The Ora Pro Nobis

The Ora Pro Nobis:

Refugee of Sinners, Comfortress of the Afflicted.



It was late and everyone who had not come to The Ora Pro Nobis alone had already left. Julian sat alone in a booth next to the window and looked out at the rush of people just leaving the movie theatre down the street. In the day time, the city was loud and the people stared blankly ahead and listened to music and rarely talked, but at night time people were scared so that they never listened to music and spoke loudly to one another and Julian liked that the people were louder than the city. The waittress checked on him often because he had a golden watch on his left wrist, but he was still on his first drink and he raised two fingers in the air each time he heard her voice so as to wave her on without looking away from the window.

"He won't break," the waittress said to the bartender. She leaned over the bar and watched the bartender ring a glass tightly with a cloth around the rim to rub the lipstick away. He was tall and his arms were thick and his sleeves were rolled up above his elbows.

"Some never break," he said.

He looked over at Julian, who was still staring out the window at the horde of people shuffling past. The bartender thought Julian was looking for someone by the way he moved his head, following the people as they moved out of sight.

"Call me calamity, electrifies man," she said.

"Go get him, Calamity," he said and placed the glass on the counter, rim down. He then poured two shots of whiskey and the waittress scooped them up with one hand and moved towards the booth at the window.

Julian didn't look up when the waittress sat down across from him at the booth. He tipped his glass with a finger and breathed heavily her scent. She smelled of peaches and cigarettes.

"A shot on the house," she said and slid a glass across the table. It slowed and stopped close to his knuckles and he looked away from the window at her face.

"What for?" he said.

"Well," she said, "I could lie to you and say that it's because I liked you, but really it's because I need a drink and it's slow and you look like the sort of man who wouldn't let a girl like me shoot alone."

Julian liked her and the way she spoke. He liked the way her eyebrows moved with her words and that she didn't speak of the weather. It was cold outside, and he could feel it creep through the glass and cool his arm.

"A girl, no. I'd never let a girl drink alone. You look more like a woman than a girl, but I won't let you drink alone nonetheless," he said and drank it down. He smelled a sudden cloud of ammonia and watched as another waittress leaned over an empty table, squirting and rubbing with a determined frown.

He wished all people were so easy to talk to, and he wasn't scared at all when he looked into her eyes. He found that especially nice, and smiled at her wincing, puckered eyes and mouth as she swallowed the drink.

"So, what's the matter with you?" she said.

"The matter with me?" he said.

"Something's always the matter. I don't know how people could get along without any matters at all, so what's the matter?"

Julian looked out the window at his car across the street and made out Rowen's sillouette in the driver's seat. He could his see his nose and cheeks glowing in the pale, blue light of his cell phone.

"My matters don't really matter at all, really."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I guess I don't think they're very important, that's all."

"Importance is objective. Right now there's fifty thousand people whose biggest matter of importance is tying their shoe lace, so who are you to say what's important?" she said and leaned across the table and squeezed her elbows together at her chest so that her breasts might bulge at the opening of her shirt. Julian dutifully glanced down and it made him swell with excitement. He hoped she hadn't noticed and took another drink out of his glass. When he looked again, imagining what her nipples might look like and how long they might be when erect, he cursed under his breath and shifted his gaze back to the window.

"Things are just a little off, I guess," Julian said.

"Like what?"

"Like food doesn't taste the way it should. This bar doesn't sound the way it should. The city doesn't feel like it should," he said, then took care to exhale onto his glass, watched the drink fade behind the fog. "My biggest problem right now is that things aren't meeting my expactations of things. And I might kill someone tonight."

"Things are pretty off then, if you're turning murderer?" she said.

"See that guy, right there?" Julian said, pointing at a man sitting at the bar. The man had a beard and stooped over himself, head propped against upturned palms. "That man is my greatest enemy."

"Greatest enemy, huh? How heroic. What's he done to you?" the waittress said and she leaned back and rested her head against the green cusion of the booth's seat. She took to biting on her fingernail and curling her eyebrows so that she looked very concerned. Julian's eyes lingered on the man's frame, the broad shoulders and scruffy neck hair and collared shirt. He wanted to tell this girl everything and maybe take her shirt off. But Julian couldn't do either of those things because he was very much preoccupied with a task and besides, Rowen would be very upset that he had driven all this way for nothing more than a girl looking for a tip.

