by T K Kenyon
“The corporate culture of the Vatican warps all those priests into sexual caricatures of men. They’re all perverts and pedophiles, like that one in Boston who sodomized those boys.”
Yes, sodomized. Perhaps that was what Conroy did to his whore. Bev sighed.
“This Father Dante was transferred here suddenly.” Conroy pointed at her with a square of pale pork atop his fork. “They say pedophiles get jobs in schools to have access to kids.”
An image arose in Bev’s mind: smashed meat and potatoes flying, the glass table top lifting and flipping onto Conroy, imprisoning him in a makeshift glass house.
She said, “Stop.”
“I don’t want the girls alone with him. He might be a pedophile.”
Pinpoint reflections shimmered in the tabletop. “You shouldn’t make such horrible accusations.”
He held up his clean, blameless hands. “Hey, I didn’t accuse anybody of anything.”
Bev grabbed the tabletop with both hands. The glass was slippery as ice between her fingers. “You checked that woman into the hotel under my name. Under my name.”
Conroy stood, outraged. “You shouldn’t be snooping around like that.”
“You shouldn’t be screwing around like that. Who is she?”
“Beverly,” he started.
“No, she most certainly is not Beverly. Why would you do such a thing?”
“I’m sorry. I told you that it was over.”
Bev’s nose burned as tears boiled up. “You have to tell her. I want proof that you told her that it’s over.”
His blue eyes rolled. “Did that priest tell you to do this?”
“Stop it. Just stop it.” He was heaping all of his own hateful sins onto Father Dante.
She prayed to Mary to intercede. Be with us now and at the hour of our deaths. That Conroy’s whore had appropriated not only Bev’s husband but pretended to her name and position and identity galled her, literally galled her, made Bev feel as if she had vomited out everything in her esophagus and stomach and duodenum, all the way down to her gall bladder, and then she vomited green gall and black bile.
No one had even checked the woman’s identity. No one even cared.
Bev was so easily replaced that she was practically no one at all.
~~~~~
Leila arrived late at the lab the next morning. Even after driving home and showering, the hangover clung to her, snarling and raking her scalp.
Keyboard clattering rattled from Conroy’s open office door. She sneaked past.
At her desk, her purse and backpack fell out of her hands, and the purse bounced and fell to the floor. She let the stupid thing lie there. The way of the universe was gravity and entropy, and that morning, the universe was winning. Alcohol detox and caffeine jones warred in her head, pillaging and burning her brain cells.
Aldehyde, that was the chemical. Ethanol metabolized to aldehydes, like formaldehyde. Even after brushing her teeth twice and gargling with acid-strip mouthwash, aldehydes excreting through her lungs scoured her tongue and irritated her stomach.
From his office, Conroy yelled, “Leila! Computer help!”
She steeled her head against her own voice and moaned, “Okay.” She limped to his cluttered office and closed the door behind her. “I don’t suppose you have any extra coffee.”
“Here.” He handed her a cup without looking up. Both his legs bounced at the knees.
“It’s okay, Conroy. You don’t have to give up your juice.”
“S’alright, it’s my fifth.” He drumrolled his fingers on the desk.
After an experimental sip, her stomach relaxed, thanks be to all the caffeine gods in the Java Islands.
“Do you know this Petrocchi-Bianchi fellow?” Conroy pointed to the computer monitor.
Tiny-fonted PubMed citations filled the screen. The papers’ titles were neuroscience, molecular to physiological. Each citation listed D.M. Petrocchi-Bianchi, SJ, MD, PhD as an author. She said, “That’s a lot of alphabet soup after his name. I don’t think I’ve met him.”
Leila sat at the other computer. With distraction, her head pounded less, though as soon as she noticed this, the war drums crescendoed. She launched web software and searched for Petrocchi-Bianchi and neurology. “Found his homepage.”
Conroy leaned over. “You can read Italian?”
“No. Is he in there?” Leila pointed to a lab group picture. The caption under the photo read, Dipartimento di Neuroscienze e Psichiatriche Molecolari, Universita degli Studi di Roma.
