by Moriah Jovan
He looked back at me. “Does he?”
“Not one,” I murmured. “He’s always very...appropriate.”
“How...fortunate,” he purred.
The tension between us was thick, half war, half sex. One pointed glance at his crotch, and he smirked before leisurely buttoning his suit coat. I wasn’t sure how much anyone else understood—clearly it had gone over my shepherdess’s head—but a couple of others squirmed in their seats.
As a teacher, he was exemplary. He taught the lesson on the fall of Adam and Eve, which was rife with innuendo directed entirely at me. As far I could tell, no one caught it; my companion certainly didn’t.
But I couldn’t blame it on naïveté. It was out of context, Sitkaris had cloaked himself in a flawless representation of Puritan morality, and his broad charm was undeniable. I would have bet an entire year’s salary that if anyone did understand the subtext, they were sitting there castigating themselves for their dirty minds.
I knew I wouldn’t spend the ten-minute interval between Sunday school and “Relief Society,” the women’s class, unmolested, especially once my shepherdess excused herself.
Once the room had cleared, except for a few female stragglers who prepared the room for the next class, Sitkaris dropped into the seat beside me and leaned into me, his arm along the back of my seat, his hand wrapped around my shoulder.
“Can I pull you out of retirement?” he murmured.
Ah, he knew.
“I give it away now,” I murmured in return.
“But not to Mitch.” I wouldn’t dignify that with a response. “You don’t have to tell me. I already know because I know him. He would never fuck you without marrying you. If he even remembers how to do it. If he ever knew how to do it in the first place. What I don’t understand is what you see in him.” Everything. “Or else this really is about the Steelworks and I’m completely misreading the situation, in which case, I’ll take you back to your hotel room after church, douse you in champagne, and lick it off.”
I didn’t think I could hate anyone more than I hated my ex-father-in-law, but today was a day for surprises.
“He doesn’t know you were a call girl, does he?” Greg said. “I can’t see him risking his position in the Church, and he’s a bit naïve when it comes to women. It probably didn’t even occur to him to have you investigated. I, on the other hand, approve of your career choice and cannot wait to sample your wares.”
“I thought you liked blondes.”
“I like beautiful women.”
“And men?”
“Of course. It’s not about gay or straight. You know that.”
Power is its own orientation, Cassie. Nigel’s mantra.
“I simply want to know what it feels like to fuck an equal for once, that’s all.”
Trust a sociopath to assume he was my equal.
“Greg—”
We both turned at the voice coming from the threshold to see a man leaning into the room.
“Waiting on you, bud.”
“Yeah, be there in a minute.” The room had begun to fill with women as Sitkaris and I negotiated like the two sexually experienced people we were. He turned back to me, tightened his grip on my shoulder, pulled me to him. He pressed his mouth to my ear. “Let me know when you get tired of waiting for Mitch to figure out he has a dick, and I’ll be happy to do what he won’t. Or can’t. Or hasn’t occurred to him. I guarantee you won’t regret it.”
He left in a swirl of suit coat and a whiff of expensive, rich cologne before I could say anything.
“You know Greg?” said my shepherdess when she reseated herself next to me.
Oh, yes. I knew Greg.
“Business,” I said airily.
“Isn’t he wonderful?” she gushed. “He’s such a good listener. The kids love him. Well, almost everybody does.” Pause. “Except Prissy,” she muttered.
I could think of no suitable reply.
Relief Society started out harmlessly enough, I supposed. Louise, the “Relief Society president,” Mitch’s nearest counterpart in this church’s flowchart if I remembered correctly, asked me to stand and introduce myself. There were murmurs of welcome all around as I sat.
I blew off the listing of announcements for upcoming activities in favor of looking at the people around me.
A gathering of women with a common thread tying them together was something I had never been part of. Now, I knew from experience that in a roomful of thirty or so women, there were bound to be four or five factions and I could almost delineate and label them as I watched how they interacted. However, once Louise spoke of a sister in need, no one hesitated to offer something.
