Wallace walked into Max’s fifteen minutes late, by design. Normally, fifteen might be pushing it, but he knew Simon would not leave—not after Wallace had baited him about the fundraiser for his school. He ignored the main room, walking instead into the side bar that would not see much clientele until the weekend. His eyes searched the corners –Just as he thought, Simon was huddled behind a small, dimly lit table against the wall. Wallace smiled to think that he had seen him just a month earler in full drag on a lit stage. Delicious. He strode across the room and extended a hand. “Mr. Stewart? Wallace Millron.” Simon half-stood and took the proferred hand in a surprisingly firm but, Wallace noted, rather damp, handshake.
“I’m sorry I’m late. Zoning committee meeting ran over—exciting stuff. You haven’t ordered yet?”
Simon pointed to the glass and half-emptied bottled water in front of him. “Thanks. I already ate.”
“Have you tried their radicchio salad? Food’s not exceptional here, but it’s the best thing on the menu. Do you mind if I order?” No need to get straight to business, he thought. Make him squirm a little more.
“No, go right ahead.” Millron’s feigned engrossment in the menu did not produce the effect he anticipated. “So, what can I do for you?”
“Well . . . ,” Millron made a show of lingering briefly over the menu before folding it and putting it aside. ‘More forceful than I’d expected,” he thought. “Either he actually has a pair of balls, after all, or I’ve really got him in a panic.’ “I hear the Court has taken on a new project. To your school’s benefit. You must be pleased.”
“Well, . . . .”
“Did you initiate it?”
“No, actually I wasn’t present when the idea came up.”
“I see. Well, I must say, I’m impressed, and a little surprised: I had no idea St. Monica’s was so progressive.”
“It has its limits. If you don’t mind my asking, why is this of interest to you?”
Simon’s directness took Millron by surprise again. “Well, to tell you the truth, it comes at an awkward moment, politically. You’re aware of my proposed amendment to amend the city’s human rights charter?”
“I’ve read about it.”
“Do you support it?”
“Of course. I admire your initiative. Sexual orientation should have been included years ago. But, I don’t see . . . .”
“Mr. Stewart, I’m a pragmatist, and I don’t like losing. I don’t propose policies I think will be defeated. But, several members of the council are fence-sitting on this one. I don’t want anything to spook them before we vote. And, I don’t anticipate that will happen until shortly after your drag show.”
“It’s not my drag show. I’m not taking part.”
“Precisely. It occurred to me our interests might be closely aligned on this matter. I take it the good sisters are not aware of your, uh, theatrical activities?”
“What are you getting at?”
“I thought not. It must put you in a very delicate position.”
“Like I said, I’m not taking part. If it even occurs.”
“There’s a chance that it won’t?”
“I’ve been raising some concerns.”
“Excellent! Any headway?”
“Some. They’re a headstrong bunch, and I haven’t been active all that long, or as much as some of the others.”
“They don’t sympathize with just how risky this could be for you?”
“Well, again, I’m not planning on taking part. So, some of them don’t see how . . . .”
“Perhaps I can help in that regard.” Millron fixed a cool stare on Simon’s eyes.
“I don’t get it.”
“Well, your friends may be a little thoughtless, but surely not heartless. You just need to give them a firm reason to believe that this event could truly spell disaster for you.”
“Such as?”
“Well, if someone were threatening to expose you, for example.”
“You?”
“Of course not. I wouldn’t dream of it. But they needn’t know that.”
“I wouldn’t think that would help your image with the gay community too much. Court members are not ones to keep things to themselves.”
“Well, there’d be no need to mention me by name. Tell them you received an anonymous threat.”
“I suppose . . . .”
“And I’m sure you can keep a secret. After all, if my name were to get mentioned, well . . . . That would be to neither of our advantage, right?”
“Well, certainly not to yours.”
“Oh, believe me, not to yours either.”
Simon felt a chill. He stood from the table and fished out several bills from his wallet.
“So, are we agreed?”
“Fuck you.”
“Oh, Mr. Stewart . . . .” Millron’s tone dripped with pity.
“I’ll do it. And you’re name won’t come up. Just stay away from me. And don’t ever talk to me again.”
“Hopefully, there’ll be no need to. I eagerly await the Court’s final decision. Keep me informed. Here’s my card.” Simon yanked the card out of Millron’s hand, and fled.
Monday, May 28, 2007
The Bridegroom Comes: Chapter Six: Like A Ravening Lion
Glancing up through the window of the visitors’ quarters, Anton watched Father Esaias walk past along the path by the main hall, pounding a wooden mallet against the plank he carried, the semandron, the rhythmic tapping calling the other monks and those on retreat to Vespers. Anton set the balled-up pair of socks in his hand down on the bunk. He’d have to finish unpacking later. That could be a problem: Vespers would be followed immediately by dinner, eaten with the monks in the strict silence of the refectory. From there, monks and visitors would file back into church for Compline, the bedtime prayer service. Anton had requested an audience after that with Father Danieel, the abbot. By the time they were done, night would have fallen, and “lights out,” like all rules at Saint John the Forerunner, was strictly enforced. Anton quickly pulled folded sheets and blankets off their shelf onto the foot of the bed and threw his pyjamas on top, resigning himself to having later to grope around in the dark. Making a hasty sign of the cross before the icon over his bed in the Orthodox manner, thumb folded against forefinger and middle finger, hand moving quickly from forehead to belly, then from the right to left shoulder, he followed the wooden sound out the door, toward chapel.
Before crossing the Church’s threshold, Anton again crossed himself and bowed low to brush the ground with his hand in a ritual metanya. Stepping through the doors, he barely noticed the baskets of scarves set aside to remind women to keep their heads covered at all times, a sight he had previously found irksome. Passing from the Church’s narthex into the nave, the main worship space, he walked to the right side, the side reserved for men.
During his first visit, Anton had been put off by these old-world customs, by the monastery’s strict piety. This time, he found himself embracing it as a welcome relief from the moral ambiguities that threatened to overwhelm him. Upon his arrival for both retreats, Anton had been handed a brochure reminding visitors, including men, to dress modestly and to limit showering to nighttime hours after the monks had retired to their cells. He had found that difficult at first not to read as a tacit admission that the monks were prey to unnatural desires. It troubled him all the more to find such passions conceded by men of “the angelic life.”
Now, he was more inclined to admire the monks for their forthrightness, their willingness to confront directly the pull of the flesh in their desire to commune with the angels. His exposure to Tracy’s world had made him more aware of the permutations of human desire, its perverse capacity to flower into unpredictable forms. Surely it was understandable that men who had renounced the physical love of women should seek to limit as much as possible reminders of their bodily presence, even that such men might find their eyes lingering over the exposed flesh of other men. After all, Anton had heard what went on in prisons. And, if some of these men were prone to such desires and had chosen this life to escape from them, --that, too, seemed understandable; admirable even.
Father Esaias emerged from behind the left side of the iconstasis through the deacon’s door, carring a censor, shaking the bells attached to its handles in rhythmic groups of three as he walked up the women’s side of the nave, then back again through the group of male worshippers standing on the right. As he did so, Father Dositheos, one of the young monks, began to chant the opening words of the service in the peculiarly oriental tones of the Greek Church: “Evloyeetos o theos eemon, ke nyn, ke aee, kai ees tous eonos ton eonon. Ameen.” Anton joined his fellow parishioners in making the sign of the cross in a grand motion. In spite of his ignorance of Greek, Anton knew the English equivalent by heart: “Blessed is our God, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages.” As Father Dositheos continued the chant, the other monks, gathered in a small group before the lectern in front of the nave, took it up. As far as he could, Anton mentally tracked the prayers in English:
Come, let us worship and fall down before Christ our King.
Come, let us worship and fall down before Christ our King and our God.
Come, let us worship and fall down before Christ Himself, our King and our God.
Throughout the long Vespers service, his thoughts wandered. It didn’t help that everything was sung in Greek. Anton had been raised in an American branch of the Church which worshipped entirely in English. Father Danieel and his monks disdained such compromise, regarding it as a modernist adulteration of Holy Tradition. Members of an ultraconservative strand of Orthodoxy, they regarded Anton’s co-religionists as little better than Protestants. Anton had been made painfully aware of this during his first visit, when one of the monks pointedly reminded him that Communion should be taken only by those who had prepared through fasting and prayer.
Watching the monks intone the service, he found himself wondering which ones might have chosen this life to escape wayward desires like his father’s. . . . Not just his father’s. He winced at the thought. Wasn’t that precisely what had brought him back to the monastery, himself? His meetings with Tracy had grown increasingly troubling. To the qualms of guilt he experienced at the deception was now added . . . this other thing.
Worried that he had shown too much of his hand with his questions about “Peter,” Anton had avoided the subject during subsequent lunches. At the same time, he continued, as best he could, to keep the focus off himself. But, this had been difficult, being as he had presented his own supposed “coming out” as the pretext for his being there, at all. His recent slip into personal divulgence had provoked that ridiculous, emotional scene in the bistro. Up to that point, he had managed to ignore Tracy’s increasingly frequent, but always indirect, invitations for Anton to share his “story.” Tracy’s popularity among the bistro crowd had been Anton’s greatest ally in that respect. Up until their last meeting, their moments alone at the table had never lasted long before being interrupted by the banter between Tracy and his friends, all of whom seemed to regard the bistro as a kind of social touchstone, a place to learn the latest gossip, crow over the previous night’s conquests, or retreat from a disastrous date.
It had become clear that this tact of avoidance could not last indefinitely. That was not all that troubled Anton. Since their last meeting, he had become aware that he, too, in spite of himself, had begun to look upon Hunter’s as a kind of retreat. He had started eating lunch there several times a week, occasionally stopping by after work, too, to get a cup of coffee. More than once, he had found himself leaving the bistro later than he intended, dreaming up excuses to present to Cynthia. He had actually caught himself enjoying the banter among Tracy’s friends. Paradoxically, though, on the drive to the café, he often found himself hoping that Tracy would be alone. At first, of course, that seemed natural enough; it would allow him more freedom to pursue the information he was after about his father—“Peter” as Tracy called him; he had not yet dared to ask whether Tracy had ever known him under another name. But, with each passing week, the urgency of collecting that information seemed to fade, while the anticipation of these meetings grew sharper. He caught himself measuring the hours at work leading up to Hunter’s, to meeting Tracy.
He was jolted back into the service by the motions of the men around him, crossing themselves and brushing the ground thrice in rhythm with the deacon’s chanting. The familiar ritual bowing clued Anton in to the meaning of the Greek words: “Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen. Alelluia. Alleluia. Alleluia.” The use of Greek faintly annoyed him, especially since he had discovered that most of the monks had been born and raised in English-speaking countries. ‘Get over it,’ he admonished himself, ‘it’s their home; I’m the guest, the one on retreat.’
Retreat from what?’ Certainly, from the bean counting of his work. Lately, the thrill of the hunt had abated, his investigative procedures become merely mechanical. He found himself wondering about the lives of the suspects over whose accounts he pored, dreaming up whole back-stories, inventing sympathetic motives other than greed for their attempts to conjure illegitimate possibilities out of the inexorable calculation of profits and losses. Disturbingly, the main character in these daydreams often looked like Tracy. Even more disturbing was the face of the man he played opposite: Anton’s father. Only, Anton could not remember his father’s face. He had to assume it was much like his own.
He came to with a start, aided by a shift in the tempo of the monks’ chanting. Their rapid-fire Greek suddenly stretched into long, reverential syllables, words with which Anton was, for once, familiar:
Agios o theos;
Agios ischyros;
Agios athanatos:
Eleeison imas.
