Hello again! Well, it seems Paul is safely tucked in for the night and Church is about to get the romp he wanted with Shawn, or...maybe none of that is true. Let's have a look. I hope you like the chapter. ENJOY!
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Crown Vic to a Parallel World: Stolen Love The third and final installment of the ongoing adventures of Church Philips
10
Life is Not Fair
I burst into the apartment and found Shawn standing in the open door of the closet. He was stripped to his briefs and socks. I was pleased with his enthusiasm but was a little disappointed that I didn't get to peel those white pants off him...with my tongue.
I realized that something was wrong. I knew Shawn hadn't been wearing underwear earlier, and now he was wearing a pair. That meant he'd put them on after removing his white pants. WHY?' My brain demanded. I got even more worried when I noticed Shawn's emotions. He wasn't feeling naughty and sexy. Instead of anticipation, he felt resignation, resignation and remorse. WHY?' My brain demanded again.
Shawn turned toward me as I hurried over to him. "I'm sorry," were the first two words out of his mouth.
"WHY?" I demanded aloud.
"I got a call. Met and I have to go into the office."
"NOW?" I shouted and felt like someone had punched me in the guts.
"Yes, now, and I know how disappointed you are, and I know how much you needed this, and you should know that I needed it just as much and I'm sorry." Having expressed himself in one long, breathless sentence, Shawn ducked into the closet. He opened the hamper to pull out the clothes he'd worn that day, the ones I'd had pressed to my face when he caught me earlier. He pulled the pants on and fastened the waist, then pulled his shirt over his head and smoothed it.
I wanted to scream and hit things. I wanted to cry. "But..." was the only word I managed to squeeze passed the lump in my throat.
Shawn came close to me and wrapped me in his arms. "I really am sorry. You have no idea how much I wanted to spend the night with you. I hate it when we're apart. You must believe me."
My mind frantically searched for a way to salvage at least part of the night I'd planned to spend with my husband. I knew life wasn't fair, but I wasn't used to it being as unfair as it was at that moment. "It's an hour flight, right?" I said to voice my thought process rather than to ask a question. "Take me with you. Met can fly the plane, and you and I can at least have an hour. I promise not to tire you out. PLEASE!" I begged.
Shawn backed away from me to look in my face to see if I was serious. When he saw that I was, I felt that he almost said yes to my plea. Almost. He shook his head. "What if Paul needs you? He'd be here all alone if you went with me. He's your guest and you need to be here in case he needs something. Think about how you'd feel if you woke up scared and alone in a strange place. No...as much as I want to, it wouldn't be right. I'll make it up to you. I promise."
Shawn was right and I knew he was right, but that didn't stop me from wanting to cry and hit things again. For just a second, I resented Paul for accepting my invitation to Solum. A thought struck me; my brain presented one last sliver of hope. "Ten minutes...just ten minutes, please. I don't even care if I get off. We don't even have to have real sex. How about if I..." I dropped to my knees in front of him and tried to unfasten his pants. "Please...I'm begging you...five minutes...I just need a taste."
Someone knocked on our apartment door. I knew it had to be Met and he had to be ready to leave. The noise froze my frantic hands as they struggled with the clasp on Shawn's pants. "FUCK!" I screamed at Shawn's crotch and dropped my frustrated face into my palms. Angry tears fell from my eyes and wet my hands against my face.
Shawn dropped to his knees in front of me and put his forehead to mine. I took my hands away so he could look into my eyes and see all the crushed disappointment on display there. "You know I'm sorry, don't you? You know I love you, right? Just bear with it a little longer and I promise...I promise it will be different. Do you believe me?"
"Yes." I sobbed, except I really didn't. How could I have believed him just then?
"Will you be alright?"
I took a deep, frustrated breath and huffed it out across his face. "Yes."
"I love you." He said and leaned in for a goodbye kiss.
I kissed him, a chaste kiss on his lips, and Shawn rose. He left, and he closed the door behind him. I sprawled on the floor in front of the closet door and hated whoever and whatever took him away from me.
After a few minutes, I fought my way to my feet and left the room. Being in that room, where we lived and loved each other, where the air always had a faint tang of his scent, being there made it harder to be without him. I sulked down to my kitchen and asked the culinarian for a cup of coffee.
I told the building management system to make the walls clear, and I scanned the sky to the east to see the lights of our plane taking my husband away from me. There it went, taking Shawn where he didn't want to be, and where I didn't want him to go. The culinarian chimed and I reached into the automatic door and took my coffee.
