Fr. Echeverría
Even though he belongs to a cloistered subculture within an already cloistered community, the priest isn't hard to find. Maybe he's easy to find because Sera isn't actively looking for him. The One has a way of working things that way.
In either case: another Sunday is put to bed, and the High Mass vestments are hung, and the rector and office administrator of La Iglesia del Buen Pastor are sitting at a Mexican restaurant on South Washington Boulevard.
They've finished splitting an order of grilled cactus. She's drinking a Sidral through a straw and he's been nursing the same cup of decaf the entire time they've been here.
Their waitress is Rosa's youngest daughter. She hide in the back when she isn't busy with their order. It embarrasses her that her priest leaves a huge goddamn tip even though she barely does any work but she's almost done with her associate's degree and isn't going to complain.
SerafíneIt's a genuine Mexican restaurant, with grilled cactus and Sidral, not the gringo sort, with some iteration of the same menu and the same explanations of the same dishes, repeated at nauseum and doused with shredded cheddar cheese rather than queso fresca. After the last mass, a bit after the usual dinner hour, but the smokey sky is still full of late afternoon sunlight and heat bakes off the asphalt.
Some of that heat yawns in every time the door opens as the old a/c churns sluggish, cough, filters full of smoke from the forest fires to the south.
That door opens now - and in piles a group of twenty- and thirty-something hipsters. Five or six, four girls and two guys, all dressed in some different iteration of the subculture, with a half-dozen identifying markets to pull them out of the mainstream, from earplugs to tattoos to the vintagey 1960s black and white polka dot dress the tallest girl is wearing, full-on rockabilly style down to the finger waves and the fucking hibiscus in her rich dark hair.
And who might one see arm-in-arm with the rockabilly girl as they spill in, chattering and bright, but a certain little blond (blonder today, hair freshly bleached and highlighted) with a particular sidecut, who appears to have dressed up for Sunday. At least, the garment she's wearing on top has sleeves and a collar and covers more than just her boobs.
It's even layered: a fucking izod fucking sweater over a fucking polo, both oversized and blocky, showing not a stitch of her figure and no skin other than her forearms where the sleeves have been rolled up.
Then: as they're being seated, she spots the priest and detaches herself from the group and wanders over to his table.
So: here's the reason for the sleeves and torso-covering-sweater. The sweater comes down an inch or three over the tops of her thighs. And she appears to have decided that fishnets now count as pants.
"Padre." Just stands there a moment, grinning at them both, hands on the edge of their table. So, so pleased to see him. " - what's up?"
Given who she is, it is safe to assume that she has imbibed something this lovely afternoon.
Fr. EcheverríaEvery other time Sera has seen Rosa she has been parked behind an antiquated desk choked with papers and neon sticky notes, phone somewhere between her hand and her ear, and she's tried but has not been able to keep the look of contempt off her face as she's silently prayed for strength to weather the storm that is this brazen young girl.
Something Pancho said just as the group of droogs came in the door made Rosa laugh. Her merriment shunts away with the Cultist's approach. It's all she can do to stir her straw around in her drink and not say anything that would bring her into the confession booth later this week.
Rosa wears a modest floral-print sundress and Pan hasn't had a haircut yet. He gives her the same smile he would have given anyone else who came up to his table all Padre how are you and unlike Rosa he pushes back from the table to greet her.
"Miss Davies," he says. "Hello. We missed you at Mass today."
He thinks he's so funny.
Serafíne"Dude, Pan. When did we get so fucking formal. No one calls me that. Make me sound like - like a fucking debutante."
Sera makes a stitching noise in the back of her throat to reinforce the correction vis-a-vis her name and, brazen, absolutely, and quite without invitation, slides into the booth beside the priest. Not quite up to him, but beside him, aware of and careful of the distance between them. Still: she slides closer than almost anyone else in the whole damn place would find appropriate.
"And I wasn't at mass because I was doing something I'm gonna hafta report at my next confession. Which isn't due I think for three thousand five hundred and fifty eight days if my fucking calculations are right, Pan. But you should keep looking for me. One day I'm gonna come."
And has her hands on the edge of the table, fingers curled forward, her bloodshot eyes bright on Rosa, just... taking her in, both the closed-off expression and the look of contempt on her face. Which makes no fucking matter to Serafíne.
"I know you don't like me, man. But that dress looks awesome on you. I should make Dee give you that fuckin' flower she's wearing."
