Magdalene

by Moriah Jovan

  “Nope.”

  Mitch knew what would happen: Petersen would take pity on Greg and call him to the stake high council. It was a fairly prestigious calling, but it would keep Greg traveling around to the different wards in the stake, limiting his ability to stir up trouble in Mitch’s ward.

  Another battle won.

  It didn’t make him feel any less tense.

  “Is that it?”

  “Um...just one...little thing. I even hesitate to bring it up.”

  “Hit me.”

  “Have you...been...encouraging...Sally Bevan’s interest in you in any way?”

  Mitch’s nostrils flared. “Absolutely not. I won’t even call her by her first name.”

  “I would understand if you, maybe, had said things you didn’t mean to say that she took the wrong way. You’re a widower and maybe that—”

  “President,” Mitch said, putting his feet on the floor and sitting up. He braced his elbows on his knees and looked up at his ecclesiastical boss. “Why am I still a bishop?” he asked earnestly. “I’m in year seven and yes, I’m a widower. I have to meet with women and counsel them and provide for them. I’m not just some random single guy in the ward. I’m wealthy and relatively young. No matter how appropriate I am, no matter what chaperones I have around, I’m a target and it’s very uncomfortable for me. Can you imagine Romney or Huntsman being widowed bishops?”

  Petersen blinked. He clearly hadn’t thought about it from Mitch’s point of view.

  “That’s how it is for me, except I’m not running for President and I’m not even close to that good-looking. I have done everything I can to discourage her. If you want to know about Sally and Sally’s issues with me, go talk to her husband.”

  “Dan’s word isn’t the best in the world, Mitch, all things considered. And your friends aren’t the Church’s favorites, especially Knox Hilliard.”

  Mitch stared at Petersen, knowing he was trapped: Trapped between his widowerhood, a woman with an obsession, an ally with little credibility, a milieu with no credibility at all, and a sociopath with an ax to grind.

  “You know what?” Mitch said wearily. “Release me from the bishopric. It’s been seven years. This time. I’m single. Clearly you don’t believe me or trust me—”

  “Mitch—”

  “It would solve everybody’s problems.”

  “I...can’t,” he said softly.

  Shocked, Mitch realized that that hadn’t been part of Petersen’s agenda for this meeting. “Why not?”

  “I’ve prayed about it and...I’ve felt impressed that I shouldn’t.”

  “Definitely or just kind of a vague feeling?”

  “As in, a big flashing neon ‘NO’ in my head.”

  Mitch stared at him, his mouth hard. “Then you’re just going to have to trust me, aren’t you?”

  Petersen gulped. “Yeah,” he murmured, and Mitch knew he was trying to figure out how to make this palatable to Greg. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

  * * * * *

  Cell Block Tango

  January 14, 2011

  The bouquet of lavender, purple, mauve, hot pink, and white roses, tulips, and lilies that sat in the middle of my desk Friday morning had no iPod buried in it. Just a card.

  8:00

  Swishy skirt and high heels

  MLK Mon. Long weekend?

  “That’s a pretty vase,” Susan said, picking it up to study it. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Neither had I. Plain and flaring out from the base, it looked almost like matte stainless steel that flashed pink-purple iridescence, almost holographic. It was heavy and well balanced.

  She held it up and looked at the bottom. “MH?”

  “Let me see.” Indeed, Mitch’s initials were etched in the base, in his hand.

  I shooed Susan away and when the door had closed, I picked up the phone.

  “Did you make this?”

  “Yes,” he said immediately. “Do you like it?”

  “It’s lovely.”

  “Mmmm,” he said, as if from far away. I heard what sounded like pen scratches. Then, survey-like, he asked, “What do you like about it?”

  I told him my impressions and, after studying it for a moment, added a few other details while he took notes.

  “Would you buy that in, say, Bergdorf?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “How much would you pay for it?”

  “Four, five thousand dollars. Maybe more.”

  “Okay.”

