Dominus Nabisco
Below is a brief excerpt from "Diary of a Heretic,” the novel. The story follows the rise and fall of a spiritual cult movement that blossoms around Malcolm Tully, the owner of a coffee and pastry shop across the street from a Chicago’s El track terminal.
The writer here, Malcolm Tully, owns the shop. His parents bought it for him after he dropped out of Northwestern University when his lover killed himself. Since then, the baker Carlos Villalobos has orchestrated the cult’s hierarchy and fluid philosophy, making Malcolm the nominal figurehead.
The novel starts on New Years Day so this entry, dated Dec. 17, falls within a few pages of the end.
At the intersection of Green Bay Road and Maple, a show-off-y couple (mink coats, silver Mercedes) blatantly ran a red light. The driver behind them, inching forward in a Dodge plastered with Jesus stickers, was singing at the top of his lungs. Hands on the steering wheel, head back, mouth open, his chest was heaving, his eyes shut. As the light changed, a cigarette-smoking young woman behind him leaned on her horn, making me jump. A simultaneous gust of cold lashed at my skin. I felt it pierce my bones, and on the outside, push things, so that I stumbled and shuddered and oh, I don’t know: This business of us each being separate, fixed creatures struck me as slim hope and nonstop neediness, no matter what.
I crossed onto Washington Avenue, away from the wind, toward, I hoped, normalcy with its little shops and single-family homes. For a while I encountered no one. Then a blotchy faced man in outdoor coveralls lurched—drunkenly—from a pink gravel driveway. With a can of Budweiser in one hand and a rock in the other, he headed straight for me. I was backing away, but he begged, “No, come on, wait. Take a look at this.” He turned over the rock, revealing a dazzling purple and white geode the size of a cut-in-half grapefruit. “Go on,” he said, “take it.”
“No, but thank you.”
“I want you to have it, achu-ally.” He swiped at my shoulder. “Because achu-ally, it much more belongs to you than to me.”
Assuming he wanted money, I slapped my pockets. “All I’ve got is a twenty.”
“Will you fuck that? What do you think I am? A fucking door-to-door lucky rock salesman? Don’t you know you are looking at your biggest, truest, hard-fucking-est-core believer on the planet?”
Not facetiously (at least at the time, it didn’t sound as bad to me as it does here), I said, “You do look familiar.”
“Take the rock.”
“Thank you.” And upon inspecting the geode, I mumbled further appreciation.
My biggest hardest-core believer on the planet drained his beer, tossed the empty can in some bushes, and said, “Now give me your blessing.”
I cleared my throat and was about to resort to a tap on the cheek and a Dominus Nabisco, when the man ranted instructions at me. “Touch my head,” was all I could clearly make out. So, “Here, hold this— ” I handed him back the geode and stroked wiry tufts of his mustard-brown hair. For good measure, I pressed my thumbs against his temples. Go, I thought of saying, and drink no more. But that seemed pretentious, even for me.
Instead, I asked, “What can I do for you?”
My rock-giver bowed his head, saying “Keep me steadfast in love,” as I mentally sifted through nostrums: Okay, sure. Go on and be steadfast.
“And,” continued the drunk, “keep me forever in awe of your holiness.”
What can you say to that?
I said, “Go. And drink no more.”
--From Diary of a Heretic, a novel by Kathleen Maher, copyright 2007
