Taken aback, I wondered if I’d heard right, then remembered I’d told Mrs. O’Cee that I was with my mom when I was really in the mountains with Gabriel.
“Okay,” I said cautiously.
She looked worried.
“I know she hasn’t been the best mother to you, but ‘Can a mother forget her nursing child? Can she feel no love for the child she has borne?’ That’s Isaiah 49:15. I’m sure she loves you, child. Will think on that?”
Mrs. O’Cee might have reached her eighties, but she was incredibly naive, because if my upbringing was any example, then yeah, my mom had forgotten I was there for most of my life.
“I’ll think about it,” I lied.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Gabriel
I should have been angry, appalled, and part of me was, but Blue’s performance had made me hard, too. After what I’d done, I deserved her rage.
I had hoped that one taste of her would quench my thirst but it only whet my appetite instead. Like an addict, I craved her. Another hit, another drag, another shot.
I burned for this woman. And that hadn’t been part of the plan. I had two choices in this situation now. Walk away from her forever. Or fuck her until she couldn’t see think, dream, speak or do anything else but come and come for me.
I’d already crossed the line repeatedly, but door number two was a one-way ticket to ex-communication. I’d be finished as a priest.
I glanced at my watch, a Rolex Submariner from my days on the Teams, the only item I owned of any worth. I had taken many vows. One of celibacy and one of poverty.
I was questioning them both now.
But I would never know what might have been. I was not God. I wasn’t all-seeing, all-knowing.
I climbed into my beater car and leaned against the steering wheel, utterly weary of fighting so hard.
It was just so confusing now. I’d never found everything I’d wanted in a woman. There’d always been some reason why I’d kept moving on. Which, strangely, was one of the reasons I’d decided to become a priest. So celibacy hadn’t seemed like such a big deal then. Besides, I’d had seen so much infidelity when I had been on the Teams that it put me off trying to commit to one person, especially since I never knew when we’d be sent on a mission. And if I was honest, I’d been the cause of more than a few infidelities. Not with the guys on the Teams, they were my brothers, but at least two couples on the Base had divorced because of me.
There was cheating from both the SEALs and the wives. But now I had the perspective of my priest’s training and experience, I could see that most of those people made a crucial mistake: they didn’t put God first in their relationship. That might sound ass about face, but I’d found that many times people who found space in their hearts and lives for God were more tolerant and loving to their partners. There were always exceptions, of course, the Christian hypocrites who looked down on their neighbor—they weren’t the ones who knew how great God’s love could be.
If I’d ever married, I’d have wanted it to be with a woman who I could connect with physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. And I needed to have all if I could have ever considered having a relationship.
But these were old arguments.
I was crazy, I’d made my vows, so Blue was out of reach. But for some reason, I couldn’t shake the feeling that God had brought her to me for a reason. But was it to be her priest or something else?
As I drove away from the church after evening prayers, my mind going crazy, part of me was still alert. I’d been keeping an eye on the alley where I’d first met Blue. And twice more, I’d seen the shady guy that I’d spotted when we’d come back from the mountains. Each time, he’d disappeared before I could catch him, but he was definitely on my radar.
And I didn’t believe Blue when she said she had no idea who he was. I suspected that he was someone from her former life—maybe her boyfriend, maybe her pimp. And I strongly suspected that it could even be the piece of shit Cornelius that I’d been warned about.
Blue had been worried, scared, that much I could tell. But unless she told me who he was or I saw him again, there was nothing I could do.
It made me fucking furious this some low life scumbag had followed her here. Although it was also possible that it was me he was after. He might even be a gangbanger, although I doubted it. I didn’t know any white guys in the gangs.
I’d been working with the San Diego PD’s Street Gang Unit, trying to keep the violence contained so it didn’t spill out into another bloody turf war. The Logan Heights gang had been hitting hard against the Los Santos gangbangers who were leaching out of Tijuana to try and colonize more territory and bring drugs out of Mexico.
