This Gorgeous Game

by Donna Freitas

  I shrug my shoulders. The truth is, Father Mark says out loud what I would never admit.

  “I’m still in the process of getting a read on you, Olivia Peters, and I am rather enjoying myself. You are an interesting study. I am eager to learn as much as I can about my beguiling new advisee. If you’re not careful, you may find yourself in one of my stories.” Father Mark chuckles, his eyes becoming world-weary for a brief moment. “Not to worry, though. I’d change your name and all significant identifying features.” This provokes a bellow and Father Mark throws his head back and clutches a hand over his stomach.

  I manage a laugh but begin to wonder how many drinks Father Mark had before I arrived.

  “My apologies. You’re here barely ten minutes and already I start on the advice and give away my dark secret that I’m not as nice as I appear, that sometimes I ingratiate myself just because a person might make a good character. Though, take it from me,” he says, leaning toward me like he’s about to reveal a secret. “Never forgo an opportunity to get to know someone who intrigues you.”

  I say nothing. I don’t know what to say.

  “But listen to me, talking nonstop, probably scaring you off—it’s just the scotch speaking.” The mention prompts him to take another sip. “Until now, writing has always been my first priority. As long as I keep producing even the Catholic Church lets me be. But this prize you won is meant to be my legacy, my plan to find the best young writers out there and give them their start. I want to offer you every resource I can. You’ll have to be patient with me, though, I’m not used to dealing with young people with any regularity. I need a little trial and error period. How does that sound? Do we have a deal?”

  “Sure. Yes.” I force a smile, feeling a little awkward, and focus on his intentions, which are good.

  “Now, enough about me. Let’s talk about you. Your family. Your work. How you got into writing. Tell me everything.”

  “Um…” I tap my fingers on the bar, trying to figure out where to start. “So…my mom…she’s a huge reader. Reads all the time and our house is packed floor to ceiling with books. And my father was…is…” I pause, not sure how to answer, “a book person, too. Though now, I don’t know. Maybe not.”

  “He changed his mind?” Father Mark looks confused.

  “No. Possibly.” I pause and then just say it. “He left us. Ten years ago.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Life is better without him,” I rush, wanting to move away from this topic. “Anyway, Mom brought my sister and me up reading just about everything you could imagine, including the American Catholic writers I mentioned earlier—my family is really Catholic.” I shift in my chair, crossing one leg over the other, my fingers still tapping the edge of the bar. “Anyway, Mom has shelves filled with the Latin Americans, too. I’m trying to read in the original Spanish, now. It’s slow going. But with the poetry especially, with someone like Pablo Neruda—his poems are nice in English but they are exquisite in Spanish.”

  “That’s a very astute observation.”

  Father Mark stares into my eyes and I realize I am staring back and so I turn away, looking hard at the mug, sliding my hand around it, letting my skin feel the burn of the liquid, still hot inside.

  “I can’t really take credit.”

  “No?”

  “I learned that from Mom. She’s a purist when it comes to literature.”

  “You and your mother are close?”

  “Yes. In fact, she’s a writer, too. She’s been writing mystery novels under a pen name since I was little. She’d kill me if I told you her pseudonym, though, and she doesn’t like to talk much about her books as a general rule. We don’t even have them on display in our living room. If you ever meet her don’t tell her I mentioned it,” I ramble on.

  “Interesting. You are following in your mother’s footsteps.” Father Mark smiles, and then adds, conspiratorially, “Don’t worry—I won’t say a word. My lips are sealed.” He sounds delighted that we share a little secret.

  A spoon sits next to the mug and I plunge it into the hot chocolate, stirring it around to give myself something else to do, unsure how to act in this situation that is me sitting at a bar with someone famous who is paying me all sorts of attention, sitting so close, leaning even closer.

  “So…um…thanks for reading one of my favorite stories,” I continue, staring into the mug as the purply brown liquid swirls in circles even after I remove the spoon. “The Borges, I mean. That was really nice of you.”