Anton translated inwardly the words of the Trisagion prayer: Holy God; Holy Mighty; Holy Immortal: Have mercy on us! With each phrase, he joined the monks and his fellow retreatants in another series of low bows, brushing the ground, berating himself as he did so for having allowed his imagination, once again—and at this, of all moments!—, to drift back to the images that had been plaguing him. Had he not come on retreat precisely to escape them?
Work had once been Anton’s place of retreat: from home, from his life with Cynthia and the girls. They had never really been the center of his life, but he had deluded himself that his long hours of working into the evenings and weekends were a form of self-sacrifice on their behalf. Anton thought of himself as an excellent provider, a source of the financial and material security his own father, with his wanderings from job to low-paying job, had never provided, even before his flight. Anton believed he loved his daughters, but when faced with what were supposed to be moments of domestic bliss, those rare moments when little Sophie climbed into his lap with a drawing, or Rachel timidly asked if he’d like to see her in the new dress she and her mother had brought home, he often found himself at a loss, longing for the certainty of ledgers and accounts.
As for Cynthia, he had never deluded himself that he felt an especially strong attraction toward her. He loved her in the sense that she was an excellent mother and a good wife, someone he could rely on to pick up the slack with the girls at home, to greet him late in the evening with a warm word and dinner. For Anton, this was the stuff and substance of married “bliss,” the sufficient reality behind the Hallmark-generated hype. To be sure, they had had their moments of romance: a year-and-a-half of dating, then engagement, nights and weekends spent together while he finished his undergraduate degree. If the whole thing had felt scripted at times, Anton attributed this to his Orthodox upbringing; the Church, with its roots in an Eastern European peasant milieu, where arranged marriages were the norm, retained a critical attitude toward Western notions of Romantic Love.
Cynthia, too, had been very sensible about this. A refugee from a previously failed marriage, she made it clear to Anton that she shared his skepticism about the relative value of impermanent passions, though she was not especially interested in the theological underpinnings. To Anton, who had fiercely re-embraced Orthodoxy in the wake of years of intellectual pretense in college during which he proclaimed himself an atheist, years that culminated in a deep depression and sense of anomie, Cynthia’s attitude toward religion was puzzling. Raised an Episcopalian, she seemed to see the faith as little more than a familial obligation. Ironically, this appeared to have eased her consent to convert prior to their marriage. She seemed to see it not so much as a conversion as a change in outer trappings: the presence of a few icons on the walls at home, and longer hours than really necessary spent in church.
Though Cynthia claimed, on the rare occasions when she commented directly on Anton’s piety, to find it admirable, he sensed it sometimes irritated her. This had especially been the case during the week leading up to his retreat. Behind her interruptions as he stood alone in his study, saying evening prayers in front of the icons, his sensed a growing resentment. Dimly, he wondered whether she somehow sensed that the new fervency and length of his private prayers had something to do with the stilted manner he seemed unable to escape in answering her questions about how his day had gone.
Anton, himself, puzzled occasionally over the link between the fierceness with which he was driven to stand at prayer, the hollowness of the words he recited mechanically from memory or from his prayer book, and the curiously intense pleasure he experienced at Hunter’s. He simply knew that he felt more alive there than at any other moment of his week. At the same time, these illicit moments left him feeling profoundly guilty, casting about for some means of atonement. And so, he had arranged this retreat at the monastery—his second, since his arrival in Texas—and for a meeting with Father Danieel He felt he needed to bring into some order the fragmented portions of his life.
Of course, he could not go to Father Kyrill, his parish priest. He knew he was supposed to; but, he found himself increasingly alienated from the life of his parish. Confessing fully to Father Kyrill would require that Anton talk openly about his lunch meetings with Tracy, about both his plans for revenge on his father, and the confused feelings that seemed increasingly to be getting in the way of those plans. And Father Kyrill was a good confessor—damn him; he was not the type to just take Anton’s words at face falue; he would force him to put into words longings and desires which he preferred remain unspoken. So, Anton had stopped going to Confession and Communion, ushering his family out of church immediately after Liturgy to avoid any occasion for his priest to inquire into his new abstinence from the Sacraments. The one time Father Kyrill had managed to pull him aside, Anton had mumbled something about pressures at work and not being able to fast properly, then had excused himself to search for Sophie, avoiding his pastor’s look of concern.
Of course, there was the danger that Father Danieel would take the same approach. Anton half expected him to. But, there was the comfort of distance: The abbot had never met Anton’s family. Moreover, he seemed likely to look more sympathetically on the demands for justice that drove Anton on, and less likely to inquire into other motives.
About the latter supposition, Anton could not have been more wrong.
* * *
Arriving at the guest house shortly after Compline, Anton was slightly annoyed to discover, through the glass partition separating the reception area from the bookshop in which the priest-monk received those seeking spiritual council, that another visitor had already gained admission. Anton drew a chair to a position where his presence could be noted through the glass, and sat. He used the time to plan out how he would present his case. There was really no need to go into the pleasure he experienced in Tracy’s company. Compline had given him time for reflection. The feelings he had begun to fear might border on some kind of perverse attraction were surely just a pretext for forestalling the confrontation with his father. His sin was cowardice—not, not anything else. No, that was his father’s sin. He just needed to sort out his anger, to get clear on . . . on its justification. After all, the Church did not condemn all forms of wrath; some anger could be righteous. But, what troubled him was the sense of selfishness involved; for anger to be righteous, he sensed, it must somehow be impersonal, disinterested, like the investigations he conducted at work into other people’s shady dealings. He needed to make it clear that he was not after personal gain. He had long ago resolved that whatever payment he forced out of his father’s winnings, would go entirely to his mother.
His thoughts were interrupted by the departure of the other visitor. Anton got up and walked into the bookstore, pausing briefly at the entrance. Father Danieel remained seated behind his desk. Anton greeted him in the manner traditionally reserved for bishops and abbots, bending at the waist in a low bow, brushing the fingers of his right hand against the floor, then standing with right hand cupped over left, palms up, in request of a blessing. He felt disconcerted by the irritation that crossed Father Danieel’s face as he stood up, made the sign of the cross over Anton, then placed his hand in his visitor’s to be ritually kissed. Anton had heard that the Greeks were less punctilious about such formalities. It troubled him that the abbot perhaps found him pretentious. Or, maybe he was just tired; the monks awoke at midnight for corporate prayers in the chapel, started their day with 6:00 o’clock Matins, and were said to keep long hours of private prayer during the night. No doubt, the abbot was eager to retire to his cell.
Anton sat in the chair Father Danieel offered him from the other side of the desk, then waited. The monk made no effort to speak, and kept his eyes lowered toward the desk. Apparently, it was up to Anton to justify this intrusion.
“I wanted to seek your counsel about a situation I’ve gotten myself into.”
“. . . Yes?”
Anton launched into his prepared remarks. The monk seemed to listen intently, but kept his eyes lowered toward his desk.
“. . . Tell me more about these meetings.”
“There’s not much to tell, really. We talk. He’s confirmed that he still sees my father.”
“You asked him directly?”
“No. Of course not. But, I’m sure.”
Fr. Danieel frowned. “Have you read the desert fathers?”
“I’ve read parts of the Philokalia.”
“Then, you know what they say about the importance of guarding one’s heart?”
Anton nodded vaguely.
“You’re attracted to this man.” It was not a question, and Anton made no response.
“What you’ve undertaken would require great strength. ‘Your adversary the devil prowls around like a ravening lion, seeking someone to devour.’”
Anton was somewhat taken aback. “Perhaps I’ve gotten in over my head.”
Father Danieel let the comment hang in the air for a while. “Sometimes God lets the Devil test us.”
“What do you mean? . . . To show us who we really are?”
“. . . Yes.”
“Can we change who we are?”
“At a price. . . . Are you capable of offering this man up?”
“You don’t mean . . . ? My father?”
“. . . Not only him.”
Anton sat in silence. He became aware that his heart was thumping. . . . “Is it wrong for me to pursue justice?”
“Any action from a divided heart is wrong. . . . But, so is inaction. ‘If your eye offends you, pluck it out.’ . . . Our Lord says, ‘Pluck it out,’ but not ‘Avert your eyes’: If you back down from the test, you may think you’ve renounced the Devil, and not even know you’ve turned your back on God.”
As Father Danieel stood up, Anton was startled to discover that the interview was over. He rose, but neither asked for nor received a parting blessing.
Before crossing the Church’s threshold, Anton again crossed himself and bowed low to brush the ground with his hand in a ritual metanya. Stepping through the doors, he barely noticed the baskets of scarves set aside to remind women to keep their heads covered at all times, a sight he had previously found irksome. Passing from the Church’s narthex into the nave, the main worship space, he walked to the right side, the side reserved for men.
During his first visit, Anton had been put off by these old-world customs, by the monastery’s strict piety. This time, he found himself embracing it as a welcome relief from the moral ambiguities that threatened to overwhelm him. Upon his arrival for both retreats, Anton had been handed a brochure reminding visitors, including men, to dress modestly and to limit showering to nighttime hours after the monks had retired to their cells. He had found that difficult at first not to read as a tacit admission that the monks were prey to unnatural desires. It troubled him all the more to find such passions conceded by men of “the angelic life.”
Now, he was more inclined to admire the monks for their forthrightness, their willingness to confront directly the pull of the flesh in their desire to commune with the angels. His exposure to Tracy’s world had made him more aware of the permutations of human desire, its perverse capacity to flower into unpredictable forms. Surely it was understandable that men who had renounced the physical love of women should seek to limit as much as possible reminders of their bodily presence, even that such men might find their eyes lingering over the exposed flesh of other men. After all, Anton had heard what went on in prisons. And, if some of these men were prone to such desires and had chosen this life to escape from them, --that, too, seemed understandable; admirable even.
Father Esaias emerged from behind the left side of the iconstasis through the deacon’s door, carring a censor, shaking the bells attached to its handles in rhythmic groups of three as he walked up the women’s side of the nave, then back again through the group of male worshippers standing on the right. As he did so, Father Dositheos, one of the young monks, began to chant the opening words of the service in the peculiarly oriental tones of the Greek Church: “Evloyeetos o theos eemon, ke nyn, ke aee, kai ees tous eonos ton eonon. Ameen.” Anton joined his fellow parishioners in making the sign of the cross in a grand motion. In spite of his ignorance of Greek, Anton knew the English equivalent by heart: “Blessed is our God, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages.” As Father Dositheos continued the chant, the other monks, gathered in a small group before the lectern in front of the nave, took it up. As far as he could, Anton mentally tracked the prayers in English:
Come, let us worship and fall down before Christ our King.
Come, let us worship and fall down before Christ our King and our God.
Come, let us worship and fall down before Christ Himself, our King and our God.
Throughout the long Vespers service, his thoughts wandered. It didn’t help that everything was sung in Greek. Anton had been raised in an American branch of the Church which worshipped entirely in English. Father Danieel and his monks disdained such compromise, regarding it as a modernist adulteration of Holy Tradition. Members of an ultraconservative strand of Orthodoxy, they regarded Anton’s co-religionists as little better than Protestants. Anton had been made painfully aware of this during his first visit, when one of the monks pointedly reminded him that Communion should be taken only by those who had prepared through fasting and prayer.
Watching the monks intone the service, he found himself wondering which ones might have chosen this life to escape wayward desires like his father’s. . . . Not just his father’s. He winced at the thought. Wasn’t that precisely what had brought him back to the monastery, himself? His meetings with Tracy had grown increasingly troubling. To the qualms of guilt he experienced at the deception was now added . . . this other thing.
