The icon of Saint Nicholas glittered, reflecting the candle flames that lit it from below. A thousand shards of light from hand-placed mosaic pieces, each no bigger than the nails on John Savas's fingers, glinted in the smoky darkness. Each stone was a different color and had been collected by monks and shipped across the seas to churches during the Greek Diaspora: deep reds and blues, turquoise, magenta, gold-plated stones of yellow, white marble. Shaped and placed, up close resembling a pixilated image on a computer screen, merging from a distance into a unified whole. A window to the soul.
Father Timothy sat across from him, troubled yet purposeful. His eyes were like the mosaic stones reflecting the dancing candlelight, and his face was lit harshly by the flashes of lightning outside.
“John, I'm not going to quote to you verses on loving your enemies or forgiving your brother seventy times seven. You've read them or heard them so many times that you can't listen to them. But there is one thing I know, and that is that hatred eats at us from within, and if we let it take root, it will slowly burn away at everything we are, and the life-blood of our soul, our ability to love, will die. You have carried a hatred within you for too long. Inside, you know this; you can feel it. You are being asked now to make a choice, John, between taking your life and turning it into a sword, or letting the pain flow through you, so that from that place inside, a stronger love will be born.”
John Savas lowered his head to stare at the floor between his feet. He could not accept a sermon; no words would touch the place within him that burned. He knew the priest was right about something; he did burn, and choices were being asked of him. He wondered whether it wasn't, after all, about a choice between love and hate, as simple as it sounded. Tonight, he had turned his back on a woman who had opened herself in vulnerability to him, even for a short moment. It was the most beautiful moment he had known in many years, and yet the fire inside of him would not let him embrace it or accept her love and return it with his own. The fire demanded something different, something harder, where tears did not flow, where vengeance ruled. He felt the church walls closing in on him; felt that God Himself was probing with a scalpel, reaching out from the burning eyes of Saint Nicholas before him. Savas stood up, surprising the priest in the middle of a sentence that he had not heard, apologized, and quickly stepped through the church and into the rain.
The downpour seemed to have only intensified. He walked through the pelting drops and slumped into his car. Ten minutes later, he was standing at the entrance of his apartment building, the rain so thick he could barely see five feet in front of him. Water pooled in his shoes, seeping into every surface of his body. The sound of a car door closing was muffled in the storm. He pulled out his keys, fitting them to the lock, then turning to the side at the sound of approaching footsteps. The light above the door spilled directly over him, and he could see only partially into the shadows on his left. Squinting, he saw a dark form approach, and he tensed instinctively, expecting the worse.
She was as wet as he was, her brown hair turned black by the pouring water and the darkness of the night. Her clothing was completely soaked, her white shirt transparent, revealing the pink of her skin, the swell of her breasts taut against the rain-washed fabric. Even in the rain, he saw that she had tears in her eyes, and she stepped up to him with a sharp desperation cut into her face.
“Rebecca, please, you didn't—” and once again she placed her hand to his mouth to silence him.
“John, please. I shouldn't have come here, I know. But so much has happened, such madness. Let me speak, before I lose the courage. I know you have suffered, and you have tried to find your way back from this suffering. I've watched you, from the first day I came to the Bureau. I watched you try to turn your pain into something good. I've waited for you, John, at first only as a dream, and then with the growing realization that you wanted me, too. I tried to give you your time, but I am built of flesh and blood and needs, too, John. I have my own pains,” she spoke, choking back tears. “I can't wait anymore. Tonight I am here for you to make a choice. To choose me, all of me and what I offer you, good and bad, or find your own way in this world without me. I need to offer you my heart, John, to reject it or to take it. I've loved you for too long and for too many lonely days and nights.” She stood inches from his face, her eyelashes wet with droplets of rain. “I love you, John Savas. Will you love me?”
Savas felt her cut through him like a warm blade. In that instant, he understood what was being offered to him, and from deep within, he answered, without hesitation, with his whole heart. He wrapped his arm around her waist, and with his other hand cupped the back of her head, pulling her to him.
They embraced. The water poured over and between them, and he held her so tight he could feel her breath escape through her lips. For a short moment, everything that he had built around him seemed to collapse, and his shoulders shook from the muffled sobs he tried to suppress.
They kissed. With the thunder reverberating around them, they kissed deeply like two starved things, oblivious to the storm's rage, knowing a personal shelter, a space protected from all that assailed them from without. Entwined, hands exploring, lips uncovering, breath in gasps, in pain and in ecstasy, with joy and sorrow, swirling wildly in the evening gusts.
33
John Savas awoke to sunlight and a cool breeze blowing in through an open window. He lay on his back; Rebecca's head nestled into his chest, her arm draped over his right shoulder. Her breathing was soft, a rising and falling cadence that stirred him deeply. He raised himself slowly, carefully, afraid to wake her. He wanted to see her face, see that haunting beauty that he now let himself admit he had desired and fought against for years, see it as she slept and in the morning's fresh light.
“Finally awake?” she said, one eye half open like a cat, a playful smile on her face. She rolled off his chest and snuggled into the pillow behind her. He rolled onto his stomach toward her, gazing up into her brandy eyes.
“Yeah, getting old, I'm afraid.”
Savas looked at her face, beautiful, and sad, a distant look in her eyes. He thought back over the years and realized that he had been blind to so much. Blinded, he corrected himself. Consumed.
Cohen turned and tried to laugh. “Now, if you were rich, my inner shadchan would be pleased, but I have to quiet her, as things stand.”
“Shadchan?” he asked.
“Jewish matchmaker. Think Yente from Fiddler on the Roof.”
“Ah, OK.”
“But in the real world, it's just my dad now. I think he'd be happy that I'm interested in any biped with a Y chromosome. Even you.”
Savas smiled. “Thanks. Breakfast? I might have something you can stand to eat.”
She smiled. “A coffee would be great, actually.”
Savas grabbed a shirt, slipped it on, and went into the kitchen. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Rebecca climbing out of bed. He pushed the button, the clashing sound of beans on metal filled the apartment, and the fresh smell of ground coffee struck him as it always did in the morning. Smells better than it tastes, he thought once again. He caught another glimpse of her in the bed. By that point, she had started combing out her hair. I could just watch her all day.