“What the fuck did I just read?” Eleanor demanded. “Was that entire book about wheat?”
Søren looked up from his work and eyed her with amusement.
“You have to read between the lines,” he’d said.
“Ruth and Naomi are poor.”
“Yes.”
“Naomi is Ruth’s mother-in-law and Ruth’s husband is dead, right?”
“Correct.”
“Naomi thinks Boaz, the rich farmer, has a crush on Ruth because he gave her extra wheat.”
“Not quite a dozen roses but when you’re nearly starving, wheat makes for a more welcome bouquet. It was Boaz’s way of showing he cared about Ruth and her needs.”
“So Naomi says Boaz is Ruth’s closest relative so she should pretty herself up and go to Boaz and take off his shoes while he’s sleeping? None of that made any sense.”
“Boaz was related to Ruth’s late husband, and according to the Levirate law, it was the male next of kin’s duty to marry a childless widow and give her sons. Another man was a closer relative than Boaz, but it was Boaz who Naomi wanted for Ruth. She sent Ruth to seduce Boaz so Boaz would marry Ruth and not the other kinsman. If Ruth and Boaz had already been intimate, it gave Boaz an incentive to marry her quickly.”
“But what about the shoes thing? Naomi told Ruth to go to the threshing floor where Boaz is sleeping and ‘uncover his feet.’ Feet are not sexy.”
“It is if you know the word ‘feet’ is a euphemism in this instance.”
“For what?”
“Use your imagination.”
“I’d rather you demonstrate,” she said. “Again.”
Søren gave her a wilting glare.
“Don’t look at me like that. You’re the one who put your fingers in my shoe,” she said. The previous weekend she’d gone to Søren’s father’s funeral with him and things had happened.
“Are you planning on mentioning that fact every day?”
“Until it happens again.”
“Eleanor—”
“Better than thinking about Dad, right?” she asked. Her own father had been dead for a week. She still didn’t know how to feel about it so she tried not to feel anything.
Søren’s expression softened. He walked to her where she stood in the doorway of his office and faced her across the threshold.
“You and I seem to have the same coping mechanism,” he said.
“What? You’ve been thinking about that night, too? Our night?”
“Better than thinking about my father.”
Søren touched her face, and she looked up and into his eyes. She sensed him struggling to hold back, to stop himself from kissing her, touching her, doing everything they’d done together that night at his family’s home and more.
“Penis,” Søren said.
“Well, if you’re offering...”
Søren ignored her. “Many biblical scholars believe the phrase ‘uncover his feet’ in the Book of Ruth is a euphemism for male genitals,” Søren said. He chucked her lightly under the chin and took a small step back—breathing room for both of them.
“So Naomi told Ruth to sneak into the threshing room while Boaz was asleep and uncover his dick and wait for him to wake up and bone her?” Eleanor asked.
“A fair synopsis.”
“And that worked?”
“When a man wakes up in the middle of the night with an erection and a beautiful woman lying beside him, things of a biblical nature can occur.”
“Søren?”
“Yes, Eleanor?”
“Your threshing floor or mine?”
Søren put his mouth at her ear. Eleanor closed her eyes and braced for a kiss.
“Out of my office,” he whispered. “Now.”
The conversation was still fresh in her mind, so when Father Jones told them to spend the class period writing a story with Bible characters, she knew just what to write.
* * *
“I got it,” Naomi said. “I know exactly how we can get you a meal ticket. I mean, a husband. That guy, Boaz. He’s cute, right?”
“I wouldn’t throw him out of bed for eating wheat crackers.”
“Good. This is what I want you to do. Take a bath. Put on your best dress. Boaz is working late tonight so he’ll be sleeping on the threshing floor. You sneak in after dark and uncover his feet. When he wakes up, tell him who you are and that he should marry you. Also, pick up some extra wheat while you’re there. How’s that for a plan?”
“Uncover his feet? Why would I uncover his feet?”
“You know, uncover his feet.” Naomi winked at her.
“Am I trying to make his toes cold or something so he’ll wake up?”
“No. His FEET. Uncover his FEET.”
“I still don’t know—”
“His penis, Ruth. I’m talking about his penis. His dick. His cock. His shaft. His lovestick. His staff of manliness.”
“You could have just said that.”
“Uncover his dick and cozy up to it while he’s sleeping. Then when he wakes up hard as a rock and you’re right next to him, he’ll want you. Let him have you. Poor guy probably hasn’t gotten laid in a while and he’ll want it again so much that by tomorrow evening, you’ll have him for a husband.”
“Good plan. Great plan. But can we go back over the part where I take his dick out of his clothes while he’s unconscious?”
* * *
Eleanor had so much fun with her story she’d forgotten it was a school assignment until Father Jones, called Father Bones because of his near skeletal frame, asked everyone to turn in their papers. As he was a substitute, Eleanor doubted he’d even read their stories. Typical busy work, right?
Wrong.
