Father Satan and Baby Judas

The Books of Father Satan

         “The used book business is not the kind of business where you’re going to get rich,” Father Satan remarks. “People don’t want to really read books anymore: why should they? I mean, give me a break.  People come into the store, and, sure, they want books ... but with illustrations, with photographs.  Or, they want books about television or films.  Not me: I’m a booky, and I’ll always be a booky, in a book world.  When other people would watch television when I was growing up, I would be reading a book.  Reading a book is better than watching a television show.  Movies and television bore me: They’re boring, they bore me.  I just can’t see movies or television, no, I just can’t see them.”
         Father Satan smacks his lips as if he has just tasted his first cup of coffee of the day, and pats the book about heroines of the Bible that rests on the glass counter showing rare books as he attempts to justify his existence working at a minimum-wage, no-benefits salesclerk job during another day of sour sales at Printers Devil Bookstore—even though the job, in my view, is certainly not in keeping with his recent, metaphysical promotion, as ordained by the Baby Jesus.
         “ You should work on the Baby Jesus to pump up sales, “ I say, casually.  “You know, he only owns hardbacks: none of those working-class paperback editions in his house.”
         “A true socialist hero,” Father Satan replies, demonically snorting. “Give him the collected works of Marx in a hardback edition, and he goes into the fetus position.”

Scenes from the Inquisition, Part I

         The Great Book of the Court of Inquisition States:  He, Evan William, otherwise known as Baby Jesus, stands trial herein for alleged acts of grievous hypocrisy, overt malfeasance, and intellectual browbeating.  And his day of reckoning is at its final hour: Here he stands, before his judge, the one he once publicly denounced in mock blasphemy as Father Satan.
         All the weight of historical and religious and moral knowledge Evan William, or Baby Jesus, has gained over the days, the months, the years through his studies of radical—though there are those who have deemed it heretical—theology must now be placed on the scales of inquisitorial justice.

In the Name of the Father Satan

         Evan William assumes the characteristic position he favors during summer days on the side patio of the Cafe Black Noir coffeeshop, that is, stretched out on the molded outdoor plastic chair, with his hairless chest bared invitingly to the sun, with his khaki shorts barely reaching over his finely tanned thighs, with his current book on his lap that he reads as mirrored aviator sunglasses that shield his eyes reflect the pages of text.  From time to time, he coolly removes a burning cigarette from the notch on the black plastic ashtray on the table next to him and takes a marked drag, then he replaces the cigarette exactly into the notch, sips from his cup of coffee and turns a page over in his book.
         Naturally, the book is a hardback.  Today, it’s a Marxist interpretation of the Spanish Inquisition.
         He appears content, satisfied in this pose.  Content, satisfied in keeping to his casual sun-touched ritual: the tanning, the book, the cigarette, the coffee, the tanning, the book, the cigarette, the coffee. …
         Little does Evan William know, however, that, on this particular very hot and very sweaty Sunday, he is about to make his entrance in the opening act of a divine comedy.
         My companion and I approach the table.  He wheels his beat-up urban street bicycle over toward the table, parks it against a tree ... and now he is just standing there to look over Evan William, he is just staring at him hard, a slight crease of a sneer on the corner of his thick lips.  After a few silent moments holding this pose, he combs a strand of his long hair over his left ear with his fingers, and he practically shouts out at Evan:
         “So, what’s the word, Baby Jesus?”
         And after a suitably dramatic pause, and without so much as one look away from his book, Evan states:

“Why, If It Isn’t

Father

Satan”


Refreshments for an Inquisition

         Father Satan takes a stone chalice from off the dais and sips a hot black drink from within it, the steam flowing about the sneer on his face and up into his nostrils as he glowers down at the accused apostate.