  “Olivia.” He draws out each syllable and again it sounds like music. Oh-liv-ee-aah.

  “Yes?”

  “Olivia,” Father Mark repeats, and I look up from the mug, focusing on the endless bottles of liquor behind the bar.

  “Look at me.”

  It’s a request not an order. I shift toward Father Mark, body and eyes.

  “No need to be embarrassed that you are precocious.”

  My eyes roll before I can stop them.

  “I’m serious,” he says, all playfulness gone. “You are different from most of your peers. You have promise. You are special. Your writing shows talent beyond your years. I am astounded by you, to be quite honest.”

  I blush. The warmth spreads all the way to the top of my forehead. Thoughts and questions fly through my mind. He thinks I’m special. Different. How can he decide this from one story? After only a couple of interactions? Is there a magic formula? It can’t be that easy…can it?

  “You shouldn’t be shy about it,” he continues. “I feel certain that success will come to you, Olivia. One day you will look back on this conversation and remember my prediction. I look forward to helping make it happen.”

  Wow, wow, wow, plays the soundtrack in my head. The red that’s run all over my face continues over every inch of pale skin on my body to the tips of my fingers and toes.

  “Okay. Enough embarrassment for today. It’s your turn.”

  “My turn?”

  “To ask questions. Anything you want.”

  “Like what?”

  “Isn’t there anything you are curious about?”

  “Well…” My eyes flicker to the ceiling as they sometimes do when I am thinking about what to say next. The fans overhead turn, slow, and a shiver runs down my spine, reminding me of the cold. “When did you know you wanted to write? How old were you? Were you my age or younger or older?”

  Father Mark seems pleased with my questions and begins to tell me how he was older than me, much older, late twenties and already a priest when he wrote his first novel—thirty the first time something was published. He explains how everything happened fast. That his first novel, Hannah, about the middle of three sisters who dies suddenly and leaves, quite literally, a hole between the older and younger sisters and how a family once strong can implode from this empty middle, became a best seller, and after Hannah, it all went very quickly, his writing career.

  The conversation between us becomes easier now that it’s his turn to open up, and the pace quickens once I am over feeling self-conscious and little-girlish about my Swiss Miss kid hot chocolate and my uniform skirt and socks. I have a lot of questions—no, a million—and Father Mark lets me ask every one though there is no way I can ask them all in a single afternoon. But I keep on and the discussion goes from somewhat awkward to beginning to seem normal to feeling like fire, like there is a spark and crackle and burning in the back-and-forth between us, and we talk and talk until finally I exclaim, “The time! What time is it?” as if I’ve been under a spell and forgotten where I am.

  The bar is full now, teeming with people, but I hadn’t noticed any of them arrive and so I imagine it must be late and it is.

  “A little after seven,” Father Mark says, checking his watch, and I gasp. “Don’t worry, I’ll drive you home,” he says and I accept his nice offer, not even bothering to worry about all the scotch he’s been drinking. Soon the check is paid and we are out the door and in his car, still talking, lo
bbing questions back and forth like we could go on this way forever, but before I know it I am out on the sidewalk in front of my house saying, “Thank you, thank you so much for the ride and everything today.”

  “I had a wonderful time, too, Olivia,” Father Mark says, leaning across the passenger seat, looking at me through the open window. He is smiling. “Have a good night.”

  “You, too,” I call out as his car pulls away, my hand raised in a wave. Only after it turns the corner, disappearing from sight, do I lower my arm. With a smile to match his, I float up the stairs and into the house on cloud nine.

  ON SERENDIPITY

  BY MORNING THE TEMPERATURE SHOOTS UP TO NINETY degrees and spring suddenly becomes summer in Boston, the humidity turning the air to liquid heat. Ash, Jada, and I go to Newbury Street to get ice cream after school. On the way we strip off our uniform socks and shoes and change into flip-flops. Ash and I grab a table inside the shop while Jada waits for the sundae we ordered to share.

