Page 20 of Saint
AHHHHH, goes my brain.
“I...I see,” is what I end up saying, in a voice that’s somehow pleading and gruff all at the same time.
She narrows her eyes at me, and then clearly decides she doesn’t have time for whatever my deal is. She gestures to the check-in desk behind her. “Towels and soap are behind there. Two towels, one bar of soap.” She looks at Elijah. “If we get this mess fixed, you can stay in the guesthouse, but otherwise you’ll be with the monks during your stay. I promise they don’t bite.”
“Actually, Brother Patrick used to bite me quite often,” Elijah says with a small smile, and Claudia laughs because she thinks he’s joking.
He’s not joking.
“You’re funny. Brother Patrick could use a funny friend. Okay, towels, soap, et cetera. Have a nice evening, gentlemen.”
And then Claudia is heading back up the stairs, and we’re left on our own to go to the dormitory. Together.
* * *
“So this iswhere the monk bedrooms are?” Elijah asks as I nod and knock on a door. I get a muffled reply back, and with a small, internal sigh, I move on to the next door, but that room is occupied too.
My dormitory is officially packed to the rafters with timeworn Knights of Columbi, and normally I wouldn’t mind at all, except it’s looking more and more like the only empty room left is going to be the one next to mine.
Please, God. Please don’t do this to me, don’t test me like this.
I’ll fail, and we both know it.
“Is that what they’re called?” he asks after I try another door. “Bedrooms? Or dorm rooms?”
“We call them cells, butroomworks too,” I respond. “We should try the upstairs.”
“And each cell has its own bathroom?”
“Yes,” I say as we climb, trying to remember if there’re any empty cells on my floor other than the room next to mine.
“Is that common, the private bathrooms? In monasteries?”
“Not generally,” I say, trying a door next to the stairs with a soft knock. I hear a dry, waveryhello?and apologize to the occupant. “But there was a local parishioner in the 1990s who owned a plumbing company and donated toilets and shower stalls to the monastery—and offered to plumb them all in too. So the bathrooms were themselves a donation, of a sort. They’re not very glamorous, but it’s nice to have some privacy. Before that there were communal bathrooms on each floor.”
There’s one last room I can try before there’s only the one next to mine left, and I pray as many silent prayers as I can in the twenty seconds before I reach it.
I knock.
The door opens, revealing a Knight of Columbus with a paper coffee cup still firmly in hand. “Yes?” he asks. Disappointment crashes through me, followed by fear...and something much worse.
Excitement.
“Just looking for a room for another guest,” I say with a small bow. “Apologies for the interruption.”
“No problem!” is the cheerful reply, and then I lead Elijah to the door next to mine, which is at the end of the hall. I knock and there’s no response, so I open the door to reveal the small suite inside.
Elijah steps past me—close enough that his legs brush against my habit—and I catch the faint hint of sage and saltwater. Like he’s just gotten out of the saltwater pool in my family’s backyard, like he’s just dried off after a long summer day lounging in the sun with Sean.
And I’m reminded of all those days I came out and bothered them as they were swimming or napping, all those times I decided I had to swim too just because they were out there, and the urge to be wherever they were was something I had no interest in fighting. Sean and Elijah were only five years older than me, but what’s nothing to adults is a yawning chasm when you’re a kid, and even more so when you’re a teenager. The distance between my fourteen and their nineteen felt uncrossable, vast—and also seductive in a way, because it constantly begged to be bridged. I needed more than anything else to prove to Elijah that I was just as mature and worldly and interesting as he and Sean were, and I used to think doing backflips off the edge of the pool or obnoxiously changing the stations on our battered outdoor radio was the best way to do it.
It wasn’t until I was well into college when I realized the fascination I had with Elijah was more complicated than the usualI want my older brother’s best friend to think I’m cool. That all the times I’d measured the precise latitude of the low-slung waistband of his shorts, all the times I’d brought out cold cans of Coke just so I could see Elijah’s throat move as he drank...all the times I’d provoked him into wrestling and horseplay so I had an excuse to touch his water-slick arms and chest...
All those times had been pointing to what I was too oblivious to understand until I made out with another boy for a fraternity dare and liked it a lot.
I wonder if it was obvious to Elijah then. Or if he thinks I was being a typical little brother, tagging along because that’s what little brothers do.
Whatever’s left of my pride takes some small comfort in that.