I’d met a few of the less important Logan Heights members, but as in all these gangs, you had to work your way into the circle of trust—what a fucking irony. But since quite a few of their moms and sisters came to my church, I felt reasonably safe walking through the streets that they ran. Although I couldn’t ignore the fact that there were some pretty strong anti-Catholic feelings among some people since all those scandals about pedophile priests had been published in the Press. In my opinion, those evil fuckers got everything they deserved, even though I knew that God would be their Judge.
So even though all my senses were on high alert, I’d rather have gone armed today, which was something of a problem for a man of the cloth. The contradictions in my life were sometimes hard to deal with.
This evening, I was on my way to a meeting with the Principal of a school where young gang members were recruited, either to Los Stantos or Logan Heights gangs, depending on whether they were Hispanic or Black. I liked to park a few blocks away and walk the streets hoping to catch some of the younger kids and get them into programs that would keep them out of the senior gangs. And I was talking about kids of elementary school age. Too many were born into the life and had never gotten a chance to try another way of living.
I was a block away from the school, right in the center of the Red Steps section of the Logan Heights gang when I heard the sound of a woman screaming—not just in an I’m-so-mad-I’ll-put-your-balls-in-a-clamp way, but a sure-to-God terrified way. Without thinking any further, I barreled into the bar where the noise was coming from as if I was still that 19-year-old SEAL who thought he was bulletproof. God gave me some pretty powerful mojo, but not even a clerical collar deflected bullets, unfortunately.
I assessed the situation immediately, spotting the tango and two civilians.
One woman was sitting on the floor, blood dripping from her nose, and the one screaming had a knife at her throat held by a skinny motherfucker who’d deliberately nicked her skin.
I didn’t bother to call out a warning, just sucker-punched the creep in the kidneys and twisted his arm until he dropped the knife.
I didn’t know if I was Priest or SEAL then. Maybe God wanted me to be both, but the SEAL in me wanted to finish the little shit stain; the priest in me knew I should stop before I killed him.
He was cursing up a storm, threatening me in a way that should have been intimidating, but wasn’t.
“You don’t know who you’re fucking with, man! Cornelius is going to cut your balls off and feed them to you. He don’t take no one messing with his business, you hear me?”
Cornelius again.
I patted down the lowlife little shit and removed a Glock from the back of his pants, in just the right place to shoot himself in the ass, and a smaller Smith & Wesson in an ankle clip. I checked the safeties, then put the firearms in my jacket. Only then, I let him sit up.
He blinked when he saw my dog collar, a nasty smile creeping over his ugly face.
“I know who you are and you just made a big mistake, homie.”
“I’m not your homie, dickwad. And you just got your ass handed to you by an unarmed priest. I’m sure that’ll go down well with your boss.”
He looked like he wanted to jump me, and I was ready for the fight. Adrenaline was shoot
ing through my veins like quicksilver, and I badly wanted to beat him in a mess of blood and broken bones. Compassion was a long way from my heart in that moment.
In the end, it was the two women who stopped me from committing more mayhem.
“Father! Help us, please!”
“What’s going on here?” I asked although I had a pretty shrewd idea.
“Marnie’s family wanna pay to send her to rehab, but Baz didn’t want to let her go.”
I guessed Marnie was the one sitting on the floor looking dazed.
“He your pimp?”
She shrugged and nodded. “He’s an asshole.”
“You want me to get this guy arrested so you’ve got a head start?” I asked.
The woman with the bloody nose shook her head and stumbled to her feet.
“No, if we do that, he’ll find us and kill us. We just wanna leave. I wanna go. I don’t want to live like this no more, Father. Help us, please!”
I got her up off of the floor while she was teetering on her six-inch heels and wiping the blood from her face. Her tiny, emaciated frame weighed almost nothing. I could see the track marks on her arms, old bruises bleeding into newer ones. I knew that I had to get them both to rehab before the shakes started.
“Cornelius won’t let you take them,” sneered the man called Baz who was nursing a broken nose. “They’ll be back on the streets and working their bony asses by tomorrow.”
