Rabid (6 page)

“Well, it depends.” She pointed to the middle of the list. “
White
is probably Bill and Melanie. Melanie is a mezzo.” She pointed at a frosted-blonde woman in the third row. “These people,” she pointed to
Lawrence, James,
and
Douglas
, “only go to Mass and school events.
Dietrich
is Laura and Don. Laura is an alto. She’s wearing the red blouse and khaki slacks.”

Bev waved to Laura, sitting between Lydia and Mary.

~~~~~

Laura waved back to Bev and then whispered to Lydia and Mary. They had been discussing that Father Nicolai was AWOL and that no one had seen him for two weeks. Father Sam had only muttered “transferred” with tight lips, and he was never tight-lipped about anything.

Laura said, “My, isn’t our Bev cozy with the new priest?”

Mary, behind them, leaned in. “He’s so young. What is he, thirty-five? What a waste.”

Lydia said, “Yeah, what a waist, and his ass is nice, too.”

Laura smiled. “Oh, Liddy, you’re awful. How can you tell under that cassock?”

Lydia flipped her bottle-blonde hair behind her shoulder. “Anyone with a face that gorgeous is morally bound to have a nice ass, too. Is it just me, or is there something especially sexy about a priest?”

“Intrinsically playing hard to get.” Mary fluffed her naturally blonde hair, preening.

“Forbidden fruit,” Laura countered.

Lydia said, “He can take you to Heaven because he knows the way.”

“Liddy! You are
so
going to Hell.” Laura examined one rough fingernail.

“If that’s where all the fun people are,” Lydia said. “And he’s so cozy with our Bev.”

Mary made a dismissive
hmmf
sound in her throat. “He should be up here flirting with us instead of wasting his time with our sweet little Bev.”

The priest looked at them. He stood and walked up the risers toward them.

Lydia said, “Quick, Mary, wish to win the lottery.”

Laura said, “Oh, crap,” and her inner Catholic schoolgirl emerged and she flashed back to high school, when Father Joseph advanced to confiscate the note she had been passing, a parodied song titled, “Father Joseph and the Amazing Lipstick-Covered Dream Condom.”

~~~~~

Four lady friends watched Father Dante stride up the stairs.

One is oblivious and the most innocent, contrary to public opinion.

One has committed adultery with another’s husband.

One will break the priest’s vow of chastity.

One is the mother of a raped child.

~~~~~

The full choir surrounded Father Dante and Bev.

During the trial, they took sides.

Some blamed the wife because she was blind to what was happening in her own home.

Some blamed the husband because his screwing around precipitated the whole thing.

Some blamed the other woman, the only one who wasn’t breaking sacred vows, as they always do.

Some blamed the priest because God should not let murder happen.

Some sided with the priest, for surely he was the innocent one.

Some supported the wronged wife for fear of being a victim like her.

Some took the side of the husband, for they were not blameless themselves.

A few sympathized with the other woman because they knew in their hearts that they were as much the very Devil as she.

~~~~~

Bev was late getting home because she circled the block four times. The January stars revolved around the cold suburban rooftops as she cruised.

She finally parked her car in the garage beside Conroy’s Porsche—should a family man own such a smug, sexual car?—and walked into the hot house. The smell of the girls’ no-tears shampoo drifted in the laundry room.

“Beverly?” Conroy hollered from somewhere in the house.

“Yes?” She set her purse on the washer, and her keychain jangled on the enameled metal.

“I missed dinner,” he yelled.

She considered picking up her purse and circling the block until Conroy figured out that his plate was in the refrigerator where it always was whenever he was late, but she sloughed off her coat, hung it in the closet, and meandered toward the kitchen, where she removed his plate from the fridge and microwaved it.

The pork chop and corn soufflé rotated in the microwave. It would be easy to shake a little rat poison on it, but she didn’t have any rat poison.

She sat with him in the dining room while he ate and said, “I hope counseling will be better tomorrow.”

Conroy cut a slice away from the apple-glazed pork chop with a strong steak knife, then divvied that into pieces. “I didn’t like him talking to our girls, alone, with the door closed.”

Bev couldn’t watch him tuck away that pork chop that she had spent an hour and a half perfecting. He didn’t even chew. “He said it was about the school.”

“Still inappropriate. He could have been doing anything in there with that door closed.”

“The door wasn’t closed. It was partway open.” Conroy could have been doing anything to that whore in the hotel room that he had booked in the names
Conroy and Beverly Sloan
. Or that whore could have been doing anything to him. “And Father Dante is a priest.”

“The corporate culture of the Vatican warps all those priests into sexual caricatures of men. They’re all perverts and pedophiles, like that one in Boston who sodomized those boys.”

