Five

I felt nothing. It was like here was this big, open secret that everyone with a religion understood, but here I was feeling no inspiration, no call of duty, no community. I was an outcast. I walked forward to the first pew and sat down where Maggie's mother had watched her only daughter marry at age 37. No one I knew got married as young as I did. Everyone I knew waited until they were 30, 35, 40. Their careers came first. I had a baby at 30, and my career ended.

I heard footsteps behind me. It was one of the priests. "The wedding party has departed," he said.

"I'm sorry," I responded. "I didn't mean to be in the way; It's a beautiful, beautiful chapel."

"I'm about to turn off most of the lights, until our afternoon ceremony," he said. "We like to save on the power bill, but the altar lights stay on. If you'd like to stay, I don't mind."

"Thank you," I responded.

Thirty more minutes passed with me staring at the carved Jesus behind the pulpit. I suddenly felt calmer than I had in the last 24 hours.

"What are you thinking about?" a voice asked quietly from above.

I looked up to find Lover was in the balcony staring down at me.

"My head is empty," I said. "You?"

"I miss you," he said.

I looked at my feet and sighed. Several moments of silence passed before he spoke again.

"You know, my whole life, I loved and hated this place," he said casually. "I was raised Catholic, and all I could think about as I was undoing all of its guilt and restrictiveness in my twenties was how much I loved this room. I always wondered if making love in here would be an expression of my appreciation for the building or an affront to God."

"I'm pretty sure the church would find that offensive and you'd end up repenting for it for a good long time. But then again, that's what jail time is good for, if they called the police. And even if you did get away with it, you might have just earned a one-way ticket to hell," I said.

"Yeah, but if all that Catholic mythology is true, I'm going there anyway," he said laughing. "But think of it, Christianity is supposed to be this all-loving religion. God loves you no matter what. God wants to you be good to your neighbors and go forth in peace. Why wouldn't he look at making love on an altar built to honor him as a kind of physical sacrifice, in fact a particularly joyous one on his behalf?"

"Hey, if you can get Emilie to go for it, you're all good," I said. "I'm pretty sure given our relationship, and one of the commandments being not to covet the other's wife, or in my case husband, that we'd burn up on the spot."

"Are you Catholic?" he asked.

"No," I answered. "I'm just curious." I stood up and walked toward the altar. I stepped up into the pulpit and looked out at the hundreds of pews facing me. Giving sermons in front of a packed church had to make a priest feel like a kind of rock star.

Lover was making his way down one of the spiral staircases toward me. He stopped and stood in the middle of the aisle next to the pew I had been sitting in.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry that this happened."

"It's what I get for needing to be emotionally attached to someone before I'm able to be physical with them," I muttered. "It's no one else's fault but mine."

Suddenly the lights all turned off except for the spotlights illuminating Jesus' head behind me.

"How emotionally attached are you?" Lover asked quietly.

This was a conversation we always avoided. We talked about our emotional connection as a list of things we were attracted to or things that we appreciated about one another. We never used, "I love you." I don't know if it's because we regard those words as too important or because we think they're said too much.

I stared at him for a moment. I couldn't find the words. So I decided to show him. I climbed down out of the pulpit, made eye contact with him and slowly slipped my shirt over my head. Then I pulled my skirt down, so I was standing at the altar in my underwear and heels.

Lover looked around the room cautiously before meeting my eyes again. He was captivated by my reckless behavior. I spent my life as a good girl. Good girls don't get naked in church. I wasn't "that kind" of girl, but apparently, for him, I could be.

I opened my bra from the front clasp and peeled it off my shoulders. Then I gripped onto the side of the pulpit with one hand and slowly bent at the waist to take off my left shoe and then my right. Finally, I pulled my panties down to the floor and I stood there naked before him, before the church, before whatever God that was watching and in front of a very, very old sculpture of Jesus. I was vulnerable to so many things in that moment, and I was standing on my own offering all of myself to him. This was my religion.

"This is how emotionally attached I am," I said. "Now make love to me before we get arrested."

In a flash, Lover's clothes were piled next to mine. He moved the books that were on the large podium in the pulpit to the floor and then gently picked me up and put me in their former place. Underneath the pulpit was a step stool for speakers. Lover stood on it so that our hips were matched, and then he sunk his penis into my warm, wet flesh. We kissed while he moved in and out. Then I bent backwards, in an arch, so my head hung in front of the pulpit. My breasts reached toward the ceiling and my hair hung down.

The inversion made blood pool in my head. Lover sucked at my right breast and I moaned louder than I meant to. Something creaked in the back of the church and a cello started to play Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in D Major very softly from the hallway. Lover stopped moving to look around the room.

"No," I said. "Don't stop. Just go with the music."

It was the saddest, sweetest sex I'd ever had in my life. After he came and the music ended, I sat up and kissed him. I tried to lower myself off of the pulpit, but he put his hand on my shoulder to stop me.

