Bleeding Hearts: Book One of the Demimonde Page 5

  I looked up from my bowl. "What, you never saw anyone eat potato chips with ice cream before? You deprived child."

  "Not that. Sometime, you say the strangest things." He held his hands up to prevent me from arguing. "This is the twenty first century. Your ideals don't exist anymore."

  "Mmm," I mused. "Maybe I have an old heart. It doesn't keep time with the world I live in anymore."

  "Ah. You spend much time in your books. You like to be dramatic."

  "No," I replied indignantly. How vaguely insulting. Picking out a wide chip, I scooped up a lump of chocolate. "People and things seem shallow when compared to a heart's true depths. Things like honor, courage, trust, promise—those things are merely words. Even faith is a watered-down echo of the original passion of the early religions. I mean, organized religion today is more business than anything."

  I popped the chip into my mouth before it got soggy. Waving at the window, the busy street beyond, the city folk moving in an endless stream, I dismissed them all. "Complacency is king these days. Forgive me if my heart is stronger than that."

  "Don't apologize. Few people find strength to keep living their individual lives when the world itself has become so automatic. You are an oddity, that's all."

  I wasn't sure I liked the term oddity but I let it go. "Maybe. But it's who I am."

  "I wonder." The words came out slowly, as if a new thought crept up on him and he attempted to sort it out. He leaned his chair back against the wall and regarded me shrewdly. "Are you other than what you would lead me to believe? Are you reincarnated? An old soul, perhaps?"

  I graced him with a smirk that said I think I'll call the nice men with the nets now. "Why, yes. Yes, I am. I'm an age-old creature, a remnant of history, doomed to walk the earth, surrounded more and more by people who resemble me less and less."

  "Now you make a joke."

  "Well, what about you? You have a curious detachment from the world, considering how involved you are with your business and your finger on the pulse of political persuasion and what-not. What kind of modern man stalks around each day with your great big this is a good day to die attitude?"

  "Well, now." He lowered his chin and toyed with his keys where they lay upon the table. Light from the overhead fluorescent bulbs sparked a green glint in his eye. "If I told you, you'd just think I was being as flippant as you are."

  "No, really, Marek. You seem to court destruction. Do you have an old soul?"

  He shook his head and pressed his lips into a humorless line. "I have no soul."

  "Oh, you don't." I played along. "All right, a modern excuse then. Military, right? You know a lot about other cultures so maybe you served on foreign missions. Hit man?"

  He shook his head so I pressed on. "Terrorist? Certainly not a martyr. I can't imagine you dying for anyone or anything. You'd be the one causing the dying."

  "If you only knew." His tone warned I had wandered onto a conversational minefield: one wrong step and I'd be blown to bits. Back off. Back off now.

  The impression was unmistakable. However, I heard the secret lurking behind the words. I had to pursue it. "Then tell me, Marek, and I would know."

  His voice was hard, telling me I'd hit more than a conversational wall. "Don't try to solve a mystery that doesn't exist. I am what I am and there is no changing. Not myself, not my outcome, not my destiny. Telling you the truth wouldn't change anything."

  I used my napkin and gave a baleful glance to the spreading chocolate puddle in the Styrofoam bowl. "Look, you know what I'm like. You wouldn't keep bringing up these heavy topics if there wasn't something you wanted from me. What is it, if not peace or relief from carrying a burden alone?"

  "Can't it be I find you attractive and like to spend time looking at you?"

  "It could be but it's not. Guys like that are less talk and more action. I think you want me to figure something out for you."

  "You're wrong." Anger locked his jaw. Only his lips moved when he spoke and the words slid out on edge. "I am not one of your charity cases."

  "Yeah, you are." A glance at my watch showed it was nearly time for my meeting. Standing up, I pulled money out of my wallet and dropped it on the table, knowing it would aggravate him. "When you're ready to admit it, give me a call."

  I grumbled all the way back to the office and endured the staff meeting with a scowl plastered upon my face. How did I get involved with impossible men? Why did I bother? Who was I, Don frigging Quixote?

