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“Yes, he should,” Brother Titus agrees, alighting from his ball and then gesturing toward it like he’s inviting me to drive an Italian sports car. “The road beckons.”
“He means the hallway,” Thomas says.
I hesitate for a moment. Not because I’m not finished with my work or even because it’s silly, but because it’s precisely the kind of thing Aiden Bell would have instigated back in the day.
Aiden Bell, the overgrown frat boy.
Aiden Bell, the fuck-up.
“No, I probably shouldn’t—”
“Are you refusing my valiant steed?” Brother Titus says, pressing a hand to his heart. “My brave, noble,valiantsteed?”
I look at them both, so much younger than me and so full of unfiltered joy, and my resolve wavers. For a moment, just for a moment, I want to be impulsive again. Impulsive and reckless and Aiden.
With a small smile and with the cheers of Brother Titus and Brother Thomas echoing in the hallway around me, I mount the rubber ball. My lumberjack frame tests the rubber for a moment—the toy compressing in protest as I get my habit tucked around my legs—but it holds. And when I give it a test bounce, it acquits itself well, launching me forward a couple feet.
“Good, good. Now again,” Titus says, like he’s the teacher in a training montage. “Harder this time.”
“I’ve heard that before,” I say, before I can stop myself, and both Titus and Thomas blink at me.
“Did you just make a joke?” Thomas says, letting go of his handle to press his hands to his face. “Brother Patrick made ajoke.Brother Patrick can have fun!”
If only they knew. If only they knew that Elijah had once found me swimming in an indoor hotel fountain with a tie around my head. Or that Ryan and I once hitched a futon mattress behind a truck after a snowstorm and rode it like a sleigh through the Plaza shopping district. Or that I’d once filled Sean’s Audi so full of pingpong balls that when he opened the door five million plastic balls spilled onto the ground and then rolled all over his church’s parking lot.
Zenny made him pick up every single one too. Ha.
I listen to Titus though, bracing my feet on the floor, and sending myself a few good feet in the air, unable to stop the grin splitting my face as I look back to see Titus giving me a thumbs-up. I bounce again, my worn work shoes finding easy purchase on the floor, the rubber slapping hard on the brick, my habit flapping everywhere.
Soon Brother Thomas joins me, and we’re racing down the hallway, ramming into each other’s shoulders to knock each other off balance while Brother Titus cautions us not to land on ourballs, and it’s the most fun I’ve had in so long that it’s almost giddying. Like a shot of Fireball—pointless and a sign of a deeper insanity—but I don’t care.
“Where did you even get these?” I ask Thomas as we line up for another race.
“Titus’s mom sent them to us. Told us to share. Which, no way.”
“You’re sharing with me. On three?”
“We’re only sharing because you looked so sad pushing that vacuum around...Go!”
“Cheater!” I yell as he takes off without warning, the ends of his belt bouncing in the air as he charges ahead.
Brother Titus tries to coach me from the office doorway, even though I’m clearly losing. “If you lean forward as you bounce, you’ll cover more ground.”
“Unless you’re going for height,” Thomas adds over his shoulder.
“Why would he in a race, dummy?”
“Ahh, not the old height vs distance debate,” says a voice from the far end of the hallway.
I look up and catch a glimpse of a raised eyebrow and whiskey eyes. I fumble my next bounce and then unintentionally come to land after a series of unbalanced, very embarrassing bounces at the feet of Elijah Iverson.
10
From Mode Magazine
I’d originally pitched this article as something about beer and anti-capitalism, and I thought it would be easy to write. After all, who doesn’t want to spend a week drinking beer and pretending the Wi-Fi is too weak to get emails? Add in a dash of monastic resistance to conceptions of productivity and profit, and bam—done. I’d have an article and a beer-cation out of the deal too.
Little did I know that this week would launch me deep into the heart of monastic brewing and take me to hidden corners of Europe where prayers and pH testing go hand in hand. Little did I know that I’d be changed by it too, by my brush against this ancient world of faith and devotion, and by living with my guide for the duration of the trip, a broad-shouldered monk who is also my ex-boyfriend.