"He's given me nightmares, I guess. Very disturbing nightmares."

"That man right there?"

"Yes," Julian said.

"That pathetic looking creepy fellow, the one with the beard?"

"Yes."

The patheric looking creepy fellow shifted in his seat to the left and pulled at his belt, shaking it and scooting his khakis down. Julian could see his eyes, and how wet and black they were, and how they reflected the neon light, which, between the varnished wood that the place was covered in and the glass tops of each table, glowed with warm, orange light.

"He'd give me nightmares too," she said.

Outside, the mass of people were thinning, and Rowen looked up from his phone. He saw Julian and the waittress sitting together and smiled and thought to himself, atta kid. Rowen had not seen Julian speak to a woman since Bethany's funeral, and he thought it good that he was speaking to her. He watched as Julian tipped his glass and leaned forward, even smiling, or so Rowen thought from what he could make out through the window. Rowen worried, though, that Julian might become distracted, so he put his cell phone away and instead occupied himself by playing his harmonica. His breath warmed his hand that was cupped around the metal lip of the harp. Low, sweet notes rang out and filled the car, which was cold once again, so Rowen turned the key and switched the heater to high. Rowen played and watched and huddled up, waiting for the warmth.

"What is it you're looking for?" Julian said. He removed his glasses and folded them up, placing them on the table and, grimmacing, rubbed his eyes hard with his knuckles.

"What am I looking for?" the waittress said.

"Yes, right now--what is it that you're looking for, right here and now?"

The waittress leaned back and smiled and thought very hard, which Julian did not see. His knuckles still wrung his eyeballs and he watched the blurred spectacle on his eyelids dance and morph in and out of green and blue flowers.

"Has a woman ever come out and said exactly what she wanted?"

"Never," Julian said. He replaced his glasses and sipped again from his drink. For a moment, the room echoed with the vibrations of light from the eye rubbing. The oranges swirled together, and then faded, and then everything was ordinary and alien again.

"Then why expect such a thing from me?"

"To make everything a bit easier on me, alright? For just one night, make this whole game a little easier."

"That sounds like treason, darling," the waittress said.

"I'm afraid our conversation has run its course then, darling," Julian said.

The waittress traced the rim of the empty shot glass in front of her with her middle finger and thought carefully.

"What am I looking for?"

"That's all I need. I won't be in Oregon after tonight."

"Where are you heading?"

"Answer the questing or let me drink alone, please."

The waittress stood up and moved to the other side of the table. Julian looked up at her. Her face was a blur--close and high enough to hang in the gap over top his glasses. She placed her hand on Julian's thigh and squeezed and he scooted over. She sat down beside him. The heat of her breath encapsulated Julian's ear and it made his gut churn.

"I want your money," the waittress said.



Julian told himself that his dreams meant nothing. He was sure they meant nothing, in fact. But, after circling Bethany all night with a knife, digging into her mouth as she hung from the ceiling by a rope coiled about her neck, he awoke covered in sweat. Sometimes, Julian watched himself from overhead. The room was always quiet and well-lit. He could not see his own face, only the back of his head and his hands as he jabbed with the knife. Often, her teeth were very impossible to remove from her gums. He was unsure as to why he needed to remove her teeth. He tried to yell. Stop, he told himself. But he watched his hands pull at Bethany's cheeks and cut. A great outpouring of blood came with every slice. With her jaw hanging limp, his hands had a better angle at the gums. Sometimes her tongue got in the way and he watched as it fell to the floor, slopped into the pool beneath her. She rocked back, blinked and spun. Julian cut and cut again. When the teeth were loose, he pried. The steel made the most satisfying sound when it clicked against enamel. With the teeth free, Julian cupping them in his upturned palm, he turned and walked into the darkness and handed them to Michael. Always, the bearded man slid them into his pocket and turned into the darkness. Julian never cut her down. He watched her as she swung from the rope, standing and staring until he awoke.

This disturbed Julian very much. He tried not sleeping, but after four days he became very ill and slept for a long time, dreaming and dreaming and cutting and slicing. He decided that not sleeping was not an option.