The next day Eleanor found herself hauled before the principal, vice principal and the school’s elderly guidance counselor, Mrs. Oates. Apparently Eleanor’s intimate descriptions of sexual intercourse—including a threshing-floor blow job—between a young widow and an older man had convinced the administration she was, in fact, sexually active herself. As she was an underage, unmarried Catholic high school student who’d signed the school’s honor code, this didn’t go over well. When they’d threatened to call her mother, Eleanor had begged them to instead call her priest.
She’d never heard a more welcome sound in her life than the roar of a Ducati motorcycle engine outside her school principal’s office.
“What did she do this time?” Søren asked as he stepped into the office.
“I—” Eleanor began, but it was as far as she got.
“Not you,” Søren said. “Anyone but Eleanor, please.”
The principal explained the situation—the graphic story, the sexual content, the specificity of intimate detail. Søren had taken the story from the principal and sat in a chair reading it while everyone watched and waited for his verdict. Apart from her, Søren was the youngest person in the room by twenty years at least and yet he had an aura of authority about him. Everyone deferred to him. If he couldn’t get her out of this, no one could.
“You didn’t finish the story, Eleanor,” he said at last.
“It’s a good thing she didn’t,” Father Jones said. “It’s bad enough as it is.”
“Bad? I thought it was quite good.”
“Good?” Father Jones nearly choked on the word. “It’s sexually explicit. It’s a Bible assignment, not Penthouse Letters.”
“Did you tell students they couldn’t put sexual content into their stories?” Søren had asked them.
“It’s not the content so much as the implication,” the guidance counselor said in her most placating voice. “No one could write sex that descriptively if they weren’t having it. Miss Schreiber, like all students, signed an honor code. Sex outside of marriage is a violation of the code.”
“I suppose Ruth wouldn’t be welcome at this school, then. Neither would Queen Esther, Tamar or King David.”
“Father Stearns,” Mrs. Oates, the guidance counselor, said, “we all know
that Eleanor’s father died recently, and we were disturbed by certain elements in the story. Ruth referring to Boaz as her father during intercourse, for one.”
Eleanor started to open her mouth to defend herself. Søren raised his hand to silence her.
“I believe you’re referring to the dialogue exchange wherein Boaz says, ‘Who’s your Daddy?’ and Ruth responds, ‘You are, Bobo’?”
“Well...yes,” Mrs. Oates said, blushing.
Søren turned to Eleanor. “Sorry,” she mouthed at him and resisted the urge to call him “Bobo.” Søren sighed, and looked at her guidance counselor.
“‘Who’s your Daddy?’” Søren repeated. “That is Eleanor’s supposed cry for help?”
The guidance counselor attempted an answer but the principal interrupted.
“Writing such a story seems like odd behavior for a young woman whose father was killed last week. Our condolences, of course, but you understand our concern?”
“My father died recently, and given the chance I might have danced an Irish jig on his grave so I can hardly judge Eleanor for being relieved her criminal of a father has gone to whatever circle of hell is reserved for men who force their children to commit felonies for them. And if Eleanor were sexually abused by her father in any way, she would have told me. Correct, Eleanor?”
“Correct. He never touched me like that. I’d still be puking if he had.”
“There we have it,” Søren said. “Are we done?”
“Not quite,” the principal said. “We still—”
“May I see the other stories the students wrote?”
Father Jones and the principal looked at each other before passing Søren a sheaf of papers. For the next hour, Søren read all twenty-one stories while everyone waited. Eleanor took her homework out and pretended to do something to it. On either side of him, Søren made two piles. When he finished reading them he held up the pile on the left.
“You have a problem,” Søren said.
“What is that?” the principal asked.
“You have nine students in your AP English class who are murderers.”
“What?”
“Nine stories written by Eleanor’s classmates contain explicit depictions of killing human beings—three crucifixions, two decapitations and various and sundry other brutal deaths. You should call the police right now and have those students arrested.”
Søren tossed the stories onto the principal’s desk.
Silence reigned in the room until Father Jones spoke up.
“Father Stearns, with all due respect, there’s a difference between those stories and Miss Schreiber’s.”
“There is, yes,” Søren said. “Those stories are written by boys. Interesting that it’s a female student being singled out for writing something inappropriate when none of the male students were.”
“Boys like wars and violence and that sort of thing,” the principal said. “It’s natural.”
“It’s also natural for teenagers to be curious about sex. Also, consensual sex between two adults—which Ruth and Boaz were—isn’t illegal,” Søren said. “Killing someone is, however. Now you either give Eleanor a passing grade for her story and let her return to class, or you call the police and have those nine male students arrested.”
“We are not having students arrested,” her principal said. “The boys wrote Bible stories—”
“As did Eleanor.”
“If she’s having sex, which she clearly is if she’s writing this sort of material, that’s an honor code violation—”
“Forgive me for speaking bluntly,” Søren said. “I was married and widowed before I joined the Jesuits. I’m well aware of the mechanics of sexual intercourse, and the act that Eleanor describes in her story could only be accomplished if Ruth were double-jointed and Boaz’s ‘foot’ thirteen to fifteen inches long. Writing about sex doesn’t necessarily mean one is having it.”
