The Halo Effect

16

The stone spires of St. Patrick’s Cathedral reached up only 330 feet, but despite being dwarfed by boxes of glass and steel, it exuded an importance those taller buildings didn’t have. From the minute its doors opened in the morning to when they shut each night, more than seven thousand people walked up the steps and through the doors to behold this magnificent Gothic house of worship. And no day was more crowded than a Saturday in the summer when people were visiting the city from all over the world.

That was why he had chosen that morning at 11:00 a.m.

It simply was the safest place for him to hide in all of New York. He could spend as long as he needed in the sanctuary, thinking out what he needed to do next without anyone paying attention to him. He never sat in the same pew two visits in a row. Never visited the same shrine more than once a month.

People who prayed sat under a shroud of invisibility. There was still the sense that it was wrong to stare at someone with their head bowed, eyes closed. And so that was the pose he struck when he needed to escape from the streets outside and the people who knew him and expected things of him.

This was his refuge. And today it was also his shopping mall. The tableau he’d constructed required simple black rosaries. And there was no safer place to buy them than in the gift shop of this holy edifice.

Commercialism had taken over the church with the same voracity as it had taken over the art world. For all the people who stood rapt in front of a van Gogh, there were two dozen who bought the coasters for sale in the museum’s store. For all the people who came to this grand cathedral to reach out to the Lord, hundreds more worshiped in the small shop buying medals, prayer cards, bottles of holy water and any one of the dozens of rosaries offered for sale.

No one would remember the man who purchased the black rosary. No one would think it odd that he had been there once a week for the past few weeks, each time buying the exact same prayer beads. And no one noticed that he managed not to touch the beads with his fingertips but held only the tag when he handed them to the saleswoman.

He chose black again. Because they were simple. Because he liked how they looked against ivory-colored skin. He chose the medium-size beads, with the silver roundels and Virgin medal and crucifix. The gold was ostentatious.

The act of handing over the money and taking the bag holding the rosary was an act of faith in itself. He was doing God’s work. He was bringing another woman into the fold. He was introducing Jesus to another lost soul. And if she did not appreciate him for it, if she did not understand what was happening in the moment, he was sure that her soul did.

The woman smiled at him as she gave him change. He smiled back. Easily. Without fear. Knowing that she would never remember just another man. He left the gift shop and walked into the apse of the church. He would go to the confessional and ask the priest behind the mesh window to bless these beads. Dozens of people made this request every day. Tourists in the house of the Lord who had no respect. Who took pictures. Who bought souvenirs. If he could push them all out, he would. If he could make the cathedral pure again, he would.

But then he would no longer be invisible. And until his job was done, until he’d completed his task, being seen, being recognized was not anything he could risk.

“Father, it has been one week since my last confession. I have taken the Lord God’s name in vain and coveted my neighbor’s wife. And I would like you to bless my rosary. Would you do that?”

“Yes, my son.”