The Veritas Conflict (37 page)

Sherry started after them, but Claire grabbed her arm.

“Sherry!” Her voice was an urgent whisper. “No one said anything about using a fake ID. I thought we were just going to dinner or something.”

“Don’t be such a scaredy-cat. The bouncers here don’t care. I was here just last weekend and they barely looked at my ID.”

“I’m not scared. It’s just—”

A shout interrupted her. “You girls coming or what?”

Sherry flashed a smile in Stefan’s direction, then looped her arm through Claire’s and pulled her toward him. Most of the others were already through the doorway.

“Yeah, yeah, hold up! We’re coming.”

Claire’s thoughts were in a jumble as she allowed herself to be propelled toward the club. Stefan and a few others fell in behind her and Sherry as they approached the bouncer, who wore all black, three earrings, and a ponytail. Sherry started a round of bright chatter with Claire as she handed the man her card and got his nod. He barely inspected Claire’s ID before waving her through and taking Stefan’s.

The inside of the club was dark and loud. A heavy beat seemed to pulse the very
walls. Sherry pushed through throngs of people dressed in black, various types of drinks in their hands. Claire followed, keeping her roommate in sight with difficulty. She could feel the beat through the soles of her feet.

Sherry stopped at an oversized corner booth already filled with half their group. The others were piling their coats on a nearby chair.

Claire leaned toward Sherry, raising her voice above the music. “How did we manage to get a table?”

“Stefan called ahead. All that stuff outside was just kidding around. We figured we’d come here. The club saves this table for him if he asks.”

“How often does he come here?”

“Probably two or three nights a week. Here or one of the other Landsdowne Street clubs.”

“Three nights a week!”

“Or more. Usually Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. And since he’s always with an entourage, the clubs roll out the red-carpet treatment. He is,” she raised an eyebrow, “a
very
good customer.”

An hour later Claire sat at the booth talking with several of Stefan’s friends. Half the seats were empty, their occupants on the dance floor or at the bar. The table was littered with beer bottles, mugs, and shot glasses—detritus of long-winded discourse on who slept with whom, who kicked whose tail on the squash court, which fabulous companies were pursuing each graduating student, which stocks in their huge portfolios were up, which were down.

Claire nodded, smiled, made appropriate comments in the right places, and felt alone.

One student was expounding on yesterday’s argument with his girlfriend, currently out on the dance floor with Niles.

“… so I say to her ‘Give me that, you idiot,’ and when she finally does, all it is is a Macys catalog!”

The others roared, slapping their hands against the table. Claire obligingly laughed at the punch line of the long story.

The speaker took a swig of his beer. “It must be her Midwestern genes. All those primitive prairie folk, you know.” He paused, then looked around the table. “Oops. Is there anyone here from the Midwest?”

“I’m from Michigan.” Claire grinned into her soda as the others chided the red-faced jokester. “Where are you from?”

“I’m from New Yawk.”

“Where in New York? Manhattan?”

“Yes sir. Right near Central Park.”

Another student slapped him on the back. “His parents have a penthouse the size of Harvard Yard. Jimmy usually drops that bomb only when he’s trying to get someone in bed.”

Jimmy shoved him away, laughing and cussing fluently.

Claire took another sip of her drink. Jimmy put down his beer and gestured toward the dance floor.

“How about you and me take a turn out there, hey?”

Claire started to protest, then reconsidered. “Okay.”

She allowed Jimmy to grab her hand and pull her toward the crowd in the lowered dance floor. She stared around at the sea of black dresses, black trousers, black turtle-necks. She had on the yellow-flowered sweater and black pants shed been wearing all day.

Jimmy pulled her into the crowd and up to where Stefan, Sherry, Niles, and several others were moving to the heavy beat. Stefan and Sherry were locked together in a sensual dance. Jimmy moved close to Claire, and she could smell the alcohol on his breath.

He was a good dancer even with the unsteadiness of four beers. Claire loosened up a bit as the music changed to a familiar piece, and Jimmy put an arm around her waist. He swayed slightly, and his hand slipped downward. Claire stepped back in time to the music, causing his hand to drop away. She could feel the warmth flooding her face. Thank God this place was so dark.