  Marek had a darkness in him, some heavy weight that kept him from enjoying—I don't know—simple things. Like ice cream and chips. My sarcastic witty charm. Simply being alive. Didn't he get what I was about? He knew I was an advice guru. Why couldn't he tell me what troubled him so? Complete strangers did it all the time without a second thought. What kept him from opening up to me?

  Didn't he trust me? It made me mad at him and mad at myself and mad at everyone who had the misfortune to glance my way.

  I left work shortly after the meeting ended. I shudder to think how my letters would have sounded if I had column work to do. Might say I felt less than charitable.

  I didn't know what I could do besides get a major grump on. So, grump firmly in place, I headed uptown to my sanctuary. Maybe Jared could tell me what to do with this roadblock, besides firebomb it and bribe a bum to pee on whatever smoldered.

  Our friendship was a double-edged sword. I depended on him for objective honesty that always had my best interest at heart. Regular friends couldn't provide the extra assurance of God's Honest Truth, Guaranteed.

  But sometimes when I was with Jared, I stared at the collar rather than looked at his eyes. Sure, he's my pastor. Sure, he's my best friend. Sure, I had enough emotional traumas without adding an audition for The Thorn Birds to my repertoire of Tremendously Stupid Mistakes.

  But still, I trained my eyes on the collar, or his shoulder, or the tree behind him because sometimes, one look at his denim-blue eyes would cause my brain to stop registering priest. I'd see only the man, the grown-up version of the boy who, at seventeen, had convinced me we could have more fun together if we undressed.

  And he'd been right. A lot.

  I'm Catholic enough to know a special level of Hell was reserved for anyone who sundered a priest. But I was human enough to know how rare it was to connect to another soul, to transcend love. I knew how desperate a person could be to feel that love again.

  Only human. Nice collar. Amen.

  Jared was in the garden with one of the retired sisters who lived in the adjacent convent. The sisters were responsible for the churchyard's thriving year-long beauty. Jared usually ended up lugging the soil and the wheelbarrow and the big pots around, but he said he didn't mind.

  A half-lifetime ago, however, if I had suggested he'd be planting flowers with a bunch of old nuns, he'd have responded with an expression of disbelief, an invitation to do something impossible to myself, and perhaps shown me the middle finger.

  Jared waved as I passed through the gates and spoke a few words to the elderly sister before crossing the grass to meet me. He brushed at the soil clinging to his jeans before raking his hair back, oblivious to the smudge of dirt he left on his forehead.

  "Father, mind the lawn," the nun called. "You'll crush the new grass."

  Jared hot-footed it over to the path, resuming his rambling stride once he was on less sacred ground.

  "How was work?" Jared caught up to me on the sidewalk and we strolled along one of the garden paths. The maple trees had finally uncurled their broad leaves and sunlight dropped through in spots that wavered with the light breeze.

  "Eh. I go. I write. I drink coffee. Then I go home. For some reason, they pay me."

  "The pay good?"

  "I still have a place to live, at any rate. Hey." I nodded toward the sisters walking toward the Church doors. "Do nuns get paid a lot? Maybe they're hiring."

  Jared pulled a nail clipper out of his pocket and began to clean his fingernails. I guess he took the cle
anliness/Godliness thing seriously. "The sisters take a vow of poverty."

  I wrinkled my nose. "That shouldn't be too much of a stretch."

  "They give up their worldly possessions."

  "All of them? Shoes too?" I craned my neck to see if Sister Mary Whatsherbutt wore strappy heels. Ugh. No.

  Jared leaned closer and gave me a stern look. "They don't drink coffee. It's a sin."

  "Ack! Forget it, I'm no saint. I'd rather be broke."

  "You wouldn't be broke if you'd stayed in nursing."

  "No," I admitted. "But I'd be miserable."

  "I don't get it. You were born to do it—the way you care, the way you made a difference."

  I scowled. This was a subject I'd deftly evaded. People didn't usually like bragging about their epic failures. "I cared too much."

  "I don't follow."

  I sighed, not really wanting to continue. "I had a great job, Jare. Every day I went to work and thought: this is the best day of my life."

