I creep into the big church and hover in the entryway, allowing my eyes to adjust to the dark and the depth of it. Inside, it smells like some kind of cleaning product, of wood polish and incense.
When I can make out the back pew, I slip in, alone. I haven’t been inside a Catholic church since I took an art history class and went to St. Patrick’s Cathedral to write a paper. I remember noting the architecture of the place, buttresses and stained glass, with detached academic perspective.
I feel that way now, until I see the coffin in the front, a priest swinging incense overhead. Bizarre custom. The bench is hard and cold. I see padding on the floor, for kneeling. Not me.
I shift and cross my legs in my funeral suit. I have to go immediately to work and changing will be a pain in the ass, but it’s the least I can do for Jeanette.
Jeanette. Up there in that box covered with flowers. How impossible is that? I scan for blonde little girl heads in the front row. Mercifully I cannot see that far. I don’t think I could bear the sight of them today. Instead of tears, the beginning of a headache has begun to bloom at my forehead. No more tears are left.
I look up at the riot of color in every window. Say what you will about the cluttered inelegance of gothic architecture, but the stained glass is beautiful. I look at the faux-marble floor, and realize that it is casting rainbows of color in patches along the church’s east wall. It’s beautiful. And maybe the floor is actual marble. I can’t tell from here.
I’m not so cold now, but that feeling lingers, of waking up this morning alone, Shane’s side of the bed smooth and cold. Chloe, was the girl’s name. My stomach clenches like a heart. Why did she leave without saying goodbye?
The parishioners are standing, I realize. Before I can consider standing with them, they are sitting. Then kneeling.
Tonight is my first shift as supervisor. It’s a great honor to take over for Jeanette, but even the prospect of work leaves me sort of numb. Under any circumstance, I am excited about nursing, in any way shape or form. But it’s as if now I’m in a bubble through which nothing penetrates, but aching.
Motion of a dark figure in the aisle catches my eye. Shane. She stumbles into the church, just a few steps. She’s wearing a black jacket, black pants, hair tamed somewhat. The black makes her look even more thin and fragile than usual, and the bubble surrounding me pops. Feelings rush in. I want to hold her close, to pour onto her all the love and anger I’m feeling.
She stands there, leaning to one side, dwarfed by the big room, looking around. Looking for me.
I clear my throat quietly, and she turns and sees me. Hunger swirls in my belly, with fear and fury. Her look holds me fast and safe, as she turns and walks down the aisle to sit next to me. Only then am I aware of tears on my face.
She sits and pulls me close into the space of her neck and collar, the tears well up and flow, wetting my cheeks and her shirt. She doesn’t seem to mind. I cry soundlessly for Jeanette who I barely knew and mostly for her children and for Shane and for me. For how small the world makes me feel today, and how much I need her. I close my eyes, because the world hurts too much, and it’s more peaceful without sight to remind me of it. Her strong arm holds my head closer to her shoulder, her fingers holding my head to her body. They gently stroke my upswept hair.
I’m in a trance of fragile calm, when Shane removes her arm. I meet her eyes. “I’m gonna take communion,” she whispers. I look to the front where the priest is holding bread, saying something about the body of Christ. The word rises up from my memory, something I don’t know how I know. Bread becoming flesh. Transubstantiation. Shane is going to eat from the body of Jesus? Drink His blood?
I watch as she gets up, goes to the end of the queue forming in the center aisle. There is a loss of warmth with her leaving, but I don’t take my eyes off her dark head as she moves forward in the line. I don’t understand why she’s communing with a god that declares her a sinner. I’ve never known a person with less shame about being gay, yet there she is. Does she confess her sins? Is she penitent for loving me? In my fragile state, the contradiction makes my head spin, so I just watch, without trying to figure her out. She nods her head to the priest, accepting a white wafer in her mouth. Drinks the wine, makes the sign of the cross and walks out the left side of the sanctuary, back around to me.
I take her hand as she sits back down, and her fingers relax into mine. She seems lighter, somehow, and her eyes seek mine out, tender. Lowers her eyes to our clasped hands, and slips her other hand around them both. We sit there like that, and I’m very conscious that I’m holding the hand of my girlfriend in a place where we aren’t wanted, where we are sinners of the first order. Shane again lets go to stand and kneel and cross herself. The mass makes no sense to me, though the priest is speaking in English, and I close my eyes and try to focus on the sensation of her warmth next to me.
After, we are the first ones out of the church. She asks me if I want to go to the wake, but I say no, I need to be at work in an hour and a half. The real reason is that I can’t face those children, their grief.
“You wanna talk?” she asks.
I nod, not entirely sure that it’s the truth. I want to be near her. Want to exist in the same space as her. She takes my hand, leads me down the street, two blocks away, to where the Jeep is parked.
I climb in, staring straight ahead. It’s a sunny day, and it’s warm in here. She fluidly sits next to me, glances over at me, anxious.
“I don’t wanna talk,” I say. “I’m all talked out. I don’t have the energy.”
“We don’t have to talk,” she says quietly. “Do you want me to drop you off at work?”
“No. I’m parked in the church lot.”
“Ok.”
“I want -“ I don’t finish it.
She takes my hand in hers. Her eyes are heavy with asking permission, and she sees my yes as she pulls my hand closer.
“Why do you take communion?” I ask.
“I dunno. To feel closer to god I guess, feel like I’m part of Him.”
I turn and look at her. She looks at me. And then it sparks, shifts. My hunger is like a bolt of lightning to my belly, and it fries my blood. And she feels it too. I can see the bob of her throat as she swallows. I can tell by the way she breathes, by her eyes.
“How long until you need to be at work?”
“Not until three.”
