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We sit silent for a while. I’m looking at her hard, too interested, so I make myself look away.
“Do I make you self-conscious?” she asks gently.
That turns me red. “It’s not you. It’s me. You look awfully good. It’s just me.”
“That’s sweet.” Now she’s doing the looking away, cheeks a little red, and when she looks back, she says, “Any idea why God would really want him killed?”
“None whatsoever.”
“But you’ve still got to do it.”
“There was this promise.”
“I know.”
“You do?”
“Sure. If you do it, He’ll forgive everything. They offered me that too if I helped you.”
“And you said no?”
“Yes.”
She loves this guy—this vampire—this son of You-Know-Who—so much she’ll turn down an offer like that? Now I’m really looking at her. She’s not just beautiful, she’s got coglioni. She’ll stand up to God for love.
I’m thinking these things and also wondering whether the angel lied about her because maybe she stiffed him. Because he’s the vindictive one.
“There’s nothing I can say to stop you?” she’s asking. She doesn’t say “nothing I can do.” She says “nothing I can say,” and that’s all the difference in the world.
“Wish there were, but there isn’t. Where is he?”
“You know.”
“Yeah, I guess I do. He’s in the Vatican somewhere trying to convince those Jesuit vampires that it’s okay if he turns.”
“That’s where he said he was going when he left a week ago, so I’m sure it’s true. Like I said, he—”
“Never lies. I know.”
I get up.
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
I’m depressed when I get to Rome and not
because the city is big and noisy and feels like L.A. (My dad’s people were from Calabria and they never had a good thing to say about Romani, so I’m biased.) It’s because—well, just because. But when I reach the Vatican, I feel a lot better. Now this—this is beautiful. St. Peter’s. The church, the square, marble everywhere, sunlight blinding you like the flashlight of God. Even the silly little Fiats going round and round the circle like they’re trapped and can’t get off are nice.
He’s not going to be in the basilica, I know. That’s where the Pope is—that new strict guy, Benedict—and it’s visiting day, dispensations, blessings, the rest. I don’t even try to go through the main Vatican doorway on the opposite side. Too many tourists there, too. Instead I go to a side entrance, Via Gerini, where there’s no one. Construction cones, sidewalk repair, a big door with carvings on it. Why this entrance, I don’t know. Just a hunch.
I know God can open any door for me that He wants to, so if my hunch is right why isn’t the door opening? Maybe there’ll be a mark on the right door—you know, a shadow that looks like the face of Our Lady, or the number 333, something—but before I can check the door for a sign, something starts flapping above my head and scares the shit out of me. I think it’s a bat at first—that would make sense—but it’s just a pigeon. No, a dove. Doves are smaller and pigeons aren’t this white.
I know my employer thinks I’m slow, but a white dove?
The idiot bird keeps flapping two feet from my head and now I see it—a twig of something in its beak. I don’t want to know.
The bird flies off, stops, hovers, and waits. I’m supposed to follow, so I do.