Worried that he had shown too much of his hand with his questions about “Peter,” Anton had avoided the subject during subsequent lunches. At the same time, he continued, as best he could, to keep the focus off himself. But, this had been difficult, being as he had presented his own supposed “coming out” as the pretext for his being there, at all. His recent slip into personal divulgence had provoked that ridiculous, emotional scene in the bistro. Up to that point, he had managed to ignore Tracy’s increasingly frequent, but always indirect, invitations for Anton to share his “story.” Tracy’s popularity among the bistro crowd had been Anton’s greatest ally in that respect. Up until their last meeting, their moments alone at the table had never lasted long before being interrupted by the banter between Tracy and his friends, all of whom seemed to regard the bistro as a kind of social touchstone, a place to learn the latest gossip, crow over the previous night’s conquests, or retreat from a disastrous date.
It had become clear that this tact of avoidance could not last indefinitely. That was not all that troubled Anton. Since their last meeting, he had become aware that he, too, in spite of himself, had begun to look upon Hunter’s as a kind of retreat. He had started eating lunch there several times a week, occasionally stopping by after work, too, to get a cup of coffee. More than once, he had found himself leaving the bistro later than he intended, dreaming up excuses to present to Cynthia. He had actually caught himself enjoying the banter among Tracy’s friends. Paradoxically, though, on the drive to the café, he often found himself hoping that Tracy would be alone. At first, of course, that seemed natural enough; it would allow him more freedom to pursue the information he was after about his father—“Peter” as Tracy called him; he had not yet dared to ask whether Tracy had ever known him under another name. But, with each passing week, the urgency of collecting that information seemed to fade, while the anticipation of these meetings grew sharper. He caught himself measuring the hours at work leading up to Hunter’s, to meeting Tracy.
He was jolted back into the service by the motions of the men around him, crossing themselves and brushing the ground thrice in rhythm with the deacon’s chanting. The familiar ritual bowing clued Anton in to the meaning of the Greek words: “Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen. Alelluia. Alleluia. Alleluia.” The use of Greek faintly annoyed him, especially since he had discovered that most of the monks had been born and raised in English-speaking countries. ‘Get over it,’ he admonished himself, ‘it’s their home; I’m the guest, the one on retreat.’
Retreat from what?’ Certainly, from the bean counting of his work. Lately, the thrill of the hunt had abated, his investigative procedures become merely mechanical. He found himself wondering about the lives of the suspects over whose accounts he pored, dreaming up whole back-stories, inventing sympathetic motives other than greed for their attempts to conjure illegitimate possibilities out of the inexorable calculation of profits and losses. Disturbingly, the main character in these daydreams often looked like Tracy. Even more disturbing was the face of the man he played opposite: Anton’s father. Only, Anton could not remember his father’s face. He had to assume it was much like his own.
He came to with a start, aided by a shift in the tempo of the monks’ chanting. Their rapid-fire Greek suddenly stretched into long, reverential syllables, words with which Anton was, for once, familiar:
Agios o theos;
Agios ischyros;
Agios athanatos:
Eleeison imas.
Anton translated inwardly the words of the Trisagion prayer: Holy God; Holy Mighty; Holy Immortal: Have mercy on us! With each phrase, he joined the monks and his fellow retreatants in another series of low bows, brushing the ground, berating himself as he did so for having allowed his imagination, once again—and at this, of all moments!—, to drift back to the images that had been plaguing him. Had he not come on retreat precisely to escape them?
Work had once been Anton’s place of retreat: from home, from his life with Cynthia and the girls. They had never really been the center of his life, but he had deluded himself that his long hours of working into the evenings and weekends were a form of self-sacrifice on their behalf. Anton thought of himself as an excellent provider, a source of the financial and material security his own father, with his wanderings from job to low-paying job, had never provided, even before his flight. Anton believed he loved his daughters, but when faced with what were supposed to be moments of domestic bliss, those rare moments when little Sophie climbed into his lap with a drawing, or Rachel timidly asked if he’d like to see her in the new dress she and her mother had brought home, he often found himself at a loss, longing for the certainty of ledgers and accounts.
As for Cynthia, he had never deluded himself that he felt an especially strong attraction toward her. He loved her in the sense that she was an excellent mother and a good wife, someone he could rely on to pick up the slack with the girls at home, to greet him late in the evening with a warm word and dinner. For Anton, this was the stuff and substance of married “bliss,” the sufficient reality behind the Hallmark-generated hype. To be sure, they had had their moments of romance: a year-and-a-half of dating, then engagement, nights and weekends spent together while he finished his undergraduate degree. If the whole thing had felt scripted at times, Anton attributed this to his Orthodox upbringing; the Church, with its roots in an Eastern European peasant milieu, where arranged marriages were the norm, retained a critical attitude toward Western notions of Romantic Love.
Cynthia, too, had been very sensible about this. A refugee from a previously failed marriage, she made it clear to Anton that she shared his skepticism about the relative value of impermanent passions, though she was not especially interested in the theological underpinnings. To Anton, who had fiercely re-embraced Orthodoxy in the wake of years of intellectual pretense in college during which he proclaimed himself an atheist, years that culminated in a deep depression and sense of anomie, Cynthia’s attitude toward religion was puzzling. Raised an Episcopalian, she seemed to see the faith as little more than a familial obligation. Ironically, this appeared to have eased her consent to convert prior to their marriage. She seemed to see it not so much as a conversion as a change in outer trappings: the presence of a few icons on the walls at home, and longer hours than really necessary spent in church.
Though Cynthia claimed, on the rare occasions when she commented directly on Anton’s piety, to find it admirable, he sensed it sometimes irritated her. This had especially been the case during the week leading up to his retreat. Behind her interruptions as he stood alone in his study, saying evening prayers in front of the icons, his sensed a growing resentment. Dimly, he wondered whether she somehow sensed that the new fervency and length of his private prayers had something to do with the stilted manner he seemed unable to escape in answering her questions about how his day had gone.
Anton, himself, puzzled occasionally over the link between the fierceness with which he was driven to stand at prayer, the hollowness of the words he recited mechanically from memory or from his prayer book, and the curiously intense pleasure he experienced at Hunter’s. He simply knew that he felt more alive there than at any other moment of his week. At the same time, these illicit moments left him feeling profoundly guilty, casting about for some means of atonement. And so, he had arranged this retreat at the monastery—his second, since his arrival in Texas—and for a meeting with Father Danieel He felt he needed to bring into some order the fragmented portions of his life.
Of course, he could not go to Father Kyrill, his parish priest. He knew he was supposed to; but, he found himself increasingly alienated from the life of his parish. Confessing fully to Father Kyrill would require that Anton talk openly about his lunch meetings with Tracy, about both his plans for revenge on his father, and the confused feelings that seemed increasingly to be getting in the way of those plans. And Father Kyrill was a good confessor—damn him; he was not the type to just take Anton’s words at face falue; he would force him to put into words longings and desires which he preferred remain unspoken. So, Anton had stopped going to Confession and Communion, ushering his family out of church immediately after Liturgy to avoid any occasion for his priest to inquire into his new abstinence from the Sacraments. The one time Father Kyrill had managed to pull him aside, Anton had mumbled something about pressures at work and not being able to fast properly, then had excused himself to search for Sophie, avoiding his pastor’s look of concern.
Of course, there was the danger that Father Danieel would take the same approach. Anton half expected him to. But, there was the comfort of distance: The abbot had never met Anton’s family. Moreover, he seemed likely to look more sympathetically on the demands for justice that drove Anton on, and less likely to inquire into other motives.
About the latter supposition, Anton could not have been more wrong.
* * *
Arriving at the guest house shortly after Compline, Anton was slightly annoyed to discover, through the glass partition separating the reception area from the bookshop in which the priest-monk received those seeking spiritual council, that another visitor had already gained admission. Anton drew a chair to a position where his presence could be noted through the glass, and sat. He used the time to plan out how he would present his case. There was really no need to go into the pleasure he experienced in Tracy’s company. Compline had given him time for reflection. The feelings he had begun to fear might border on some kind of perverse attraction were surely just a pretext for forestalling the confrontation with his father. His sin was cowardice—not, not anything else. No, that was his father’s sin. He just needed to sort out his anger, to get clear on . . . on its justification. After all, the Church did not condemn all forms of wrath; some anger could be righteous. But, what troubled him was the sense of selfishness involved; for anger to be righteous, he sensed, it must somehow be impersonal, disinterested, like the investigations he conducted at work into other people’s shady dealings. He needed to make it clear that he was not after personal gain. He had long ago resolved that whatever payment he forced out of his father’s winnings, would go entirely to his mother.
His thoughts were interrupted by the departure of the other visitor. Anton got up and walked into the bookstore, pausing briefly at the entrance. Father Danieel remained seated behind his desk. Anton greeted him in the manner traditionally reserved for bishops and abbots, bending at the waist in a low bow, brushing the fingers of his right hand against the floor, then standing with right hand cupped over left, palms up, in request of a blessing. He felt disconcerted by the irritation that crossed Father Danieel’s face as he stood up, made the sign of the cross over Anton, then placed his hand in his visitor’s to be ritually kissed. Anton had heard that the Greeks were less punctilious about such formalities. It troubled him that the abbot perhaps found him pretentious. Or, maybe he was just tired; the monks awoke at midnight for corporate prayers in the chapel, started their day with 6:00 o’clock Matins, and were said to keep long hours of private prayer during the night. No doubt, the abbot was eager to retire to his cell.
Anton sat in the chair Father Danieel offered him from the other side of the desk, then waited. The monk made no effort to speak, and kept his eyes lowered toward the desk. Apparently, it was up to Anton to justify this intrusion.
“I wanted to seek your counsel about a situation I’ve gotten myself into.”
“. . . Yes?”
Anton launched into his prepared remarks. The monk seemed to listen intently, but kept his eyes lowered toward his desk.
“. . . Tell me more about these meetings.”
“There’s not much to tell, really. We talk. He’s confirmed that he still sees my father.”
“You asked him directly?”
“No. Of course not. But, I’m sure.”
Fr. Danieel frowned. “Have you read the desert fathers?”
“I’ve read parts of the Philokalia.”
“Then, you know what they say about the importance of guarding one’s heart?”
Anton nodded vaguely.
“You’re attracted to this man.” It was not a question, and Anton made no response.
“What you’ve undertaken would require great strength. ‘Your adversary the devil prowls around like a ravening lion, seeking someone to devour.’”
Anton was somewhat taken aback. “Perhaps I’ve gotten in over my head.”
Father Danieel let the comment hang in the air for a while. “Sometimes God lets the Devil test us.”
“What do you mean? . . . To show us who we really are?”
“. . . Yes.”
“Can we change who we are?”
“At a price. . . . Are you capable of offering this man up?”
“You don’t mean . . . ? My father?”
“. . . Not only him.”
Anton sat in silence. He became aware that his heart was thumping. . . . “Is it wrong for me to pursue justice?”
“Any action from a divided heart is wrong. . . . But, so is inaction. ‘If your eye offends you, pluck it out.’ . . . Our Lord says, ‘Pluck it out,’ but not ‘Avert your eyes’: If you back down from the test, you may think you’ve renounced the Devil, and not even know you’ve turned your back on God.”
As Father Danieel stood up, Anton was startled to discover that the interview was over. He rose, but neither asked for nor received a parting blessing.