Conroy pointed to a man in the back row. “That’s him.”
The guy was wearing gothic black, and his thick, curly hair swept his shoulders. He looked like he might be cool. He looked European, and Leila liked Europeans because they did the most passionate things in bed, but something was odd about his clothes. She leaned toward the monitor. His black shirt was cut by a Roman collar. “He’s a fucking priest. Why the fuck are you asking me about a priest?”
“No reason.”
She squinted, trying to will herself to read Italian or at least call up enough of her high school French and Californian Spanish to make an educated guess. “Goddamn priests. They’re all sick bastards. The corporate culture of the Vatican subverts natural moral sense and warps their personalities into a chauvinist parody of hyper-masculinity.”
“Yes, you’ve mentioned that.”
Leila’s opinions were sometimes too near her tongue. “That’s what the SJ after his name means: Society of Jesus. He’s not just a priest; he’s a Jesuit. Christ, Conroy. What did you do to get the Jesuits after you?”
Conroy shifted in his chair. “Click on some of the links.”
The links led to many papers in very good journals. “Damn,” Conroy said. He closed the browser window on his own computer. A window holding a gel showed up.
A groan rose in Leila’s throat. She needed to go home, drink fluids, and sleep it off, not stare at a glaring computer screen over Conroy’s shoulder and point to icons that Conroy would laboriously drag the cursor over to and click. She said, “I’m not a hundred percent today.”
Conroy looked surprised, and then he stared back at the screen. “We can do it tomorrow.”
His monitor’s engorged plasma screen showed a picture of a preternaturally schmutzless gel with five dark, smooth bands. She asked, “What is that?”
Conroy minimized the window. One of his eyebrows dipped and he frowned at her. “You look like hell. Go home.”
When a neurologist who specializes in the end stages of organic brain diseases like Alzheimer’s and mad cow-associated prion dementia says that you look like hell, you should go home and sleep it off. “Okay. I’ll split cells and then leave.”
“You can ask someone to split your cells.”
Considering that she had stepped over Joe when she had left O’Malley’s this morning, Leila doubted he was in yet. Danna went AWOL about three in the morning, when one of O’Malley’s writer friends also disappeared. Yuri might ask why Leila had primary neurons in culture and what was grotesquely killing them. “No, thanks.”
Conroy dropped his voice. “Are you all right? Do you need a scrip for antibiotics?”
“It’s probably one of those twenty-four hour bugs.”
“Headache?”
“Enormous.”
“You didn’t pick it up in the lab?” His gray eyebrows clenched over his blue eyes. “Because God only knows what’s growing in here half the time. Yuri’s doing some secret experiment that he won’t talk about. Lab accidents happen all the time, infections, contaminations, weird stuff.”
“I’ll bet I caught it somewhere else.” She walked out.
In the tissue culture room, she pressed her face to the hood, and the glass cooled her forehead. On the other side of the glass shield, her hands efficiently pipetted media. Her poisoned body could do the work without any higher brain function at all. Miraculous, really.
She slid her flasks into the incubator. Mysterious dishes slat
hered with Conroy’s handwriting tiled the shelf below hers.
Leila gloved and set one of Conroy’s dishes on the microscope. Neuroblastoma cells half-covered the bottom of the dish. The bloated, dying cells looked virus-infected, but a chemical or cytokine or reagent virus or transfection might cause the same cytopathic effect.
Leila went home to sleep off her hangover.
~~~~~
Chapter Four
The Daily Hamiltonian:
Contamination at NIH
By Kirin Oberoi
In an assumed accident at the National Institute of Health, a scientist, Dr. Joy Chan, was contaminated by carbon-14, a radioactive isotope commonly used in scientific research. The chemical was found on her lab chair last week.
Though Dr. Chan is six months pregnant, the isotope is not expected to harm the fetus.
The NIH declined to comment.
~~~~~
Dante interlaced the packing box’s flaps and taped them shut. The books that remained on the shelves huddled, shamed that they had sheltered the criminals rather than recoil and expel them.
