Teach us to give and not to count the cost.
- Saint Ignatius of Loyola
The doors fly open, no mean feat: they’re tall and solid, built of dark wood in the days when mitering and carving was done by hand.
“Fraser…” he gasps, falling to his knees, one hand on his chest, the other braced on the floor.
How he knew I was here I don’t know, any more than I know how, or why, we’ve become friends: we met over a chess table some weeks ago, in a park near St Adalbert’s, on a golden autumn afternoon. We’ve met since – at the park, at the food bank around the corner – for chess, for conversation, once, even, for coffee, held tight and sipped quietly on the front steps of the church early one morning after Mass.
He wasn’t religious, “Fraser,” he told me that day, perhaps to explain why he called me what he did, or perhaps just because, but he asked some questions about the Society of Jesus. I answered honestly, satisfying his curiosity; and the conversation turned to other matters.
He bends a knee, trying to get to his feet, resting an elbow on it while he tries to catch his breath, gulping in air.
Through the soles of my thin shoes – nothing like the worn quasi-military boots that are his chosen footwear – I feel an odd rhythmic thud.
Being raised on the tundra has had some advantages in my vocation but I never thought this would be one, although I learned early from my father and his friend Quinn to track caribou not only through scat and signs but through the vibrations of the herd echoing through the ground.
My mind is slow, or perhaps just hidebound, but hard upon my realization comes a plan, full-fledged. I haul him to his feet and half drag him to the confessional, closing the door upon both of us and making certain I have the green light lit outside. He looks confused, confused and tired; and I whisper – because now I can hear his pursuers, not just feel them – words of reassurance; and I push him, standing, into the near corner, where no light will fall on him from outside.
When I look again, he’s pulling a gun from a holster beneath his arm.
For a moment I wonder how it is I’m so certain he should be given sanctuary but the voices outside, loud and angry, bring me back to the problem at hand.
A thud on the door makes me jump, and I take a breath, composing myself and holding a vision of my grandmother before me, stern Scotswoman that she was, before opening the door.
There are three men, all oversized, all with guns – which seems to be overkill – and angry besides.
“Father?” the middle one says, uncertainly; the man on his left, swarthy and with a St. Christopher medal hanging from a thick gold chain, crosses himself and falls back a step. The man on the right, sharp-nosed and narrow-featured, frowns at them and then at me.
“You been here long?”
“I’ve been here for several months,” I say, feigning ignorance.
“I’m not in the mood to play, Father,” he snaps, almost spitting at me. “You been here long today? What are you doing here?”
“Praying for the souls of the damned,” I say as mildly as I can; St. Christopher crosses himself again and puts a hand on the arm of the man in the middle, urging them both backwards.
“And hearing confession?” he asks sarcastically, nodding at the confessional where the green light still shines.
“We had a call in the parish office,” I say, again mildly. “I was otherwise unoccupied and offered to come.”
“Man or woman?” the man asks, his nose almost twitching.
I shouldn’t, and I know it; but this is God’s house. My temper is usually the basis for several confessions each year, and will be again this week: “I hold the Seal of the Confessional sacred, my son.” I judge, and rightly, that this will infuriate him: he’s probably fifteen or twenty years my senior.
It has the opposite effect on his compatriots, however: as if that was the last straw, they both stammer apologies and back away until they reach the doors, pulling them shut behind them.
“Man or woman?” he says again, moving closer to me; and when he moves his jacket aside, I see the glint of blue steel.
“Since I didn’t take the call, I’m afraid I cannot say,” I tell him. “I could guess; I’d have a fifty per cent chance of being right. Or perhaps you were the one who called?”
He almost growls, then shoves me backwards, against the wall. “Have you been here for the past fifteen minutes?”
“Have you a good reason for asking me these questions?”
“I’m looking for a man.”
“If the man you seek is Our Lord, I’d be happy to help you.”
“Listen, Father,” he says, pushing me against the wall with his all of his considerable bulk, “this isn’t funny. The man I’m looking for is not a good man. Mr. Labruzzo, the man I work for, wants to ask him some questions. You might know him… he gives a lot of money to your church and your school here. And if you don’t want to help Mr. Labruzzo, it could be a bad thing for you and your church here. Capisce?”
