TOURIST ATTRACTIONS

by Molly J. Ringle

Our faces had drawn closer over the last few sentences, and we began kissing. This occupied us for about 30 seconds, then Laurence pulled his face away abruptly.

  "I cannot believe you thought I was gay," he protested.

  "I'm sorry, darling. Eileen and I were just jealous. Is all forgiven?"

  "Not quite. I'm going to take a few days to get over this."

  "In the meantime, tell me how long you've been thinking about me. This wasn't an 'I've loved you since seventh grade' kind of thing, was it?"

  "Hardly. I would have killed you on the flight over if I hadn't been so ill."

  I stroked the back of his neck affectionately. "And I would have killed you several times since if it hadn't been illegal."

  "Thank you. I'm touched." He adjusted my weight on his legs, then resumed, "Actually, it started when I looked out that window and saw you tonguing Gil. My first thought, which completely surprised me, was, Hmm, maybe she could be lured away from Tony after all. Maybe I do have a chance. Since then it was a gradual thing."

  "You weren't put off by my sneaking around and being totally unethical?"

  "You were tactful about it," he said. "Anyway, your evilness became kind of endearing." He kissed me again, dipping me halfway down to the couch cushions.

  I tugged him down until my back was against the cushions, and with nudges of my legs rearranged him so that he was nearly lying on top of me. He complied readily, but stopped when I tried to lead his hand under my T-shirt.

  "Easy, tiger," he said. He pacified me by spreading his palm against my bare waist, but didn't let it go higher. "I can't do this with your boy under the same roof."

  "But he wasn't supposed to be here," I complained.

  "I know, and out of sheer spite I put him in a separate room from you, but that's as deceitful as I can stand to be today." He paused, and conceded, "That, and making out with his girlfriend on my sofa."

  "All right," I grumbled. "So then, are you saying I'm not spending tonight in your bed?"

  "You'd better not. It would look very bad if anyone noticed."

  "Okay." I reluctantly sat up, and straightened my spine. "So what's the plan? Do I tell Tony while he's here? And what about Eileen?"

  He groaned at the difficulties, and pushed his hands through his hair. "Let's not tell," he finally said. "Let's wait till we get home."

  "Even keep it secret from Eileen? And Sharon?"

  "Hell, if we tell Eileen, we might as well tell the Wild Rose Gazette. Sharon-- well, only if you feel you must. She probably wouldn't tell."

  "And anyway, she's safely out of the country," I pointed out.

  "Yes. But-- this all just started today. It seems it would be...rushing into things."

  I nodded. To be truthful, doubts had been lurking in my mind about whether Laurence and I would really make a compatible pair. For instance, would we stop arguing? Or rather, since we probably would never stop arguing, would the arguing be worth the companionship? It was easy to say yes when enfolded close to him, aglow with the novelty of the sensation, but would I regret it two months down the line? Worse yet, would he?

  Tucking our relationship into the shadows for the weeklong duration of Tony's stay seemed only wise. And since I didn't want to break up with Tony over the phone from the U.K., waiting until our return to Oregon to tell him the bad news was unavoidable. It was only one more month now. I had lived with treachery since October; surely another month wouldn't hurt.

  "It'll be easy enough to keep it from Eileen," I said, "since she doesn't live here anymore."

  "I think we've both become experts at hiding things," he agreed.

  I cast him a rueful gaze. "This probably means that you won't..." I ran my hands slowly up his chest. "...until we've come clean, huh."

  "Correct, little minx. I do have some standards to maintain. However, expect to be tackled once in a while, just on principle." He leaned forward and nipped my lower lip with his teeth. "Just to remind you that I'm not gay."

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  February 19th

  How can I describe the two days between Tony's arrival and February 19th? At the time they were torturously long, but they were also empty. They were hours tiptoed through and killed, wasted in anticipation of the one important date in Eileen's life-- and, by extension, in the lives of the rest of us.

  I held no expectations that anything spiritual would occur that day, but I respected the delusion because it had led, via a twisted path, to Laurence and me becoming so close. If it hadn't been for the date February 19 blazing in Canongate Cemetery, Eileen would not have fled up to Laurence's room in a panic; and if she hadn't slept up there so often and so oppressively, she might never have shamed herself into leaving the hostel for New-Age Nina's flat. And if she hadn't gone away and left Laurence and me alone together, we might never have spoken the necessary words or shared the necessary hours.

  As I watched Tony and Eileen talking with fervor over their coffee during those two days, it occurred to me that sometimes the absence of other people mattered more than their presence. In the constant presence of these two, my life would not have changed much over the past season. But in their absence-- good heavens, look at the mess I created.

  Both nights I took the risk of sneaking upstairs to spend half an hour with Laurence. We sat latched together on his sofa, alternately kissing and analyzing how we had gotten ourselves into this. On each occasion we agreed several times that we shouldn't meet this way. In anyone else's company, we behaved very well-- though Laurence did surprise me, the night of the 18th, by giving my knee a caress under a pub table, while retrieving a sliding napkin from his lap.