“Listen, asswipe, I don’t give a fuck who this Cornelius clown is. I’m on God’s Team and I’m 100% certain he has the biggest balls. So stay out of my way—and leave these girls alone. You do not want to know what the wrath of God looks like.”
I gave him a slap for good measure and pocketed his switchblade, too. I’d be dropping all those pieces of hardware into the police later.
Urging them to move as fast as possible, I escorted the two girls to my car which was more than a block away and drove them to the rehab place they’d mentioned. As we drove past the bar, I saw the same ugly bastard watching me that had been outside the rectory: white male, mid-forties, blond dreads. He was staring at us with a mean expression on his face. The two girls in the back of my car sank lower on the seat.
“Oh my God, that’s Cornelius! If he finds us, he’ll kill us.”
The pimp pointed at me and mimed pulling a trigger. I knew I’d just made a bad enemy. I’d made ‘em before.
“You’re going to be okay now,” I said, infusing my voice with a certainty I didn’t feel, then put my foot on the gas and got the hell out of there.
I needed to find out who this Cornelius asshole was. The Logan Heights gangbangers had warned me of him so maybe he was a member of the opposition, although they hadn’t said that. And besides, I’d never heard of the Los Santos gang having white members, but maybe they were integrating for the first time. God bless America. But one thing was for sure: when he’d been at the rectory, he hadn’t been there for me. Until today, he hadn’t known I’d existed. Which meant that he’d been there for Blue.
And that was fucking unacceptable.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Mariana
Somber. That was the word that fit Gabriel when he arrived back at the rectory. His mood had darkened dramatically and I was ready to get away from him for a while before I decided what to do next.
In the mountains, when I’d felt the weight of his body on mine, that searing kiss that sent flames of need rushing through me, it had been so fucking hot, but confusing as hell. How could I want him and hate him? Why was I imagining so much more than getting my revenge? No! I’d waited too long and planned too hard to fuck this up by now by turning into a pile or raging hormones. I had to focus. I had to complete the mission.
I could see now why he went to the mountains—it made him stronger, and that wasn’t good. I needed him weak.
Damn it, I needed space to think but Mrs. O’Connor was talking to the devil incarnate and they both saw me before I could sneak up to my room.
“Great God in Heaven, have you been pulled through a hedge backward, child?” Mrs. O’Cee cried out. “And in pity’s name, what happened to your neck?”
I glanced in the kitchen mirror and saw ugly purple finger marks around my throat that Gabriel had put there in the mountains. I’d forgotten to cover them up with makeup today.
“Oh, my mom’s boyfriend,” I lied easily. “He’s a creep—couldn’t keep his hands offa me. But I kneed him in the balls and hit him over the head with a garbage can lid.”
She crossed herself three times as Gabriel threw me a caustic look. Mrs. O’Cee fussed around making me food and a cup of her God-awful tea, apologizing profusely that she’d suggest I see my mother again, then made me swallow a couple of Ibuprofen for the pain. I kind of enjoyed her fussing, even though I felt a slight tug of guilt for lying to her. Gabriel disappeared when Mrs. O’Cee started on about the iniquity of men in general and the wickedness of my mom’s mythical boyfriend in particular.
I didn’t see Gabriel again that evening, and for the next few days, he was silent and solemn whenever we met. He didn’t blank me like he had before, but his eyes dimmed with sorrow when he saw me, and that cut like a bitch.
Oh yeah, Father Gabriel—so good, so tolerant, so compassionate, so kind to everyone who wasn’t me. He tossed smiles around like they were on sale, with a few wise words for the poor, pathetic fools who needed a con-artist like him to tell them what to do and how to live. It was stupid and pitiful. It was weak. They were beneath contempt—but I hated Gabriel most of all.
It was hard to act neutral around him, and the atmosphere in the rectory was tense.
But two days later, Father Miguel Angel spoke to me directly while I was serving his breakfast, something he rarely did since he always had his nose in a religious textbook or his newspaper.
