The Wanting Life

by Mark Rader

  They swam and baked on the beach. Ate lunch at two, then swam and baked some more, their suitcases beside their towels. For most of the day, the looming dread—he knew it was there—was ironed flat by the heat, kept cool by the water. But it wasn’t gone. As they walked to the bus stop, to catch a ride to Formia, where the train station was, he felt it, corkscrewing his stomach. The return to ordinary life.

  Halfway to Rome, Luca fell asleep and rested his head on Paul’s shoulder. Paul was touched but worried; he looked around to see if anyone had taken notice. But others were in their own world. A little girl stomped up and down on the thighs of her father, like Godzilla, feeling her power. A young woman and her friend loudly ate potato crisps from a crinkly bag in the seat in front of them. Others slept or looked out the windows.

  So he let Luca be. Moving only his head, so as not to disturb Luca’s sleep, he watched fields the color of sand and highbranched pines scroll past, his reflection sometimes surprising him in the watery glass. Father Paul Novak stared back. Son of Anna and Virgil Novak, from Edgar, Wisconsin, with a moppyhaired man’s head making peaceful sounds on his shoulder. Never would he be a virgin again. What had happened was as permanent as the summer landscape shooting past was fleeting. The reality of Italy outside made him fantasize for a while: the two of them in a small Italian town, quieter than Sperlonga; he a teacher of religion at some local school, Luca a photographer for the small local paper. Roommates to the world, of course, but inside their home, whatever they wanted. A private universe. In the back, a garden, a miniature of his mother’s; Rome just a train ride away whenever they had the need for culture. Summers free, time to read. The town—and this was the unlikely, impossible part—a quiet place in which their neighbors wouldn’t suspect a thing. Drifting, he thought of Norb and his Marie: now they had this in common. Though of course it was something he could never share.

  Only as the train pulled with a hiss into the station did Luca wake up, lift his head, inhale deeply, arch his back. When he looked at Paul it was with a sleepy smile and eyes that could only be described as sexual, and Paul smiled back, proud of having been privy to the feeling the look implied. They waited their turn, then filed out into the walkway beside the train, until Luca stopped in his tracks and grabbed the back of Paul’s sleeve. Ack, his sunglasses. They must have slid out of his pocket and onto the seat. Paul stopped with his own bag to wait, turned back to watch Luca jog nimbly toward the doors, and it was then that he saw a familiar face. Three faces, actually. Atwood, Fenno, and Durst. Second-years in canon law. Always together, those three, names strung quickly together by other people like they were a law firm.

  Had Paul not so fearfully reacted to Atwood’s glance at him, had they not been coming right for him, they might have avoided each other. But here they all were.

  “Novak,” said Atwood.

  “Oh, hi,” Paul said with fake cheer. His ears were preemptively red with embarrassment. “That’s funny. That you’re here.”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Durst coldly.

  “Were you…on this train too? I guess so.”

  “We were a few rows behind you, actually. Somebody in our car got sick and so we relocated. We were in Naples for the day.”

  They’d seen Luca, then; his and Paul’s sweet little tableau. Paul felt dizzy. The best thing to do here was to keep a calm, straight face. But he couldn’t contort his expression into something even close to calm. Surely he looked guilty.

  “You’re traveling with a friend, it looks like.”

  “Yes,” Paul said. “My friend Luca. We met playing bocce.”

  “A close friend, it seems,” Fenno said.

  “Well,” Paul said, blushing even more, “we get along, yes.”

  Only Atwood nodded. “How nice.”

  Five seconds of silence. “We’ll see you back in town, I guess,” said Durst.

  “Right,” said Paul. “Yes, I’ll see you there.”

  He stood frozen, eyes unfocused, as they left him. Other people flowed around him like water around a stone. Then Luca was back, sunglasses perched on his head. His relieved smile faded when he looked at Paul.

  “What? What is it?” he said.

  “Some of my classmates were sitting right behind us,” Paul said.

  Luca blinked. “So?”

  “Your head was on my shoulder. They saw that.”

