The Virgin

She raced off down the hall to her cell.

“Elle?” Kyrie stood in the doorway of her room.

“I got this,” Elle said. She pulled open her purse and dug to the bottom of it. From it she pulled out a leather case.

“Got what?” Kyrie asked. But Elle didn’t answer. She ran off down the hall again and down the stairs. She could hear Kyrie behind her racing to catch up.

“What room?” Elle asked once she was in the infirmary. But she already saw it. Three sisters were kneeling by the door, their ears against it.

“She’s crying her eyes out,” one of them said. “She might be hurt.”

“Get up,” Elle said. The nuns hesitated a moment but then moved out of her way. She knelt on the floor in front of the lock and examined it. Sister Aquinas hadn’t been kidding. The metal works were old and tarnished. This wouldn’t be easy. She opened her case, pulled out a lock-pick tool and inserted it into the keyhole. It took some doing to get the ancient tumblers to move. By the time she’d pushed the first one up, sweat had beaded on Elle’s forehead.

“Elle, can we help?”

Kyrie sounded as scared as Sister Mary Angelica but Elle only shook her head and pushed up the second tumbler. She wiped her sweaty palm on her jeans and a minute later, had the lock picked. Elle got up and wrenched the door open. Her mother and Sister Aquinas raced inside the pantry and brought out the weeping elderly nun.

Elle’s mother took her gently by the arm and put her in a chair. She called for water and a towel and every nun in the room rushed to help Sister Mary John calm Sister Mary Angelica down.

Every nun in the room except for Kyrie.

“How do you know how to pick locks?” she asked Elle.

“Long story,” Elle said, and put her lock-pick tool back into the case. She got off her knees and left the infirmary. She walked to the nearest bathroom. Kyrie followed.

“I’m serious. I want to know how you did that.”

“Just a hobby,” Elle said. “I was curious about how to pick locks. I figured out how to do it.”

“Are you a cat burglar?”

Elle laughed. “I haven’t stolen anything since I was fifteen years old. Well, one car, but I gave it back.”

“You stole a car?”

“No, I was kidding. I borrowed it. It was a friend’s.”

“Who? The complicated guy?”

“No. A different guy. Doesn’t matter. I’m not friends with him anymore.” She turned on the water and washed the dirt and oil from the lock off her hands.

“Who taught you how to pick locks?”

“Kyrie, I’m not going to talk to you about any of this, okay?”

“Why not?”

“I told you. I don’t want to talk about my life. I want to keep my head down, do my work and figure things out. I don’t want to get into trouble because a little virgin nun has a crush on me and won’t leave me the hell alone.”

The smile and the delight washed out of Kyrie’s eyes like color fading from too many washings.

“I don’t have—”

“Yes, you do. You follow me everywhere, you ask me a million personal questions, you are obsessed with finding out why I’m here even though I’ve told you a dozen times I don’t want to talk about it. You’re not the first girl who’s had a crush on me. I know what it looks like. And I’m not interested, okay? Go be a nun. Go back to the infirmary and help them with Sister Mary Angelica. Stop thinking about me.”

Kyrie clasped her hands in front of her. They disappeared under her bell sleeves.

“I can’t, Elle,” Kyrie said. “I try to stop thinking about you and there you are, back in my mind again. I ask you about your life because I told myself that the reason I’m thinking about you is because you’re a mystery to me. And if I solve the mystery then you won’t be so interesting to me anymore, and I won’t think about you anymore. But it’s not working. You won’t tell my anything about yourself and here I am, still thinking about you, morning, noon and night.” Kyrie paused, and when she spoke again her voice had become a whisper. “Especially at night.”

“That’s not my problem,” Elle said, grabbing a paper towel to dry off her hands.

“I know it’s not. But maybe if you tried to help me...maybe if you told me something about you...how you know how to pick locks or why you came here or why your complications are so complicated. I mean, I know complicated. I’m a nun with a crush on another woman who’s standing two feet in front of me. That’s complicated.”

“He’s a priest.”

“What?”

“You really want to know why my situation is so complicated? There. I told you. My lover who I ran away from is a Catholic priest. He was into hardcore kink, sadism and bondage, and I taught myself how to pick locks so I could get out of anything he put me in if I wanted to. There you go. Your questions are answered.”

Kyrie stared at her. Her eyes were wide with shock. She said not a word, made not a sound. It was the longest Kyrie had ever been silent in her presence. The shock in her blue eyes turned to horror and then something worse.

Disgust.

Kyrie turned and walked out of the bathroom without another word.

And as she’d wanted, Elle was finally alone.

18

ELEANOR TURNED THE page in her book, pushed a second pillow under her head and read. She was so engrossed in the story she barely heard the door to her bedroom open. But she wasn’t so engrossed in the story that she didn’t feel the bed move when someone sat on it.