Page 28 of Saint
About me?
No, we couldn’t have been about to kiss. I’m imagining things in some kind of sex-starved, emotional collapse, because I’ve taken a vow and Elijahis engaged to be marriedand he was pissed at me today anyway and we were only leaning in to talk.
But when I drop my hand and look at Elijah, the expression on his face gives me no reassurance whatsoever.
He looks fucking shell-shocked.
“I—” I don’t know what to say and my voice comes out all strangled anyway. “I think I should get to bed now. Vigils and all.”
“Right,” Elijah says with a swallow. “Vigils.”
“Good night,” I whisper, and then I stand, and then I leave.
But it’s not relief I feel as I push inside the dormitory and find my way to my cell, it’s something much, much more dangerous.
It’s hunger.
17
from the notebook of Elijah Iverson
Whatif
What if he
What if I still
18
I wakeup bleary and miserable, damp with sweat and other fluids. I send up a silent prayer of thanks that we throw all our sheets down the same chute each week and so no one knows whose bed linens are whose. For now I scrub them as best as I can and then clean myself up for vigils. Despite whatever emitted from me nocturnally, my body is aching for sex in a way I haven’t felt in years, and I feel nearly fevered with it. All of my thoughts are of things hot and slick and firm, and I’m so fucking tired, and it’s fuckingrainingand so by the time I’m stumbling into the church to the toll of the bell, I’m all wet too.
There’s supposed to be a psalm for everything, but there is no psalm for this, there’s no proverb. A jeremiadmaybe, but we’re not reading Jeremiah right now, we’re in Joshua, and there’s nothing about being horny and wet in that whatsoever. Even the river dries up in Joshua.
In fact, in addition to there being no psalms about this, the psalms we are reading almost seem to taunt me today.I will be watchful of my ways, for fear I should sin with my tongue.And later:we groan inwardly and await the redemption of our bodies.
The verses are meant to exhort me to righteousness, which as a monk inevitably includes chastity. But now all I can think about are the sins I want to commit with my tongue.
They are many.
I make it through vigils and hopefully look merely tired and not like a monk who nearly kissed someone last night, and then after morning lectio, I return for lauds and see Elijah there. Our eyes meet—once, quickly—and I feel it like a lightning strike. I can barely breathe.
I keep my eyes on my breviary for the rest of the prayer, barely able to mumble-sing along for how fast my thoughts are racing. I’m still supposed to be his host, right? I can hardly duck out of that duty without telling the abbot what happened, and I’m...not going to do that.
Not because I’m being dishonest, of course, but because it wasn’t a big deal to begin with. Even if wehadbeen about to kiss, it was muscle memory more than anything, it was a habit that had never been properly broken, only fled from. Nothing to confess there.
Maybe Elijah won’t want me to be his host any longer anyway. He had been angry with me, and then there was the whole muscle memory kiss thing, which even though itwasn’ta real kissat all, still probably felt icky to him on account of the whole being engaged thing.
So it’ll all work itself out. He won’t want to see me, and then I will lick my horny wounds in peace until I can fling myself on the mercy of the starkest monastery that will have me. And then, with an ocean between us, there will be no choice but to weed him from my heart and finally empty myself of everything but God.
But when Elijah walks up to me after breakfast, he doesn’t briskly inform me that he’ll be quite all right on his own, thank you very much. Instead, he kicks one foot behind the other and asks, quietly, “Can we take a walk?”
I glance outside, where rain is still streaking down in build-an-ark amounts.
“Um, in the walkways,” Elijah clarifies. “Just for a moment.”
“Of course,” I say, although I’m suspecting once again that I might be fired as his abbey host. Which would be a good thing. The sharp pain in my chest is totally irrelevant to how much of a good thing it would be.
I lead Elijah through the office building to the north end of the campus, where most of the walkway traffic leads on to the printing room and is therefore fairly private. We come to a stop around the far end of the north cloister, and Elijah turns to face the green garth inside, his large hands gripping the wet stone of the walkway railing. He looks down, as if drawing strength for something, and I brace for impact.