Every Sunday, Julian dressed in black and walked to the cemetary. It was a long way away, about two miles uphill from his house past the indian smoke shop and the apple grove, and he smoked cigarettes all the way there, lighting another with that already smoked until his throat burned and his mouth was very dry and tasted of hickory and mint.

The children's cemetary was separate from the regular cemetary. It was littered with little cement angels and stuffed animals. He stopped at his nephew's grave and sat for a while and didn't know what to say. On the gravestone it said: "Little James, helping the angels alight the stars at night. July 12 - January 7. 5 months."

There was a picture of a baby with wings and an angel reaching toward the moon. He felt as if he should cry, but he could not cry and that made him upset. He remembered crying at his nephew's funeral, the last time he ever cried, and how satisfying each sob and gasped breath felt. It was as if he could let everything go all at once, not worrying about anything or even thinking, just crying and crying and watching as the tears made the whole world blur. But he could not do that anymore. Julian could not let anything go, or move anywhere, and goddamnit if he did not try, remembering the casket lowering, and how angry he was at everything, mostly at life and God and the reverand who said the little James was with God, and that Julian's sister would see him again in Heaven. So, every Sunday, Julian would sit down in front of little Jame's grave and try to cry, but never did, and his whole body would ache with anger, and his hands would tremble, and he would breathe slow the fresh cut, foul-smelling grass.

Julian would leave the children's cemetary this way each Sunday. And when he was close to the grown-up's cemetary, where the statues were much taller, flowers replacing teddy bears and teething rings, he stopped. He looked out on all the graves of the people who lived and had lives and loved and played instruments and sang to each other and he became more upset. Not once did Julian ever visit Bethany's grave. Instead, Julian turned away and walked home, got stoned, and fell asleep. If Julian was stoned enough, he would not dream. Julian went on like this for many months.

Until one Sunday, Julian was walking to the cemetary, fully expecting to visit Bethany's grave this time, when he was hit by a car. The driver did not see Julian at the cross walk, and Julian, who was very stoned at the time, watched the trees spin and the sky turn bright red as he became airborne. Nothing hurt, but everything meshed together and all the air in his lungs evacuated and he had the taste of fresh rain in his mouth. He spit some gravel, brushed his hair from his eyes, and rolled to his side, propping himself on a bleeding elbow. He smiled into the cold wind, smiled so big and bright that the driver who hit him thought he was delirious. Yes, yes I am fine. No, no I don't need an ambulance. You know what? Fuck off, fuck off and die alone you stupid cunt. You hit me. And the driver whom Julian said all this to quietly backed away, looked around and saw noone watching, and got in their car and drove away. The driver had a ham to get back to. And this kid was fine, he was fine and he'd be alright and he wasn't going to die or anything, so best to go home.

Julian limped because his left knee hurt. There was a big black bruise and it was bleeding and there was a tear in his pants where it rubbed against the asphalt, but he was fine. He heard the ring, ring, ring of the phone and waited for an answer. The air smelled crisp, like mornings in the mountain by the lake under the sun, and the wind was cool and he smiled at each person who walked by and hoped they'd smile back. Some did, like the chubby girl with the thick glasses who was on her way to visit her grandmother. She smiled dumbly and so did Julian, whose phone pressed against his cheek, and they separated, never to see each other again. After the eighth ring, the chubby girl turning the corner behind him, Rowen picked up the phone. His voice sounded just as Julian had remembered it, stupid but endearing: Jule! Jule, what's up, man?

"I need a favor," Julian said and limped on, phone in his right hand, pressed against his ear, cigarette burning in his left, smile lighting the way, up, up the hill, to the grown-up cemetary where he would visit Bethany's grave, this time.



Julian sleeps the sleep of utter exhaustion. He is handing another batch of teeth to Michael, but the bearded man does not walk into the darkness. He waits, both hands still out, cupping the air between them and some teeth, sharp, bloody pearls glowing and glowing and glowing.