  “Embed diamonds in the base. Other jewels. Not too many. Make the jeweled ones limited. Signed and numbered. Design some other things, though. Brand yourself, MH, something.”

  “Working on it.”

  “Oh? Spill.”

  “Hollander Home. Tentatively. Anything else?”

  “Not right now. I may think of something later. I like the sheen. Matches the flowers.”

  “The sheen changes depending on the color that’s next to it.”

  “Is it stainless?”

  “No. It’s an alloy I’ve been developing since forever. Sebastian saw the color properties in it and decided he could do something with it. This is part of the flagship Ford collection.”

  “So you want to capitalize on his fascination with your metal, put him to work, then establish your brand on the back of his name as an artist.”

  “Exactly. You were my test market.”

  “You are a remarkable man, Doctor Hollander.”

  “I hate it when people say that,” he groused.

  “So...long weekend. Does that mean you’re playing hooky from church on Sunday?”

  “Well, that’s why I have counselors, right? But I don’t want to wear out my welcome.”

  “You can’t wear out your welcome until you’ve worn out my sheets.”

  He chuckled.

  “Swishy skirt, then?”

  “Eight o’clock,” he said instead, and hung up on me.

  I would’ve dumped any other man who was arrogant enough to tell me what to wear—and in such specificity!—but if I were going to comply, I’d damn well do it right.

  I stared at myself in the mirror that evening, wondering if it were too blatant and thus would derail my full-court press.

  Red.

  The color of a whore.

  Only...

  Mitch didn’t make me feel like one. He sent me gifts, but not expensive ones. Sentimental ones, ones that meant something to him—layers of meaning I couldn’t hope to peel away without getting to know him better.

  I doffed the dress that said Fuck me!

  I put on a bra and found a different dress—still red—that said I know you want to. What are you going to do about it?

  With a swishy skirt.

  And wickedly high red Louboutins.

  My doorbell rang and I headed up the stairs from The Bordello, where I’d done business for so many years. I stopped on the stairs and looked over my shoulder. It was as exquisitely decorated as it had ever been, though completely different from when it had been my workplace.

  It was not a place I’d ever bring Mitch.

  “Where are we going tonight?” I asked as we descended the front stairs, feeling my tone coming from somewhere down deep, husky, willing. I did not do this on purpose; it seemed I couldn’t keep my arousal out of my voice and, worse, he probably knew that.

  He opened the back door of the taxi that awaited us and said, “Dancing,” low, slow, and held my attention with those unimaginably ordinary blue eyes that did unimaginably extraordinary things to me.

  “I thought dancing was verboten in most Protestant religions.”

  “Dancing is one of my culture’s favorite pastimes and as a collective, we’re very good at it.”

  I wondered how he defined “very good at it.” In my experience, heterosexual white males aren’t particularly interested in dancing, much less taking time to learn how to do it halfway decently. Appreciating good dance is one thing, but doing it— Dancing well
takes time and effort, concentration and practice, interest and talent.

  Like making love.

  “We aren’t going anywhere if you don’t get in the cab,” he said finally, amused.

  He handed me in, but I left him little room to sit beside me. If I calculated correctly, I could end up in his lap by the time we got wherever we were going.

  As he squeezed in next to me, he looked at me sideways with that knowing expression he had; I had indeed miscalculated. He was much bigger than he looked under his expensively tailored suit and I had to scoot away from him—an entire inch—so he could close the door. He gave the cabbie an address I didn’t recognize and then looked at me, inscrutable, and laid his arm across the back of the seat behind me.

  I leaned into him and touched him, dared him to say a word as I rested on my hip and pressed closer to slide my left leg over his, then draw it up his until my knee nudged his cock. I placed my hand on his shirt front, and slid it slowly across his chest and under the lapel of his jacket.

  He dipped his head a bit. Finally!

  But his lips only barely brushed mine when he whispered, “Were you hoping I’d kiss you?”

