by Andrews
“Would you come in and have dinner? These are just…people I barely know, actually.”
“I’ve got some things to do—”
“If I’d known, I would never have accepted this invitation, but then if I hadn’t, you wouldn’t have known where to find me, or maybe you would have followed me home, which would have been better…”
I made a note to do a better editing job before I spoke. “Maybe I’m not feeling as great as I thought. I’m babbling.”
“Would you like to have dinner with me tomorrow night?” The invitation sounded abrupt, as if she was giving in to me, or to herself, or to something that was annoying her.
“Yes. That’s what I’m saying. I’d love that.” What in hell am I doing? Dennis will have a field day with this.
“My house at seven?”
“Great. Perfect. Where do you—”
“I have a card.” She reached in her bag and took out a business card and on the back side wrote her home address and phone number.
The card smelled of perfume and the night air blew her fragrance toward me. Even the phone number felt incredibly intimate, and I stopped looking at the card in favor of her eyes. “You’d better get back to your friends.”
“I wish it were tomorrow night. Then this dinner would be over. I’m really not a very good dinner guest.”
“I’ll take my chances. I got Joyce to Google Roger Thurgood. She’s good at pretending to be someone else in order to get information out of people. Maybe she can help you find out where he got the article.”
“I’m glad it wasn’t you who sent it.” My tone was apologetic.
“Are you allergic to anything—nuts, alcohol?”
“No, I’m fine with those.” I felt disembodied, remote, absent, thinking of Roger Thurgood disliking me enough to want to do me in.
“See you tomorrow, Alex.” Her voice softened as I treasured the sound of my nickname. She pulled away from the curb and I waved good-bye before turning back to the restaurant. This feeling is too good to…be good, I thought.
* * *
“I was about to send out a search party. In fact, I did go to the door to see if you were okay,” Jude said as I rejoined them.
“A lot of people are checking on me lately.”
“Maybe you need it.” Lyra grinned, biting into something she’d ordered in my absence.
“Who was that woman?” Jude asked.
“A writer the seminary asked me to hook up with.”
“Nice hook.” Jude looked at me oddly.
I ignored her and focused on asking questions about Lyra’s trip, giving her too much attention in order to keep Jude from prying into my conversation with Vivienne.
Dinner went on far too long, and I was so fidgety I could barely stay in my seat as my mind floated down the freeway with Vivienne, wondering if she was going home and what home looked like. This isn’t normal. Well, it might be normal for some people but not for me. I was jolted out of my reverie by a hand on my knee.
“You aren’t eating much these days.” Lyra rubbed my thigh.
“Perhaps there’s something else you would enjoy.”
“Yeah,” Jude said, oblivious to what was going on under the tablecloth. “Order dessert.”
“I’ve got everything I need,” I said, and Lyra took that as a personal endorsement of her romantic technique and got a firmer grip on my leg.
“As much as I’d like to stay,” I looked at my watch for emphasis,
“I’ve got to get home. Early morning tomorrow.” Lyra was forced to let go of my thigh as I stood up. I gave her a brief and perfunctory hug, ditto for Jude, and escaped into the cool night air, pausing to stare at the spot where Vivienne’s car had been parked.
She actually followed me all this way to see if I was okay. A little thrill ran through me, like the reverberation of bells trailing over my skin.
Chapter Thirteen
Breaking bread with parishioners is part of what a priest does—dines with those whom he blesses and who in turn bless him. When invited to a parishioner’s home for dinner, I’d always been appropriately witty within limits and extremely courteous and caring. And for that alone I never enjoyed myself—too much image control. But several things I was not—nervous, ill at ease, or worried about what I wore.
So tonight, of all things, why am I nervous and digging through my closet for a chic, butter-soft charcoal leather jacket to wear over my black turtleneck and black slacks, and checking my makeup every fifteen minutes, for God’s sake?
Her house was in a posh part of town—a two-story flat with broad cement steps on which someone could sit and watch the passersby. The windows overlooking the wide front porch were lit up, and the light slanted down on a white slat swing hanging from chains anchored in the ceiling. It was the kind of place where a young boy might steal a kiss from his teenage date and an irritated father might peer through the curtains and then flash the porch light and finally chase the sexual interloper away. For a moment I expected an older man to glower at me through the gauze drapes.
The door swung open. “Were you eventually going to ring the bell or, like a moth, are you just attracted to the porch light?”
“Hello.” I pretended to be wiping my feet on the door mat, about to make a move for the doorbell. I followed her inside where the charm of early nineteen-hundreds architecture with its big parlor and winding staircase took me back to a quieter time. The house smelled like cinnamon apples and I hoped that was dessert. Vivienne Wilde looked a bit like a Christmas delight—reflected in an orange-red glow that followed her around as if her hair had painted everything it swung by.
“You look lovely,” I said.
“And you look stately chic, as usual.”
I treasured her compliment as I trailed her down the expansive corridor lined with gilt-edged frames of elderly people, who, judging by the style of their wardrobes, were now long dead.