  “You’re paranoid. You didn’t want to wake me up, that’s all. What’s the big deal?”

  “I acted guilty. It wasn’t good.”

  “My head on your shoulder doesn’t mean anything, Paul.”

  “Of course it does,” he snapped. He felt disappointed that Luca was so naïve to not see that. “People gossip, especially them.”

  “And if they do and someone asks you…” Luca said. “You just say we’re friends. And that I fell asleep and you didn’t want to wake me up. Okay? It’s not that hard.”

  Paul felt like smacking him. In a few minutes, Luca would return to his wayward, meandering life with no consequences to face, this weekend just another blip in the ongoing drama of his life. One day Paul would be but one of Luca’s many flings—a colorful story to tell his future lovers. A priest? How scandalous! Whereas he would be expected now to fall back into line. Pretend as if he weren’t altered forever. No, Luca had no clue about the stakes for him because he was a silly, unserious person. Paul had a strange urge to shove him to the ground, show him how flimsy a thing he really was.

  “You look angry right now,” Luca said.

  “I just want to go home.”

  “Fine then,” Luca said, frowning. “We’ll go.” Then under his breath: “Gesu Cristo.”

  They walked in silence toward the bus line together and boarded. In the same way something bright and daring had bloomed in him on the walk from the beach to the door of their room the night before, something equally dark was growing in him as they moved through the city. He said nothing, and Luca didn’t speak until a few blocks before his stop.

  “So,” he said, “when will I see you again?”

  Maybe we shouldn’t, Paul thought. But at the idea of an actual end, he panicked. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “When do you leave again? What day?”

  “May the eleventh.”

  “Then we should see each other before then,” Luca said. “Shouldn’t we?”

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Paul said, still sick to his stomach. The dream had ended the moment Atwood had said, I see. He felt naked, unable to think.

  “Paul,” Luca said, “you can’t be serious.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re angry at me, and I don’t know why.”

  Paul said nothing. His stop was coming: strained relief. Luca looked out the window.

  “Don’t let them ruin this,” Luca said, voice lowered. “You can’t let them do that.”

  The bus creaked and stopped with a jerk.

  “I’ll call you soon,” Luca said.

  “Don’t call there now.”

  “Then call me at the restaurant,” said Luca. “Okay? Please.”

  “Okay,” Paul said. “I will.”

  That night, and the nights that followed, Paul was constantly found out in his dreams. The judges varied. First it was Father Krzyechek, the priest of his boyhood, then his mother, then the monsignor. He always woke in a panic when the disappointment reached its peak, piercing him like the high whistle of a kettle—but one morning, sheets damp with sweat, he wondered what might’ve happened if he waited out the disgrace in the dream, remained present for his reckoning.

  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, he went to class. Kept his eyes peeled for the Law Firm, whom he did not see. Read the faces of everyone at Il Castello, looking for but not finding evidence that they knew. He barely ate. He dry-heaved twice. In class, he remembered with amazement the encounters at Sperlonga: the power he’d had over Luca in certain moments, the power Luca had had over him. The pleasure of pleasing and being pleased. Many t
imes a day he felt equally guilty and then wondered if, truly, it had been a sin. The Bible said that it was wrong; the Church he had given his life to did as well. And yet, when else had he felt so fully himself? Every night, he went to Mass and knelt. Closed his eyes, squeezed his hands together, and tried to summon through the murk the flickering sunbeam of God’s love, the same love he’d been summoning since he was a boy kneeling beside his sister at St. John the Baptist or on the cold, warped hardwood floor of his bedroom. It took time to sense it, to shut up his mind completely enough, but he was relieved that it still came through: a heavy, warm presence above and inside himself, though not just there—beyond. Beyond his imagining, beyond himself, beyond them, beyond the Law Firm, beyond his confusion. A feeling he sometimes imposed on the smiling face of Christ.

  It was still there, despite it all. His eyes filled with gratitude.

  Wednesday, after dinner, someone knocked on his door. When Paul opened it, there was Monsignor LaRouche. As always, the hair on the back of his head was sticking up, and his glasses were smudged. These hygienic blind spots were some of the traits they all loved about him.

