Page 62 of Razors & Ruin

I taste bile on the back of my tongue. Sommers talks about man’s essential humanity and imposes on his congregation the need to see suffering through the eyes of Christ.

A joke indeed; these are people for whom suffering is grist for the mill. And if this is the elderly ecclesiastic who shepherded the unfortunate Johanna through her misery, then I want to be a million miles away.

I glance at Sweeney, watching his face for signs that his thoughts align with mine. He isn’t paying the slightest attention to the sermon, of course; instead, his dark eyes bore into the back of the Beadle’s head as though he might be able to kill him stone dead with a murderous glare alone.

The Sunday message is received in pious silence, and at its conclusion, the assembly stands. The organ starts up as Sommer’s boy vanishes into a side room, taking the heavy Bible with him, and the priest leads us in a full-throated rendition of All Things Bright and Beautiful.

My man can sing, it turns out, and I’m surprised to hear him carry the song evenly in a fine baritone.

The rich man in his castle,

The poor man at his gate,

God made them, high or lowly,

And ordered their estate…

Not so for Mr. T and me.

We are on our way up, out of the gutter, even if we have to stand on a thousand stacked-up corpses to see over the heads of our so-called betters.

32

Nellie

No sooner is the service concluded than Sweeney is away from my side, his focus on the Beadle. My instinct is to follow him, but something keeps me from doing so.

His words trouble me, tapping incessantly like hailstones, a corresponding tattoo beating in my temple as Sweeney’s greeting is met by the Beadle’s cordial but guarded smile.

A threat. Sweeney asked if I was threatening him, but he didn’t demand an answer.

The walk over here was not the loved-up promenade I’d hoped for; although he ambled beside me, he was musing, his quicksilver thoughts locked away in his head.

I waited over ten years, dreaming he’d return to me, yet I never truly believed it would happen.

Then the Earth turned, the stars spoke in whispers, and the man to whom I’d lost my heart was at my door, ready to claim all I was and will ever be.

Does he really think I’d rat him out now, after everything?

As I watch him talk to the despised Beadle, I’m struck by how vital my man looks, how vibrantly alive.

He’s beautiful in his good morning coat and topper, beard shaved artfully as only he can do, and even at church, the heat creeps over the faces of the women as they mill around near him.

Sweeney is too much in many ways—so vehemently sexual, singularly depraved, and utterly magnetic.

Such thoughts I have when I look at him; it’s embarrassing at times. I’m glad he can’t hear my chattering schoolgirl brain.

But God in heaven help him; he can’t leave well enough alone. I’m sure he’s trying to strongarm the Beadle into a second visit to his parlor.

Still, I cannot ignore the possibility that he has suspicions about Johanna—aboutme— and is deliberately shutting me out.

I should never have written that fucking letter. I hadn’t meant for him to see it when we got back from the party, not least because I didn’t expect him to be with me when I returned, but before he split the envelope, I knew I’d gone too far.

When he burned it, I was so relieved that I almost burst into tears; what a naive fool.

Just because it no longer exists does not mean I can take it back.

Sweeney may be mine, but I forgot an important detail: the dead are perfect. There are no pricks in the graveyard, as they say. Veronica and Johanna remain, crystallized as a vision of a perfect love that I cannot hope to emulate.

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