She answered my unasked question. “This house has been in the family for nearly a hundred years.”
“We have old family haunts in common. I live in my maternal grandmother’s farmhouse not too far from the city.”
“A farmhouse.” She whirled to face me as joyful as a child. “I would love to see that.”
“Name the day. I’d love to show it to you.” I allowed my brain to register that making this woman smile made me light up. All right, perhaps more than light up. A massive tingling sensation shot through my body evidencing, even to me, that I was undeniably attracted to her.
I had not been uncontrollably attracted to anyone in a decade. I had averted, aborted, adroitly avoided attraction to anyone—but tonight my body told me that I had just lost the battle. This woman sent warmth cascading over me like sunlight.
The living room was a large, drafty parlor whose architectural saving grace was a gigantic fireplace with massive logs and a roaring blaze. I inquired as to who prepared the logs, certain it would take two grown men to drag them in. She laughed. “You don’t think I could?”
“If you could drag those logs in single-handedly, I wouldn’t be having dinner with you.”
“Do strong women scare you?” She laughed congenially.
“Clever women scare me and you are—”
“Smart, not clever.” She placed a hand firmly on my chest just below the shoulder, and my knees grew weak as she slipped her fingers up and around the nape of my neck and whipped the collar back to examine the label. “I love Armani. Here, let me have it.” She deftly removed my jacket, leaving me feeling vulnerable. My jacket is my one remotely cool item.
“You’re going to be hot in that turtleneck by the fire…but don’t take it off.”
“Naked clergy scare you?” I teased back.
“Now that you mention it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. Which is odd,” she refused to let it drop, “since I’ve seen most everything.”
I wondered if her remark was humor or truth. A short oriental man in a tight-fitting white jacket came int
o the room and without a word began preparing a buffet table—pulling it back from the wall, adding a cloth he’d carried neatly folded over his arm—and then disappeared momentarily into the hallway.
“I had the chef prepare something that would linger without poisoning us, and that way, we can sit, talk, eat, in whatever order pleases you.”
The oriental fellow returned pushing a tea cart with dome-covered dishes and transferred them onto the table he’d prepared, all faster than hotel room service.
“Anything else, Ms. Wilde?”
“No, thank you, Niji.” He gave her a nod just this side of a bow and left, closing the door behind him. “Family money. Lest you think I shagged my way to luxury,” she said, using the amusing British slang for fornication. “Let’s have a look, I’ll bet you’re hungry.” She lifted a sterling lid and peered at the roast beef beneath. I told her it all looked great, took a small square of dark bread, and used a fat-handled knife sporting a baroquely engraved W to spread the brie. “I think you’ll need something more substantial than that.” She offered up a star-shaped cracker spread with pâté and held it to my lips.
I don’t have a free hand. She can’t possibly mean for me to bite into it while she’s holding it.
“I’ll bet it’s been a long time since you’ve tried this.” Her tone seemed to mean something entirely apart from pâté.
I bit slowly into the offering and her fingers brushed my lips.
Her face revealed nothing as my body trembled, betraying my attempt to conceal that biting into anything she held between her fingers was unbearably erotic.
“Wonderful?” she asked, as if seeking praise for the repast rather than noticing my physical response to her touch. My eyes rose to meet hers, blue shimmering seas. “You have a beautiful mouth.” She spoke almost absently as she turned away from me.
Priests place wafers into the mouths of total strangers, offering the body of Christ. Was she offering her body? Does she offer herself to everyone?
I followed her lead by picking up a gilt-edged dinner plate as she glanced over her shoulder. “Do you have everything you need?”
“Most days. This might not be one of them.” My tone was teasing but my statement factual.
“Life is short. I believe in getting what you want,” she said, but “the look” had vanished, disintegrated into politeness. I took a deep breath and collected myself, focused on getting the roast beef and vegetables onto the china and not the floor, and then trailed her to the couch in front of the fireplace. Placing my plate on the long coffee table, I tried to relax and complimented her on the house, asking her about its history as nonchalantly as if I’d never seen her searing glance.
She responded to my questions in a friendly but detached fashion.
And as I stared into her magnificent face, I knew my side of this inane conversation was simply verbal camouflage for the simmering fire within me that, given air, could consume us both. I shuddered from the intensity of my feelings.
“You can’t be cold.”
I wanted to say I wasn’t cold at all, but had simply been on ice for some time waiting for the heat that would melt me, and now like a Southern summer it had arrived.
I summoned enough air to whisper, “No.”
Niji came back in short order and took the dishes away, removed the food with lightning speed, and poured us an after-dinner liqueur. I took that opportunity to get off the couch and away from her, staring out of the massive arched window overlooking the lantern-lit back lawn. The door clicked and then Vivienne approached.
She didn’t speak. We stood side by side staring into the semi-darkness. I felt oddly at peace and yet about to leap out of my own skin.