  “Evening, Paul,” he said. “Sorry to bother you. But do you have a few minutes to speak with me in my office?”

  Paul’s face fell. “Sure thing,” he said. He slowly followed the monsignor along the external hallway and down the stairs. When Paul glanced up he saw Fenno and Atwood loitering by Durst’s door, eyes following him. His heart sank. In the office, Monsignor LaRouche motioned for him to sit in the red leather chair across from his desk, worn and cracked in spots like an old baseball glove.

  “So you’ll be leaving us very shortly,” he began.

  “Yes,” Paul said. “Two weeks. I can’t believe it’s already here.”

  “Amazing how time flies, isn’t it?” Monsignor LaRouche said.

  “Yes, but I’ve enjoyed it immensely,” Paul said. “Some of the best years of my life. Without a doubt.” It was a pathetic attempt to charm the man, but he didn’t know what else to do.

  “Good, good. I’m always glad to hear that. That’s part of the reason I’m here.”

  Paul smiled.

  “So then,” he added with a sigh. “I’m upset that I even had to call you in here. But”—he began rummaging in his shirt pocket—“last night, someone slipped this under my door.”

  He took out a white rectangle the size of a postcard and unfolded it once: a piece of typing paper cut in half.

  “Maybe I’ll just let you look at it,” he said, and pushed it across the table.

  You might want to keep an eye on Father Novak.

  “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman;

  that is detestable.” Leviticus 18:22.

  Though he was sitting, Paul felt like he was free-falling down an elevator shaft. Had he been a good liar, he might have quickly assembled his features into a look of indignation. But he wasn’t a performer. His lies, when he lied, were lies of omission. All he could manage was a deep frown he held as long as he could, until the blush on his neck passed and he could figure out what to do or say.

  “I…” he said. “I’m…surprised.”

  “Now,” said the monsignor, “I don’t know who might have wrote this, or why—and I don’t want to know, frankly. It’s a cowardly thing to do, and I’d think the men here were above such a thing. But I felt the need to make you aware. Not that you’re here much longer anyway. But even so.”

  “It’s—it’s quite a charge to make,” Paul said, which he realized also wasn’t a denial.

  “Indeed, it is,” Monsignor LaRouche said, his face serious. “Do you have any idea who might have found reason to do such a thing?”

  He felt paralyzed, until his mind landed on Luca’s advice at the train station: Play it down. Explain the situation.

  “The only thing I can think of,” he said, “is that this weekend, I went to the beach with a friend I’ve made in town. A guy I play bocce with. A few of the second-years saw us together on the train and may have gotten the wrong idea.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, if I was to guess, at one point my friend fell asleep and his head slipped off his seat and onto my shoulder, you know, accidentally. And I didn’t want to wake him up. Maybe they read something into that.”

  “Well,” scoffed Monsignor LaRouche, “that’s a rather big leap to make.”

  “Yes, exactly,” said Paul. He was still flushed but now saw the monsignor wanted this to go away as much as he did; he would—at the end of this—be safe. “It is.”

  “Well,” Monsignor LaRouche said, “I’m not going to ask you who it might be, as much as I’d like to give them a piece of my mind. But I understand if you’d feel the need to talk to them yourself. To clear things up.”

  “Okay,” Paul said. “I’ll consider that.”

  Monsignor LaRouche cocked his head to the left, nodded. “Okay then. Good.” He exhaled, relieved. “It’s nice that you’ve made friends outside of our little compound here. Gives you a different sense of the place, I bet.”

  “Yes, it does,” Paul said.

  “A local fellow, you said?”

  “Yes. He’s a photographer. Well, a waiter. We met playing bocce in the park. Nice guy. He’s helped me with my Italian too.”

  “Very nice,” Monsignor LaRouche said. “I never got the hang of bocce. Though I suppose that’s because I’ve only played it twice.”

  “There’s a learning curve for sure.”