And Now, Beeratrice

         “But I don’t blame her, it isn’t her fault.  It’s been leading up to this for years.  I was always his foil, just his foil.  She’s basically a good kid.”
         “I think she has something to do with it, Father Satan.  I mean, she was seeing both of you guys at the same time, and it wasn’t like you were the one who was going to be footing the bill for sandwiches at Café Black Noir or for pitchers of beer at the Far Mirage Bar.  That’s why the Baby Jesus brought it all up in the first place, on that enduring night of critical implications for the metaphysical foundations of the universe as we know it.”
         Father Satan laughs. “I still don’t think you can blame her,” he says. “She’s a sweet young kid.  She can still be one of my acolytes.”
         “Then, as one of your acolytes, she must assume a name,” I say.  “How about ... I know. The incident of which we speak took place at The Far Mirage, right?  And she has been known to help empty a pitcher or two, right?  So she should henceforth be deemed ... Beeratrice.”
         “Beeratrice?”
         “Sure, like Beatrice: she who leads the infatuated toward heaven ... and into hell.”
         Father Satan falls silent.
         Expanding on the notion, I continue:  “Except that she’s Beeratrice.  Picture it: She takes you down to hell as your guide, you follow after her, until you come to the very center of hell itself; only there, it isn’t Satan encased in a block of ice, but ... a keg of beer.”
         Father Satan smiles, and said:  “Beeratrice, huh?  I don’t know.  Maybe.”

Beeratrice and Dante

         Beeratrice can be found these days sitting at a table in Cafe Black Noir, with her Italian-English dictionary and a worn hardback copy of Dante’s epic poem at her elbow, assiduously working on translating it for her class at the nearby nominally theological though essentially secular Catholic University.
         At times, she takes a break from her books to talk with us.  She charms us when she talks: Her talk has an enrapturing ceaselessness, and we are held immersed in her looking into our eyes as if she is watching each of her words materialize before a mirror.
         Here is Beeratrice talking:  “I don’t think they’re ever going to make a movie or television show about Dante I don’t think they have at least he’s amazing it’s almost like you want to go to hell with him to see all these people who are down there I guess you could say it’s like you want to be down with Dante to see all the people there it’s like one big circus in hell and because you know you won’t be staying you know it’s pretty cool to be down there because you are going to see these evil people living out their evil deeds right in front of your eyes and it’s just even more cool in the original Italian especially at the end when Dante runs into Judas and then finds Satan in a huge block of ice right in the center of hell not the fire you would have thought it’s all so I don’t know Italian and poetic and all like ciao bello Dante Bonjourno Judas Vorrei Una Birra, Satan.”

Beeratrice Entertains the Baby Jesus

         Many lines of conversation at Cafe Black Noir often end up at Evan William’s table.  He is his own salon⎯an instant symposiast.  A practiced listener and conversationalist, a talent cultivated during those days when he had worked as an academic counselor at the nearby Roman Catholic University, he has it all down to a choreographic art: with a nod of the head⎯brief and smoothly accomplished; searching eye contact, then, a hard squint as he puffs on his prop, his cigarette, he prompts you to continue talking, using rhetorical questions phrased softly, such as:
         “And your boyfriend?  Where is he now?”
         “Oh he’s staying in Europe see he’s visited there so many times that well before anything becomes serious between us he wants to stay there for awhile and see how it feels like to be in the middle of a different culture without having to leave in three or four days …”
         His nod, his squint through the smoke as he takes a drag off the cigarette, and Evan says: “Oh, I see.”

Evidence of the Existence of the Baby Jesus
         “And this is my photo album.  I only really show it to my closest friends.”
         “Oh I see I see oh look at this one here oh look at you here you are such a hippie in this picture …”
         “MMM Hmmm”
         “… look you’re wearing granny glasses in this picture.”
         “That was when I was working for the McCarthy campaign.”
         “Oh cool.”
         “Waging our struggle against the war.  LBJ, WE AREN’T WAITING.  GET OUT NOW, YOU EVIL SATAN!”
         “Really cool now what’s this who’s this here?”
         “Here, move a little closer so I can show you.  This picture was taken back there at my seminary school, during our Christmas pageant.”
         “Look at you here you look like you are in one of those holy pictures that we used to have to wear around our necks in Catholic School with the curly hair and the little round face you look just like him you are a perfect match you two if I didn’t know any better I would say you were him.”
         “Yes, I was known as Baby Jesus ... though there were times when I was referred to as Goat Boy.”

