Looking up, Jason saw something black hurtling from the ceiling toward his head. There was a flash of color, as well as white. Jason turned to run, but a pair of bare feet slammed into his back, sending him sprawling face-first over the floor. He spun onto his back while swinging the sap behind him. He hadn’t intended to connect with anything, but the wide swing was meant to serve as a “brush back” pitch in baseball, keeping whoever just jumped him from pouncing on him as he rolled over. The sap struck a curved canine in the colorful snout of a mandrill, whose snarl echoed in the otherwise empty church, where beside the two of them, only the priest lay groaning on the floor. The arched canine broke off on impact and hit a pew, where it skittered until it came to a stop.

The mandrill raged, pointing its snout—lined with ribbons of blue, white, and red—at the ceiling to bark, then growled as it ambled on all fours. The mandrill went airborne, opening its snarling mouth wide, exposing three fangs and the fourth jagged stump of a canine tooth. Jason kicked with his feet, but the mandrill swatted with his paws to knock Jason’s feet aside. The mandrill jumped on him, but Jason blocked the beast with his knees, then kicked up, sending the mandrill over his head.

Jason circled like a crab to keep his feet pointed at the monkey and kicked the mandrill back when it lunged for him. Still, the beast was immensely powerful and fought against Jason’s feet, which pedaled furiously as though he were on a bicycle. Jason reached down with his left hand, struggling to get to the snubby on his inside right ankle, but he was kicking too much, and too violently, to get a grip on the small revolver.

He scooted back into the pews, pursued by the snarling mandrill that flashed its fangs wide and slapped at Jason’s feet and legs, frustrated that they remained in its way. Once Jason was in between two pews, he rolled under one pew and landed in the next aisle, with the first pew serving as a barrier between Jason and the enraged mandrill. The mandrill squatted low and swiped beneath the pew at Jason with its hairless paw, but decided on a different tack, and climbed over the back of the pew between it and Jason.

The mandrill peered over the top of the pew, then jumped up, raising both fists high above its head, loading up to bring them crashing down onto Jason’s head. The snubby barked twice in Jason’s hand, tearing through the mandrill as it fell. Jason rolled back under the pew and emptied the next three shots into the face of the mandrill as it lay beside him on the floor.

As Jason rose to his feet, he noticed that he had lost his hat, and wore only his face mask. He heard sirens approaching, so he rushed down the aisle to the side of the fallen priest. “Sorry, father, but I can’t stay. The ambulance will be here soon.” He hesitated to lay a comforting hand on the priest, who must be covered with injuries from the lead-loaded knob of the shillelagh. Finding the shillelagh on the floor, Jason picked it up and carried it with him as he hurried out the north side exit of the church.

* * *

“Don’t worry about dad,” Jason told Gramps as they walked briskly through the neighborhood surrounding his mother’s and Gary’s house. “I think he’s going to be sleeping for a while.”

“Randy thinks he’s going to do passive-aggressive, zing his ex-wife and Gary with stinging put-downs, but doesn’t realize he’s so drunk that he can hardly formulate a sentence, let alone a witty insult.” Gramps windmilled his arms, spinning them to fight the cold.

“So far, I’ve worn the mask only twice in the game, but both times the women seem to get really turned on.” Jason watched his breath turn onto clouds in the chilly air. “Like the arousal level gets turned up to 11. Am I just imagining things?”

“No. Have I told you about the straight line?” Gramps looked at Jason.

“I don’t think so.”

“The straight line goes directly from point A to point B. I often refer to the Straight Line as the obvious answer, the simple solution. There are times when directness is best, but other times when the straight line should be avoided.” Gramps gestured to a corner up ahead where they should turn as they walked. “In arousal, men follow the straight line. I see a sexy woman, I want her; it’s that simple. But women are more complicated than that, in large part because they find so few men attractive.”

“Why would a woman want a man who isn’t good looking?” Jason wondered.

“For men, looks are very important, but for women, looks are less important than status, dominance, surgency…”

Jason arched his eyebrow, giving Gramps a curious look.

“It means a guy who is pro-active, who takes control of his life, who actively fights for what he wants. Don’t think that just because you want someone who’s very good-looking that women want the same. Listen very carefully to what I’m about to say.” Gramps looked at Jason to make certain his grandson got the message. “You would be surprised at the number of women who orgasm while being raped, and the number of women who fantasize about being raped.”