Yes,
sodomized
. Perhaps that was what Conroy did to his whore. Bev sighed.

“This Father Dante was transferred here suddenly.” Conroy pointed at her with a square of pale pork atop his fork. “They say pedophiles get jobs in schools to have access to kids.”

An image arose in Bev’s mind: smashed meat and potatoes flying, the glass table top lifting and flipping onto Conroy, imprisoning him in a makeshift glass house.

She said, “Stop.”

“I don’t want the girls alone with him. He might be a pedophile.”

Pinpoint reflections shimmered in the tabletop. “You shouldn’t make such horrible accusations.”

He held up his clean, blameless hands. “Hey, I didn’t accuse anybody of anything.”

Bev grabbed the tabletop with both hands. The glass was slippery as ice between her fingers. “You checked that woman into the hotel under my name.
Under
my name.
”  

Conroy stood, outraged. “You shouldn’t be snooping around like that.”

“You shouldn’t be
screwing
around like that. Who is she?”

“Beverly,” he started.

“
No
, she most certainly is not
Beverly
. Why would you do such a thing?”

“I’m sorry. I told you that it was over.”

Bev’s nose burned as tears boiled up. “You have to tell
her
. I want proof that you told
her
that it’s over.”

His blue eyes rolled. “Did that priest tell you to do this?”

“Stop it. Just
stop it
.” He was heaping all of his own hateful sins onto Father Dante.

She prayed to Mary to intercede.
Be with us now and at the hour of our deaths.
That Conroy’s whore had appropriated not only Bev’s husband but pretended to her name and position and identity galled her, literally
galled
her, made Bev feel as if she had vomited out everything in her esophagus and stomach and duodenum, all the way down to her gall bladder, and then she vomited green gall and black bile.

No one had even checked the woman’s identity. No one even cared.

Bev was so easily replaced that she was practically no one at all.

~~~~~

Leila arrived late at the lab the next morning. Even after driving home and showering, the hangover clung to her, snarling and raking her scalp.

Keyboard clattering rattled from Conroy’s open office door. She sneaked past.

At her desk, her purse and backpack fell out of her hands, and the purse bounced and fell to the floor. She let the stupid thing lie there. The way of the universe was gravity and entropy, and that morning, the universe was winning. Alcohol detox and caffeine jones warred in her head, pillaging and burning her brain cells.

Aldehyde, that was the chemical. Ethanol metabolized to aldehydes, like formaldehyde. Even after brushing her teeth twice and gargling with acid-strip mouthwash, aldehydes excreting through her lungs scoured her tongue and irritated her stomach.

From his office, Conroy yelled, “Leila! Computer help!”

She steeled her head against her own voice and moaned, “Okay.” She limped to his cluttered office and closed the door behind her. “I don’t suppose you have any extra coffee.”

“Here.” He handed her a cup without looking up. Both his legs bounced at the knees.

“It’s okay, Conroy. You don’t have to give up your juice.”

“S’alright, it’s my fifth.” He drumrolled his fingers on the desk.

After an experimental sip, her stomach relaxed, thanks be to all the caffeine gods in the Java Islands.

“Do you know this Petrocchi-Bianchi fellow?” Conroy pointed to the computer monitor.

Tiny-fonted PubMed citations filled the screen. The papers’ titles were neuroscience, molecular to physiological. Each citation listed
D.M.
Petrocchi-Bianchi, SJ, MD, PhD
as an author. She said, “That’s a lot of alphabet soup after his name. I don’t think I’ve met him.”

Leila sat at the other computer. With distraction, her head pounded less, though as soon as she noticed this, the war drums crescendoed. She launched web software and searched for
Petrocchi-Bianchi
and
neurology
. “Found his homepage.”

Conroy leaned over. “You can read Italian?”

“No. Is he in there?” Leila pointed to a lab group picture. The caption under the photo read,
Dipartimento di Neuroscienze e Psichiatriche Molecolari, Universita degli Studi di Roma.

Conroy pointed to a man in the back row. “That’s him.”

The guy was wearing gothic black, and his thick, curly hair swept his shoulders. He looked like he might be cool. He looked European, and Leila liked Europeans because they did the most passionate things in bed, but something was odd about his clothes. She leaned toward the monitor. His black shirt was cut by a Roman collar. “He’s a fucking priest. Why the fuck are you asking me about a priest?”

“No reason.”

She squinted, trying to will herself to read Italian or at least call up enough of her high school French and Californian Spanish to make an educated guess. “Goddamn priests. They’re all sick bastards. The corporate culture of the Vatican subverts natural moral sense and warps their personalities into a chauvinist parody of hyper-masculinity.”