When he wakes it is with a mind washed so blank that terror rises in him. Only with a deliberate effort can Julian reinsert himself into time and space: into his bed, his room, a night, a world, a body pointing east and west. Though he lies sprawled on her with the weight of a dead moose, the girl beneath him is asleep, her arms clasped around his back. He eases himself off her and stands beside the bed, rearranges the covers so she is at least warm--Julian knows how it is to be both cold and breathless, and he wishes it on only one person--and tries to recompose himself. Not for an instant does Julian think he could recollect his night in its entirety, but, standing and swaying at the edge of his bed, looking down at the girl who breathes heavily, her dark skin rising and falling, Julian pieced together what he could.

Yes, Rowen had arrived from Tuscaloosa late last night in his old pickup, the same he had in high school. Yes, we had gone drinking to talk of plans, mostly, and supplies we would need, and when we would leave. Yes, Rowen had brought the gun, and with a smile on his crooked face had shown me the bullets and how they fit into the chamber. Yes, I would be fine, and you should go home and I will call you tomorrow to give you a ride back to your pickup, which you should leave, because you're too drunk, and I'm going to stay for a while longer. Yes, I'll call you a taxi. And yes, I would like a drink, pretty girl, Koryelle, is it? Because I'm not quite ready to go home yet.

Julian looks at his clock. He will need to call Rowen soon to retrieve the pickup, which most likely has a ticket by now, and this girl in his bed will have to leave. Julian remembers the sex, which is always odd, always somewhat off, always something that is anything but normal. Natural, that's the word. Julian listens scrupulously to the reverberations of the girl's breathing, and watches blankly her drooling lips. He realizes she is injured, her soul somewhat shattered, and that he helped it along, cutting and choking. Her words, that's kind of hot, in the daylight sicken him, but in the dark, where his conciousness had plunged into a primal frenzy, spurred him relentlessly on. So she had tried to push him away, and laughed. And Julian could remember only being able to make out her teeth through the dark, how they moved like a phantom through space, and how they blinked when she spoke. And how he had fought against her, her fingers pushing at his hips, and he slid closer.

And now, he knew what pleasure was. He knew he had to push, be pushed. He knew that what he really wanted was to be able to affect anything as Michael had Bethany, and that sickened him. Julian thinks of himself as a car, a car without a driver that can only go straight on a road that goes on straight forever. And he keeps going straight, doing nothing but cutting up distance, until he either runs out of gas and dies, or collides with and kills something. "I must be tired," Julian thinks. "Or perhaps whatever can be articulated is falsely put." Julian slides back into his bed beside the sleeping girl, lips moving, silently composing and recomposing the words. "Or perhaps it is the case that only that which has not been articulated has to be lived through." Julian stares at that last proposition without any hint of resolution offering itself. The words grow more opaque before him; soon they have lost all meaning. Julian sighs at the sun, bearing itself upon the window. Then he turns to the girl, embraces her, draws her tight against him. She purrs in her sleep, where soon Julian has joined her, cutting.



"Michael!" Julian said. "Swoboda!"

The bearded man looked wildly at Julian, who waved at him from the dark alley.

"Who is that?"

"Barson, Six-Fifty First! Don't remember me?"

Michael squinted and leaned forward, swaying. He could not see the face of the man in the alley, only a dark sillouette and a burning ember, white clouds of smoke, arms doffing a service coat, shaking it, swiping at ashes, and replacing it around thin shoulders. Michael moved toward--Barson, was it? He crossed the street and held out his hand for Barson, and from the darkness, Barson's emerged, gloved.

"Barson?"

"651st, Kuwait ot' nine," Julian said. "Fort Sam Houston, Texas? October twenty-ten?"

"I was never at Sam Houston. Barson, was it?"

And then, Julian coughed twice. Hrmph, hurmph. And from behind the dumpster Rowen emerged, moved closer from behind the bearded man, and with his fists raised in the air, fingers locked together like a hammer, brought hands down at his neck. He leaned into the blow, as if he were holding a baseball bat, and as he spun Julian could see his lips sucked inside his mouth, and when his hands hit Michael's neck, it sounded as if someone had dropped a chicken breast from very high up--a wet clap ringing against the brick walls of the alley.

