Like a Prayer

by Orangeblossom

Based on the 2009 "Angels and Demons" movie. In my AU the camerlengo isn't a total freakazoid, and when he's faced with his crisis of faith it's friendship that saves him. Or, "You mean there's a passageway between your apartment and the camerlengo's chambers — between Rome and Vatican City?"

3. Chapter 3

Like a Prayer

Chapter 3

I know my way around the soup kitchen's dishroom so I go straight in and start the hot water running into one of the sinks. I grab a plastic apron and rubber gloves, crank up the radio, and tackle the stock pots while singing along to an Italian Top 40 that's becoming increasingly familiar. The nice thing about this station is that every so often they throw in a song in English and then I can really go to town.

I'm just finishing the knives and cutting boards and wondering why no one's brought in any dishes from dinner service when Madonna's "True Blue" comes on and I give it all I've got.

"...no-whoa more sadness!' (wagging my finger back and forth) "I kiss it goodbye!" (miming blowing a kiss) "The sun is bursting right out of the sky!" (jazz hands, starting above my head and dropping to shoulder level and right leg stretching to the side) "I searched the whole world — " (waving the jazz hands as I rock from side to side)

"— excuse me!"

"— for someone like you — " I turn around and point.

At Father Patrick. I haven't run into him since Saturday night so of course it's him standing in the doorway to the dining room wearing a faded green bib apron and trying so hard not to laugh at me he can barely say, "When they told me there was a crazy American in the dishroom — "

"— you should have known it was me," I finish for him, my face turning bright red even as I'm laughing at myself.

He shakes his head, grinning. "I'll tell everyone it's safe to come in." He turns to go back to the dining room— and I notice he's wearing, not a cassock, but a clerical shirt and trousers, which show off the most stupendous ass I've ever seen. Who knew he was hiding that underneath his cassock?

Oh, bad Miri. Bad bad bad! I turn back to the sink and swipe at my forehead with my arm, and not just because of the steam from the dishwater.

Father Patrick comes back in with several high-schoolers trying to get their community service hours completed and a few tubs of dirty dishes. He explains to the kids that I'm not contagious while I kit them out in gloves and aprons and try not to hum, even under my breath. Father Patrick stays for a little while to give the kids moral support, and then he leaves me to my own devices.

I ask them the usual innocuous questions as we wash and dry and stack — if they know each other, where they go to school, if they've volunteered at the soup kitchen before, if they play any sports. By the end of dinner service they shyly wave goodbye as they leave — they might have their doubts about me, but at least they're polite.

I'm heading to the closet when I hear an Irish-accented voice behind me. "So you like Madonna, then."

You know, I don't think I've stopped blushing furiously when I'm with Father Patrick since I first discovered that darned tunnel. "Hey, Italy likes Madonna!" I defend myself. "I just sing along."

He nods, conceding the point. "I don't think I've seen — or heard — you volunteer here before, Miri."

Ha ha. "I've been working the breakfast shift but they said they thought they'd be short-handed tonight so I told them I'd come in for dinner."

Even though I'm all kinds of sweaty I pull on my jacket; the catcalls from Italian men with nothing better to do are bad enough but in a damp t-shirt I'm just asking for it. Father Patrick, who probably has never broken a sweat in his life, shrugs into a black suit jacket, and thank goodness — I don't think I could handle another glimpse of that dorsal fin of his. Then he puts on a black, flat-brimmed hat, the kind that looks picturesque on other priests but on him —

"You look crazy adorable in that hat, Father." I have no idea why I say these things out loud. And now I'm making him blush.

He informs me, "It's called a saturno — "

"Saturno."

"— and I don't believe you should be addressing the camerlengo in that manner."

"I know I shouldn't be," I admit, belatedly remembering I'm supposed to respect my elders.

We head out talking about the soup kitchen and he tells me about the other work they do with the homeless. But I'm surprised to notice the reaction to Father Patrick as we walk down the street. I was sort of expecting people to stop him, say "hello," ask him how he's doing, tell him about their family, just like people do with the priests back home. But here people nod at him so deeply they're almost bowing to him, and they pointedly give him a wide berth, and no one talks to him. (An interesting corollary to this is that no one talks to me, either, which is actually a relief. Not a single wolf whistle or "Bambina!" reaches my ears. Maybe when I want to run an errand I should just wait for a priest to walk by and draft behind him.) It makes me realize just how reverently Rome treats its priests and that when Father Patrick told me no one talks to him the way I do, he meant it literally.