Then came the lesson and it was taught by a woman I thought must be an anomaly in this collection of pretty women: Morbidly obese, she was swathed in a voluminous dark green dress to accommodate her girth. She had to be somewhere between three or four hundred pounds, but she had a charisma I had seen only a few times in women anywhere. She had the kind of charisma that commanded respect and/or fear without saying a word—and it had nothing to do with her weight.
“Today’s lesson,” she said in a no-nonsense manner, “is about bearing false witness.”
A ripple ran through the room and thirty heads looked down at what seemed to be small textbooks.
My shepherdess stiffened. She turned to the woman behind her. “I cannot believe her,” she hissed.
“Sally—” she said. “It’s Prissy.” The woman who didn’t like Sitkaris. “What do you expect? Are you going to get up and tell her to teach the right lesson?”
I hate women.
“I’m going to go get the bishop.”
“He won’t do anything. He never does.”
Sally turned toward the front again, then cast me a glance. “I apologize for her,” she whispered. “She never follows the lesson. Drives everybody up a wall. This isn’t... I’m sorry. You’re not having a good experience right now, are you?”
“I had no expectations,” I assured her. “Part of my job. Diplomacy. Good corporate partnership.”
She nodded sagely and patted my arm.
This large woman, Prissy—
I marveled at the incongruity of her name and her appearance, then promptly forgot about it because she hooked me with her opening salvo.
“I’m not going to ask what everyone thinks bearing false witness is. I’m going to tell you what I think it is, and then we’re going to talk about that.” She turned to the freestanding blackboard and wrote, in enormous letters:
MURDER
Well.
I’d been involved in far too many business deals not to know when someone had just declared war.
“Why would I say such an outrageous thing?” she said smoothly, a benign smile on her face. One woman timidly raised her hand. Prissy pointed to her.
The woman gave some wishy-washy answer that really didn’t seem to apply, but Prissy acknowledged it gracefully and headed into “what would Jesus do?” territory—with a twist.
“Let’s talk about the pharisaical politics of Christ’s time and what underlay his crucifixion, because it’s directly related to the points I want to make today, and how we in Zion—who profess to be followers of Christ—can learn to live more peacefully with each other.”
Then she began to walk slowly across the front of the room, completely uninhibited about her lecturing. She used no books but pulled references from the Bible and contemporary accounts, scholarly works, Roman and Jewish law. She created metaphors as easily as she breathed; she applied them to the core principle of her lesson—not the canned one—with a facility borne of clean, linear thinking. Her vocabulary was impressive and she spoke quickly, packing ideas and concepts into each minute the way I would pack for a month’s vacation in a carry-on.
She would have left at least half the class behind intellectually within the first five minutes, but she had a point to make, and I could tell she was struggling to keep her discussion from heading off i
nto the intellectual stratosphere. I looked around and saw that most of the women were completely wrapped up in her lesson while she paced.
Obesity or not, she moved with the grace of a dancer. I had never seen such a large woman move with that much fluidity and I might have had a harder time reconciling it but for Mitch’s assertion that Mormons danced. I would have loved to spend time with her, picking her brain, learning what she knew and how she knew it, wishing she had been my comparative religions professor.
“The end result, then,” Prissy said, still pacing, her fingertips steepled in front of her, “is that one deliberate lie was the final piece the Pharisees needed to attain their goal, which was to get rid of their political enemy number one. Let’s think about that a minute. In what ways does that happen today?”
Someone’s hand shot up, and Prissy called on her. “False accusations of molestation.”
“Very good.” She called on someone else.
“It could be as simple as a child tattling on a sibling and exaggerating what really happened so they’ll get in more trouble.”
I could relate to that, and I found myself nodding.
“Uh huh. Starts young, doesn’t it? Almost an instinctive power struggle, wouldn’t you say?”