“Perhaps,” the guidance counselor said gently, “if she would submit to a psychological and medical examination, then—”
Søren stood up. She’d often seen him using his height to his advantage and today he took full advantage of all six foot four inches of him.
“If anyone lays a hand on Eleanor or any other underage member of my congregation without my permission, you will have to answer to me and the American Civil Liberties Union.” Søren looked around the room defying anyone to contradict him. No one spoke. “Eleanor, you can go back to class. Later you and I will have a talk about what sort of writing is and is not appropriate for school assignments. Yes?”
“Yes, Father Stearns.” Since no one stopped her, she left the office. She didn’t go back to class, however, but waited in the hall. Five minutes later Søren walked out of the principal’s office with a look in his eyes that could be described as murderous.
“They’re lucky Jesuits are pacifists,” he said as he zipped up his motorcycle jacket over his clericals. “Why aren’t you in class?”
“I wanted to thank you,” she said, walking beside him to the glass double doors at the front of the school.
“You can thank me by graduating before we have to go through this nonsense again.”
She laughed. “Four more months. Thanks for hauling my ass out of the fire again.”
“Your ass is my ass. If it’s going to get burned, I’ll do the burning.”
“Aww... You say the sweetest things, Blondie,” she said, standing by the double doors. “You know, if they’d made me take my clothes off for a doctor, they’d see handprint bruises on my thighs left by a certain big blond sadist we both know and love.”
“The bruises haven’t faded yet?” Søren didn’t seem pleased to hear that.
“Not completely. They’re in the gross and yellow stage.”
Søren paused by the front door. “Are you still comfortable with what happened that night?”
“Comfortable with what? That I fooled around with my priest at his father’s funeral a week and a half ago?”
“I admit I never intended us to be that intimate that soon. I don’t regret it. But I’m still reeling a bit.” It was a humble confession and it touched her heart to hear he was as affected by what happened as she was. Perhaps even more so.
“I know it’s been a long time since you’ve been with someone...you know, like that.”
“A very long time,” he said quietly.
“I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to do it again. I mean, the fooling around part. Not the funeral part.”
Søren smiled at her. “Later. After you graduate.”
“Then what?”
Søren reached into his pocket and pulled out something that looked like part of a weed.
“I intended to give you this later.”
“What is it?” She looked at the pale brown plant in her hand.
“The head of a stalk of wheat,” he said with a wink. “When you’re ready, we can revisit my threshing floor.”
Then he got on his Ducati and turned the key.
“Finish your Ruth and Boaz story,” he ordered. “And it might be sooner rather than later.”
Then he rode away, taking her heart with him.
* * *
With shaking hands Nora untied the cord on the box and ripped off the plain brown paper.
“Goddammit, Søren...”
It was a laptop. Of course it was. Of course he’d found a way to give her the thing she most needed, her heart’s desire. But how? How had he paid for this? What had he done? Did he borrow money from his sister Claire? Or Kingsley? Did he sell some valuable Stearns family antique? Did the priest sell his fucking plasma? Nobody had that much plasma.
“Maîtresse?”
Nora turned and found Kingsley standing in her dungeon doorway. He looked resplendent tonight in Regency-era British military dress with obscenely tight white trousers and his saddle-brown Hessian boots. She appreciated how much it must have hurt the Frenchman to dress in British regimentals, but the red of his coat m
atched the red of her corset and boots. He looked ready to do battle. She didn’t. She felt ready to surrender right into Søren’s arms.
“King...” She couldn’t breathe. She felt too much.
“Shall we?” he asked.
Nora looked down at the box in her hands. She nodded and set it back on the bed. Later she’d return for it. He held out his arm, and she took it.
No going back now.
“Are you ready?” Kingsley asked as they took the back way upstairs to the elevator.
“No,” she said.
Kingsley looked at her with some concern. “You have five minutes to get ready.”
“I...” She looked around and pulled Kingsley between the coat-check booth in the main hallway and the elevator. She pressed her head to the wall and breathed through her hands.
“What is it?”
“Kingsley, Søren gave me a laptop. A really expensive one. He took a vow of poverty. He has no money. How did he pay for it?”
“He didn’t get it from me,” Kingsley said with a shrug. “I suppose he could have asked his sister. Claire could have paid for it.”
“Actually, I paid for it.”
Nora whirled around and saw Milady standing by the elevator wearing an elegant Regency-style dress of pure white silk. It almost looked like a wedding dress. But Nora paid no attention to her clothes, her perfectly coiffed thick black hair, her perfect pouty lips or her long eyelashes. No, Nora’s eyes focused on the locket around Milady’s neck. A glass memento mori locket, it was designed to hold a lock of hair from someone beloved now dead. But that’s not what this locket held. Nora could see right into it.
Inside was a lock of golden-blond hair.
Søren’s hair.
“Oh, you bitch...” Nora said with a smile. “He wouldn’t.”
“He did.”
“Not a chance in hell.”
“I told you everyone was for sale.”
Milady laughed. No, it wasn’t a laugh. It was a giggle, cute and girlish. It enraged Nora. She charged forward and Kingsley grabbed her arm, stopping her.
“Not here,” he said into her ear. “Save it for the game.”
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