Rosary girls

14

It is night in Philadelphia.

I am standing on North Broad Street, looking toward Center City and the commanding figure ofWilliam Penn, craftily lighted atop city hall,feeling the warmth of the spring day fading into the sizzle of red neon and long, de Chirico shadows, marveling once more at the two faces of the city.

This is not the egg tempera of daytime Philly, the bright colors of Robert Indiana's Love or the Mural Arts Program. This is Philly at night, a city rendered in thick, violent brushstrokes, an impasto of sedimentary pigments.

The old building on North Broad has witnessed many nights, its cast pilasters standing silent guard for almost a century. In many ways, it is the stoic face of the city: the old wooden seats, the coffered ceiling, the carved medallions, the worn canvas where a thousand men have spat and bled andfallen.

We file in. We smile at each other, raise eyebrows, clap shoulders.

I can smell the copper of their blood.

These men might know my deeds, but they do not know my face. They think I am a madman, that I pounce from the darkness like some horror movie villain. They will read about the things I have done, at their breakfast tables, on SEPTA, in the food courts, and they will shake their heads and ask why.

Could it be they know why?

If one were to peel back the phyllo layers of wickedness and pain and cruelty, could it be that these men might do the same if they had the chance? Might they lure each other's daughters to the dark street corner, the empty building, the deep-shadowed heart of the park? Might they wield their knives and pistols and bludgeons and finally utter their rage? Might they spend the currency of their wrath and then scurry off to Upper Darby and New Hope and Upper Merion and the safety of their lies?

There is always a morbid contest in the soul, a struggle between the loathing and the need, between the darkness and the light.

The bell rings. We rise from our stools. We meet in the center.

Philadelphia, your daughters are not safe.

You are here because you know that. You are here because you do not have the courage to be me. You are here because you are afraid of becoming me.

I know why I am here.

Jessica.