Karras leaned over and cranked down the window on the passenger side. Karl leaned his head in. "You are going which way, Father Karras?"
"Du Pont Circle."
"Ah, yes, good! You could drop me, please, Father? You would mind?"
"Glad to do it. Jump in."
Karl nodded. "I appreciate it, Father!"
Karras started up the engine. "Do you good to get out"
"Yes, I go to see a film. A good film."
Karras put the car in gear and pulled away.
For a time they drove in silence. Karras was preoccopied, searching for answers. Possession.
Impossible. The holy water. Still...
"Karl, you knew Mr. Dennings pretty well, wouldn't you say?"
Karl stared through the windshield; then nodded stiffly. "Yes. I know him."
"When Regan... when she appears to be Dennings, do you get the impression that she really is?"
Long pause. And then a flat and expressionless "Yes."
Karras nodded, feeling haunted.
There was no more conversation until they reached Du Pont Circle, where they came to a traffic signal, and stopped. "I get off here, Father Karras," Karl said, opening the door. "I can catch here the bus." He climbed out, then leaned his head in the window. "Father, thank you very much. I appreciate. Thank you."
He stood back on the safety island and waited for the light to change. He smiled and waved as the priest drove. away. He watched the car until at last it disappeared around the bend at the mouth of Massachusetts Avenue. Then he ran for a bus. Boarded. Took a transfer. Changed buses. Rode in silence until finally he debarked at a northeast tenement section of the city, where he walked to a crumbling apartment building and entered.
Karl paused at the bottom of the gloomy staircase, smelling acrid aromas from efficiency kitchens. From somewhere the sound of a baby crying. He lowered his head. A roach scuttled quickly from a baseboard and across a stair in jagging darts. He clutched at the banister and seemed on the verge of turning back, but then shook his head and began to climb. Each groaning footfall creaked like a rebuke.
On the second floor, he walked to a door in a murky wing, and for a moment he stood there, a hand on the door frame. He glanced at the wall: peeling paint; Nicky and Ellen in penciled scrawl and below it, a date and a heart whose core was cracking plaster. Karl pushed the buzzer and waited, head down. From within the apartment, a squeaking of bedsprings. Irritable muttering. Then someone approaching: a sound that was irregular: the dragging clump of an orthopedic shoe. Abruptly the door jerked partly open, the chain of a safety latch rattling to its limit as a woman in a slip scowled out through the aperture, a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth.
"Oh, it's you," she said huskily. She took off the chain.
Karl met the eyes that were shifting hardness, that were haggard wells of pain and blame; glimpsed briefly the dissolute bending of the lips and the ravaged face of a youth and a beauty buried alive in a thousand motel rooms, in a thousand awakenings from restless sleep with a stifled cry at remembered grace.
"C'mon, tell 'im to fuck off!" A coarse male voice from within the apartment. Slurred. The boyfriend.
The girl turned her head and snapped quickly, "Oh, shut up, jerk, it's Pop!"
The girl turned to Karl. "He's drunk, Pop. Ya better not come in." Karl nodded.
The girl's hollow eyes shifted down to his hand as it reached to a back trouser pocket for a wallet. "How's Mama?" she asked him, dragging on her cigarette, eyes on the hands that were dipping in the wallet, hands counting out tens.
"She is fine." He nodded .tersely. "Your mother is fine."
As he handed her the money, she began to cough rackingly. She threw up a hand to her mouth.
"Fuckin' cigarettes!" she choked out.
Karl stared at the puncture scabs on her arm.
"Thanks, Pop."
He felt the money being slipped from his fingers.
"Jesus, hurry it up!" growled the boyfriend from within.
"Listen, Pop, we better cut this kinds short. Okay? Ya know how he gets."
"Elvira...!" Karl had suddenly reached through the door and grasped her wrist. "There is clinic in New York now!" he whispered at her pleadingly.
She was grimacing, trying to break free from his grip. "Oh, come on!"
"I will send you! They help you! You don't go to jail! It is---"
"Jesus, come on, Pop!" she screeched, breaking free from his clutch.
"No, no, please! It is---"
She slammed the door in his face.
In the shadowy hall, in the carpeted tomb of his expectations, Karl stared mutely for a moment at the door, and then lowered his head into quiet grief. From within the apartment came muffed conversation. Then a cynical, ringing woman's laugh. It was followed by coughing.
