Authors: Zack Love
“Now don’t budge, Lucky Chucky. I’ve got the surgical knife right here. Your new name is Castrated Carlos. It’s time to end everyone’s misery.” Heeb took the scalpel out of his shirt pocket and started moving towards Carlos, who was paralyzed by indecision.
Carolina spied another look at Carlos, who appeared as if he were watching a television embedded in the cab seat in front of him. She smiled in amusement and decided to interrupt the broadcast. But preferring to avoid an improper intrusion, she rummaged through her purse a little and then resorted to a harmless pretext that had proven its efficacy on countless other occasions.
“Carlos, do you have a light?” she asked, with a cigarette between her fingers.
Carlos felt the knife neuter him forever.
He groaned aloud and then released a moaning wale.
“Nnnnoooooooo!” He couldn’t contain the anguish of his disappointment.
“What’s wrong? Are you OK, Carlos? What happened?”
Carlos leaned against the door, dizzy. He saw a blurry image of Carolina moving closer to him, with the unlit cigarette trailing in the air, as if in a slow motion film.
“Please…Please don’t…”
“What? What is it? The cigarette?” That was the only explanation she could surmise for his unexpectedly dramatic reaction. “Are you allergic?”
In Carolina’s considerate inquiry, full of concern and sensitivity, Carlos suddenly regained most of the hope that he thought he had just lost. With a tremendous sense of relief, he grabbed hold of the lifesaver that Carolina had inadvertently thrown him and began trying to elaborate on his newly discovered allergy.
“Terribly allergic…I…I’ve had some awful reactions…I’m sorry…I shouldn’t have reacted that way…My body has just grown instinctively repulsed to even the sight of cigarettes…After…After so many bad experiences.”
It was the best he could do to parry Heeb’s castration threat. There was no explaining to Carolina that his aversion to cigarettes was actually just a small example of a much broader and more complex neurosis. That was another talk for another, safer time. For now, a medical allergy was a far simpler and more palatable explanation for the perfect woman who had taken so long to arrive in his life.
“I’m sorry…I didn’t know,” she said with a gentle smile, as she dropped the cigarette into her purse.
The cab pulled over. Carolina passed the driver a ten-dollar bill and the two got out.
“Thanks for being so considerate, Carolina.”
“Don’t be silly. Actually, I’ve tried quitting many times, but it’s hard to drop a habit that you started at the age of twelve.”
That didn’t sound encouraging. But Heeb was right there, ready with the scalpel, so Carlos needed to change the topic.
As he followed Carolina’s lead up Fifth Avenue, he noticed that they had traveled all the way to Eighty-second Street, near the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“Is this where the apartment is?” he asked, genuinely intrigued, as they walked into an impressively large and ornate lobby.
“I think you’re really going to like this one,” she said with a wink. “It’s nicer than anything I’ve shown you so far.”
“When you were offering me a job, I didn’t think the salary you had in mind was so good.”
“That’s because you don’t know just how much responsibility I have in mind for you. That’s what happens when you raise expectations, Carlos.”
“Oh,” said Carlos with an irrepressibly curious grin.
“You’ll like the light in this apartment,” she added. “And the views of the park are incredible.”
They got out of the elevator on the fifteenth floor, and, as Carlos followed a few steps behind Carolina’s enchantingly graceful figure, he wondered about the purpose of this particular apartment visit. He doubted that she would really pay him enough to rent a place like this, but was happy all the same to return to the familiar pretext of viewing apartments together.
Carlos agreed that this was the nicest apartment she had shown him. It was a two-bedroom penthouse with a balcony and a spiral staircase leading to a roof deck.
“Why don’t you walk around a little?” Carolina said, walking into the large kitchen.
Carlos took a moment to tour the space on his own. Its elegantly simple style, stunning park views, high ceilings, and airy feel were extraordinary. But he suddenly noticed that the apartment wasn’t vacant.
“Someone’s stuff is here,” he observed. “Are you sure it’s available?”
“It’s available for the right tenant. Come and check out the marble kitchen.”