  “You were right. Eastern Standard is a bar,” I admit. “But once I got over the initial awkwardness, and my total idiocy ordering hot chocolate, like I’m six years old or something—”

  “You ordered hot chocolate at a bar? You should’ve asked for a real drink, something mature-sounding, like a Manhattan or a vodka on the rocks.”

  “That would’ve been a great idea, getting drunk with Father Mark.”

  “How can you even think of hot chocolate when it’s a million degrees out?”

  “It was freezing in there.”

  “What’s this I’m hearing?” Jada places a dish piled high with ice cream, bananas, gooey caramel, and whipped cream in front of us and hands out napkins. “You and writer-priest-man drank hot chocolate together? How snow day of you.”

  “No. He had scotch.” Just saying the word scotch like it’s a normal part of my everyday conversation makes me feel sophisticated. “But that’s not the point. The point is, even though it started out kind of weird, it ended up being really amazing. I mean, he’s great to hang out with. I think we totally clicked, you know?” I stop a moment to eat a heaping spoonful of sundae, enjoying the cold relief on my mouth and throat. “We talked for hours and he told me all about his career and his life and how he finds stuff to write about and he let me ask anything I wanted.”

  “Did you ask him how to become famous?” Jada wants to know.

  “I don’t think he cares about fame.”

  “How can he not?”

  “I don’t think he gets out much, you know, because of all the writing.”

  “But he’s on television and in the press constantly and doing readings like every other best-selling author in the universe,” Ash says. “He gets out all the time.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Say more then.”

  I try to find the right words. “Well, he is social in the ways you mentioned, but I think it’s like, some sort of professional persona he adopts. In the end, he’s pretty solitary—”

  “Well he is a priest,” Jada interrupts.

  “But I think his solitude—at least if I’m understanding him right—has more to do with being a writer. He spent a lot of yesterday telling me to prepare myself for the loneliness that comes with writing, that it’s inevitable, and even with success, after all is said and done there is only and always just you and the page.” I do my best to affect his voice: a bit preachy, a little slurred. “That kind of stuff.”

  “Sounds dark,” Ash says and pops a bite of banana into her mouth.

  “Not exactly. More like, he’s reached a point in life when, since he doesn’t have children or a wife and he wants a legacy other than his books—he actually used that word when talking about the contest—he’s thinking of the people who win this prize each year as his pseudo kids or something. Like, it’s his job to take care of us. I don’t know. Maybe I’m being overly analytical.”

  “Well,” Ash says, “regardless of his reasons you get to be the beneficiary. Right place, right time. You know.”

  “And, on a different note…” Jada is ready to change the subject. “Guess what I have to report?”

  “You heard from Sam, didn’t you?” I exclaim, and when Jada nods I scold: “You waited an entire day of school to tell us?”

  “I wanted to wait until we had time to discuss the intricacies of the conversation and examine it down to the very last detail.”

  “Given that neither Olivia nor I have a boy in our lives—not yet at least,” Ash says, looking at me, mouthing the name Jamie, “we have all the time in the world to devote to your late-night exchange with Sam-u-el.”

  “So!” Jada seems ready to burst. “We IM’d for two hours last night,” she begins, and for the next thirty minutes the three of us sit by the window, at our little metal table with the tiny, old-fashioned chairs, picking apart each word, fragment, and sentence of Jada’s exchange with Sam, trying to figure out the meaning, however minuscule it might be.

  “Maybe, once Sam and I fall madly in love—and Olivia and Jamie, or insert other college boy here, fall madly in love…” She gives me a look before continuing. “We can set you up with one of their friends.” Jada reaches her hand across the table, tapping Ash’s. “Because if Olivia and I end up with boyfriends then, of course, you will need one, too.”

  Jada is still talking about Sam when I notice two familiar people standing in front of the ice cream shop.

  “Jada Ling!” I hiss. “I can’t believe you.”

