It seemed to Foy like people treated him differently in the weeks after the wedding prank. It seemed like people were quieter around him now that they knew he used to be a priest. More respectful but also more distant.

It’s probably just me. I always think people are paying more attention to me than they are. I always think people are looking at me and they aren’t. People don’t care about you or think about you nearly as much as you think. It’s probably just me.

At least once a week a group from the office would go to a local bar after work. Mostly the single people. During happy hour they smoked and drank and got bawdy and laughed a lot. They cut loose. Happy hour was like a miniature weekend that surprised everyone when it appeared in the middle of the week. Foy had been on one of these outings. He was uncomfortable, not because he had a problem with the booze and cigarettes and loose talk, but he never learned to do any of that stuff. He noticed that he hadn’t been invited again.

Yeah, but I never got invited that much anyway. Only the once and I didn’t really like it. It’s just me.

But it still bothered him.

Chuck called him “Father Foy” now, which he hated. But he instinctively knew that if he reacted to this, it might become a general nickname that everyone used. So he just smiled and ignored it. Chuck caught him in the break room one afternoon.

“Father Foy! Just the guy. I got something I wanna ask you.”

“Okay.”

“If God is supposed to be good and loving and all that. And powerful, you know, he can do whatever. If he’s all love and everything - loves the little children of the world, red and black and yellow and white…”

Chuck paused, as if he felt that Foy might need a moment to digest these deep thoughts.

“If that’s the case, then why is there so much evil and suffering in the world? Why doesn’t God do anything about it?”

He looked at Foy, waiting for a response, looking like the captain of the debate team who had just dropped a bombshell and was waiting for a rebuttal.

How many times have I had this conversation? 1000 times?

Foy exhaled loudly. “Man, I don’t know. I’m not a minister anymore. I don’t…nobody knows the answer to that. If you can figure that out you can write a book and make millions.”

Chuck looked triumphant. “See, that’s what I’m saying. That’s why I don’t go to church. It just doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t figure. It’s just bullshit and people wanting money. Those preachers. That’s all they want.”

He paused. “Present company excluded of course.”

Foy was a master at manufacturing a smile, but his attempt to force a smile onto his face was an abysmal failure. There was no hiding his disgust.

“Yeah, I gotta go.”

He left the break room. He looked back in case Chuck was worried about whether or not his feelings were hurt, what with that smile and leaving quickly. But Chuck had already turned to someone else and was talking.

How can people not see how people feel? Why do I have to see it? Everything. I see every twitch on their faces. Every move that means anything.

One afternoon he got an email from someone named Paul. He couldn’t remember meeting him, but it came from within the office. It was in all caps, which made him wince.

MY COUSIN CLAUDE IS WONDERING ABOUT GETTING AN ANNULMENT. HE MARRIED THIS WOMAN THAT HE WAS GOING OUT WITH, BUT SHE’S TURNED OUT TO BE A TOTAL PSYCHO. THEY MADE THE MARRIAGE OFFICIAL, IF YOU KNOW WHAT I’M SAYING, BUT THEY WERE ALREADY SO IT’S NOT LIKE ANYTHING IS REALLY DIFFERENT. HE WANTS TO KNOW IF HE SHOULD JUST GO STRAIGHT TO HIS PRIEST AND ASK ABOUT IT, OR IS THERE SOME CHURCH OFFICIAL HE SHOULD TALK TO.

Foy punched the caps lock on his keyboard.

I DON’T KNOW. I’M NOT CATHOLIC AND I’M NOT A PRIEST. I HAVE NO IDEA.

The reply came back in seconds.

YEAH, BUT WHAT ARE THE GENERAL CHURCH RULES ON THIS? IS IT NOT HAVING SEX OR MORE A MATTER OF TIME. BECAUSE THEY WERE HARDLY MARRIED. JUST A COUPLE OF MONTHS.

Foy looked around. His cubicle was set away from the busiest part of the office, and no one was near. He put his head down near his keyboard. Rage filled him and he whispered with an angry hiss.

“I don’t fucking know, okay? If he married the bitch, then divorce her. Or go ask the mother-fucking pope.”

He straightened up and looked around, worried. No one heard him. He sighed and tapped out a response.

I DON’T KNOW. I DON’T HAVE ANY IDEA. TALK TO A PRIEST.

Foy wandered down the little hallway through the cubicles and felt emotion and desire drain out of him. When he first came to the office he was starting to feel like he might be close to becoming a regular person, someone who just goes to work and makes money and looks forward to the weekend and takes life as it comes. But now he felt like a non-person, somehow set apart from everyone. He felt emasculated. Sexless. Without desire. Sinless. Always nice. That Foy, what a nice man. So sensitive. So caring.

There were bursts of life all over the cubicle village. A woman was outraged by something. She walked quickly past Foy with short, angry steps. Her sharp complaints came popping out of her mouth. A friend walked next to her, trying to keep up, nodding in silent affirmation. A sharp laugh came from the other side of the office. Foy turned and looked in that direction, but he couldn’t tell where the laugh came from. He opened the break room door. There were several men by the coke machine. One of them was describing a fishing trip. He seemed so happy to be talking about it. The others were giving him their complete attention.

“So I said Roy, where the fuck are we? I can’t see land. And he says, You gotta trust the instruments. And I’m like BullSHIT, I don’t see land. We were drinking like motherfuckers, and all of a sudden it was like, I want to be in the ocean. I’ve never been in the ocean. So I took off my pants and jumped over the side.”

