The Faces of Angels by Lucretia Grindle Read Free Book Online Page B

priests, women who need abortions, doctors who perform abortions, NGO workers who don’t believe starvation offers a neat opportunity for conversion. Oh yeah, and anybody who believes that condoms might actually stop people from dying of AIDS and that you aren’t necessarily criminal if you want a divorce or use birth control.’ He stops and looks at me. ‘But the fact is,’ he says, ‘a lot of people think that’s just what the church needs. To stand like a rock. Be firm hand on the tiller in this sea of moral relativism. And provide an apartment for every child molester in Vatican City.’
    â€˜It won’t work,’ I point out. ‘It will only alienate more people. Besides, it’s mean.’
    â€˜Right,’ Pierangelo agrees. ‘But I am not in the college of cardinals, and neither are you. So, when it comes to one of the most powerful institutions on earth, we don’t get a vote. Instead it’s in the safe hands of the men in red, the little gremlins the Pope appoints in the first place.’ I’m surprised by the anger in his voice.
    â€˜So, you think this is real?’ I ask. ‘You really think D’Erreti’s in some vanguard, that this is where it’s going?’
    Pierangelo shrugs. ‘I think it would be a tragedy, but I don’t see why not.’ He sweeps a pile of chopped parsley onto a saucer and reaches for his glass again. ‘D’Erreti’s backed by Opus Dei, for what that tells you. They think he’s great.’
    The Opus, the Work, as they call themselves, was founded in the 1930s by a Spaniard, a big admirer of Franco’s who’s since been canonized, some think with unseemly haste. It operates like a free radical in the body of the Catholic Church, unanswerable to most of the usual channels, and awash in money, how much, nobody really knows. Rumour says a justice of the Supreme Court, at least one United States senator, a British cabinet minister, and God knows how many other political movers and shakers are members. In point of fact, God may not even know. The Opus like to call themselves discreet, but most people would probably use the word ‘secretive’. Some mutter ‘sect.’
    There’s a school of thought that says they’re deeply sinister, but I have to admit I find them kind of silly. Fanatics, especially when they think they’re being subtle, tend to overdo it like cops in old movies. I discovered after I’d known him for a while that Rinaldo was Opus, and once, back when we were bosom buddies, he introduced me to some members of a prayer group he led up at San Miniato. The whole episode was like a bad satire on religious cults. Rinaldo primed me by talking about how ‘we’re all alone in the world and need real friends’ and when I met them his disciples murmured and fluttered around me with such extreme godliness that it was positively cloying. Even if I hadn’t already been seeing Pierangelo, they would have been enough to send me straight out into the streets to do some serious sinning.
    As it was, Piero and I laughed about it in bed the next afternoon, and he still teases that if he hadn’t bought me a Martini one rainy day maybe I’d be sleeping on a board in an Opus Dei house right now. Doing the Work. Turning my pay cheque over to Rinaldo for His Bank Account’s Sake, and greeting every morning by kissing the floor and wrapping barbed wire around my thighs for fun.
    It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask Pierangelo if he’s come across the good father lately, but I don’t. It’s bad enough that suddenly I swear I can feel the soft pressure of Rinaldo’s hand on my shoulder. The puff of his breath in my ear. Any minute now, I’ll hear him whispering his recipe for salvation. I reach for one of the olives on the counter and bite into the bitter green flesh.

    The veal is perfect, tender enough to cut with a fork