Carlos walked over to the kitchen.
Carolina was leaning against the marble sink area, drinking a glass of red wine.
“I’m sorry. It’s just such a hot and muggy day, and this seems like just the right drink now.”
“Do you always raid the fridge of your client’s properties?” he asked in amused surprise.
“I’m on very good terms with the landlord here.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” she replied, offering Carlos the glass. “Do you know why?”
“No.” Carlos took the glass in his hand. “Why?”
“Because I am the landlord.”
Carlos couldn’t contain his pleasure at her artful ways. They shared a mischievous smile.
“Take a sip.”
He hesitated for a moment. Carlos regularly indulged in a single daily glass of red wine after reading that the practice promoted cardiac health. The problem was that Carolina’s germs were on the glass.
But as he looked at her standing there – a portrait of perfectly poised pulchritude – he realized how the last two hours were nothing short of one continuous miracle whose germs he was ready to swim in for the rest of his life. He thought about how it had been years since he wanted to kiss a woman so badly, and how the kiss would surely involve more exposure to her germs than the shared wine glass.
And so he took the wine glass and – rather than lift it to his lips – he moved it to the side and set it down on the marble counter, so that his hands were free to float down to her hips as his lips moved towards hers.
And what started as gentle caresses and slow kisses against a marble kitchen counter gradually grew more firm and vigorous, until it became urgent and frenzied – like so much water boiling on a hot summer day in Manhattan.
Chapter 7
C+C
Any relationship with long-term potential has a honeymoon period, however brief, marked by the happy illusion that one’s lover might be uniquely perfect. This fool’s paradise is sustained by the elaborate deception artfully employed in every courtship: the diplomatic dodging of difficult issues, the careful concealing of unflattering flaws, and the strategic stressing of charming virtues. But as trust increases and each person grows weary of maintaining this initial beguilement, the blissfully blurry lens through which the other is perceived eventually refocuses to a clearer picture.
Accordingly, at some point after the honeymoon period, in a relationship of equals, there will be at least one dramatic dispute – one moment of tremendous tension – when the whole relationship is called into question because a raw difference has been fully exposed for all of its import. For Carlos and Carolina, this moment occurred about two months after they first met. It began with a perfectly simple and innocuous question.
At a tender, twilight hour, when the couple finally stopped quaking from the intensity of their lovemaking, Carlos asked her gently and wistfully, “How did you do it?”
Despite his inexperience, he knew intuitively that his new girlfriend was much more passionate and free in bed than most women were.
“Do what?”
“Lose your guilt about sex…It’s as if you never had any,” he explained, hoping to find some inspiration or direction in her answer.
Carolina smiled for a moment at the answer. “I confronted it head on. At the source.”
“How?” Carlos asked, genuinely intrigued by the complex and mysterious woman next to him.
During their honeymoon period, Carolina would have surely evaded the question or supplied a misleadingly incomplete answer. But now her guard was down, and in a moment of exceptional intimacy, she decided to share a story from her secret past.
“I’ve always been too ashamed to tell anyone,” she began hesitantly. “But…You’re different…And this is different.”
Carlos caressed her, patiently waiting for her to muster the courage to continue her story.
“I was seventeen at the time, studying in Madrid, when I met Father Vegas…It’s uncanny how much you look like him,” she added. “You have the same deep, dark eyes, the same – ” Carlos removed his hand from her back and adjusted his position in the bed.
“I’m sorry.” Carolina reflexively covered her mouth in regret. “I shouldn’t have compared the two of you like that.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Do you want me to continue?”
“Yes. Please.”
*****
Soon after joining the Madrid parish, the handsome, twenty-five-year-old priest from Valencia took notice of Carolina, not only because she came to confession so frequently, but also because she was clearly an exceptional girl. After hearing eight of Carolina’s confessions, Father Vegas realized that she was precociously perceptive and insightful, and remarkably articulate in a language that wasn’t even her native tongue.
