A Fountain Filled With Blood

Two

“Marriage is meant to be for life,” Clare said, taking a kir royale from one of the caterer’s staff. “It gives ordinary people like you and me a chance to emulate Christ, to offer ourselves up for another person, to truly put another’s happiness first.”

The men and women clustered around her looked alternately interested, amused, and put off. Diana’s fiance shook his head. “See? She just puts a whole new spin on it for me.” He gulped at his martini. “You should all take counseling from Reverend Clare. Keep you from screwing up so much.”

“Or screwing so much,” one corkscrew-curled young woman said to the man beside her. He was so tan and sun-bleached blond that his teeth appeared to be lighted from inside when he flashed a smile.

“Chelli!” The other woman, dangerously thin, with long nails that owed nothing to nature, frowned at her friend.

When Diana and Cary brought Clare into the enormous living room and announced her as their priest, she had immediately gathered a clump of interested listeners. She put it down to the curiosity value of her calling and gender, rather than a sudden desire for a conversion experience by anybody in the crowd, which looked as if it had been assumed bodily from the set of Sex and the City and set down in this three-story tumble of wood and windows clinging to the side of a mountain. Cary Wood—the name still made her shake her head—had dropped several interesting details about the counseling session they had just completed in the quiet home office next to the family room. “So we were talking about self-sacrifice and sticking it out, and tell them what you said about divorce, Reverend Clare!”

Clare flexed her feet inside her high-heeled sandals and thanked God for the thick carpet covering the floors. If she was trapped here, at least she wasn’t in shoe hell. She smiled at Cary. It was possible she had impressed upon him some essential wisdom he was going to need a few years down the road, but she suspected she was being asked for this tidbit again because of its thrilling break with current thinking. “I said that if marriage made two people one flesh, then divorce was like an animal gnawing its leg off to escape a trap before it dies. It should only be considered as the very last resort.”

“That sounds like me when I split from Annalise,” the bronzed sun god said. “Except she was the animal chewing on my leg.”

The perfect-fingernailed woman laughed. “You mean the only reason you can consider divorce is if you’re threatened with death? That sounds extreme.”

Clare sipped her drink. It was cool, tingly, and perfectly currant-flavored. “Not necessarily a literal death. Sometimes, a marriage can mean the death of your soul. The death of who you are. Or think of the traditional grounds for divorce or annulment: infertility, the death of your future, insanity—the death of the mind that made the vow—adultery.”

“Death if you get found out!” Chelli’s corkscrew curls bobbed as she laughed.

“What gets me, and no offense, Reverend Clare”—by this statement Clare understood that what the very tan man was going to say would offend her—“is how priests who have no experience with sex and marriage get off on telling the rest of us how to stay married.”

“My mother says that a doctor doesn’t have to have cancer in order to know how to cure it,” Chelli said.

“Yeah, I’ve heard that one before,” Clare said. “I think it’s better to think of your priest as an investment adviser. Let’s say you’re going to invest everything you have, and commit all your future earnings as well, in the hopes that you’re going to get a terrific return. Do you want to consult someone already deep into the market? Someone who may have opinions and self-interest based on his own experiences? Or do you want to hire an independent adviser, someone who has followed the market and read up on its history and all the different investment schemes? Someone with no vested interest in the outcome, other than to make sure you put your money where it will do you the most good?”

“Huh. I never thought of it like that.” The sun god stuck out his hand. “I’m Dennys, by the way. With a y.”

“Hello, Dennys with a Y.”

“And I’m Gayle. Also with a y.”

Clare took her hand gingerly. Those nails were scary. She wondered if she should figure out some way to spell her name with a y. Clayr?

“So tell me.” Dennys dropped his voice and the two women leaned in to hear him. “What’s it like? Being celibate? I mean, I can’t imagine it.”

“I bet you can’t.” Chelli giggled.

“I think you may be making a common mistake and confusing celibate, which also means not married, and chaste, which means…well, not having sex. Episcopal priests don’t take vows of celibacy. Lots and lots of priests are married and have kids.”

“You’re not married,” Gayle said.

“No, I’m not. How did you know?”

“No ring,” she said, pointing to Clare’s unadorned left hand. Clare was impressed. She knew women checked out men’s hands, but other women’s? It was a good thing she had been out of the singles scene for so many years. She’d have been eaten alive.

“Well, the church traditionally teaches that sex should be reserved for marriage. There’s been a lot of talk in the General Convention lately about redefining that to a mutually committed, loving relationship. I think…” she paused. “I believe that a priest has an obligation to be a model for her or his parish. To try to live very much in the open, in the way Christ wants us to live.”

“So no sex? Until you’re married? At all?” Dennys was clearly intrigued by the idea. She hoped he wasn’t the type of guy who got off on the idea of an unobtainable woman. Now that marriage didn’t stop people fooling around, it must be hard to find any really challenging conquests.

“That’s right,” she said, and as she said it, an image from her dream appeared in her head, the floating warmth, the hands, Russ rising out of the water. She could feel her cheeks heating up.

“She’s blushing!” Chelli said.

Clare smiled and hoped she looked composed. It was only a dream, for heaven’s sake. “I’m afraid you’ve caught