  “I might’ve sent a quick text on our way here,” she sings, shooting me a sheepish look before she is up from her chair and out the door like a shot. I put my hands over my eyes, afraid to watch, afraid to be made a fool of, to act a fool, a jumble of nerves and thrills.

  “What?” Ash asks, craning her neck to see whatever I’m seeing outside the window. “Who’s out there?”

  “Nobody,” I say.

  “That’s a very hot nobody,” Ash observes once she gets a good view.

  Sam and Jamie—as in Jamie Grant—are locking up their mountain bikes to one of the meter poles along Newbury Street.

  Jada knocks on the window, waving us to come outside.

  “Go say hi to him already,” Ash demands. “I’ll watch our stuff. Besides, I don’t want to be a third wheel.”

  “I can’t.” I am as frozen as the ice cream in our sundae.

  “Olivia. Come on.” She tries yanking me from my chair.

  My shy side kicks into high gear, and when it’s clear I’m not going anywhere, Ash takes matters into her own hands and before I can grab her she tells me, “Fine, you watch our stuff and I’ll go get him for you.”

  Oh God, oh God, oh God, I repeat in my mind, then pull out the novel I’ve been reading, The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende, to give myself something to do other than watch whatever is happening outside. But after I read the same paragraph over and over for what feels like five minutes, the door of the ice cream shop opens and I can’t resist—I look up.

  There. He. Is.

  Jamie.

  “Hi, Olivia,” he says, walking over to the table. “Your friend Ashley said you might be getting lonely. Mind if I join you?”

  Oh, Ash! “No, not at all,” I say, grabbing my messenger bag off the seat and putting it on the floor to make room. “Of course not. Hi. Nice to see you again.”

  “Same here,” he says, smiling, sitting down next to me, and I practically fall into his big dark eyes.

  “Any luck getting into the class?” I ask, finally coming up with something to say, hopeful that the answer will be yes.

  “Not yet. I’m getting there, though. Two signatures to go.”

  I think about whether or not I could help, whether I might have a little pull with Father Mark now that he and I have hung together in a bar, but then decide against suggesting this. “I’ll keep my fingers crossed then,” is what I tell him.

  “I need all the help I can get,” he says, laughing, playing with the tiny silver
cross dangling from his neck, holding it out as if to say that prayer isn’t out of the question, either.

  “That’s right. Selling your soul and all that. I remember.”

  There’s a knock on the window. Sam gestures to Jamie that they need to go.

  “I wish I had more time,” he says.

  Me, too, I think.

  “We’ve got to go take our last exam in…” he pauses, pulling out his cell, “forty minutes. But before I go…I guess, I was wondering…”

  He was wondering? Wondering what?

  “…if maybe we could, you know, exchange information. That way if I do get into the class, we could, I don’t know, be in touch before it starts. I could give you my e-mail and number and get yours and then I’ll know how to get ahold of you when I get the verdict.”

  “That would be great.” I smile because it would be honestly, truly, utterly great. “I’d love that,” I say. “I hope it works out. It would be fun to be in class together.” An understatement.

  He hands me his cell so I punch in my info and then I give him mine to do the same.

  “So we’ll be in touch,” Jamie says, getting up. “Soon.”

  I sure hope so. More knocking on the window and I look out to see Sam, Jada, and Ash, hands cupped on the glass, watching us, smirking.

  I will not turn red, I will not turn red.

  “Sounds great,” I say, glancing back at Jamie.

  “Talk to you later then,” he says and heads outside, holding the door for Jada and Ash to pass through.

  “Bye, Jamie,” they call.

  “Now that wasn’t so bad,” Ash says, sitting down and diving back into what remains of our melted sundae. I am so jubilant that I can almost forgive her for being Ash, and Jada for setting me up. Jada is focused on scooping caramel out of the bottom of the dish, avoiding my eyes, but she can’t contain the laughter bubbling up inside her. “You are shameless,” I begin, when the door to the shop swings open again and my jaw drops and I think, This cannot be happening, is this really, truly happening?