“Mariana, I’ve spoken with Mother Evangelina over at St. Nicholas’s Hostel for Troubled Women and she’s going to give you a room. You’ll be able to move in by the tenth of next month.”
I gasped and Mrs. O’Cee’s head shot up, her hand over her mouth.
“You’re throwing me out?”
Father Miguel Angel looked perplexed as if he’d said it was sunny and I’d insisted it was raining.
“Not at all. As I said, Mother Evangelina will have a bed for you and find you work.”
“I have a bed here! I work here!” I shouted at him.
He blinked, pushing his glasses further up his nose and his Mexican accent becoming stronger.
“But surely you realize that you can’t stay forever, Mariana? It’s not appropriate for a young woman to live here. When I spoke to the bishop, he assured me that it was the correct thing to do.”
“It’s not ‘correct’ to give me a home when I was living on the street? Is that what you’re saying, Father?”
He took off his glasses and polished them.
“I’m sure you’ll see I’m right, young lady.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sure I won’t. I’m not living in any damn nun’s hostel. I’d rather live on the streets.”
“The decision is out of my hands,” he said, gazing through me. “The bishop has taken a personal interest in your case.”
“Oh, I’m a ‘case’ now? Well, you can take his ‘personal interest’ and shove it up his Holy ass! I’ve worked hard here! I’ve cooked and cleaned and made beds and scrubbed your fucking toilets! But that’s not good enough for you, is it?”
“Mariana, child, the Holy Father is only trying to help,” said Mrs. O’Cee brokenly.
But I was too angry to take a breath. “Instead, you’d rather work Mrs. O’Connor to death! She’s 84 years old and she’s still looking after you as if you were children. But it’s okay for her to be on her knees scrubbing your floors! God, you’re all such fucking hypocrites. Gabriel?” I turned to him in desperation. “Gabriel, say something!”
He looked sick. “I’m sorry, Bl— Mariana. I can’t go against the bishop. But if you don’t want to g
o to the hostel, I’ll help you find a place in a safe part of the city.”
I stood up so suddenly, my chair toppled over and landed with a crash on the tiled floor.
“Fuck you! Fuck you all!” and I pointed at each of the priests in turn. “‘The merciful man does good for his own soul, But he who is cruel troubles his own flesh.’ Proverbs,” I declaimed loudly, quoting from Gabriel’s last sermon.
The silence in the kitchen was profound, only Mrs. O’Cee’s soft sobs a quiet condemnation.
I despised them all.
I left the kitchen and flung myself on my bed in the room I’d come to think of as mine, but now they wanted me gone.
Fine, I’d go, but the deadline was still three weeks away.
I cuddled Lolita, listening to her soft purrs. Tears burned in the back of my eyes, but I wouldn’t give in.
“You and me, Lolita,” I whispered into her fur. “I’ll never leave you. I promise. Swear to God,” and I laughed harshly.
For the next four days, I went about my work in silence. I’d thought about going on strike, but Mrs. O’Cee had been good to me and I couldn’t let the old lady down. She tried to talk to me and convince me it was all for the best, but I cut her off, and finally she let it go, sighing when she saw me, and trying to hug me at every opportunity which felt weird but nice at the same time.
Father Miguel Angel was the least affected—I wasn’t even sure that he noticed I was still here. I hated him the most then, he was so fucking oblivious to everyone else, but thought he was so holy, too. I thought he was the biggest hypocrite of the lot. I couldn’t imagine any of his parishioners going to him with a personal problem.
Father Neil gave me pained smiles when he saw me and tried to tell me uplifting stories about girls who’d gone to St. Nicholas’s hostel and done well for themselves, which according to him meant getting hitched and popping out a couple of kids.
And then there was Gabriel—he looked like shit and didn’t know what to say to me. He knew that he was the reason I was being kicked out, but he didn’t have the balls to stand up to Father Miguel Angel or the bishop.
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