Blood of the Lamb

“You don’t want to talk?” she asked.

“I’ll gladly listen to anything you want to tell me,” I said. “But I have nothing to say.”

She hesitated before speaking and I added, “Do you have anything you need to talk about?”

She shook her head very slowly. “No,” she said softly, “not really.”

“Then get some sleep,” I said.

As she turned and began to walk away, I called after her. She turned quickly, a hopeful, even expectant look on her face. “Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” she said with a small smile. She then continued walking away another step or two before turning around and coming back, taking a seat in the booth across from me.

“I know you’re… well… anyway, I do need to talk-if you can,” she said.

“Sure,” I said.

As far as I knew, I was the only adult she really had to talk to.

Looking at her so closely in the harsh light of the diner, I realized she was not nearly as pretty as I thought she was-not physically anyway. Her eyes were just slightly too close together and her nose was a little on the long side. Perhaps if I were seeing her for the first time-or looking at a photograph of her-I would say she was a little above average at best, but I wasn’t. I was seeing her after knowing her. I was seeing, if not nearly all of her, far more than a first glance or picture could ever reveal. And I still say she was beautiful in a profoundly subtle way.

She took a deep breath and let it out. “I know we’ve talked about a lot of stuff, but this is hard.”

I waited. I should have encouraged her to continue, reassured her in some way, but I was in no condition to do either.

“I’ve got a couple of friends whose boyfriends are pressuring them to…” she began, then hesitated a moment, before dropping her voice and adding, “have sex with them.”

I nodded. Nothing new there.

“But they want to be virgins when they get married-or at least when they really fall in love and think the guy’s the one. So they’re considering alternatives-”

“The girls?” I asked.

“Yeah, but only because the boys are begging them to,” she said. “Do you know what I mean by alternatives?”

“Well, unless your generation has come up with some new ones, I only know of three,” I said.

A small smile twitched on her lips, then she raised her eyebrows and nodded slightly, trying to get me to elaborate.

“You want me to say them?” I asked.

I felt myself getting frustrated, but remembered how much I could have used someone to talk to besides my friends when I was her age.

Wincing slightly, she asked, “Would you?”

“Well,” I said, finding it more difficult to say than I thought it would be, “there’s manual, oral, and anal.”

She nodded, a look of relief filling her face. “The third one,” she said. “They already do the first two. They think if they do it-the other thing-their boyfriends will be satisfied and they’ll still be virgins.”

I shook my head. “They might be virgins-depending on how you define it, I guess-but their boyfriends will never be satisfied. At least not for more than a few minutes at a time. And if the, ah, standard way becomes the thing they can’t do, it will become the thing they most want to.”

She nodded. “I told them that,” she said. “Well, something kind of like that.”

“Are we really talking about friends of yours?” I asked.

She nodded slowly. “Yeah,” she said. “I mean, I’ve thought about it some, too, but I don’t even have a very serious boyfriend.”

“Just be very, very careful,” I said. “You’re all making decisions that can affect the rest of your lives.”

“It really is about two of my friends,” she said. “I thought if I told them you said it, they’d listen.”

I laughed.

“You’re very influential,” she said with a wry, self-satisfied smile. She patted my hand and stood up.

“I’ll leave you alone now,” she said. “Thanks.”

When she had climbed back onto the bar chair and laid her head down on the counter next to her school books, I said, “Go get in bed. At least get a couple of good hours.”

She glanced toward the back and the small living quarters she refused to call home, then back at me. “I’d rather just stay here.”

I nodded and smiled at her.

Before I finished my first cup and just about the time Carla dozed off, the cowbell above the door clanged and Anna walked in.

It was the only time in my life I could recall not being happy to see her.

She spoke to Carla, then walked over and slid into the booth across from me.

We sat in silence for a long moment, staring at each other. Her huge brown eyes took me in, and though there was only acceptance and compassion in them, I didn’t like the reflection I saw.

My embarrassment at her seeing my weakness was compounded by how much I needed her, but the self- loathing I felt couldn’t compare to the pain her presence inflicted.

“You okay?” she asked.

“No,” I said bluntly.

“Can I do anything?”

“No,” I said again, shaking my head.

“Have you been drinking?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “And more than just coffee.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

I shot her a quizzical look.

“For what you saw,” she explained. “For what you’re feeling.”

I couldn’t tell her that part of what I was feeling was anger and frustration at not being allowed to stay and investigate, at being treated like a chaplain and not a cop. In the light of what had happened to Nicole, my self- centered, sophomoric feelings seemed even more silly and superfluous, my hypocrisy more pathetic. Less than twenty-four hours earlier, I was telling her how I wanted to stop investigating so I could concentrate on chaplaincy.

“I can’t know what you’ve seen or what it’s done to you,” she said, “or how much pain you must be feeling.”

I didn’t say anything, just tried to get some of what I needed from the energy of her full attention. Desiring her so strongly and not being able to have her hurt so badly that I couldn’t tell which was stronger, the wounds or the wanting, and I wondered if I had the ability to inflict the same unseen injuries on her.

“But it’s just an excuse you’re using,” she said.

“What?” I asked, my anger flaring.

“You’re drinking because you want to,” she said. “Fine. But don’t use that precious little girl to justify it.”

I looked at my watch. “It’s late,” I said. “I’m a single man. You’re a married woman.”

“John-”she started before I cut her off.

“I’m not your concern,” I said. “Don’t come chasing after me in the middle of the night. Have some self- respect.”

“John,” she said, her stunned tone filling the single syllable with more pain than I thought possible.

“Go home to your husband,” I said.

Which she did, and, as I sat there alone in the comfortless silence, her absence was as palpable as her presence had been.