Zenny laughs a little. “Like I said, I have an unconventional novice mistress and my prioress is very, well, modern. She says she’d rather have women who choose this life in knowledge than who choose in ignorance.”
I have to concede that’s a fairly wise perspective on religious life—if anything about religious life can be called wise and not, you know, corrupt or pointless.
“Okay, so you feel like you haven’t, I don’t know, thoroughly interrogated this choice or whatever because you haven’t had doubts, and your mentors have encouraged you to go fuck someone to force those doubts into being.”
“Well,” Zenny says, flexing her hands on her knees and looking down, “it’s more like they think I’m so certain because I haven’t actually confronted what I’m leaving behind. And that’s not just sex. It’s money and close relationships and freedom and frivolous kinds of things. I don’t just want fucking, Sean,” she explains, her eyes finding mine again. “I want someone to show me everything I’m going to miss. I want someone to challenge me and test me. And if I’ve tasted everything the world has to offer and I still want to consecrate my life to Christ, then I’ll know it’s what I’m truly meant to do. It will be a mature choice and not a choice made out of naïveté.”
Her eyes are hypnotic, the copper rims darkening into pools so deep that I can barely separate where they blend into the onyx of her pupil. “If you really want this,” I say, feeling almost dizzy looking at her, “you should find a boy your own age. Or shit, at least a boy who believes in the same things you do.”
She shakes her head, and it finally breaks the spell. I stand up abruptly, going over to the window, because I can’t handle looking at her, being so close to her. Not when she’s asking for what she’s asking for, which is something I’d fork over my own soul to give her.
Unfortunately, that would almost certainly be the price. Not my soul per se, since I don’t believe in that shit, but you know. Whatever’s left of honor and morality inside me.
“It has to be you,” she pleads to my back. “I’ve been trying to take the Reverend Mother’s advice for the last six months. Wearing street clothes instead of my uniform to school, trying to flirt with the guys in class, even saying yes to a couple of dates, but no one interested me. No one challenged me. In fact, most of the guys I interacted with only reaffirmed that I wasn’t missing anything good. I never even got as far as kissing them, and that night at Elijah’s gala—it was me saying goodbye to the whole plan. I’d have that one last time to get dressed up and drink and pretend, and then I’d give up this idea of searching for doubt. I mean, if I’d been searching for it and still didn’t find it, then didn’t that mean something too? That God didn’t want me to doubt?”
I don’t believe in a god, so I obviously don’t believe in any predestination, “this is God’s path for me” crap, but by dint of the situation and my vested interest in trying to maintain a semblance of control, I find myself squawking in agreement. “Surely that’s the right answer. Surely you should give up this idea.”
“But see, then I saw you,” Zenny says, and her voice goes so soft and low that I turn to look at her. Her face glows up at me with a kind of self-deprecating helplessness, like she knows how silly it all sounds and yet she can’t stop herself from just coming out with it plainly. “I saw you, and you were the first boy I ever wanted, Sean. When I was a little girl, I thought we’d get married, when I was old enough to have a real crush, I had a crush on you. When I was in high school, it was you that my body first wanted. And seeing you at the gala was like…like the answer to my prayers.”
I’m greedy for this idea of her having a crush on me, of her wanting me with all this shy conviction over the years. The thought of it sends something spinning in my chest like a pinwheel, and I have to force myself to track the conversation. “You prayed for doubt?” I ask, hoping she can’t see how boyishly flattered I am.
“I prayed for a chance. A chance to prove I was stronger than doubt—but how could I prove it if I never had the doubt in the first place? And then there you are, the first man I ever wanted, the ultimate temptation. Powerful and experienced and so hot I could barely even talk to you without stammering.”
It should be shocking that this makes me embarrassed, this compliment, when I’ve had women call me a god or a hero or any number of insane things in order to get into my pants or my wallet. But it’s not shocking because—as I’m quickly learning—everything about Zenny seems to come with a different set of rules, a different set of experiences. It’s like I’m starting all over again with her, and I have no idea what to say.
Luckily, my silence doesn’t seem to bother her and she keeps talking. “And it wasn’t just that I wanted you, although I did. I mean, I do. But I know how you feel about the Church, I know exactly how worldly and materialistic you are, and what could be more perfect? Who could be more perfect?”
She beams up at me, like a star pupil who’s just delivered a perfect answer, and I stare down at her, like a teacher trying very, very hard to suppress a boner he has for his student.
“Zenny, the answer is still no.”
Her beaming smile fades into a sigh. “I thought you might still protest. It’s about Elijah, isn’t it?”
“And you’re young. A thousand years too young. I know it’s hard to see at your age, but men like me are—”
Zenny holds up a hand to stop me. “Don’t give me some patronizing line about the ‘depraved nature of men’ or some bullshit. It’s a gender theory that’s about fifty years out of date, for one, and nothing more than a convenient excuse for you to avoid taking responsibility for yourself, aside from the way it neatly precludes the possibility that a woman might also be depraved. And aside from the obviously problematic binary construct.”
I blink. Star pupil indeed.
“I wouldn’t ask for this if I didn’t want it, and I can assure you that I’m just as capable of sexual energy as a man. I can also say that aside from being a legal adult, I’m under no illusions about the way you desire me. You made that very clear the night of the gala.”
Guilt rams through me like a railroad spike. “Zenny, I—”
“Don’t apologize. I liked it, I liked your honesty. I asked for it, and I mean the things I ask for, Sean. Like right now.”
She’s too articulate for me to argue with, and especially when it’s an argument I only halfheartedly want to win. By which, I mean that my heart feels like I should say no, while the rest of my body is throbbing with the urge to give her everything she’s asking for and then some.
Not halfheartedly, then. Half-cockedly.
“Elijah, though,” I mumble, trying to grasp on to some reason that she can’t talk her way around. “He asked me to keep you safe.”
“And what better way to take care of me than to help me when I ask for it?”
“I, uh—” Good God, where is the guy who dominates boardrooms? Who runs over lawyers and heirs and investors with sheer charm and willpower? Why can’t I formulate a response? Why can’t I vocalize any fucking words?