only to have her change her mind like the wind changes.”

	“Well, no, but—”

	“I have. It was nothing but a joke to her. Taking advantage of my sensitivity, she did. Playing games with me, like I was a worm.” Yoramin buried his head in his hands and began to cry loudly. Father Don Rickles took him gently by the elbow and led him to his room where Yoramin collapsed, weeping on his bed. Frank had put the ladder down and was walking toward the building, and the priest waved him back. “It’s all right, Frank. It’s him this time.”

***

	Yoramin cried for four days and four nights and hardly slept at all. When the priest walked into the room on the fourth morning his shoes squished in Yoramin’s tears which covered  the floor. He came to Yoramin’s bed and addressed him in a soft voice.

	“Why are you crying so much over one woman?”

	“She wasn’t just one woman.”

	“Well now, how is that possib—?”

	“It isn’t just her. It is all of life. It bleeds suffering all around. The very air is filled with sweetness, and it is this which makes life painful. All of this sweetness is within us, the beauty, the music, Time’s passing on and the changing of the seasons. The snow. A fly. But it is all outside, and nothing enters. The beauty is there and I am here and nothing enters. So I am full of hatred for life…. I am really a spy, you know. I may as well tell you. I came to find out about God for the Russian government, but I have already failed in my mission. They can shoot me if they want. I can’t tell them about God because even you don’t know anything about Him except (mimicking) ʻthe scriptures, the scriptures.’  I’d say to them that God lets us suffer and for what? Heaven? We will go to Heaven if we believe and won’t go if we don’t believe? Is that some kind of game? Tell me!”

	The priest shook his head and sighed, looking out the window.

	“Father, you know it, don’t you? There’s no point to life. Tell God to strike me dead, please, Father, tell him. Go to a quiet place and ask him to please strike me dead. He’ll listen to you.”

	“I am totally at a loss for words, Sam,” said Father Don Rickles slowly. “You are a very bitter man. You are more pathetic than even poor Frank. He lives in a world where life is all about fixing a gutter and singing a standard. But it’s better than your world. You’re all clouded up with anger and I am getting very bad vibes right now, man.”

	At this moment Yoramin burst out furiously in a fit of tears and Father Don Rickles drifted away from him, shaking his head.

***

	The next morning Yoramin woke to find Frank sitting on his bed trying to feed him a muffin. Instinctively Yoramin knocked the muffin out of Frank’s hands and bolted to his feet. The priest entered and picked up the muffin as Frank shuffled out.

	“I’ll fix your gutters today, Father.”

	“Thank you, Frank.”  The priest sighed and went into the kitchen, biting into the muffin. Yoramin followed. “However badly you feel, you should not have treated Frank that way, Sam”

	“Because God says I should love my brothers, I suppose,” said Yoramin. “And don’t call me Sam. My name is Yoramin Rhezvinski. And don’t ask me any questions about why I’m here.”

	“You already told me.”

	“Huh?”

	“You told me while you were crying that you are a spy.”

	“Oh. Right. Well, then don’t ask me any more questions, man of the cloth. I’m staying right here, and if there are any arguments I’ll knock your block off. I may have been crying for four days and four nights, but I can be tough.”

	At this the priest whirled and socked Yoramin across the jaw, sending him sprawling onto the floor and causing three of this teeth to fly out of his mouth and cascade ahead of him along the ceramic tile.

	“I can be tough, too,” said the priest.

***

	Yoramin healed his sore jaw and damaged gums by talking only sparingly and eating apple sauce. His mood, however, became increasingly more cheerful, his melancholy melting  along with his black and blue jaw. He and the priest rarely spoke, but if either seemed to be angry at all it was the priest, who was not so much angry with Yoramin as he was silently brooding about some other matter. Yoramin’s words to him had indeed hit home somehow. He wondered what he was doing being a representative of God when he wasn’t even sure of what God really was. He knew that God was Something. It was the What that had him stumped. During a confession one day, a man muttered his sins through the curtain which separated him from “God’s ears,” meaning the priest.

	“I thought of committing adultery fifteen times this week, Father. Only once did I follow through, though. Also, I haven’t given back the hoe I borrowed from Sam Blake, even though he never gives stuff back to me when he borrows it. I slapped my wife around one time this week because she didn’t have the ketchup on the table. And—”

	“Are you finished?” the priest asked.

	“No, what do you mean?”

	“I mean, just go. You can say some prayers if you like, but they’re useless. They’re nice strong words and it might make you feel better but it won’t alleviate what you’ve done no matter how many times you say them and no matter in what devout voice you whisper them in. Go read a sports section.”

	“Now just a second. I came here to be forgiven, not—”

	“You wait a minute, buddy boy—”

	“You’re no priest. I’m leaving.” He burst out of the confessional and stormed past the other sinners who were waiting on line. The priest cracked his confessional door open and screamed.  “Go on then! Go! Adulterer! Wife beater! Go on! And I’m going to tell Sam Blake about that ho!”

***

	One might say that the priest was fed up, but he wasn’t completely fed up. He had his doubts about God, but more doubts about man himself. He felt that as long as he doubted he could not go on talking about Him to those who had more faith the he did. He didn’t know why he’d ever become a priest in the first place. His brother was a bank robber and his sister a hooker, and though that makes for a good start in the forgiveness department, he wondered why he was different. His family was Catholic, so Catholic that they trimmed their bushes into the shape of the Virgin Mary each spring, so much so that they said a full rosary every night before eating dinner while their food grew cold and Don’s stomach rumbled.  And after an entire childhood of cold and sometimes spoiled food, his sister became anorexic and his brother became a glutton, stealing for money and then buying and eating large quantities of chocolate layer and cheese cakes, so that he was exactly three hundred pounds by his fifteenth birthday. His poor family said even more rosaries for him, but his weight and his thievery only increased. Soon he became too heavy to run from the police any more, even in sneakers, and he was caught sometimes before even getting out of the door of the store he was robbing even though the police station was a full three miles away.

	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.