NINETEEN
TIESHA’S LIPS PURSED at the edge of her cup, her eyes squinting through the steam as she blew over the black circle of Jamaican Blue Mountain. She sat on a donated couch, pocked with cigarette burns and mismatched patches, and stared through the plate glass window. Across the street, the campus commons mellowed in the afternoon sun. It would be a few weeks yet before the students returned, then the wide lawn between buildings would boil with activity. She took a sip, tasted wood and earth, a hint of smoke.
A cargo van pulled up to the curb and whited-out her view. Tie sat up. She knew that van, recognized the rust spot by the left rear wheel. Horton used it from time to time. Tie had seen that van roll down the long drive at all hours on more than one occasion during her visits to Mason’s. When Hisself wanted Tie, he sent one of his boys to fetch her at Mancy’s restaurant. What the hell was Chrome Dome the Wonder Thug doing here? Tie exhaled and settled back into her seat as the driver slammed the door and walked around the front of the van.
Calvin was unmistakable in his black pants and matching shirt, the white tooth at his neck. He wore what Tie thought of as the “workin’ preacher” uniform today. A black short-sleeved button-down revealed the end of a thick vein running over his biceps and branching out over a wiry forearm. He carried a black satchel that appeared empty from the way he swung it as he walked across the street and ducked into the campus chapel. A few minutes passed on the street—blue sedan, black coupe, bicycle and pretty blond rider—and Calvin emerged from the chapel clutching the satchel, but holding it down by his side, the muscles in his forearm rippling with the weight. He trotted across the street to the coffee shop.
A clutch of bells jangled overhead as Calvin pushed through the front door. He spotted Tiesha at once. She wore a pair of faded jeans, the knees completely ripped out, with a snug wifebeater tank top. The straps of a black bra contrasted with the straps of the tank top. Calvin had a sudden worry that he would trip as he made his way over to her. She made eye contact and smiled, looked away, then back.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said.
Tie glanced at her naked, elegant wrist as if she wore a watch. “Hadn’t noticed.”
Calvin put the satchel down and sat in a beaten armchair on a diagonal from her. He pointed to a paperback on the coffee table in front of them. “Yours?” he asked, and picked it up. “No Exit and Other Plays.”
“Yeah,” she said, her voice soft. “I heard this quote from one of the plays in there and kinda’ wanted to see where it came from.”
Calvin flipped open to The Flies, scanned a few lines. “What was the quote?” he asked without looking up.
“Hell is other people.”
“No Exit, that’s my favorite,” Calvin said. “You believe that? Hell is other people?”
Tie slid forward on the couch. “S’pose if I got stuck in a locked room with a bunch of jackasses for the rest of forever I would.” She looked out the window. “Even if you liked someone, after a while no matter who they was, they’d get on your last nerve. Don’t you think that would be bad, never being able to get a moment away for yourself? Lots of people talk about how heaven would be boring, just hanging out on a cloud. But sometimes I think that would be wonderful, you know? Being all alone like that in the middle of the sky.”
Calvin couldn’t remember much about his own possession. All he had was the vaguest sense of falling down a well, black and forever. “Huh,” he breathed. “I think hell would be just that. The lack of other people.”
“What’s the matter, father, you don’t dig on your own company?”
A sketch of a cello, rough waves of white pastel scratched on a charcoal-blackened background, hung on the exposed brick over Tiesha’s head. “That’s a nice piece,” Calvin said, taking a moment to look around the rest of the coffee shop. Sketches and paintings in various styles covered the walls. A sign above the counter proclaimed the establishment as HOLY GROUNDS. Calvin nodded toward another sketch. “Students do these, I guess?”
“Some of them.”
“You did the one with the cello, right?”
Tie’s lips curled at the corners and she took a sip of her coffee. “You like it?”
“What’re you doing with Mason?”
Tie stared at his collar. “Everybody’s gotta’ belong to somebody.”
“Why’d you agree to meet with me, Tiesha?”
“Tie. Only my daddy calls me Tiesha.” Mason did, too but she didn’t want to tell him that for some reason.
“Fine. Tie,” Calvin said. “Why are you with Mason? You’re obviously intelligent, very attractive…” He couldn’t think of anything to say after that. The way she looked at him. Damn this. He didn’t know what he was doing here. “I mean, you could do anything you wanted.”
“You’d be surprised how little a black woman can do, whether she wants to or not.”
“Bullshit,” Calvin said. “Sure, you have to deal with limitations that may not be forced on a white woman, or a woman from old money or something, but falling back on the whole race thing to explain—,”
“Whoa, cool out, Father Superior.” Tie held up her hands. “All right, all right. So, it’s bullshit. I could be doin’ something other than playin’ mistress to a mobster.”
