S?ren raised his hand to stop him.
“Don’t. Please, don’t thank me.” S?ren glanced away into the corner of the room. “After all that happened, after all I put you through, terrifying a doctor on your behalf was the least I could do.”
He gave Kingsley a tight smile.
“You did more than terrify a doctor. I shouldn’t tell you this, but my…employer at the time had decided to burn me.”
“Burn?”
“Remove me from existence. Letting me die in the hospital was a nice, clean way to get rid of me and everything I know. The doctors, they’d been encouraged to let me die peacefully. I would have, if you hadn’t shown up and given the counter order.”
“I’m good at giving orders.” S?ren gave him the slightest of smiles.
“How did you find me? At the hospital, I mean.”
“You listed me as your next of kin when you joined the Foreign Legion.”
“That’s right,” Kingsley said. “I had no one else.”
“You had our school as my contact information. A nurse called St. Ignatius, and St. Ignatius called me.”
“How did you find me today?”
“You don’t exactly f ly under the radar, Kingsley.”
Kingsley shrugged, tried and failed to laugh.
“It’s not fair, you know. I couldn’t open my eyes that day in the hospital. You saw me last year. I haven’t seen you in… too long.”
“I was in Rome, in India. I’m not sure I want to know where you’ve been.”
“You don’t.”
“What are you doing with yourself these days?”
Kingsley shrugged, sighed, raised his hands. “I own a strip club. Don’t judge me. It’s very lucrative.”
“I judge not,” S?ren said. “Anything else? Job? Girlfriend? Wife? Boyfriend?”
“No job. I’m retired. No wife. But Blaise is around here somewhere. She’s the girlfriend. Sort of. And you?”
“No girlfriend,” S?ren said. “And no wife, either.”
“You bastard,” he said, shaking his head. “A fucking Jesuit priest.”
“Actually, a nonfucking Jesuit priest. They haven’t rescinded the vows of celibacy yet.”
“How inconsiderate of them.”
Kingsley tried to smile at S?ren, but he couldn’t. Not yet.
“Celibacy.” Kingsley pronounced the word like a curse. It was a curse. “I thought you were a sadist. When did you become a masochist?”
“Is that a rhetorical question or are you looking for the exact date of my ordination? I’m a priest. Once you’re firmly convinced that God exists, it’s not that great a leap to ask him for a job.”
Kingsley stood up and walked to the window. Outside, Manhattan had awoken and stirred to life. He had CEOs and Nobel Prize winners and heiresses as his neighbors here on Riverside Drive. They were the men and women who owned the city. And yet the only person in the entire borough who meant anything to him sat on his sofa in the music room and didn’t have a cent to his name. S?ren once had a cent to his name. A few billion cents to his name. And he’d given every last one of them to Kingsley.
“Why are you here?” Kingsley finally asked the question of the night.
“You might regret asking that.”
“I do already. I’m guessing this is more than a friendly reunion? And I’m guessing you aren’t here to pick things up where we left off?”
“Would you really want to?”
“Yes.” Kingsley answered without hesitation. It didn’t seem to be the answer S?ren expected.
“Kingsley…” S?ren stood and joined him by the window. Dawn had come to Manhattan. If dawn knew what she was doing, she’d take the next bus back out of town.
“Don’t say my name like that, like I’m a child who said something foolish. I’m allowed to want you. Still. Always.”
“I thought you would hate me.”