SINNER: Part 3

Transcript

Chapter 22, I'm amused at her eagerness, but I'm an unmoving wall of aftercare, which earns me a charming little tantrum. I'll fuck you every time you ask me, I promise. But I need to make sure you're doing okay first.

I'm okay, she pouts. Now come over here and do it again. I'm over at the bathroom door, I've just finished with the condom, and also with a ten second staring session in the mirror where I stared at the face of a man who's in love.

I've never been in love before. It's gutting and disorienting and dizzying and joyful. Like a roller coaster careening wildly around corners, like a car punching into top gear as the highway streaks away underneath you.

Like standing in a prairie summer storm, the blowing rain soaking your skin, lightning sawing across the sky. The wind a part of a song that you knew a long time ago, but have since forgotten. It's too soon, but I love her.

She's Elijah's little sister and much too young for me. And she only wants me for sex, but I love her. And she's going to leave me for her God, but I love her.

I go back to the bed and I undress her, I undress myself. I make a shower, flicking water at her from the spray while she stands just outside, pulling on her shower cap and wrinkling her cute little nose at me. I spend a long time washing and soaping and massaging her, petting her and spoiling her and telling her how much I want her.

How grateful I am, how perfect she is. I don't say that I love her, not because I doubt it, not because it's new, but because I honestly think it might spook her given her reaction to my there are no other women I care about like this comment the other day. I don't want to scare her away, not when I've just gotten her.

And also, is it even fair for me to tell her this? She didn't explicitly say and we can't fall in love when we were negotiating our arrangement. But I'd felt it in the air nonetheless, hanging like a heavy fog.

I don't think she wants that from me. And it might even be cruel to burden her with it in the looming face of her vows. So I stay silent about that part and after we're toweled off, I spend another long time rubbing her with lotion and she rubs me with her lotion so that I smell like roses and I don't even care.

I want to smell like her always, I want to carry roses with me wherever I go. And I use the lotion as an excuse to check the bite marks on her breasts, to gently test her clit for soreness. I'm hard, and I'd love nothing more than to burrow inside her soft heat once again.

But I refuse to hurt her, I couldn't stand it if it hurt her. But gradually she convinces me that she's not sore, not hurting, and we go again, completely naked this time. She wants to try being on top, and she pierces herself on my offered up cock in a slow, anguished slide.

She's shaking as she sinks home and I murmur reassuring words to her, ungentleing hands over her flanks and hips. I tell her how hot she is like this, perched above me like a goddess, how sweet her tits look, how hard it makes me to see her pussy stretched around my base as if I barely fit, I do barely fit. And the thought is inflamingly coarse, sinfully vulgar.

So of course I share that with her too. She rides herself to a whimpering, shaking orgasm, one I endure marginally more stoically than the last time. And when she's finished, I make to pull off the condom.

No, she insists, dismounting me as if I were her steed, her stallion. God, that thought shouldn't be as erotic as it is, but fuck me, I can't help it. She puts her hand on my wrist.

Come in the condom again, she says, her eyes gleaming in the dark. I like to watch it. Your wish is my command, I whisper.

And as she kneels next to me, my little anthropologist once more, I wrap my hand around my zenny wet cock and jerk off. Strictly speaking, jerking off through a condom is not something I'd normally enjoy, but it doesn't matter now. With zenny next to me, her perfect tits hanging forward as she leans in for a better view, and her lovely fascinated face and profile with her button nose and long eyelashes, it doesn't take much.

I only need to pull on myself a handful of times before my erection swells inside the condom and starts pumping out my release. It's raw somehow, raw and almost unclean feeling, which is surprising given that it's perhaps the cleanest sex act one can perform. But it's something about how it traps my cock inside its own leavings, something about how much it puts my grunting rough release on display.

It's enough to make a man hard again, which is how we end up having sex a third time. This time tangled together on our sides, one of her legs over my hip and my arms tied around her. It's slow and languorous, and when she comes, it's nearly silent.

