If You Eat, You Never Die by Tony Romano

Author:Tony Romano
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-09-12T16:00:00+00:00

Silences

J IM CUMMINGS DROVE AROUND IN CIRCLES, the back of his neck burning, the throbbing in his head now slow and steady. It wasn’t the beer, he knew. He wished to God it were. Hours earlier at his bachelor party, he had climbed onto a hooker. His skin crawled now at the thought of it. What had he been thinking? He spat out the window. Spat again. Suddenly two yellow beams of light washed over him, and in an instant swerved away. He pressed hard on the horn, the blare cutting through the August stillness. He cussed the bastard.

He pulled in front of his apartment, looked up at the darkened third-floor window. Six months before, he and his fiancée, Teri, and his best-man-to-be, Rick, had lugged furniture up the three flights of stairs. After Rick left, he and Teri had collapsed to the floor in exhaustion, rolled playfully on top of each other, excited and scared, and made love to each other for the first time. It had been Teri’s first time ever.

How many other parties had the hooker worked tonight? he wondered. He started the car again and peeled it away from the curb, almost hitting the parked van in front of him. When he got to Teri’s house, he didn’t dare glance at her bedroom window and didn’t slow the car. He drove a few more blocks to the church where they would be married, pulled into the lot, and parked. He stared blankly at the rectory where he and Teri had filled out forms at eight that evening, just seven hours ago. He hadn’t been in a rectory since his altar boy days in eighth grade. Sitting close to Teri, waiting for Father Rourke, who would pronounce them married in two weeks, he had been struck by the old schoolboy emotions of awe and fear for the place.

He had leaned over and whispered, “What do you think he’s going to ask us?”

She pushed him away playfully. “Why are you whispering?”

He laughed, a bit disappointed that she wasn’t as awestruck with the rectory as he was.

She squeezed his hand. “Are you nervous?” she asked.

“A little.”

“Relax. All he’ll want to know is how many times you’ve disobeyed your parents in the past three months, how often you’ve lied to me, and how many people you’ve murdered.”

He nodded knowingly. “Exactly.”

They had both attended Catholic schools in the city, had recited the same confessions. He remembered the nuns, how they would wait outside the church confessionals and review beforehand the common sins on their checklists with each boy and girl.

Sometimes they would unsheath red pens from dark places beneath their habits, warning that what they wrote in their blue books would “go on your records forever.” He imagined Father Rourke calling St. Columbkille, requesting the records. “So, James,” he’d say. “About the time you demolished the milkman’s truck, how many Our Fathers did you recite for that? Or what about that Halloween night when you broke the third-floor window with an

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