The Look of Beeratrice
         Evan William sets aside an hour at Café Black Noir this afternoon to simply admire a photograph on the tabletop that reveals a side of somber grace in the character of Beeratrice.  She had given him a copy of the photograph after their long discussions about memorable deaths in their families.  Evan’s uncle had died quickly in suicide; Beeratrice’s father had died slowly from emphysema and then lung cancer.  And to show him how much she still thought about her father, the photo showed her dressed in a cloud-white gown that flows loosely around the fullness in her body, as she poses behind the tombstone of her father.  She appears to Evan like a Venus in Bluejeans become the Grieving Angel of the Mourning.  Her eyes are cast in a mesmeric, faraway stare; her face carries a tranquilly grim expression.  Evan likes the way her hands rest softly on the tombstone, as if to steady it, to grant peace to the shell of the departed soul beneath that had been shaken so long by gasped wheezes for air.
         So now he finds himself wondering how he would love her.  But he does not so much see her in bed with him, as him on her.  The queen-sized body wrapped with sheets in the white of the same gown she wears on the tombstone photo, his head pillowed on the soft of her breasts, he would curl up on top of her and drift off to sleep, as the touch of her breath played on his ear.  Now he had never before allowed himself to imagine himself sleeping on her, no, Evan had been studious in reminding himself that he must honor the distance presence of her fiancé away in Europe (besides, he was too old for her: After all, he was 42 years of age, and here was this bright young woman, still in her 20s …) until, moved once again by this photo, he sighs out a plume of cigarette smoke and admits the obvious to himself: Beeratrice is hot.
Beeratrice , Smoking
         “If your father died as a result of smoking too heavily, why, then, do you still smoke?”
         She stops blinking her eyes to fix them on him, as she answers,  ”Oh I guess for the same reason you do.”

An Opening Statement From the Defense
         Poring over the voluminous, hardback tome before him and dipping his quill pen into a bottle of reddish-black ink, the Inquisitor jots down notes into the book and mutters sardonic words to himself in a snarl under his breath. Now he announces:  “This court is in session to consider the apostasy of, firstly, you daring to call yourself the Baby Jesus, and, secondly, you mocking the Inquisition by branding me, in public, as Father Satan.  Have you a response to these grave charges?”
         “While pondering the metaphysical implications of my studies of the works of arcane philosophers and little-known theologians in varied forms of Latin and Greek and Hebrew, I indeed arrived conclusively at the revelation that I had been called to carry the name of Baby Jesus and was met by hosannas and exultations from my fellow scholars and practitioners in the arts of obscure theological inquiry.  Though knowing that you and the court would be in opposition, I then followed with what I consider the inevitable inspiration to announce the naming of you.  As a matter of enlightened integrity, I could do nothing else.  Thus, I think of it as the epitomic apex of my cerebral discipline, the very apex of my intellectual accomplishments, to have branded you as Father Satan.  It would be an honor to be doomed by this court for my actions, though I be damned through eternity.”
         “Damning you eternally is the lesser of the punishments that you face,” Father Satan responds, and begins to call out the particulars of the offenses with a tick of the pen on the book: “And what other manner of cerebral convulsions are these that you spread like insidious vermin? what, that our Lord God imbibed Magic Mushrooms and thus Created Mass Hallucinations of Supposed Miracles? And that the Lord Committed Acts of a Carnal, Man-Lusting Nature during his holy mission on earth?  Am I to take seriously what I am reading here? Yet you persist to term such blasphemies as the grand conclusions of your studies?”
         “Blasphemies, no.  Truth, I say.”
         Violently, Father Satan slams shut the tome.  “Do not speak of the truth,” he shouts.  “To the keeper of the books!”
Scenes from the Inquisition, Part II
         And, indeed, the walls of the courtroom of this particular Inquisition are lined entirely with books.  All are bound like the book Father Satan studies before him, only in different colors.  While Father Satan is referring to a pure white book, as white as a spotlight in an interrogation room, in this case before him, the other books on the towering shelves⎯extending out behind and above Evan William into the infinite⎯are in red, or black, or yellow, or tan, and many appear to have been heavily used, covered in centuries of dust.  What could these great books contain?  Evan was curious, and felt a sudden mischievous urge to grab out a book from its shelf and open it.
         Thus, when Father Satan bent down below the bench to pick up the quill pen he had dropped in his raging at Evan, then spent several minutes fussing with his cloak beneath the desk, Evan took the chance to sidle over to a nearby shelf and draw out a yellow book.  He cracked open the book and discovered it was filled with the names of persons in minute print⎯name after name in a variety of Oriental languages, column upon column that appeared to cover hundreds of pages.  Scrawled by hand next to each name in the reddish-black ink of Father Satan’s quill pen was either a checkmark or an ominous X.
         Before Evan could hope to study the book further, though, Father Satan had caught him and was pointing and jabbing the quill pen at him.  He dropped the book, noticing suddenly that it did not make a sound when it hit the floor.  Father Satan was raging again: “You read names etched in the plots of blasphemous crime, all hard bound in the dust of this library of guilt.  And your book, Baby Jesus, is long overdue.”