Indeed, there are several wealthy men in this parish with shady pasts; some may even have ties to organized crime, but, as Father Ducro explained to me my first week here, it’s best not to ask too many questions, and, in fact, to stay out of their business altogether.
While not a Jesuit, Father Ducro is clearly a very wise man.
Whereas I, newly minted priest though I am, am not.
“If your employer wants to hold the service to God by a priest in the execution of his duties against him,” I say firmly, “I can only imagine the church would say good riddance to him.”
His breath is – predictably – garlicky and strong, and he smells of hair oil and old sweat. He shoves his face up against mine, and his body too; and I can feel the gun pressing into my side.
And something else: to my utter disgust, his hand drops lower, from my hip, and his gun isn’t the only thing pressing against my body. “You like games, Father?” he whispers hoarsely. “I got games that’ll leave you bleeding like a stuck pig, and you’ll be happy to play them with me after Mr. Labruzzo gets done with you.”
For what, I want to say, but I’m too shaken: twenty-nine years of virginity never prepared me for this. I was sent here in part because the Chicago province was in need, and ours was not, but I was sent in part because Father Ellis considered me… sheltered.
And perhaps I am, and perhaps I ought to be – I have never missed the Northwest Territories more acutely than at this moment – and I make up my mind to ask him about this, all of it, in my next letter.
His hand is on my chin, holding my face still: he says again, so close my eyes begin to cross, “Capisce?”
His compatriots save me: one door opens, a narrow crack widening, and someone calls, “Sal!”
“Don’t you forget,” he says to me in an undertone, groping for my crotch, his grasping fingers hampered by my cassock. “I’ll be telling Mr. Labruzzo about you, Father.” He squeezes hard as he says the last word, leaving me immobile, enraged, as the door shuts behind him.
I’d almost forgotten Ray was there and remember only when I see the confessional door open a crack. He doesn’t look at me but slides out so quietly he’s almost a shadow, or a ghost; and when I blink again, he’s at the church doors, sliding home the bolts.
I close my eyes, regaining my breath and my composure; when I open them again Ray is staring at me, eyes wide and angry. “What was that? What was that, Fraser?”
“What was what –” I begin, bewildered, but he stops me not with a hand over my mouth but his lips on mine.
“That,” he says, when I pull free, trying to formulate a protest, “and that,” and his hands are pulling me close against him; but unlike “Sal” he’s not at all garlicky or fat but lean and solid and smelling of clean sweat and an indefinable spice. “The – the groping and the kissing and – and you’re a priest, Fraser! And if you are gonna go for that, why him? Don Corleone gets you hot? Or you in it for the money, like all the rest of ‘em? You got nothing to say to a good honest Polack with no money and no prospects?”
I start to tell him I have no idea what he’s talking about but his eyes are blazing in the dimness of the sanctuary and his hands are strong and… knowing; and I’ve never been kissed before, never even been touched before, not like this. He seems to know every part of me, to know how and where to touch me, even why; and shock can be the only explanation for my compliance – shock and disbelief. And when he sinks to his knees, unfastening my cassock, pushing my under-cassock up and aside and my boxers down, muttering fiercely about men in dresses, I must be frozen out of time or perhaps temporarily possessed: that can be the only explanation for my failure to protest, a “no” wrung from my throat at that last moment before his lips touch my penis, rising hard between us.
The name of our Lord and his Blessed Mother is wrung from my lips; and supplications too; nothing in my life has prepared me for this, his soft lips, his strong tongue, the scrape of stubble on my thigh… his hands and fingers holding, stroking… and nothing has ever felt like this before, not even half-remembered dreams ending in a sticky rush, succubi, I was told once, succubi preying on God’s servants.