The Bridegroom Comes: Chapter Seven: Whom He Shall Find Watching
As Tracy lowered the cup from his lips, two hands reached from behind his head and covered his eyes. Coffee sloshed onto the table as he tried to twist his head, but found it firmly gripped in place. “Anton?”
Releasing his grip, Herman stepped aside and raised his eyebrows in exaggerated shock. “Anton?!” he echoed. Tracy’s grin vanished. Herman lowered himself into the neighboring chair, his eyes searching out Tracy’s face with amusement, then concern, then pity. Tracy’s embarrassment flared into anger.
“What do you think you’re doing? Christ, you’re a pain in the ass.”
Herman was unfazed. “Honey, I never thought I’d see the day. You poor thing.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Mmm hmm. Sombody hand the Devil a blanket, ‘cause hell has definitely frozen over.”
“Get a grip.”
“You’re in love.”
“Please.”
“And with that closet case. Girl, what are you thinking?”
Tracy could think of no response. Of course, the idea was preposterous; especially, coming out of Herman’s mouth. What made it all the more infuriating, was that, for the first time, Tracy realized there might be some truth to it. How could he have reached such a state? It was undeniable that his mood had grown increasingly agitated during the two weeks of Anton’s absence from the Bistro. Each day for over a week, Tracy realized with astonishment, he had shown up at Hunters’ hoping that Anton would be there; each day, had spent his lunch waiting for Anton to walk through the door. It was ridiculous.
Herman drove the point home: “Honey, don’t take this wrong, but for over a week now, you’ve been such a bitch, I was beginning to resent the competition. Like an addict in withdrawal. And who would have guessed your pusher was sweet little Cupid! I guess it’s true: A man can get addicted to just about anything. That mousy little man!”
“Shut the fuck up. You don’t know him.”
Herman leaned back. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
Tracy was shocked at the strength of his emotion; even more so, at its quality: He felt protective--not so much of himself, he was astonished to discover, as of Anton. He had never felt protective of another human being in his life.
“Sweetheart, I am sorry. Far be it from me to criticize the ways of the heart.”
Tracy fished out his wallet. “Look, you’re right; I’m not much company right now.”
“Okay. . . . Tracy.” In his embarrassment, Tracy found it difficult to meet Herman’s eyes, which had grown serious. “I am sorry. If you want to talk . . . .”
“Forget it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I said forget it! . . . Look, it’s not you. Don’t worry about it. I’ll talk to you later.” He gathered up his jacket and headed out the door.
On his walk back to the studio, Tracy tried to make sense of things. But, almost nothing about his attraction to Anton—there; he’d said it!—Christ!—nothing about this attraction made sense. Of course, there was the usual factor: Anton was good looking, in a ridiculously conventional, straight boy sort of way. But, there was more to it than that. Whatever it was, it wasn’t the witty repartée; the man was certainly no conversationalist. Tracy felt simultaneously flattered and awkward at the degree to which their meetings revolved around himself. He supposed the attraction stemmed at least partly from the lure of forbidden fruit: Accustomed to easy conquests, Tracy found his new acquaintance’s shyness titillating. Over time, though, he had begun to sense that there was more to it than even that. The life Anton held so closely in reserve represented everything Tracy held in disdain: the conventionalities of religious tradition, the monotony of suburban family life—all aspects of a world Tracy felt had rejected him and which he despised in return. But, instead of feeling grateful that Anton had rarely and only reluctantly talked about these things, Tracy hungered after it, like some waif with his nose pressed against the window of a restaurant he wasn’t allowed to enter. Perhaps Anton had begun to notice this. During the most recent of their lunch dates, the occasions for his deflecting Tracy’s queries about his family, his parish, his Orthodox upbringing seemed to increase. Now, he’d disappeared. Tracy was shocked at the emptiness left in his wake.
Releasing his grip, Herman stepped aside and raised his eyebrows in exaggerated shock. “Anton?!” he echoed. Tracy’s grin vanished. Herman lowered himself into the neighboring chair, his eyes searching out Tracy’s face with amusement, then concern, then pity. Tracy’s embarrassment flared into anger.
“What do you think you’re doing? Christ, you’re a pain in the ass.”
Herman was unfazed. “Honey, I never thought I’d see the day. You poor thing.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Mmm hmm. Sombody hand the Devil a blanket, ‘cause hell has definitely frozen over.”
“Get a grip.”
“You’re in love.”
“Please.”
“And with that closet case. Girl, what are you thinking?”
Tracy could think of no response. Of course, the idea was preposterous; especially, coming out of Herman’s mouth. What made it all the more infuriating, was that, for the first time, Tracy realized there might be some truth to it. How could he have reached such a state? It was undeniable that his mood had grown increasingly agitated during the two weeks of Anton’s absence from the Bistro. Each day for over a week, Tracy realized with astonishment, he had shown up at Hunters’ hoping that Anton would be there; each day, had spent his lunch waiting for Anton to walk through the door. It was ridiculous.
Herman drove the point home: “Honey, don’t take this wrong, but for over a week now, you’ve been such a bitch, I was beginning to resent the competition. Like an addict in withdrawal. And who would have guessed your pusher was sweet little Cupid! I guess it’s true: A man can get addicted to just about anything. That mousy little man!”
“Shut the fuck up. You don’t know him.”
Herman leaned back. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
Tracy was shocked at the strength of his emotion; even more so, at its quality: He felt protective--not so much of himself, he was astonished to discover, as of Anton. He had never felt protective of another human being in his life.
“Sweetheart, I am sorry. Far be it from me to criticize the ways of the heart.”
Tracy fished out his wallet. “Look, you’re right; I’m not much company right now.”
“Okay. . . . Tracy.” In his embarrassment, Tracy found it difficult to meet Herman’s eyes, which had grown serious. “I am sorry. If you want to talk . . . .”
“Forget it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I said forget it! . . . Look, it’s not you. Don’t worry about it. I’ll talk to you later.” He gathered up his jacket and headed out the door.
On his walk back to the studio, Tracy tried to make sense of things. But, almost nothing about his attraction to Anton—there; he’d said it!—Christ!—nothing about this attraction made sense. Of course, there was the usual factor: Anton was good looking, in a ridiculously conventional, straight boy sort of way. But, there was more to it than that. Whatever it was, it wasn’t the witty repartée; the man was certainly no conversationalist. Tracy felt simultaneously flattered and awkward at the degree to which their meetings revolved around himself. He supposed the attraction stemmed at least partly from the lure of forbidden fruit: Accustomed to easy conquests, Tracy found his new acquaintance’s shyness titillating. Over time, though, he had begun to sense that there was more to it than even that. The life Anton held so closely in reserve represented everything Tracy held in disdain: the conventionalities of religious tradition, the monotony of suburban family life—all aspects of a world Tracy felt had rejected him and which he despised in return. But, instead of feeling grateful that Anton had rarely and only reluctantly talked about these things, Tracy hungered after it, like some waif with his nose pressed against the window of a restaurant he wasn’t allowed to enter. Perhaps Anton had begun to notice this. During the most recent of their lunch dates, the occasions for his deflecting Tracy’s queries about his family, his parish, his Orthodox upbringing seemed to increase. Now, he’d disappeared. Tracy was shocked at the emptiness left in his wake.
The Bridegroom Comes: Chapter Eight: Whom He Shall Find Sleeping
Anton’s eyes flew open. For an awful moment, he relived the childhood agony of waking up in the middle of the night to a strange room in a new town, wherever his father had found work.
Even as his mind registered the fact that everything around him, he had chosen—his bed, his house, the dark shadow of his sleeping wife’s body beside him—, it felt utterly unfamiliar. This is how he should have felt earlier that day, not now, not here. ‘Am I insane?’
He knew that the Calvinist doctrine of predestination was foreign to Orthodoxy, but his day had been entirely unorthodox, and precisely those events that were most without precedent had seemed to unfold inexorably, as if from a second, doomed nature.
After his return from the monastery, he had stayed away from Hunter’s for several days, but he knew he would go back. “If you back down from the test,” the monk had said, and Anton had no intention of doing so. But, Father Danieel had also said it would require great strength, and Anton sensed a need to gather his forces. Looking back on his interview with the abbot, what troubled Anton most was its perfunctory nature: It was as if Father Danieel had sensed that the whole thing was a waste of time, that his interlocutor lacked the strength to pass the test, perhaps even to undergo it. It was the latter doubt that pushed Anton forward; he would at least prove the monk was wrong about that. So, three days after his return, he ventured back into the lair; whether as hunter or as prey, he was unsure.
* * *
He found Tracy and Herman huddled over a copy of the local gay news weekly. Both their faces betrayed uncharacteristic emotions: bitterness, in Herman’s case; shame, in Tracy’s. As usual, Herman was holding forth. He was the first to notice Anton: “Great, here’s your as-good-as-straight-boyfriend to gloat.” Looking up, Tracy broke into a radiant smile. Before he could speak, however, Herman cut him short. “Join the feeding frenzy! Today’s specialty: carcass of local drag queen.” He fished the cell phone out of his pocket and flung it onto the newspaper in front of Tracy. “Here, why don’t you call Simon and have him come over! Invite Millron while you’re at it, then the party will be complete.” The delight that lit up Tracy’s face at Anton’s arrival appeared to wage war with the shame that had preceded it. Glancing down at the paper on the table, Anton noted it was open to the Opinion page. The only headline not obscured by coffee cups and other café bric-a-brac captured his attention: “Off with Her Head!” it read, followed by smaller print: “Can Our Community Afford This Court?”
With an apologetic grimace, Tracy pulled his attention from Anton’s face back toward Herman. “I told you, I’m as upset as you are. The man’s a shit. I told him I’d pass on his concerns on behalf of the Human Rights League, but that I doubted you’d give a fuck. If I’d ever have thought he’d stoop this low, I’d have told him to stick it up his ass the first time he asked me to bring it up with you.”
“But you didn’t, did you? Mind you, it must have been such an embarrassment to admit we were close enough for you to even bring it up. A drag queen for a friend: How gauche! And now, it appears, a pederastic one, at that. I wouldn’t want to further sully your reputation among the queer haut monde. I’ll leave you two to butch it up.” He shot Anton a look that hovered somewhere between malevolence, hurt and interest. “So little time, so much straight ass to kiss.” As he snatched up the phone and left, Anton noted with shock that Herman’s face seemed close to tears.
Tracy sat down with a sigh: “Shit.”
“What’s that all about?”
Tracy shoved the article across the table. “You remember the drag show for St. Monica’s?”
“Yeah.”
“The Human Rights League is afraid it’ll interfere with their plans.”
“What plans?”
“They’re trying to get City Council to extend anti-discrimination laws to queers. You know: right to housing, city benefits for same-sex partners, that kind of thing. Some of the Council members are sitting on the fence, and the League is afraid any scandal might tip the vote against them. Like you said: ‘Drag queens and schoolchildren’ . . . .”
“So, what’s all this about pederasty?”
“Read the article.”
Anton scanned it quickly, noting the by-line at the end. “Who’s Wallace Millron?”
“Our first openly gay Council member, and former president of the League. And a total asshole.”
The article was a fairly artful piece of rhetoric, opening with a description of recent judicial and political victories on gay marriage, positive portrayals of gay characters in popular entertainment, and the author’s own election to City Council as evidence that the moment was ripe for passage of a local gay rights ordinance. It proceeded with a tolerant acknowledgment of the role played by drag queens in the early gay rights movement, and a commendation of the gay and lesbian community for its tolerance of even the most exotic elements; but culminated with the argument that now was the time to grow realistic in pursuing political goals, which meant presenting a main-stream, non-threatening image of gays and lesbians to the larger community. Herman/Ivana and his court, it was suggested, did not fit that image.