I wasn't paying attention as I withdrew the cup. I was too busy trying to separate the winking light of our plane from the ocean of glittering stars in the sky. I misjudged the catch that held the automatic door and snagged the full cup on it. The coffee sloshed from the cup and scalded my hand.
"FUCK!" I screamed and threw the cup. It shattered against the outside wall of the house. Hot, dark roast coffee streaked down the wall and across the floor and mixed with broken glass and lonely rage.
I watched the mess spread and it made me feel even worse than I already did. I went around the counter where there was an island to sit. I sat and put my head down on the black glass surface and wept with self-pity. I knew I was having what my therapist would call a `disproportionate reaction' to Shawn getting called away, but that wasn't the only thing bothering me, not by a long shot.
I'd been worried we were drifting apart. That night represented the first time in months I'd felt the real spark of Shawn's love for me. I knew he loved me, I thought he did anyway, but that night I'd felt it with an intensity I hadn't felt in a while. I wanted to show him how much I missed him. I wanted to prove that I loved him. I thought I'd have my chance to stoke the fire that seemed to be smoldering out...but it wasn't to be.
A big body leaned into my side and a big hand patted my back. "What's wrong, young man?" Paul asked me.
I collected myself and sat up. I picked up my shirt to wipe my face and pushed it back down when my eyes were dry. "Having a pity party. Why aren't you sleeping?"
"You know how it is in a strange place...and this place is stranger than most." Paul said with a lift of his shoulders. "I thought you and your young man would be...you know." He waved his right hand in the air in little circles to indicate activities he didn't plan to describe.
I explained the situation with as few words as I could. "His answering service called...or someone did. He had to go to Oppidum for an emergency."
"I'm surprised you didn't go with him." Paul said and added some unintended insult to my very raw injury.
I felt my hands clench into angry fists. I instantly regretted the meanness I felt toward Paul and forced my fists open. It wasn't his fault, and he didn't mean for his words to hurt. I rubbed my face with my hands and lowered them to rest on the countertop. My right hand moved to grip the bracelet on my left wrist like it was iron filings drawn to a powerful magnet.
Paul walked around the counter and saw the spilled coffee and shattered cup. "Do you want to talk about it?" He asked and rested his hands on the counter opposite my own. His face was bunched up with that mix of caution and worry that equaled concern.
The way Paul stood behind the counter made me think of old Beni and the advice he couldn't give me. I found myself missing that much older man, more sharply in that moment, than I had in years. "Do you mind if we don't talk about it?" I asked Paul. "There's nothing you can do to bring Shawn back to me, and I feel bad enough as it is."
Paul lifted his meaty shoulders again in what amounted to a shrug of `either way is fine with me.' He directed a pointed glance at the floor on his side of the counter. "Perhaps a mop then? If you don't want to discuss it, at least I can help you clean up."
I got up from my stool and moved to stand next to Paul. I elbowed him gently and pointed to the brown streak on the floor. "You want to see something cool?" I asked a leading question that no one ever says `no' to. "My control has gotten much better since we saw each other last. Watch this."
I shot a wide pattern of white magic at the floor that vaporized the spilled coffee without damaging the floor surface or destroying the shards of the shattered cup. When the coffee was gone, I held my palm open and called the broken glass into it. I showed Paul my handful of broken glass and asked his opinion. "How about that?"
"I see you are still a showoff, young man." Paul smirked at me. "I am happy to be your audience if it puts a smile on your face."
I threw the glass down the trash chute and dusted my palms off. Paul wasn't wrong. I was a showoff, and I was happy to have a fresh audience for my performance. As I stood back from the trash chute, I noticed the view of the sky through the clear wall. I crossed to the wall and looked out. Paul joined me and I asked the building management system to open the wall wide and shut the lights off. It did as it was asked, and the mild nighttime breeze of the plains blew in to invite us into the dark.
Paul and I took enough steps to put the plains under our feet instead of the black glass of my kitchen floor, and we raised our eyes into the pitch darkness. The sky above us was so full of stars, it was like a glitter cannon had gone off in a velvet room.
"Beautiful." Paul breathed to the darkness with his voice lowered in reverence to the majesty before us.
"Yes, it is. This helps me. No matter how bad I feel, no matter what's bothering me, I can usually look at the night sky and feel a little better. I don't know why that is."
"No moon tonight." Paul said, just to be saying something.
"There isn't one." I explained.
"As I said."
"No, I mean there never is one. Solum doesn't have a moon."
"Truly?" He asked.
"Yup...no moon. The oceans have no tides either. No moon, and no tides. I didn't realize the moon thing for a long time. It was just something I didn't notice until one day I asked about it. No eclipses either because there's no moon to get between us and the sun."