And Ray – Ray is still talking, muttering fiercely, kissing my length up one side and down the other, his body tense, almost shaking in his desire. And he is lovely, his mouth stretched wide around me, his eyes closed in an ecstasy I can well imagine as an incredible sensation begins to overwhelm me. I say, “No” once more, just one more sin: this is not a plea to stop but a plea to my body, traitor that it is, not to end this now, so soon, too soon…
He sucks, and swallows, and swallows again, greedily, and my hands learn the shape of his head, the prick of hair against my palms even as I feel the wall suddenly hard against my back, holding me up, wrung out, drained as I am, Ray still sucking, gently now, his eyes still closed and his fingers rubbing – caressing – the hollow at the top of my thigh. When he finally lets me fall from his mouth he still doesn’t open his eyes but turns his face blindly to my leg, and his lips are soft and gentle on the skin at the inside of my thigh.
He seems more shaken than I, which is hard to imagine, let alone understand, but I find myself touching his face, his hand, urging him from his knees, seeking to put him at ease, reassure him…
Or is that the devil’s game, since he comes to his feet and pulls me into his arms, lightning quick, the way he sunk to his knees just a few minutes ago, his mouth finding mine again.
He tastes of bitter herbs.
“You’ll see,” he’s whispering against my cheek, into my ear, holding me close to him, so close I can feel his heart pounding next to mine. “You’d see, God, if I could…”
And then he’s gone, turning on his heel so quickly I grasp nothing but air; and how is it that I worry more about his safety – are they gone; what if they’ve lain in wait – than anything else?
The sun has long since set when I rise, my knees stiff and my back weary; despite hours of prayer, my mind is anything but clear. And it’s a sign of my own culpability that I avoid Father Ducro and the others, that I hasten to my room, that I lie to Brother Montoya when he taps on my door to ask if I am all right. I tell him it’s a headache, this small lie falling from my lips frighteningly easily.
Nor can I imagine, after that sleepless night, haunted by waking dreams of demons, confessing to Father Ducro, not because he knows me but because he doesn’t. Father Ducro would believe me horrified and penitent; Father Ellis will know that I can’t, or perhaps won’t, erase the image of Ray from my mind, on his knees before me, the feeling – and now I know, oh, how I know, what “carnal” truly means – of my seed spilling, unbidden, down his strong throat. Father Ellis is the one who brought me to know my nature, my downfall, my weakness: pride, stiff, unbending, more unyielding than the granite of the Scottish coast my forebears left behind.
Proud and temperamental; and I fall to my knees beside my bed, pleading with St. Teresa for guidance, with Mary for understanding, with Jesus for forgiveness, and my eyes are wet but my spirit is not humbled when there is yet another tap on the door.
Father Ducro this time: I’ve missed dinner, and early Mass, and breakfast, and as far as he knows have no reason to be fasting. One look at me and his kind face reflects distress, but I find my feet even as I shake my head, even as I ask his permission to call and confess to Father Ellis.
He grants it readily: he’s a good-hearted man, a man of generous impulses, and it shames me that I cannot emulate him, that I cannot be this man of God when it’s clear it’s easy if one has faith, faith and humility.
Perhaps I ought to have given more thought to the Franciscan Order.
But it’s far too late for that now.
Father Ducro lends me his study, simple and comfortable, like him. It’s almost an anticlimax to hear Father Ellis’ voice. I had been quite suddenly certain that he would be away, or busy, that I would have to endure this torture with no end in sight; and am horrified anew at my lack of resolve, my lack of strength. Surely I should, could endure this as long as He deems fitting, another penance.
I hear compassion from Father Ellis I didn’t expect and that almost undoes me completely. There is nothing feigned about the tears in my voice, the contrition in my heart as he speaks; but when he warns that I was in, perhaps, mortal danger, and that this man I sheltered might have easily been an agent of either God or Satan, I cannot hold back my tears, more bitter than –
My penance is lighter than I deserve: nine rosaries each day for nine days, praying the Sorrowful Mysteries for eight and the Glorious for the last, and fasting until they are completed. He reminds me, gently, that it is the sin of pride to do more than the penance assigned and I flush hotly.
Absolution follows; he has me repeat the words with him: Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.
“Go in peace,” he says quietly. He doesn’t need to add the rest; I won’t, can’t forget.
When I exit the study, Father Ducro gets to his feet, his rosary clasped in one hand. He was kneeling under the window at the end of the hallway, keeping watch.
