Carol heard Jim's voice drop into a monotone.
"He works at the slaughterhouse, but he's not a butcher. He does one thing all day long, and I guess he's pretty good at it. As each cow is led inside, it's his job to brain it with a sledgehammer before its throat is cut."
14
Emma heard Jonah's car pull into the driveway. She tried to suppress her excitement as she wondered what he'd be like this time. Sometimes he went out late at night and came back and just sat in the living room with the lights off, drinking beer. Other times…
She wondered where he went on these little jaunts. What did he do, what was he looking for? Like so many other things with Jonah, you learned not to ask. It got you nowhere.
At the moment she didn't particularly care what he had gone out for; she just hoped he'd found it. Because on certain nights he didn't sit up in the living room when he came home. Instead he came directly to the bedroom. And when that happened, he always wanted her. Wanted her badly.
And when that mood was upon him, he drove her to ecstasy beyond imagining.
Emma heard him enter through the kitchen from the garage.
"Is everything all right?"
"Fine, Emma. Just fine."
She felt her heart begin to race as she heard Jonah's footsteps bypass the living room and come down the hall, felt herself grow moist between her legs as he stepped into the room and began stripping off his clothes. She could hear his rapid breathing, sense his arousal like a throbbing heat in the room.
He slipped into bed and pressed himself against her back. He was stiff and hard, like oak, like iron. She turned toward him and felt his arms go around her, felt his hands slide down her flanks and lift her nightgown.
This was going to be one of those nights. Maybe the best ever.
Six
Ash Wednesday, February 28
1
"Remember, man, you are dust, and to dust you will return."
Grace dwelled on the priest's words as he dipped his thumb in the ashes of last year's palms and dabbed them on her forehead in the form of a tiny cross. She crossed herself and walked down the center aisle of St. John's toward the front entrance.
Outside, she jumped at the touch on her arm as she stood atop the stone steps.
"You're Grace Nevins, aren't you?"
She turned and saw a thin, intense-looking young man perhaps half her age. His face was very pale; his blond hair was so thin and wispy she could see his scalp right through it; his pallor was accentuated by the dark smudge of ash in the center of his forehead. His mouth seemed too large for his face, his nose seemed too small. Two of him could have fit inside the stadium coat he clutched around him. It was of good quality, but he was too thin for it.
"Who are you?"
"I'm Martin Spano. We've been looking for you."
Grace was immediately uneasy. Why should anyone be looking for her?
"You've found me."
"It wasn't easy. I waited outside every Mass at St. Pat's last Sunday. You weren't there. The Holy Spirit led me back downtown. This happens to be my parish."
"What do you want?"
"Brother Robert heard about what happened at choir practice at St. Patrick's last week."
Grace turned away and started down the steps.
"I don't want to talk about it!"
She had not been back to St. Patrick's since that awful night. She now attended Mass at St. John's instead. It was closer to her apartment. And besides, what was there to go back for? The choir director obviously could not trust her with the solo. She had pleaded with him that she didn't know what had come over her, that she hadn't meant to sing those horrid words, but that only seemed to bolster his decision: If she could not help it, how could she guarantee it wouldn't happen on Easter?
He was right, of course. She had rushed out of the cathedral in shame.
The young man followed her down the steps to Thirty-first Street.
"It wasn't easy to find you, Grace. You've got to listen to me. You're one of us!"
That stopped her.
"I don't even know who you are, Mr. Spano—"
"Martin, please."
"—so how can I be one of you?"
"Brother Robert says that what happened to you at choir practice is proof. You've felt the presence of the Evil One. You know that he is among us!"
Grace tensed. "Are you a Devil worshiper? I want nothing to do with—"
"No-no! I'm just the opposite! I'm one of the Chosen."
The Chosen? Hadn't she seen that title in bookstores on the cover of a best-seller?
"Chosen by whom?"
"By the Lord, of course. By the Holy Spirit. We have received the knowledge that the Antichrist is coming. We are to spread the warning among the nations of the earth. We are to expose the Evil One when he appears!"
This was crazy!
"I'm not interested."
Martin gently took her hand. "You're afraid. I myself was afraid when I first realized the responsibility God was placing on my shoulders. But it's a responsibility neither of us can shirk. Brother Robert will explain it to you."
"Who is this Brother Robert you keep talking about? I've never heard of him."
Martin's eyes glowed. "A wise and holy man. He wants to meet you. Come."
Something about the younger man's intensity frightened her.
"I… I don't know."
He gripped her arm insistently. "Please. It will only take a minute."
Grace wanted to run from this man, yet he was offering her answers to the questions that had plagued her since that awful night in St. Patrick's when she had begun singing about Satan instead of the Blessed Virgin. She had not had a good night's sleep since.
"All right. But only for a minute."
"Good! It's this way."
He led her up Fifth Avenue past the Art Deco splendor of the Empire State Building, then east on Thirty-seventh Street into the Murray Hill district with its procession of stately brown-stones in various states of repair. Halfway between Lexington and Park they stopped before a three-story brownstone.
"This is it," Martin said.
Brownstone steps ran up to the front door on the first floor. A shorter flight curved down to the right to the basement. A hand-printed sign on the basement door read chapter house. A slim, leafless tree stood to the left. Naked vines clung to the stucco front.
"Which floor is your apartment?"
"All of them—this is my house."
It occurred to Grace then that if she was getting involved with a crazy man, at least he was a well-to-do crazy man.
He led her up to the heavy glass-and-oak front door and into the blessed warmth of the foyer, then down a narrow hall to a sitting room. Their footsteps echoed on the highly polished bare hardwood floor; the walls and ceilings were painted a stark, flat white. Grace followed him into a brightly lit sitting room—as stark and white and bare as the hallway except for some sparse ultramodern furniture and abstract paintings on the walls.
And a man standing at the window, looking out at the street.
She recognized him immediately as a Cistercian monk by his beige habit, wide leather belt, and long, brown, cowled scapular. The cowl was down. He stood bareheaded and tonsured, a striking anachronism amid the glass-and-chrome and abstractions, yet he appeared to be perfectly at home. His graying hair was on the long side, falling from the glistening bareness of his tonsure over the tops of his ears and trailing to the base of his neck. He was of average height but very lean. As he turned to face her Grace saw that he had a neat, full, dark beard, salted with gray. For all his leanness, he had a round, cherubic face. His eyes were deep brown and kind; the weathered skin around his eyes crinkled with his smile as he stepped toward her.