“Gilda, you must return with me to Brooklyn. My brother has a farm there, we can live in a cabin by the lake and be happy.” He grabbed Gilda’s shoulders. It had always been a bad habit, but his sense of decorum had long since left him at this point. He was in love, probably, and he couldn’t bear to stop.
“Charles, you know I can’t do that. I’m a nun, now, and it wouldn’t be kosher. What would God think?” Gilda demanded as she turned her head away from his gaze.
Charles sighed, and slapped his hand angrily on the desk where her Bible, and CPR training manual sat unopened. “God, all you speak of is God. Let me ask you: does God lean in close to you like this?” He lightly touched her trembling shoulder. “Does He… caress you like I do?” he asked as he traced a finger alongside her cheek. Leaning his forehead against her, Charles whispered, “can He hold you close, can you feel His warm breath, and would He squeeze your ample buttocks like I can?”
Gilda gasped in surprise. Grabbing her buttocks wasn’t at all cricket before 8 PM, though overlooked often enough, but breathing directly in her face when there was a polio epidemic? Vile.
She slapped him across the face. Anger had turned her rosy cheeks into cherry bombs of indignation. “I think,” she said in clipped tones, “you should leave, Charles. Leave and never come back. Never come back for good.”
THE DARKEST THOUGHTS BEFORE THE DAWN
