The Ezekiel Code Page 2

  Angela reached for the ashtray and crushed out her cigarette. “I thought my life was over. You know what I mean? There was just this big empty hole in my life. Believe me, I was teetering on the edge. And then one day I don’t know what happened. I can’t explain it. I just woke up one morning and realized I was still alive. It was like an amazing revelation.”

  Banyon smiled. “I think I understand.”

  “Well, so there I was. Thirty-three years old with a new life ahead of me but I just didn't know what to do with it. Then I had an idea. Although it seemed kind of silly at first.”

  “What was that?”

  “I thought maybe I should go back to school. In a way, I thought it was probably the nuttiest thing I could have come up with. I mean, at my age and all. But the thing is, years ago I did want to go to college to study anthropology. I probably would have if I hadn’t gotten married.”

  “Anthropology!” Banyon exclaimed. “That’s interesting.”

  “Well, see,” she continued, “I was a National Geographic addict. I just loved that stuff. Especially the ancient cultures. So anyway, the more I thought about it, the more I was intrigued by the possibility even though I was pretty darned nervous about going back to school. I mean, not only was I worried that maybe I couldn’t cut it but I could just picture myself as the old lady in a class full of twentysomethings. That was a frightening concept.”

  Banyon nodded and smiled. “I can imagine! But I have to tell you, you look a heck of a lot closer to twenty-three than thirty-three!” As soon as he said it he wished he hadn’t. Not that it wasn’t true. She looked great. He was just afraid it sounded like a stupid attempt at flirting something he wasn’t very good at even when it was intentional. Angela smiled, a bit embarrassed. “Well, thank you. I do what I can.”

  “I’m sorry,” Banyon said, clearing his throat. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”

  Angela shifted in her chair. “Oh, that’s all right,” she said. “Anyway, a friend of mine insisted that a lot of people my age were taking classes in the community colleges. So I got up the nerve, and signed up for my first two classes on my way to a two-year degree. That was about six months ago and I’m loving every minute of it. But I needed a little extra cash so I thought a part time job would be a good idea. Then I saw the help wanted notice you placed on the bulletin board at the college and so here I am.” She paused and laughed. “You know, even the guy who runs the student employment office at the college thought you were a priest.”

  Banyon laughed. “Well, there you go. I can’t get away from it!”

  Now, as he sat there staring at her, it dawned on him why she looked so familiar. “Did anyone ever tell you that you look just like Meg Ryan?”

  Meg Ryan was one of the few pop-culture icons that stuck in his mind. He didn’t usually pay much attention to that kind of thing. He wasn’t much of a TV-watcher. He’d certainly never seen Access Hollywood or Inside Edition, and he hadn’t actually been to a movie since well, since Harry Met Sally. In fact it was probably the famous orgasmic restaurant scene in that movie with Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan that earned Ms. Ryan a special place in the back of Banyon’s mind.

  The comment took Angela by surprise. “Who, me?”

  “Oh, never mind,” he said, thinking the comparison was probably a stupid thing to mention. Strike two, he thought to himself. “I admire what you’ve done, going back to school and all. So, hey, you’re hired.”

  “I am? I mean… I am?” Angela stuttered at the sudden announcement. “I mean, I’m not even sure what it is you need me to do. The help-wanted notice didn’t really say.”

  Banyon smiled. He pushed his chair back from his desk and nodded toward the huge pile of miscellaneous stuff that covered it. “If you don’t mind, you could start by doing an archaeological dig through this ancient mess and see if it can be organized into some kind of order.”

  Angela laughed. “I’m studying to be an anthropologist, not an archaeologist.”

  “By the time you get through this,” he said with a wink, “you’ll be an archaeologist, too. You can start tomorrow.” He took another look at his desk. “Maybe you should bring a shovel.”

  She grinned. Tall, dark, handsome, and a sense of humor, she thought to herself. Not bad. She caught herself wondering if he was married but she didn’t think it would be appropriate to ask. She didn’t even think it was appropriate to be thinking about it. Since her husband had died she hadn’t given a second thought to the idea of another man in her life. Whenever such a thought tried to squeeze its way in she shut it out immediately. It was a guilt thing. At the moment, however, her thoughts were causing her more embarrassment than guilt. Is that a good thing? She wondered.