The men laughed while the one telling the story nodded, pleased with himself.

“The guys in the boat were laughing their asses off and screaming at Roy, Man overboard! And I’m like, holy shit I’m in the goddamn ocean. Then I got this horrible feeling cause who knows what’s down there and it felt like a shark or something was gonna come up and bite my balls off. So Roy starts coming in close with the boat and then zooming away. They’re all laughing, but that shark shit has really got me. Then I panic and start screaming like a little girl…”

Foy slowly closed the door and backed away.

How do they do it? How do they just let their emotions fly out in front of everyone?

A thought occurred to him. He was always going to be a minister. He had put on some kind of sterile, priestly personality, and now he couldn’t take it off. It didn’t matter where he was or what he was doing. He had lost the ability to let go and live and laugh and be with people.

And it’s me. It’s not them. They don’t care what I do. I can’t live, or at least I can’t live in front of anyone. Maybe I can’t even live with myself. I’m just floating around. Mr. nice guy. Father Foy.

He slipped into his cubicle. There was a file open on the screen, a report from marketing. He opened it and began reading it, whispering as he went. He made small changes here and there, smoothing it out. Then he froze.

Shit, even my job is making things look nice. Sound nice.

Panic and anger poured into his stomach. His skin got warm. He looked over at a coffee cup by his monitor. There were several pens in it and an X-acto knife, sitting blade upwards. The silver tip of the knife caught his eye. He looked back at the screen, typed for a few seconds, then his eyes went back to the knife.

Foy sat back in his chair, motionless for a moment. He stood up just enough for his head to rise above the top of the cubicles. He looked around, then lowered himself. He rolled up his left sleeve and looked at his forearm. The underside of his forearm, above his wrist, he didn’t like. It was too vulnerable and soft and white. But the top of his forearm, up from the back of his hand where the hair was. It was brown from the sun and tough. He took the Exacto knife and put the tip of the blade on his arm. He pulled it across his skin, leaving a little white line. He made several of these white lines in parallel rows. Then a rush of raw anger came. Anger at himself. His mouth tightened and he pushed harder. The last line turned red as the blade went along. The pain cleared his mind a bit.

He looked around and spoke in a soft voice. “I bleed like anyone.”

He reached over and jerked a tissue from a box on his desk. He wiped the blade and dropped it back into the cup. Then he pressed the tissue over the cut on his arm. After a moment he lifted it and looked under it. He folded it into a small square and fastened it to his arm with scotch tape. He pulled his sleeve back down and buttoned it neatly. He took several deep breaths and rolled his head around until his neck popped. Then he exhaled loudly and turned back to his computer screen. He worked for a few minutes more until he heard someone saying, “Foy.” It was Suzanne. She was standing in the doorway.

Foy smiled at her. “Hey, how are you doing?”

She shrugged. “I can’t complain. How about you?”

“Eh, same old same old.”

She nodded and looked around his cubicle. Foy recognized the look of someone who had something she needed to say. His general practice was to give people an immediate opening when he saw that.

“So what’s happening?”

“Well, I know it’s been awhile since we talked, but I wanted you to know I did the things you said. I got all of Jeremy’s stuff out of around my desk. Most of it I threw away, but there were a couple of things. And then, you know, a lot of his stuff at home. His blanket from when he was little and some things.

She paused, pulled her lips into her mouth where you couldn’t see them, and nodded deliberately.

“Uh, I got this cute kind of like a trunk at Pier One. It’s green, um, and it has this little key. And when I was putting some of the stuff into it, I could almost feel Jeremy saying, ‘It’s okay.’ And it was like, I own this. I can come here anytime I want and just see everything and cry or whatever. And, it just…feels so good. I wanted you to know.”

Foy stood up and walked over to the doorway. He put out his right arm as an invitation, but he didn’t square up and face her. He left a nice angle to avoid too much intimacy. Suzanne accepted and leaned into him briefly, giving him a respectful half hug. Her eyes were wet.

Foy’s smile was absolutely genuine. It came so naturally. It was real, and he felt real happiness.

“Hey, that is so great. Just, I know that was a huge step for you. I’m so glad.”

Suzanne smiled and walked down the hall. Foy watched her go. She was pretty. She had an interesting walk. It was like she might be wondering if he was watching her and had suddenly become a little self-conscious. The vulnerability of the moment was very endearing. He had quick image in his mind of the two of them eating dinner together. But now he had taken up a kind of priestly, counselor role with her. And it made everything feel wrong. He really couldn’t sort out what he felt. It was a kind of vague but impossible longing that evaporated pretty quickly. And then he was too tired even to think about how he would start thinking about how he might start something like that. Even the line of thought was too complex for him.

He sat back down and looked at the computer screen. His eyes drifted to the right, and he looked over the cup with the pens and X-acto knife to a spot on the padded wall of the cubicle. He stared at the spot with his mouth hanging open. His eyes jerked suddenly to the right and to the left and then up and back down. Like someone who is thinking. A small smile appeared on his face. He made a rumbling sound deep in his throat.

“Hmm.”

A good feeling came over him. It was the feeling of pushing everything away. It was the feeling of letting go of being a man and putting everything out of his mind. He slipped into this androgynous, oblivious state like a man closing the door to his home, dropping onto the couch, and turning on the television. It was too much. Everything was too much.

His eyes moved back to the knife in the cup for an instant, but he looked away quickly. He stopped himself from thinking about that even before he began thinking about it.

This is a good life, what I do and who I am. This is just the way things should be and are.

rlp

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