Acts of God by Mary Morris Page A

collection nailed to the wall. A large mural on the opposite wall she had painted in shades of gray and brown that had something to do with U.S. intervention in Central America. Little wizards holding crystal balls sat on her desk. A stained-glass rainbow hung from a string, casting rainbows around the room.
    When Bruno nodded solemnly, we moved into my room, which was small, with just a double bed and dresser, but it looked out to the sea. There were no pictures on the wall, no photos on the dresser. There weren’t even books on the bedstand. It was odd, seeing my room with a stranger standing beside me, and I thought how stoical and barren it looked, as if the person who lived here had moved away years ago.
    We paused before Ted’s door and the words inscribed on it, “Clato Verato Nictoo,” which I gazed at each time I stopped by the door. Bruno paused, hesitating with me as well. He read the words carefully, then nodded. “Do you know what they mean?” I asked him.
    â€œNot exactly,” he said, “but I know what they come from.”
    â€œYou do? What?”
    â€œThey are the instructions that needed to be repeated in The Day the Earth Stood Still. Clato Verato Nictoo is what you need to tell the robot to keep it from destroying the earth.”
    â€œOh, and what happens?”
    Bruno shrugged. “I don’t remember, but I think no one tells this to the robot and the earth gets destroyed.”
    â€œSo this wards off destruction?” Bruno nodded as we entered Ted’s room. I hesitated to show him the room, which had a view of the mountains and was papered wall to wall—those precious stone walls that Francis Eagger had built—with James Dean, Bogart, grunge-rock groups (Loose Screw, Nervous Breakdown Number III). His father procured these posters for him—it was the one perk, as far as I could tell, that came from having Charlie as his father. On his dresser was a Kurt Cobain shrine. His bookshelves were lined with Vampires of the Masquerade books and assorted other volumes of horror. But the view into the hills was spectacular and it was not lost on Bruno.
    In the living room Bruno’s hands touched the cold stone walls. He ran his fingers over the exposed wooden beams. At the bookshelf he examined the feathers, pine cones, and shells, giving me a querulous look. “I collect things,” I said. “It’s a childhood habit.”
    When we completed the brief tour, Bruno followed me back into the kitchen. “Mrs. Winterstone, I can’t thank you enough. I can’t tell you what it means to me to see this view—this vista—where he wrote ‘The gods rage against me and I can do no more but hope and be humbled by what crashes below, against this fragile shore.’”
    â€œSo, Mr. Eagger was a religious man?” I said, curious now to know more about him.
    â€œYes, he believed, well, not in organized religion, but he believed in a certain power. The power that made this landscape.”
    â€œI’m a realist, Mr. Mercedes. I believe that oxygen and various elements and our relation to the sun…”
    Bruno Mercedes sat down in the breakfast nook and stared out to sea. “It doesn’t matter what you believe, Mrs. Winterstone. It’s what you feel. What you feel sitting right here. People spend too much time thinking about what they think. Francis Eagger invites us to feel. I like the feel of this place, just like I like the feel of walking on pine needles and looking at a great painting and hearing a piece of music I haven’t heard before or seeing a rainbow or having a friend ask me for help. It means there’s something bigger than me out there in this world. And yet I can still be a part of it. I can embrace it and it can embrace me. Do you understand what I am saying?”
    I looked at this young man with thin, sandy hair and glasses, sitting in my breakfast nook. There was something