My Revelation to Beeratrice
         Eventually, I had to talk with Beeratrice myself.  Not just a few offhanded pleasantries, either, but a more involved conversation with historical and poetical and spiritual allusions ... even going beyond her conversations with Father Satan and Baby Jesus.  I did not believe that Beeratrice truly understood what she had done, in unleashing these Manichean elements that now orbited her being:  on the one hand, a committed Socialist who had proudly read the entire works of Marx and Lenin in chronological order and who, thus, was perilously close to betraying his lifelong basic tenet of eliminating all forms of competition from the world (like, how many times had Evan chided me for turning to the sports page while I was reading the newspaper at Café Black Noir? for paying any attention whatsoever to the “funny pages of the infantile adult bourgeois male”); and, on the other hand, this Father Satan, who was a story unto himself—as I meant to explain to Beeratrice.
         I planned to see her one night at The Mirage:  a dive bar located near the University that the students and even some faculty had chosen for sessions of drunken slumming.  At a table near the door, under a framed sign with a mirrored backdrop for Red Goat Bock Beer that featured a cartoon of a scarlet billy goat head whose mouth munched on a six pack of empty cans, I set a pitcher of suds down and met her face to face.  Now, I was nervous about all of this because Beeratrice had never revealed herself as thoroughly to me as she had to Father Satan and Baby Jesus, no, our talks had never ended up as marathon discourses between these living personifications of Hegelian dialectics:  Messrs. Thesis and Antithesis.  I was, I think, understandably concerned that she would find my talents for conversation to be superficial, after her sessions with these two neighborhood philosophes ... so before the meeting, I had practiced talking to her in front of a mirror in my room.  By rehearsing what I would say first without alcoholic stimulation, I hoped to gather in my mind a technique, a line of approach, a script that would impress Beeratrice with the implications of her actions; then, I repeated the process after drinking down a 12 pack of the cheapest beer I could buy.
         “Once upon a time, a long time ago, on a dark and stormy night of the soul,” I began, “there was a writer in search of the perfect story: our friend, now known as Father Satan.”  I nodded my head in her direction, and drank a mug of beer, then poured another and continued.  “He had come to believe that the only way to become a writer was to have a story, told in a clear, simple prose, with a beginning and a middle and an end.  He would talk in long hurried monologues about the necessity of short clear sentences and paragraphs in plotted novels.  Punchy prose.  One scene leading logically to another.  Characters, real characters and, always, a theme.  He did not believe in adjectives or ten-dollar words or novels that went—as he phrased it—nowhere slow.  ‘Where’s the story?’ was his question, and his answer, his rallying cry, ‘You have to have a story.’  His search for the perfect story was pure and undeterred, Beeratrice.  Because we both had an interest in writing, I would, from time to time, show him a piece I had composed.  He would study it, in one day, and return it with his verdict:  ‘Well, the writing is pretty good ... but you need a story.’  I shrugged.  “Of course, when he showed me one of his pieces, I could never find the story ... as in, I guess, a logical plot device that leads you from Point A to Point B ... his pieces would begin and ... here was the problem, Beeratrice, I could never find an ending.  There was no shipwreck, or discovery of a long-lost treasure, or a sudden revelation of the criminal who committed the murder.”
Beeratrice on Television
         “Well, thank you, I appreciate the gift, but I never really watch television,”  Father Satan told her.  “I’m a booky:  I live in a world of books.”
         Beeratrice laid her hands serenely on the used television she was offering to Father Satan.  She stood behind the television, and blinked at him.
         ”One time, I saw a sign one of my friends had tacked on to his television--a sign you could actually read, ha, ha—that said ‘Death to Your Television.’  That sums up my feelings ... not that I don’t appreciate your gift, I mean, I’ll make sure and watch something, but not all the time.  Because, I am a booky.  I mean, take a book that has a story, a real story.”  He pointed his finger at her.  “You can lose yourself in a book like that, with a real story and real characters.  You can’t lose yourself in television.”
         Beeratrice looked at Father Satan and smiled, mildly.  She moved the tips of her curved fingers lightly over the top of the console as if she were a medium channeling through a crystal globe.
         Finally, she said:  “Televisions have stories don’t they of course they do my father would watch them when he was in bed sick and he would say that he couldn’t go a whole day without his story you know soap operas he called them his stories like he was the story only I could never sit through them I never really got the habit it’s like smoking I guess to some people those stories really hook you you can’t quit watching them even though they never end the stories I mean they can go on and on for years and years even.”
         Expressionless, Father Satan stared at Beeratrice.  Then, he said:  “So, you want to screw?”
The Plot Thickens
         I continued:  “Just what was his story?  He kept telling me that I lacked a story, but, strangely, all the time he continued to proselytize to me about my failings, the less and less I saw of any writing from him.  It was a mystery to me.  And to him ... for one night we were sitting here, at The Mirage, when he announced after three pitchers of beer that everyone who wants to be a writer should be writing them, I mean, mysteries and crime novels.  None of those profound, academic, weighty tomes for him; no, they could not compare to a good crime story that contains the pulp of true fiction:  the crime, the trial, the sentence, that is, the beginning, the middle, and the end.”

