Magdalene

by Moriah Jovan

  Bastard.

  “Um, okay. Her only real job is to support the bishop, keep the home fires burning and raise the kids while he’s spending his evenings and weekends tending to the ward. How active a woman is in the ward itself is probably most dependent on her personality and how involved she’s willing to be. Sometimes, the ward, especially the women, will presume upon her as a gateway to the bishop.”

  “How did his wife do it?”

  “From what I’ve been told, it was about all she could do to keep the house and make dinner until they could afford a housekeeper, and then she spent all her time with the kids. She didn’t have much energy, and she just kept sliding downhill. Once she was in a wheelchair, that was about it. Mitch took over from there. Tried to, anyway.”

  “Why did they ask him to do almost a full-time job for free when his wife was dying, he had children to raise, and a stressful job?”

  He said nothing for a moment, then, “The Church can be rather self-serving at times, but Mitch doesn’t see himself as serving the Church. He’s serving his ward members, thereby serving God—and that’s all he cares about. Sebastian says that’s all he’s ever cared about.”

  Yesterday’s skating adventure—for a congregation a hundred miles away from his and not even of the same faith—flashed through my mind. Why did I find that sexy?

  “I don’t understand you people,” I said flatly.

  “Oh, there’s a surprise.” Again he paused, yet sounded sincere when he added, “Good luck, Cassie.”

  I needed it.

  “And wear a dress. You’ll fit in better.”

  I blinked at the phone after he had tossed that last one out at me and hung up. Okay, Morgan. Thanks bunches.

  Thus I found myself in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in front of a rather low-slung church building with no decoration but a nondescript steeple (no cross). I was more nervous than I had been with my first client. Then, every second before his arrival had been spent repeating the mantra, “It’s not too late to back out, it’s not too late to back out.” Now I was doing the same before going into a church, for God’s sake.

  Come to think of it, I should’ve done that on my wedding day when, ten minutes before I was to walk down the aisle, my father hinted that I should not, in fact, walk down the aisle.

  I shrugged and figured that between getting married, turning tricks, and going to a three-hour service in an oddball church, this was probably the least traumatic of the three and not quite as long-lasting, though church was no place for a whore.

  But I felt compelled. I wanted to understand Mitch Hollander the way his family understood him because they shared this culture with him. I certainly didn’t want to remain on the outskirts of Hollander Steelworks like the rest of the financial industry, scratching its collective head over what the hell motivated the CEO.

  I wanted to know why he was so stalwart where most of his friends—and his son—were not.

  The papers I held in my hand fluttered in the breeze, and I looked down at three pages of instructions, addresses, phone numbers, maps, glossary, and protocol Morgan had sent me.

  Sacrament meeting was first.

  I sat in an overflow area behind the pews, where chairs had been set up. I could sit back here and observe without being observed in return. From my place, while the prelude music softly streamed out from the organ, I could see Mitch sitting in a theater-type chair behind and to the left of the pulpit, in front of the pews where a choir would sit. He looked over his congregation as it trickled, then streamed in; the men who sat on either side of him occasionally whispered something to him and he would nod or shake his head or whisper something back. The sanctuary itself—chapel, Ashworth called it—was remarkably plain, with no crosses or crucifixes. The only decoration I could see was a small box of tissues on the pulpit.

  Then the prelude music stopped and Mitch arose to speak. His short wavy hair glinted dark gold in the light and against the light olive of his impeccably tailored suit. He rested his hand on a stack of Bibles on the pulpit, just to his right.

  I caressed my own soft palms, remembering how his rough, heavily calloused hands felt in mine when we danced together, how they felt against my waist and surrounding my hips, and how they looked, the ridges of his fingertips tattooed with faint spots of permanent grime, though his nails were as manicured as mine.

  I could feel my arousal start. This was completely out of my realm, a man who was at once a savvy businessman linked to some of the most influential power players in the country, an exquisite salsa club dancer, and a man of God whose sole experience with women had been his wife of twenty-three years. He’d been celibate for eighteen years and spent thirty hours a week tending to the needs of four hundred people. For free. Because he thought he was serving God and that was what he wanted to do.

