"He's not a rival if he's won. But--"
"What?"
"Maybe it's part of my malady. Despite everything, I have this wild, fervent conviction that if Temple and I are meant to be together, we will he. Call it an act of faith."
"That's just it. Infatuation is the ultimate act of Faith. A manic state. Delusional. Frustrated infatuation is a manic-depressive state. One minute you're positive everything will go your way; the next you're pounding your head on the sidewalk, hoping the worms will crawl up and eat you."
"This is normal? This is what men and women are supposed to go through?"
"And boys and girls, which you and I have tried mightily to head off in our priestly pasts."
"Yeah, but . . . I had no idea they felt like this. It's not a sane state. I can't believe all the advice I was handing out to 'master their feelings' and 'do the right thing.' "
"You think it was bad advice?"
"No. Just pretty impossible to follow when your heart and mind and body and soul are all acting like they have St. Vitus's dance."
Nick leaned against the cast-iron railing that bracketed two crummy concrete steps down.
Matt settled against the opposite barrier, even though it felt like a chilly rack.
"Tell me about this girl," Nick said.
"Temple." Matt suddenly realized that he had so far sheltered her name from the circle inside.
Nick nodded. "interesting name. Spiritual almost."
"If you told Temple about 'temple of the Holy Ghost' she'd think you were seriously psychic."
"She has a sense of humor."
"How can you tell?"
"You smile when you talk about her."
"That's scary, isn't it? Seeing one person through another? I do feel she's become a part of me, maybe my better part."
Nick nodded again. "An honor."
"Then how can l live without it?"
He sighed. "You'll have to, Matt, if she's recommitted to her previous love. Look. There's isn't a soul, male or female, walking on this planet, who hasn't cared deeply for someone who's been unwilling or unable to reciprocate."
"You?"
Nick nodded seriously. "I may look like an old codger, but there was this brown-haired girl in grade school--"
"Grade school!" Matt scoffed.
"No, Matt, you don't get it. We get these glimpses. Sometimes we see through people like water in a mountain stream: where it's been, where it's going, how much we'd like to flow with it.
Moments of such clarity they cut like glass. And nothing happens. We both flow on, whether we're eight years old or forty-eight. Everybody has a path not taken. A person not known."
"Even priests?"
"Even priests. You're unusual in that you stilled your instincts at such an early age because of your abusive background."
"Then you . . . other guys knew what you were giving up."
"Not really. Mind if I smoke?" Nick pulled a pipe from his jacket pocket.
Matt quickly nodded. He needed to hear what Nick said more than he cared about secondhand smoke.
Nick sucked at the pipe as it took slow fire from a long farmer's match, and smiled when it finally offered enough smoke to expel.
"I was not Mr. Cool in high school," Nick began.
"Neither was I."
"But you passed, l didn't. I was precast as either a grind or a nerd, or a seminarian. And l was happy with that life, that commitment. Until I left."
"Why did you?"
"I'd . . . had theological difficulties. I couldn't stand the faces I'd counseled to do the impossible. I get the impression celibacy was not a problem for you. Not for me either. We were reared in an environment that rewarded the considered act. Desire seemed . . . unreliable, quirky, an adolescent imperative. How strong we felt to conquer it."
Matt thought. Yes. He had "overcome" life. His abusive childhood, any instinct to mate. He was a higher being, next to an angel.
"You can look at me, Matt, and not believe it, but I have enjoyed one of the greatest love stories of all time. Midlife, middle-aged, midcareer." Nick smiled.
"I do believe. The world doesn't have to be telegenic. Haven't I always known that, even while people have envied me my . . .charisma?"
"My wife. She's thirty pounds overweight, and thinks she's fifty pounds beyond the pale. She won't believe that I think she makes . . . oh, Raquel Welch look like a cheap substitute. You ever see this great old forties film, The Enchanted Cottage? Two terminally plain people connect, and everybody wonders what they see in each other, except when they go into this cottage, We see them as they see each other. And they're Robert Young and Dorothy Maguire. Love is like that.
Love puts this aura on the beloved. Maybe it's a halo. Think what a halo means, an other-worldly spiritual charisma. Attraction is religion, Matt. It's not cheap, it's not tawdry, it's agape."
"A fancy Greek word for spiritual love. If we're in the market for fancy Greek words, why not eros?"
"It is eros. Love is eros. That's what you don't know until you try it."
"Or. . . you don't try it."
"Your acquaintance with the world, the flesh, and the devil getting too close for you?" Matt looked down at the concrete steps. "When l first began to think about Temple in that way, I rushed to a priest l knew to confess my 'bad thoughts.' it was really meant to validate his priesthood and my fallibility; I'd been in a position to know his weaknesses and the advantage made me ashamed."
"So you found some shame of your own to show him."
Matt nodded. "Tenet of the church: Always make others feel good about themselves before yourself."
"So?"
"So . . . I've progressed--regressed?---to a lot more specifically 'bad thoughts' than the vague piddly ones I confessed. And I haven't told a soul, in church or out." Nick laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. "Out here, we call that a 'rich fantasy life,'
and we don't worry about it."
"What about a rich spiritual life? We used to talk about that in seminary. The odd thing is that what I'm experiencing with Temple is clarifying some parts of my religion I used to take for granted"
"Like what?"
"Like in the New Testament, when Christ walks by the Sea of Galilee and gathers his disciples by asking them to drop their nets and come follow him. I always read about this testimony to his charisma, his sacred mission, and thought, yeah, yeah. Now that I've suddenly been plummeted into this dazzle for Temple, l finally believe it. I believe that in an instant a stranger, or even someone you know fairly well, can suddenly draw, pull, attract, hypnotize otherwise rational beings into mindless orbit.
"And all those times in prayer I sought to find God, reach something so immaterial yet all-encompassing, experience divine love, and utter faith. . . Now I find myself possessed of all the irrationality of faith, but not for God--for another human being, for the rightness of my own belief in that other human being. Beyond the desire, which is so mind-blowing, there's this bottomless cup of unconditional love for her, the world, myself. I can't deny the physical imperative, but it isn't just that. It's . . . a mystery."
Nick was silent for a while. "If the physical pull becomes too frustrating, well, even the church recognizes that in some circumstances it's better to . . . there is self-gratification."
"We spent years in seminary learning to resist it. But even the term betrays itself. How l feel, l know l could relieve it but my satisfaction isn't the point. It's finding satisfaction with another, for another, giving satisfaction."
"So after years of saving yourself for God, so to speak, you're saving yourself for a woman who is committed to another man."
"A new secular vocation, huh?"
"You're sure you're not simply afraid of the intimacy and have become infatuated with an impossible situation to avoid facing it?"
"I'm not sure of anything but my love for Temple. Maybe I'm an obsessive personality.