It was obviously this latter part of the article that had so upset Herman and Tracy. The author, apparently concerned that the force of his argument alone might not be enough to win opposition to the planned event, insinuated that the drag court’s reigning monarch had a history suggesting more than merely altruistic motives for his desire to associate with schoolboys. Noticing Anton dwell over this part of the article, Tracy supplied the missing link: “Everybody knows Herman’s lover, Bobby. He’s twenty, but they’ve been together since he was seventeen.”
“Jeez. This man plays hardball.”
“You think? Now Herman thinks I’m in cahoots with Millron, which in a way, I have been. I can’t believe I bought his assimilationist line of crap.”
“What do you mean?”
“Wallace asked me to plead with Herman not to go ahead with the gala for St. Monica’s, at least not until after the Council vote. Of course, Herman would have none of it. And, he shouldn’t. Now, Millron’s apparently decided to pull out the big guns: the ‘P word.’ This is still the Bible Belt, remember; a lot of gay men in this city grew up hearing about the ‘gay agenda,’ how the faggots are all out to convert ‘our children.’ It’s a charge that still causes a lot of fear at the gut level. Especially when it comes from someone within the community.”
“You think it’ll work?”
“It will with the folks that matter: our local ‘gay leaders.’ They’ve never been eager to claim drag queens as their own, as it is. You remember the big stink in the Eighties over allowing the Court to host a float in the Gay Pride parade? No, of course you don’t. You see, the irony of the whole thing is, Herman really does give a damn. This whole gala thing is about his wanting to overcome the Court’s pariah status within the gay community. At least, partly that. He’s applied to the Human Rights League for official sponsorship of the event. In spite of Millron, the current board hasn’t been able to find a good reason to deny their application. That’s what’s really sticking in Wallace’s craw. I say, fuck the community. There is no gay and lesbian community, and why the hell should there be? We just need to be allowed to screw whoever we want, put on dresses and big wigs if we want, and not give a fuck what anyone else thinks. Herman and his queens were better off when they really didn’t give a shit.”
“So, why’d you try to convince Howard to back down?”
“I wish to hell I hadn’t. Temporary insanity. Guess I got swept up in everyone’s excitement over this City Council vote.”
Anton was struck by Tracy’s apparently sincere mortification that he had played a part in hurting Herman. He found himself feeling an odd mixture of admiration and jealousy. “It’s nice to see you again.”
Tracy looked slightly taken aback. “Thanks. Where’ve you been?”
“Busy. You know, work.”
“All work and no play . . . .”
“Well, here I am.”
“Here you are.” Tracy smiled. “I want to show you something.” He slid his chair next to Anton’s, and fished what appeared to be a rosary out of his pocket. On closer inspection, Anton realized it was, in fact, an Orthodox prayer rope, made up of polished wooden beads instead of the more traditional woolen knots. “I’ve been carrying this thing around with me for two weeks, waiting for you to show up. And you know what? It’s already improved my prayer life: I’ve been praying every day that I don’t get into an accident with this thing on me. It’d be way worse than dirty underwear!” Anton smiled stiffly. “I was going through a box of old photos my mother sent me and came across it. My mother attached a note identifying it as her grandmother’s ‘Orthodox rosary.’ I called her about it.”
“Your great-grandmother was Orthodox? Where was she from?”
“The Ukraine. Mom said she grew up ‘Eastern Catholic,’ whatever that is. Turns out, the government tried to force her whole village to convert to Orthodox. That’s part of why she and her family came to America.”
“She must have been from Western Ukraine.”
“I dunno. Anyway, I thought you might be interested.” He reached out, took Anton’s hand and turned it upward, placing the string of beads in a neat coil on top. The gesture was unmistakably tender; the warmth in Anton’s hand quickly mounted to his face. “So, how do you use it? The usual ‘Hail Mary’s?’”
Anton did not immediately remove his hand. “No. You repeat what’s called the ‘Jesus prayer’: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’” He drew his hand back, still holding the beads.
“Hmm. Sounds like you Orthodox are as into self-flagellation as us Catholics.”
“So, you still consider yourself Catholic?”
“Of course not. But, you know what they say: ‘Once a Catholic, . . . .’ I suppose I’ll die still rejecting the Church that rejected me. At some point, you’d think I’d stop giving a damn.” He left his hand on the table. “Anyway, I really loved my great-grandmother. When I was twelve, I left home and went to live with my grandmother right up until I left Portland. Mi Mi—that’s what we called her mother—lived with Grandma. She was very pious; used to take me to Mass.”
Anton nodded.
“I’d like to know more about her; what her childhood was like. You think I could visit your church sometime?”
“No.” Anton placed the prayer rope back on the table.
“Afraid I’ll blow you cover?” Tracy smiled. “I promise, I won’t so much as look in your direction.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea. There are other Orthodox churches in town.”
“Russian Orthodox?”
“There’s one in Plano. I think I’ve heard there’s a Byzantine Rite Catholic Church here, too. That’d be more like what your great-grandmother grew up in.”
“Okay, fear not: I promise not to infiltrate your parish. Probably wouldn’t make it past the door, anyway. You know: the angel with the revolving fiery sword. The impure may not enter.”
“It’s not that. It’d just be awkward, that’s all.”
“You want to go for a walk?”
“What?” Anton was flustered by the non-sequitur.
“You know: a walk? One foot in front of the other.”
“Uh, okay. Sure.”
“Great. I need to get some fresh air. It’s a gorgeous day. We’re crazy to be inside.”
Tracy did most of the talking during the walk, as usual. His manner, though, was different; his cynicism seemed to have been stripped away, replaced by a playful, almost girlish mood. He kept bumping into Anton until they were walking nearly shoulder-to-shoulder. They stopped in front of a vaguely familiar apartment building. Tracy turned with a smile, “You want to come up?”
“What?”
“It’s my apartment, remember? You’ve been here before. I still owe you a massage.”
“Oh! Uh, no, I can’t. I have to get back to work.”
“Okay, no massage. But, I owe you a coffee, too: You never got to order at Hunter’s. My coffee’s better than theirs.” His smile was disarming, but Anton still hung back. “I don’t know why, but I’d like you to see a photo of Mi-Mi. Come on.” He turned and walked up the stairs, not waiting to see if Anton followed. He did.
What happened in the apartment, Anton remembered in all too great detail, but with a curious detachment, as if it were scenes from a movie. Tracy made coffee in the kitchen, asking Anton to pull a package of cookies from the refrigerator and to place them with cups and saucers on a tray. He continued his friendly chatter. After they seated at the table, he excused himself to his bedroom, then returned with a box of photos which he placed on the table. Standing behind Anton, slightly to the side, he leaned over Anton’s shoulder to pluck out images of his past: his great-grandmother, other members of his family, a blond-haired ten-year-old boy wearing a white tee-shirt blazoned with a yellow smiley-face, standing amid younger children in the concrete wasteland of a low-rent apartment complex, looking at the camera out of eyes that made no attempt to mask their hurt and expectancy. Barely an hour ago, Anton had seen that expression in Tracy’s eyes for the first time.
Leaning over to point out and explain details in several photos, Tracy placed his hand on Anton’s left shoulder. Anton was surprised at its weight and strength. Then, he moved it to Anton’s other shoulder as he bent down to talk about a photograph, his cheek nearly brushing Anton’s. Anton could smell Tracy’s hair. Strangely, it made him think of the ocean, the beach, strong arms encircling. Involuntarily, he leaned in toward the warmth of those memories, of Tracy’s body. He was astonished to find his head cradled in the crook of Tracy’s neck. Tracy responded by lowering himself onto one knee while he moved his hand up Anton’s right shoulder, drawing him in closer. Tracy moved his head slightly to the right, inhaled deeply the scent from Anton’s hair, placed his lips on his forehead, near the hairline, then placing the fingers of his left hand under Anton’s jaw, he tilted Anton’s face gently up, and kissed him.
Anton melted into the sensation: sea grass, goose tongue, the sound of waves. He was on his knees, too, his left hand around Tracy’s back, his right hand cupping the back of Tracy’s head, pulling him in.
Now he was on Tracy’s couch, leaning against the sofa cushion. Tracy knelt over him, one knee on each side of Anton’s thighs, slowly unbuttoning Anton’s shirt, kissing his breastbone, his chest, the hair around his nipples, the nipples themselves, his belly.
Tracy pulled Anton’s slacks off slowly, then unbuttoned his own shirt. Anton ran his eyes over Tracy’s body, reached out to run his hand down the hairless chest, astonished at its creamy smoothness and the tautness of underlying muscle. Tracy gently placed his hand over Anton’s, smiled, and pulled him off the couch to his feet, then down the hall to his bed.
Afterwards, Tracy had been tender, lying on his side, lightly caressing Anton’s arm, gazing at his face. Anton lay motionless and mute, staring at the ceiling. Wordlessly, he got up, and pulled on his clothes. Tracy remained lying on his side, head propped up by one hand, watching. Anton did not look at him. Neither spoke as Anton pulled on his shoes, walked down the hall and out the door.
* * *
Now Anton lay staring at his own ceiling. In the dim light cast by the hall lamp which Cynthia always insisted remain on—for the girls, she said—, Anton forced himself to trace the figures he had conjured countless times out of the textured, off-white paint: a sharp-faced woman, wearing a rakish, plumed hat and angular cocktail dress; a gun; a Chinese dragon. The lines were all there, but the figures kept swimming out of shape. “It hasn’t changed,” he repeated to himself; “nothing has changed.” The face of Father Danieel kept forming before him, interfering with his efforts. “Your adversary, the Devil . . . .”
Anton had only one hope of forcing the lines back into their proper order: to incorporate what had happened into his plans, master this desire and bend it to serve an outcome that would both judge and redeem it. “Sometimes, God lets the Devil test you.” Anton was awestruck at the deviousness of the test. He had been lured into following in his father’s steps, given into his father’s lust, lain with his father’s lover. A wave of nausea swept through him. The outcome God desired was crystal clear: Anton was being asked to make the sacrifice his father had been unable, or unwilling, to make. “Are you prepared to offer this man up?”
Even as his mind registered the fact that everything around him, he had chosen—his bed, his house, the dark shadow of his sleeping wife’s body beside him—, it felt utterly unfamiliar. This is how he should have felt earlier that day, not now, not here. ‘Am I insane?’
He knew that the Calvinist doctrine of predestination was foreign to Orthodoxy, but his day had been entirely unorthodox, and precisely those events that were most without precedent had seemed to unfold inexorably, as if from a second, doomed nature.
After his return from the monastery, he had stayed away from Hunter’s for several days, but he knew he would go back. “If you back down from the test,” the monk had said, and Anton had no intention of doing so. But, Father Danieel had also said it would require great strength, and Anton sensed a need to gather his forces. Looking back on his interview with the abbot, what troubled Anton most was its perfunctory nature: It was as if Father Danieel had sensed that the whole thing was a waste of time, that his interlocutor lacked the strength to pass the test, perhaps even to undergo it. It was the latter doubt that pushed Anton forward; he would at least prove the monk was wrong about that. So, three days after his return, he ventured back into the lair; whether as hunter or as prey, he was unsure.