  I sighed and began to close my eyes and tilt my head just a tad.

  He chuckled—chuckled!—pulling a mere inch away from me, a satisfied smirk on his face. In retaliation, I found the little nub of nipple through his shirt and flicked it with my thumb. His only response was the slight flare of his nostrils and bob of his Adam’s apple. He said nothing, but continued to watch me as speculatively as I watched him.

  Daring more, I caressed downward, intending to make a point of the fact that he was as aroused as I—if the tent in his trousers was anything to go by—but he caught my hand just as I touched his belt buckle and slid his fingers through mine, at once rebuffing me and drawing me closer.

  “Abstinence,” he murmured, “is an effective aphrodisiac, don’t you think?”

  Unbelievably erotic.

  I swallowed, my mouth dry, unable to stop staring at him. I knew I should feel ridiculous, but I didn’t. He wouldn’t allow it. He seemed to know every move I’d make, be prepared to stop me and at the same time, keep me near.

  He dropped his arm from the back of the seat over my shoulders and pulled me tight against him; my breath caught when I felt his lips against my temple. “Patience.”

  Patience.

  All signs pointed toward the inevitable, but something was off, some disconnect about the basics of the game. We seemed to be playing with the same end in mind, but the rules conflicted in some way I couldn’t sort out.

  “You want me,” I whispered. “You want to make love with me.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  I blinked and drew away from him to stare. I already knew that; I’d known it from the moment he’d asked me to dinner, but his candor shocked and diverted me.

  “That surprises you?”

  “It surprises me how quickly you admitted it.”

  He shrugged. “I have no reason to lie. It’s not a sin to want.”

  “Just a sin to do.”

  He inclined his head.

  “I am going to seduce you.”

  “You can try. You won’t succeed.”

  “I already have because you’re here.”

  “Maybe I like playing this game with you.”

  “Why would you think it’s a game for me?”

  “You made it one. So since I still haven’t given you what you want, you decided to throw down the gauntlet.”

  “I don’t play games I can’t win.”

  “Neither do I,” he whispered, this time in my ear. I shivered. “Puts us at cross purposes, doesn’t it?”

  “You want to. I want to. What’s the problem?”

  “You know the answer to that.”

  And the cab came to a halt. Mitch got out, but not in an attempt to escape from me; he’d had plenty of chances to put me off and, well, he had but...he hadn’t. He turned and held his hand out to me, to help me out of the cab.

  I looked up at the building in front of us and gasped, even knowing he watched me, gauging my reaction to the place he had brought me. I glanced at him, amazed. “You—?” It came out as a squeak.

  He flashed me a wicked grin. “Shall we dance?” I stared at him, aghast, but apparently he misunderstood as he wrapped his arm around my waist and propelled me toward the door. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll teach you.”

  But he didn’t have to.

  I’d spent my childhood and adolescence as a good debutante from the Upper East Side learning how to dance properly in a ballroom, and I’d made sure to dirty up all those sanitized Latin dances as soon as I was old enough to sneak out of the house with my sisters and into a nightclub.

  It was my sole rebellion, one my parents would never have believed me capable of, even if they’d caught me.

  “Where—? How—?”

  “Long story,” he said, concentrating on navigating the path from the cab to the door, guarded by a large bouncer. He held my left hand in his, his right arm curved around my waist to guide me past the hundreds of people on line all the way down the block and around the corner.

  “Hey, yo, Bishop!”

  “Luis,” Mitch called back as he climbed the stairs. “How’s Maria?”

  “Good, good, and— Rowr,” said the bouncer as he looked me up and down appreciatively. For once, I didn’t feel objectified so much as appreciated. I found myself preening; it was an odd feeling and I liked it, particularly when Mitch smiled at me, pleased.

  Proud.

  “Missed you the last few weeks.”

  “Had better things to do than hang out with a big bouncer checking IDs.”