"Such a wonderous place." Paul observed to the darkness.
We stood just about shoulder to shoulder, each with his own thoughts and each looking onto the same sky, but presumably seeing different things. I thought about pointing out some of the unique constellations of Solum, but Shawn was better at picking them out than I was. I also figured the three of us would be doing some stargazing eventually. `If Shawn's practice will ever stop ruining my life.' I thought with no charity in my heart.
I tried not to be bitter, but it was hard. I thought again about the constellations but deferred to my previous decision on the matter. I also didn't want to steal Shawn's thunder with a bunch of half-assed finger pointing.
I don't know how long we stood there, it felt like a while. Paul startled me when he broke the silence by whistling a tune. It was a tune that sounded familiar. He whistled it through once, then whistled it again and sang some of it. The words he sang didn't ring true. "Jews, Jews, Jews, looking out my back door." He sang with his big voice.
"Jews?" I asked.
"Jews." Paul asserted with a nod of confirmation. I wasn't sure if he was kidding because he'd asserted the lyrics with such conviction. He could have easily convinced me that he was deadly serious.
"I don't think that's right." I challenged him gently.
"Of course, it is." Paul insisted. "I know Creedence Clearwater Revival well and specifically the album Cosmo's Factory.' In fact, I know all the words to the song, or most of them anyway." Paul whistled the melody again and filled in the words he knew' with a voice that tried to approximate the rasp of John Fogerty, the original singer. Whenever Paul didn't have words, he hummed.
"Tangerines and elements are layin' in the sand, cornflakes on rye, I'm gonna fly and soon...Jews, Jews, Jews, dinosaur betrothals, hmmm hmm Beethoven...Jews, Jews, Jews, lookin' out my backdoor."
By the time Paul was done singing, I was laughing so hard I couldn't breathe. I was holding my middle, bent over, roaring with hysterics. Tears streamed down my face while I gasped through convulsive laughter. Paul made it worse, or maybe better, by staring at me with deliberate consternation on his face, like he didn't get the joke. He finally broke up as I started to regain control of myself.
"Are those not the words as you heard them, young man?" Paul asked through his own merriment.
"Jews?" I gasped.
"No," he shook his head like he was correcting a child, "Jews, Jews, Jews."
I broke up again and Paul started whistling and singing. "Cornflakes on rye, I'm gonna fly, and soon...hmmmm hmmmm hmmmm."
I staggered to the edge of the wall that bordered the opening from the kitchen and leaned against it to stay on my feet while I laughed some more. Paul kept up his singing like my laughter was an unrelated condition to his mad lyrics. "Dinosaur betrothals...hmm hmmmm Beethoven, Jews, Jews, Jews..."
I covered my ears, desperate to keep the words out so I could catch my breath. Paul came over to check on me. "Are you alright, young man?" He asked, his tone half concern and half amusement. I nodded and tried to breathe through the lingering giggles. Eventually, I was successful in settling down. "I don't think Fogerty wrote one word of that." I wheezed.
"I don't know." Paul stroked his chin dramatically. "He probably used the word `and' in that tune...somewhere."
I nodded at Paul's inescapable logic. "At least once." I conceded.
Paul switched off the routine and went back to being himself. "I love Creedence. I always have. I had a friend, when I was in the seminary, he was a genius for word play. He was a genius, full stop, but the things he could do with words...he wrote the most deeply moving sermons I've ever heard, and he also came up with those lyrics. We used to sing them to each other and play around with them. He was a true friend and a dear man. I miss him. I miss him a great deal."
Paul seemed to get a little sad over the memory of his friend, but he shook it off quickly and went back to talking about music. "For years, decades really, I listened to `Cosmo's Factory' every Sunday morning to get myself ready to say mass. Something about Fogerty's raucous voice at high volume, played very early on a Sunday morning would get the blood moving in my veins. That's what I needed to be ready to face the congregation. One cannot inspire, unless they are inspired themselves. Somewhere along the way, I stopped listening. I don't think I even know why."
I got my feet under me and stood off the edge of the wall. I moved over to Paul and looked up at the sky. "Did you need that?" I asked with genuine curiosity. "The inspiration, I mean?"
Paul exhaled a ragged sigh, turned to me for a second, then looked back up at the sky. "It will probably surprise you to find out that I don't do well in crowds. I am terrified of public speaking. You will probably wonder why I would become a priest if I didn't like public speaking. The answer is that I didn't intend to. After South America and my lost years back in the States, I thought I would become a monk and spend my life in quiet contemplation and reflection. That was easier said than done."