* * *
He found Tracy and Herman huddled over a copy of the local gay news weekly. Both their faces betrayed uncharacteristic emotions: bitterness, in Herman’s case; shame, in Tracy’s. As usual, Herman was holding forth. He was the first to notice Anton: “Great, here’s your as-good-as-straight-boyfriend to gloat.” Looking up, Tracy broke into a radiant smile. Before he could speak, however, Herman cut him short. “Join the feeding frenzy! Today’s specialty: carcass of local drag queen.” He fished the cell phone out of his pocket and flung it onto the newspaper in front of Tracy. “Here, why don’t you call Simon and have him come over! Invite Millron while you’re at it, then the party will be complete.” The delight that lit up Tracy’s face at Anton’s arrival appeared to wage war with the shame that had preceded it. Glancing down at the paper on the table, Anton noted it was open to the Opinion page. The only headline not obscured by coffee cups and other café bric-a-brac captured his attention: “Off with Her Head!” it read, followed by smaller print: “Can Our Community Afford This Court?”
With an apologetic grimace, Tracy pulled his attention from Anton’s face back toward Herman. “I told you, I’m as upset as you are. The man’s a shit. I told him I’d pass on his concerns on behalf of the Human Rights League, but that I doubted you’d give a fuck. If I’d ever have thought he’d stoop this low, I’d have told him to stick it up his ass the first time he asked me to bring it up with you.”
“But you didn’t, did you? Mind you, it must have been such an embarrassment to admit we were close enough for you to even bring it up. A drag queen for a friend: How gauche! And now, it appears, a pederastic one, at that. I wouldn’t want to further sully your reputation among the queer haut monde. I’ll leave you two to butch it up.” He shot Anton a look that hovered somewhere between malevolence, hurt and interest. “So little time, so much straight ass to kiss.” As he snatched up the phone and left, Anton noted with shock that Herman’s face seemed close to tears.
Tracy sat down with a sigh: “Shit.”
“What’s that all about?”
Tracy shoved the article across the table. “You remember the drag show for St. Monica’s?”
“Yeah.”
“The Human Rights League is afraid it’ll interfere with their plans.”
“What plans?”
“They’re trying to get City Council to extend anti-discrimination laws to queers. You know: right to housing, city benefits for same-sex partners, that kind of thing. Some of the Council members are sitting on the fence, and the League is afraid any scandal might tip the vote against them. Like you said: ‘Drag queens and schoolchildren’ . . . .”
“So, what’s all this about pederasty?”
“Read the article.”
Anton scanned it quickly, noting the by-line at the end. “Who’s Wallace Millron?”
“Our first openly gay Council member, and former president of the League. And a total asshole.”
The article was a fairly artful piece of rhetoric, opening with a description of recent judicial and political victories on gay marriage, positive portrayals of gay characters in popular entertainment, and the author’s own election to City Council as evidence that the moment was ripe for passage of a local gay rights ordinance. It proceeded with a tolerant acknowledgment of the role played by drag queens in the early gay rights movement, and a commendation of the gay and lesbian community for its tolerance of even the most exotic elements; but culminated with the argument that now was the time to grow realistic in pursuing political goals, which meant presenting a main-stream, non-threatening image of gays and lesbians to the larger community. Herman/Ivana and his court, it was suggested, did not fit that image.
It was obviously this latter part of the article that had so upset Herman and Tracy. The author, apparently concerned that the force of his argument alone might not be enough to win opposition to the planned event, insinuated that the drag court’s reigning monarch had a history suggesting more than merely altruistic motives for his desire to associate with schoolboys. Noticing Anton dwell over this part of the article, Tracy supplied the missing link: “Everybody knows Herman’s lover, Bobby. He’s twenty, but they’ve been together since he was seventeen.”
“Jeez. This man plays hardball.”
“You think? Now Herman thinks I’m in cahoots with Millron, which in a way, I have been. I can’t believe I bought his assimilationist line of crap.”
“What do you mean?”
“Wallace asked me to plead with Herman not to go ahead with the gala for St. Monica’s, at least not until after the Council vote. Of course, Herman would have none of it. And, he shouldn’t. Now, Millron’s apparently decided to pull out the big guns: the ‘P word.’ This is still the Bible Belt, remember; a lot of gay men in this city grew up hearing about the ‘gay agenda,’ how the faggots are all out to convert ‘our children.’ It’s a charge that still causes a lot of fear at the gut level. Especially when it comes from someone within the community.”
“You think it’ll work?”
“It will with the folks that matter: our local ‘gay leaders.’ They’ve never been eager to claim drag queens as their own, as it is. You remember the big stink in the Eighties over allowing the Court to host a float in the Gay Pride parade? No, of course you don’t. You see, the irony of the whole thing is, Herman really does give a damn. This whole gala thing is about his wanting to overcome the Court’s pariah status within the gay community. At least, partly that. He’s applied to the Human Rights League for official sponsorship of the event. In spite of Millron, the current board hasn’t been able to find a good reason to deny their application. That’s what’s really sticking in Wallace’s craw. I say, fuck the community. There is no gay and lesbian community, and why the hell should there be? We just need to be allowed to screw whoever we want, put on dresses and big wigs if we want, and not give a fuck what anyone else thinks. Herman and his queens were better off when they really didn’t give a shit.”
“So, why’d you try to convince Howard to back down?”
“I wish to hell I hadn’t. Temporary insanity. Guess I got swept up in everyone’s excitement over this City Council vote.”
Anton was struck by Tracy’s apparently sincere mortification that he had played a part in hurting Herman. He found himself feeling an odd mixture of admiration and jealousy. “It’s nice to see you again.”
Tracy looked slightly taken aback. “Thanks. Where’ve you been?”
“Busy. You know, work.”
“All work and no play . . . .”
“Well, here I am.”
“Here you are.” Tracy smiled. “I want to show you something.” He slid his chair next to Anton’s, and fished what appeared to be a rosary out of his pocket. On closer inspection, Anton realized it was, in fact, an Orthodox prayer rope, made up of polished wooden beads instead of the more traditional woolen knots. “I’ve been carrying this thing around with me for two weeks, waiting for you to show up. And you know what? It’s already improved my prayer life: I’ve been praying every day that I don’t get into an accident with this thing on me. It’d be way worse than dirty underwear!” Anton smiled stiffly. “I was going through a box of old photos my mother sent me and came across it. My mother attached a note identifying it as her grandmother’s ‘Orthodox rosary.’ I called her about it.”
“Your great-grandmother was Orthodox? Where was she from?”
“The Ukraine. Mom said she grew up ‘Eastern Catholic,’ whatever that is. Turns out, the government tried to force her whole village to convert to Orthodox. That’s part of why she and her family came to America.”
“She must have been from Western Ukraine.”
“I dunno. Anyway, I thought you might be interested.” He reached out, took Anton’s hand and turned it upward, placing the string of beads in a neat coil on top. The gesture was unmistakably tender; the warmth in Anton’s hand quickly mounted to his face. “So, how do you use it? The usual ‘Hail Mary’s?’”
Anton did not immediately remove his hand. “No. You repeat what’s called the ‘Jesus prayer’: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’” He drew his hand back, still holding the beads.
“Hmm. Sounds like you Orthodox are as into self-flagellation as us Catholics.”
“So, you still consider yourself Catholic?”
“Of course not. But, you know what they say: ‘Once a Catholic, . . . .’ I suppose I’ll die still rejecting the Church that rejected me. At some point, you’d think I’d stop giving a damn.” He left his hand on the table. “Anyway, I really loved my great-grandmother. When I was twelve, I left home and went to live with my grandmother right up until I left Portland. Mi Mi—that’s what we called her mother—lived with Grandma. She was very pious; used to take me to Mass.”
Anton nodded.
“I’d like to know more about her; what her childhood was like. You think I could visit your church sometime?”
“No.” Anton placed the prayer rope back on the table.
“Afraid I’ll blow you cover?” Tracy smiled. “I promise, I won’t so much as look in your direction.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea. There are other Orthodox churches in town.”
“Russian Orthodox?”
“There’s one in Plano. I think I’ve heard there’s a Byzantine Rite Catholic Church here, too. That’d be more like what your great-grandmother grew up in.”
“Okay, fear not: I promise not to infiltrate your parish. Probably wouldn’t make it past the door, anyway. You know: the angel with the revolving fiery sword. The impure may not enter.”
“It’s not that. It’d just be awkward, that’s all.”
“You want to go for a walk?”
“What?” Anton was flustered by the non-sequitur.
“You know: a walk? One foot in front of the other.”
“Uh, okay. Sure.”
“Great. I need to get some fresh air. It’s a gorgeous day. We’re crazy to be inside.”
Tracy did most of the talking during the walk, as usual. His manner, though, was different; his cynicism seemed to have been stripped away, replaced by a playful, almost girlish mood. He kept bumping into Anton until they were walking nearly shoulder-to-shoulder. They stopped in front of a vaguely familiar apartment building. Tracy turned with a smile, “You want to come up?”
“What?”
“It’s my apartment, remember? You’ve been here before. I still owe you a massage.”
“Oh! Uh, no, I can’t. I have to get back to work.”
“Okay, no massage. But, I owe you a coffee, too: You never got to order at Hunter’s. My coffee’s better than theirs.” His smile was disarming, but Anton still hung back. “I don’t know why, but I’d like you to see a photo of Mi-Mi. Come on.” He turned and walked up the stairs, not waiting to see if Anton followed. He did.
What happened in the apartment, Anton remembered in all too great detail, but with a curious detachment, as if it were scenes from a movie. Tracy made coffee in the kitchen, asking Anton to pull a package of cookies from the refrigerator and to place them with cups and saucers on a tray. He continued his friendly chatter. After they seated at the table, he excused himself to his bedroom, then returned with a box of photos which he placed on the table. Standing behind Anton, slightly to the side, he leaned over Anton’s shoulder to pluck out images of his past: his great-grandmother, other members of his family, a blond-haired ten-year-old boy wearing a white tee-shirt blazoned with a yellow smiley-face, standing amid younger children in the concrete wasteland of a low-rent apartment complex, looking at the camera out of eyes that made no attempt to mask their hurt and expectancy. Barely an hour ago, Anton had seen that expression in Tracy’s eyes for the first time.
Leaning over to point out and explain details in several photos, Tracy placed his hand on Anton’s left shoulder. Anton was surprised at its weight and strength. Then, he moved it to Anton’s other shoulder as he bent down to talk about a photograph, his cheek nearly brushing Anton’s. Anton could smell Tracy’s hair. Strangely, it made him think of the ocean, the beach, strong arms encircling. Involuntarily, he leaned in toward the warmth of those memories, of Tracy’s body. He was astonished to find his head cradled in the crook of Tracy’s neck. Tracy responded by lowering himself onto one knee while he moved his hand up Anton’s right shoulder, drawing him in closer. Tracy moved his head slightly to the right, inhaled deeply the scent from Anton’s hair, placed his lips on his forehead, near the hairline, then placing the fingers of his left hand under Anton’s jaw, he tilted Anton’s face gently up, and kissed him.
Anton melted into the sensation: sea grass, goose tongue, the sound of waves. He was on his knees, too, his left hand around Tracy’s back, his right hand cupping the back of Tracy’s head, pulling him in.
Now he was on Tracy’s couch, leaning against the sofa cushion. Tracy knelt over him, one knee on each side of Anton’s thighs, slowly unbuttoning Anton’s shirt, kissing his breastbone, his chest, the hair around his nipples, the nipples themselves, his belly.
Tracy pulled Anton’s slacks off slowly, then unbuttoned his own shirt. Anton ran his eyes over Tracy’s body, reached out to run his hand down the hairless chest, astonished at its creamy smoothness and the tautness of underlying muscle. Tracy gently placed his hand over Anton’s, smiled, and pulled him off the couch to his feet, then down the hall to his bed.
