He’d been friendly enough, not peremptory or arrogant or overly familiar, as priests could be. In fact, there was an unusual quality to this priest – a kind of depth, a seriousness that Marco was unused to. It was almost un-nerving.
“These are your children?” the priest had asked, a typical enough question. But the American had taken note of the pain in Marco’s eyes when he’d attempted to answer jovially in the affirmative.
Not that he’d said anything untoward. But Marco saw that the priest perceived his pain, which was both embarrassing and oddly infuriating. Feeling suddenly defensive, he found himself, to his great annoyance, talking about his divorce.
How angry he was, how little control he had. How he was alone at Christmas, because that bitch – sorry Padre, but you know what I mean – refused him access to his own children. All of this, mind you, before his espresso.
What he didn’t say, of course, because it was none of the priest’s business, was that the divorce had come because of his affair with Flaminia, the personal trainer at his gym, who’d left him with an empty wallet and a sexually transmitted disease which he had neglected to mention to any of his subsequent lovers.
He declined to mention his online porn habit, or that he was keeping three sets of books at the shop – one for the tax man, one for his greedy ex-wife and the real one, for him alone.
Marco didn’t go into the fact that when his son no longer wanted to see him or even speak with him by phone, he began to hate everyone and everything. That the Devil had bitten deeply into Marco and was steering his life was something that Marco didn’t see.
But the strange priest did. For, unbeknownst to Marco, who sat watching the retreating figure of the priest making his way up the busy street, Father Paul Corinth was not a typical cleric.
Indeed, Father Paul had a highly unusual job. He was the Pope’s exorcist, newly arrived back in Rome. And that morning he was on his way to start his new job, one that he wasn’t at all sure he was capable
of handling.
CHAPTER 2
Gina Pirisi looked at her reflection critically in the mirror. Her thick, long hair had once been smooth -- a dark, chocolate brown. Today its luxurious Italian length was streaked with permanent chemicals, the frazzled ends bearing a strong resemblance to straw.
Gina’s hair was just one casualty of the days she had been with Marco. Gina often thought that he fancied himself to be living the life of the MTV he watched obsessively, where American mega-stars and Italian crooners took turns singing the virtues of hedonism and passion on flat screen TVs mounted a few
inches from the noses of his
neighborhood clientele.
REGINA | 95
One or two, however, were members of a student political group which had recently morphed from a radical Marxist to a Sexual Left position. It was their leader, a girl whose mother was the most prominent breast cancer surgeon in America, who decided to mock Pat in public for his father’s predicament.
The contemptuous words ‘fascist pig’ were barely spat out of her mouth before Pat lost control of himself, lunging for the girl in a blind fury – and this in full view of horrified teachers and students. In the resulting melee, Michelle was told, her son had accused the girl’s mother of being a ‘ghoul, profiting from the hapless victims of Big Pharma’ and called the girl herself names that Michelle was sure were not normally bandied about in those elite environs.
Net, net, Pat had been expelled. When he arrived in Dallas, Michelle was too overwhelmed to argue with her son about finding another private school.
For his part, he’d had it, Pat said grimly. Returning home, he’d immersed himself in a Catholic homeschooling program which concentrated on the Great Books and refused to listen to his mother’s arguments in favor of more conventional schooling.
He could do this schoolwork anywhere, he’d argued, pointing out with some justification that their luxury apartment residence in Dallas was a temporary one. But he’d been unable to bring himself to visit his father in the prison, despite his mother’s entreaties. It made him too angry, he told her.
Dyson soothed her distress about this when they met at the prison in a bare room outfitted for a ‘conjugal visit.’
On her first visit, Michelle had stared in disbelief at the queen-sized bed made up with prison-issued regulation linens. Dyson watched her face register shock and comprehension.
“Is that what I think it’s for?” she stage-whispered as a guard with a carefully-composed expression took his leave of them.
Dyson nodded soberly.
“Are they outta their minds?” she spoke her question aloud without thinking. Dyson grinned at her and after a moment, they both laughed. It was the first time that Michelle had any inkling that they might actually survive this ordeal.
She placed the books she’d brought Dyson on the bedside table. The guards hadn’t registered any emotion as they checked through them: St Augustine’s The City of God and his Confessions, and a collection of the Lives of the Western Fathers edited by Christopher Dawson.
As a low-risk prisoner with no history of violence, Dyson was permitted plenty of leeway, including religious reading material.
“I’ll bet you’re the only one reading,” she’d said slyly, handing him
the Confessions.