Free Crazy by William Peter Blatty

and little spooky tap-tap-taps in the ceiling, and most times I couldn’t sleep on account of I’d be thinking so hard about the Health Club fights I was missing, not to mention having windows that didn’t look out to darkness but out to the street and familiar sounds: cars passing, punches and curses—anything but tap-tap-tap! All a steaming heap of cow-flop, of course, but there was no other way to give Pop what he needed and deserved: a real bed with a downy mattress.
    “Do not cry, Joey. Please.”
    I rubbed a knuckle at the corner of my eye.
    “I won’t.”
    “Couch not comfortable, Joey.”
    “Not for me, Pop. I’m smaller,” I told him.
    Well, he studied me for quite a little while until he turned toward the faint sound of jukebox music as someone either entered or left the Health Club. Then he turned back to me and said, “Okay.”
    “Oh, thanks, Pop! Thanks! Oh, wow! ”
    I did everything but slobber and kiss Pop’s hand.
    He still seemed to be thoughtfully appraising me.
    “You go out tonight, Joey?”
    I said, “No, Pop. Too much rain. I’ll do homework.”
    Sister Joseph had assigned us to write fifteen hundred words on the topic “Why St. Francis of Assisi Talked to Birds but Not Fish.”
    “Try to make it original,” she’d said.
    Pipe stem in his teeth, Pop nodded and said, “Good boy.”
    I went back to my dinner feeling happy as Larry. Pop got up with his beer and walked over to a window where he stood and looked out at a fall of rain so heavy it seemed almost on the verge of violence. “Tonight they fight inside,” he said quietly. “Too bad.” Then he turned to me and smiled mysteriously and in a flash I saw the painting and the caption:
     
     
    Peruvian Male Mona Lisa with Beer
     
     
    These were mists I couldn’t penetrate.
    Ever.
    Later that night while still doing my homework—I had narrowed the saint’s disinterest in fish, by now, to a single species: carp—Pop came out of the bedroom in his pajamas, gave me a hug and then went back inside and closed the door. A second later he opened it a crack and said, “Joey?”
    “Yeah, Pop?”
    “There is woman at school she really having green hair?”
    “Where’d you hear that?”
    “Then is true?”
    “Yeah, it’s true. Pop, who told you about that?”
    He said, “Tony. Tony Pagliarello. What her name, Joey?”
    “Doyle, Pop. Her name is Miss Doyle.”
    “I want to meet her.”
    What was this?
    I said, “Why?”
    He wasn’t looking at me now, he was staring just over my shoulder with this faraway look in his eyes. I couldn’t tell what it was. Maybe sadness? Fond remembrance? Both?
    He said softly, “Tony say to me she crazy.”
    Then he mutely turned away and closed the door.
    I slept on the living room sofa that night and it wasn’t that bad except I dreamed I was deep in the Amazon jungle desperately searching for something important even though I had no clue as to what it might be or what these Hari Krishna bozos were doing there cavorting and dancing in a circle all around me while they’re shaking and slapping at their tambourines while chanting over and over again, “What a schmuck!”
    Never mind. I slept deeply and oh so well.
    I woke up to church bells ringing. Not St. Stephen’s, though. Farther off. I sat up and scratched at my chest through my red-and-white striped pajamas while I looked out the window and could see that it was still coming down in buckets. Big stretch. Big yawn. No sound from the bedroom. Pop must have still been asleep and dreaming that he’d died and gone to heaven. I got up and was padding toward the kitchen for some juice when I happened to look down through a window to the street across the way and saw a woman in a fisherman’s yellow raincoat and hat standing holding an umbrella. She was staring up at the window and when I stopped and stared back she started happily and excitedly smiling and waving to me. Then my heart jumped a little because she sort of resembled Jane, I