The Prayer Waltz Read online

  “I really don’t like talking about this.” He sipped some coffee.

  I sighed and slumped against the chair back. Outside, a plow truck rumbled past the inn and sent a flurry of sparkles into the air.

  “I’m sorry, Evan. I don’t know what to say. It looks like I didn’t know him nearly as well as I thought.” That seemed more and more like an understatement. I didn’t feel resentful, but I did feel troubled and disillusioned and bewildered.

  “You’re not alone.” Evan touched his napkin to his mouth and dropped it beside his plate. “I gotta go. I got a driveway to plow and a business to run and a wood burner that needs filling.”

  “Could we get together again tomorrow?” I asked. “I need”—I lifted and dropped a hand—“I need more insights.”

  Evan nervously licked his lips and glanced out the window, glanced into my eyes, looked down at his plate. “Uh… yeah, I guess so. How about if I stop by after work? Say around four.”

  “That would be great. Thanks for understanding.”

  He still seemed a bit unsettled by the prospect of seeing me again, regardless of “kind of” liking me.

  “What’re you going to do with your time here?” he asked.

  “Pull my material together, maybe talk to other people who knew Frank.”

  Judging by Evan’s frown, he didn’t have a clue what I meant.

  “I didn’t tell you,” I said. “I’m trying to write a book about Frank.”

  A good deal of color drained out of Evan’s face. He leaned toward me. “Are you crazy? You can’t go broadcasting—”

  “I’m not going to use real names. For people or places. I don’t even know if I’ll get the damned thing published. Or finished, for that matter.” A distinct possibility occurred to me then, and it was one I hadn’t considered before. “Hell, maybe I’m just doing it for myself.”

  He kept staring at me in a zoned-out kind of way.

  “Evan? You okay with that?”

  “You have really beautiful eyes,” he murmured, then abruptly pushed up from the table.

  Chapter Six

  “FATHER FELSICKER, my name is Steven Brandwein. I’m visiting here from Minneapolis, and I have a rather unusual request. If I could see you today, in private, I’ll explain it to you.”

  “May I ask what it’s in relation to?”

  I felt half-hypnotized by the priest’s deep, sonorous voice. “Frank Connor.”

  My answer was met with a lengthy silence. Then, “Frank’s no longer—”

  “With St. Jerome’s.” I’d almost said alive. “Yes, I know. Were you acquainted with him?”

  “I was. We served together for a number of years.”

  “Then please, may I speak to you about him? It’s important. To me, anyway.”

  Oh boy, I could just about hear his mental flywheel whirring away.

  “I don’t think it would be appropriate, Steven.”

  “Please. He passed away eight months ago.”

  A moment of stunned silence. “What happened? He was still a young man!”

  I gave him a sanitized version of the story, saying only that Frank had been the victim of a freak accident and it was a subject I still found difficult to discuss. “We were good friends,” I concluded. “I’d really appreciate talking to somebody familiar with his past.”

  “Yes, all right.” Felsicker sounded less self-contained. My news had obviously hit him hard. “I have to be at Immaculate Conception for a funeral Mass today. I doubt you’re aware of this, but I’m not assigned strictly to St. Jerome’s. These days, pastoring duties are often handled by clerical teams.”

  “Oh, I see.” I couldn’t recall if Frank had ever mentioned that. Probably not.

  “Why don’t you meet me at the rectory office at two?”

  “I’ll be there. Thank you, Father.”

  “Dear God, that’s shocking news. But maybe it’s for the best.”

  I SPENT the intervening hours doing pretty much what I’d done the day before: sitting cross-legged on my bed, laptop before me, recording my visit thus far and trying to spin some impressions from it. But today, Felsicker’s phrase, “maybe it’s for the best,” kept echoing in my head and breaking my concentration.

  The day before, I’d also started making a list of people I could possibly talk to, but the list soon became an exercise in futility. A thorough approach would be like following links on the Internet. I’d have to be a serious investigative journalist with a guaranteed income from this project to chase down each and every lead. Frank had lived for nearly forty years, after all, and come into contact with countless people in all kinds of places.

