Chapter 10
As we left the train station in Rome, our outfits and reverent demeanor served as a force field.
Strangers would automatically cede the sidewalk, in a city that was noisily crowded, sunlit, and visually stunning.
Since I’d never been outside the States, Rome became cinematic, remembered as the backdrop for so many films, from Fellini to every romantic comedy in which the heroine visits the Trevi Fountain or the Spanish Steps, map in hand, only to trip and fall into the arms of some swarthy, flashing-eyed local who’ll either change her life, causing her to break up with her stuffy American fiancé (Chad, Tad, or Brad) over a long-distance phone call, or simply introduce her to the forbidden tingles of pasta, head-snapping motorbike rides around the Colosseum, and even sex, as indicated by a melting kiss on a palazzo balcony and a close-up of morning cappuccinos.
While lecturing myself to stay pure-minded and prayerful, my eyes raced ahead, savoring each crumbling column and awninged trattoria.
Whatever else was transpiring, I was in Rome, goddamnit, fancying myself in a crisply striped cotton sundress, twirling at the center of a piazza, tossing my silly straw hat high into the air, very Mary Tyler Moore meets Three Coins in the Fountain, meets a three-episode arc of Sex and the City in which Carrie meets a married Sicilian novelist, Samantha beds a pizza chef, and Miranda gets her Fendi purse, a gift to herself upon making partner at her law firm, stolen by a gondolier on a day trip to Venice.
Reggie got us a cab that, after a death race through traffic, deposited us at a white-plastered building with small square windows and an oak door with ironwork hinges.
“We’re staying in a Vatican guesthouse, with other visiting priests,” said Reggie. “It’s like a summer share on Fire Island, only with fewer inhibitions.”
We ate a silent, meager dinner at a long, rough-hewn wooden table with a group of clerics from around the world, everyone keeping their eyes on their pockmarked metal bowls of soup and chunks of a dark, tasty bread.
When I’d glance up, and accidentally catch someone’s eye, the other priest would quickly look away, from either modesty or gay bar snobbism.
Getting sexually rejected by priests was a new low, even for me, or maybe everyone was just being polite and circumspect.
Even more than at the White House or in my flight attendant’s uniform, this was a deeply undercover assignment.
Reggie had asked me to lose my Irish accent (“I keep waiting for you to say ‘begorrah’ or mispronounce ‘Cillian Murphy’ ”) and stay alert for anyone out of place, because “Parnassus will do whatever it takes to undermine Reata.”
By 9 p.m., we’d been brought to an unadorned barracks-like room with six narrow cast-iron beds.
We’d stowed our few belongings in battered cabinets, and soon wore only T-shirts and billowing cotton shorts.
Our dorm-mates wore similarly blameless underwear, although I’d been hoping for some one-piece Mormon-style chastity garments.
As everyone sat on their beds, preparing for sleep, a few of the guys checked their phones, a weirdly irreligious move.
What were they looking for? TikTok memes of funny miracles?
(“Look, it’s the prophet Isaiah rollerblading into a tree!
”) Was there a liturgical hookup app called Fathr?
I ostentatiously skimmed a Bible Reggie had given me, as if checking the index for the parts about me.
Actually, with names like Mark, Luke, and Philip, the apostles might’ve been attending the Last Brunch.
As I paged through Ecclesiastes, which sounds like the next Pilates, a Venezuelan priest only a bit older than me asked, “What are you studying? Which gospel?”
“I’m catching up on Moses,” I said, since Moses was a biblical figure I could remember.
“Moses?” the Venezuelan asked. “The Jew?”
My point of reference was The Prince of Egypt, the animated film in which Val Kilmer voices the stalwart young Hebrew, with Michelle Pfeiffer as his wife Tzipporah and Sandra Bullock spunkily playing his sister Miriam; this casting wasn’t just cultural appropriation but a gentile hijacking.
“I love Moses,” I said.
“Do you remember ‘When You Believe’?” asked a young Polish priest.
“From the Prince of Egypt soundtrack?” echoed a middle-aged English parson still in suspiciously good shape. “I adore that song, because it was the only duet ever between Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston. The heavens opened.”
“All the characters in that movie had those tiny little noses,” said an older gentleman from Australia. “Just two dots, like semicolons. So Disney.”
