A Fountain Filled With Blood (28 page)

“I think, gentlemen and ladies, that Clare is right.” As always, Terry’s voice was easy, jovial—the dealmaker making a deal. “I think we could have easily sidestepped the whole issue, but now that our, ah, energetic young priest has brought it up, we’re not going to get away without some show of support. If for no other reason than if we don’t, we’ll feel like a bunch of bigots.”

Sumner made a noise.

“So we might as well come to an agreement on how we’re going to stand up and be counted. Clare?”

“I was thinking of a march from St. Alban’s to the town hall and—”

“No. No marches.” Corlew slugged back some of his beer. “The downtown merchant’s association would kill us.”

“He’s right,” Terry said.

“Maybe we could have a fund-raiser?” Mrs. Marshall suggested. “A dinner dance. It’s short notice, but we could probably get together a committee and be able to present it by mid-September.”

Clare shook her head. “I think that’s too removed in time from what’s happening now. Besides, a dinner dance is private by definition. We need something public. How about a rally in Riverside Park?”

“You mean like that damned antidevelopment group?” Corlew’s skin took on an alarming purple shade. “Those tree-huggers? Those backward, head-in-the-sand—”

“Well,” Clare said, “not exactly like them, no. I was thinking we would get a permit, for one….”

“I don’t think a rally is a good idea,” Mrs. Marshall said. “After all, they rather depend on a large crowd for their effectiveness, don’t they? Otherwise, all you have is a handful of malcontents talking to one another.”

“A candlelight vigil,” Sumner said.

They all looked at him. “What?” Clare said.

“What are we? A church. What do people think of when they think of a church? Quiet, hymns, candles. You want to draw attention to the church’s stance. Is this going to happen by marching through crowds of tourists in the middle of the day? No, it is not. You want contrast. People, at night. Light and darkness. Some music—not that dreadful guitar-strumming ‘Michael, Row the Boat Ashore’ protest stuff. Something that works as a counterpoint—a solo voice or a single wind instrument.”

They all looked at him.

“You’re thinking of this in terms of a military campaign. Think of it as a design problem. You have a message that may be uncomfortable or unpleasant to some. You have to create the appeal, the comfort.”

“Sterling,” Clare said. “I think you must be a remarkable architect.”

He snorted. “Mostly retired now. I do teach a bit, though, at Skidmore and down in Albany. One thing I tell my students is that there is
always
a solution to a design problem.”

“Sounds good to me,” Corlew said. “As long as you keep it nice and peaceful.”

“And don’t block any storefronts!” Terry added.

“In front of town hall,” Clare said. “Peaceful. And tasteful.”

The four vestry members and their priest looked at one another in wary agreement, as if not trusting the fragile accord to bear the weight of anything more enthusiastic.

“Maybe getting known as a more liberal parish won’t be so bad,” Corlew said.

“We can hardly get a rep as a more conservative group,” Terry said. “I think the last parish census showed the average age of our congregants was fifty-six. It’s not like we’ve been bringing new blood into St. Alban’s with what we’ve been doing.”

“Didn’t someone say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting new results?” Clare said.

“That holds true until you start thinking about having children, dear,” Mrs. Marshall said.

“Or playing the stock market,” Terry added.

There was another pause. Clare could hear the quick
thwap-thwap-thwapping
of the sail as it lost the wind. “I’m going to tack,” Corlew said. He hauled in the jib and released the boom. Clare and Terry dropped down into the bench and ducked as the boat turned and the boom sliced through the air over their heads. “Reverend Clare, can you get up there and tie off the boom?” he asked. “Terry, take the wheel. I’m going below for a sec.”

She scrambled over the hatch and secured the boom in its new position. The wind had lessened from its earlier slipstream rush and now the boat sailed up the lake like a determined woman through a crowded fairground, sweeping past the people and the glittering carny amusements, making her way steadily up the midway, headed for the open air.

She stood mastside for a few minutes, feeling the easy motion of the boat through her feet, hearing Corlew clumping around in the cabin below and the square clinking of ice in glasses.