Clarissa had done it from the moment she could talk.
“Prissy?” said the Relief Society president.
“Yes, Louise?”
“I think,” said Louise, “there must be a lot of that that goes on when spouses are in the middle of divorcing or even when they’re just going through a bad patch.”
“Indeed,” Prissy purred, a wicked little smile on her face. “Usually it’s best not to bring those things to church, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes,” Louise said definitely. “Keep it at home and/or take it to counseling so other people don’t start taking sides and meddling.”
Sally made a little gurgle-like noise and I glanced at her.
She was seething.
I ceased to pay attention to the teacher and looked around, studied the faces of the women here. This room was about to explode and I wondered what the hell was going on.
Another woman’s hand inched up, and Prissy pointed at her, eager, as if she were hoping that woman would offer something even more telling. “Amelia?”
How’s Amelia?
Sitkaris. She, too, was beautiful. Blonde.
...politically delicate.
The mystery was so juicy I could taste it, like the most exquisite wine, precisely chilled, its flavors bursting on my tongue and awaiting my analysis.
“I think, uh, maybe when...” She spoke in the manner of a woman who thought she should not speak at all, but was compelled in spite of whatever consequences she feared. “When, uh, people present themselves to be...ah, you know, something in public and then in private they’re totally different.”
Prissy’s smirk melted. She was somber as she watched Amelia, ignored other hands waving in the air for attention. Amelia squirmed and looked down. “That too,” Prissy said softly, and moved on from there.
Then it was over.
I gathered my purse after the closing prayer, bid my shepherdess adieu, and headed for the door. I saw the teacher packing up her things alone and I thought to go to her and tell her how much I had enjoyed her lesson—no one else would—but hesitated. I shouldn’t have; by the time I’d made up my mind, two small children barreled into the room to clutch at her dress and babble with great excitement, followed by a man who looked at her as if she’d hung the moon. Not only had I lost my chance, I began to wonder if I would ever know a man who looked at me like that.
If Mitch could ever have looked at me like that if I hadn’t destroyed the pride of one of his parishioners.
But for right now I had to set about getting the hell out of this place without running into Mitch, because after having shown up on his turf and embarrassed Brittany’s mother, he wouldn’t want to see me again.
“Ms. St. James,” said a low male voice behind me. I turned and saw a tall, handsome young man whose gray suit was as finely tailored as Mitch’s. He had dark brown hair, but eyes the same blue as Mitch’s. “I’m Trevor Hollander. My dad wanted me to catch you before you left and ask you if you’d come to the foundry tonight around eleven. He’d like you to have a tour, but he’s got a time crunch and can’t come get you.”
I stared up at the boy and I knew my surprise showed, but if he noticed it, he said nothing while he waited for my answer. “Um, sure,” I murmured. “I thought—” He stood patient, silent, then I shook my head. He didn’t need to know how his father’s, uh, woman had misstepped. “Okay.”
“Would you like me to walk you to your car?”
“Sure.”
I wondered if Mitch had told his son what I used to do for a living and I realized I didn’t want him to know.
Odd. I usually didn’t care who knew.
“He also wanted me to tell you he was sorry he couldn’t see you out himself,” said Trevor conversationally as he skillfully navigated me down the gauntlet of a hallway where people gathered to chat. “He’s got people stacked down the hall all the way to Primary to see him.”
I didn’t know what the hell Primary was and most certainly did not care. “I knew he’d be busy, so no worries.” I paused a moment. “Do you know the woman in the green dress? The one who teaches in the women’s meeting? Prissy?”
“Sister Seaton? Sure. What about her?”
“She’s a good teacher. I was impressed.”
“Yeah, Dad really likes her.”
That didn’t surprise me.
I didn’t have much more of a chance to converse with the boy (shit, he was a head taller than I, taller than his father, even) as he led me through the congested hallway. Half a dozen conversation clusters blocked the path and I found it incredibly rude that they didn’t find another place to chat.
