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“You said it all.”
“How come I thought I was waiting for you to say it? Say it.”
“The priest said—”
“I don’t want to hear what the priest said. Don’t blame him. What do you say?”
“The priest said,” she went on, as if not hearing me, “since I am now a member of his flock, that from now on I mustn’t have anything to do with married men.”
“What about unmarried men, what did he say about those?”
“We only talked ‘married.’ ”
“Now we’ve almost got it. What you are saying is that …” I figured swiftly, counting back. “Is that the Tuesday before the Tuesday before last was our last tossing-the-blanket pillow fight?”
“I guess so,” she said, miserably.
“You guess so?”
“Yes,” she said.
“And I’m not to see you again?”
“We can have lunch—”
“Lunch, after all those midnight banquets and delicatessen-appetite-inducing brunches and made-in-heaven snacks?”
“Don’t exaggerate.”
“Exaggerate? Hell, I’ve lived inside a tornado for three incredible years and never touched ground. There wasn’t a hair of my body that didn’t throw sparks if you touched me. I no sooner got out
your door with the sun going down every Tuesday than I wanted to charge back in and rip the paper off the walls, crying your name. Exaggerate? Exaggerate! Call the madhouse. Rent me a room!”
“You’ll get over it,” she said, lamely.
“Around about next July, maybe August. By Halloween I’ll be a basket case … So from now on, Helen, you’ll be seeing this Reilly, this father, this priest?”
“I don’t like you putting it that way.”
“He’ll be instructing you every Tuesday afternoon, right as rain, on the nose? Well, will he or won’t he?”
“Yes.”
“My God!” I got up and walked around, talking to the walls. “What a plot for a book, a movie, a TV sitcom. Woman, lacking courage, no guts, figures amazingly clever way to ditch her boyfriend. Can’t just say, Out, go, be gone. No. Can’t say, It’s over, it was nice but it’s over. No, sir. So she takes instruction and gets religion and uses the religion to call a halt and regain her virginity.”
“That’s not the way it was.”
“You mean to say you just happened to get religion and once you were inoculated it suddenly struck you to call the Goodwill to come get me?”
“I never—”
“Yes, you did. And it’s a perfect out. There’s no way around it. I’m trapped. My hands are tied. If I forced you to love me now, you’d be sinning against Reilly’s good advice. Lord, what a situation!”
I sat down again.
“Did you mention my name?”
“Not your name, no …”
