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“Manny?” I said as the door behind me opened.
“Yes, Manny,” Ginny said with the hint of a self-satisfied
smile. “Manny is one of our counselors.”
“You have a counselor,” I said, “named Manny?”
“Hello, Mr. Doohan,” Manny said and came around in
front of me with his hand outstretched.
Manny, I ascertained by craning my neck to look up, was
huge. Manny was humongous. Manny, I have to tell you,
wasn’t a person. He was an industrial complex with feet.
“Hi, Manny,” I said as my hand disappeared into one of
the catcher’s mitts attached to his wrists.
“Hi yourself, Mr. Doohan. What seems to be the prob-
lem?”
“Grief,” I said.
“Lotta that going around,” Manny said. And smiled.
Manny and I walked cautiously along the icy sidewalks
and streets as we cut around the Public Garden toward the
Grief Release Therapeutic Center on Beacon Street. Manny
kindly explained that I’d made the common, understandable
mistake of walking into the business offices of Grief Release
when obviously I was seeking help of a more therapeutic
nature.
“Obviously,” I agreed.
“So what’s bothering you, Mr. Doohan?” Manny had the
softest voice for a man his size. It was calm, earnest, the
voice of a kind uncle.
“Well, I don’t know, Manny,” I said as we waited for a
break in the rush hour traffic at the corner of Beacon and
Arlington. “I’ve become saddened lately by the state of it all.
The world, you know. America.”
Manny touched the back of my elbow and led me into a
momentary lull in the traffic. His hand was firm,
SACRED / 49
strong, and he walked with the strides of a man who’d never
known fear or hesitation. When we reached the other side
of Beacon, he dropped his hand from my elbow, and we
headed east into the stiff breeze.
“What do you do for work, Mr. Doohan?”
“Advertising,” I said.
“Ah,” he said. “Ah, yes. A member of the mass media
conglomerate.”
“If you say so, Manny.”
As we neared the Therapeutic Center, I noticed a familiar
group of kids in their late teens wearing identical white shirts
and sharply pressed olive trousers. They were all male, all
with neatly clipped hair, and all wore similar leather bomber
jackets.
“Have you received the Message?” one of them asked an
older couple ahead of us. He thrust a piece of paper at the
woman, but she swiveled past him with a practiced sidestep
that left his hand holding the paper to empty space.
“Messengers,” I said to Manny.
“Yes,” Manny said with a sigh. “This is one of their pre-
ferred corners for some reason.”
The “Messengers” were what Bostonians called these
earnest youth who stepped suddenly out from crowds and
thrust literature at your chest. Usually male, sometimes fe-
male, they wore the white and olive uniform and the short
hair, and their eyes were usually kind and innocent with just
a touch of a fever in the irises.
They were members of the Church of Truth and Revelation
and unfailingly polite. All they wanted was for you to take
a few minutes and listen to their “message,” which I think
had to do with the coming apocalypse or rapture or whatever
happened when the Four Horsemen descended from the
heavens and galloped down Tremont
50 / DENNIS LEHANE
Street and hell opened up beneath the earth to swallow the
sinners or those who’d ignored the Message, which I think
was the same thing.
These particular kids worked this corner hard, dancing
around people and threading themselves through the weary
crowd of pedestrians heading home from a day’s work.
“Won’t you receive the Message while there’s still time?”
One desperately asked a man who took the piece of paper
and kept walking, balling it in his fist as he went.
But Manny and I, it seemed, were invisible. Not one kid
came near us as we approached the doorway of the Thera-
peutic Center. In fact, they moved away from us in a sudden
wave.
I looked at Manny. “You know these kids?”
He shook his massive head. “No, Mr. Doohan.”
“They seem to know you, Manny.”
“Probably recognize me from being around here so often.”
“Sure,” I said.
As he opened the door and stepped aside so I’d enter first,
one of the kids glanced at him. The kid was about seventeen,
with a light freckling of acne across his cheeks. He was
bowlegged and so thin I was sure the next strong gust of
winter would cast him into the street. His glance at Manny
lasted about a quarter of a second, but it was telling enough.
This kid had seen Manny before, no question, and he was
afraid of him.
6
“Hello!”
“Hello!”
“Hello!”
“Good to see you!”
Four people were coining out as Manny and I entered.
And God, were they happy people. Three women and a man,
their faces glazed with joy, their eyes bright and clear, their
bodies damn near rippling with vigor.
“Staffers?” I said.
“Hmm?” Manny said.
“Those four,” I said. “Staffers?”
“And clients,” Manny said.
“You mean some were staffers, some were clients?”
“Yes,” Manny said. Obtuse bastard, our Manny.
“They don’t seem terribly grief-stricken.”
“We aim to cure, Mr. Doohan. I’d say your assessment is
a selling point of our operation, wouldn’t you?”
We passed through the foyer and climbed the right side
of a butterfly staircase that seemed to take up most of the
first floor. The steps were carpeted and a chandelier the size
of a Cadillac hung down between the wings of the staircase.
51
52 / DENNIS LEHANE
Must be a lot of grief going around to pay for this place.
No wonder everyone seemed so happy. Grief, it seemed, was
definitely a growth industry.
At the top of the stairs, Manny pulled back two great oaken
doors and we stepped onto a parquet floor that seemed to
run for a mile or so. The room had probably been a ballroom
once. The ceiling was two stories up, painted a bright blue
with gold etchings of angels and creatures of myth floating
side by side. Several more Cadillac chandeliers shared space
with the angels. The walls bore heavy burgundy brocades
and Roman tapes tries. Couches and settees and the odd
desk or two occupied the floor where once Boston’s
staunchest Victorians, I was sure, had danced and gossiped.
“Some building,” I said.
“It sure is,” Manny said as several brightly grief-stricken
people looked up from their couches at us.
I had to assume some were clients and some were coun-
selors, but I couldn’t tell which, and I had a feeling ol’ Manny
wouldn’t do much to help me differentiate.
“Everyone,” Manny said as we passed through the maze
of couches, “this is Deforest.”
“Hello, Deforest!” twenty voices cried in unison.
“Hi,” I managed and started looking around for their pods.
“Deforest is suffering a bit of late-twentieth-century mal-
aise,” Manny said, leading me farther back into the room.
“Something we all know about.”
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