  Banyon walked her down the hall to the front door where they stood talking for a few moments. They were oblivious to the presence of a man just a few paces to their left in the main lounge area. The man looked like any of the other down-and-outers off the street just trying to get warm. He was huddled over in one of the well-worn overstuffed chairs, seemingly minding his own business. But this down-and-outer had something up his sleeve. Literally. Shielding his mouth with his hand he spoke quietly and covertly into his sleeve. “Get ready. She’s coming out.”

  “Thank you Father,” Angela said, shaking Banyon’s hand.

  “Please,” he said, “just call me Zeke.”

  “Okay, Father,” she chuckled as she opened her umbrella and headed out the door into the mist. She turned back just briefly, peeking out from under the umbrella. “By the way,” she said, grinning, “you look a little like one of the Baldwin brothers.”

  The moment she turned back to the sidewalk a man in a black van across the street made a quick adjustment to the telephoto lens on his 35mm Nikon. He managed to click off two good close-ups of Angela’s face before her umbrella blocked his view.

  Banyon called out to her. “Who the heck are the Baldwin brothers?”

  But she was already on her way up the street and couldn’t hear him. As he leaned out the door and watched her disappear into the night a gust of wind blew a lock of his thick black hair down into his eyes. He brushed it back and was about to close the door when the man with the wire up his sleeve quickly squeezed by him with his hat pulled down and his collar turned up to hide his face.

  “Pardon me,” the man mumbled under his collar as he hastily made his exit.

  “Quite all right,” Banyon said, stepping aside. Then he closed the door and headed off toward the kitchen. Yup, he thought to himself, I love Meg Ryan. I have a feeling this is going to work out well. Who the heck are the Baldwin brothers?

  As he passed the storage room on his way to the kitchen he glanced up at the clock on the wall. He had developed a habit of checking the clock against his watch whenever he passed by. The time on the clock at that moment was exactly 9 p.m. He stopped in his tracks. What?

  Wait a minute. He checked his watch. It showed 6 o’clock. He knew his watch was right because he remembered noticing it was 5 o’clock when Angela came in for the interview. The interview, he was pretty certain, took just about an hour. That would indeed make it now about 6 o’clock. That’s odd, he thought. The clock must have stopped this morning. Then he thought again. No, that can’t be. When I passed by it at noon I remember the hands were straight up at the 12, right where they should have been. So it was working fine. How could it get from 12 o’clock to 9 o’clock when it’s really only 6 o’clock? It didn’t make sense. He got a chair to stand on, reached up, removed the clear plastic cover, and moved the hands back to the correct time. He stepped down, took another look at it, and shrugged it off. Very strange, he thought to himself as he headed off toward the kitchen. Very strange. What he didn’t know at the moment was that something much stranger was still waiting to happen. Pieces of a puzzle - a puzzle he didn’t even know existed - were moving into place. The great mandala was in motion. The wheels of destiny were turning. And like the hands on the clock that go round and round, it was j
ust a matter of time.

  2

  It didn’t take long for Banyon and Angela to establish a comfortable work routine although that comfort zone did have a slight glitch in it. There seemed to be some sort of undefinable tension between them. It wasn’t even really negative or disruptive in any way. It was just there, lurking in the background. Neither of them, of course, could be certain that the other was experiencing this feeling so

  they kept it to themselves and tried to ignore it.

  Angela’s job turned out to be a kind of Gal-Friday position, helping Banyon in nearly every aspect of running the shelter. They worked well together although they hardly ever talked about their personal lives and Angela still didn’t know for sure whether or not he was married.

  As far as Banyon was concerned, things were going wonderfully. For the first time in what seemed like years, he even got to see the top of his desk. That, in fact, is what triggered the first step into the strange journey upon which, unbeknownst to either of them, he and Angela were about to embark.