I had no idea just how bad a Catholic I'm being. Boy, whoever's manning the confessional on Saturday is going to get an earful.

He seems surprised when we stop at my place, and then smiles to himself. "I've never seen the front of your building, Miri."

"Now you know what it looks like, you can take the shortcut back to your place anytime, Father."

"Do I get a key, then?"

I know he's teasing me but I assure him, "Of course! I'll get a set made tomorrow."

There's a box waiting for me outside my apartment, and Father Patrick, who had taken off his saturno when he'd entered the building, hands it to me so he can hoist the box into his arms. I go up on tiptoe to check the return address. "It's from Carolyn!" On the way to the kitchen I make sure to carefully place the saturno on the coffee table (I might not treat the priest with enough respect but I can at least respect the hat) and then I gleefully tear into the box.

"Oh, Carolyn, you are awesome!" She's sent me a charcoal-gray glazed ceramic tea pot and four matching charcoal-gray cups with a light autumn-orange interior glaze. "I don't know where she found it."

"Found what?"

"A tea set in San Francisco Giants colors." Then I look at Father Patrick, stricken. I'm supposed to be indifferent when it comes to sports. "Can I keep it, Father?" (Pleasepleaseplease is, I hope, implicit in my best pathetic puppy dog look.)

"Of course — " I give a little spring of joy and he laughs along with my relieved happiness. " — it's a gift from your sister and does no dishonor to any other team."

I spy among the bubble wrap some silver canisters of looseleaf tea. "Do you want to help inaugurate the tea set?"

He gives his schedule some thought. "Well, I'm not signed up for tonight's chess tournament ..."

He's not going to let me live that down, is he? Then I have a brilliant idea and shove the box at him. "Here, Father, you pick a tea and I'll make some brownies." I level a look at him, trying to shrug out of my jacket at the same time. "You can get serious about brownies, right?"

His answer is the speed with which he helps relieve me of my jacket to give me room to maneuver. When he comes back into the kitchen he watches as I plunk butter and baking chocolate into a pot and says, sounding a little puzzled, "I don't remember making brownies like that."

"How did you make them?"

"I would watch my mother bake and…she used powdered chocolate, not chocolate bars." He straightens. "I haven't thought about that in years."

The little Irish kid from the movies is back, all freckles and bright eyes, his elbows on the kitchen table and his face propped in his hands, watching as his mom measures out flour and cocoa powder in a sunlight-filled kitchen...

I look over at Father Patrick and see that his expression is a little dreamy. He's so cute. "Have you been back to Ireland since you moved here?"

He visibly comes back to the present. "No. My father thought it would be best if I simply made Italy my home. He's the wisest man I've ever known and I've had no reason to regret the decision."

So when he says he hasn't thought about his mother in years, he means since-he-was-adopted-and-moved-to-Italy years? Wow. "We can do a taste test, see if they're anything like your mom's."

"I doubt I could tell if they tasted like my mother's. It's been so long — "

"You'd be surprised, Father." I take the melted chocolate off the heat and stir in some sugar. "I remember one time my family went out for breakfast and I had some French toast off of Leo's plate and I just about burst into tears, it tasted exactly like the French toast our grandma used to make and she'd died over ten years before."

"What did Leo think?"

"He was too young to remember her French toast. But my dad agreed with me. And Carolyn did burst into tears. Poor Leo, we had to give him all our bacon to make up for eating his breakfast. But see?" I point my wooden spoon at the camerlengo, making my point. "Taste is a powerful memory, it can take you back just like that. You'll see."

I add eggs and vanilla to the chocolate and beat like crazy, while Father Patrick takes the wax wrapper from the stick of butter and smears it around the bottom and sides of the pan. "Don't forget the corners."

"I would never forget the corners."

I stir flour in with the chocolate and dump the batter into the pan Father Patrick's holding steady for me — the pan I didn't ask him to butter, but he did anyway. He must have done this as a kid helping his mom in the kitchen.

"No walnuts?" he asks, curious.

I'm horrified. "Heck no! I mean — Mom and Carolyn are deathly allergic to nuts, none of us cooks with them."

He's closer to the sink so I hand the pot and spoon to him. He gets a look in his eyes like he just might lick them both and I hastily turn away to put the brownies in the oven. Watching him lick anything is probably not a good idea.

I put the cow-spotted tea kettle on to boil while Father Patrick is unpacking the rest of Carolyn's care package when he pulls out two CDs. "Bach's 'Mass in B Minor'?"