“Then why?”
“Why’s anybody do what they do?” she said. “Why you doin’ what you doin’? Life just ended up pointin’ me this way.” She waved a hand up and down his frame. “What’s with this costume and all that shit? Don’t tell me it’s some kinda’ calling, PAH-dre. You about as godly as I am ladylike.”
“I think you’re ladylike.”
Tie’s cheeks warmed. “Whatever,” she blurted. “How’d you end up a priest, anyway?”
Calvin chuckled. “I was sort of adopted by the church.”
“I was sort of adopted by Mason.”
“What’s your father think of your adoptive parent?”
“He’s fine with me workin’ at Mason’s restaurant.”
“You know that’s not what I mean.”
Tie rolled her eyes. “He’d probably get himself killed tryin’ to lay some smack down on Mason if he ever found out.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
Silence enveloped them a moment. Calvin rose. “I’m getting a coffee, you want something?” She held up her steaming cup and he walked away. Tie watched him give his order to the barista, then scan the other works of art, the menu, everything he could not to turn around and look at her. Standing there so severe in his black clothing, he looked more undertaker than priest. What the hell was she doing here, talking to this man, this stranger? She never should have talked to him in the garden in the first place, should just get up and walk out. He came back with his drink and Tie had to restrict a grin.
Girl you need to get a hold of yourself.
Calvin sat down, inhaling the steam from his cinnamon coffee. “What’re you thinking about?”
She thought fast. “Just wondering what you had in the bag.”
Calvin darkened. “I don’t think you want to know about that.”
“It’s for the kid, right? His problem?”
Calvin nodded. Took a sip and grimaced. Jesus, they just couldn’t do coffee in the states like they could overseas.
“Somethin’ wrong with your drink?”
Calvin smiled. “It’s fine. I’m just being a snob.”
Tie tipped her head to one side. “What’s the best cup a coffee you ever had?”
Tough question. Great question. Led him back through some of the more enjoyable corridors in the labyrinth of his memory. Calvin’s face drifted away with his recollections. After nearly half a minute he pronounced, “Collioure.”
“Cull-your?”
“Close enough. It’s a little town in the southwest of France.” Warm memory bloomed across his features. “I was there off-season, so I didn’t have to deal with all the touristy st
uff.”
Tie settled back, watched his face and imagined what he saw.
“The town’s situated at the base of the Pyrenees Mountains. A bunch of famous impressionists used to work there just for the light. Anyway, I ended up on this marble plaza that went right down to the harbor. It was about an hour before sunrise. All the cafes were still closed, but this older gentleman was loading up his fishing boat for the day’s work and he was roasting coffee over a fire on the beach next to the dock. He offered me a cup and we watched the sun come up.”
Tie sighed. “Sounds incredible.”
Calvin was quiet a moment, a shadow flickering across his face. “It was.”
“My best cup was from a Dunkin’ Donuts in Windsor, Ontario. A bunch of us drove up there to gamble in a boosted car when we were like nineteen. You could drink in Canada if you were nineteen then. I don’t know if they still do it like that, though. We ended up losing all our scratch after like ten minutes and just wandering around town talking all night. The coffee really wasn’t all that good, now that I think about it. It was just the way I felt. Grown up and free. Happy.” Tie laughed, like light from a sparkler. “Not quite as fabulous as your story.”
“Not bad, though. Sometimes I wish…” He didn’t finish.
Tie stared at him for a long time, watching his face. She leaned forward and asked, “What’s wrong with the kid?”
Calvin stared at her for a moment, trying to guess her thoughts, gauging how much she could handle. Fuck it. Let’s see what she does. “Jeremy’s possessed. He’s dangerous. That’s why I told you not to go upstairs. I’m performing the exorcism later tonight.” He sat back and waited for it.
Tie studied him for a moment, her attention flicking from his left eye to his right. “You’re not kidding me, are you.”
“No.”
“So, the bag is full of what? Bibles an’ shit, or.…?”
“Holy water and some other stuff I got today.”
Tie started off into space then snap-focused back on Calvin. “You’re really not fuckin’ with me? He’s possessed? Like by the devil?”
“I don’t think it’s the devil per se.” Calvin sat back, releasing a long sigh. “Hell, maybe it is. What do I fuckin’ know?”
“You’re scared.”
“You know what?” he said, staring hard at her eyes, seeing his own reflection. “I’ve gone through most of my adult life with very little fear of anything. And now, yeah, I’m scared out of my mind. It’s not going to work the normal way, and I’m afraid of what I’m going to have to do to help this kid.”
“Normal way?”