The Crime, Then ...
         See, Beeratrice, you are together at last, at The Mirage, with the One known as the Baby Jesus and he who will be known as Father Satan.  You sit at their elbows and muse over your stein of beer, wary of saying anything, waiting for something worse than a whirl of fists or mugs heaved at walls, or blabbered obscenities⎯all events this bar has seen in its time.
         No, you wait for ... not a mere battle, but an Armageddon of wits.
         Now, you have known this pair as convivial, sometimes entertainingly odd, older acquaintances at Cafe Noir,  but you never understood that, here, together, they would vie for your sole attention as acting agents in a psychic drama, that their apparently lighthearted game of contentious friendship⎯with their improvised lines of needling digs and playful, mock insults⎯masked the ferment of a bitter conflict that will prove decisive for the ages.
         By a round of cyclical and fateful occurrences, the character of the struggle evolved.  A shift in appearances or positions in one inspired a drastic reaction as a counterforce from the other, leading inexorably to this field of destiny, this face to face in your face encounter at The Mirage.  History shows, for example, that the conversion of Evan Williams to Stalinism with a Smiley Red Face (“if your state must adopt ideology to attain Utopia,” he would say, “then what’s a few broken eggs for the fluffy omelet?”) then into a milder if still potent Socialist Theocracy that would resemble a Secular Vatican, was answered resolutely by Father Satan, who repeatedly declared to all listeners that he was currently compiling notes to write the first Jazz Western⎯jive-talking good guys wearing white hats with Louis Armstrong as their hepcat sidekick in a battle with a big band of ex-cavalrymen bad guys dressed all in black and led by Bix Beiderbecke as their evil bugler, set against a Western Plains that holds a tribe of swinging Cherokees heavily into percussion, and so on⎯because such a book would combine two inherently American artistic creations into the one, true, and greatest American novel.
         You have not so much as come between them, as tipped the balance of the struggle.  See how Father Satan, the Force of the Physical World, invites himself over to your table and makes a point of nudging you in the shoulder when he sits beside you, while the Baby Jesus prepares to tap into the Depths of the Metaphysical for his scourging reply; as he observes Father Satan helping himself to a glass of beer from your pitcher without asking permission, his countenance chills with a righteous glare:  a cocked eyebrow, a malicious smile tugging on the corner of his lips, a different Evan William for you, Beeratrice.
         “Why, look who’s come to bore us with his stories about the Great American Novel,” begins Baby Jesus, acidulously.  “Are you going to pay us now or pay us later for that beer?  Before or after you negotiate your advance?”
         “Oh, come on, Evan, give me a break, “ says Father Satan.  “I thought you socialists were supposed to share with the working class.  I’ll be glad to find you a hardback edition of the Sex Life of Marx for a glass of beer.”
         Evan sighs, and turns to you, taking on that voice of a kindly and wordly confidante he has been using on you since you have known him.  “Our mutual friend believes in drinking beer on the Five-Year Plan,”  he tells you.  “In other words, he’ll compensate us around the time of the millennium?”
         From the appearance of Father Satan, you anticipate a reply with fire; watering at the mouth to let loose on Baby Jesus, his lips smack until you can see drops of spittle on the corners.  You sense, then, a long night at The Mirage.  You reach for the pitcher, but both of your drinking partners extend a right hand toward the vessel to vie for the honor of serving you.
         “Oh, excuse me, after you,” says Evan, tartly.  “Of course, you are better at doing this than I am.”
         “What do you mean by that, buddy?”
         “I’m simply acknowledging your years of experience as a waiter, and a damn good one, I’d imagine.  One can’t help but notice the ... graceful way you reach for the pitcher, so quickly and effortlessly, knowing someone else will be paying for it, soon enough.”
         Father Satan sits back.  “You pour it then,” he sniffs. “Just don’t spill any on your lap.  You never know what you’ll find down there, when you wipe it off.”
         Baby Jesus suddenly takes on a solemn mien.  He drinks from his stein, and he looks into the mirror behind the scarlet goat head next to his seat (and you know the sign I refer to, Beeratrice).  “Very good,” he whispers, as if to himself.  “That was well put.”
         Father Satan now moves in for the last shot.  “You might not find what you’re looking for, buddy.”
         “MMMM Hmmm”
         “So don’t wipe too hard.”
         “Excellent.  Perhaps you really are a writer, then.”
         “You are so cute, Evan.  Like a bug.”
         How do you react, Beeratrice?  Fill in the pause, or fill your empty glass?  Evan continues to stare out the window.  Father Satan points at him, jabbing his finger forward.  “You’re a loser, my friend,” he informs Evan, rapidly.  “A socialist with hardback books and soft palms⎯a loser.  I’ll bet you’ve never read every word of Marx; I’ll bet you wouldn’t recognize Karl if he walked into The Mirage naked wearing a red flag diaper.  I mean ... oh, how can you talk to a person? give me a break, you’re just full of crap, Baby Jesus, you’re all crapped out, you’re a loser.”
         But you had so much to say before, Beeratrice.  Always so eager to talk with us.  Ceaselessly.  Never boring.
         “This is language I would expect from someone who reads comic books all day,”  Evan retorts.  “Or are these phrases listed in the notecards you bring to Cafe Noir everyday? to show us you really are writing a Great American Novel?  Please tell us.  We want to hear about your work, considering that we’ll probably never read any of it.”
         “Go to hell, Baby Jesus,”  Father Satan fairly spits out.  Then, as if exhausted momentarily by his expectoration, he looks to you and groans sourly.  And, of course, Baby Jesus answers with a look to you of his own.
         What do they see in you, Beeratrice?
         Our Lady of the Apocalypse?  Helen of Troy as an International Supermodel who inspires Gog and Magog to the war table of a battlefield that will be televised around the clock?  Are battalions of the spirit world mustered on an antediluvian landscape for your approval?  Now, what order of speech have you prepared?  Should you not lift your face to those forces arrayed before you, prepared to violently unite the duality of satanic and godly⎯too long locked in inconclusive, epochal stalemate⎯in a final struggle?  Should you not give your blessing with an upraised hand gesture as if from some sinister Pope, with words off your lips like the soul kiss of a Babylonian priestess?
         Instead, I hear you tell them:  “Guys why are you fighting like this let’s be friends let’s drink another pitcher what do you say I’ll buy this time I promise I’ll buy okay okay?”