I tell him slowly of my encounter with the three men: I knew he must be told but Father Ellis absolved me from telling him all. Father Ducro, as I expected, brushes it off: he’s known Vinny Labruzzo “since his confirmation” and he “wouldn’t hurt a fly.” He’s more concerned with the threat from “Sal;” he thinks he knows St. Christopher – “Joey Loria,” he says, nodding, but the other two are unfamiliar to him, perhaps new to Chicago or at least to this neighbourhood. He counsels me not to walk alone at night until he has a chance to talk to Vinny; these men from “outside,” he says, don’t always respect tradition.
His matter-of-fact acceptance of the possible danger bruited by Father Ellis is… chilling; and I retreat to my penance almost more frightened than thoughtful.
Almost; in the bright sunshine after early Mass the next morning my fears seem ridiculously overblown. I find myself at the park and realize in some embarrassment that I’m looking for a blond head, for a tall lean figure; but it’s only to make sure he’s all right. He ought to have gotten away from Labruzzo’s men; I can only hope he did, and pray for him: he was probably as overwrought as I, misguided and afraid.
But I didn’t repeat his words to Father Ellis: they made no sense at the time and they make none still.
Wednesday dawns bright and clear and it takes discipline to say my penance. Because of this I say it in Latin, thus forcing myself to slow down, to meditate, to contemplate. And I fast until late Mass – Father Ducro says Latin mass even now twice a week – and listen with ears sharper, more ready to hear than I ever remember feeling, thrilling, even ecstatic, with the grace and peace of Our Lord.
That night I sleep soundly, untroubled by dreams; and the next day, after my penance, I write to Father Ellis to express my gratitude for his time, his understanding, and above all his wisdom. “We are indeed heir to the sins of the flesh but we can inherit the kingdom of God through God’s grace and strength; and these desires to serve Christ our Lord are given to us by Him, proof anew of his bounty and the great love and concern with which He is waiting to save us.”
By Friday the de facto house arrest is wearing on me; Brother Montoya goes with me to the park after early Mass but he’s being polite, not seeing the point of these long walks of mine, nor why he must accompany me. And, indeed, it’s not fair: he has plenty to do. So I cut my walk short, not looking for – nor seeing – any sign of Ray.
That evening, at Mass, I see St. Christopher. Father Ducro sees him too but he leaves directly after the Eucharist, and on our way back to the rectory Father Ducro says it’s a “good sign” Joey showed up.
I am angry, afraid, impatient, all these, and more; and I blame my state of mind, and my consequent state of unrest, for my inability to find sleep, or even peace, once in bed. I toss and turn and toss again, climb out of bed and say my penance all the way through until my knees are aching and my eyes are heavy, asking for the grace and peace of the Lord and the love, the sympathy of His Blessed Mother, Our Lady of Sorrows.
But still I am tormented, waking before dawn to sticky underwear and a false sense of benison, the peace of physical release and not the peace of righteous prayer, the peace of the devil himself, not the peace granted us through the grace of God and all his saints.
St. Ignatius struggled with this, as did St. Augustine, but again flesh is weak and sheer lassitude pins me to the bed, as if the devil himself is holding me, closing my eyes too.
When I wake a second time, the torment continues: this time my penis is stiff, stiff and exquisitely sensitive, so that even the brush of the blanket across my groin is almost too much. I tumble out of bed onto my knees, fumbling for my rosary and beseeching the Holy Virgin, St. Michael and St. Catherine for mercy, mercy and relief. And I pray my penance, eyes shut tight, concentrating on each word, on each Mystery, ignoring my body as completely as possible.
The minutes pass as if in a dream, each decade drawing me higher, further, my mouth shaping the familiar words as if speaking to a lover, soft against Her breast. I feel disconnected, humbled, awed, ecstatic; and when I reach the penultimate Gloria Patri all of it tumbles down together in a bright sparkling rush where I am one with God and the universe suddenly, briefly makes sense.
At early Mass, the ritual of the Eucharist moves me to tears, not for the first time; and I cling to the wafer in my mouth as if Jesus can draw me to heaven through that alone, and I move through my daily tasks serenely, disconnected from the world. When Father Ducro offers to relieve me of the duty of Reconciliation – we are rotated, like doctors on call – I decline: even the threat of Mr. Labruzzo’s displeasure can’t penetrate my calm. I recognize it for what it is, the grace of Our Holy Mother, the gift of her serenity.