A caught breath, and then the telltale contractions on my dick. I jack off a final time, yes, into a condom once again. I really can't refuse zenny anything.

And we clean up and crawl into bed like two tired children coming home from a theme park. Exhausted physically, exuberant mentally, sleep a fuzzy, earned embrace waiting for us the moment we close our eyes. Thank you, zenny murmurs, tucking herself into me.

It was everything I wanted, more than I could have wanted. No, thank you, darling. And I almost don't ask, because the night has ended so perfectly, so sweetly, but I have to.

Zenny, what happened with Northcutt today? She yawns and I relax the tiniest bit, because I don't think she'd yawn if something terrible had happened. He met with me, and the Reverend Mother tried to convince us to issue a follow-up statement to the news outlets that Baldwin and Associates has been nothing but helpful, it was all a misunderstanding, yada, yada.

We said no. Relief rolls over me at the same time as delight. You told him no, just like that? Well, the Reverend Mother did, and he started to be shitty, and then she asked him to leave her office, and he did.

She's very intimidating when she wants to be. I picture the scene with stupid Northcutt fleeing the office with his tail between his legs, some old lady in a giant winged nun's hat scolding him as he goes. It's a very nice scene to imagine.

So you're okay, she's okay. I was so fucking worried when I heard. We're okay, Zenny says sleepily.

Believe it or not, we can take care of ourselves without Sean Bell coming in to save the day. She pats my chest as if I'm a tamed bear who thinks he's ferocious. But is only a harmless old lump instead.

I know, I know, I just want you to be safe is all I, wrong word, Sean, care about you. Mm, I care about you too, and I like that you care about me. She says it simply, dozily, and it's the last thing she says before she falls into sex-exhausted sleep.

But me, I stay awake for a long time, my brain still spinning and I'm missing this new thing, this new love, this new love that I can't ever, ever keep. The next week passes in a blur of sex and work. We find a rhythm that feels impossibly right.

Sex in the morning, then work for me and classes and rotations for her. In the evening, she has her shelter shifts and I start going with because I can't stand to be apart from her. Of course, I don't just get to hover around her and steal kisses when no one's looking.

She puts me to work in the kitchen. And then we come home and fuck late into the night. Her curiosity knows no bounds.

It makes her brave and she tries the jeweled plug for the first time and loves it. We fuck in every position she wants to try, every position I can think of. We sneak a fuck in my office in one in the corner of an expensive restaurant.

We snuggle and watch movies and I burn with this secret love for her and it chars me up inside. It sears me and cracks me. I can't get enough of it.

I try to make her doubt in earnest. It never works. And it's a stinging thing to note that even as I try my hardest, even as I throw every reason I ever hated God or despised the church at her, I can't crack her faith the way her love cracks me.

I can't carve away her connection with God the same way she's carved a gap into my heart that she refuses to fill. I can't bear to tell her I love her. It feels manipulative somehow.

And also I'm frightened. I don't think I'll survive it if I tell her and she dismisses it. Dismisses me.

I can even imagine it in my worst moments, the way her mouth will soften in pity and her eyes will shine from compassion. Sean, I'm flattered, she'll say. And she'll do something mortifying like pat my shoulder.

But you know I don't feel the same way, you know I never will. God, the fucking irony of a sinner loving a nun. It's agony, I'm dying.

And as I'm both a light and a flame with loving her, these splashes of thought keep coming out of nowhere, like raindrops on a sunny day. Raindrop number one, I'm jealous of Zeni's relationship with God. Not only jealous like a lover watching his beloved with someone else, but jealous that she has it.

Jealous that she's mature enough to be angry about all the pain in the world and to accuse God of not doing enough. And then in the same breath, work to change that pain in his name. Raindrop number two, Zeni reminds me of the things I loved about God.

A sense of curiosity, a bravery, a turbulent emotion, bundled close with the deepest peace. Things I felt about God once upon a time and felt about myself. Raindrop number three, if loving Zeni is even close to the way she loves God, I understand why she's choosing this life.