And, the Continuing Trial ...
         Eternity times the proceeding.  The antagonists debate with precision.  The arguments are tangles of forgotten languages, arcane allusions, labyrinthine pursuits that date back to the first scribbles of sacred and pagan laws, on rocks and other hard places.  The visceral excitement of personal belief.  The recalled minutia from obscure scrolls.  Nuance in translation, a twist in dialect, a parameter of interpretation.  Voices rise as high as the tower of books that dominate the courtroom.  Abuse of protocol occurs.  A gavel sounds.  Objections sustained, then overruled.  An oath is broken, and bickering ensues over the difference between the apocryphal and the ordained.  Whole books are spoken in tongues.  Evidence is entered.  A hieroglyphic word undergoes tortuous scrutiny for what might once have counted for hours upon hours.  Evidence is withdrawn.  The proceedings degenerate into insults and whining.  Decorum is restored, a ruling goes unanswered.  Point of order, point well taken, point counterpoint, pointed rebuttal, prove the point, what is the point?  Where is the point?
         Below where the angels dance.
...followed by ...
         I went on: “Another pitcher, Beeratrice?  Why sure, no problem, and I’ll buy.  Now, where was I?  Ah yes, the story I did not have.  I mulled over his opinion about me, and about his own storyless existence.  Where, indeed, was the story? the characters? the plot? and, most importantly, the theme?  I mean, he seemed so sure of himself, so correct, as only a Father Satan can be.  Then, one night, in here, at The Mirage ... an idea for the story came to me.  All the time, it had been staring me in the face, haranguing me, insisting I tell it.  Yes, Father Satan demanded a story, all right, and he and Baby Jesus were, in my mind, real characters ... so ... so ... what do you think of the story so far, Beeratrice? how do you find yourself in it? in this, the story of Father Satan and Baby Jude...