  Now the monsignor reached for his pipe, opened a drawer, and began packing the bulb with tobacco. This signaled that the worst was over, and Paul relaxed, so much so that he felt a little faint.

  “Anyway,” Monsignor LaRouche said, “I’m sorry we had to have this conversation.”

  He struck a match, lit his pipe, and set fire to the edge of the note. The corner flared orange, and the fire slowly ate its way to the middle, at which point it died out. The monsignor swiveled back to where a small metal fan sat on the floor and turned it on, to diffuse the smell, then plucked the half-destroyed evidence and tossed it in the trash can under his desk.

  “Thank you for understanding,” Paul said.

  Monsignor LaRouche took a puff, and a faint smoke genie wriggled its way to the ceiling. “Of course. Good luck on your exams.”

  That night, after his first decent meal since the weekend, Paul felt himself getting seriously ill. By the next morning, his body ached, his eyes and muscles most of all. He had a sore throat, fever and chills, diarrhea. Only twice had he gotten sick in Rome: a winter cold that lasted four days, and a twenty-fourhour calamari-inspired case of food poisoning. But this was going to be something worse, he knew it.

  Not wanting to fall behind, he forced himself to dress and go to class, returned immediately to Il Castello, took aspirin, sweated up the sheets, slept. All he ate were the saltines he kept in his room for a snack; all he drank was water from the bathroom tap. The second day was worse. Feeling that he should, he put on pants and a shirt and walked down to the monsignor’s office to tell him he wasn’t feeling well, and within the hour, Sister Angelique had left a tray of chicken broth and bread outside his door. The salt in the soup tasted good, but he threw it all up, and the third day was more of the same. Looking up at the ceiling in bed, Paul imagined he was in his childhood bedroom, his mother downstairs making chicken soup the way he liked it, with dark thigh meat, the globs of fat strained out. Then a vision of Luca entered the room, sat at the edge of the bed, placed a cold washcloth on his forehead. How nice this would be right now, he thought—Luca’s attention, Luca’s touch. But of course, that was impossible, now that suspicion was in the air. Even before, it would have seemed suspicious. But if they were still in Sperlonga, it would be quite fine. That room, away from the world, two friends on vacation…though, for that entire Sunday, something like a couple. A pair. But now? There was nowhere else for the thing to go. Already they were on the verge of goodbye. His family and his diocese were waiting
. His life as a priest. To think that a whole life filled with days like those he’d had with Luca was possible was utter foolishness. Very soon, he would have to begin his penance.

  He was supposed to call Luca, but he didn’t. What was the use, when he couldn’t see him anyway? Best to focus on merely getting through the days, getting his rest. So Thursday turned to Friday, Friday to Saturday, Saturday to Sunday. His sheets did finally get changed, and a few of the guys he was friendly with stopped in to wish him well. Three times a day Sister Angelique brought up broth and fruit and a bland cheese sandwich, encouraging him to eat. On Sunday, the fever finally broke, but he still felt too exhausted to sit and kneel his way through a service, so the monsignor brought up Communion to his room. He tried to study, as he had the past two days, but didn’t have the strength to concentrate. He didn’t want to even think about the test: worrying about that wouldn’t help him get better.

  Early Sunday night—time had become strange, it felt like morning—there was a knock on his door. It was the portiere. “Call for you in the office,” he said. “Your friend Luca. Should I tell him you’re coming?”

  “Yes,” said Paul. He absently combed down the back of his hair, even though he was only going to use the phone.

  “I thought you were going to call me,” Luca said, first thing.

  “I have the flu. I’ve been in bed for pretty much the last week.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really.”

  “You poor thing,” Luca said. “Are the people there helping you at least?”

  “Yes. The sisters here bring me food.” But I’m feeling lonely, he thought.

  “Me coming to see you there isn’t possible, is it?”

  “No,” Paul said. “That wouldn’t be wise.”

  He told him of what had happened with the monsignor.

  “Those assholes,” Luca said. “I guess you were right.”

  “I will be very nice,” Paul said, “and not tell you I told you so.”

  “But it all worked out in the end, right? So in a way I was right after all.”