Читать книгу Everyday Ghosts - James Morrison - Страница 8

They took their meals in silence, side by side at tables for two, each one facing the crucifix at the front of the room. One day Pete felt Brother Dominic’s knee pressing against his under the table. He thought it had gone on too long to be an accident, but he couldn’t be sure until Brother Dominic came to his door after midnight. He kept coming every week or two. It did not feel like sin. Brother Dominic never sat at his table again. There was no way of knowing when he would appear at night, or when he would not. Once there was a commotion in the hall outside Pete’s cell and they thought they had been found out, but it was only Brother Walter streaking past.

Brother Dominic had a right to be vain, and he was. He had been a movie star as a teenager, playing a boy genius in a series of popular films two decades before. Years of drug abuse followed, but he looked no worse for the wear. He seemed vexed that Pete had never heard of him, but his disappointment was short-lived. Pete tried to make him feel better by telling him that anyone could see he was still handsome enough to be a movie star. In fact, the word Pete used was beautiful. Brother Dominic ignored him. The only compliments he accepted were the ones he paid himself.

They did not talk much, but when they did, no matter what the subject, Brother Dominic brought it back to his past career.

“I feel like I’ve been waiting for something my whole life,” Pete remarked one night, in a philosophical mood. “But I don’t know what it is.”

“Try working in Hollywood,” said Brother Dominic. “An hour a day in front of the camera and the rest of the time sitting around your dressing room waiting for your call. Now that’s waiting.”

This sort of thing made him difficult to talk to.

They were what Pete had been running from, these feelings, yet here they were again. He should have been more afraid of them here, for if they followed him here, even here, it must mean they would never go away. But somehow he was less afraid, not more. He even got up the courage, one night as Brother Dominic was leaving, to ask, “Do you love me?”

Brother Dominic finished pulling his robe over his head and stood staring into what would have been a great distance, if the walls of Pete’s little cell had not closed it off. Finally he answered. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

That was when Pete knew he would have to return to the world.