“Hi.” Gerold knew at once what she was, from the smile. Her teeth were gray, from either meth or crack. A street whore, he knew. There seemed to be twice as many of them now, since the recession had bitten in.
“You know,” she began, and now her bloodshot eyes were intent on him. She stood up. The sweat-damp T-shirt betrayed flat, dangling breasts. “We could go over by them trees.” She pointed.
Gerold saw one of many stands of trees around the park. Gerold sighed. “I’m not looking for any action, if that’s what you mean.”
She walked over and without warning began to rub his crotch.
Gerold frowned.
Her desperate whisper told him, “Let’s go over to them trees. Twenty-five bucks. I’ve done guys in chairs before; some of ’em get off.”
“I don’t get off!” he spat.
“Hmm? You sure?” She kept rubbing, her grin knife-sharp. “You feel that, don’t you?”
“No,” he grumbled. He was enraged and humiliated. “I’m paraplegic. You know what that means? It means dead from the waist down.”
“Come on, just let me play with it anyway. Twenty bucks. You’ll like it.”
“Get away from me!” he bellowed.
“Well fuck you, then!” she yelled back. “Fuckin’ cripple.”
“Yeah,” he said, grimacing. He got out his wallet. There was his bus pass and a fifty-dollar bill. “Do you have a knife or a gun?”
“What?”
“I’ll give you fifty bucks, my bus pass, and my bank card—”
“For what?”
“I want you to kill me.”
The junkie face seemed to pucker like a pale slug sprinkled with salt. She left the shelter and jogged away.
Anyway, that’s what had brought Gerold down here in the first place. That’s why he’d been in the library: to use their computer, go online, and read about castor bean poison, which he’d found quite easily. Just as easily, however, he’d found that the extraction process was way too complicated, save for anyone but a chemist; and then when he’d looked up some other poisons, he’d caught the librarian eyeing his screen with a troubled frown on her face. He’d felt idiotic so he’d left in a rush.
SWOOOSH!
The next bus drove right by, its driver pretending not to see Gerold waiting in the shelter.
No. Today just wasn’t Gerold’s day.
(IV)
When Hudson finally fell asleep, he dreamed almost in flashback: the recent past. A year ago when he’d graduated from Catholic U., he’d taken a summer job for a Monsignor Halford, the chancellor of the Richmond Diocesan Pastoral Center. Hudson needed a letter of reference to get into a quality seminary, so here he was.
Halford had to have been ninety but seemed sharper and more energetic than most clerics half his age. He did not beat around the bush with regard to spiritual counsel. He said right off the bat, “The only reason you’re working here is for a reference, but I won’t give you any manner of reference or referral unless you do this: take a year or two off, go into the work force—not volunteer work or hospices—you’ll do plenty of that during your internship.” The pious old man chuckled. “Work a real job, live like real people, the other people. You have to be one of them before you can be one of us. Work in a restaurant, a store, do construction work or something like that. Earn money, pay bills, know what it’s like to live like they do. Go to bars, get drunk, smoke cigarettes, and, above all . . . familiarize yourself with the company of women, like St. Augustine. There’s nothing worse than a young seminarist going straight from college to seminary and taking all his idealism with him. Those are the ones who fold halfway through their pastorship.”
Hudson sat agog. St. Augustine was a whoremonger before he found faith . . . “You don’t mean . . .”
“I mean as I’ve said,” the elder replied in a voice of granite. “Am I ordering you to engage in sexual congress outside of wedlock? No. But hear this, Hudson. A venal sin now is much more forgivable than a grievous sin later, later as in after your ordination.”
Hudson couldn’t believe such an implication.
“Are you receiving my meaning, son?”
“I’m . . . not sure, Monsignor.”
“In the real world you’ll be subject to the same temptations that Christ faced. We in the vocation all need to know that.”
“But I’m perfectly happy with a vow of celibacy.”
The monsignor smiled, and it was a sardonic smile. “Go out into the world first, and that includes the world of women. If you don’t, you’ll probably quit in ten or twenty years. It doesn’t do God any good to have priests that quit when they start feeling that they’ve missed out. It’s the same things with the nuns—good Lord. I’ve been around a while so I know what I’m talking about.”
Before the notion to ask even occurred consciously, Hudson began, “Monsignor, did you ever . . .”
The old man lurched forward in his chair. “Did I ever break my vow of celibacy? Are you being audacious enough to ask me that? Me?”
“I-I-I,” Hudson bumbled. “Not audacious, sir. But . . .”
“Fine. It’s an honest answer. God needs priests with balls, too.”
Hudson’s brow shot up.
“No, I never broke my vow of celibacy, and I’ve been a priest for almost seventy years.” The monsignor’s gaze sharpened to pinpoints on Hudson. “But I’ll tell you this. I almost did many times, but in the end, I resisted.”
“That’s . . . probably easier said than done.”
“Nope. I asked God to take the burden of my temptations off of my shoulder and onto his. And he did. He always does”—very quickly, the Monsignor pointed—“if you have faith.”
“I have faith, Monsignor.”
“Of course you do, but you’re also full of idealism—you’re too young to know what you’re talking about.” The old smile leveled on Hudson. “I’ll bet you don’t even masturbate—”
Hudson didn’t, but he blushed.
“I won’t ask if you do or you don’t, but know this, young man. There’ll be none of that shit after you’re a priest.”
Hudson had to laugh.
“All I’m saying is it’s reasonable in God’s eyes to get all of that out of your system before you take your true vows. That’s why I won’t give you a referral until you’ve gone out into the world for a year or so. You see, if I recommend you to a seminary, what I’m really doing is recommending you to God. Don’t make a monkey out of me in front of God.”
This guy’s a trip, Hudson thought. “I understand, sir.”
“Good, so where are you going?”
Hudson drew on a long breath. “Florida, I think. I grew up in Maryland, where I learned to shuck oysters. I could get a job doing that.”
“Good, a real-world job, like I’ve been saying.”
“A friend of mine lives down there now. We were acolytes together.”
The old priest’s eyes widened. “Is he in the vocation?”
Hudson chuckled. “No, sir, I’m afraid not. He’s, I guess, lost his faith, but—”
“Excellent. You can help him find it again while you’re shucking oysters in Florida and experiencing real life. The real world, Hudson. You need to know it before you can be a priest.”
“Yes, sir.”
The monsignor looked at his watch. “I have a golf match now. Make sure you clean all the windows in the chancellery today. Then you can take off. Go to Florida, live amongst the other people. Then come back in a year or so and I’ll get you into any seminary you want.”