Then again, this wasn’t Blackwood Securities and these people had no reason to part like the Red Sea when an officer of the company walked through.
“Trevor, wait up!”
I heard the voice, young and female. Felt Trevor tense. “Fuck, not now,” he whispered. That might have shocked me if I didn’t know the kid had had King Midas for a role model and already had one foot out the door of his father’s religion.
“Trevor...”
The girl was gorgeous, I had to give her that, with a familiar face and auburn hair precisely coifed in innocent-looking curls.
Sitkaris made pretty babies, but then, I would have expected nothing less.
“Hi, Hayleigh,” Trevor said with a patient kindness that perfectly mimicked Mitch’s. “What’s up?”
She glanced at me briefly, but instead of excusing himself to speak with Hayleigh in private, Trevor directed both of us to a small, quiet alcove, making it clear that I was the chaperone. She went with it, apparently trusting Trevor to know the chaperone wouldn’t blab.
“Are you— Um... I didn’t see you at the Valentine’s Day dance last night.”
Trevor’s face pinkened, and I almost laughed. I could just guess what he’d been doing last night. “Uh, well,” he murmured, “I have a girlfriend.”
She flushed and looked away. Her acute embarrassment was uncomfortable. “I’m sorry. I— I didn’t know. Someone from school?”
“No. You wouldn’t know her.” Trevor brightened. “Hey, though— Josh told me he had a good time with you last night.”
Hayleigh stiffened. “He said that?”
“Yeah.” He lowered his voice. “You know he really likes you, right?”
She gulped.
More mysteries. This wasn’t a girl accosting a boy she had a crush on. She needed Trevor for something, but it wasn’t love, attention, or romantic mediation. My fingers itched to untangle all these little knots and find out where the strings led.
Suddenly Trevor pulled her to him in the same kind of bear hug Mitch had given me. “You have got to tell my dad what you told me, or else let me te
ll him.”
The girl looked hunted, and I knew why. I’d seen that look on Gordon’s face too many times during our marriage not to know what it was. I’d seen a flash of it on her mother’s face not twenty minutes before. “Oh, I don’t— I don’t know.”
“Well, if you won’t talk to my dad,” Trevor whispered earnestly, “talk to Josh, and see what he says. You’re almost eighteen. At least make plans to get out of the house.”
Her mouth tightened.
“Okay, look. I’ll try to come up with something. But at least be honest with Josh about your feelings. Just that? Will you do that?”
She nodded, and the relief on her face was almost heartbreaking. The elephant was on its way out of the room.
At the sound of Sitkaris’s cheerful booming voice coming from an adjacent hall, Hayleigh scrambled out of the alcove and into the gym—the opposite direction.
Neither Trevor nor I spoke as he escorted me out of the building, then to my car. He handed me in and said simply, “I’ll see you tonight.” Then he bounded up the stairs and disappeared into the building.
I began to smile in spite of myself, warmth sort of stealing over me in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time. I checked my watch.
Eleven o’clock was a lifetime away.
* * * * *
Iron Coke, Chromium Steel
I bought jeans, a sweatshirt, hiking boots, socks, and a cheap coat to go to the mill that night, as I hadn’t planned for anything like a tour through the bowels of a foundry. Floodlights held back the night as I drove onto the property, the foundry itself separated from the offices by an enormous underground parking lot. Mitch’s office directly overlooked the parking lot and straight into the major building of the mill. I parked and followed the last stragglers through the checkpoint.
I gave my name to the guard who nodded, put his fingers in his mouth, and released an ear-piercing whistle. Soon enough, Trevor jogged around a corner. In sharp contrast to his church garb, he now sported an oil-filthy coverall and a hard hat. His face displayed a healthy portion of the same grease as his coverall and he held a pair of heavy leather gloves in his hand. Without speaking to me, he grabbed the coverall and hard hat the security guard handed him, then signaled to me to follow him.
