Glass Houses(35)

Besides, he thought, there was the other thing. There was the fact that God was here, and that men were obliged to go to God and not the other way around. He wondered if men like Chickie knew that God was here, too, and just refused to come; or if they honestly didn’t see it, or saw God somewhere else. Theology said that at the end of time, everything would be explained. Alexander hoped that was true because he had a lot of questions he wanted answers to. Sometimes he even wrote them down.

At the bottom of the stairs, he looked left and right and saw that the conference room was full of women. It was the Council of Catholic Women meeting for their “Get to Know You” night, something they did four times a year in the hopes of attracting new faces to do—whatever it was they did. Alexander was a convert to Catholicism. A lot of the little details of parish life were completely beyond him. He went past the conference room to the little warren of classrooms the church used for religious education. They were all empty.

This is what was needed, he thought. There had to be a way to maintain and preserve civilization, the structure that made it possible for men and women to live in peace and sometimes to do great things, in medicine and architecture and music and art. There had to be a way to maintain the order those things required, without imposing the disorder of punitive laws. Alexander didn’t want to go back to a time when states could pass laws making it il-legal to have gay sex. He didn’t even want to go back to a time when the boys on Queer Eye would be jokes instead of cultural icons. He just wanted to find a way to make society a place where it was easier, not harder, to become fully human.

He had come all the way back to the conference room without a clear idea of where he was going to go next. He went to the stairs and looked up—would Father Harrigan be in the rectory at this time of night? He wasn’t usually—when he heard a voice behind him.

“Alexander? Are you all right? Is there a meeting I didn’t remember tonight?”

Father Harrigan was a thin, red-haired man who looked as if he’d been sent by central casting to play second to Bing Crosby in a Father O’Malley picture. Alexander waited until he caught up.

“No meeting,” Alexander said. “I was just looking for conversation. And fumigation, maybe.”

“Fumigation?”

“I’ve been in the Zone.”

“Ah,” Father Harrigan said. “Well, that’s all right. Don’t let it discourage you. I think it’s probably inevitable that—”

“No, Father. I wasn’t in the Zone doing that.”

“Oh.” Father Harrigan blinked. Alexander could almost see his mind switching gears. “It’s this obsession of yours again. With your employer. Did you follow him, or did you go to the Zone just hoping to run into him?”

“I couldn’t follow him,” Alexander said. “He left the office early today, and he seems to have disappeared. He’s not at home. And no, I didn’t see him in the Zone. I saw enough else, though, if you know what I mean.”

“He hasn’t really disappeared, though, has he?” Father Harrigan said, starting up the stairs to the main floor. Alexander followed him. “You just mean you don’t know where he’s gone.”

“I’m not sure,” Alexander said. “I do have the keys to his apartment, but I don’t like to go in there when I don’t know where he is. I don’t want to get caught at it. All I know right now is that he left the office in a hurry this after-noon, and I haven’t seen him since. He doesn’t answer his phone at home, and he doesn’t answer his cell. And he was sweating when he left.”

“Sweating?”

They had reached the vestibule on the main floor. Alexander could see the two middle-aged men, still kneeling. “Like a pig,” he said. “He had rivers of the stuff running down his neck. His collar was soaked through.”

“He could have been ill,” Father Harrigan said.

“I don’t think so,” Alexander said. “I think he was scared. I know he was scared. I could smell it.”

“Scared of what?”

“That’s a good question,” Alexander said. “He did something in his office today before he left. He moved a filing cabinet. A big one. It isn’t easy to move. I’m in better shape than he is, and I had trouble with it.”

“And?”

Alexander shrugged. “I don’t know. But I’ve told you about this. I’ve also felt he was hiding something, that there was something, somewhere, relating to his nighttime life. Maybe whatever it was was under the filing cabinet, and he retrieved it.”