By the time she leaves, I’m more than grateful she’s gone, and I explore the rest of the apartment on the hunt for my bed.
There are two bedrooms, but I like the back room because there’s a window that looks straight onto the Vatican. It’s high up, oddly high in fact, but when I’m in bed, I just know I’ll see the roof, plus, there’s a thick curtain that would cut out the light.
Sometimes, I get bad headaches, so the front bedroom, which is pretty bright, would be a nightmare for me.
This one has a bed with an antique headboard made of thick walnut, which matches the table, and has me wondering if they are heirloom pieces.
Crisp white linens cover the mattress, and a duvet that looks like a cloud tempts me to plunk myself onto it and just nap.
But I’m icky.
So, I trudge through to the interconnecting room and find a shower with a few plush soaps and stuff in it.
Because I know I’ll crash soon, I quickly wash up, wiping away the grime from the long flight.
When I’m covered in a towel, leaving my dirty clothes on the floor, I do as I’d wanted earlier.
Flop onto the bed.
As I stare up at the ceiling where light dances in from the open windows in the lounge, I smile.
The buzz of a thousand different people talking from dozens of languages—most I don’t understand—and the chiming of the bells that suddenly strike at the top of the hour? All of it energizes me.
Not in a way that means I could get up, empty my rucksack, and actually change into pajamas and dump the wet towel, but in a way that’s good for my spirit.
I’m where I’m supposed to be.
I’m where I’m needed.
He’s here.
I can feel him.
Now I just have to find him.
But knowing that I’m in the same city as him, that we’re breathing the same air, speaking the same language?
It makes my skin feel hypersensitive. As I stare up at the light flickering over the ceiling, dancing as shadows rise and fall, I have no choice but to think of him as I let my fingers drift to the part where the edges of the towel meet.
Shoving the fabric aside, I bare my flesh to the room. It feels wicked, wanton, even, to lie here with my pussy on display as I let my fingers move between my legs. But that’s what I am sometimes.
Wicked.
Watchers are fallen angels. They fell into human temptations and were lost to the cause. At that moment, I embrace that half of me, and I touch my clit.
“Savio,” I whisper softly, to no one in particular, to the air, to fate, to my destiny and his which are on the brink of crossing. “I need you.”
And I let my fingers do the talking, let them take me higher as I rub my clit until I clap my hand to my face and moan into the ball of my fist as I come.
Sweet relief fills me then. A wonderful lethargy that I know will help me drift off to sleep, and with thoughts of him, as always, whispering through my psyche, I finally let the jet lag take hold of me.
Savio
“Now, my children, don’t forget about the food bank. We’re running low on stock, so any donations you can give will be most appreciated.” As expected, I lose their interest at that, but I persevere. “We’re helping a side of our community which is suffering greatly now thanks to the drop in tourism—”
Of course, that makes them worry about themselves.
Agitated, but knowing I tried, and also knowing that a lot of my flock in this parish are below the breadline themselves, I simply sigh as I retreat from the pulpit and wander over to the first pew.
I smile as Lara Ricci grabs my hands as I reach for hers. She squeezes, and murmurs, “You look brighter today, Father.”
“I feel brighter.” I peer at her though. See the bruises under her eyes, the bright yellow of her skin, and know that today is not a good day for her. “How about you?”
“I’m good enough to attend service.”
I snort a little. “You’re always good enough to attend service.”
She grins at me, her wizened face puckering into a semi-toothless smile that always makes me wonder why she doesn’t have false teeth. Unlike a lot of my parishioners, she’s wealthy. A chauffeur drops her off at church, and as she already said, she never misses a service.
Her fingers are frail in mine, and every day, they seem to grow more brittle.
We both know she doesn’t have long left for this Earth, but neither of us mention it.
Just as she’s dying, her soul is going to be liberated, and I know she takes comfort in that.
I’m glad she has her faith. Glad she has the security of it.
In truth, being around people like her, good people, has re-instilled some of my own beliefs.
Rome, this past year, has been good to me. Good for me. I never thought it would be much different. Same shit, different day, and all that. Once you’d seen one church, you’d seen them all—and yes, I know that isn’t a very priestly thought for me to have, but most days, I don’t feel like a priest.
I go through the motions. I do my job. All while I wonder what I’m doing.
The only time it makes sense to me?
When a service ends.
When I walk down the aisle of pews and greet the worshippers.
It amuses me that, during my time here, numbers have increased.
The church doesn’t know what to make of that, and neither do I, in all honesty.
Every other parish I’d been assigned to has been a disaster. No one has particularly liked me, and I haven’t particularly liked anyone there.
Here?
I fit in.
I guess, in a strange way, I’m home.
Not because this is the capital of my faith. The center of the Catholic world. But because this is my father’s country.
This is where I have roots—I’d just never been here long enough to let them take to the soil before.
I give Lara’s hands one last squeeze, and murmur, “I’ll send your chauffeur down for you.”
Her eyes twinkle. “Thank you.” She refuses to walk down the aisle with her stroller, so she uses her driver as a cane instead.
Her stubbornness amuses me, especially when she has to walk to the front pew where her family’s name is engraved.
The Iglezia di Santa Cecilia is in her blood in a way that it isn’t in mine, yet I’ve found a home here.
A place.
As I carry on with my walk, I stop beside Carlo DiRittano. He looks sheepish, and he’s fidgeting under his dad’s firm hold on his shoulder.
“What did you do, Carlo?” I chide, knowing he’s here, midweek, for a reason.
The DiRittanos come every Sunday, without fail, but during the week? Never. Carlo has ADHD, and he keeps doing stuff that shocks the family, so when they’re here on a Wednesday? I know he’s ‘misbehaved.’
I find it hard to keep a straight face, in all honesty, when I take his confession. The family is aghast at the stuff he does, but to me, they’re just sticklers. Well-meaning, but stifling.
“Nothing, Padre,” he mutters glumly, before he stares down at his feet.
His sneakers squeak over the ancient stones, and his toe digs into them, kicking a loose piece of gravel that someone has traipsed in at some point after the cleaners came.
“He’ll be waiting to give confession,” his father promises, and I cut him a look, wanting to shake my head but staying still. It isn’t my place to parent the boy, nor to parent the parents, but I truly do think they are too hard on him.