Darcey Steinke - Milk

He glanced back down at the bills, slips of perforated paper, spread out next to the computer. The gas was the most substantial; even with the thermometer at sixty the cavernous church was ridiculously expensive to heat. Walter’s calculator was beside him. All told, St. Paul’s expenses were twice as much as the amount in the checking account. Walter thought of calling Mrs. Newberry, though he’d just made his New Year’s visit. He’d been as explicit as possible, given the form of the pastoral house call, but she had not written him a check. Silk was the only answer, and he dialed the bishop’s private number at the cathedral and left a message about getting together for lunch.

Walter heard Junot’s roller in the tray and then paint spreading over the wall; the delicate sound was akin to snow falling but wetter and less ethereal. He glanced over to his computer screen; the picture of a man in a brown fedora still hovered. Walter couldn’t decide about his face, though he did like that he’d named his dog Elmo. And he wasn’t too faggy; those guys obsessed with ABBA and Liza Minnelli made his skin crawl. Under favorite book was listed Barbara Kingsolver, Poisonwood Bible . Ugh. But not everybody was into Meister Eckehart and Julian of Norwich. What the hey. The man had nice ears, like shells, the lobes oversized and artistic-looking.

“Mary?” Walter said, as he swung open the closet door. He’d seen what looked like her black boots and then realized her legs and knees where attached. “What are you doing in there?”

Her face poked through the sleeves of coats dangling from wooden hangers, and she stood up between brown boxes of Carlos memorabilia, her head floating as if in water above the blue and gray collars of the woolen coats.

“Praying,” she said. “Closets are like little chapels, don’t you think?” Her expression was sheepish. Earlier that day she had asked if he thought there was any connection between astrology and Christianity, and what did it mean that Jesus was a Capricorn?

Her face seemed narrower than usual; there were burgundy circles under her eyes and sweat on her upper lip. Walter had seen her like this before, like last summer when a voice had instructed her to fill her bathtub with dirt and plant flowers. The time before she’d gotten fascinated with the mailbox at the corner of Cranberry and Henry. But the worst was in college when, in a dream, God had urged her to save the world through prayer. Mary had rushed into his dorm in the middle of the night with this news, her pupils dilated and her voice solemn with stewardship. She’d told him that all the furry animals being born in the woods around their university were divine, that they’d bring into existence a common language, one that the entire world would understand, people as well as dolphins and butterflies. When he’d suggested she take one of his Valiums, she’d been offended and locked herself in her dorm room, praying for seventy-two consecutive hours until, exhausted, her sweatpants damp with urine, she’d fallen asleep.

“Did you take your Saint-John’s-wort today?”

Mary nodded. “When I’m sad, sometimes I go into my closet and lay on my shoes.”

A part of him wanted to insist again that she wean the baby and get on Zoloft. He wanted her to act normal, to behave in a conventional manner so he could worry less. But what difference did it make really if you prayed by the side of your bed or underneath it?

“My dog did that during thunderstorms.” He saw his umbrella, a thrift-store model with a handle shaped like a tree branch. “Will you pass me that?”

She complied.

“Don’t wait up,” he said, and there was an awkward pause. “You can carry on if you’d like.”

“Okay,” she said, her head disappearing again between the jackets.

“Do you want me to shut the door?”

“If you wouldn’t mind,” she said, her voice muffled by the wool and cashmere coats.

* * *

The man from Match.com had a sandpapery voice and a rapid delivery that mesmerized Walter. His hair had grown since the photo into a strawberry-blond mop; strands fell over his eyes as he gesticulated. He’d been raised on the Upper West Side. His mother was German and his father the editor of a cooking magazine. He pronounced his name Sta-fon. He was an actor, mostly TV commercials. He’d been the fire ant in the Ortho spot and the voice of a character called Tiny Duck Man in a popular Saturday-morning kids’ cartoon.

Walter watched him as he moved his hands, relating the story of his first sexual experience — always a mainstay of these encounters, or the good ones anyway, the ones where a pretense of connection had to be established before sex. Walter was pleased that he found Sta-fon engaging; he was trying to be good. He’d always been attracted to teenagers, but after Carlos died they had an almost magnetic pull. Particularly that boy at Heavenly Rest. Nothing physical had happened, but when the boy’s mother found The Love Letter she went ballistic, complained to Bishop Silk and forced his resignation from the Upper East Side church. Silk threatened to send him overseas to do missionary work but in the end he’d arranged with his friend the bishop of Long Island for the job in Brooklyn.

He listened to Sta-fon’s story intently, as he moved through the attributes of the lecherous drama coach, a familiar archetype in any gay adolescence, interchangeable with the lecherous basketball coach or the lecherous priest. The dramatist wooed with emerald cuff links and a collection of Picasso prints. At the end of the semester, he’d invited Sta-fon over for a private performance of Krapp’s Last Tape and a bottle of scotch. Walter could tell he had told the story before but not how many times. His eyes kept changing from sea green to lavender.

Walter’s own seduction story was grim, its main components being a kitchen table and an evil stepfather, and so he always lied. There were several versions he relied on; the lifeguard at camp was the most popular. But today he decided to go free form, explaining how his mother’s family owned the largest ranch in Montana. This fantasy mother, he explained, had taught him to rope and ride as well as make a venison chili that the Quilted Giraffe would be lucky to serve. A half-dozen cowboys ran the place, and when he was thirteen, a couple of them agreed to take him up-country on an overnight.

“There was an individual,” Walter said — he could tell Sta-fon believed him by the way he leaned forward, his sweater almost brushing the foam of his second latte—“a half-Mexican fellow known as Juan. He ate M&M’s and was always singing Led Zeppelin songs.”

“Jesus,” Sta-fon said, “it’s like a movie.”

“Yeah, it was,” Walter said. “So anyway in the middle of the night I got up to go to the bathroom and on my way back I saw Juan walking toward me. And that was, as they say, a fait accompli.”

“Wow,” Sta-fon said, and he adjusted himself in his chair, a pained expression infiltrating his features. He had a potbelly, and Walter assumed all the talk of hard-chested cowboys had made him self-conscious.

“Do you ever make stuff up just for the heck of it?” Sta-fon said as he looked past Walter’s head to the snowy street. Hairs on the back of his neck stood up and he had the sensation that he was cornered, each shoulder blade touching a wall. A thump of blood moved from his heart out into his veins. No one had ever questioned his seduction story before. Maybe he should have stuck to the standards like the Little League coach or the heterosexual one that featured a best friend’s mother. He was confused. These Match.com encounters were typically friendly; men who dated online rarely wanted to see you more than once.

“It’s all true,” Walter said, “right down to his straw cowboy hat.”