“That’s good,” Jack said, smiling without removing the pipe stem.
It was a pleasant, calm evening, and Natasha watched them, wondering at their ease together. Faulk had said nothing of his plan about the clergy.
As they were taking their leave, Clara said to Natasha, “I hope I’ll be seeing you,” and embraced her. Then she kissed Faulk on the cheek. “We’ll keep the light on, as usual. But you know we always do that anyway.”
“Thanks, darling,” Faulk said. “Thank you very much.” He put his arm around Natasha, and they walked down the sidewalk toward Thirty-Sixth Street, where he’d parked the car. The streetlights made shadows of the laden tree branches across the sidewalk. She felt pleasantly sleepy. “That was such fun,” she said. “What cool people.”
“I stay with them every time I come to Washington. Since my divorce, Aunt Clara’s been worried about my well-being. I think she’s convinced you’ll be good for me.”
Natasha hooked her arm in his. “She’s wonderful. I want to be like her when I grow up.”
“I know that feeling.”
“It’s funny. Politics didn’t come up at all.”
“Cousin Greta came up. That’s politics in a way. Her nervousness. It’s all about what she has to do with her days.”
“But you know Greta always does seem so comfortable and at ease. Like she was born to it. She was glowing at that Human Relations dinner.”
“Yeah, well, she claims Clara’s house is the only place in the city where she doesn’t have to be the senator’s wife. You should see her and Clara together. Clara talks to her so tenderly, like she’s eleven years old and still living under her roof. And of course no mention is ever made of the, um, business. It’s like furniture: always there, but you never talk about it.”
“I thought you might say something about your plans.”
It took a moment for him to respond. “I’m not sure why I didn’t. I’ll tell her sometime before I go back to Memphis.”
They went along the walk to the corner. The concrete was uneven, a tree root having forced it to buckle. He tightened his grip on her arm as they negotiated this and then let go when they crossed the street. Opening the car door, he said, “So where’ll we go tomorrow? It’s your call, I believe.”
“I want to make love,” she said. “Tonight. Now.”
He stood shuffling with the car keys.
“Did I say something wrong?”
“I’m thinking where we can go.”
“My apartment,” she said.
So their first time was in her bed in the small room with one window overlooking East Capitol Street. Before they went in there, though, they sat for an hour on the sofa in her combination living room and kitchen, sharing a snifter of brandy. She liked that he was not in a hurry. At one point she lay her head against his shoulder. She told him about wanting to grow up to be an artist.
He looked at the little square frames with the watercolor faces in them on the wall. “Are those yours?”
“Yes.”
He got up and went to them and stood gazing. He took his time in front of each one. Finally he said, “They’re amazing. Truly. You must know how good they are. Who’re the models?”
“I don’t know. Except, you know, I do feel like I know all of them. I buy old photographs from antiques stores and try to paint the faces, and you do get a feeling for a person, painting a face. I haven’t done it for a while.”
He came back and sat down. “You have to start again. These really are quite amazingly good.”
She felt the need to change the subject. “What will you do when you leave the priesthood?”
“Haven’t thought about it much,” he said. “Some kind of social work? I’ve had to write a homily every week, and not having to do that is going to be good. I can get to some of the reading I’ve been too busy to do. I’ve been rereading Thomas Aquinas. And I’m not trying to impress you with my erudition. Really, it’s calming.”
“It’s Catholic.”
“Well, we’re English Catholics, right?”
“I went to that church down in Charlottesville. A big metal statue of him out in front of the place. A very podgy, disgruntled-looking aluminum monk. And a building that looks like a spaceship.”
“I spent some time reading in his big book when I was a kid. Something reassuring about having everything laid out in that orderly way. I liked that. Still do. It might’ve been what led me to life in the church. Not his, of course.”
“Let’s not talk about church,” she said. Then: “Will you wait until I can put things away?”
“Of course.”
He sat on the sofa in the light of the one lamp, legs crossed, a magazine open in his lap, looking like someone in a dentist’s office. It was endearing, and sweet. She went into the other room and worked behind the closed door, putting dirty clothes into the bottom of the closet, stacking books neatly on the nightstand, and changing the bed. She worked hurriedly, and when she came back out to the living room she found him standing at the bookcase, hands clasped behind his back, gazing at the titles.
“We’ve got some of the same books,” he said.
She took him by the hand and led him into the little room. He moved as if worried about waking someone, padding to the window and pulling the curtain aside to look out. “Nice view of the Capitol.”
“Yes.”
He came back and put his arms around her, kissing her neck, the side of her face. His mouth tasted of the brandy. They were standing beside the bed. They sat down and looked at each other.
“I’m nervous,” he told her.
“Me, too.”
They made love, saying little, and she came very quickly, holding tightly to him. He kept going, and she spread her legs wider to take him deeper, murmuring his name.
“I’m going to come in you,” he said suddenly, loud.
“Do. Oh, yes,” she said. “Yes.”
Afterward, they lay in the tangle of sheets, saying nothing for a time. Finally he leaned up on one elbow and gazed at her. “That was glorious.”
“Can you stay?” she asked.
His expression was faintly bemused. “I’m not going anywhere, if it’s all right.”
This gave her a distressing sense that he might suppose she had done this often enough to wonder. She said, “I don’t know what the protocol is. I’ve never done this.”
“Here?” he said.
She answered simply. “Here, yes.”
“I’m glad I’m the first. Here.” He smiled.
She reached up and brought him to her, then rolled over on top of him and began softly to move down. When she took him, still a little flaccid, into her mouth, he moaned, “Oh, lover.” She felt him harden, and she tightened her lips and pulled, and then ran her tongue slow along the shaft, and then straightened and straddled him, guiding him into her, sinking and rising on him, head back, hands gripping his shoulders. It went on. It was very good. She paused, bending to his face, kissing him, tightening the muscles of herself around him, then straightened, moving her hips back and forth, rising and sinking. “I’m going to come,” she said, and did, and held him tight inside her, hands still gripping his shoulders, her head drooping so that her hair was in his face.
Later, they went into her small bathroom and took a shower together, moving gingerly in concert because of the small space and the clutter of the bottles of shampoo and conditioner. He held her in the rush of warm water while she let it cascade over her hair. They stayed until it began to get cold. Then they toweled off — he dried her and she him — and returned to the bed. She lay back and opened her legs, and he kneeled before her, paused, moaned, lowering his head. He began kissing her inner thighs until, with tantalizing slowness, he licked her. And when she was about to come, raising himself, he pushed deliciously inside. She felt the easing, the falling through, without quite going over, and he went on, apologizing for taking so long, until at last he, too, was finished.