  The actual desktop hadn’t seen daylight for a long time, or so one would suspect, judging by the clutter of papers, pamphlets, and whatnot that had accumulated over time. Perhaps it had been cleared off once or twice but, if so, no one - not even Banyon - had bothered to change the oversized desk-pad calendar hidden beneath the mess.

  According to the current calendar on the wall, the present date was Sunday, October 26, 2005. The desk-pad calendar, however, was still at May, 2001. Apparently the former director had never bothered to change the calendar on the desk-pad and, oddly enough until this very day, it had completely escaped Banyon’s attention.

  Banyon didn’t really know much about the former director, a Reverend somebody. But, whoever he was, he was a doodler. The pad was filled with quickly scratched notes and phone numbers and curious little scribbles. And something else. Another thing to which Banyon had previously paid no attention. Not surprising, really, given that the desk had been covered with clutter for God knows how long. But now, as he studied the odd little doodles, his attention was drawn to the numbers and letters randomly scribbled all over the pad. Up toward the top of the pad someone - presumably the former director - had written the alphabet and had numbered each letter consecutively, 1 through 26, starting with A and finishing with Z. Then Banyon noticed a lot of words randomly scattered around on the pad. Each word had a number just below each of its letters. Glancing back at the alphabet at the top of the pad he realized the numbers below the letters in the words corresponded to the numbered letters in the alphabet. Apparently someone had been converting the words to numbers. But why? he wondered. Now that he thought about it, he remembered seeing this before, probably in a book somewhere. Numerology, he mused. Banyon didn’t know much about numerology but he remembered thinking it was just a silly curiosity, something about as useful as astrology which, of course, was all poppycock and balderdash, as his mother used to say to his father whenever his father read the daily horoscope in the morning paper. Now, looking at the scribbling on the deskpad, Banyon was amused that someone had apparently been at least somewhat serious about this numerology thing. That struck him as odd, especially if it was the former director, a man of the Cloth. At that moment something caught his eye. Off to the side of the pad he saw his own name. It wasn’t referring to him personally. It was a reference to a character out of the Bible. The words, scratched out in dark blue ink, read:

  THE WHEEL OF EZEKIEL = 180 = 9

  Obviously, it was a reference to the book of Ezekiel in the Bible where the prophet Ezekiel recounts his vision of an object coming out of the sky. The scripture describes part of the object as a wheel within a wheel and Ezekiel believed it to be a manifestation of the glory of the Lord.

  Using the alphanumeric table at the top of the pad, Banyon carefully did the math for himself. Sure enough, the sum of the letters in the phrase was 180. What he didn’t understand was how 180 equaled 9. He studied it for a moment and it occurred to him that if the digits in 180 were added together the sum would be 9. Maybe that’s it. But, so what? Still, he couldn’t resist the temptation to see what number his own name might come to. He printed his name on the pad just below the words, THE WHEEL OF EZEKIEL, and did the math: EZEKIEL BANYON = 144 = 9

  That raised his eyebrows but his silent musings were interrupted by a knock at his office door.

  “Come in,” he called.

  “Mr. Banyon? Am I disturbing you?”

  “Angela! What a surprise! Come in, please. You don’t work on weekends. What brings you in here on this beautiful Sunday afternoon?”

  Typical for Seattle, the weather had changed from a week of clouds and rain to a nice, almost warm, sunny day. With her denim jacket draped over her arm, Angela, looked amazingly attractive in a pink turtleneck sweater and blue jeans. She scooted a chair over to a spot just in front of Banyon’s desk and lit up a cigarette. “I was at the main library downtown looking for some research material for one of my classes. Anyway, since I was in the neighborhood I thought I’d stop and say hi.”

  “Well, I’m glad you did. Hey, check this out.” He showed her the date on the calendar pad.

  “It hasn’t been changed since 2001!”

  Angela laughed. “Wow. I’m sorry. I didn’t notice that when I cleaned off your desk. I would have mentioned it.”