And, truly, I am grateful to participate in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, to hope that I can, through God, provide a path to repentance and peace for those as troubled as I, and I remember the words of St. Teresa, that it was useful to have gone astray so we may acquire experience, and pass these words on to those whose confessions I hear.
The bell rings, two chimes: Father Ducro allows time to say the Rosary before and after Mass, and uses the bell to mark the quarter-hours. I reach up to turn the lights out and hear the door swing open in the other compartment. One last confession then; and there’s time. So instead I turn the light to red and open my mouth–
The voice is familiar, all too familiar: “Bless me, Fraser, for I have sinned.” His words are low and rapid, and I can make out the shadow of his head against the grille. “It’s been… huh, seven years since my last confession and that was only because my brother–”
Swifter than thought, I am on my feet, throwing open my door, flinging open his, dragging him almost back into the confessional. “Ray, are you all right? Are you insane?”
Even in the dim light of the confessional I can see a blacked eye, fading to yellow and green, and scrapes on his cheekbone, a healing cut on his lip.
“I had to see you,” he says simply, wincing when I catch his jaw to tilt his face toward the light. “I heard Labruzzo’s goons were after a priest at St. Adalbert’s.”
“Father Ducro is going to talk to Mr. Labruzzo –“
He scoffs, laughing, then winces; and I see the shadows under his eyes, then, and the stubble on his cheeks, longer than I’ve seen it before, nigh on beard length. “Might as well talk to a pair of cement shoes, Fraser, the new players on the board ain’t listening to any of our hometown boys. They got something, they know something, they got someone…”
He breaks off, shaking his head in frustration.
I feel under my seat for the thermos of tea, pressed into my hands by Brother Montoya on my way out of the rectory. I hadn’t touched it, hadn’t needed it; and now I see that it was Providence.
“One of them has been coming to Mass,” I say quietly, pouring a tea into the lid. “Drink this now, finish it, and rest. After Mass I’ll make sure you can get away safely again.”
“What is this?” he asks, one eyebrow raised: he was expecting black tea, no doubt.
“Just peppermint tea.”
“I could probably use some caffeine,” he says wearily, sipping it nonetheless, then apparently throwing caution to the winds and tipping it back all the way, swallowing greedily.
I try not to watch his throat muscles, try not to remember –
The bell chimes again, thrice, God interceding once again, recalling me to myself, to my vows, to my duty.
“Lock the door after me,” I whisper, switching both outside lights off. “You’ll be safe here; I’ll keep watch from the sanctuary.”
He grips my forearm, then presses his forehead against it. After I pull the door shut, I hear the bolt slide home.
I attend Mass with less than my usual concentration, praying only for Ray’s safety. As I had feared, the man with the St Christopher medal, the one Father Ducro calls Joey Loria, is indeed at Mass, and so a compatriot, fortunately not the one who’d threatened me.
I help to tidy the sanctuary after Mass and the saying of the Rosary is over, as I should, so it occasions no comment. When Brother Montoya begins to check the doors, I accompany him, more to put my own mind at ease than to help him, but he seems grateful. Together we close and lock the front doors, and then I tell him I will check the east doors, which were locked all day but which I know he checks every night.
There’s no answer when I tap on the door of the confessional, so I find my key, a shiny modern one that’s more out of place in this church than I am in Chicago. Ray’s slumped down on the floor, his head and arms resting on the seat of the chair, his long legs folded up in a manner that looks quite uncomfortable, almost as uncomfortable as the shoulder holster that crosses his back. I pull the door shut carefully, quietly, so no stray beam of light betrays us, although the church is empty, and wake him quietly, although it goes against my heart to do so.
He comes awake almost instantly, as if he’s a soldier, and I wonder if he’s a dispossessed veteran. He’s too young for Vietnam, of course, but not for the Gulf War. He’s never talked about his life, but if he is a veteran, that might explain his reticence.
“Sorry,” he says, rubbing his uninjured eye. “How long did I sleep?”
“Just a Mass,” I say, holding my hands together tightly lest I betray myself and touch him, the temptation suddenly overwhelming.