So many tapes and magazines and movies on CDs, some slickly commercial, others rickety and homemade, had been stuffed on those motley shelves.
Homemade: these despicable tracts sullied that vanilla-cookie word.
Dante’s despair was bilious black. Angry acidity burned the barriers between his gut and his heart, and the bile recirculated through his body and felt like a heart attack.
Heart-sick, Dante was heart-sick. Exorcisms and battling demon-strong men and women and expelling the Latin-spewing devils by holy water and crucifix had been easier.
Knocking pattered at the library door.
“Come in,” he said and scooted the chairs to form a triangle.
The doorknob grated. The metal-studded door opened. The Sloans surveyed the library, its chairs and its shelves.
Mrs. Sloan said, “Hello, Father.”
Dante grasped the stuffed arms of the chair and sat.
They sat.
Mr. Sloan jiggled his leg, eyed the bookcases, and sighed dramatically.
Mrs. Sloan, roused, looked over at him and then back down at her hands. She seemed ashamed that they had to be there, whereas he looked annoyed. Dante studied them. A relationship is a sinuous, gauzy thing stretched between two people but not of either one.
Dante wove his fingers into a double fist at his chest and waited. He waited until the silence oppressed, until it hung from the ceiling and slouched in the corners, until it blanketed the room and no one wanted to peep out from under the covers lest the unspoken thing devour them.
Dante asked, “And who is the woman who left her underwear in your suitcase?”
Sloan leapt up. His fist twisted at his side as he turned to his wife. “You told him that!”
Mrs. Sloan shrank in her chair and clutched the arms as if acceleration drove her back.
Horrors, that bastard had hit her.
Dante rose to his feet. “Stop! Stop this.”
Sloan’s voice dropped and he snarled at his wife, “Who else have you told?”
She didn’t say anything, but she searched from Dante to Sloan as if one of them would save her from the other.
Sloan took a step toward his wife.
Dante jumped between them and glared up at Sloan. Dante was accustomed to being among the tallest men in the room, but Sloan was half a head taller.
Dante stepped toward Sloan, chest to chest. “Sit down. Now.”
Sloan blinked and stepped back and Dante advanced, herding him toward the chair.
Sloan stepped back again, the chair caught his leg, and he sat. He looked up at young and powerful and towering Dante. Men like this thought they could stick their dick in any hole they wanted and damn the consequences. Arrogance and selfishness like that begat pedophiles. A violent urge knotted Dante’s throat. “What about your wife, and your children, and what about the other woman?”
Sloan shook his head and rolled his eyes, somewhere between dismissive and possessed.
Dante leaned down and braced himself on the arms of Sloan’s chair, their faces inches apart. Onion-skinned wrinkles around Sloan’s eyes stretched upward, and he jammed his white-haired head against the chair’s upholstery.
Mrs. Sloan’s fingers plucked Dante’s black shirt sleeve. “He said he would stop.”
Dante asked quietly, “Have you stopped?”
“Yes!” Sloan’s eyes widened more, and the small folds in his eyes’ skin turned to rigid lines. He dropped his head away and to the side, nearly leaning over the chair arm.
Rage clawed Dante, raking his heart and his temples, worse than the time a possessed priest had tried to escape, spitting blood, and Dante had hauled back the old man and flung him into the chair to continue the exorcism.
Mrs. Sloan grasped his biceps and tugged. “That’s enough.”
This was not an exorcism. Wrath is a sin. Violence is a sin. Sloan was just a selfish old goat. Dante should calm himself.
He pushed off the arms of Sloan’s chair. “You will cease the affair. Until you have satisfied me that you have stopped, you will not receive communion.”
Sloan, belligerent, chucked up his chin. “We’ll join a different church.”
Dante sat in his chair and stretched his legs out. “This is a small city, Mr. Sloan. If you were excommunicated, no church would admit you.” He wove his fingers together. “Community ties are important to American universities.”
Mrs. Sloan looked stricken. “You wouldn’t excommunicate him.”
