“Why, you might ask, does Marcia live behind this place,” Daniel asked, after they’d escaped out the back door of the Hari Krishna Institute.

They’d been lucky. The Krishnas were in the middle of a celebration and ignored the four potential converts in their midst. However, shepherding the girls through their orgy of the senses had been difficult. Men, women, and children swirled mindlessly around them, through clouds of burnt cooking oil and sandalwood incense to the rhythm of slapped bongo drums and rattled tambourines, intoxicating and hypnotizing the three road weary girls. Only out in the fresh air, had he allowed them to stop a forward motion.

“Believe it or not, they’ll keep swirling and twirling and banging those drums until they pass out and then, in morning, why, I’ve seen men leave that place in business suits and carrying brief cases. Investment bankers on Wall Street during the day. Krishnas at night.” Daniel joked as he led the girls across a cobblestone courtyard to the carriage house. “You’re kidding!”

“I am not.” The second floor was dark. Troubling. However, the doors to both the stairwell and to the flat were unlocked. That was a good sign. “Marcia thinks the Krishnas will protect her,” he chuckled as he led them inside. “She never locks her door.”

Looking around a room lit only by the Krishna’s celebrations, he recognized the two beanbag chairs they’d sewn together over popcorn and beer one night and a wooden coffee table left behind by a previous tenant for obvious reasons. The clincher that she hadn’t moved was good old Che still hanging on the wall next to the kitchenette. It was a poster of Guevara that Marcia’d had since college, the dead revolutionary, so young, so handsome, and so dangerous.

“Marcia?” He called as he flipped on the light over the sink. In response he heard two sets of voices coming from the bedroom. She wasn’t alone. What made him think she would be?

“It appears we’ve stumbled into something,” he said. The girl he’d called the Catholic caught his meaning. She was the tallest of the three and model-thin. Her long black hair and white skin seemed to set in marble a pair of blue eyes, unnervingly intense and crystal blue eyes. Compared to her, the ringleader (Venus of the Sewers) looked less like a goddess and more like the neighborhood tomboy. The third girl, who reminded Daniel of a young Eleanor Roosevelt, seemed to be trying to hide behind her friends.

The mumbling from the bedroom continued. “Marcia?” He repeated.

“Is that you Daniel?” Was the response.

“No, it’s Che Guevara.”

Marcia opened the door. She’d slipped a flowered house dress hastily over her head, which, on any other woman would look drab and shapeless but not on her. “My God, Daniel. How long has it been? I thought you’d finally given up on New York City and gone to live on Walden Pond.”

“No. I’ve been here. Well, around.  Here.”

She spotted the girls and turned her questioning eyes on him.

“You remember what it is to be adrift in this city without friends?” he asked. “It hasn’t been that long.”

“My God Daniel. I haven’t seen you in over a year and now you show up with three runaways?”

“A year? No, that’s not possible. It hasn’t been that long, certainly not in meaningful days and you can’t count my useless days – for which I’ve had many – against me. For the angel who talked with me came again, and waked me, like a man that is wakened out of his sleep.”

“Daniel? Old Testament now?”

“Daniel saved our lives! We were completely out of gas —we had no place to go. We would have been killed or worse.”

“He can’t help himself. He’s a Jesuit.”

“Was…was a Jesuit. No longer.”

“That’s right Daniel, I forgot. Now, you’re the Anti-Christ. How old are you girls?”

“I’m eighteen. My name is Bronte and this is Nora and Ellie.”

“Bronte? That’s an unusual name. Did you make it up? You don’t look eighteen. Are you runaways?”

“No, we’re not runaways. We’re musicians. Ellie and I play the guitars and Nora sings and she’s got a really good voice, just like Cher. We tried getting jobs in Montreal but the Canadians wouldn’t give us work permits cause there are too many Americans up there trying to avoid the draft. So we came down here.”

“To New York City? Do you know anyone in the city? “

They shook their heads no. “See, even stupider than we were when you came here to save the world and I came here to escape from God.”

“Escape from God? Is that what you’re calling your mother these days.”

“Heretic!” Daniel returned. Her face, despite the years spent in New York City working on hopeless causes, had not changed. It was still springtime and fresh air. Freckles swam across her nose like wandering stars, making her look much younger than she was. Meanwhile his hairline receded, the lenses in his glasses thickened each year and, the grime of city air had rendered his complexion dull and grey.

Before she could respond, the door to the bedroom opened and what emerged, albeit shyly, was a lawyer. Of that fact, Daniel was one hundred percent certain.

It was then that he said things he never should have said, opened Pandora’s Box and let evil take flight.

Next time: The Hunter Returns