“Reverend Clare, you want another one?” Corlew twisted backward to see her from the hatch.

She slid down to the rail deck and walked to the cockpit. “I’d better not. I’ve got to drive. And tonight’s that party at Peggy Landry’s.”

“Is that Margaret Landry? I used to know her mother,” Mrs. Marshall said. “How did you come to meet her? I don’t believe any of the Landrys have attended St. Alban’s since old Mr. Landry died, and that was before the war. World War Two,” she added.

Clare sat on the edge of the cockpit and braced her feet against the seat cushion. “Her niece Diana is getting married at St. Alban’s next month. She and her fiancé have been putting off their premarital counseling sessions, and when I pushed Diana on it, Peggy asked me to come to her house and sit down with them before this party. I guess she figured she owed me a dinner if I drove out there for counseling. I have to confess I’m not wild about attending. Standing around making small talk with a bunch of New Yorkers. Plus, I’ll have to wear heels. I hate wearing heels.” She waggled one sneaker-shod foot.

“I hope we’re getting a good donation for the use of the church,” Terry said. He reached past Clare’s legs and accepted a new beer from Corlew. “We’re becoming awfully popular with the wedding crowd. Maybe we ought to institute a series of fees. You know, one rate if you have some family connection, another if you’re a total stranger. It’s not as if their pledges are supporting our expenses.”

“Peggy ought to be good for a hefty chunk of change, after what she got in that deal with BWI.” Corlew emerged from the hatch with his own drink and took the wheel from Terry. “Word is, that spa is going to put her into the big leagues. I didn’t think she was ever going to be able to unload that white elephant, to tell you the truth. I know someone out of Albany who looked pretty seriously at trying a vacation condo community there, but it never went through.”

“Why not?” Clare asked.

“Who knows? It’s a tough site. Environmental impact, the old PCB issue, and it’s remote. People want to vacation where they can reach things, not where they have to drive half an hour to get a burger and a movie. Peggy needed an outfit like BWI, with deep pockets and a long-term plan. They’re going to need to pump a hell of a lot of money into that place for the first few years.”

“You mean to build the place? Or to keep it running?”

“To build clientele,” Terry said. “It usually takes several years for any resort or vacation-oriented property to have enough name recognition to start making money, instead of spending it. Even when there’s an established attraction nearby, like a good ski resort or”—he waved a hand, encompassing the water and mountains around them—“a lake. When the bank structures a loan for a resort-related development, we figure in a minimum of three years before we can expect any profit.”

“So BWI isn’t just going to build the place and put in the staff. They have to keep it afloat for the next several years.”

“That’s why BWI is the perfect partner for Peggy,” Corlew said. “They don’t wait for visitors to discover nearby attractions.
They
are the attraction. I’d love to know how a small-time player like Peggy got their attention.”

Sumner cleared his throat. “I understand that Landry’s nephew was a particular friend of the late Bill Ingraham.”

“What?”

“Get out!”

“Where on earth did you hear that?”

He affected a pained expression. “I normally avoid gossip at all costs, but still, one hears things.” He leaned forward, and everyone else leaned in, as well. “I understand that the boy is what might have been called a gold digger by an earlier generation. What I heard is that he latched onto Bill Ingraham as his sugar daddy. At some point during their friendship, the boy introduced Ingraham to Peggy and she, evidently, put on the full-court press. Next thing you know, good-bye white elephant, hello Alonquin Spa.”

Clare sat back up. “But I heard Ingraham broke up with his boyfriend months ago.”

Sumner flipped his hand, as if to say, Life’s like that. “In the matchup between youth and wealth, only the wealth stays the same. The youth has to be replaced periodically.”

Corlew took a drink. “So the nephew is the missing piece.” Terry snickered at his pun, and both men began sniggering.

Sterling tilted his head toward Mrs. Marshall. “You see why I rarely gossip.”

Clare slung one leg back over the edge of the seat and propped her foot against the rail deck. Mal Wintour. What was it Peggy had said? “He’s just having trouble living a life of wealth and leisure without any visible means of support.” Even if she did have to wear high heels, she was suddenly looking forward to the party tonight.