After a few minutes the music switched again. Claire enjoyed the rhythm, the tempo, the energy of being a part of the pulsing crowd. But even as her body joined in, her mind was oddly distant. She watched the others around her, watched the glazed eyes, the dripping sweat, the couples locked in a primal mating dance. Her eyes drifted beyond the dance floor to the tables and ledges laden with empty bottles and glasses, to the corner booth where six people were still engaged in shallow, self-centered conversation.

She sighed, her heart hurting for them.

THIRTY-FIVE

T
HE SPIRAL STAIRCASE INSIDE THE
C
OOP
stretched gracefully upward beside her as Claire ran her fingers along shelves of books, looking for her next philosophy reading assignment.

She stopped at the appropriate section, scanned the row, then plucked out a large paperback.
The Humanist Manifesto
—
I and II
She sighed and headed into the Coop’s coffee shop.
Yippee
.

She placed her order and waited, looking around at the scattered tables. She did a double take, squinting into the far recesses of a corner area.

“Tall latte with Irish Cream.”

She started and took the tall cup proffered over the counter. Sipping gingerly, she ventured back into the corner.

“Hey.”

Brad looked up and smiled. He put down the student newspaper he was reading and moved several textbooks from the other chair at his table.

Claire took the seat. “Does the paper have our advertisement in there about the big study break HCF is hosting in two weeks?” She looked at the strange expression on his face. “Don’t you know what I’m talking about? The Fellowship is putting on this Saturday barbecue for anyone on campus who wants to come. Isn’t that a great idea for outreach?”

She peered more closely at his face. “What’s wrong?”

“I know about the barbecue.” He sighed and tapped the paper. “And yeah, they have our advertisement. But some columnist wrote a nasty opinion piece about it … actually, about the whole Fellowship.”

Claire set her cup down hard. “What?”

“It’s really unfortunate. This guy isn’t even trying to be objective.”

“Who wrote it?”

Brad peered at the byline. “Um … Niles somebody. Niles? That’s—”

“The guy in our philosophy class. He’s a friend of Sherry’s boyfriend. I was out with them last night, and he was going on about Christians. It was just hateful. Totally unthinking.”

Brad laughed. “That’s ironic. That’s exactly what he accuses us of.”

“How can he
say
that?”

“Let me read you a few selections.” Brad looked down, running his finger across line after line of text. “He starts by talking about how misguided fundamentalist Christians are—that’s how he describes the Fellowship by the way, even though there are tons of people in HCF from all different streams of the church. We have to be misguided, you see, for believing and trying to convince others to believe something so ’patently bizarre.’ ”

“Oh, of course.”

Brad started reading aloud.

“Their private beliefs wouldn’t bother me so much if they didn’t feel compelled to impose them on those with no desire to listen. I don’t mind if someone wants to pursue his peculiar belief system in private, just please don’t beat me over the head with it and tell me its ‘good for my soul.’

“Thankfully, not all Christians are of this stripe. Many of my classmates attend various churches in the area and willingly acknowledge the already obvious fact that they don’t have a corner on ‘truth.’ But the fundamentalists, or evangelicals, are dangerously zealous, intolerant, even hateful, illustrating the adage that the deeper the religious belief, the more unsafe one becomes to oneself and others.

“I decided to take it upon myself to examine the peculiar brand of evangelical Christians that we have here at Harvard. So one Friday night I arrived incognito at the meeting of the Harvard Christian Fellowship as if I were just another lost sap looking for ‘answers,’ as one of their leaders so snidely put it.”

Claire stared into her coffee cup, her stomach churning, as Brad skipped down the page. “Oh, here’s a nice line.

“Why is it that people singing incomprehensible lyrics about blind faith have the gall to claim entitlement to the answers we truth seekers will spend the rest of our lives pursuing? Their blind passion is commendable, I suppose, in the same way that a beer-bellied Packers fan could be commended for painting his face and torso green and yellow and standing shirtless in the freezing rain. It’s brave but not sensible. And it’s certainly not right to ask everyone else in the stadium to make similar fools of themselves.”