"Lean back again," he requested. I arched again feeling the blood rush back to my head. Lover's soft penis was still inside of me. He rubbed my clit a bit and nibbled at my breasts. "Imagine the room full of people watching you," he said. "Imagine I'm giving the sermon. Imagine the sermon is about how to pleasure a woman. Think of yourself as a nude model in a figure drawing class. Thousands of people are watching as I give instructions. Men and women are kneeling not toward me in worship, but toward their lovers. It's a room full of women with their feet kicked up on the pew in front of them, lover's head and hands buried between their legs following my every instruction."

His penis had come out during his description. He inserted two fingers into me and turned them up. He moved them back and forth over my g spot as if he was motioning me over to him.

"Lover," I moaned. "We don't have time—"

"Hush." He sucked on my nipple, and I felt the urge to orgasm build up. "There's always time for this," he said. He moved his fingers faster, bent down and flicked his long, warm tongue over my clit. "Come for me, ma biche. Show the congregation how it's done. Come for me—right—now."

I bit onto my hand to stop from crying out in pleasure as my body started to violently spasm. Lover's right hand kept stroking me, while his left supported my weight on the podium. When I was done, I pulled myself up to a sitting position using his shoulders to steady myself and kissed him again. My cheeks were hot with blood, but I felt like we should hurry and get out of there. As I slid off the podium, into his arms and onto my feet in front of him he kissed me on the nose. He was smiling at me as a man who'd finally accomplished a life-long fantasy. It was like his Christmas morning.

I bent over, fetched his shirt and handed it up to him. He pulled it over his head, while I got on my knees and put my mouth around his soft penis, giving him a quick bath with my warm tongue.

Then I got dressed. As I stood after putting on my shoes, I felt drops of his semen slide out of me onto my underwear. It was like a little reminder of where he'd been and what we'd done.

When we were both ready, I led him back through the church and out the side door where I had entered. We walked quietly together to the reception not saying anything.

When we got to the party, he sat with Emilie four tables over from me laughing and chatting with their long-time family friends.

I sat alone, next to Maggie's Grandmother Parker, listening to her complain about having to walk three flights of stairs up to the reception room at the inn.

I watched as Lover danced slowly with his wife. Emilie drank too much champagne and was out on the floor doing everything from the Bunny Hop to the Electric Slide. I couldn't eat my lunch watching them, so I gave my meal to Grandmother Parker, who was more than happy to steal as many shrimp cocktails as she could get her hands on. Finally, I excused myself to the bar. I ordered a vodka martini and sat making small talk with the bartender. It was an honest attempt to not feel like I was stalking Lover. But life is cruel, and shortly after I started to feel better about attending the reception, Emilie sat down on the barstool next to me.

"I'm glad you're feeling better," she said. "I was so worried when you had to go home early from the cookout yesterday. But then we saw you walk in the church, you looked so much better. In fact you look, what was my husband's word? — Stunning."

I swallowed a large gulp of my drink. "Thank you," I said. Normally, I would feel the need to flee, but I sat still.

"Why don't I entertain the old bat for a while at your table. You should dance at least once. Take my husband, he won't mind."

She had no idea what I'd already taken from her husband that day. But this was the last time I was going to be able to see him, until who knows when. So I took the opportunity to be forward, more like myself than this sad, pathetic creature at the bar.

I approached Lover at his table and slid into Emilie's seat. Then calmly I said, "Your wife told me to ask you to dance."

Lover gave a slight nod of consideration before he put his flute to his lips and took a sip of champagne. "Well, then, we better do what she wants."

He stood, offered me his hand, which I took, and led me out onto the dance floor. I put my left hand on his shoulder, and he held my right hand gently. We were close, but not too close. We chatted like people getting to know each other would. He made me laugh. His eyes were fun and loving. They were tender and enthusiastic. Then at the end of the dance, he looked me dead in the eyes as the music stopped. It was an intense gaze of a dominant animal. It said that he was seconds away from either devouring me or bending me over the head table and mounting me. I wasn't sure which would be worse.

Like a good girl, I backed away. I excused myself to go pass on my best wishes to Maggie and Guy, and I let go of his hand before he let go of mine.

When I left, Lover and Emilie were sitting together at their table again. Emilie was feeding a piece of wedding cake to Lover. He smiled at her, but his eyes were flitting around the room when she wasn't looking at him. He was looking for me.

He found me at the stairs. I gave him a small smile and lifted my hand to say goodbye. He furrowed his eyebrows and mouthed, "Tonight?"

I shook my head no. His whole face fell in disappointment for several seconds. Then his features suddenly looked softer, more hopeful. He watched Emilie deep in conversation with the couple next to them out of the corner of his eye. Then he raised his glass to his mouth on her side and mouthed, "I miss you" behind it.

I nodded my head in appreciation of his declaration, even if I couldn't hear it. Then I fled down the stairs, out the door, down the street and to my hotel. I packed as quickly as possible while I called to change my flight.

I sat on a nearly full flight headed back to the states. I leaned back in my chair and stared out the window. I had been in Montreal for a little over 24 hours, and in those hours I felt I had found myself and lost myself all at the same time. As the plane took off, I stared at the city below. Then some minutes later, I put my earbuds in and let the music wash over me until I felt numb.