  At about that moment, Eileen was telling us that she wanted to spend most of the next day in a Catholic church. She was softened enough toward Tony, and scared enough about the 19th, to come to this somewhat arbitrary decision. Perhaps the ancient concept of the church as sanctuary appealed to her, as did the soothing company of a virginal altar boy.

  Tony, of course, volunteered instantly to sit with her. They even got up the idea of fasting until it was time for Communion at the morning Mass. Laurence and I agreed to go along, but only under the condition that we would get to eat whenever we wanted.

  February 19th dawned yellow and gray-- the usual clouds and broken sunlight. New-Age Nina, who had stayed within feet of Eileen since the stroke of midnight, delivered her personally to the hostel at 6:00 a.m. and made the hand-off to us. The four of us shuffled sleepily in the dim dawn to St. Mary's, and took seats in the pews.

  For an hour we sat and looked around at the high-arched ceiling, the over-large floor of pews, and the grand candle-lit altar. A few other worshippers began filtering in, and the priests and altar servers appeared by the sacristy, straightening their white robes and placing bookmarks in the oversized Bible.

  "Too bad we didn't invite Cathy," I murmured, eliciting a snicker from Laurence.

  Eileen folded and refolded the collection envelope that someone had left in the pew. She had been doing this the entire hour and it was falling apart like moth-eaten cotton in her hands now. "What do I do when it's Communion time and I'm in front of the priest?" she asked Tony. "Open my mouth?"

  "You can, but that's kind of old-fashioned," he said. "Most people cup their hands up, like this. However, I have to say as a good Papist boy, you're not supposed to take the Eucharist unless you're a confirmed Catholic."

  She perked up and nodded. "The wafer burned Mina's forehead, in Dracula."

  "That was because she was turning into a vampire," I said. "Not because she wasn't Catholic."

  "Well, if you're afraid of it," Tony said, "you can just bow your head and cross your arms over your chest, and the priest can give you a blessing instead. But if it were up to me, anyone could take Communion who wanted to. I really don't think there's any harm."

  "Then maybe I'll just take it," she murmured.

  But half an hour later, when Mass had gotten underway and people were lining up to take the wafer and
wine, I saw her hesitate in front of me, and then bow her head and receive the blessing. The priest laid his hand on her head, intoning quietly, and when Eileen turned away to return to the pew, I saw tears in her eyes. Whether it was from relief or from unhappiness, I didn't know.

  I mechanically offered up my cupped hands, said "Amen," and ate the wafer, conditioned by years of churchgoing. Only as I walked back to the pew did I think of how many un-confessed sins had piled up against me by now, and how little I deserved to participate in this most sacred part of the religion's ceremony.

  I sat down beside Laurence (who hadn't gone up for blessing nor wafer), then slid forward onto my knees on the padded bench, next to Tony and Eileen, who both had their hands folded on the back of the next pew, eyes closed.

  I thought of how scared Eileen must be, and offered up my own untraditional prayer in my head: She means well, and she's actually done less bad stuff than I have, so please don't punish her, even if she has said nasty things about you. With friends like Laurence and me, she doesn't need a vengeful God in her life, too. Do something nice for her-- and I swear, we'll try harder. I'll come clean one of these days. I promise. Thanks.

  Communion was ending. The small congregation was back in the pews, kneeling or sitting, as they preferred. The altar servers whisked away the bowls of wafers and goblets of wine. These weekday morning Masses were never as long as the Sunday ones, unless it was a special occasion like Ash Wednesday. After a brief homily and closing blessings, it was over, and people began filing out. We stayed where we were, sitting in the middle of the church.

  "Oh, hey," Eileen said, rousing herself weakly from a deep preoccupation. "Happy birthday, Laurence."

  "Yeah, happy birthday," Tony chimed in.

  I kicked Laurence's shoe. "You're ancient," I said.

  "Yeah, I'm a whole five months older than you," he retorted. Then he picked up his overcoat from the back of the pew and said, "Come buy me a croissant, smart-ass."

  "Ooh, a croissant for Mister Nutrition. Alert the media." I stood up and put my coat on. "We'll be back in a few," I said to Tony and Eileen. "Want anything?"

  "Get me some of those chocolate digestive thingies," Tony said.

  "Ginger biscuits," Eileen requested softly.

  "Okay." I turned and followed Laurence out.

  "It's my birthday," he was protesting. "I can eat a croissant once a year if I want to. Anyway, if they're made fresh, they're still better for you than a donut."

  "Explain that one, science guy."

  We kept this up until we got outside the church, then we stopped bantering and smiled at one another. "Hi," I said.

  "Hi." He slid an arm around my shoulders.

  "Happy birthday."

  "Thank you." We paused at a street corner, and he kissed me.

  "How does 23 feel?" I asked.

  "I'm not sure yet. I suppose it could be fun-- it's a prime number, you know."

  "You have the strangest criteria."

  "I must. I don't know how else I would have ended up with you."