  Amazing.

  Once again, he looked out over the congregation and bent his head to read, then stopped, looked up and straight at me. My heart thundered and I couldn’t catch my breath. I gave him a smile that felt weak, timid. Beseeching. Asking his forgiveness for intruding upon him. I hated it, but couldn’t help it.

  His eyelids lowered and his mouth quirked. My heart settled down, and I could breathe again.

  To my surprise, Mitch didn’t give a sermon. He read announcements, conducted administrative business for the ward and...that was about it. Other people directed its course. A hymn and a prayer. Another hymn. Then came the service of communion—sacrament—by a gaggle of awkward prepubescent boys in white button-down shirts (most of which desperately needed to see the business side of an iron) who scattered throughout the congregation with little trays of bread and water.

  After that finished, Mitch arose to announce the names of three people who would be speaking—“giving a talk”—for a few minutes each, one of whom had made it clear that he had been “assigned the topic of tithing.” No hellfire and brimstone. No professionally written and delivered sermon by a trained pastor (and it showed). No paid musicians (that showed, too). A hymn and a prayer.

  The lack of professionals was yet another anomaly in Christendom, that was for sure, but since I couldn’t see Mitch very well from where I sat, I spent most of my time simply trying to hear what was said. The sheer number of screaming, squalling, and crying babies and toddlers was beyond irritating. For all their protestations of chastity before marriage, these people sure as hell made up for it after.

  I vaguely wondered how they handled differing sexual needs if they didn’t have sex before marriage. But of course, needs change over time and with age, and people can deceive with body parts other than their vocal cords—and oh, how well do I know that.

  I started when a little girl appeared at my side, apparently having decided to make me her pet project. Pale, blonde, blue-eyed, her mass of curls were caught up in and fastened by an elaborate, elegant bow that Martha Stewart’s staff couldn’t have matched. I pegged her around five-ish and she had abandoned her mother (where was the father?) who struggled with an infant, an intractable seven-year-old (or thereabouts) boy, and a male toddler type.

  “Hi,” she said.

  I really don’t like children, particularly small ones. “Hi.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Cassie. What’s yours?”

  “Brittany. You smell pretty.”

  I had to chuckle at that. “Thank you.”

  She plunked herself in the seat beside me and leaned against me as if I had invited her to do so. I put my arm around her because I could tell it would go numb if she continued to lean against that particular pressure point. She picked at my sleeve. “What’s that?”

  “A cufflink.” I collect cufflinks; it’s my favorite kind of jewelry and I make sure to have my clothes tailored to showcase them.

  “What’s it do?”

  I popped it out and handed it to her, then demonstrated how my cuff fell open. “It’s kind of like a removable button. See, you have buttons here, but I don’t. I just flip this thi
ng,” and I did. “See how your buttons stay on your clothes?”

  “So you don’t have two of them, like me?”

  “Nope. One does the trick just fine, but see, my blouse front works the same way.” She was fascinated, but I wasn’t about to pop one of those out. “These are called shirt studs.”

  She played with the cufflink, turning it over and over, holding it up to the light and seeing the glints off the facets. “This is really pretty.”

  “You can have it if you want.”

  She looked up at me and grinned. “Really?”

  “Really. But give it to your mother to keep it safe for you.” I made a mental note to talk to her mother and make sure she knew it wasn’t a toy. I popped the other out and gave that to her, too, then rolled my sleeves up to my elbows. I’d been a little too overdressed, anyway, what with most of the mothers all in denim jumpers and the like; and most of the older women in serviceable, though attractive, dresses.

  The girl stayed curled up against me for the rest of the service. If her mother noticed, I didn’t know about it, but then, the poor woman was so harried I couldn’t hold it against her. This was church; the mother had a rightful expectation of a community that would take care of her child if she couldn’t.

