This is a guest post by Lisa Brandel

She walked to St. Mary Magdalene’s clutching a tan trench coat around her body.
It was the coat he had given her just two nights prior to his death and far too big for her lithe frame. Stopping just below her ankles it would have dragged the ground if not for her stiletto boots. Nevertheless, the coat protected her from the bitter winter wind, just as it had protected her from the splatters of blood the night he died.

When she approached the steep concrete steps of the church, she paused. She pushed her dyed ash-blond hair from her eyes and looked around to make sure she was alone. Thankfully, she saw nothing to indicate the other mourners had arrived.

As the suns’ light peeled in and out of the clouds, she ascended the steps; until the distant roll of winter, thunder froze her in place. Paranoia began to play with her mind. God would not really strike down a hooker entering His church. At least she hoped not. She ran to the doors as fast as her heels would allow. Hoping moving targets were harder to hit.

She grabbed the brass fixtures on the cherry doors, pulling with all her might. The doors opened without sound as she slid through, and then closed with a thunderous echo. The noise did not startle her as much as the life-sized statue staring down at her in the foyer. A woman clothed in white marble robes, holding a bottle seemed to gaze through her very soul. The stone woman’s pupil-less eyes made her shiver harder than the cold had, and she wasted no time scurrying past the statue and into the sanctuary.

The splendor of the church overwhelmed her as she entered. Until now, she had only seen the art that hung bolted to a motel room wall. Now, she stood with her mouth gaping at the surrounding wonder.

The ceiling was painted like a sunny sky surrounding a simple cave. Cherubs and angelic defenders frolicked in cotton clouds, with the largest of the angels standing, sword drawn, near a woman weeping at the cave. Her eyes swam over the details of the ornamented ceiling. This, she thought, must be what Vegas looks like from the inside.

The suns’ light was rolling through thousands of intricate panes of stained glass; bathing her in subtle dots of color. She lifted her hands, amazed at the collage of hues dancing across her pale skin. She stroked the air fascinated by the warm beauty. Her eyes darted around, gluttonous for more.

The grandeur of the scene had, for a moment, stolen the purpose of her visit. However, as her eyes fell on the coffin sitting before the alter it was all too clear again why she was there. From where she stood in the back, the blond oak casket seemed cradled, like a still child, in the arms of flower sprays and glass- tainted light.

As she walked toward the alter, she began to shake; her feet became strangers, weighted down by a sudden crushing grief. The hundred paces to the casket felt like a mile, as each step toward saying good-bye took her back in time.

The last john he set her up with had beaten her viciously. He found her naked, tossed in a pile of snowy garbage in an alley. He wrapped her in his trench coat, the one she wore now, and took her to her home. He stayed with her all evening tending to her wounds. His hands and voice were so gentle it made her forget the pain. And if he had been angry, she could not tell. He hid his emotions behind the mask of a gentle healer, speaking to her with an almost paternal kindness.

He had made several calls that night, she remembered: one to his wife saying he would be late from the office and at least three looking for her errant john. He had caressed her cheek while he was on the phone with his wife spinning a benign lie. All his girls knew that his wife thought he sold insurance, and had no clue of the truth. He even dressed the part, with pomade slick hair, and his white bread Brooks Brothers suits.

She could remember thinking as a little girl that he looked like he belonged on one of those old-timey black and white films she watched when her mother was working. Sometimes he would come and sit with her while her mother was gone, and after she died he caressed her cheek, like he did that night, and told her everything was going to be alright.

Her mother always said he was the best pimp a woman could have, and though she found her mother to be wrong about so many things, she was right about him.

Memory and reality blurred. She had not realized, until then, how much she missed the touch of his large rough hands. Tears began rolling down her painted cheeks cutting through the applied mask that hid the green and black tattoo’s, fading reminders of the beginning of his end.

Blinking her vision clear, she realized his picture sat atop the closed casket. The picture was him exactly as she remembered. His trademark tweed suit, narrow silk tie, fresh-slicked hair and quirky smile looked at her through a flat glass frame. The picture had to be recent. He was wearing the suit she and the girls had given him for Christmas.

It was funny though, she had always thought that his family pictures would show a different man-a man unlike the one who spent his nights in the company of whores. It did not though, and for reasons she could not understand, it made her feel warm inside.

She placed her dainty hands on the wooden casket. No one knew it, but she had been the last person to see him alive, and was the only person that knew who murdered him. The john who had beat her, the one who he had tracked down, had jumped him in the same alley she had been dumped. The maniac beat her beloved protector relentlessly with a pipe. She was sure he would have done the same to her, if not for the police sirens scaring him off.

She remembered, as her hands caressed the cool wood, how he pleaded with her to stay with him as he lay there leaking his life onto the snow. She was so scared that when his blood slick hand reached up to her cheek, then fell limp to the ground she ran. She ran back to her run down hotel room, shut the door, and did not come out again until today.

A hand touched her shoulder, and pressed a linen handkerchief into her palm. “Excuse me, Miss, are you here for the funeral?’ a gentle voice asked.

She swallowed hard and smeared away the make-up tainted tears from her eyes. As she turned to see who was touching her shoulder she gasped. The young man could have been his ghost. She took several frightened steps back. He could not be more than twenty, she thought, but he had his look.

He was eyeing her, she wanted to run, but stood trapped in his gaze.

“You’re one of dad’s girls aren’t you?”

Even though his voice was kind, she gave a fearful nod. She did not think anyone-not even his sons-knew about his business.

“It’s O.K., sweetie,” he reached out and caressed her cheek, “Dad told me everything the night before he died.”

The heat of his hand melted her fear and grief. It felt like him, even if it was softer.

“He told me that if anything happened to him I was to take over the business. He said of all the boys I that was best suited. Father always knew best…You better run along, though, Mom thinks that coat was stolen the night he was murdered. You tell the girls I’ll be at the South bar tonight…drinks are on me.”

On impulse, she gripped him in a quick hug before obediently turning to leave. She stopped, her hand gripping the brass fixture of the doors, when she heard him again.

“By the way, sweetie, what’s your name?”

She looked over her shoulder giving him the sultry look his father loved. “Whatever you want it to be.”

Lisa Brandel lives in Ohio, and has been working as a freelance writer on and off for years,

writing under various nom de plumes.