  "So what changed?"

  "It was gradual. I mean, I didn't walk in one day and suddenly everything sucked. The changes were so subtle I never found that aha, now I quit moment. Stress built, you know, little things I could handle at first."

  I pulled a lock of hair over my shoulder, twisting it and studying the split ends. "But it kept building. Management wanted profit. Increased quotas. Budget cuts. Scaled back support staff. Missed lunch breaks. That's when mistakes began to happen, mistakes I could objectively prove occurred due to the lack of help, and the supervisors just—blew it off."

  "Everyone makes mistakes, Sophie."

  "Not me, okay?" My heartbeat picked up, the remembered stress manifesting. "I can't make mistakes, Jared, not any kind, not ever. But no one listened. I pleaded with the supervisors to give us what we needed but they turned a deaf ear. Someone higher up was twisting their arms even tighter. So screw the little people further down the food chain."

  Jared reached out and squeezed my arm. "Sophie, slow down. You're getting..."

  "Stressed out?" I dropped my hair and moved on to my cuticles. Anything to avoid eye contact. "I helped a lot of people, I made good relationships. I was part of the community. I made a difference. I did."

  I summoned a strained smile as I remembered old faces, old names, old times.

  "But it was so hard," I whispered. "Whatever made me strong enough to deal with challenges at work, it had turned brittle. In Church I prayed for patience and tolerance and strength and peace. Well, at least until I had to start working Sundays."

  He glanced away and drew a cross in the air with his fingers.

  "I cracked, Jared," I said. "I failed. So I quit. It wasn't worth the pills or the sleepless nights I spent worrying about what I could have done wrong that day." I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my palms and pushed my hair back. "I quit. I left all the good behind because I couldn't handle the bad anymore."

  "That was one job." he said. "Why not find a different one, someplace that didn't have the stress? Why not medical writing? You could still be using your knowledge and expertise somewhere."

  "No. I can't."

  "Because?"

  "Because my career wasn't the only thing that ended. I had a relationship, too." Another reason to erase that entire section of my life. "Stan was a good guy. But the stress spilled over into my private life. I'd become my career. There was no nine-to-five then go home."

  Jared whooshed out a breath and chuckled in sympathy. "I can understand that."

  "Yeah, well, we worked together. When I started getting fed up with the job, he took it personally. He figured if I didn't want the job, I didn't want him, either." I tucked my hair behind my ears and watched ants on the sidewalk, waiting for the tears to sink back in. "It was a clean break. I don't regret it more than anything else."

  "Are you still friends?"

  "He's not who I knew five years ago. Neither am I. It's pointless to think about going back. It wasn't him—he gave a hundred percent. But he didn't need me. I never loved him the way I love when I'm needed. He merely wanted me. It wasn't enough. Maybe that's why I never settled with anyone else. Nobody ever needed me like..."

  I trailed off, feeling like I'd painted myself into a corner. Last thing I needed right now is to lay a guilt trip on a priest.

  "Like I needed you?" Jared supplied the words my cowardice couldn't.

  "Yeah." I shrugged and tugged my sweater tightly around me, pulling at imaginary fuzz balls on my sleeve. Soon, I'd run out of things to fidget with. "I never found something like that again. You were kind of a benchmark."

  I braved a glance in his direction. His gaze held the understanding a teacher gave a struggling kid. Patience, encouragement, acceptance.

  I was grateful for his silence. This was a conversation I never intended to have with him, especially not on a day he wore a well-worn black Hanes pocket T-shirt instead of the safety net of the clergyman's collar. Our past was past. Our past had no place in the present. Our past was not something to discuss, especially not in a church garden. God forgive us.

  "Maybe it's silly," I said. "I mean, we were seventeen. Trying to find our way on our own but still not ready to give up the security of somebody taking care of us, right? Teen angst, raging hormones, all that."

  "Oh, I remember, all right. Lots of high-emotion circumstances at the time." The distant look in his eyes told me he remembered his own troubled past clearly.