"Those are from Mom," I explain. "The chorus I joined is singing the Mass and she thought it might help if I heard different recordings of it."

He looks them over critically. "Good choice. I like these both." He asks how rehearsal's going, and he commiserates with me on the difficulty of the piece (of course he's sung the Mass himself several times; is there anything Father Patrick doesn't do?) and offers me tips on how to approach the score. I take mental notes; no need to tell him it's the first time I've ever tried to sing anything classical and it's kicking my butt. But then he catches on that I can't read music.

He looks at me, incredulous. "How can you possibly sing a piece this complicated and not use the score, Miri?"

"I've got a cd with the alto part and I just listen to it over and over. Eventually I'll have it memorized. I mean, I can see in the score that the notes go up and down, but the names of the notes or — time signatures, intervals, major and minor chords? Nope."

"Wouldn't it be easier just to learn how to read music?"

The cow starts whistling and I shrug, turning off the burner. "I don't know. Would it?"

"Let's find out." He opens a canister of oolong. "I'll teach you."

I stare at him. "Do you sleep?"

"Please?"

"I mean, you work nine-to-five, plus overtime saying mass and hearing confessions, plus you do good works, plus you sing the great choral works, plus you read contemporary literature, plus you're going to teach me to read music? You must not need much sleep."

"Well, you do the same thing, work full-time all day and volunteer — "

"Oh, no, I'm not working yet! I start teaching in the fall, I came to Rome early to get acclimated. I sleep."

"So do I," he insists with a smile. "But I don't think anyone becomes a priest because they long for a desk job."

"Is that what the camerlengo does? Is?"

He follows me into the living room with the tea cups while I carefully balance the tea pot. "It's more than just a desk job, of course, and it's a position traditionally held by a cardinal, not a priest, so it's quite unusual that I was named to the post. But I still miss my other duties so I fit them in where I can."

He moves his saturno to the sofa and sits beside it so I scoot onto the armchair, and it isn't until we're sipping oolong with the coffee table between us that I realize we'd been in really, really close quarters in the kitchen. I need to stop doing that.

"Let's see if we can figure out a good time for your first music lesson," he says. "I'll be gone this weekend with the Aeronautica Militare — "

"— so between that and the article you're writing for the 'Journal of Applied Biblical Research and Methodology' and rehearsal with the Vatican String Quartet — "

"No, really."

He's serious? He's serious! My jaw literally drops. "You — the Aeronautica Militare? What?"

"When I was younger I wanted to serve my new country and my father told me to learn to fly," he explains. "I joined the Italian Air Force and flew helicopters, bringing the wounded back to hospital. I still train with them to keep my skills up, one weekend a month and two weeks a year. This weekend we'll be working on search and rescue."

Suddenly I see him in a flight suit, striding across the desert in slow-motion with Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum, the three of them grinning and smoking cigars after cheating death and saving the world. But that picture is so one-dimensional, it doesn't even begin to do justice to all the ways Father Patrick rocks and instead I see him —

"...Miri?"

"I'm sorry?"

"You get this look sometimes, like you're not here anymore. Where do you go?"

I pour more tea for myself and try to think of something plausible to say. I can't. And my face is red again. "I...go...to the movies. Someone says something and I make up a scene about it and it plays like a movie in my head."

He gives me the tolerant-but-amused look a long-suffering therapist would give a patient. "So what was the movie just now?"

I say slowly, "It was just starting." He nods for me to continue. "I was thinking about 'Young and Dangerous,' it's a movie about a group of teenagers who join a triad —"

"Triad?"

"Like the mafia, but Chinese."

"And how did you get from the Aeronautica Militare to 'Young and Dangerous'?"

"I was...trying to think of someone who equals how you serve in the Air Force and save peoples' souls at the same time and there's this character, Father Lam, he tells the teenagers that before he became a priest he was a triad member called Lethal Weapon and at first you don't know whether to believe him or not but later on when push comes to shove he busts out a kung fu kick to Ugly Kwan's head and— "

"Ugly Kwan is the bad guy?"

"Oh, yeah! Father Lam is nothing but righteous. Ugly Kwan definitely deserved the beat-down."

"And if your movie had played…?"

"I would have cast you as Father Lam. Donnie Yen would have backed you up. And the fight scene would have been longer."

He can't hold his laughter in any more "You know, I think I need to see this movie."