I realized being furious with him was not the same thing as wanting him out of my life. That's what my mom said the day I found her with the rosary. What if that were true for me too? Is hating God the same thing as not believing in him? Can you hate a thing you don't believe in? And when I say I hate God, what do I mean? Do I mean that I'm angry about Lizzie? Angry that humans who were supposed to serve goodness were actually monsters and that it's all his fault?

Do I mean I never want to think about him again? Or do I mean that I want to rage at him? To howl and pace and scream and have him listen.

Have him witness and hear and see my pain. And one night in the dark as Zeni sleeps, I send up a thought like a balloon. I still hate you.

I think up to the ceiling. You let us all down and I'll never forgive you. Nothing happens.

The ceiling remains a ceiling. My room remains quiet save for the soft snores of the little nun at my side. There's no burning bushes or shimmering prophets poking their heads out of the walls.

Except when I tell Zeni about it the next morning, she gives me a knowing smile and eyes full of compassion. Sean, she says, that was a prayer. You prayed.

It's like looking up and seeing a green sky, this thought. It haunts me for days. Chapter 23.

Two weeks left. Chapter 24. I stare at my phone for a minute before I slide it back into my pocket.

The property owner is ahead of me, talking in over-bright tones to the Reverend Mother and Zeni, gesturing around to windows and load-bearing beams. I should be up there with them, and I will be in just a moment. It's another bowel obstruction, Dad had explained.

They don't know if it's the old site flaring up or something new. New mets in her intestines, maybe. Adhesions from the last surgery.

They did a suction on her stomach to relieve the pressure. She's about to go in for a scan now. It's funny how quickly everything can fall apart.

Only last week she was putting away dishes and arguing about God. And now we're back in the hospital, possibly facing another surgery. I glance at my watch.

It's 4.13 now, and Dad thinks Mom will be done with her scan and back in her room before 6. That should give me plenty of time to finish the tour and drop Zeni off at the shelter and the Reverend Mother back at the monastery. Maintain, you idiot, I chastise myself.

Because my hands are shaking and for a dumb, terrible minute, all I can feel is this kind of stale fear and even staler exhaustion. Because I know once I get to the hospital, it will be the triple duty of comforting Dad and handling the doctors and keeping Mom company. I love my father, but he can barely be strong enough for her.

He can't be strong for himself or be counted on to ask hard questions and to chase down nurses and to demand every next step Mom needs. It has to be me. I take a breath and catch up with the group.

And here we can easily build in an office for you. The owner is saying, the prioress is nodding thoughtfully. And the expense, she asks.

Well, ideally, the owner trails off as the prioress studies him. She's in her mid-70s, black, short, and stout, with massive glasses and wrinkled expressive hands. They're folded over her belly now as she waits for him to finish saying whatever stupid thing he's going to say.

He wisely reconsiders. I'd be happy to do the renovations myself. Oh, how kind, the reverend mother says.

That would be a lovely gift. She says it in a way that's genuine, that even I feel. And I think she is warmly grateful.

But I also recognize as a businessman that she's getting exactly what she needs from him, and all it took was a silent look. I wonder if she gives lessons. And then it's done.

The prioress approves the site, both parties sign a provisional contract I drew up. And then I'm driving the women away from the property. I can't kiss Zanny goodbye at the shelter with the reverend mother waiting in my car by the curb, but I do get out and walk her to the front door and tell her things that have her lashes fluttering until she disappears inside.

And then I climb back into the car, preparing to drive the reverend mother back to the monastery, which is a sprawling old house in Midtown. So you're the man having sex with Zenobia, the reverend mother says before I can even get my seatbelt buckled. My hand fumbles for a minute on the belt.

A thousand awful, awkward scenarios roll through my mind. The worst ones featuring Zanny exiled from this vocation she holds so dear, and the least worst involving unwelcome lectures about chastity and propriety. It occurs to me in a racing shadow of desperate expediency that I could lie to her.