Afterwards, Tracy had been tender, lying on his side, lightly caressing Anton’s arm, gazing at his face. Anton lay motionless and mute, staring at the ceiling. Wordlessly, he got up, and pulled on his clothes. Tracy remained lying on his side, head propped up by one hand, watching. Anton did not look at him. Neither spoke as Anton pulled on his shoes, walked down the hall and out the door.
* * *
Now Anton lay staring at his own ceiling. In the dim light cast by the hall lamp which Cynthia always insisted remain on—for the girls, she said—, Anton forced himself to trace the figures he had conjured countless times out of the textured, off-white paint: a sharp-faced woman, wearing a rakish, plumed hat and angular cocktail dress; a gun; a Chinese dragon. The lines were all there, but the figures kept swimming out of shape. “It hasn’t changed,” he repeated to himself; “nothing has changed.” The face of Father Danieel kept forming before him, interfering with his efforts. “Your adversary, the Devil . . . .”
Anton had only one hope of forcing the lines back into their proper order: to incorporate what had happened into his plans, master this desire and bend it to serve an outcome that would both judge and redeem it. “Sometimes, God lets the Devil test you.” Anton was awestruck at the deviousness of the test. He had been lured into following in his father’s steps, given into his father’s lust, lain with his father’s lover. A wave of nausea swept through him. The outcome God desired was crystal clear: Anton was being asked to make the sacrifice his father had been unable, or unwilling, to make. “Are you prepared to offer this man up?”
The Bridegroom Comes: Chapter Nine
When it came to sex, Tracy was used to having the upper hand. So, it troubled him profoundly that he did not know what to do about Anton. He expected him to flee and was tempted to make a peremptory phone call: ‘We both know this was a mistake. It would be best that we not see each other again for a while.’ He could not bring himself to do it. To find himself waiting like some teenage girl for a phone call was maddening, and threw him into unprecedented paroxysms of self-loathing. Finally, the phone rang:
“Yes?”
“It’s Anton.”
Tracy made no reply.
“Tracy?”
“Look, save your breath. Whatever line you’ve prepared, I’ve delivered it myself a hundred times.”
“. . . I’d like to see you.”
“. . . .”
“Are you there?”
“Okay, I haven’t delivered that one. You’re full of surprises.”
“. . . Was the other day a surprise?”
“No. . . . I mean, it wasn’t something I’d carefully planned out, if that’s what you’re getting at. . . . How do you feel about it?”
“I don’t know. I want to see you again.”
“Okay.”
“But not there. At the Bistro.”
“Look, if this is going to be some long regret speech and goodbye, let’s get it over with now.”
“I’m not interested in saying goodbye. . . . Are you?”
“No. But, I don’t want to pretend it didn’t happen, either. And I’m not interested in just being friends.”
“Would you like to know what I want?”
“Yeah.”
“Me, too. I want to figure that out. With you.” The last two words took even Anton by surprise.
* * *
As soon as Tracy walked through the door, Anton knew that Father Danieel had been right: He would fail the test. Not, though, as he might have feared: He would make the necessary sacrifice. In a sense, he would even do so from an undivided heart. The duty to attain justice for his mother had become an idée fixe that dwelt entirely in his head, ruling over his members. But, his heart was not in it: he could not love a God that required this sacrifice. Indeed, as many times as he had heard the word “love” pronounced, or pronounced it himself, at Church, at home, he could only now begin to attach some meaning to it: the particular arc his fingers had traced along Tracy’s collar bone, the brush of Tracy’s eyelashes against his chest, the sweet muskiness of skin below Tracy’s ribs. Anton’s eyes drank in the slightly disjointed rhythm with which Tracy walked across the room, registered the now-transparent cynicism which had returned to his lips. He found himself wishing he could suddenly vanish, taking the moment with him preserved like a fly in amber.
“Well, here I am.”
“Here you are.” Anton noted with irony the reversal. “Sit down; I already ordered your sandwich.”
“What’s this, already beginning to anticipate my habits? Careful, you might scare me off.” Tracy settled into his chair and leaned back, holding Anton in his gaze. “So, figured it out yet?”
“What?”
“What you want.”
“I don’t work that fast. Besides, I thought we agreed that was going to be a mutual project.”
“’Mutual’: Big word. You really are risking scaring me off.” Tracy’s eyebrows increased their arch.
“You sure you’re the one that presents the greatest flight risk? Who has the most to lose?”
“Well, let’s see: your wife and kids, my hardened image. It’s a draw.”
“Maybe.” As Anton’s hand reached for his coffee, Tracy intercepted it. Anton made no attempt to withdraw. “You have no idea how confusing this is.”
Tracy laced his fingers in Anton’s. “Does this feel confusing?”
“I don’t know how to make sense of it.”
“I said ‘feel,’not ‘think.’”
“I’m not very good at turning off my brain.”
“You did pretty well the other day.” Anton’s blush deflected Tracy’s cynicism. “I don’t want to hurt you. And to tell the truth, you scare the shit out of me. Seducing a straight man may be a popular fantasy, but I’ve never been one to mistake fantasy for reality. People get hurt that way.”
Anton steeled himself against the upsurge of guilt, his face flushing a deeper crimson. “I won’t lie to you, either: You could get hurt. I wouldn’t blame you for backing out.”
“You first.”
Anton looked down and fought to regain control.
“Here you are: the usual. A garden sandwich.” Both men were startled by the barista’s interruption. Tracy, flustered, relinquished Anton’s hand, annoyed at the sparkle in the young waiter’s eyes and his goofy smile. “Thanks,” he muttered, waiting impatiently for his withdrawal. “Herman says I’m a fool.”
“You told Herman?” Anton’s face flushed, first with panic, then anger.
“He’s my friend. Look, I’m not interested in forcing you out of the closet any faster than you’re prepared to go, but I’m not interested in climbing in myself, either. And what you said goes for me, too: You can back out whenever you want. No blame.”
“I don’t want to back out. At least, not yet.”
“So, where do we go from here?”
“You tell me. I’m the novice, remember?”
“Okay, then: My apartment.” Tracy’s eyes flashed.
Anton thought about raising the need to return to work, but didn’t. Tracy forgot about his sandwich.
“Yes?”
“It’s Anton.”
Tracy made no reply.
“Tracy?”
“Look, save your breath. Whatever line you’ve prepared, I’ve delivered it myself a hundred times.”
“. . . I’d like to see you.”
“. . . .”
“Are you there?”
“Okay, I haven’t delivered that one. You’re full of surprises.”
“. . . Was the other day a surprise?”
“No. . . . I mean, it wasn’t something I’d carefully planned out, if that’s what you’re getting at. . . . How do you feel about it?”
“I don’t know. I want to see you again.”
“Okay.”
“But not there. At the Bistro.”
“Look, if this is going to be some long regret speech and goodbye, let’s get it over with now.”
“I’m not interested in saying goodbye. . . . Are you?”
“No. But, I don’t want to pretend it didn’t happen, either. And I’m not interested in just being friends.”
“Would you like to know what I want?”
“Yeah.”
“Me, too. I want to figure that out. With you.” The last two words took even Anton by surprise.
* * *
As soon as Tracy walked through the door, Anton knew that Father Danieel had been right: He would fail the test. Not, though, as he might have feared: He would make the necessary sacrifice. In a sense, he would even do so from an undivided heart. The duty to attain justice for his mother had become an idée fixe that dwelt entirely in his head, ruling over his members. But, his heart was not in it: he could not love a God that required this sacrifice. Indeed, as many times as he had heard the word “love” pronounced, or pronounced it himself, at Church, at home, he could only now begin to attach some meaning to it: the particular arc his fingers had traced along Tracy’s collar bone, the brush of Tracy’s eyelashes against his chest, the sweet muskiness of skin below Tracy’s ribs. Anton’s eyes drank in the slightly disjointed rhythm with which Tracy walked across the room, registered the now-transparent cynicism which had returned to his lips. He found himself wishing he could suddenly vanish, taking the moment with him preserved like a fly in amber.
“Well, here I am.”
“Here you are.” Anton noted with irony the reversal. “Sit down; I already ordered your sandwich.”
“What’s this, already beginning to anticipate my habits? Careful, you might scare me off.” Tracy settled into his chair and leaned back, holding Anton in his gaze. “So, figured it out yet?”
“What?”
“What you want.”
“I don’t work that fast. Besides, I thought we agreed that was going to be a mutual project.”
“’Mutual’: Big word. You really are risking scaring me off.” Tracy’s eyebrows increased their arch.
“You sure you’re the one that presents the greatest flight risk? Who has the most to lose?”
“Well, let’s see: your wife and kids, my hardened image. It’s a draw.”
“Maybe.” As Anton’s hand reached for his coffee, Tracy intercepted it. Anton made no attempt to withdraw. “You have no idea how confusing this is.”
Tracy laced his fingers in Anton’s. “Does this feel confusing?”
“I don’t know how to make sense of it.”
“I said ‘feel,’not ‘think.’”
“I’m not very good at turning off my brain.”
“You did pretty well the other day.” Anton’s blush deflected Tracy’s cynicism. “I don’t want to hurt you. And to tell the truth, you scare the shit out of me. Seducing a straight man may be a popular fantasy, but I’ve never been one to mistake fantasy for reality. People get hurt that way.”
Anton steeled himself against the upsurge of guilt, his face flushing a deeper crimson. “I won’t lie to you, either: You could get hurt. I wouldn’t blame you for backing out.”
“You first.”
Anton looked down and fought to regain control.
“Here you are: the usual. A garden sandwich.” Both men were startled by the barista’s interruption. Tracy, flustered, relinquished Anton’s hand, annoyed at the sparkle in the young waiter’s eyes and his goofy smile. “Thanks,” he muttered, waiting impatiently for his withdrawal. “Herman says I’m a fool.”
“You told Herman?” Anton’s face flushed, first with panic, then anger.
“He’s my friend. Look, I’m not interested in forcing you out of the closet any faster than you’re prepared to go, but I’m not interested in climbing in myself, either. And what you said goes for me, too: You can back out whenever you want. No blame.”
“I don’t want to back out. At least, not yet.”
“So, where do we go from here?”
“You tell me. I’m the novice, remember?”
“Okay, then: My apartment.” Tracy’s eyes flashed.
Anton thought about raising the need to return to work, but didn’t. Tracy forgot about his sandwich.
The Bridegroom Comes: Chapter Ten
Standing on Anton’s front stoop, Tracy fought back the impulse to flee before any one answered the doorbell. “What the hell am I doing here?” he thought. Initially, he had thought he just wanted to see the neighborhood, take a look at the house, maybe, with luck, catch a glimpse of Cynthia or the girls through a window. In spite of having prepared a pretext for doing so, he had not really intended to introduce himself. But, the strength of his disappointment at finding the curtains drawn had caught him short; Cynthia and the girls’ unseen presence, attested by the car parked in the driveway, been too tantalizing. The house itself was nondescript, just another of several standard ranch styles in a suburban track. It brought him no closer to the life within.
Tracy had chosen this day, Saturday, deliberately: Anton had mentioned he needed to be in the office that morning. Tracy no more understood what had compelled him to pull Anton’s driver’s license out of his wallet and memorize the address while Anton was in the shower than he understood what held him now in place, waiting for Cynthia to come to the door. It was the same force that had prompted his request to visit Anton’s church. The connection to his great-grandmother had been, he sensed, not exactly a pretext, but not the whole story, either. It had something to do with the notion that her story hooked his own into Anton’s other life.
