The Confessions(15)

“How so?”

“Because I’m sleeping with my priest.”

Clients.

Hotel.

Black eyes that turn green.

Black hair.

Shameless.

“Well, well, well,” Stuart said, leaning back in his chair. “We meet at last, don’t we? I have to say...I thought you’d be taller.”

“I get that a lot. I have a tall personality.”

“You are as beautiful as he said you were. I give him credit. To think I accused him of exaggerating. Then again, he’s not so bad himself, is he?”

“If you’re into six-foot-four blond men with perfect faces and asses you can bounce quarters off of.”

“I hope you’re being literal.” He laughed at the image of this lovely lady flicking coins at Marcus’s backside.

“It was a half-dollar actually. I like a challenge.”

“So...” he sat back in his chair again, crossed his ankle over his knee. Usually arthritis prevented him from sitting so casually but he was feeling good today and even better now. “Do I call you Eleanor? Or do you prefer Nora?”

She grinned broadly, brightly, and laughed. “What does he call me?”

“Eleanor.”

“Does he talk about me much?”

He ran his fingers over his lips as if zipping a zipper, then turned the imaginary key in the imaginary lock and threw the key back over his shoulder.

“I know, I know,” she said. “You aren’t allowed to tell me anything S?ren said during his confessions. Trust me, I know the rules by now. He and I have been sleeping together, oh...almost eighteen years?”

“S?ren. I could never get used to calling him that. He’ll always be Marcus to me.”

“Whereas I can’t imagine calling him Marcus. It’s not his name to me at all. Never has been. He told me his name the day we met.”

“The day you met? Took him years before he told me what his mother named him. By then it was too late—it was Marcus.”

“No, he’s definitely S?ren. Good Danish name. Means ‘stern.’ Fitting name.”

“Marcus, from the Roman god of war, Mars. Even more fitting.”

“For a pacifist priest?”

“He’s been at war with his own soul since the night he was born, and you know it.”

She glanced at the orchid on the windowsill, and then raised her hand to touch its fragile petals.

“I know it,” she said softly and lowered her hand.

“And perhaps,” Father Ballard continued, “you have been a casualty in this war?”

“A few cuts and bruises. Nothing fatal.”

“Pressed but not crushed,” he said.

“Exactly.”

“Although…” He paused and narrowed his eyes at her. “Maybe a little crushed?”

“Maybe a little.”

She took a breath and turned to face him again. She crossed her legs and sat back in the chair. They stared at each other.

“Tell me your sins, Eleanor. Let me help you find peace.”

“I told you—I’m sleeping with a Jesuit priest.”

“You’re here to be absolved of your sin of fornication with a member of the clergy? That’s it?”

“I am. Is that not a good enough sin?”

“No, it’s a fine sin. One of the better sins there is. Still packs a punch. Nobody cares about adultery anymore. That’s old news. But getting your rocks off with one of us? That’s nice and punchy. But here’s the problem: Something tells me you intend to keep sleeping with him. Yes?”

“Well…yes.”

“Then I don’t think I can help you. Usually when you confess a sin, the sinner at least tries to pretend he or she doesn’t want to do it again.”

“I wouldn’t want to lie in confession. My mother asked me to confess my sins to a priest who is not S?ren. She wanted me to be absolved of my sin of seducing a priest and/or being seduced by a priest—it changed depending on which one of us she was angrier at that day. Sometimes I was the harlot, and he was the innocent victim of my seductions. Other days he was a sexual predator and I her virginal daughter, who’d had her innocence cruelly plucked from her by a wicked clergyman. Either way it sounds so lurid and gothic, doesn’t it? She never did believe the truth.”

“What is the truth?”

“We were nothing but two people who fell in love with each other and did what people in love do, namely have sex with each other. Often. It was inconvenient I was so young when we met. It was even more inconvenient he was a priest. But I’m not young anymore—and I still love him, and he still loves me. And we still have sex. Among other things.”

Stuart waved his hand dismissively.

“You don’t have to tell me what the ‘other things’ are. I’ve been hearing his confessions since he was 18,” Ballard said. “I’m actually only 60 years old. I only look 80 because of him.”

“Liar,” she said.

“I am.”

“I’m only doing what my mother asked. I came to a priest who is not S?ren, Marcus, whoever he is, and I’m giving you my confession. Can you absolve me so I can put that promise to rest?”