  I’d taken a nap, dreamed about Frank and Evan, had a pizza delivered, and jotted down more notes as I watched TV. About a month before coming to Prism Falls, I’d started chronicling my own relationship with Frank. I read over what I’d written, and a realization jolted me: the more I found out about my late lover, the more extensively I’d have to revise those dozens of pages.

  Just before I turned in, the sound of my ringtone startled me. I’d spread the word among friends and family and professional associates that I’d be gone for a while and didn’t want to be bothered. I’d told them either to send a text or leave a message on my answering machine.

  “Hi. We still on for tomorrow?”

  “Hey, Evan.” The sound of his voice made my head and stomach feel airy. “Yeah. Four o’clock, right?”

  “Thereabouts. Okay, just double-checking.”

  “How’d your day go?”

  “It was kind of a bitch, actually.”

  He went on to grumble a little about the snow making life difficult for him and some problem with a truck that had an onboard loading crane and some fucked-up delivery schedules to a paper mill. I was lucky I’d picked up that much. Because all I could think about was the sight of him in my room and over the breakfast table and how alluring that sight had been.

  Today, as I headed for St. Jerome’s rectory, my mind was more on seeing Evan than on what I would say to Father Felsicker.

  As Frank might’ve put it, fate was on the pitcher’s mound and it was sending some slurves, curveballs, splitters, cutters, forkballs, sliders, and/or change-ups my way. In his mind, there were nuanced differences between these throws, but damned if I knew what they were.

  LEO FELSICKER was a surprisingly large, hale man, even taller than Evan, and looked to be in his sixties. His gray mane didn’t seem to have thinned by a single hair. Maybe in deference to the reason for my visit, he didn’t make me face him across a desk. I sat on a loveseat; he, in a chair on my right. He drank tea. I had ice water, just to keep my throat lubricated.

  “I hope you realize,” he said after we’d introduced ourselves, “I can’t divulge the content of any official records or private conversations. That’s all confidential information.”

  “Yes, I understand.” And I’m beginning to see this was a wasted trip. “But you do know Frank left the priesthood.”

  Felsicker blinked at me. His neatly folded hands rested on his lap above his neatly folded legs. He was wearing a black suit and Roman collar—not “civvies,” as Evan called a priest’s street clothes. “I’m not at liberty to discuss the circumstances surrounding Frank Connor’s departure from St. Jerome’s,” he said conclusively, but in a gracious way.

  “Oh, that’s right.” Fuck. So much for trying to sneak in the backdoor. “Well, in case you’re wondering, I do know. We were quite close. There isn’t much you could say, confidential or not, that would startle me.”

  Felsicker stiffened almost imperceptibly. His gaze got a bit chillier. “Nevertheless….”

  “Yes, all right. Can you tell me this: do you know if Frank had an interest in antique guns, if he was a collector?”

  “Priests aren’t generally too fond of firearms,” he said dryly, as if I were a dumb shit for asking. “And most of us aren’t inclined to collect things. We try to lead simple lives and spend our leisure time, what litt
le there is of it, in social situations with the people we serve.”

  He elaborated. When I asked him to, he gave me a précis of Frank’s daily life at St. Jerome’s, sprinkling it with wholesome personal anecdotes. Father Leo seemed fond of his younger associate, in a regretful kind of way, but he skirted the central issue: Frank’s struggle, which had largely defined his tenure at the church.

  The picture he painted made me wistful. I compared it with the Frank Connor I knew and found surprisingly few discrepancies—except for The One That Could Not Be Named.

  When he finished speaking, I lowered my head. I felt heartsick. Frank Connor’s homosexuality, an essential part of his birthright and his being, was being treated as a dirty little secret.

  Felsicker’s fingers curled over my wrist. “I’m really, truly sorry for your loss,” he said with quiet sincerity.

  I lifted my head and felt the defiance in my face. “Are you? Then why did you say it was for the best?”

  The reminder rocked his equilibrium a little. Implying someone’s death was a positive turn didn’t reflect too well on a priest. “He was a troubled man, Steven. It grieved me. I hope and pray he took the right steps to secure his everlasting peace.”