Tracy had backed off on his questions about that life, and begun to resort to other, more surreptitious means of inquiry. Besides snooping around in Anton’s wallet, there had been the incident with his prescription sunglasses. When Anton had excused himself to use the restroom during one of their interludes at the apartment, Tracy had slipped them out of the outer pocket of Anton’s satchel into his own pocket.
Cynthia opened the door cautiously, keeping the locked, glass-paned screen door between them. “Can I help you?” She neither confirmed nor overturned any image he had formed of her: It was precisely his rebellion against having to imagine her at all that drove him here. In one sense, what she looked like mattered to him not in the least; in another, it meant everything. What mattered was that she was real, concrete, that her hair was this particular shade of brown with an overtone of red, that her eyes dipped down almost imperceptibly at the outer edge, that her chin receded slightly at just this angle. Tracy’s eyes drank all this in in an instant, but apparently too avidly. Cynthia’s face showed a look of alarm. Noting her stiffen and shift her weight behind the door, he spoke quickly, smiling.
“Hi. My name’s Tracy. I’m a friend of Anton’s. We eat lunch at the same café sometimes. I found a pair of sunglasses he left there, and thought he’d appreciate it if I brought them by. Here.” He held them up where she could easily see them across the glass. Cynthia remained immobile, apparently trying to decide whether to risk opening the screen door.
“Tracy?” she said. “Anton’s mentioned you, I think.” Her face showed her effort at trying to place the name. “No, that was . . . . Are you from Oregon?”
“Um, yeah. But that was a long time ago.”
“This was awfully nice of you. I hope you didn’t go too far out of your way?” Somewhat hesitatingly, she unlocked and opened the door. Apparently, she had decided he presented no immediate threat, but her face remained guarded. She stepped forward onto the threshold, blocking the entranceway.
“No, I would have been in the area, anyway.”
He smiled, and handed her the glasses.
“Thanks.” He smiled again and nodded. Clearly, the moment demanded that he say something polite and take his leave. He sensed Cynthia hesitate, guessing she was debating whether to ask him in; he sensed just as strongly that he had no business doing so.
Before she appeared to make up her mind, her eyes shifted to a car turning the corner, and her face relaxed. Following her gaze to its object, Anton’s face froze, his look of panic contrasting sharply with her relief. The car swung to an abrupt stop in the driveway, and Anton nearly leaped out, then walked furiously toward them. Tracy stood stock still.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Anton’s face was red, his arms held tightly to his sides.
It took an awkward moment for Tracy to find his voice. “I found your sunglasses. They must have fallen out of your satchel.”
“So? You didn’t have to bring them here.” Anton glanced nervously at his wife. Now, he too stood paralyzed.
Cynthia glanced from one man to the other. Her face shifted abruptly from an embarrassed smile, to puzzlement, to something like fear.
“Daddy’s home!” A small body—Sophie’s, the youngest—catapulted out the door and attached itself to Anton’s leg. He reached down absently and cupped the back of her head, not taking his eyes off Tracy.
“Well, anyway, I’d better get going.” Tracy brushed quickly past Anton and strode across the yard and street to his car. Swinging the car around in the street, he looked surreptitiously toward the house entrance, afraid to meet the eyes of his lover. But, Anton’s gaze was fixed on his wife’s face. He appeared to say something, then took his daughter by the hand and walked through the door. Shifting his rearview mirror, Tracy saw Cynthia hesitate at the door to watch the retreating car. Briefly, he had the sense that their eyes met. Then, she turned and followed her husband and child back into the house.
Tracy had chosen this day, Saturday, deliberately: Anton had mentioned he needed to be in the office that morning. Tracy no more understood what had compelled him to pull Anton’s driver’s license out of his wallet and memorize the address while Anton was in the shower than he understood what held him now in place, waiting for Cynthia to come to the door. It was the same force that had prompted his request to visit Anton’s church. The connection to his great-grandmother had been, he sensed, not exactly a pretext, but not the whole story, either. It had something to do with the notion that her story hooked his own into Anton’s other life.
Tracy had backed off on his questions about that life, and begun to resort to other, more surreptitious means of inquiry. Besides snooping around in Anton’s wallet, there had been the incident with his prescription sunglasses. When Anton had excused himself to use the restroom during one of their interludes at the apartment, Tracy had slipped them out of the outer pocket of Anton’s satchel into his own pocket.
Cynthia opened the door cautiously, keeping the locked, glass-paned screen door between them. “Can I help you?” She neither confirmed nor overturned any image he had formed of her: It was precisely his rebellion against having to imagine her at all that drove him here. In one sense, what she looked like mattered to him not in the least; in another, it meant everything. What mattered was that she was real, concrete, that her hair was this particular shade of brown with an overtone of red, that her eyes dipped down almost imperceptibly at the outer edge, that her chin receded slightly at just this angle. Tracy’s eyes drank all this in in an instant, but apparently too avidly. Cynthia’s face showed a look of alarm. Noting her stiffen and shift her weight behind the door, he spoke quickly, smiling.
“Hi. My name’s Tracy. I’m a friend of Anton’s. We eat lunch at the same café sometimes. I found a pair of sunglasses he left there, and thought he’d appreciate it if I brought them by. Here.” He held them up where she could easily see them across the glass. Cynthia remained immobile, apparently trying to decide whether to risk opening the screen door.
“Tracy?” she said. “Anton’s mentioned you, I think.” Her face showed her effort at trying to place the name. “No, that was . . . . Are you from Oregon?”
“Um, yeah. But that was a long time ago.”
“This was awfully nice of you. I hope you didn’t go too far out of your way?” Somewhat hesitatingly, she unlocked and opened the door. Apparently, she had decided he presented no immediate threat, but her face remained guarded. She stepped forward onto the threshold, blocking the entranceway.
“No, I would have been in the area, anyway.”
He smiled, and handed her the glasses.
“Thanks.” He smiled again and nodded. Clearly, the moment demanded that he say something polite and take his leave. He sensed Cynthia hesitate, guessing she was debating whether to ask him in; he sensed just as strongly that he had no business doing so.
Before she appeared to make up her mind, her eyes shifted to a car turning the corner, and her face relaxed. Following her gaze to its object, Anton’s face froze, his look of panic contrasting sharply with her relief. The car swung to an abrupt stop in the driveway, and Anton nearly leaped out, then walked furiously toward them. Tracy stood stock still.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Anton’s face was red, his arms held tightly to his sides.
It took an awkward moment for Tracy to find his voice. “I found your sunglasses. They must have fallen out of your satchel.”
“So? You didn’t have to bring them here.” Anton glanced nervously at his wife. Now, he too stood paralyzed.
Cynthia glanced from one man to the other. Her face shifted abruptly from an embarrassed smile, to puzzlement, to something like fear.
“Daddy’s home!” A small body—Sophie’s, the youngest—catapulted out the door and attached itself to Anton’s leg. He reached down absently and cupped the back of her head, not taking his eyes off Tracy.
“Well, anyway, I’d better get going.” Tracy brushed quickly past Anton and strode across the yard and street to his car. Swinging the car around in the street, he looked surreptitiously toward the house entrance, afraid to meet the eyes of his lover. But, Anton’s gaze was fixed on his wife’s face. He appeared to say something, then took his daughter by the hand and walked through the door. Shifting his rearview mirror, Tracy saw Cynthia hesitate at the door to watch the retreating car. Briefly, he had the sense that their eyes met. Then, she turned and followed her husband and child back into the house.
The Bridegroom Comes: Chapter Eleven
When the phone rang, Irene’s arms were plunged elbow deep in hot dish water. “Never fails,” she thought, “probably another stupid telemarketer.” Rushing to dry her hands before the machine switched on, she glanced at the caller I.D. and felt her chest tighten in alarm: Her son called frequently, but with methodical regularity, like he conducted all his affairs: never before 7:00 PM, and never on any day other than Sundays and holidays. Irene shot a brief prayer heavenward. “Hello?”
“Irene?” It was Cynthia.
“What’s wrong? What’s happened?
“Nothing; it’s okay. We’re all fine. I was just calling to ask you a question.”
“Thank God.” Irene was not completely reassured; Cynthia never called on her own.
“It’s kind of a strange one.”
“Yes?”
“Actually, it’s stupid, really. I’d ask Anton, but he’s working late tonight, and . . . well, you know how you suddenly forget something, and you just can’t get it off your mind until the memory comes back, even if it’s of no importance? It’s completely trivial, but it’s been bothering me all morning.” There was something odd about Cynthia’s voice. She spoke unnaturally fast.
“What is it?”
“Like I said, it’s of no real importance. But, . . . .” She hesitated, then plunged ahead: “When Anton’s father left, Anton’s told me he left with someone. A man. What was his name?”
Irene was both shocked and offended. Propriety forbade the subject from being raised between herself and anyone other than her son; and that, only on her initiative. Of course, she assumed Anton must have at some point informed his wife of the circumstances surrounding his father’s absence. Indeed, Irene was vaguely aware that this accounted partially for the rather stiff cordiality with which she treated her daughter-in-law. But, this had never much troubled her. Her relations with her own mother-in-law had been far more conflicted; she accepted this as part of the natural course of events. “Why in the world would you ask that?”
“I can’t explain right now. Just tell me, what was his name?”
“I don’t remember,” Irene lied.
“Was it Tracy?”
“ . . . Yes.” Irene’s voice was cold and angry. “I can’t imagine why you would ask me that. It is not something I care to talk about.” The ensuing silence was so long and so complete, she began to wonder if they had been disconnected. “Are you there?”
Cynthia did not answer immediately. When she did, her voice sounded flat. “I’m sorry. I can’t explain now. I’ve got to go.” She hung up.
Irene walked to the kitchen table and sat, staring blankly, then walked back to the phone and dialed Anton’s work number.
“Irene?” It was Cynthia.
“What’s wrong? What’s happened?
“Nothing; it’s okay. We’re all fine. I was just calling to ask you a question.”
“Thank God.” Irene was not completely reassured; Cynthia never called on her own.
“It’s kind of a strange one.”
“Yes?”
“Actually, it’s stupid, really. I’d ask Anton, but he’s working late tonight, and . . . well, you know how you suddenly forget something, and you just can’t get it off your mind until the memory comes back, even if it’s of no importance? It’s completely trivial, but it’s been bothering me all morning.” There was something odd about Cynthia’s voice. She spoke unnaturally fast.
“What is it?”
“Like I said, it’s of no real importance. But, . . . .” She hesitated, then plunged ahead: “When Anton’s father left, Anton’s told me he left with someone. A man. What was his name?”
Irene was both shocked and offended. Propriety forbade the subject from being raised between herself and anyone other than her son; and that, only on her initiative. Of course, she assumed Anton must have at some point informed his wife of the circumstances surrounding his father’s absence. Indeed, Irene was vaguely aware that this accounted partially for the rather stiff cordiality with which she treated her daughter-in-law. But, this had never much troubled her. Her relations with her own mother-in-law had been far more conflicted; she accepted this as part of the natural course of events. “Why in the world would you ask that?”
“I can’t explain right now. Just tell me, what was his name?”
“I don’t remember,” Irene lied.
“Was it Tracy?”
“ . . . Yes.” Irene’s voice was cold and angry. “I can’t imagine why you would ask me that. It is not something I care to talk about.” The ensuing silence was so long and so complete, she began to wonder if they had been disconnected. “Are you there?”
Cynthia did not answer immediately. When she did, her voice sounded flat. “I’m sorry. I can’t explain now. I’ve got to go.” She hung up.
Irene walked to the kitchen table and sat, staring blankly, then walked back to the phone and dialed Anton’s work number.
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