  “Oh, no, it’s not that!” he grinned. “I just thought it was amusing.” He pulled the calendar sheet out from the deskpad and was about to toss it in the wastebasket when he remembered the curious alphanumerics that were scribbled on it. He hesitated a moment and then handed it over to Angela. “By the way,” he asked, “have you ever seen anything like this?” He pointed to the letters and numbers. She studied it for a moment. “Um… well, yes. Looks like someone was playing around with numerology. Why? Are you interested in numerology?”

  “Oh, I don’t know anything about it, really. But look at this.” He pointed to his name and the phrase about Ezekiel. “Isn’t that a coincidence? They both equal 9 if you -”

  “Yes,” she interrupted. “If you cross-add the digits.”

  “Cross-add?”

  “Yes, it’s called cross-adding. It’s what you do in numerology.” “So you know something about numerology?”

  She shrugged. “Not much. I had a book on it once. Just a used paperback I happened to find in a thriftstore a couple years ago. I might still have it. I could look for it if you want.”

  “So what’s the deal with it? I mean I imagine the numbers are supposed to have some kind of meanings attached to them?”

  “As I recall, yes.”

  Banyon chuckled. “So what does the number nine mean?”

  She handed the calendar back to him and smiled. “I don’t know. But isn’t this the kind of thing priests are supposed to stay away from?”

  “Well, like I told you before, I’m not really a priest.”

  “Yes, you did say that. What happened? I don’t mean to be nosey. Just kind of curious. Unless you don’t want to talk about it.”

  “No, I don’t mind. It’s just the ol’ twists and turns of life, you know. I started to study for the priesthood some years ago but one day I met this woman and that sort of changed everything, if you know what I mean.”

  Angela’s stomach tensed up. Well, now I know. She forced a smile.

  “Hey, I fell in love!” he said with a grin. “That’s pretty much the long and the short of it.”

  “I see. So you gave up the church and got married?”

  “Yup. It’s funny. It was both the easiest decision I’ve ever made and, at the same time, really difficult. My mother was beside herself. It was mostly her idea for me to become a priest. I don’t think my dad really cared that much.”

  “So they were both Catholic?”

  “My mother was a devout Catholic and my dad converted to Catholicism shortly after they got married. But I think he did it mostly just to please her.” He paused for a moment and laughed. “Needless to s
ay, Karen and my mother never hit it off real well but my dad thought she was terrific.”

  “Your wife’s name is Karen?”

  “Was,” he replied solemnly.

  Angela hesitated, puzzled. Was? She didn’t know if she should ask but her curiosity got the best of her. “You’re divorced?”

  Again, Banyon couldn’t believe he was spilling out his whole lifestory to this person he hardly knew. After all, she’d only wandered in the other day to apply for a job. Still, there was something about her. She was easy to talk to and he felt unusually drawn to her for some reason. “Karen died in a car accident three years ago,” he explained. “We’d only been married for three years before it happened.”

  There was a sudden pause in the conversation. Not an uncomfortable one. Time just seemed to stand still for a moment as the past few years of his life ran through his mind. Angela was having her own private moment and didn’t even really notice the void in the conversation.

  “Anyway,” he said, “The short time I spent at seminary did provide me with a direction. I went to school and got a degree in social work and eventually got a job as a counselor at a shelter for battered women. But after Karen died I just couldn’t do it anymore. To make a long story short, I basically just started wasting my days not doing much of anything until an old friend of mine, Father Caldwell, came to see me and sort of gave me a motivational kick in the ass, if you know what I mean.”

  Angela smiled and Banyon went on. “He told me the homeless shelter here was in need of a new director and it’s worked out pretty well. I like it here. I’m helping people in some small way. It’s good. And, see, the deal is, a rumor got started on the street that I was, in fact, a priest.” He gave a short laugh as he thought back on it. “These homeless people started coming in and calling me Father Banyon. I kind of liked it but I felt a little guilty about it at first. Anyway, the name just sort of stuck and that’s why everyone around here calls me Father Banyon. It works,” he chuckled. “So I just figured, what the hell.”