  The village.

  And the village was a mix of rich and poor—mostly poor—with not much in between. That surprised me, but it shouldn’t have. Lehigh Valley was perpetually depressed. Since the Mormon church was huge, there would most likely be a reflective percentage of poor mixed in a congregation like this.

  It was also as overwhelmingly white as Lehigh Valley. I counted two black families. The one with a father was just as rowdy as the rest of the families with many young children.

  The one without a father sat in the fourth row, middle section, from right to left arranged according to height. The mother wore a sapphire silk dress, the two small girls wore dresses that matched hers exactly, and the three boys of widely varying ages wore identical black suits. Then I glanced back at the nattily dressed black man up on the dais to Mitch’s right (one of Mitch’s counselors?). He had on a sapphire silk tie.

  Sacrament meeting finally ended. I dislodged Brittany, stood, and went to her mother while that entire congregation surged toward the doors. “Here,” I said. “Let me have the kid.” I picked up that slimy disgusting mess of a crying infant and threw it (him? her?) over my shoulder to pat its back, unsure if my jacket would withstand the mess. I looked at the girl and pointed to an empty seat. “Brittany. Sit. Stay sat. Don’t talk.” She obeyed, wide-eyed.

  Why had my daughters never done that?

  “Oh, thank you,” breathed the mother as she pinned the oldest boy to his chair with one strategically arranged leg and wiped the mouth of the toddler. “My husband is on assignment in another ward.” It took a minute to register, but then I remembered the spreading around of labor that Mitch and Ashworth had told me about. Seemed counterproductive to me to take the husband and leave the wife to tend the children he’d made on her, but then I wasn’t here to rearrange this organization’s flowchart. I was pretty sure that Sebastian would have done it by now had he had his ’druthers.

  “No problem.” She moved the leg with which she’d pinned the boy and allowed him to dash off somewhere (he seemed to know where he was supposed to go) and then she regained some semblance of control.

  “Can I talk now, Sister Cassie?”

  “May I,” I corrected automatically as I gave Brittany a stern look. “Yes. You may.”

  Brittany turned to her mother, holding out the cufflinks. “Look what Sister Cassie gave me.”

  The mother’s eyes widened and she looked up at me. “She can’t have those.”

  I waved it off. “Got a ton of ’em. Don’t need ’em.”

  “I used to work in a jewelry store. I know what those are worth.”

  I shrugged and shoved her now-calm baby back at her. “Put it in a safe deposit box,” I said abruptly and turned to walk off—

  —straight into Mitch’s chest.

  His big hands wrapped around my arms to steady me. “What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?” I stiffened, but he pulled me into a bear hug. “I can’t spend time with you today,” he breathed in my ear and my response was immediate. Effortless. “If you’d told me you’d like to come, I’d have made arrangements.”

  “I got the rundown from Ashworth,” I murmured. “I think I’ll be okay.”

  “Co-conspirators, eh? Well, I’m glad you’re here, but I have to go. Sunday school’s next. Do you want to go to the one the old-timers go to or the one the newbies go to?”

  Morgan had told me about this, too, so I was prepared. “Newbies.”

  “Remind me to thank him.” He offered his arm and escorted me out the door. I felt the wool-silk blend under my hand and I edged a little closer to him, breathing in his elegant cologne and wanting so much to press my mouth to the soft spot just under his ear, in the hollow behind his strong jaw... “How do you want to play this, Cassandra?”

  His voice was rich and full of things I didn’t understand—a first for me. “I don’t know enough about your culture to know. You’ll have to tell me what to do.”

  “I’m asking you if you want to be here as my woman or my business associate.”

  He hadn’t just said that, had he? “Your woman?” I pulled away and cocked an eyebrow at him, feeling as if I had betrayed a country full of feminists for not protesting more strongly.

  “Would you prefer ‘girlfriend’ or ‘lady friend’? ’Cause as far as I know, there’s no other barely acceptable term. I’m way too old for girlfriends and way too young for lady friends.”