  I didn’t bother asking what the “right steps” were—repentance and celibacy, probably—and Felsicker didn’t bother explaining. At that point, it was obvious neither one of us wanted to dig any deeper into the other’s thoughts. We were a universe apart. Détente was impossible.

  I thanked him for his time and left.

  WHEN Evan called from the inn’s parking lot to let me know he’d arrived, I scampered down the stairs like Ann-Margret embarking on a date with Bobby Rydell in Bye Bye Birdie. But Christ, it felt good, knowing exactly what had put propellers on my heels.

  I came wheeling out the door as Evan approached it, and we almost slammed into each other.

  Damned if he wasn’t wearing cologne.

  “Why were you coming in?” I asked, just as he grabbed my arms and asked, “Why’re you in such a hurry?”

  “I’m not,” I said.

  “I didn’t know if you wanted to talk in your room or elsewhere,” he said.

  “Elsewhere. I’m sick of being in my room. Besides, I’m hungry.” I hadn’t eaten anything except some grapes since breakfast. Connie put out a tray of cheese, fruit, whole-grain crackers, and venison sausage every day at noon.

  “You like fat, sloppy burgers?”

  “Love ’em.”

  Evan grinned. “Then I’ve got just the place for you. You can ride along with me. The truck has four-wheel drive.”

  Don’t spin in your urn, Frank. It’s only a hamburger. For shit’s sake, I’ve already had grapes today.

  We went to a place called Ruby Dew’s Café. I loved it, from the spiffy, red vinyl upholstery on counter stools and booth seats to the bright melamine dinnerware to the pictures of old television stars on the walls. Evan and I sat at the counter, shoulder to shoulder, and ordered from menus encased in metal-rimmed plastic sleeves. Behind the counter, a large grill sizzled with greasy exuberance and a vintage three-head milkshake machine churned through malted ice cream.

  I felt so good I wanted to sing.

  We both had obscenely thick, juicy burgers, and Evan shared his mountain of fries. I told him about my visit with Felsicker.

  “Oh, Leo the Lion,” he said. “He’s actually an okay guy. Just walks and talks the party line. And you know what the party line is, don’t you?”

  I assumed he meant when it came to being queer. “Yeah, Frank told me. Desire isn’t a sin, but acting on it is.”

  “Meaning,” Evan said, “our friend could’ve hung on to his job if he’d just… you know….” He turned up his hands. A flush suffused his face.

  “Kept it in his pants,” I said.

  Evan scowled at me and bumped me with his arm.

  Smiling, I bumped him back. “Your dimple is glistening.”

  He’d just filled his mouth with fries so had to chew and swallow quickly in order to speak. “What?”

  “The dimple in your chin—there’s a little spot of grease in it.” Oh, how I wanted to lick it clean!

  Evan immediately grabbed up his napkin and began swabbing the lower half of his face. If he knew what I was thinking, his skin would soon match the upholstery beneath his gorgeous ass.

  BELLIES full, we toured Prism Falls in Evan’s truck and talked about our own lives for a change. Where and how we’d grown up, our parents and siblings, when and how we’d figured out we were gay. We explained what we did for a living. We made each other laugh.

  When I told Evan I wasn’t ready to return to the inn just yet, he took me to another neighborhood joint called Tap-Tap Tap, a name that amused me. It had a large, L-shaped parking lot, and Evan parked in a corner of the empty shorter section. He tried to keep his truck isolated in bar lots, he explained, because it had twice been damaged by drunks pulling in or out.

  We continued talking over drinks. There weren’t many customers in the bar, which meant there wasn’t enough noise to camouflage our conversation. We kept our subject matter light. At some point—it was inevitable, I guess—Frank’s name came up. The context was innocuous. We’d been talking about our interests and Evan had mentioned sports. Baseball, in particular.

  Some scruffy-looking guy a few stools away peered at us. “You talkin’ about that priest at St. Jerry’s who left town?”

  “Yeah,” Evan said. “Frank Connor. He passed away.”

  The other man chuffed and took a swig of beer. “Good riddance to bad rubbish. Son of a bitch was queer as a three-dollar bill. Fuckin’ pedophile.”