...the Sentence
... hiss, through clenched teeth and raised upper lip like a rabid horse would neigh, as the books began to smoke in what he saw as a furious spontaneous combustion, as he cried from the smoke with the realization of what his new name would cost him and shouted and raved at The Inquisitor in spasms, as the stench of the books pinched his nostrils with an odor not of paper but flesh and hair on fire in this oven of a room where he would be sealed in his fate, as a plume of oily (from sweat and blood and burst blisters) smoke drew down his eyelids and blinded him while flakes and ashes from the books peppered his body that curled to the floor of the room like a bald tire in a junkyard inferno, Father Satan continued:  “Now spill the silver spun from that great organ in your head to the ground and give your nether cheeks the slimy kiss as you sizzle and shrivel before me for you have betrayed yourself with your very own words and you have hanged yourself thusly and now only now can I watch you become my acolyte because I your Father Confessor of a Satan have finally put you on

BABY JUDE-HISS
I HAVE
PUT YOU ON!!!!!!!!!!”

A Switch of the Tale
Time for your favorite program.  Your story.  The story you follow.  You can’t keep your eyes off the screen.  Black and white screen.  Portable television you can take anywhere with you.  You don’t want the story to end.  A real page turner.  The hand on the book turns another page.  Her hand.  On a blank page.  But what a story.  Beginning, middle and ... the reception remains clear.  Her hand turns another page, for you.  What will happen next on your program? in your story?  Better than the model who transformed letters into words on the game show, her hand turns the page.  Again.  A story should end.  But you don’t want it to end.  Ever.  It is too good.  You are happy you put it on.  Your story.  Your program:  “World of Books.”
I End Up With Beeratrice
“I suppose you never guessed that I would win your hand in the end, Beeratrice.  But you should know better than anyone what old Dante said:
“THEN THEY RAKED HIM WITH MORE
THAN A HUNDRED BOOKS
BELLOWING: ‘HERE YOU DANCE BELOW THE
COVERS.
GRAFT ALL YOU CAN THERE: NO ONE
CHECKS YOUR BOOKS.’ ”
Yes, a little reading is a dangerous thing.  Did you like my story?  It doesn’t matter, you’re in it anyway.  Yes, perhaps I was a little too hard on the principal characters throughout the ... uh, narrative, but, listen, if you are going to play at being a Father Satan and a Baby Jesus ... uh, Judas ... you have to expect a God the Dad.  There was no way in hell that I could have ever won you over otherwise: I mean, we never spoke, did we?  I just sort of, watched you speak from a distance.  I’m really only good at picking up ... six packs, I mean, in the conventional sense?  What?  Oh, thank you for reminding me, I, I almost forgot ... and it’s getting late ... but ... this place stays open late ... so it’s never too late.  Character, plot, scenes, motivation ...now, we need a theme.  Let’s see ... I have a good one.  Thank you, Beeratrice, just for being yourself.  The theme then:  What difference does it make if the glass is half full or half empty, if there’s beer in it?” I asked the mirror containing the head of a billy goat at The Mirage.

THE END