  Luis roared and after another couple pleasantries, Mitch guided me into the darkened club, buzzing with the energy of humans engaging in the ages-old sex ritual of drums and dance. The music assaulted my ears and entered my body easily, like an old lover I had neglected too long and was now welcoming back to my bed. Lights flashed. The dance floor writhed with the serpentine grace of a hundred bodies moving to the same beat.

  The bartenders all greeted Mitch, and he yelled back to them and others as we navigated a path through the clusters of people toward the dance floor. At the edge of the parquet, I saw that a table was waiting for us. In the middle of it sat a platter filled with a large selection of tapas and two pitchers of water with glasses. He took my coat and handed it to a server who’d appeared out of nowhere. “Thank you, Margarita.” He took off his jacket and I watched, hungry to see more of what those expensive clothes covered.

  “You come here a lot?” I yelled over the music once Margarita had left.

  “Yes,” he yelled back.

  “With whom?” I asked before I thought and instantly regretted it. The corner of his mouth quirked as he jerked off his tie and threw it carelessly onto the table. He unbuttoned the top two buttons of his fine white shirt to his rather low-scooped undershirt, then rolled his sleeves up to his elbows. He dropped his cufflinks in his pocket with one hand and offered me his other.

  I put my hand in his.

  He led me to the edge of the floor, and I was not surprised when he first pulled me to him, then pushed me away. I had to grin at the look of pleased shock on his face when I completed the simple figure I knew he would choose to begin my lessons.

  Swishy skirt. High heels.

  I threw back my head and laughed.

  The dancers on the floor seemed to notice us as we stepped out onto the parquet.

  Mitch could dance as well as the best club dancers I’d ever met or danced with. He had a more pronounced Cuban styling than mine and I was terribly rusty, so it took us the whole of half an hour to get me up to speed and negotiate adjustments. It took us another hour to learn to dance together, but then we did so as if we had been doing it our entire lives, equally matched in skill and stamina.

  If I actually believed in a deity that cared, I might have been tempted to think it had had a hand in this.


  Everyone here knew him, from bouncers, bartenders, and random denizens, some of whom—the female variety, anyway—stared at me with some amount of consternation. I laughed in the middle of a turn, Mitch’s arm sliding around me and turning me under, swift and sure, then his turn under my arm. I didn’t have to look around to know that only Manhattan’s best club dancers were here tonight and it seemed that the CEO of Hollander Steelworks and bishop of a Mormon congregation was one of them.

  The air was heavy with sex: impending, frustrated, yearned for.

  Incomplete.

  I was no different and neither was he. I knew it the minute the music slowed and he pulled me back against his chest for a slow rumba. His arms slid around me, his body close against my back, his mouth near my ear, his arousal against the small of my back. In business, he didn’t hesitate to practice a little sleight of hand. Here, though... I wasn’t sure it would occur to him to press his cock into me to make a point.

  “I come alone,” he whispered. I closed my eyes and melted into him, my hands wrapped around his hair-dusted arms. “Eight months or so, I guess. Cutting loose from my life. I don’t dance with any woman more than once and I don’t stay past midnight. Mina, she— She was never strong enough to dance like this. I’ve missed it.”

  I gulped.

  He turned me out then and I looked at him: Fine white dress shirt all sweaty and wrinkled, the tails out now, his face open and happy, without that sly humor he used as a shield.

  The music exploded then and I turned, stepped away from him, ecstatic that I had a skirt I could flip back at him as my hips hit every beat, swiveled and otherwise taunted him, but then he caught me, twirled me around to follow him.

  Mitch was not shy about his footwork nor the hip technique he needed to do it and even in those generously cut trousers, I could tell he had a fine ass. His figure eights were a work of art—and I wasn’t the only one who noticed. I caught him and he turned, so that he held me firm in frame as we maintained eye contact and did crossover steps.

  The night wore on, neither of us flagging, our steps faster, our turns and footwork more complicated, as if this were the game itself, to compete on a dance floor.