Fr. EcheverríaThey both choose in their own way to accept the situation and their inability to do anything about it. Serafíne isn't anyone they really have to worry about, not like if she actually joined hands with them every week or was the daughter of someone who joined hands with them every week. If the contempt is intended for anyone it is not for this girl. She doesn't know any better.
But she came stumbling into the church over a month ago and scared the abuelitas who come into light candles and pray at dusk and Pan hasn't done anything to keep her out. So many things he has done in the past without blinking and Rosa understands why he won't tell this particular hooligan to stay out of his house.
So Pan sits still and placid as Sera sidles into the booth next to him and swears and mocks and as long as it's aimed at him he doesn't react. The expression of beleaguered endurance persists for the duration, the undercurrents of amusement present the way they were present that first night, but then she turns to Rosa and things threaten to turn south.
"No," Rosa says. Her accent is thicker than the priest's and matches the parish's better than his does. "Is fine on her."
Whereupon the priest clears his throat to say: "Rosita, I'll see you in the morning, huh? Tell Lily I said thanks for dinner."
And he gives the Cultist a look and a tilt of his chin, a request for her to move her skinny behind so he can get out the booth. Time and her love affair with it being what it is she has to know he's going to suggest she walk him outside.
Fr. Echeverría[HARK IT'S OLD PERSON O'CLOCK TIME TO GO TO BED]
Serafíne
Confusion alights in her bloodshot eyes as she just sat down and now Pan is taking his leave and she's in the way and then that knot between her brows smooths away to something else, balanced between chagrin and good-feeling. Serafíne does move her skinny behind so the priest can climb out of the booth, smoothing the hem of the oversized sweater down so she is not literally showing her ass. Gives Rosa a look over her shoulder and looks like she's about to say something else when the priest is stands and is suddenly looming behind her. Makes his request and she accedes, as she knew she would.
Then her attention flashes back to Pan, all drunken intent, and she favors him with the curl of a quiet smile. Has to stop herself from reaching for his too-long hair but is fortunately sober enough to arrest the motion almost before it is born. Maybe Rosa sees it, though. The hitch of motion in the girl's shoulder that she pulls back as soon as it begins.
--
He asks her to walk him out. So of course she does. If he actually asked her to come to mass, she might fucking do it. Not every time but just this once, and only because he asked her to. He asks her to walk him out, and she leaves his side just once, to duck over to the table of her friends and bestow a quick pair of kisses, forehead and cheek, on Dee.
Outside, in the soft darkness of a summer's evening, she wants to say, I didn't mean to interrupt your dinner. And she wants to say, You sure you were done? And she wants to say, even maybe I'm sorry, what did I do wrong?
- but in the end all she says is, "You still need a haircut."
Pan
The things Rosa sees she keeps to herself but the older woman and the young woman understand each other. Older lifts her eyebrows barely but still visibly and casts a look to Pan's shoulders as he lifts himself out of the booth and heads for the door. Her daughter will be grateful for their exit but their conversation is not over.
And he walks out the restaurant with this girl, tall over her even in her ridiculous heels and with his sloping posture. Holds the door open for her so she can saunter out ahead of him and his eyes stay aimed over her head. Questions she wants to ask stay locked behind her teeth and he doesn't read her mind so he doesn't know they're there.
He still needs a haircut.
"Bah," he says, "I'll cut it when it gets long."
Serafíne
Outside in the smokey twilight (and it is still twilight; it is midsummer and the days last forever and the nights are so short, the sky hardly closed when it has to open all over again, the huge fully moon swimming brilliant and pregnant and low in the grayed out and failing evening as it sweeps over the city. In the west, the orangene glow of the dying sun lights a patchy bank of clouds and makes the smoke glow against the mountains) - outside in the smokey twilight Serafíne crosses her arms and and finds the moon in the sky and then the remnants of the sun, then glances back at Pan as he emerges from the restaurant.
Glances back up at him because she always looks up at him because even she does not own a single pair of shoes ridiculous enough to lift her to anything approaching his height. The streetlights are on, a dull amber glow in smear reflections on the glass storefront of the restaurant they've both just exited that surrounds her like a corona. Can't call it a halo, she's so far from angelic, Sera. Still: all blazing that reflection behind her though her eyes are cut toward him, not the streetlights, and are therefore dark and darker, the color lost in the shadows.