"I'll see if Mom can send a copy." Saying that makes me realize that this is all Mom's fault. If she hadn't raised me watching every movie under the sun, my imagination wouldn't be half as out of control as it is.

And by the time the oven timer goes off, we've figured out that I'll have Father Patrick all to myself Friday night. Oh boy.

When I pull the brownies out of the oven Father Patrick's right there with a knife. He wants these bad. "You're supposed to let them — " cool, I'm about to say, but he looks so disappointed. "Oh, go ahead, Father." The brownie doesn't come out cleanly but he's clearly happy with the mound of chocolate on his fish-shaped plate. He's courteous enough to scoop some out for me, too, before he dives in. I raise my eyebrows in question.

"It's delicious," he assures me. He devours it all before he elaborates, "But you're right, Miri — I do remember that my mother's brownies were different. They weren't as..."

"Fudgy?"

"Fudgy. They were more like chocolate cake."

"Know what? I'll email my dad and see if he has a brownie recipe that uses cocoa powder instead of baking chocolate. They'll probably be closer to your mom's."

"When? I mean, when will you email your father?"

"Tomorrow — I have to go to the café to send emails, I don't have internet access here yet."

"Send it from my computer," he offers.

"What, tonight?"

"Why not?"

How about I've already spent more time alone with him than I should and it'll probably be fodder for my fantasies about him for weeks to come?

On the other hand, there's something about this whole brownies-memory thing I want to help him with. I don't know what it was like to be a little kid and subject yourself to willful amnesia just so you could adjust to a whole new life and not make any trouble for your new dad, but if I can help him recover those good memories of his birth parents, I can't help thinking that would be a good thing.

"Sure, why not?"

I shovel half the cooling brownies onto his plate and charge down the stairs to the passageway with it, leaving him to pick up his hat and coat and follow. I want to be sure I'm walking in front of Father Patrick — staring at his behind all the way to his study doesn't make for pure and holy thoughts.

When we enter his study Father Patrick goes to put his coat and hat away and I can't immediately see a place to put down the brownies. Both the table by his comfy chair and his desk are covered with neatly-stacked books and papers and files (hey, maybe he is working on a biblical journal article!) except for the space allotted to a surprisingly modern-looking desktop computer. When Father Patrick comes back into the room he logs himself onto the computer and turns it over to me, then takes the brownies someplace safe. Where a glass of cold milk is probably involved.

I'm pretty sure I know how my dad will react to getting an email from the Vatican so in the subject line I type, "Hey Pops, it's Miri" and I start the message itself with "No, I'm not in trouble."

In the meantime, Father Patrick has dug up something for me, and when I turn around from his desk he hands me a book with the title "Destructive Emotions: How Can We Overcome Them? A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama."

"Cardinal O'Connor just returned this to me. I thought it might be helpful as you work through your lists of people you like and dislike, another way to think about what it is you're trying to do."

Why is he so nice to me? Why does he care so much? "Thanks, Father. It looks really interesting." That sounds lame, but it's just that I'm a little stunned. "I really appreciate you thinking of me like that."

He smiles at me. "You're welcome."

We shake hands. And I hightail it out of there. As I walk down the passageway back to my place, turning off the lights as I go, my feet get heavier and heavier until when I reach my stairs I just plunk myself down on the bottom step. I rest "Destructive Emotions" across my knees, my elbows on top of it and my chin in my hands, and stare back down the darkened passageway towards Vatican City. It's all too awful. I mean, I like Father Patrick. He's a good man, super nice, really kind, and so holy. But how can he be so holy and so hot at the same time?

If he were just some guy I was interested in this would be perfect; we loan each other books, he's going to teach me to read music, we volunteer at the same soup kitchen — there's a tunnel between his place and mine! I'd have ample opportunity to flirt with him. But Father Patrick is Captain Kirk.

And not just because he's unattainable, but because he's totally unaware of me as a woman. Captain Kirk never looked at Yeoman Rand's legs; I know Father Patrick's not looking at mine. He's not being driven crazy by thoughts of me; he's probably brushed, flossed, in his jammies (now there's a mental image... cut it out, Miri!) and sleeping the sleep of the perfectly unbothered. It would never occur to him that I'm attracted to him, because he's not attracted to me. I'm just a soul to him.

So the plan is — be his friend. Make him brownies. Keep it light. Don't get mesmerized by his smile or his accent or that look in his eyes when he's feeling mischievous. And stop checking out his ass.

And on that virtuous note I turn out the last light, climb the stairs, and take myself to bed.

end Chapter 3