Sloan rallied. “I give this parish a hell of a lot of money.”
“I don’t care,” Dante said.
The Sloans, Mr. Sloan sitting and his wife standing beside his chair, looked at each other, their first sign of communication and common purpose.
No doubt a parish priest would have salved their wounds and encouraged them to rebuild, if only Sloan had shown the slightest bit of willingness to do that. Dante drew a deep breath and waved a hand to Mrs. Sloan’s chair, indicating she should sit. “Now,” he said, “Mr. Sloan, when did you begin this adultery?”
Unrepentant anger squinted Sloan’s blue eyes. “Six months ago.”
Mrs. Sloan said, “I don’t want to know this.”
“Then, Mrs. Sloan, would you wait outside?” Dante asked. He gestured toward the door and didn’t dodge Sloan’s stare. Lines of anger coalesced in the beige skin around Sloan’s eyes.
Mrs. Sloan hesitated, but she left. The door clanked softly behind her.
The lines on Sloan’s face strained upward, and smugness replaced his anger. “Father, I wish to confess my sins.”
Dante had no doubt about Sloan’s intention. “Confession is to beg God’s forgiveness. You cannot use a sacrament for selfish ends.”
Sloan didn’t blink. “I want to be reconciled.”
Dante leaned his elbows on the chair arms and pressed his fingertips together. “Can you say the prayer before confession with an open heart?”
Sloan grunted, “Okay.”
Arrogance again. Arrogance that he could fool a psychiatrist, who diagnosed lies and illness and the haunted and the evil and the damned and the possessed. If Sloan genuinely wanted to confess, and Dante wished he did and knew he didn’t, Dante must grant him absolution and the conversation would be under the seal of confession. The sin would pass out of Sloan’s soul like rotten chicken out of his gut.
But Sloan had to make a genuine confession. Loopholes didn’t apply.
Dante smiled to unnerve Sloan. “Pray for your soul’s salvation, and I will don the stole.”
Sloan crossed himself perfunctorily and clasped his hands. He sped through, “Come Holy Spirit into my soul. Enlighten my mind that I may know the sins I ought to confess, and grant me your grace to confess them fully, humbly, and with a contrite heart.”
“Stop,” Dante said.
Sloan’s mouth snapped shut. “What the hell?”
“Don’t cu
rse during confession. Has the Holy Spirit enlightened your mind?”
Sloan flicked his hands apart, nearly an obscene gesture. “I know what to confess.”
Dante watched Sloan’s blank, blue eyes. “Are you contrite?”
Sloan’s stare flinched away, but he caught himself and looked right back. “Yes.”
Dante’s cynicism won out. He leaned back in his chair. “This is not a true confession. This conversation is not covered by the seal of confession.”
“A priest can’t refuse to hear a confession!” Sloan’s anger dragged his rangy body up to his feet, and he paced.
“Sit down, Mr. Sloan.”
“It’s Doctor Sloan. Doctor.”
Dante held his steepled fingers motionless though the rigidity strained his arms. “Sit.”
Sloan paced in front of the two chairs. “You’re supposed to help us. You’re twisting everything I say. You’re making it worse.”
Stillness was key to retaining control. Dante’s fingertips mashed flat against each other. His fingerpads and nailbeds reddened. Strain drained into his wrists. “You cannot repair injury with platitudes.”
Sloan slashed the air with one hand. “You don’t know anything about being married.”
This objection, priests prepare for in the seminary. “One need not have cancer to be a good oncologist. You treat patients with neurodegenerative diseases. Do you have Alzheimer’s?”
“Of course not.”
“Marriage is a sacrament. As a priest, God and the sacraments are my domain.” Dante added his own twist. “And I am a psychiatrist. I am not psychotic, but I treat the mentally ill.”
Sloan’s head bobbled, begrudging the analogy.
Dante continued, “And I have never been possessed, but I perform exorcisms.”
Sloan stopped pacing. One sandy eyebrow dipped, incredulous. “You believe in possession and demons and all that superstitious crap?”