Audra came tap-tapping in high heels down the hall from Matthew’s bedroom. She looked very pretty, in a dark red dress, her hair pulled back in a gold clip. “Oh, my goodness,” she said as soon as she saw Father Hicks. “I know you! You’re the man I cut in front of in the supermarket checkout line. I’m sorry, I didn’t know then that you were a priest or whatever.”
Graham blinked, not sure where to start objecting. Father Hicks was a priest, not a priest or whatever. Did she think he was a vicar? Also, she seemed to be implying that she would have no remorse about cutting in front of a layman.
But Father Hicks only smiled and said, “That’s perfectly all right.”
And then, fortunately, Doug and Lorelei arrived. Doug was a big fleshy man with pale crew-cut hair you could see his scalp through. No matter what shirt Doug wore, his neck always squeezed over the collar in the back. He looked to Graham like a not-very-bright midwestern high school football player who now sold used cars. Actually, he was a native New Yorker and the chief commercial officer of an international company. Graham liked him a lot.
Bentrup and Elspeth arrived a minute later and there was a little burst of introductions, with everyone sort of talking over each other, and Bentrup saying, “The pleasure is entirely mine” twice.
Graham had to go into the kitchen and get dinner ready, so he missed whatever it was they found to talk about, though he could hear Audra offering wine to everyone. He prepared seven plates of tomato-and-mozzarella salad and then called them all into the dining room.
“You’re so lucky Graham cooks,” Lorelei said to Audra as soon as they were seated. “Doug can’t cook a thing.”
“Neither can I,” Audra said. “Really, next to nothing. But you’re a great cook, Lorelei. Now, Elspeth, tell me, when you and Graham were married, who did the cooking?”
Elspeth gave Audra one of her long looks and then she said, “We took turns.”
“And do you cook, Bentrup?”
God, it was like being on some endless, awkward talk show.
“Oh, not at all,” Bentrup said. “Not one bit, I’m afraid.”
Audra looked thoughtful for a second. “So if Lorelei came to live with Graham, and I went to live with Doug, who would gain more weight? You guys, from cooking delicious meals for each other, or Doug and me, from ordering pizza all the time?”
Graham wasn’t sure they should be talking about wife swapping, even of the culinary sort, in front of a priest, but to his surprise, Father Hicks joined right in. “Oh, you’d get tired of pizza pretty quick,” he said. He pointed his fork at Graham and Lorelei. “But they’d just keep trying to outdo each other with lavish meals and get fatter and fatter.”
“I think so, too,” Audra said, giving him her most approving smile. “Now tell me, who cooks for you, Father?”
This topic carried them all the way through the chicken masala, though it did reveal a large amount of ignorance on Audra’s part. Apparently, she thought Father Hicks lived in a kind of rooming house for priests (that was how she described it) and that the church paid some woman to cook for all of them. She was surprised to learn that he lived in an apartment and cooked his own meals.
“And what about laundry?” Audra asked.
“I have a washer and dryer,” Father Hicks said. “I do my own laundry.”
“Just like a regular person,” Audra marveled.
Graham thought Doug and Lorelei’s godson’s chances of getting baptized in Father Hicks’s church were probably low and falling.
Then Bentrup and Lorelei had a brief discussion about the price of mozzarella and a deli Bentrup knew of somewhere in Queens. “You must remind me later,” he said to Lorelei. “I will give you the address forthwith.”
Not for the first time, Graham wondered how successful Bentrup was as a shoe salesman. Did people get up and leave rather than listen to him? Or did they buy a pair of shoes just to shut him up?
He glanced across the table at Elspeth and their eyes caught for a second, like two coat hangers before you shake them free of each other.
After dinner, they moved into the living room. Audra sat next to Father Hicks on the sofa, and said, “Do you mind if I ask you a question?”
Without really meaning to, Graham held his breath, and he was pretty sure everyone else did, too.
“Go ahead,” said Father Hicks.
“Well, I went to your church charity shop this week to buy a dresser,” Audra said, “and I was wondering if you’d noticed that the man who works there looks just like a young Charlie Manson?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Father Hicks said.
“I’m so glad it’s not just me,” Audra said. “But really, it was so unnerving being alone in the shop with him! I kept thinking, Is he going to kill me, or brainwash me, or just sell me a dresser? But he was as nice as could be. And going to school in social work, too.”
Father Hicks nodded approvingly. “He’s a good kid.”
Audra took a sip from her wineglass. “And do you know our dentist, Dr. Alpen? I believe he’s a member of your congregation.”
“Oh, yes,” Father Hicks said. “He’s an usher.”
“Well, I can’t understand why Dr. Alpen is not off treating lepers somewhere,” Audra said, “because he has absolutely saintlike patience when it comes to cleaning Matthew’s teeth. Do you go to Dr. Alpen, Father? Or someone who, like, specializes in priests?”
“No, no,” Father Hicks said. “My dentist is a Lutheran.”
He seemed charmed by Audra’s interest in his life, and not offended like a sensible person would be.
“Now, let’s see,” Audra said thoughtfully. “Who else do I know from your church? What about the Mosebys?”
“Oh, yes,” Father Hicks said. “David and Carol and their five kids.”
Audra leaned forward slightly. “Maybe you don’t know this, but when their oldest son, Bobby, threatened to burn down the house unless his parents bought him a motorbike, they bought him a motorbike.”
“I’ll have the community pray for him,” Father Hicks said.
Audra laughed. “I think it might be a little late for that.”
They both sounded very merry.
Graham said nothing and drank his wine. He understood that Audra was using this gossip to include Father Hicks, to draw him to her in a warm silk net that felt, for this evening anyway, like friendship. The gossip was all gentle and harmless, though Graham had no doubt whatsoever that Audra knew things about all these people that were far more shocking than anything Father Hicks had ever—ever—heard in confession.
“Perhaps you can tell me something,” Father Hicks said to Audra. “Do you happen to know a former parishioner of mine named Brice Breedlove? Because he and his wife stopped coming very abruptly about a year ago, and they used to be such regular churchgoers.”
“Oh, yes, I know what happened to Brice,” Audra said unexpectedly. (Well, sort of really expectedly, actually.) She leaned forward to refill her wineglass and Father Hicks’s. “Apparently God spoke to Brice one morning last year and told him that he was making a big mistake with his adjustable rate mortgage. And Brice was like ‘What are you saying? You think I should get a fixed rate mortgage?’ And God said, ‘No, no, I want you to move right out of that beautiful expensive condo to a studio apartment in Queens and have no mortgage at all.’?”