Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates

surrogate, he’s being born and put to death again and again, over and over, every time we inhale and exhale, not just at the vernal equinox and on the twenty-fifth of December.”

She pondered that for a good long while, then eventually changed the subject. Soon after that, they were kissing, as was their custom, and when she turned aside his efforts to open her legs, a rejection that also had become routine, she—again, as usual—seized hold of the bulge in his panda-bear shorts. By this time, their behavior seemed almost scripted.

Obviously, he wanted something more, but he neither pressured her nor complained. The French say that the best part of an affair is going up the stairs. Desire is almost always more thrilling than fulfillment. In all likelihood, he was caught up in the drawn-out yearning, in the kind of innocent nasty intimacy, the Suzyness, if you will, of their gropings, so when she inquired if he was content with her manual manipulations, he replied only that she was amazingly adept at them. “I feel like a baton in a homecoming parade,” he said.

“I probably should not admit this to you,” she said, lowering her long lashes, “but in high school in Philadelphia, I was—”

“A drum majorette?”

“A what? Oh? No, not that. I was a one-woman petting zoo. Every boy in school was crazy to stick their fingers in the sexy French pie, and I cheerfully accommodated a great many of them. It did not take me long to learn how to please them without—how do they call it?—going all the way. Only Mr. Frederick, my basketball teacher, ever fucked me. Just once. I felt so guilty about it, this married man twice my age, that I —”

He kissed her eyelids. “You don’t need to spill these kind of beans.” Something about it was making him uncomfortable, even as it titillated him.

“But you’ve been so patient. I really must explain. When we moved back to France, I threw myself with whole heart into the arms of the Church. It was not just from girlish guilt, I want you to know. All my life I had loved Christ. And Mary. Especially Mary. I won’t bore you with details, but one thing led to another, and about the time that I decided to take up the cloth, I learned how my aunt came to have that wart on her nose. That gave me my own idea. I began to pray for the reinstatement of my virginity. Crazy, no? Such a silly girl. But I prayed and prayed. For years. And after a long while—it grew back.”

“Grew back? You mean your maidenhead?”

“My hymen. Yes. God gave it back to me. It is not an illusion. I have medical proof. More than one doctor has examined me and pronounced me complete. Okay, big cotton-picking deal! It’s nothing but a fold of mucous membrane . . .”

“A thin sliver of sashimi.”

“But as slight and expendable as it may be, it is my tangible link to Mary. And because of Mary’s unique oneness with humanity, which is her greatest attribute and appeal, it is a physical link, also, to the loving humanism that she represents. And that—that tiny tab of tissue . . .”

“That petal from a salty rose.”

“. . . is further proof of the power of prayer. To lose it for a second time, to squander a miracle, would be a major, dramatic thing for me. To permit that—that little . . .”

“Nub of translucent bacon.”

“. . . that petite . . .”

“Paper tiger that guards the pearl pot.”

“. . . to be pierced by even the finger of a man less important to me than my sacred vocation . . . well, it would be unacceptable.”

In the unlikely event that Switters needed a reminder that the world was a woo-woo place, Domino’s story of cherry resurrection would have filled the requirement. After taking a moment or two to absorb it, and thinking it wise not to ask what kind of man might possibly be as important to her as her sacred vocation, he clasped the hand that continued to clasp his now somewhat droopy member and asked, “This, however, is acceptable?”

“I don’t believe Almighty God is coince. A prude. Didn’t he design these bodies for us to enjoy? Mary is said to have remained always celibate, a virgin in partu; yet she and Joseph lived together in wedlock. She would have had to do something to relieve his sexual tension.”

The image of Blessed Mother Mary as a hand-job artist, to use the coarse vernacular, was a bit startling, yet he was willing to expand the notion. Again, he squeezed her grip. “There are other options, you know; other, uh, practices in which they could have indulged.” He was pleased to observe that he could still lobster her up.

Domino admitted that there were said to be other, uh, practices. Especially in the Middle East. Then, after a short pause, she returned to the subject of Christmas.

“Just like Masked Beauty, I love and respect the desert. It’s the place where I feel closest to my breath and to the breath of God. The only time I’m discontent out here in the wilderness is at Christmas. I miss then so much the lights and the families and the cheer and the snow.” She talked about annual trips into the Alleghenies to cut a tree for their Pennsylvania house, about window displays in Philadelphia and Paris, the crowds, chocolate shops, candlelight masses at Notre Dame, and ice skating at Place de l’Hotel-de-Ville. There was something, Switters noticed, very childlike about her as she reflected upon the joys of past Noels.

For some reason, she expected the coming holiday, the Christmas that was eight weeks away, to be particularly lonely and glum. Masked Beauty would arrange a lovely service, she always did, but this year even she seemed drained of energy and joy. Maybe it was the excommunication, maybe their financial situation, or maybe age had simply caught up with the blue nude, for she seemed in a blue funk. The Marias were getting old, too; Fannie was gone, and up to who knows what, and ZuZu and Bob were in a world of their own. Ah, but if Switters were at the oasis! If he were there, Domino knew he would find a way to make their bare desert Christmas as festive as the Champs-Elysees. For all of them, but especially for her. Certainly, he had his own agenda, he needed quite literally to get back on his feet, she appreciated that, but hadn’t Masked Beauty’s experience, as well as Domino’s own holy “wart,” shown him what prayer could accomplish? And anyway, it was only eight more weeks. Of course, he might be intent on spending the season with his grandmother, and . . .

She was getting slightly worked up, and Switters was enjoying listening to her tizzy. Misinterpreting his silence, she thought the moment had come to play her ace. “If you will spend the Noel with me,” she whispered conspiratorially, as if the stars had ears, “I will do something special for you.”

Misinterpreting her offer, he said, “Are you trying to bribe me?”

She smiled. “I will open up for you something only thirteen people on the earth—”

“Thirteen? That’s quite a lot. Listen, honey cake, if you wanted to open the pearly gates for me out of affection, or even out of wanton lust, I’d gratefully accept. But as payment for helping you fend off holiday depression . . .”

“You imbecile!” She rolled away from him. “Imbecile. You think for to have a Bing Crosby Christmas I would sacrifice my—I forget all your poetic names for it. No, jerko, I was talking about something altogether else.”

“Calm down. You’re losing your English.”

She did calm down. She even laughed. Sailor Boy would have approved. “It’s true, I suppose, that if you delay your departure, I might eventually find myself willing to experiment with one or more of those ‘other practices’ about which you were referring, but my bribe happens to be just this: on Christmas Eve, I will open up for your eyes the secret document that it has been the Pachomians’ fate to conceal and protect.”

“All right, I get it. You’re offering to trot out the Snake. Forgive me. My rooster brain jumped the conclusion fence. But, Domino, think about it: I used to be in the CIA. I ate secret documents for breakfast. I’ve handled more secret documents than Maria Une has handled chickpeas. What gives you the idea that I might drool on the Persian at the prospect of seeing another one?”

She sighed. “I, also, must be guilty of the wishful thinking.” She sighed again. “It’s just that you appeared to have at least a small bit of interest in the matter.”

“What matter is that?”

“The matter of the lost prophecy of Our Lady of Fatima. It isn’t lost, you see. We have it.”

As October picked up speed, dragging its grape skins behind it, daytime temperatures had become marginally less sizzling, the nights increasingly chilly. Switters, who hated the sight of gooseflesh (had found it pathological