Jason started to speak, but Gramps cut him off with a stern look. “I am not saying that rape is ever right—it is always wrong. No woman wants to be raped, but nevertheless, they fantasize about it, almost always by a stranger who is gentle with her.”

“Whoa, I had no idea.” Jason watched a flock of blackbirds swarm around a leafless tree.

“The takeaway is that women often want what is forbidden, taboo. They want a stranger who takes control. A rapist is not weak, asking where she wants to go for dinner, or how she feels about him, or apologizing for offending her. The stranger who takes control absolves her of responsibility for her own desires—she didn’t choose to have sex with a stranger, like some kind of slut. No, it was forced on her, and she had no control.”

For Jason, this was one of those “Everclear moments,” when he felt as though he was drinking 180-proof alcohol, and his head spun. “It’s going to take me a while to wrap my head around that one.”

“Several female authors of erotica have admitted that if it weren’t for Kindle’s ban on rape stories, the genre of erotica would be full of them, and sell like wildfire.”

Gramps vigorously crossed his arms back and forth over his chest. The two of them looked through windows with Christmas trees and watched families celebrate. “So when you wear the mask, realize the powerful effect it has on women, and although you want to be sympathetic to their plight, if you want them to respond, and to have the best experience, you must be the stranger who takes control. Just make certain you never cross the line into sexual assault.”

“Now I realize what you mean by, ‘They don’t tell you this stuff.’” Jason rolled his shoulders and thought that there was a whole encyclopedia of knowledge that a man ought to have, but most guys were clueless, because no one ever bothered to tell them. Plus, there were the men, like his father, who couldn’t tell Jason because they had no clue themselves.

“You asked why I don’t look up Nova…” Gramps’ eyes lit up, as though he just remembered something. “By the way, did you know that Nova was the director’s girlfriend, who got cast for the role? Why is someone that hot with the director, who might be middle-aged, chubby, balding…”

“Because he’s alpha, the man in charge on the set, and poised to make a fortune if the movie takes off.” Jason felt proud of himself.

“Got it. Okay, try this?” Gramps looked at Jason with a grin. “Why would a woman choose a struggling, nearly broke director over a teacher at the top of the salary schedule? It’s all about money, right?”

Jason smiled, knowing the answer in an instant. “No, the teacher has a limit, a ceiling on his income, but the director is, uh…surgentic, trying for big things, and could hit the jackpot, like the movie Animal House, which was filmed on the smallest of budgets, but was an unexpected smash hit, earning millions.”

“Or The Blair Witch Project, the most profitable movie of all time calculated on a ratio of investment-to-profit.” Gramps looked up as though trying to remember. “I think the budget was something like $20,000 but made millions.”

“Holy crap,” Jason was stunned. “People pay more to have their wedding photographed.”

“That’s why you need to spin the wheel.”

“What do mean by that?” Jason asked.

“Don’t settle for being a teacher. Take a chance. Try something big. Be surgentic.” Gramps laughed. “I love that word.”

The two men kept up their brisk walk and rounded another street corner.

“But anyway, as I was saying before I got sidetracked…” Gramps now returned to his lost conversational thread. “But that’s why I don’t go to high school reunions, either. I think of all the beautiful young women in their prime, who I lusted over in high school. They were always out of reach, because I was a clueless nobody. Now they’re all 60 years old, and I don’t want to see them—I’d rather remember them as they were.”

Jason immediately saw the flaw in Gramps’ thinking. “But don’t you want to get married while you’re still young and attractive, and can get married, so you don’t wind up old and alone?”

Gramps laughed out loud. “That’s what women want you to think, so you’ll settle down out of fear that you’ll be alone. Beta males are alone all the time, and fear loneliness more than anything else. Right now, I’m with the most attractive woman I’ve ever dated, and I’m 60 years old. I see it all the time in the Philippines.”

“I don’t want to be harsh, but the Philippines is a very poor country, and the women are willing to settle for anyone with the money.” Jason hated the way that sounded. “Sorry, I don’t want to be my dad throwing out verbal putdowns.”

“George Gilder estimates a man has only a 10% chance of marrying a woman who makes as much or more money as he does.” Gramps looked at Jason with a smile. “Are you saying that 90% of American women are marrying men just for their money?”