He'll cut his hair when it gets long.
"Like a hippie," this sudden, stupid little grin on her face. That damp softness in her eyes, in her mouth, all affection. " - that's okay I like it shaggy anyway."
Then her eyes drop from his profile and she gives him this narrow, girlish sort of shrug, shoulders pressing forward and inward, mutely expressive but these microexpressions, the movement of her shoulder, the curling cross of her arms over her torso are dangerous because my god she should not have left her house wearing a sweater as a dress and fishnets as pants because a sweater is not a dress and fishnets are not pants, Serafíne.
"I didn't mean to interrupt your dinner," she says, then. Not really looking at him, now, but he's been looking over her head so maybe he doesn't even notice, just down at his shadow against the sidewalk. Maybe stealing a glance at his profile, now. "You should go back in and finish your cactus or whatever. Order some fucking flan."
Pan
Cooler out here than in the restaurant but without the clinking of silverware and the murmur of conversation from people near at hand but never destined to be friends. Red walls and the decor as spicy as the food. For a flicker earlier sat in the booth talking about something that didn't have to do with anything the priest seemed more like a person than an idea. They weren't talking about God or the church or the War or any of that when Sera came in.
She knows he looks younger when he laughs. Laughing might as well have kept him as young as he is. Young enough to stalk off down a driveway to face a band of Fallen on his own. Young enough to still think himself invincible. Only the old know better than that, those aged in the mind or the spirit or both. Weathered as his skin is the rest of him hasn't conceded such defeat yet.
Won't even cut his hair until it's grown out. Like a hippie.
And he pulls out a cigarette he rolled earlier, strikes a match and lights it and she feels him feel the Tapestry around them, like he wants to be prepared in case they're set upon while they're otherwise indisposed. Offers her a drag because she's offered him a drag before. Lets her keep it once his magick has illuminated the place.
An apology draws his eyes and he watches her strong sharp profile and the displacement of her gaze and she feels the acuity of his own but no aching. He's not that young.
You should order some fucking flan.
The door opens and Rosa walks out then holding her handbag in the crook of an elbow with the same delicateness with which she would have held a bouquet or another person's elbow and she and Pan look to each other. She lifts a hand to wave and he says to her "Buenos noches," and she says, "Good night," and she does not ignore Sera but neither does she spare her a farewell. Kitten heels clack against the asphalt. She has the stringy calves of one not used to a desk job.
"It makes her uncomfortable," he says once she's out of earshot. "'Fuck,' you know language like that. Reminds her of the people she used to hang around when she was using. Don't take it personal."
Serafíne
Now she has his cigarette in hand and he lets her keep it but she passes it back if he'll take it. This is the stoner's routine, and the addict's routine and the routine of homeless street kids the world over. If you light one cigarette, you share it back and forth. Divide the nicotine hit in two. Hoard the rest because who knows when you're going to be able to scare up enough cash both for whatever drug you crave and for a pack of two of smokes. So, she takes a drag, the hand-rolled cigarette tucked almost like a joint between her index and middle fingers, braced by the edge of her thumb. Offers it back to him with a quick lilt of question in her eyes and manner, and retains custody only if he refuses.
Only if he refuses it back more than once.
When the front door opens Sera looks up all sharp, watches the exchange between Rosa and Pan and gives the older woman this twist of her mouth to stand in for the farewell she herself is not spared. Sera's eyes linger on Rosa's retreating figure, the clack of her heels, the long shadow cast behind her, then takes another drag on Pan's cigarette and looks back up to the sky.
"Shit." The curse is quiet and autonomic and Sera's chagrin is immediately and sublimely evident afterward. Her gaze drops from the smokey sky to Rosa in the distance, just as the latter rounds the corner. "I'm sorry." And oh, she sounds like she means it, for all the fucking good an apology like that will do her. For all the fucking good even the conviction behind the apology will do her. Because she cannot stop cursing anymore than she can stop feeling her way through the world.
Still, fuck:
"I mean, tell her I'm sorry, would you? I hadn't - I didn't think."
Because it is one thing to push every fucking button of every smarmy, self-important, self-righteous asshole the world offers up so routinely, so repetitively and another to -
Well, Sera swallows hard. Takes another drag and and drops her eyes from Pan, looks back and hard to the right, across the street, at the flash of headlights moving like ghosts at a dark intersection. Let's pretend that the sudden flush of tears in her eyes is from the forest fires, the smoke of the cigarette in her hand. Let's pretend that she doesn't remember what she saw in him, one night not so long ago, the stain of his suffering beneath his skin. The memory of it and her awareness it so sharp and acute even in the midst of her own drunken misery it was like she had inhaled some ghost of his past, swallowed it into her body.
