help him discredit them, but Aramaic would have been Simon’s native tongue.
“When I finish with the scrolls and Sana finishes with her work—”
“How is Sana’s work going to help or deny the authenticity of the bones?” James interjected irritably.
“I have no idea,” Shawn said. “I don’t totally understand what she does, but it’s indicative of our wish to properly investigate the contents of the ossuary to the limits of our abilities.”
“In spite of whom you may injure in the process?”
“I see it more in terms of whom we might help, and I include in that the Church itself.”
“Do you honestly believe that you may have been selected by Jesus Christ to help guide his Church? Is that what I’m hearing?”
Shawn spread his hands as if exposing himself. “It’s possible,” he said, but it came out as “ossible,” as he was unable to pronounce the
James let his head fall forward until his chin hit his chest. “This is worse than I imagined.”
“How so?” Shawn asked. He wasn’t so drunk not to notice a true change in his friend’s demeanor.
“I’m beginning to fear for your eternal soul,” James said. “Either that or your mental health.”
“Hey, you’re going overboard,” Shawn said. “I feel fine. Perfectly fine. I’ve never felt better. This ossuary and its contents are the most fascinating subject of my career.” Sana suddenly reappeared from the kitchen bearing a candle-covered chocolate cake and singing “Happy Birthday.” Shawn and Jack joined in the singing as Sana placed the cake on the side table next to James’s chair. As they finished the birthday ditty, they all clapped.
Self-consciously James slipped forward in his chair, causing the bruise-like discolorations on his cheeks to darken. Taking in a big lungful of air, he blew out all the candles in one large sustained puff amid further applause.
As per usual, he didn’t let on what he’d wished, if he’d wished; but if he did, Jack had a good idea what it had been.
24
9:23 P.M., SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2008
NEW YORK CITY
Do you call this parked?” Jack questioned, standing on the curb with his hands on his hips and gazing at the more than two feet that separated James’s Range Rover from where he was standing.
“It was the best I could do,” James said. “Don’t give me a hard time! Just get in. I assure you I can get you home safely.”
Both men climbed into the SUV’s front seat. Jack made a point of fastening his seat belt.
If James’s park job was as good as he could do, Jack was mildly concerned. “You haven’t had too much wine, have you?”
“As wired as I am, I don’t feel like I’ve had any.”
“I could drive,” Jack offered. “I had very little.”
“I’m fine,” James said as he maneuvered out of the tight space.
They drove in silence through the West Village, each digesting the dinner party’s edgy conversation.
“Shawn is impossible,” James said suddenly, while they waited for a traffic light before getting onto the West Side Highway. “Of course, he’s always been impossible.”
“He’s always been his own person,” Jack said.
James glanced in Jack’s direction, catching the man’s strong profile against the streetlights. “That’s rather limp support.”
Jack looked over at James, and their eyes caught for a moment before the light changed, and James had to drive ahead. “I’m sorry,” Jack said. “And I probably shouldn’t say anything at all for fear of making things worse for you. I can certainly tell how passionately you feel, but from my humble perspective, he does seem to have a point.”
“You’re on his side?” James demanded, with a mixture of surprise and dismay.
“No, I’m not on anyone’s side,” Jack said. “But last time he invited me to dinner, which I told you about, and we were alone, washing the dishes, we did speak briefly about you and your impressive successes with the Church hierarchy. That stimulated him to tell me a few things that I’d never known. By the time we all came in contact, in college, he was already a lapsed Catholic, but I had never known why.” James cast another quick glance in Jack’s direction before returning his attention to the road. “Don’t tell me! He wasn’t molested himself, was he?”
“No, nothing as dramatic as that, but close.”
“This is new material,” James said. “What do you mean ‘close’?”
“Because I had no experience with religion growing up in an atheist household, I feel at a disadvantage telling his story, but I’ll give it a go. Apparently, as a very young teenager, he loved the Church, as did both his parents.”
“I’m aware of that,” James said.
“Then you know he and his parents were very active in their parish.”
“I’m aware of that as well.”
“Anyhow,” Jack said, “he reached puberty without much preparation, maybe none. As he tells it, it is rather humorous if nothing else. Apparently, he masturbated the first time by accident and utter surprise. He was in the shower, and he was washing his privates such that the cleaner they got, the better it felt, until he had an orgasm, which he described as divine pleasure. For obvious reasons, that episode ushered in a proclivity for taking showers, up to three a day, which made him feel closer to God and all the saints than he ever had previously.”
James found himself chuckling despite his general unease. He could clearly see Shawn telling such a story, as he was a gifted raconteur. A moment later he quieted, as he feared how the story was about to unfold.
“Apparently,” Jack continued, “it was several blissful weeks later that he came in contact with the teaching of the pope he mentioned tonight.”
“You mean Pope Gregory the Great?” James asked.
“I believe that’s the one,” Jack said. “Was he as negative about sex as Shawn suggested?”
“He was,” James admitted.
“Anyway,” Jack continued, “Shawn described the collision with the supposed antimasturbation dogma of the Church and his own sense of experiencing the divine as cataclysmic, especially learning that to receive the Eucharist he had to confess every episode of self-gratification and every unclean thought, such as fantasizing about Elaine Smith’s ass.”
“Was Elaine Smith’s ass something to admire?”
“According to Shawn and the number of times he had to confess he’d fantasized about giving it a good look.”
“I know this amusing anecdote has to be going somewhere bad, so let’s hear it.”
“Shawn said he struggled with this epic battle for as much as six months, trying to regain his chaste life so as to be in accordance with Church dogma. To do so required him to confess his transgressions week after week, such that to remember what he’d done when he got into the confessional, he began to keep a very accurate diary of his masturbation episodes, which had moved out of the shower because, as he said, his skin became too dry. As for his unclean thoughts, they had expanded to take in more parts of Elaine Smith’s supposedly enchanting anatomy.”
“You’re dragging this out,” James complained.
“Okay,” Jack agreed. “Sorry. As I said, this battle went on for months, with Shawn doing his best to remember everything he did and confess it each Friday in minute detail.”
“And?” James asked impatiently.
“Shawn began to notice that the two priests who normally heard confessions began to get progressively interested.”
“Good Lord, no!” James uttered.
“Don’t get upset,” Jack warned. “Nothing really happened, at least overtly.”
“Thank God!”
“But no matter how much detail Shawn offered in the confessional, it was never enough, and each week toward the end, he was asked more and more questions, such as even he, as a newly pubescent teenager, knew that something was wrong. The crowning moment for Shawn was when one of the priests offered, in the confessional, to meet with him privately to help him overcome this soul-endangering habit.”
“Did they ever meet?”