Calvin waved a hand as if he were performing a Vegas magic trick. “The usual biblical mumbo jumbo from the Roman Ritual just isn’t going to cut it this time. I have to get creative, do something it won’t expect.”
“It? Like what, you mean the devil thing, the demon?”
“Yeah, that ‘it’,” Calvin said and sipped his coffee.
For a long while they sat in silence as the world passed by, muted by the plate glass. A grungy teenager in baggy pants and no shirt rolled by on a skate board. A tattoo scrawled across his shoulder blades in angular Gothic font read “SK8ORDIE”. A ladybug, brilliant as a drop of blood, trundled along the caulking at the base of the window. It paused, stretched it wings and buzzed away. A young woman waddled along the other side of the street, her face buried in what could only be a textbook. She had short cropped hair and scrunched features. Tie watched her go and wondered what she was studying so hard.
She looked at Calvin. He seemed so sad, and that confused the hell out of her. Not because she cared about what made him sad—she did—but that wasn’t what was throwing her. Tie was wrenched by the urge to do anything she could to make him happy. She wanted to see him laugh and brush that wavy hair off his forehead, to smile at her and take her hand. Tie had no reason to believe that she’d ever been in love with anyone in her life. She’d never wanted to be in love, thought it was impractical and expensive. Not to mention that women always seemed to get the short end of that particular stick anyway. Her mother had seen it that way, evaporating when Tie was only three, turning the tables on Tie’s father before he could leave her.
Calvin felt her eyes on him and looked over. She didn’t turn away. He didn’t say anything. They just stared, caught in something huge, tidal. Calvin’s heart pounded. He allowed himself to break eye contact and roam over her body, attempting to understand and record her musculature and skin. He was as obvious and open about it as if she had given him verbal permission. Tie watched his dark eyes and the lines around them. Her skin felt very warm.
“I think we’re in trouble,” she said.
He nodded. For the first time in weeks his nebulous doubts and worries faded. The world crystallized around this coffee shop, this corner by the window, this woman. The only other sensation he’d ever experienced that even came close to this feeling was the cone of silence that had accompanied the demon earlier. Calvin thought he had been afraid before. Now he was terrified. “I’ve never had anything to lose before,” he said.
Tie smiled and stared. Her breath came fast. “I, um—,” she started, then had to look away, but then the eye contact was broken and she had to look back. “Jesus, this is weird.”
“For me too,” he said. Father John Calvin didn’t believe in any kind of anthropomorphic God, some white-haired iconographic splice of Santa Clause and Zeus, but the only way he could explain his feelings was to say it felt as if a great hand were pushing him toward this woman.
Tie reached forward and took his hand. Both of their palms were moist, but neither of them minded. “This is going to sound kinda’ funny,” she said. “But what’re you doing after the exorcism?”
Calvin smiled and a laugh burst from his chest. “I hadn’t thought about it all that much.” That was almost true. He had only planned his life up through that evening. By the time the sun was down an hour, he might be dead. Now, however, he had reason to create a contingency plan. Like those neural pathways and muscle groups that had been trained to react before he could think, the part of Calvin’s mind responsible for manipulating logistics on the fly kicked into overdrive. He squeezed her hand as his eyes began to tick off her lips, nostrils, hairline, the cup of coffee still steaming on the table next to her, the rip in her jeans and the wedge of skin it revealed.
“You’re away from the mansion during the week, right?”
She squinted at him, “Yeah, why?”
“Can you be there tonight?” he asked, his eyes zipping around again, then centering on her. “I think I can get it all settled by around midnight.”
Giddiness shook through Tie’s body. She felt like she was planning to sneak out with a high school boyfriend. Except, if they got caught, Mason was likely to do a little more than ground them. “This is fucking crazy,” she said, grinning like a kid.
Calvin’s brow drew down. “I know it, but I’m getting pretty used to feeling crazy. This is the first time I’ve felt okay about it, though, so I’m going with it.”
“Where do I meet you?”
“End of the driveway and be ready ‘cause we’re going fast.”
“Midnight? If he catches us…”
“I know. He won’t.”
“Where’re we goin’?”
“You like the woods?”
“I never been out of the city any farther than the ‘burbs,” she said.
“You’ll love it,” he gave her fingers a squeeze and stood up. The world spun and for a moment Calvin thought he might fall right over. His knees were shaking. Nothing was going fast enough. He had to get out of here and get started. He stopped and looked down into eyes that made him feel encompassed. “Tie, this is going be awful.”
She half-turned her head away. “What do you mean?”
“I can’t tell you all of it now,” he said. “I don’t even know ever
ything myself yet, but saving this kid is going to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done. The ugliest.”
“You need my help?” she asked. “I’ll help.”
“Twelve o’clock, Tie.”