CHAPEL—2
Jogging away, Julius thinks—You should have asked him his name. Do it soon—next time you visit. Tomorrow morning. Maybe tonight?
Jogging away, Julius thinks—You should have asked him his name. Do it soon—next time you visit. Tomorrow morning. Maybe tonight?
The priest’s finally left the Wales after long hours sitting in the common room, waiting without luck for another glimpse.
It’s starting to feel more like addiction than compulsion, more like greed than desire. And with it, of course, comes the shame. People who count on him have gone without assistance, and gone without knowing why, to boot.
He’s deep in Checkertown now, almost to the track that forms the unofficial northern border of Loony Island.
The trees stand sharp against the sky in the unearthly brightness of a day on the cusp of ripening to sunset but still minutes away from the transformation, the strange glow a low-hanging summer sun provides.
The air brings him the enticing smells of cooking meat, and Julius picks up his pace. He rounds a corner, and there it is, peeking over the lower buildings: his home, his refuge, his nest, the Neon Chapel.
A gray brick building spaghettied with glass tubing that blaze with noble gases....
... pink as hot as the cheeks of an Alabama sheriff, blue as bright as a dream of the Tahiti sea, purple more groovy than a magistrate's silk undies, green as a seasick turtle, yellow as jealousy, orange as Clyde.
Here, he hopes, he'll be able to find some clarity. He knows he’ll be able to find a plate. The barrel grills are out and the crowd is already forming. He just needs a moment to rest.
It’s not a small building, the Neon, but nothing so big as the cathedral it replaced, and there’s grass planted now all around in the footprint of the old structure.
Julius shucks off his sneakers in rote practice at this threshold, ties the laces together, hangs them around his neck like a holy stole.
He briefly kneels to pray before stepping onto the grass, then heads inside to the narthex for a quick drink from the water fountain just inside the door.
It’s a large open space; you can see almost all of it from any other part. The Neon mimics the cruciform shape of the cathedral it vacated, though not the grandeur.
The emptiness of the interior lends it a sense of size it doesn’t possess—an effect diminished somewhat by the décor, which he’s heard described as “chain-restaurant chic.”
Every inch of wall and ceiling space had presented Julius an opportunity to display some gaudiness or other—stuffed moose head, kitsch painting, mirrored advertisement for Lite Beer—interlaced between with more neon noodlework.
Hanging from the ceiling, a mobile made from hubcaps and galvanized lock washers. Hutched in the narthex, a sofa upholstered in velvet; by the door, a hat rack, its arms inlaid with silver finials, its wooden base carved to resemble large wooden clown shoes ...
... a triad of eight-foot bookshelves crammed with old paperbacks and magazines. The pews are rows of easy chairs. The altar rail is a fine burnished lacquered beauty, but the padded kneelers have a violet underglow better suited to a low-rider automobile.
The nave is trimmed on either side, not by a cathedral’s aisles, but by rooms, the open-faced “cells” within which the Neon Brothers and Sisters reside.
There are twelve cells in all; six to a side, with two rows of three stacked one above the other, identically and generously sized.
Each cell has a wall missing, exposing it to the nave’s central room, though there are accommodations for privacy; each comes equipped with the sort of roll-down heavy-duty steel shutters used to secure mall stores and downtown pawn shops.
The fellowship utilizes the three unoccupied upper cells on one side for storage, and these are shuttered and locked, but the brothers and sisters rarely use the forbidding shutters to obscure their own abodes.
For everyday privacy they’ve festooned their entrances with decorative curtains, each customized to their own taste.
Sister Nettles wove her own marvelous curtain. Up close, it appears to be a lone shade of midnight blue flecked with lint, but as you withdraw, you see ...
... the intricate patterns of black woven throughout the blue, and the further away you stand, the more specific the face described by the ‘lint’—each fleck of which is a delicate single-thread loop of white—becomes.
Nettles also wove Julius’s drapery, a birthday present to replace the sad plastic shower curtains he’d strung up in early days.
It’s more a tapestry than a curtain; woven intricately with many colors, with shades of brown figuring most prominently, and with porticolored bits of glass, blue and white and gold and crimson, threaded expertly into the fabric.
Past the nave, the room opens up onto the arms of the cruciform, leading to the bathrooms on the left and, on the right, a massive modern kitchen, where ...
... bread and biscuits are cooked in the morning and side dishes for the barbecue are prepared in the afternoon, where immense freezers hold the meat.
Beyond this intersection, the choir holds a scattering of unmatched comfy chairs surrounding a large jukebox, whose base glows from the slowly bubbling golden liquid within.
Still further, against the back wall, presides the square and bulky wooden presence of Monseigneur Ex ...
... —but Julius, as disinterested in confession as he is interested in finding a plate of meat, barely spares Monseigneur Ex a glance.
A.R. Moxon, THE REVISIONARIES bookshop.org/books/the-revi…
A.R. Moxon, THE REVISIONARIES bookshop.org/books/the-revi…
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