He grins, getting to his feet slowly, so slowly I can almost hear his bones creaking. “Guess Chicago is worth a Mass.”
I’m so surprised I can’t answer for a moment: dispossessed veteran, possibly involved in a Mob-related turf war – and he’s widely, and well, read.
Well, I knew he was intelligent – he’s beaten me at chess more than once – and my grandmother would be the first to remind me, even before Father Ellis, that one oughtn’t to judge a book by its cover, especially, she would add, the “nonsense” on the back.
“You recognize anyone?” he asks, shrugging into his jacket, the holster disappearing as if by magic.
“Yes. Yes, the – well, two of them, the man with the medal around his neck, and the other man who was here before, not the one they called Sal.”
“Not your boyfriend?” he says, more dryly than not. “When I heard they were after you I figured I maybe got it wrong, but he told a crew down at the pool hall that you were his damerino. You stop putting out, what?”
His voice is so acidic, so different from just a few seconds ago, that I blink, my throat dry. “I – I didn’t do anything,” I say finally, heartfelt, not even knowing where to begin.
He cocks his head to one side. “He dumped you? He wanted to pass you on, you said ‘no dice’? They do that, you know; this your first? They pass ‘em on all the time.”
“I don’t even know him,” I say harshly. “And I wish I’d never met him.” And I wouldn’t have, if not for you, but I keep my temper in check enough not to give voice to that pointless accusation.
“Yeah?” he says, consideringly; and I suddenly realize he’s got me in the corner, the chair to one side so I can’t duck away. “Happens… that’s what Stella said when she left me. Bet she said it again after her new boyfriend put her in the hospital… land deal went wrong and she walked out on him. That’s why I figure you walked out on Gaspipe Gravina and not the other way around.”
I don’t know where to begin to put him straight, to correct these misapprehensions, but he doesn’t give me a chance anyway: his lips are on mine again and I realize with some horror that I have been waiting for just this moment, that I have been craving his touch since the moment I heard his voice again, or even – if I must be honest – before that.
And perhaps I am the catamite he deems me, because I moan deep in my throat and kiss him back as well as I can, unpractised though I am, mimicking his movements, holding him against me just as tightly as he’s holding me.
And this time – this time I feel him, hard against my thigh, riding me; and I press back, just as hard, riding his thigh too. He makes a sound between a groan and a laugh and tucks his leg up, higher and harder; and he lets me go just long enough to lick my cheek, to gasp my name, to fix his teeth in my earlobe. “Fraser, Fraser,” he whispers, shifting his hips just enough that our erections slide against each other. He has a hand between us, popping the rivet on his jeans and I –
I am helping him pull the zipper down, helping him push my clothes up and out of the way, gasping when his hand slips into my boxers. “God, you’re beautiful,” he’s whispering, fluttering kisses across my cheekbone. “Too beautiful for him, for that, God, Fraser, why? I could – we could – oh, God…”
He breaks off: imitating him, I’d shifted my hips again and moved my hand inside his briefs, finding the hard warm length of him, letting his glans rub against the palm of my hand where it leaves a wet smear; and then we are flesh to naked flesh, Ray tilting me backwards with one hand bracing me, our members rampant, striving against each other, tumbling towards completion.
“So good,” I whisper, tears starting to my eyes: I know I am lost, I know I am damned, and yet I cannot stop, could not stop if my life depended on it, even though my soul does.
“Yeah,” he groans, biting my throat, his erection slicking warm across my belly, across my own hardness, two swords battling for victory. “God, wanna fuck you, God, Fraser, want you, want you, you’re mine, damn it, you’re mine…”
And I am: I am his, and I’m lost, because Heaven couldn’t be better than this, this ecstatic completion, flesh to flesh, held close against him… nothing could, nothing except the next moment when he drops his head to my shoulder and I feel the warm pulse of his penis on my stomach.
“C’mon,” he’s whispering, straining against me, gasping for breath, making noises as guttural as they are lewd, one hand slipping between us, guiding his penis to push against mine, pulse after wet pulse.
The feel of his semen on my member is enough to push me over, profligate and uncaring of anything but my own pleasure, deposited between the two of us, both our bellies warm and slick now.