  Girlfriend. God, that was pathetic; next, he’d feel obligated to say something about “going steady.” Lady friend. Indeed, that was worse. Florida retirement community, here we come. I sighed. “What do you want? What’s most expedient for you?”

  He laughed, his cheeks immediately carved in laugh lines, his smile quick and comforting. “What I want and what’s expedient are mutually exclusive.” He leaned into me and his mouth brushed my ear. “Figure out what you want to do and let me know.”

  Then he was gone. I turned to call him back, but got hung up watching that talented ass of his, the hips that could flash through the most complicated turns. Was it possible I was the only woman here who knew what a fabulous dancer he was? I blinked when I saw his confident stride halt mid-step when Brittany’s mother caught him with a desperate, “Bishop Hollander!” He looked down at her, his back now a tiny bit hunched in such a way as to make him seem humble and caring, unthreatening.

  This was so different from the way he’d been with Father Farraday, his eye glinting with the promise of challenge, and his body deceptively relaxed, ready to strike at the man’s next misstep.

  The way he could tear up a dance floor all night long, his eyes sparkling, his laugh easy, quick, and rich.

  The way he could seduce me with a whisper, create in me an intensity of desire I’d never known before, without a touch other than a kiss on my hand.

  I couldn’t decide which incarnation of the man fascinated me most.

  She hadn’t seen me all the way down the hall from the foyer, but I could see them both in profile. I could hear nothing of what she said, but then I caught my breath when she opened her hand and he looked down. I could feel her distress from here and it occurred to me that perhaps I had done the wrong thing. It had seemed so harmless at the time, to give a child a shiny trinket, but...I had hurt the child’s mother. I saw that now, and I knew no way of taking that back without making things worse.

  There, the classroom. I started to go through the door when, in my periphery, I saw Mitch lean toward her to speak to her while he closed her hand back on the diamonds. He gave her a quick hug and directed her away from me to send her on her way down an opposite hall. He watched her until she turned the corner, then looked at me with an unsmiling expression I couldn’t decipher. I couldn’t help
but bite my lip and turn away then, unwilling or unable to face whatever censure I had earned.

  Thus, the first thing out of my mouth when someone introduced herself and asked the inevitable question was, “Cassie St. James. I do business with your bishop and I was in town with nothing to do this morning, so...”

  Naturally, these people would take it on its face, trusting souls that they were, and the woman, whose name I didn’t bother to remember because I wouldn’t be back, shepherded me to Sunday school (“Gospel Essentials,” Ashworth had said).

  “I don’t usually go to this class,” she confided, “but sometimes it’s good to get back to basics. Besides, Brother Sitkaris is subbing today. I just adore him.”

  I couldn’t have chosen better Sunday-morning entertainment.

  We sat toward the back. A man arose to apologize for the regular teacher’s absence, to announce Greg Sitkaris as the substitute teacher, and to ask a woman to give the opening prayer, which she did.

  I knew the minute Sitkaris spotted me, and his eyebrow rose.

  He wanted me.

  Whether for me or because he saw me as belonging to Mitch, I didn’t know, but it didn’t matter. He was perfectly confident that he could have me.

  “Well, Ms. St. James,” he drawled. “So nice to see you again. What brings you to our humble services this morning?”

  “Oh,” said one woman, twisting in her seat to look back at me. “You are Cassie St. James. The one separating the old Jep Industries out from the Steelworks? I thought I recognized you.”

  I never looked away from Sitkaris. “Yes.”

  “I was chosen to be part of your project team. We’re very excited.”

  But Sitkaris did look away from me to bestow a lovely smile on the woman. It wasn’t a concession; it was a gambit to bolster his charming reputation. “It is an exciting time for the Steelworks, isn’t it? The bishop doesn’t seem to make a wrong move.”

  I heard it, but I didn’t think anyone else had, that undernote of bitterness, the anger and hatred.