* * *

“We’re here with Jason ‘The Fighting Father’ Whitlock, fresh off of his second knockout victory. On a more somber note, what do you have to say about today’s tragic events, with a madman killing several cops and wounding a large number of others, then charging into a church to brutally assault a priest?”

“I think it’s still not clear what happened today, but Father Bannon agreed to come into the shelter to conduct mass this morning, and the coward who beat him is going to pay, I swear it.”

“What does this mean for the future of the shelter, where several of the mayor’s men, who arrived to stop the assault, were killed or wounded? Already one priest has been murdered at St. Michael’s and another is in grave condition as we speak.”

“As long as I can serve the men here at the St. Michael’s Shelter, I’m going to do so.”

“And why was mass being held in direct defiance of the mayor’s order?

“The constitution guarantees the freedom of worship, and the mayor has no right to suspend that right on a power-mad whim…”

“Fahck you, you fahckin’ Mic!” Mayor Buttafuoco charged across the living room floor, galloping over all fours to the radio, which was mounted in a beautiful walnut cabinet. “I’ll shove dis radio so fah up…”

The gorilla mayor threw the radio through the window of the 18th floor, or tried to, but the wood cabinet cracked into pieces, and bounced off of the reinforced glass. The mayor paced on all fours, setting his knuckles onto the carpet, before rearing up to pound his chest and roared loudly enough to be heard on the floor below them, which caused the goons standing at one side of the room to flinch, while eyeing the mayor warily.

Caesar watched it all from the bar. He jerked his head in the direction of the elevator. “Gentlemen, let’s get the mayor another radio, please.”

The two muscle men dashed to the elevator, glad to be out of range of the mayor’s fury.

Caesar was relieved that he had the bulletproof reinforced glass installed, which had already prevented a variety of furniture from sailing through the 18th floor window to land on passersby or vehicles below, which would cost the mayor a fortune in damages. At least one goon had been saved by the solid window, but his back was still out after he struck the thick glass.

Caesar growled when the doctor poured rubbing alcohol into the wound in his shoulder, then begin digging with a thin set of forceps. Caesar’s trembling lips parted as he snarled in pain, revealing a wide mouth full of teeth.

A girl came into the room, resembling an 18-year-old Shirley Temple with curly blonde hair and a sailor dress. “Teddy Bumpkins, are you okay?” she asked soothingly, laying her head against the bare pads of hthe mayor's chest, while running her fingers through his long black fur. “You sounded so angry.”

“Nah, Peaches, I was jus’ upset ‘bout some people breakin’ deh law. Like dey want folks to die from Mitrul er somethin’.” The mayor patted her curly head with his long, thin hand. “Why don’ you’s jus’ run along so’s Caesar and me can tahk, ‘kay?”

“All right, don’t’ get too upset.” Peaches leaned up on the tippy toes of her glossy, buckled shoes to give the mayor a kiss on the lips.

Caesar thought he might throw up. Not only were these displays of affection sickeningly cloying, but he had no idea how the mayor could kiss someone as ugly as a human. He poured himself a quick shot of the corn and downed it.

“Sorry,” the doctor shrugged, “but I can’t get to it, the buckshot is too deep. We could remove it with surgery, but as long as it doesn’t cause you trouble, you might just decide to live with it.” The doctor placed a bandage over the shaved spot on Caesar’s shoulder, then started to leave.

Caesar inspected the bandage. “Talk to Dana downstairs in accounting, she’ll see to it that you get paid.”

The doctor waved and walked to the elevator.

The gorilla mayor crept to the edge of the room on all his knuckles and feet, then leaned his head past the wall to see that Peaches wasn’t listening.

“I thaht I said to beat dat priest’s ass, paste him!” The mayor slammed his fist into his palm. “Three cops dead, 14 wounded, one a which ain’t nevah gonna walk ’gain. Six RAPE squad dead, six! Eight wounded, and a dead mandrill. How deh fahck does dat happen?”

“It was a case of mistaken identity. What church has two priests?” Caesar pointed to his bandaged shoulder. “There were two killers, and I was lucky I didn’t get bumped. One of those guys was a ghost who blew through all your men.”

Buttafuoco’s eyes smoldered. “Find dat priest, and pahp him.”