Rage Against the Dying

Thirty-six





I hadn’t spent that much energy standing in my closet staring at my clothes in a long time. For my first date with Carlo, I ultimately chose a floor-length sleeveless black jersey with a low-slung cowl neck that showed off my relatively firm triceps while hiding my monkey-face knees. I let my hair hang naturally instead of pasting it to the back of my head in a twist.

Sound of a knock, he didn’t use the doorbell. When I opened the front door it didn’t take a trained eye to see the effect I had. His retinas dilated, and his pulse throbbed in the side of his throat. Surprisingly, I could feel my own pulse accelerate in response, as if our hearts were souped-up engines and we were revving for a drag. I tried to remember the last time I had sex, thought I’d rather go straight to bed, dinner was going to feel interminable. He helped me into his unimpressive Volvo, the back of his hand grazing my bare shoulder.

But dinner wasn’t at all what I expected. Oh, we went over all the usual backstory. He shared that he was an ex–Catholic priest and had been teaching since he left the Jesuits in his forties. And he talked about Jane, his wife of twenty years, with a seasoned grief that somehow made his face only more attractive. I told him my story as well, the sanitized version, how I was in law enforcement, just a desk job really, retired, not much else to tell.

“Federal or local?” he asked, ignoring the hint that I didn’t want to talk about it.

“Federal. I investigated copyright infringements,” I added to forestall any more questions about myself, with a small regret that the first lie happened so soon. To turn the focus back on him I gave him a compassionate stare mixed with a “come on, you can tell me” twinkle. “Was it too hard to be a priest? Dealing with so much horror in the world?”

“No, that wasn’t it. I found people to be essentially good. That was my problem with the church.”

“Since when?” I said, taking an ever so small sip of wine and glancing appreciatively at the soft-shell crab appetizer placed before us. He had brought me to a very nice place.

“Since when have people been good, you mean?”

I nodded, dipping a little leg into a cream sauce and nibbling on it.

“Since always,” he said. “That original sin business is crap,” he said, but in a mild tone, lacking the intensity with which people usually debate matters of faith. He sipped his Manhattan, with no intention of saying more about that. A little sissy, that Manhattan, but nobody’s perfect. Then he asked, “Why, what has been your experience?”

He wasn’t bad at focus turning himself.

“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?” I asked.

“The Shadow knows,” he said.

We both laughed, that kind of moment when you agree to admit how old you are. But then I saw that he really wanted me to answer, and I needed to tell him something. “My experience has been…” I nearly said something flip, then found myself wanting to impress him, to show I could keep up with him on an intellectual level. “Most good is just a way of hiding an agenda.”

“Interesting. You’re familiar with Max Beerbohm.”

While trying not to look like I should have been, I admitted I was not.

Carlo managed to tell me without sounding patronizing. “A writer. He wrote a story that agrees with your point of view, only with a different result. Do you care to hear it, or would you prefer to shift back to quips and flirting?”

I was momentarily stunned, a rare experience with any man. Carlo DiForenza had my number, and he was by no means going to let me control the evening. I was uncomfortable with that, but the discomfort felt, in its own way, kind of delicious, and for the first time I went into an emotional free fall without looking for the net. I employed the name that would become my favorite term of endearment, a character in an old cartoon strip called Pogo. “Have it your way, Perfesser.”

He smiled to show he got the allusion. “Thank you.” He paused to eat his maraschino cherry thoughtfully before going on. “A very wicked man falls in love with an innocent young woman. He declares his love, but she can see he’s wicked. His degeneracy is stamped on his countenance. She says the only man she can love will have the face of a saint. So he goes to a mask shop and finds exactly that, a saint’s face. She falls in love with him and agrees to marry. But now comes the challenge. In order to keep her love, he must keep up the charade. So he gives money to the poor, is kind to children and small animals, visits the sick. All to convince her that he is the saint she assumes him to be. And every morning, before the sun comes up, he puts his mask back on before she can see what he really is. As you said, hiding his agenda.

“Only one morning, after they have been married for some years, he reaches under the bed where the mask is hidden. He feels nothing but shredded paper. Mice must have nibbled at it during the night and left nothing for him to wear. He begins to weep, knowing that this is the end of his great love. When his wife discovers he has been nothing but a hypocrite, she will leave him.

“The sun comes in the window, and, as always, his wife rolls over so that his face is the first thing she sees. She looks at him with eyes of love, not the horror he had expected. He cautiously kisses her, gets up, and steals a look at himself in the mirror on her dressing table. And he is shocked to see that his face looks exactly like that of the mask he had worn so long. Ah, the entrée,” he finished, licked his lips with anticipation, and fell to his scallops and caramelized onions without seeming to notice that the muscle at the top of my jaw had clenched briefly, or that it took me a moment to control my breathing and fan the tears dry with my eyelashes before I could mutter something suitable about my sea bass.

I was grateful for the warning. In that moment I decided I would never allow Dr. Carlo DiForenza to see me without my mask. The tactic had worked well until today.