“Except Prince of Egypt was from DreamWorks,” corrected the Polish priest, who I was now calling Sister Mary Know-It-All.
“Did anyone see that Mel Gibson thing, The Passion of the Christ?” asked the Venezuelan.
“Oh, honey,” said the Englishman, “pure crucifixion porn.”
“Although Jim Caviezel was cute,” said the Polish priest. “I like a yummy savior.”
Reggie looked stunned by the conversation I’d triggered, as the English priest added, “Willem Dafoe was fabulous in Scorsese’s Last Temptation of Christ. And I know we weren’t supposed to notice, but Willem wasn’t just hanging on that cross—he was hung.”
“What would be your last temptation?” posited a nearby Jesuit.
“Fettuccine Alfredo,” said the Venezuelan.
“The seaweed wraps at this spa in Portofino,” decided the Australian.
“Austin Butler and Ben Whishaw as wartime buddies who share a tender night of love that they’ll never forget, in a bombed-out Normandy farmhouse,” suggested the Englishman. “With partially destroyed walls and a dusty bottle of cabernet.”
The Venezuelan fanned himself, the Polish priest did three snaps up, and the Jesuit enacted a chef’s kiss.
For a fleeting second I thought—maybe I could become a priest. But before I could highlight my performance as Herod, the snazzy gay role, in my high school production of Jesus Christ Superstar, a member of the guesthouse staff leaned into the room, shut off the lights, and murmured, “Go to sleep, ladies.” I was close to cuing the barbershop harmony of “Good Night, Ladies” from Music Man, but I heard Satan cackle.
The next morning, as Reggie and I showered in a mildewy chamber with minimally separated cubicles, I noticed, as I’d suspected, that Reggie had retained much of his Navy SEAL physique.
He was burly, with a massive chest, and I scolded myself, because the man I’d most recently been involved with was missing, I was still conducting a fictional affair with Dr. Huron, and I had to concentrate on finding the diamond.
But Reggie caught me appreciating him, and rolled his eyes, obviously accustomed to hungry glances from novice priests.
“We’re here for an audience with His Holiness,” Reggie told me, once we were dressed and crossing the square facing St. Peter’s Basilica, beside busloads of tourists.
It was like CatholicCon, a gathering of the faithful at their most esteemed shrine.
Upon entering the cathedral itself, I became dizzy, my legs barely supporting me, as the architecture was staggeringly sumptuous, a visual tornado of marble acreage, multiple side chapels, and a torrent of gilding.
Whatever I believed in, the cathedral was overwhelming me with a sense of what human beings are capable of in the pursuit of beauty.
I challenge anyone, of any faith or lack thereof, to resist being awed by this gargantuanly theatrical majesty.
“It’s gorgeous,” I said to Reggie.
“It gets me every time,” Reggie replied.
Reggie touched my arm so I wouldn’t topple over, as I faced Michelangelo’s Pietà, both a religious icon and a shockingly realistic and superbly executed work of art.
Encountering genius, all I could think was—How did Michelangelo manage this?
Where did he begin? How can I thank him?
Everywhere I turned there were bundles of radiantly hovering, rosy-cheeked cherubs, fully winged angels, and rows of stately, gleaming oak pews.
“Come on,” said Reggie, tugging me along. “We’re late.”
Because the Tuxedo Society was underwriting my visit, I wasn’t here to gawk, but I kept turning back to take in one more towering archway and the light itself, streaming in through an oculus many stories above onto the inlaid floors.
These shafts of sunshine had a sharp-edged, pictorial quality, as in the kitschiest oil paintings, except they were real.
St. Peter’s exists as a set for the grandest opera, as a thrillingly monumental proof of God’s existence, or maybe as a collaboration between humanity and some divine interior decorator.
Reggie led us through mazelike hallways, the walls filled with exquisitely rendered Madonnas and other haloed figures; as a kid, I’d thought these people were wearing golden pie plates around their heads.
We passed velvet-curtained, mullioned windows overlooking lushly planted courtyards, and climbed wide marble staircases, as if trapped in an Escher engraving, infinitely twisting.
There was a musty authority to the premises, reminiscent of those grand, heavily ornamented turn-of-the-last-century apartment buildings on the Upper West Side, called things like the Ansonia and the Apthorp, occupied by the very wealthy.