“Marriage is meant to be for life,” Clare said, taking a kir royale from one of the caterer’s staff. “It gives ordinary people like you and me a chance to emulate Christ, to offer ourselves up for another person, to truly put another’s happiness first.”

The men and women clustered around her looked alternately interested, amused, and put off. Diana’s fiancé shook his head. “See? She just puts a whole new spin on it for me.” He gulped at his martini. “You should all take counseling from Reverend Clare. Keep you from screwing up so much.”

“Or screwing so much,” one corkscrew-curled young woman said to the man beside her. He was so tan and sun-bleached blond that his teeth appeared to be lighted from inside when he flashed a smile.

“Chelli!” The other woman, dangerously thin, with long nails that owed nothing to nature, frowned at her friend.

When Diana and Cary brought Clare into the enormous living room and announced her as their priest, she had immediately gathered a clump of interested listeners. She put it down to the curiosity value of her calling and gender, rather than a sudden desire for a conversion experience by anybody in the crowd, which looked as if it had been assumed bodily from the set of
Sex and the City
and set down in this three-story tumble of wood and windows clinging to the side of a mountain. Cary Wood—the name still made her shake her head—had dropped several interesting details about the counseling session they had just completed in the quiet home office next to the family room. “So we were talking about self-sacrifice and sticking it out, and tell them what you said about divorce, Reverend Clare!”

Clare flexed her feet inside her high-heeled sandals and thanked God for the thick carpet covering the floors. If she was trapped here, at least she wasn’t in shoe hell. She smiled at Cary. It was possible she had impressed upon him some essential wisdom he was going to need a few years down the road, but she suspected she was being asked for this tidbit again because of its thrilling break with current thinking. “I said that if marriage made two people one flesh, then divorce was like an animal gnawing its leg off to escape a trap before it dies. It should only be considered as the very last resort.”

“That sounds like me when I split from Annalise,” the bronzed sun god said. “Except she was the animal chewing on my leg.”

The perfect-fingernailed woman laughed. “You mean the only reason you can consider divorce is if you’re threatened with death? That sounds extreme.”

Clare sipped her drink. It was cool, tingly, and perfectly currant-flavored. “Not necessarily a literal death. Sometimes, a marriage can mean the death of your soul. The death of who you are. Or think of the traditional grounds for divorce or annulment: infertility, the death of your future, insanity—the death of the mind that made the vow—adultery.”

“Death if you get found out!” Chelli’s corkscrew curls bobbed as she laughed.

“What gets me, and no offense, Reverend Clare”—by this statement Clare understood that what the very tan man was going to say would offend her—“is how priests who have no experience with sex and marriage get off on telling the rest of us how to stay married.”

“My mother says that a doctor doesn’t have to have cancer in order to know how to cure it,” Chelli said.

“Yeah, I’ve heard that one before,” Clare said. “I think it’s better to think of your priest as an investment adviser. Let’s say you’re going to invest everything you have, and commit all your future earnings as well, in the hopes that you’re going to get a terrific return. Do you want to consult someone already deep into the market? Someone who may have opinions and self-interest based on his own experiences? Or do you want to hire an independent adviser, someone who has followed the market and read up on its history and all the different investment schemes? Someone with no vested interest in the outcome, other than to make sure you put your money where it will do you the most good?”

“Huh. I never thought of it like that.” The sun god stuck out his hand. “I’m Dennys, by the way. With a
y.
”

“Hello, Dennys with a Y.”

“And I’m Gayle. Also with a
y.
”

Clare took her hand gingerly. Those nails were scary. She wondered if she should figure out some way to spell her name with a
y.
Clayr?

“So tell me.” Dennys dropped his voice and the two women leaned in to hear him. “What’s it like? Being celibate? I mean, I can’t imagine it.”

“I bet you can’t.” Chelli giggled.

“I think you may be making a common mistake and confusing
celibate,
which also means not married, and
chaste,
which means…well, not having sex. Episcopal priests don’t take vows of celibacy. Lots and lots of priests are married and have kids.”