Olivia studied him, then, leaning forward, said, “Does this mean you are offering me a job?”
Was he? He felt like a diver, standing on the edge of a cliff and about to jump into unknown waters. Should he step back before it was too late, or take the plunge? “Does this mean you are available if I did?”
“I’m not sure. I am very busy, with my tours, and my own research, and—”
“Fine,” David said, starting to fill out the call slip and calling her bluff. “It was nice meeting you.”
But her hand flicked out and stopped him. “Already,” she said, “you are hard to work for.” And then she laughed, and the sound of it made David laugh, too. “I want a raise!”
There was a shushing sound from someone in the main reading room, as Olivia snatched the call slip and read what David had been writing there. “The Codice Mediceo-Palatino?” she inquired.
“Yes,” he said, wondering if it would meet with her approval.
“A good place to start,” she said, nodding. Raising her hand to signal one of the library attendants, she added, “You may not be so bad, after all.”
Chapter 15
The wind off Lake Michigan howled around the walls of the Holy Name Cathedral, rippling the tarps where the ceiling was still being mended, and sending a cold draft into the side chapel where the private ceremony was being held. A blown-up photo of Randolph Van Owen at the wheel of his yacht had been mounted on an easel, with a caption providing his dates of birth and death.
Despite the prominence of the Van Owen name, and its long history in Chicago, Kathryn had arranged for this to be a small gathering—just Randolph’s sisters, their children, and a scattering of his friends from the yacht club. The young priest, Father Flanagan, was doing his best, but he was nervous and laboring hard to say something true and consoling about a man he’d never met. The Van Owenses had not been churchgoers, and it was clear that a lot of the priest’s eulogy had come from a quick search on Google.
Kathryn just wanted it to be over. She wished she had never had to set foot in Holy Name Cathedral again, and glancing at the confessionals on her way in, she had experienced a predictable pang. She had had to step over the very spot where the old priest, Father DiGennaro, had collapsed just a few nights before, the cell phone spilling from his hand. There was nothing to mark it now, nothing to alert anyone passing by that a man had died there. But then, she sometimes thought there was no place on earth that didn’t bear that same stain; others might not see them, but she could, everywhere. Live long enough, she thought, and the whole world starts to look like a graveyard.
The onyx urn containing Randolph’s ashes rested on a marble pedestal, and from time to time the priest looked over at it with a show of deference, as if it contained some presence, some essence … - something other than what it did, which was purely dust and rubble. Kathryn had no illusions. For someone in her position, it would have been impossible to feel otherwise.
When the priest intoned his last prayer and the ceremony was over, Kathryn said good-bye to the other mourners from under her black veil. Randolph’s sisters, with whom she had never gotten along, trailed out, dragging their spoiled progeny, and the boating pals shook her hand, no doubt heading off to the yacht club to get drunk in his honor.
Father Flanagan came to her side, and after she had thanked him for his words, he said, “No, I must thank you.”
“For what?”
Gesturing upward, where the hats of the previous Cardinals had been reattached to the rafters and the ceiling work was again under way, he said, “I was told that you had made a very generous contribution to the church, to cover all the expenses of the roof repair.”
That she had done. Out of guilt. If she hadn’t given the old priest such a shock, he might have one day died, peacefully, in his own bed, instead of on these cold stones. The next day, she’d written a check. Writing checks was easy.
“May I escort you out?” he asked, but she said that wasn’t necessary. Cyril had already taken the urn in his gloved hands and walked her down the aisle to the great double doors with their Tree of Life motif.