“God,” he whispers after a lingering kiss, and it doesn’t sound like blasphemy even though it is, especially now, especially here, especially after…
The tears in my eyes are running freely, assuaging only my confusion and not my guilt, even as Ray leans in and down, his tongue emerging, long and wicked, like a snake’s, to lick our commingled semen from my belly, words flowing from him like a peaty river, soft and warm: “If it’s sex, Fraser, I can do that, I can give you that,” he’s whispering as he laps at me… at us.
And, so help me God, I want to taste him – us – too, even though I should be thinking only of my soul, repenting, recanting this worship of the flesh.
Too late, all of it: he looks up, then finds his feet, leaning in against me; and my traitorous body leans against him, seeking out his touch, the feel of his warmth and strength all along the length of me.
“What, Fraser?” he’s whispering, gentle, so gentle, almost as if he understands.
But he doesn’t.
“I can help you,” he’s whispering. “Help you get away, if that’s what you want, help you hide until the Church can get you away, if you really want to leave him.”
The Church, my God…
“Fraser,” he’s whispering against my lips, insistent, his thumb wiping my cheek dry. “Let me –”
“You can’t help,” I say, closing my eyes and staring into the red darkness. He can’t help: he is the agent of my damnation, though the fault is mine alone.
“I can,” he says, even more insistent. “You don’t belong to him.”
“No, I don’t,” I say, finally, belatedly angry. “I never did. I never met him until Wednesday, when he came here looking for you, and I hope to God I never meet him again.”
Sinful, sinful and cruel to take my own anger out on him, but I do; and if I didn’t already have far too much to confess, to repair, I would add it to my list.
His hand drops to my jaw, his fingers still on my face, his thumb caressing my chin; and he stares at me. “I… what?”
He leans in close again, his lips brushing mine gently, almost as if he doesn’t know what he’s doing. And my lips cling to his, belying my protest – no, betraying my very soul.
“But you… he…”
I don’t want reality to intrude, this moment to end, his voice soft, his lips softer, gentle even in his bewilderment, and so I press close to him again, insistent: if I am damned, surely I have earned these few moments of indulgence. I put a hand up to his hair, hesitant; he resists for three heartbeats, perhaps four, and then he makes a soft sound into my mouth and presses me back against the wall, fullbodied and strong, his kiss demanding, orchestrating a response that I – pitifully – am only too willing to provide.
But he’s not to be distracted, and somehow I already knew that about him; when he pulls back, even though his lips are moist, even though his eyes are half-lidded and sultry, he persists: “I saw you… he touched you, he touched you, Fraser, like you belonged to him.”
“He… did,” I whisper back, swallowing hard: I don’t want to remember, I don’t want to feel that way, like a… thing, a thing to assuage his lust; and I breathe in deep, the scent of Ray insensibly calming.
“He touched you,” Ray says again, slowly, his eyes hardening in anger, his lips thinning. “He was threatening you.”
I have no words: I can only nod, and marvel at his quick intelligence.
“This is worse than I thought,” he says abruptly, his hands falling to my shoulders and gripping there, almost too tightly. “Shit, fuck and god damn it –“
“Shhhh!” I whisper, putting my fingers to his lips: the vestry door squeaks, and Brother Montoya –
Sure enough, he’s calling out for me, thankfully the length of the church away. “I’ll leave the vestry door unlocked,” I whisper. “Be careful when you go; there were two of them here tonight.” I’m wiping at my stomach with my undercassock, my fingers fumbling with the fastenings on my cassock itself, and I am thankful – I’ve lost count of my sins long since – for the practicality of the Jesuit design that lacks all those buttons. And if I am sticky and uncomfortable, it’s only the beginning of my penance.
“No,” he whispers roughly, grabbing my face, forcing me to look at him. “No, Fraser. We have to talk. Where can we meet? When?”
“I’m not allowed to leave,” I whisper back, pulling away from his hands. “Not alone.”
“Not with Sal Gravina after you, no. The choir loft; I’ll meet you there tomorrow afternoon. We have to talk.”
“Ray –”
“Promise me,” he says, his eyes fierce.
And this, too, I already knew: I cannot deny him.