Kate was already done with the pocket squares, and it was clear by her expression that I wasn’t fooling her. Not in the slightest.
“Friday, huh?” she asked as she started putting things away. “Sure, there’s no girl. Just you wait until we tell everyone tomorrow. We’ll get it out of you, Mattie. We always do.”
I didn’t stay home after dropping off my suit. Something had been bothering me since running into Nina the day before. I had some things I needed to get off my chest, and since I had to be uptown tomorrow for Mass anyway, I figured I’d give Frankie the house tonight and kill two birds.
So I took the train all the way up to the Bronx. I walked into Christ Our Redeemer, where I’d spent a solid part of my childhood daydreaming on the hard wooden pews and making trouble in catechism classes. Where I’d spend the next morning kneeling beside my family, trying to figure out how to be a better man than the one I always seemed to end up being.
Now that I was grown, I wasn’t sure I believed all the stuff I learned within these brick walls. But I still went to confession, if only to appease my grandmother, who was a very devout Catholic. And, if I was being truthful, I still went for myself. A little absolution never hurt anyone, and there were days, like today, when I needed it a little more.
Like when you run into a woman who would tempt Christ himself, I thought to myself. Who was I kidding? In less than a week, I’d be sitting across the table from the definition of temptation. This was an emergency.
Quickly, I crossed myself as I knelt in front of the latticed screen and tried not to sniff. This thing had always smelled damp, somehow. Like a colony of moths lived under the kneeler.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been…” I looked up at the rickety wood beams, trying to count just how many days it really had been since I’d sat in a confessional. Fuck. I mean, damn. I mean, crud. Whatever. I’d add mental profanity to the list and give Sofia a twenty when I got home. “Three weeks? Maybe four?”
The familiar, patient breathing of Father Deflorio wheezed slightly from the other side. Great, so the priest had a cold too. The silhouette of his head tipped in recognition of my voice.
“Hello, Matthew. Nice to have you back.” Finally. He didn’t have to say it.
“We’ve got a bit to catch up on, don’t we, Father?”
The priest said nothing, just waited for me to speak. He wouldn’t rush me or goad me, like some might on a Saturday afternoon with several other people waiting to confess before Mass the next day. I’d known the unflappable Father Deflorio my whole life. He was a vacuum of personality, to the point where my sisters used to compare him and his soutain to Nonna’s drapes. But you know, that’s not such a bad thing when you’re divulging all your mortal secrets in hopes of having a shot in hell at heaven. Ah, you know what I mean.
“Let’s see…” I flipped my fingers in front of me, trying to recount all my sins. “Between all five of them, I told my sisters to fuck off at least ten times since February. I yelled at Frankie twice last week alone for throwing her towel on the new couch. Took the Lord’s name too many times to count. Um…a fair amount of sex with contraceptives—a few of them were involved, one engaged. And I lied to Kate when she asked me who I was buying a suit for.”
“A suit?”
I rolled my eyes. That’s what he picked up on?
“A suit, yeah. It’s for—well, I said it was for no one. But it’s not. It’s for this woman. This—well, I told you about her, Father. The one-night stand. The one who’s married.”
“Forgive me, Matthew, but there have been a few like that before.”
“The blonde, Father. The princess. The…doll. Nina.”
I practically choked on the word now. That word I had never used before I met her.
There was a long pause. Then: “I remember.”
I’m sure he did. I came up here after our night together and spent a fuckin’ hour in the confessional. It wasn’t so much about telling him everything Nina and I did. Father Deflorio wasn’t some dirty voyeur—he just needed the facts so he could dole out a punishment to fit the crime. Me, I just needed to process. Figure out what the hell had happened.
Some people talk to therapists, but I was Catholic, so I talked to my priest. And that day after Nina’s and my scarlet night together? Well, it took a while. And several other times since. Because you can’t really repent if you don’t regret. And I still couldn’t find it within myself to regret anything I had done with Nina Astor…de Vries. I winced. Gardner.
“I saw her again,” I said. “Yesterday. For the first time since January. I was at a friend’s apartment, and she walked in. Turns out she’s his cousin, right under my nose. Can you believe that, Father? That’s some divine intervention right there.”
Father Deflorio’s sigh, again, was audible. Yeah, he knew where this was going.
“She’s helping on a case. Afterward, I walked her home across the park. We just talked, Father, honest. But we couldn’t finish, so I asked her to dinner.”
“Matthew…”
“It’s not like that, I swear it.”
His silence told me he didn’t believe a word. I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t believe myself either.
“Okay, okay, maybe it is a little,” I admitted.
“Have you continued to have impure thoughts about this woman?”
Impure thoughts. Ha. Yeah, that was putting it mildly. “You could say that. One or two times since yesterday?” Right, well, that was only true if you counted all last night and all day today as one “time” each, but since it was constant, I figured it was technically true. “And, yeah, I masturbated in the shower thinking about her. Twice.”
“Matthew, God is quite clear about this matter. It’s there in Exodus. Deuteronomy. ‘Thou shalt not covet your neighbor’s wife.’”
Thou shalt not covet. Yeah. Sometimes it felt like all I ever did was covet. “Well, she’s not really my neighbor’s wife.”
“‘Thou shalt not commit adultery,’” added the priest.
“I mean, does it really count if I’m not the adulterer? She’s the one who’s married, Father. I had to stare at the rock on her finger for three hours, so I know it’s true.”
It was like I was thirteen all over again, sitting in catechism classes and picking apart every piece of logic. That was the first time anyone every suggested I should be a lawyer. If it hadn’t been for the good priests channeling my healthy questioning of the Church, I might have never gone the route I did.
That didn’t mean I was going to win this case, though. Then, as now, Father Deflorio couldn’t be moved.
“‘Every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.’”
I studied my hands. Fuck. If that was the truth, I’d been committing adultery with Nina nonstop since she walked into Eric’s apartment. I was going to burn for those petal-shaped lips alone.
I shook my head viciously. “Right. Yeah.”
“Is there anything else?”
I thought for a moment. “No, I think that about covers it.”