Michael curled up and his fists went right to his chest, his fingers locked and twitched as if he were typing, click-click-clicking at the air. He gurgled, then groaned. It was loud, and Julian thought he heard the noise before. Perhaps when he had shot an animal in the wrong place, and it had to bleed out. And before it could die it made that noise. That seemed right. Rowen grabbed Michael by the armpits and dragged him back into the alley. His arms were still locked tight, bent hard at the elbow, fingers twitching still. His eyelids were open wide, and his eyeballs were all white, rolled back in their sockets.

"You hit him too fucking hard," Julian hissed.

"What?"

"Look at him."

Rowen propped Michael against the brick wall, and he leaned left and his head collided with the dumpster. Rowen took a step back, moving beside Julian who, with one hand holding a cigarette, the other on his chin, was frowning at the sight of the gagging man.

"Fuck."

"Fuck is right. I think you killed him."

"Well," Rowen said. He walked up to Michael and sat back on his haunches, rested his elbows on his knees and studied him.

"So, what do we do now?"

"Fuck if I know. You can still do your thing, you know?"

Julian thought of the note in his pocket. The paper that held all the words he had born up in his head over the past year. The treatsie of hate.

"I can't do my fucking thing. I can't do the thing now."

"Why not?"

"Look at him!"

And they both did. They watched Michael. His arms went straight like a rubber band snapping, both hands curled hard at the wrist. His head turned into the dumpster, and his eyeballs looked left. They moved, left, then left, and Rowen and Julian watched as they kept looking left, but kept moving, left and left. And his whole body shook. And his throat sucked in like a lung, and they weren't sure if he was breathing right then, but his throat sure was trying.

"I'm sorry, Julian," Rowen said.

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry."

"Did you smoke?" Julian said.

"What?"

"Did you smoke any cigarettes?" Julian said, deliberately.

"No."

Julian rolled his cigarette in his fingers and the ember fell to the ground, sizzled into the wet asphalt. He slid the filter into his pocket. Rowen was still staring at Michael, whose convulsions were worsening. The alley echoed the sound of his skull knocking against the dumpster.

"We should go," Julian said.

"Where?"

"We've gotta skip, somewhere."

"That's the plan?"

"This wasn't the plan, no."

"What was the plan?" Rowen said, angry now. He spun and his whole body convulsed. "Fuck!" His palm collided with the dumpster and a deep, loud boom bellowed out and echoed and seemed to both as if it would never stop echoing. And Rowen reached beside the dumpster and picked up a wet piece of cardboard, tore it in half.

"The plan was to scare him," Julian said, stepping back.

Rowen moved toward the bearded man, whose head still vibrated against the dumpster. A thick, red foam pooled at his lips. He slid the cardboard between his head and the dumpster, and everything was quiet again.

"He looks scared to me," Rowen said.

"Maybe this will work," Julian said.

And Julian knew that it wouldn't, right then and there. As he watched Michael's life fade, he realized he'd done nothing. He felt no different; he was neither happier nor sadder, only more content with himself. He knew he was no different than the shuddering flesh beside the dumpster. He debated what to do. Forever more, Bethany was his, his. Whose? And Julian found a thing to do. From his coat he produced a pen and pad, and scribbled a note, and placed it in Michael's jacket. And as Julian buttoned the breast pocket, Michael smiled, big and ugly--his whole beard shifting and twitching, and died his frantic death, helpless.



The Ora Pro Nobis was quiet, and her shift was ending in an hour. A few light taps upon the pane made her turn to the window. She watched sleepily the drops, grey and dark, falling and blurring the neon lights outside. Julian's money pressed heavily against her hip, and she sat and watched the empty streets. In the morning, the newspapers would detail the murder, but she would know what it really was. It was no murder, no murder at all. The rain fell all across the west, on sawtooth ridges blanketed with yellowing tamarack, dripping relentlessly on the asphalt veins trickling inland from the sea, farther north, falling on the clay banks of the manmade lakes, slipping the soil into the water, exposing roots to the bitter air. It was falling too, on the bearded man propped against the dumpster just outside. It collided with flesh and soaked into cloth, washed thoroughly the ink from Julian's note. Her soul shivered at the sight of the rain as it fell just outside, and far north, upon Julian and Rowen as they crossed into Canada, and indeed everywhere, upon the living and the dead.