Page 36 of Saint
What haven’t you told me?
The sun vanishes completely; the fireflies come out. In the distance, fresh lightning flickers on the horizon, harkening the next summer storm to roll over our patch of prairie. We finish this round of beers, and Brother Crispin suggests one final drink of our dark ale to close out the night, and I gratefully take the opportunity to get it for everyone—and then to bus the table and start washing the glasses. Maybe if I take long enough, Jamie will be gone by the time I’m done...
But no. When I come back to collect the final round of glasses, everyone is still present and accounted for. My heart lifts for a moment when I see that they’re no longer sitting, but it promptly sinks as I recognize the early stages of the Midwestern Goodbye, which means Jamie will be here for another forty-five minutes.
At any rate, I know the right thing to do is to say farewell and wish him a safe drive, so I take a deep breath and stride over to the group, mustering the closest thing to a smile I can manage as I do.
“Brother Patrick,” Jamie says warmly, “thank you so much for having me visit. Elijah knows I love all things beer, and I had to see what had captivated him enough to bring him back to a monastery for an entire week.”
He’s shaking my hand as he says this, and there’s nothing in his handshake or in his voice to indicate a deeper meaning to his words. He seems like the kind of guy who’s above jealousy, who is super great at communication, who’s just full of trust and reciprocated fidelity. But then when he drops my hand and steps back, there’s something to the way his gaze moves back to Elijah and then to me...
And then as the Midwestern Goodbye inevitably devolves into more conversation, I catch Jamie staring at me again. At first I think I must be imagining it—that my keen awareness of him as the man who has Elijah’s heart is making me hyperaware of very normal social things—but over the next fifteen minutes, it becomes so obvious that even Elijah seems to notice, his gaze flicking between me and Jamie, his brows knitted together.
I finally decide that I need to Irish Goodbye this Midwestern Goodbye, and make a polite murmur of farewell and step back—which is when my eyes meet Jamie’s. And while his gray eyes aren’t unkind or jealous, there is something uncomfortably scrutinizing about them, as if he’s surveying me. As if he’s trying to see through my clothes and skin and bones to something invisible underneath.
It’s not fun to feel that kind of stare on me. It makes me feel very aware that I’m a scruffy hulk in polyester robes with a regrettable tattoo on my shoulder and an even more regrettable nickname. It makes me very aware that I was the fuck-up who broke Elijah’s heart and that Jamie is the good citizen who’s fixing it.
I escape by mumbling something about the glasses and then gather up everything from the picnic table, leaving the others to finish their slow goodbyes to Jamie while I wash up.
And it’s while I’m washing up, my sleeves pushed to my elbows and my forearms slick with soap suds, that I realize I’ve seen that look before, the look Jamie was giving me outside.
It’s the same look Elijah gave Jesus on the cross after his first compline here. Jamie looked at me like he needed to make sure I was staying exactly where I’d been put.
* * *
I don’t goto the dormitory after the dishes are done. I know I’ll pay for it tomorrow—and for that last glass of beer too—but the thought of going to bed right now makes me viscerally miserable. After seeing Jamie and Elijah hold hands and brush shoulders and pet each other as they sat on the picnic bench across from me...
No. The last place I want to be is on my hard, narrow mattress, alone, alone, alone. I know isolation is thepoint, solitude is thepoint, and I know that real loneliness—that soul-deep lack of affection and touch and love—is supposed to be assuaged by God and the other monks. By friendship and by devotion.
But sometimes, I am so lonely I could scream. And tonight I saw just how not-lonely Elijah is.
I wipe down the taproom bar, rinse all the taps and spouts, and then make sure the taps and spouts are covered. I mop behind the bar and take out the trash. I turn off the lights and lock the door and decide to take the long way back to the dorms, the way that skirts along the base of the hill. The fireflies are gone, and only a few lights are lit—two in the parking lot, and one on the doorway to the dormitory. The rest of the world is stars and shadows and restless lightning far to the west.
It’s because the parking lot is lit that I see them. Elijah and Jamie, alone in the now-deserted lot, saying their own private farewell. Jamie is backed against his Jeep, his hands on Elijah’s shoulders like they’re middle-schoolers having their first slow dance, and there’s definitely room for the Holy Spirit between them. But then Elijah leans forward, his body arcing carefully toward his fiancé’s, and then they kiss. Slowly and sweetly. Like courting beaux. Elijah reaches up to cradle Jamie’s face, and that’s when I duck my head and start walking as fast as I can to the dormitory so I don’t have to see any more. So I won’t be tempted to watch any more.
It’s not for me.
Elijah’s not for me.
My bed is as hard and narrow as I knew it would be, and while the dormitory technically has air-conditioning, we turn it off at night to save energy. Which means even with the window open, it’s hot and damp, and I’m hot and damp too, even though I skipped pajamas tonight and I’m wearing nothing but my cage.
I’m lying there in the dark, staring up at the ceiling, when I hear the key in Elijah’s door, and then the door’s quiet opening and closing. It’s only been thirty minutes maybe, but my imagination still runs wild with what he and Jamie were doing. Thirty minutes is enough time for a lot of things if you believe in yourself. And while the parking lot of a Benedictine abbey isn’t the most likely spot for an assignation, that wouldn’t have stopped Elijah and me back in the day. We would have crawled into the back of the Jeep like teenagers and made it work.
The water in Elijah’s room runs, and then I hear him moving around, the sharp zip of a suitcase, the squeak of his bed. No typing tonight, I suppose, which makes me a little sad. Falling asleep to the sound of him tapping away has become one of my new favorite things.
After a few minutes, though, it’s silent on his side of the wall, and it’s just me again. Just me in this too-warm room, utterly alone, listening through my open window for the distant rumble of thunder from miles and miles away. Sleep refuses to come, and I don’t debase myself for it, trying tricks and games. I simply wait for it to come to me, like the stubborn asshole I am, and that means I’m awake to hear it.
Something that’s not thunder, that’s not the rustle of trees outside. Something almost rhythmic. Unhurried and even.
It’s faint enough that I’m still not sure what it could be until I hear a soft, barely-there moan, so quiet that it almost feels like I imagined it.
But I know I didn’t.
I sit up slowly—as not to make any noise—and then listen again. For the measured slide of skin against skin, for the short, hard breaths that come with it.
Elijah is masturbating. On the other side of the wall, he’s masturbating, and I can hear him.
My organ has been swelling a while now, but it’s just hit the point where the cage bites back, and I instinctively go to rub myself as I stand up, soothing the needy flesh with the pad of my thumb as I walk silently over to the window. His window isn’t open, which while disappointing to me in the short-term, is probably a good thing in the long run, because then any other sleepless monk could hear what I’m hearing right now.