Paul's shining eyes flashed at me in the darkness. He cast his gaze back to the heavens and continued his story. "You've probably noticed that there aren't many monasteries around anymore. There weren't many when I accepted the holy orders. When I couldn't find one with a vacancy, I did the next best thing I could do. I became a priest.
"I thought that even as a priest, I could find a place to lead a monastic existence; work with the poor, minister to the sick and dying, help the individual lamb instead of tending to a flock. It wasn't to be. God called me to a large parish, and I spent my entire career using the vestments like a costume...a shield to protect me from my fear. That's why I needed the drink earlier this evening. It's why I got drunk at your brother's house twelve years ago.
"One on one, like this, I can function quite well." Paul admitted. "With two or even three people, I can usually manage. In front of a large group, if I can be all the way in front of them, separate, you understand, I can manage. Between three and twenty, up close like this evening, that's where my real fear lies."
I felt terrible, like I'd put my friend through an ordeal by having him to dinner. "I'm sorry...I didn't..."
"No, you didn't." Paul cut me off. "Don't apologize. You are my friend. Your extended family are my friends. Once I realized that, I felt better. As much as I resented your brother for his pig-headed display, it was his obstinance, and Mary's defense of me, that reminded me who I am and who your people are to me. I love being here with you and them. I'm so pleased to be here with you, looking out your back door."
I felt my lips press together with distaste as Paul mentioned Joe, but I tried to release the anger that I had for my brother. With it I also tried to release the anger that I had for whatever force had taken my husband from me that night. "I'm glad you came." I admitted to Paul. "I wanted to make this a good visit for you. I wanted to give you some of the happiness you gave me. I hope I can. I hope you come to love this place the way I love it. I may have helped to save this world, but this world was my salvation. And you're right, it is a wonderous place."
Paul sighed deeply at the sky. "I suppose that's why that particular song came to mind. Fogerty paints such a vivid picture with his words, a wonderous party that he gets to watch from his back door while he winds down from a difficult journey. I've heard and sung that song countless times, but standing here with you now, I think I finally understand what he was trying to say."
"You're quite a man, Paul." I said to my friend. "Thank you for being here. Thank you for making me laugh. I needed a laugh like that. I needed it badly tonight."
"And I needed to hear you laugh." Paul replied. "It probably did me as much good as it did you."
Paul yawned and stretched and wiped his hand over his face. "I think perhaps I can sleep now. Will you be alright if I retire?" He asked.
"Yes. I'm better now. I still miss him, but I can bear it. I couldn't before."
"Of course, you miss him." Paul said as his eyes shone at me in the dark. His voice took on that reverent tone again and he recited more...something, poetry maybe. "By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth. I sought him but I found him not."
"What is that?" I pressed him for an answer.
"The Song of Solomon, chapter two, verse one. It's in The Bible. That's what I was quoting earlier. Shawn's legs in those white pants put me in mind of chapter five, verse fifteen. `His legs are as pillars of marble, set upon sockets of fine gold.' The man who taught me those lyrics used to recite Solomon to me. Some of it is randy stuff. Not your typical Bible verses, but the Old Testament is full of that kind of thing."
Paul grinned like a child about to tell a dirty joke. "You should read Leviticus sometime. He's preoccupied with the condition of the testicles of animals being used for sacrifice. It seems God doesn't like animals with damaged equipment."
I found myself grinning back at Paul. I knew much of the New Testament from my catechism classes when I was a child, but we didn't cover much of the Old Testament. The teachers didn't seem to think it was relevant. To hear Paul talk about it, pillars of marble and animal balls, I understood why those teachers omitted those chapters.
Paul didn't dwell on the wonders of The Bible. His face fell as he returned to the subject at hand. "Shawn is your person, your other half. It's a blessed thing to have a person. You're a lucky man. Always remember that. If you do, it won't hurt so much when you're parted." He turned away and crossed the room toward the door.
I watched him go until he went through the door and closed it behind him. When he was gone, I turned back to the sky to think about what he'd said. "Church!" A quick, sharp voice called behind me. I looked back to see Paul's head poked through the door. "Jews, Jews, Jews!" He said, pulled his head back through the door, and banged it shut.
I roared with laughter and was freshly glad he was with us.
I calmed my mind and star gazed for as long as I could. When my eyelids grew too heavy to look anymore, I closed the opening in the house and turned it back into a white wall. I thought about going upstairs to bed, but the idea of trying to sleep in the apartment alone made me too sad to attempt it.
I moved from the kitchen to the rumpus room and stretched out on one of the long couches. I kicked my dished heels off, took my shirt off, rolled it up to stuff under my head as a pillow, and shut my eyes. Sleep found me before too awfully long and I embraced it.