Brad shook his head. “Here’s the nice attack on our barbecue.”

“In the next two weeks you will see flyers and posters everywhere inviting you to a free barbecue on the lawn between Mem Hall and the Science Center. Be forewarned. HCF will use free food and friendliness the same way a Venus’s-flytrap will use it’s attractive scent: as bait to lure and trap unwary unbelievers.”

Brad slapped the paper down on the table and nearly glared at Claire. “And this part is what really gets me.” He leaned on his elbows, reading.

“As a final capper, the organizer of this little soiree is HCF member and anti-choice activist Alison Rodenberg, who as we speak is trying to organize an ‘Ivy Leaguers for Life’ rally at the state capitol. My friends, don’t be fooled. This group is unsafe, their proselytizing is an affront, and I urge all right-minded students to exercise their right of free speech and picket their transparent attempt to impose their arcane values on others.”

He looked across the table in silence.

After a long moment, Claire closed her mouth. “That’s … that’s …”

“Worse than usual,” Brad declared dryly.

“What’s his problem?”

“I don’t know, but it’s certainly going to create a problem for us. Alison told me about this an hour ago, and we agreed that if we’re picketed we’re going to have to set up some sort of tent so those who want a study break don’t have to see the people shouting at them. And we’ll probably need a security guard to keep the picket line at a reasonable distance. I don’t know now if anyone will come, but we can’t just call it off. We can’t set a precedent of discontinuing outreach plans because of harassment. Alison and I are meeting tonight to talk about it.”

Claire took a slow sip of her latte. “How is Alison?”

“She was pretty upset.”

“I can imagine. It’s so unfair!” She slammed the cup down on the table. Hot liquid spurted from the opening in the plastic cover arid onto her hand and wrist. “Ahh!” She grabbed a napkin and wiped off the scalding liquid.

Brad jumped up to grab other napkins and returned in a hurry. “You okay?” He knelt beside her and gingerly pressed a napkin to the back of her hand, then wiped the table.

Claire looked at the concern on his face as he worked. “Thanks. Sorry about that.”

“It’s no trouble. What were you about to say when you decided to test your heat tolerance?”

“I was just thinking that Niles is so mad at those who ‘proselytize’ just because all his
nice, moderate churchgoing friends don’t claim to have the truth. I bet those people aren’t even Christians!”

Brad looked down at his long-empty coffee mug. After a moment he raised his eyes and caught her gaze. “Do you mind a kind rebuke, Claire?”

Claire wrinkled her nose.

“Nothing bad, trust me. It’s just … it’s hurtful—and I think wrong—if we question people’s faith without knowing anything about them. John said in his first epistle that ‘everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is a child of God.’ And Paul warns us not to jump to conclusions about ‘whether or not someone is faithful.’ If Niles’s friends claim Jesus as Lord and Savior, we can’t judge where they are in their faith. That’s God’s job.”

Brad gestured in the general direction of the campus. “You know how people in the Fellowship come from all different streams of the church? Like Teresa comes from a mainline denomination whereas Alison comes from a charismatic church? Well, in the same way I’m sure there are sincere believers on campus who may be uncomfortable with HCF, or with outward displays of religion, but who will still spend eternity worshiping around God’s throne.” He put his hand to his chest. “I may disagree with their theology and think they’re dead
wrong
about not claiming ultimate truth, but does that mean they don’t have a relationship with Jesus?”

Claire didn’t meet his eyes. His voice was gentle. “We have to be very careful. They may or may not, but we don’t know. But we do know that God meets people where
they
are. We have to do the same.”

There was silence for a moment, then Claire looked up. “I’m so awful sometimes, Brad. I’m really only a baby Christian myself. Why do I go around judging people?” She let out a long breath. “Forgive me. You’re totally right.”

“Nothing to forgive, believe me. All of us are a work in progress.” Suddenly, he was overtaken by a yawn. He covered his mouth a bit sheepishly and lifted his mug. “And right now I’m a sleepy work in progress. I’m going to get a refill. Be back in a second.”