But none of these private observations, nor any of her previous sessions with him, had prepared Father Vegas for her ninth confession – which would be the most memorable of his career as a priest.
“Forgive me, Father,” she began nervously. “For I have come here to sin.”
“What do you mean?” Father Vegas asked, his voice rising in alarmed confusion, hoping that he had misheard something through the thick black curtain that temporarily replaced the wooden lattice barrier, which had been removed for repairs.
“Don’t be angry with me, Father.”
“Speak freely, my child.”
“Father… To be truly open and honest with you…I have been sinning almost every night since you became a priest here. Every night before I’m due to make my confession. And every night after too. I come to confession for only one reason, and that is to be near you and talk to you.”
“You mustn’t say such things, my child. These are all terrible sins that can blemish your soul.”
“Am I an immoral person for having such thoughts, Father?”
“Temptation is a natural part of every journey, my child. We must all struggle with it. But it is precisely in that struggle that we define our moral life.”
“But Father, this passion is not one that I have chosen. Rather, it has chosen me. It has consumed me. Nobody ever asked me if I wanted you to become a priest here. You just appeared one day. And now I have this passion burning within me…So how can I be less moral for having these feelings if I never chose to acquire them? If they thrust themselves upon me, as I now wish to thrust myself upon you?”
“Please child. You mustn’t say such things!” he admonished through the curtain separating them. “You are speaking sin!”
“How can it be wrong to act upon my most natural of impulses, which is to share this passion with you, even if others may judge me severely for it?”
“Please, my child. Stop talking like this. Say ten Hail Marys for each time that you have had any thoughts like these.”
“Father, if I do that then my grades in school will suffer.”
“Why is that?”
“Because then I couldn’t do my homework. There would be no time for anything but repeating the Hail Marys.”
“My child, you have to stop this madness…Immediately.”
“I know, Father, but I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to talk to you. And I had to ask you if you can play any instruments besides the organ…”
“What do you mean, my child?”
“Every chance I get, I listen to you playing the organ, Father. You don’t see me because I’m always standing in the entrance farthest from the organ. But I see your broad shoulders and long arms dominating the organ with such graceful force and elegance…You play so beautifully…”
“Thank you, child, but music is a pleasure for the senses and right now we must focus on the work of the soul.”
“But Father, my soul is housed within my senses.”
“Let us focus on the spiritual edifice, rather than physical adornments of that dwelling.”
“Please just tell me if you play any other instruments. Can’t you tell me that much, after I have told you so much about myself?”
“That is not relevant to the cleansing that you are here to accomplish.”
“I have opened my soul to you, and countless personal questions and struggles. And you can’t now tell me if you play any other instruments?”
There was a silent moment, as Father Vegas weighed the value of building and rewarding trust in this penitent against his reluctance to start divulging any personal details or otherwise lose control of the confession.
He finally broke the silence. “I can play the guitar.”
“Have you ever played it for a Flamenco dancer, Father? Do you know that I can dance Flamenco? I have been studying it for the last four years that I’ve been living in Madrid.”
“Child, why do you insist on diverting us from our duty here?”
“Because you can’t call me child any more. You can only call me Carolina. And I can’t call you Father Vegas any more. What is your first name?”
“I…I can’t…I can’t do this, my child.”
“Tell me your name!”
“You mustn’t ever call me by it.”
“Just tell it to me once, so that I may know who has heard so many of my confessions – including this most humiliating of all confessions…This stubborn display of my affection despite your steadfast resistance and rejection. Tell me your name! It’s the least you can do in return before I plunge into despair and try to forget that I ever met you.”
There was something so desperately true and irresistibly pure and undeniable in Carolina’s plaintive voice that Father Vegas couldn’t refuse her.
“It’s Fernando.”
“Fernando, pull this curtain aside.”
“You mustn’t call me by my first name!”
“I need to see you.”
“We mustn’t speak like this.”
“No. We must. Because I will keep coming back here like this. Until you leave this church and disappear without a trace. I will return. Either that or I will have to leave Madrid. But there is nothing we can do now but deal with what is between us.”