She glances at her watch, then starts the Jeep. She doesn’t say a word as she drives me. I don’t know where she’s taking me, but it’s near the hospital. I think about my car back at the church, but the thought falls away.
I understand when she stops outside a hotel. Jumps out and hands the keys to a valet. Excitement sparks inside my chest, my belly, my brain. She takes my hand and leads me inside. She asks for a room and pays with a credit card. I follow her to the elevator, to the eighth floor, down the hall. We are silent as she shoves the card in, waits for the green light.
We step inside. Polished wood and gold, two beds. We’ll only need one. Decadent, on a hairdresser’s salary. For just forty-five minutes. It feels wrong. But I don’t care. I need her, her flesh on me.
“Be right back,” she says shyly, and ducks into the bathroom. A blushing bride? I smile for the first time in over twenty four hours, a small smile.
Dustmotes are dancing slow patterns in the yellow sunlight. It’s quiet here. I look at myself in the gilded mirror. Sleek black suit, black hair. Funereal. I shrug out of the jacket, lay it on the table. Unbutton my blue blouse, small flat buttons. I watch, the world’s least exciting striptease as I unhook my bra, let it fall. Skirt, stockings, and panties. I need to be naked, with nothing covering me. I need my body to shine in the light. To be the steel upon which her flint sparks. To inspire the violence of our collision.
The toilet whooshes and she emerges from the bathroom, hands damp. I stand, arm raised to undo the knot in my hair. It’s grown long, and it tumbles over my shoulders. She takes in my nakedness like it’s a hit to her gut. I feel the beginning of warm satisfaction in my belly. Then I’m walking to her, feet bare on the carpet. I’m yanking her to me roughly as I slide her jacket off, impatiently unbutton her shirt. She makes a small breathy sound as my thumbs dart underneath, each nail scratching a nipple. I use the sides of the shirt to pull her to me roughly, and I kiss her hard. She tastes of wine. Flesh, and blood. I kiss my fill of her, then press my face to her neck, bite the inward curve where shoulder meets neck.
She moans, not entirely in pleasure. My body, my blood for you. I can feel the shudder of her breath on my cheek, warm. I didn’t break her skin, but still I lick my lips.
Her skin makes me violent, and I roughly pull off her shirt, then shove her hard. She falls on the bed, so hard she bounces, and her eyes are submissive.
Her hand moves to finger her nipple, and I can’t take it any more. I groan, rush in to undo her pants with my fingers and my teeth. I reveal the sweet feminine curve of her hips, their flare under her tiny waist and boyish shoulders.
I don’t know where to begin on her, whether to suck her pale toes or dig my fingers into her hair or kiss those pink parted lips, so I stand there. And her eyes are on me like a burden or a blessing. There is desire there, and I feel wetness come down from inside of me.
I kneel to the floor, take one pale foot in my hand, suckle at the arch of it as she squirms, graze my teeth over her big toe, then work my way up to her knee, leaving soft kisses and bites all along her.
I thrust two fingers mercilessly into her furred sex, and am shocked to find her molten inside. Warm validation courses through me. She wants me. She is as turned on as I am.
I meet her eyes, withdraw my fingers, and pump them in again. She bites back a breath, but I can see the rise and fall of her chest. I press my face to her hip as I curl my fingers, and she writhes, moaning against her will. That’s it. I’ll hear more from you by the time we’re finished. I leave little nips up the length of her body, redoubling back and laving them with my tongue, and every one, she jumps. I would think she hates it, but for the burning red flush that rises to her face and shoulders.
I move down again, not having the time nor discipline to avoid her taut cunt. I part the fleshy gates, fingers pushing away the soft hair there, and she groans, thrusting up despite herself.
Then she gives herself over to me. She spreads her legs, ankles rooting into the mattress as I begin to flicker, knees bent as I lap. Her body for me. She looked like a pretty boy in her black suit, but now she’s soft and sweet, all girl, so beautiful under me I stop licking for a second, just to take in the beauty of her.
She closes her eyes as I begin again, riding up toward my face with an even slow rhythm. As she comes close I barely hear her whisper. “I’m sorry.” She’s quivering, and I look up, but I don’t stop sucking. “I’m so sorry, D.” A hallucination, but for the movement of her lips.
I accept her apology, swallow it down as I take her higher. I bring her off quickly, leave her shuddering and blinking like an idiot in the wake of her orgasm.
I keep my fingers inside her, let her breathe for a minute. Her eyes meet mine, and there I see a complex submission, satiation and hunger. I straddle her, and bring my pussy so it is just above her mouth.
Her hands move to my hips, warm. She lowers me down and I shudder at the first taste of her tongue on me. Her fingers lower to spread me apart; she flickers her tongue over me. I moan, fall down like liquid over her, as if I could soak into her, be absorbed by her skin. My fingers are white on the headboard, no place to grab because it’s fused to the wall. I come so easy, like water slipping down a hill, and I cry loudly as I can feel the resonating throb inside me. But she still licks, pressing her fingers inside and up toward the wall, and like a rock skipping over water my orgasm catches, and magnifies, skipping again and again and again.
I fall to the mattress, almost disappointed that all my fire hasn’t been spent, though my body is.
“I’m sorry,” she says again. As if I’d not heard her earlier. As if I could not accept her apology. I look over at her, see the pain in her eyes. Take, eat. I trace the elegant line of her eyebrow, touch her with sticky fingers, palm the sacred curve of her jaw.
“I know. I love you Shane.”
“I love you too.” Quiet.
I wrap my arms around her, swallowing the last of my anger, my resentment. “I love you.” I kiss her temple. “You’re my girl.”
She closes her eyes, made simple with gratitude. She kisses me and hovers close in those few minutes we have left.