  "And this..." I gently traced the edge of a tattoo peering out from under the cuff of his shirt sleeve. He didn't have it when I'd first known him, although I'd watched him doodle it a half-million times. A stylized mathematical symbol, a combination of a loop and an arrow.

  "Infinity." He lifted his sleeve to give me a better look. The bluish line had grown fuzzy the way most cheap tattoos did as they aged. "I got it the week I moved away. Math is supposed to be logical, right? I'd figure out how to get back to you and the infinity we tried to find. You know how far I got."

  His eyes lost focus. "Time went by, though, and infinity came to mean other things. Like with my vocation, my studies at the seminary."

  "You have to take math classes to be a priest?"

  "No, silly. Theology classes. You know." He pointed a finger at the sky. "God? Infinity?"

  "Oh, yeah," I grinned. "I heard of that somewhere."

  "Right," he drawled. "Infinity. Nothing is permanent. We're a blink in a grander scheme. Our whole life is one tiny moment in infinity. Even if something is really bad, it's not forever."

  "Even when it feels like forever?"

  "Even then. We've nothing to fear, except maybe screwing up so badly we lose our chance to rejoin infinity. You'd have to be completely damnable. That's a hard thing to achieve."

  "You didn't go to the same school I did," I said. "The nuns said we were hopeless."

  "How can we be hopeless? We have souls, little slices of infinity inside us, and anyone with a soul couldn't be forgotten by God. He'd never leave behind a part of Himself." He made it sound comforting. So easy to forgive myself for the things I couldn't release. I wanted to believe him, to submerge myself in faith, to surrender.

  Jared smiled, emphasizing what made him a charismatic pastor: gentleness and patience, wishing with his whole heart for me to believe. To just let go of my fear and believe.

  I didn't feel quite that brave, but he encouraged me to think someday I might be. For now, I'd settle for a single peaceful moment in this lifetime of hectic coffee-fueled stress. Leaning back on my elbows, I turned back to the gardens, admiring the play of sunlight upon the leaves and grass, content to be momentarily content with life.

  The temperate winds convinced me to skip the bus and walk home instead. My brain tried to sort out pressing questions along the way. What would it be like to abandon everything for my faith, like Jared had? Would I feel secure trusting God to take care of me?

  My mom used to say that when things got to be too much to handle, we should "put it all in God's hands, a
nd let Him take care of it." As a child I found it easy to have that kind of faith. After all, my parents took care of me and my brothers; it seemed natural to believe God was there too, taking care of the invisible things.

  As I grew, the theory unraveled.

  My twin brothers died when they were seven. My parents said illness but I don't remember anyone being sick. They didn't want to talk about it. I didn't, either, at first. By the time I was ready, the topic had long been forbidden.

  I remember how quiet my dad became, how strong my mom tried to be. They were constantly preoccupied, too busy for the little things that made things normal. Smiles stretched thinner, faded faster. Meals became silent, functional tasks.

  Everyday life lost sound, color, taste. I had to work harder at living, for me and for them. I couldn't bear to merely exist.

  Outside my home, things were no more optimistic. Half my teen friends had lousy parents who left them to fend for themselves. I remember standing outside Jared's house, listening to his mother's aggravation spurt out the open windows as she berated him for yet another infraction, knowing I faced another long night of convincing him not to run.

  So much uncertainty, so much pain, so little hope. Why didn't God take care of us?

  And the one time I needed Him most, when I got the call at college, my Aunt Marie telling me I had to come home, my parents were in an accident—

  my parents were dead

  I'd blindly put everything into God's hands. He dropped it.

  My world shattered. I watched it fall to pieces all around me, heard the discordant ping of sanity and hope as they blasted into oblivion. No words could describe my desolation. Grief wasn't strong enough. Raw wasn't strong enough. No word for that feeling when breath was pulled from me like a taffy string, making my lungs bunch up and stick shut. No word for that shallow breathing as I tried to learn to breathe again.

  I put myself back together, but it was hard work, almost too hard for one small person like me. No word for that sense of being orphaned. Orphaned just wasn't strong enough.