  We went into the nearest shopping center and found a cafe. Laurence ordered tea and chocolate-filled croissants for us both, and I pushed a five-pound note across the counter before he could pay. "Your birthday, stupid," I told him.

  I also bought the packages of biscuits Tony and Eileen had requested, then sat down with Laurence to have breakfast.

  On our way back to the church, I beckoned him into a corner beneath an arched doorway, and removed a small package wrapped in tissue paper from my inner coat pocket. "Thought I'd give you this now."

  He unpeeled the tissue paper and held up the small, shiny knife. "Ooh, are those my initials?"

  "Yep. Thought you deserved your own skean-dhu."

  "And here I had just gotten Gil's nice and sharp." He smiled. "He can have it back. This one's much nicer. Thank you."

  While he leaned down and kissed me, the sun broke through the clouds. It brought rose-pink light to my closed eyelids, and set the breeze stirring. Spring seemed to have arrived for a moment.

  We stepped out into the brief flood of sunshine, and Laurence said, "Could that be warmth, coming from the sky?"

  "I'd forgotten what that was like," I said.

  We turned toward the church, and the clouds had taken over again by the time we reached the steps. But when we got inside, we found Tony and Eileen glowing like a pair of meteors and whispering in astonishment.

  They were seated in the pew, their knees turned toward one another. Eileen had tears shining on her face, but was gasping and smiling as if in joy. Tony was holding her hands and examining her palms, murmuring in confusion. He appeared to be trembling.

  "What's wrong with you guys?" I asked, as Laurence and I snaked down the pew toward them.

  Tony turned his face to me, still holding Eileen's hands in his lap. His eyes were bright, his lips parted; his skin radiated the warmth that had always made his altar-boy robes look so natural on him. "I think I've been called," he said.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Called

  Within half an hour Eileen was laughing ecstatically. She no longer needed to be inside the church; she no longer feared anything. She wanted to be outside where she could skip and dance and wolf down the gingersnaps I had bought her.

  "Wow, I'm starving! I hadn't realized how worried I'd been. Mmmph, these are so goooood!" she said, her mouth stuffed with cookie.

  Tony, too, was walking as if in a rapture, turning in circles and looking at everything with pure happiness. "I know I'll be unhappy again in the future," he was saying. "I know this won't be an easy path. But right now-- it's just so obvious what I'm meant to do; I've never been so sure of anything-- I wish you could feel it, it's amazing! Thanks, God." He laughed, and threw both hands in the sky. "Thanks, God!" he repeated in a shout.

  With one hand Laurence caught Tony's arm, and with the other hand steered Eileen out of the path of a taxicab. Neither of them seemed to notice. "Okay," said Laurence. "We're going to have to go over all this again. Just for me. I'm slow today."

  We sat down on a park bench in St. Andrew's Square and they told it to us again, a jumbled, tumbling story, each of them taking turns finishing the other's sentence. What had happened was something like this:

  Shortly after Laurence and I had left to get breakfast, Eileen had succumbed to her stress and unhappiness, and had begun weeping in the church, hands pressed to her face. The only people left were Tony, at her side, and a dozing elderly man two dozen pews away. Congregation and clergy had all departed. Tony, being Tony, had moved closer to her and begun murmuring soothing things.

  She wept that she didn't want to die, that she had done bad things in her life that she still wanted to apologize for, that she had loved people and mistreated them, that she wanted to find her father and make peace with him, that she had never wanted the gift of seeing ghosts and had never liked it in all these years.

  She had only been putting on a brave face, all this time, she told Tony; she had truthfully been terrified and had serious doubts about her own sanity. It had kept her awake so many nights and given her so many bad dreams, she couldn't even begin to estimate how many total years of sleep she had lost over it by now.

  And toward the idea of God and all his followers-- the Catholic God, the general Judeo-Christian God, God as mentioned anywhere in the Bible-- she felt she had been blasphemously unfair. She had seen this today as she sat in the church, where no one was judging her and everyone was forgiving her; despite all the trouble she had caused her friends, they had come to be with her. Tony had come thousands of miles.

  She felt lost and worthless, she had said. She didn't know how her life had ended up in such disarray.

  Tony had told her all the reassuring things one would expect: he valued her as a friend, and he knew that Laurence and Sharon and I did too, and everyone went through rough times, and what kind of friends would we be if we didn't help her through them? She had calmed down somewhat at this, re
ducing her sobs to sniffles.

  As for having been unfair to God, Tony had said, most everyone agreed that if God was anything, he was forgiving. And whether or not you decide to believe in him exactly as the Bible says, or as the Catholics say, or in any other way, Tony had said, it never hurts to pray. You don't even have to consider it talking to God. It's just thinking about your life, and reminding yourself that you're never alone.

  And though neither of them actually went so far as to say, So let's pray, then, they had mutually fallen silent, seated with their hands in their laps, and stayed that way for an indefinitely long time. (My calculations indicated that it must have been about fifteen minutes, based on how long Laurence and I were away.)