“Is there something going on between us?” I managed to say, unable to stand the physical suspense any longer, my body vibrating like the sustain of a violin note.
“Like what?” She didn’t look at me and her voice was seductively calm.
“We seem to be enemies, yet it doesn’t feel like that.”
“What does it feel like?” Still she didn’t look at me.
“It feels like…I need to go. I’ve really enjoyed being here.”
She turned her beautiful profile to look at me and her eyes once again held a languid longing. The air stopped stirring, clocks stopped ticking, I no longer breathed, and the world ceased spinning, all other moments in my life having served merely to reach this one. As if a spell had been cast over me, I pushed aside the mental images of my life, my father, my career and cared only about this woman and this instant in time.She put her lips to mine, sealing out duty and honor in favor of lust and the softest sensation, the most electrifying meeting of flesh I had ever known. Her lips were warm and throbbing, her small body up against me, passionate and provocative, and then she took over, pulling me closer, letting me know I had come to the altar but she would baptize me—wetness and warmth spreading throughout me, turning my soul inside out, to merge with hers.
“Take your clothes off.” She whispered the sterile command that jolted me back to my senses.
“And make love here in front of the fire?” I pulled back, stunned by how quickly she moved forward.
“We want each other. We’re two consenting adults. Why not?”
A million reasons embedded in my DNA. A million reasons emblazoned on my soul.
I put myself in check . “I’m sorry. I was completely out of line. I don’t know what came over me. Forgive me.”
“Forgive you?” She laughed softly. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned?”
“Could I have my jacket?”
She hesitated and then located it for me, holding it against her chest, forcing me to stay a moment longer. Panic overtook me. I was in danger of leaning forward again and kissing her madly. I shut my eyes to wipe away any image of her and held out my hand for the jacket.
She handed it to me without a word and I left, nearly running from the room.
Moments later, slumped over the wheel of my car, I rested my head on the steering wheel and practiced breathing rhythmically. I had ceased being an officiant at mass, surrendering the duty, honor, and privilege of a priest as self-inflicted punishment for my inability to control my thoughts about women. And now, to make matters worse, I was unable to control my actions.
But I could never remember being this attracted to anyone in my life. Had kissing Gladys Irons suddenly switched on my desire to kiss another woman? Or being kissed by Sylvia? Why did I go without kissing a woman for decades, then suddenly kiss every woman in sight?
I must be going mad. Maybe I need counseling…or confession…or a vacation. Something. I have to stay away from Vivienne. My God, what in hell will she write about Claridge now?
Chapter Fourteen
My Wednesday class was attentive, as they always were when the air was filled with a smattering of sex. Even the most tardy had been on time today since the lecture was billed as the sexual angst of the saints. I found myself preoccupied with sex these days and was desperately trying to channel it appropriately.
“St. Augustine was wild about his concubine.” I lost my thought for a moment when the word “wild” came out of my mouth and Vivienne’s golden locks flashed before my eyes. Two young men murmuring in the back row brought me into the present. “He had a son by his concubine and would have lived with her happily, but her societal status didn’t make that possible. In addition, his mother wanted him to settle down and marry someone respectable and cease living in sin. Bereft, he left his concubine forever but could not stop his sexual cravings and ended up having relations with other women as he waited for his young bride to come of age. His writings speak of his self-loathing and put forth the idea that sex is a horrible, disruptive, bestial thing.”
“So St. Augustine was a sex maniac?” a boy in the back asked, tongue in cheek, simultaneous with his hand shooting into the air to be recognized.
“St. Augustine was an ordinary man.” More laughter. “He was an intelligent, tortured,
sexual being whom we have dubbed ‘saint.’
Saints are people. You are the stuff of which saints are made.” Laughter ensued again but then quieted. I let the silence hang in the air. “In fact, I will take that a step further. If we are made by God, in the image of God, then we are pieces of God—all of us. A Yorkshire terrier is not as large and powerful as a bullmastiff, but he is still a dog.”
“Are you saying God is a dog?” A young girl’s voice leapt two octaves.
“No.” The same boy in the back laughed. “She’s saying bullmastiffs made Yorkshire terriers in their own image.” More laughter this time, to relieve tension, and I smiled at their joking.
“Perhaps I shouldn’t have ventured into canine salvation. What I do know is that saints and sinners are the same people. And perhaps, in our most basic essence, God and mankind are one and the same.”
A chapel bell sounded and chairs scraped the floor, books slid across desks, and students rumbled out of the classroom. All except for the young girl whose voice had soared above the room. She hung around waiting, apparently, for the other students to leave.
“Could I talk to you privately?” she asked, and the worried look on her face convinced me to invite her to my office as I struggled to remember her name.
“Angela, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
I remembered her now—the student who was pregnant and recently had her baby amid speculation about the father. Who he was and where he was. I unlocked my office and offered her a chair.
“You think differently than most of the other professors.”
“Don’t let that trouble you. I think differently than most people on the planet.”