"Does it - " here she pauses, brow knitting and her jaw with it, and her jaw is all he sees of her face because she's looking so assiduously away from him now. "I mean, do I remind you too. Of them, back then?
"I mean, I'm not so good at self-censorship, you know. But I could maybe," a sharp breath out, one of those dangerous oneshouldered shrugs offered in his direction though she's yet to glance back at him. "not come around so much. You know? I could do that for you."
Pan
And the thing about his past suffering is that that's all it is. The things that test the mind and the spirit remain in the past so long as they are confronted. It did not flare up that night so much as the present reality come up before them let her see. What John Brogan said was meant to turn them against each other, drop another layer of separation so that she would come closer to a darkness she could not, for all of the darkness looming behind her, imagine.
So he can stand here and listen to coarse language and smoke cigarettes and mingle with the salt of the earth because those are the people he tends to. He has no time for the elite and the well-off and he has no time for people who would judge those who love those of the same sex or administer the Eucharist to those not confirmed by the Church or those who would let women perform the duties of a priest. That is why he was not ordained in the Roman Catholic tradition. They would not have him and if they had had him it would not have been for long.
The god Father Echeverría serves is not hateful.
"You ain't undergone a proper Confession in a while," he says through the smoke held between his fingers, "so I know contrition and you've drifted apart a bit. But next time you say you're sorry to someone, you might want to try just saying you're sorry and let them tell you what they want you to do to make things right, huh?"
Serafíne
All those tumbling apologies come to a halt. Sera is still looking away from Pan, her shoulders stiff, some wreathing alertness to her posture and a certain sharpened awareness about her, which comes about all sudden. He can read in that posture that she's listening to him. Were he looking at her he might see the way she absorbs his mention of confession like a blow but holds that in, holds it all framed in her skin because she trusts him in a way she has never trusted anyone who wears a collar or a cassock or a cross or anything close to them.
And she is so, so quiet when he's finished. Just nods.
Breathes out, slow and sure, before she cuts a glance back to him. Eyes still shining but she has a hold on that now.
"I'm sorry." Seams her mouth and swallows hard. "I - " Another swallow.
"What should I do?"
Pan
He offers her the cigarette a final time.
"You don't have to do nothing."
The double negative isn't a concept that exists in Spanish. If anything, the two negatives are stronger together. It doesn't translate well in English and to people who hear him speak who don't speak his native tongue, he sounds rough around the edges, like he just got off the boat even though his accent is a smoothed-away thing.
"But you and Rosa ain't gonna be on the level right away, and it's got nothing to do with you. You wanna do something for me, you can watch your language when you two're in the same room. But don't play like you're a burden to me or you need to change, you hear?" If she gave the cigarette back to him this is when he kills it between his fingers and pockets the roach. "I'd be dead right now if it weren't for you being the way you are."
He clears his throat then and pushes away from the wall, intent to leave.
"Good night, Serafíne. I'll see you later."
Serafíne
He doesn't leave before she hugs him. Or rather, listen, he says his piece. Says it clearly and says that he would be dead and Sera, in that moment she grits her teeth against the fucking word and the fucking idea. Then the priest pushes away from the wall and she's looking at him, her profile all sharp against the dark smearing night. There's that way he deforms the universe, the brightness he carries inside him and sheds in every which direction that makes you feel like you don't need the natural light because it's all caught up inside him.
He pushes away from the wall, intent to leave, and she's still and still stubborn and still able to be so momentarily whiplash angry even just about the idea of his possible death that she fails to register his movement or his farewell before his back is to her and then, quite abruptly, she hugs him from behind. Right out on the street. Just wraps her arms around his waist and presses her cheek against his spine. She releases him almost as quickly as she embraced him, then, pushing him forward with a herky-jerky movement of her frame, like she's launching him back down the street.
All she says is, "Yeah, well. Likewise. Without you, I'd be dead. Or worse."
If he looks around, he'll just see her back. She's ducking back into the entrance to the Mexican restaurant and pulling the door open, the noise of the crowd filters out onto the quiet street, a background chorus, a halo of noise.
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