I could say that I'm simply helping with this shelter move and trying to make up for my part in the Keegan deal. I could say that Zanny's an old friend, that what I feel for her is nothing more than older brotherly. And I'm merely looking out for her for Elijah's sake.

But right after the shadow comes a quick slant of light. I can't lie. Not only would lying to the reverend mother be, I suspect, quite futile, as she'd see through it immediately and be understandably unimpressed with my deceit.

But I can't help but feel that Zanny wouldn't want me to lie, that she'd want me to be honest no matter what the consequences were. Because she would do the same in my place, because she has lived honestly, even when it came at the cost of her identity as the model Iverson daughter, even when it brought her parents' disapproval down around her ears. Here I am, a 36-year-old millionaire, taking courage from a college student, but there you are.

When the college student is Zanny, you'd be foolish not to use her as an example. And cheeringly, I realize that any lecture can only last as long as the drive to Midtown, which is about 15 minutes in the afternoon traffic. I finish buckling, start the car, and glance over at the Prioress.

She's staring serenely back at me, nobbled hands folded in her lap, the stark framing of her wimple around her head making her eyes behind their glasses look even bigger, inescapable. Yes, I say. I don't know what else to say after that, though, so I turn back to the road and shift into gear, and we pull away.

And, well, that was definitely not what I was expecting. Does she want some kind of report? Or am I due for a lecture, and she wants to start with me accounting for my actions like a schoolboy?

And what, ma'am? She makes a noise. It's the noise old people make when they think young people are being deliberately obtuse.

How is she? How is she feeling? Where does her heart wander? I might be her mentor, but you are her lover.

Surely, you know these things. My hand opens and closes on the gear shift as I search for words. Trying to describe Zeni in some kind of bizarre moral report, and within such a short time as the drive allows, is an impossibility.

Zeni defies simple observations, simple explanations. It's part of why I love her so much. Try, the old nun says, seeing my struggle.

I don't like talking about Zeni like this when she's not here, so I decide to talk about her only in the most abstract and broad strokes, so as not to accidentally betray any confidence. She's magnificent and fierce and smart, I say. I think of the roller skating rink of our nights together at the shelter and then say, she cares more than I can tell you about the people in the shelter and becoming a midwife for the needy.

She speaks about God with reverence and balance. She told me she wanted to take this month to make certain of her path and her upcoming vows. And all I see from her is ironclad certainty.

I give a smile that I mean to be lighthearted, but it twists bitterly on my mouth instead. She's more committed than ever. You love her.

What's the point of denying it? Yes, I say, helplessly. Yes, I love her.

And you don't understand why she chooses this path. I shrug with one shoulder as I shift gears. I understand it better than I did two weeks ago, but you're right.

I still don't understand, not all the way. The nun is silent for a moment, and I get the impression she's more comfortable in silence than she is in words. And it's not as awkward as I would have thought it might be, sharing a car with someone who prefers quiet.

It's actually quite soothing, the silence not heavy or demanding or smothering. It's restful, and everything takes a kind of bluing, quieting hue like this. Zenny and my unrequited love for her, my mother in a hospital bed right now, getting scans and tubes and medicines.

Images of empty sanctuaries flit through my mind, the kind of reverent hush that comes with a sacred space. The calming way candles flicker and dance along the edges of the room. Zenny told me about your sister.

It was a terrible thing that was done to her, a terrible, evil thing. And suddenly, like a key turning in a lock, I trust this woman. I trust her because she didn't give me some blandishment about God's will or how Lizzie is in a better place.

Although even the last phrase was only sparingly handed out following Lizzie's suicide, given the uneasy Catholic attitude towards self-destruction and its implications for the immortal soul. The Reverend Mother didn't offer up an empty apology or murmur something about praying for our family or Lizzie's soul. She simply said the truth.

And having the truth acknowledged feels like an embrace and comfort all on its own. I thought of the night last week when I prayed, when I decided to believe in God just long enough to accuse and censure Him. When I realized I wanted Him to sit and listen to me roar and scream until my voice was hoarse.