  I felt my face twist. I was off the barstool as if it had just delivered a shock to my ass. The local gave me a stupid look and then lunged at me. Two other patrons made a grab for him. My right arm cocked with a vicious, lightning-swiftness that was uncharacteristic of me, unless I was eager to get out of my clothes, but just as swiftly Evan was on me like the Jaws of Life. His hand locked around my forearm and pulled it down; his other arm twined around my waist and held me tight.

  “Let it go,” he said in a growly voice near my ear.

  At that point, I had no choice. He was strong. The most movement I could’ve managed was pushing my ass against his crotch, but I was too enraged to be amorous.

  “You need to learn some respect, Mueller,” Evan snarled as he hustled me toward the door. Then he sort of flung me out of his grip and charged up to the homophobe, his arm and forefinger extended. “Frank Connor was a priest. And a damned fine man. You don’t know squat about him, you brain-dead lizard. He had more character in one earlobe than you have in your whole worthless body. If you ever start talkin’ shit again and defaming good people, I’ll decorate your fuckin’ boots with your teeth.”

  Evan wheeled past me and flat-handedly slammed the door open. “Let’s go. The air is bad in here.” He grabbed my coat sleeve and ushered me outside.

  I still wanted a piece of that cretin, so I yanked my arm away. “Don’t order me around like a kid. I can handle myself.”

  “I’m telling you to let it go, Steve, before I either have to scrape you off the ground with a goddamn shovel or bail your ass out of jail.”

  Grudgingly, I took his advice. We walked the length of the parking lot and turned left. Evan’s truck still sat by itself, its grill leering at a pile of snow.

  Fury and despair had balled into something painful in my throat—a knot of sobs, probably. But it was a dud, a grenade with a broken pin. It wouldn’t disintegrate into tears; it wouldn’t explode into roars. Each emotion had a stifling effect on the other.

  “Queer as a three-dollar bill … fuckin’ pedophile … faggot ….” Mueller hadn’t spoken the last word, but he’d been thinking it, was on the verge of spewing it.

  And then I realized Evan himself had all but branded Frank a child molester, or at least had entertained the notion.

  As soon as my butt hit the cold upholstery of the
truck seat, I curled forward. My throat was so constricted that the most I could manage were strained groaning noises. I tried to muffle them but couldn’t still them. Then a word sounded—“Why?”—and sounded again. I didn’t know what the question meant. I just kept grating it out.

  Evan’s arms came around me. He pulled me toward him and held me against his broad, warm chest. He rested his chin on my head. “It’s all right. Don’t pay any attention to what he said.” He held me closer and soothingly threaded his fingers through my hair, making my scalp tingle. It must’ve been what I needed, because my breathing as well as my feelings began to calm. I managed to fit my arms around his torso.

  I could’ve fallen asleep right there, contentedly miserable in his embrace. Damn, he felt good. I lifted my head, pulled back a little, and looked up at him.

  “Don’t be upset,” he murmured helplessly, his gaze and fingers caressing my face. “I know you’ve had a tough time of it with Frank passing away, but that kind of bullcrap, coming from someone like Dale Dumbass—”

  “It came from you too,” I whispered hoarsely.

  “What?”

  “Your boy. You’re worried Frank might’ve….” I couldn’t even say it. I didn’t want to think about the possibility. “You son of a bitch.”

  I wondered vaguely why it was just hitting me now, why I’d been so reasonable about his concern two nights ago and hadn’t challenged or castigated him. But I’d been catching a buzz then, and I’d been bone-weary, and my mind had been whirling with confusion. Besides, it wasn’t possible for me to resent Evan. I’d believed in his essential goodness from the moment I’d laid eyes on him.

  His face blanched as he remembered. He looked stricken. “Christ, Steve, I’m sorry. I didn’t really mean it. That whole evening fucked with my head. Being involved with Frank fucked with my head. There are even more questions now than there were then, and I just started feeling that I’d been… used and chucked aside.”

  I stared up at him. Used. You were an innocent, regardless of your age, and you ended up feeling used. So you worried Frank might’ve carelessly used other innocents as well. I doubted this man had a vicious bone in his body. In his own way, he too was hurting.