Chapter Twenty

“Only fair to warn you, Sister, I served eight years in a parochial elementary school, so unless you’re going to make me write, ‘I will not use the introduction of a new character as an excuse for exposition’ fifty times on that chalk board, what say we cut to the chase.”

Except for the worn sofa that I awoke on, the room was empty but for three wooden chairs in a half circle and, face down on one, a lute with all but two strings broken, the remaining catgut draped over the rounded back like an octogenarian’s last attempt at a comb-over; hoping my voice was more convincing than my hands, already cramping from the muscle-memory of hours spent writing a single, declarative sentence on a classroom blackboard where, once written, erased; Sisyphus in a two-dimensional hell of after-school punishment.

The woman standing over me wore an old-fashioned nun’s habit, complete with starched white wimple that framed a face that, captive to the hopeless ambition to do justice to the most remarkable green eyes, conjured a vision of a new moon rising in the darkest of night; to my credit, I resisted the urge to howl in superstitious awe; the monochromatic religious garb was accentuated by a row of golden-yellow stones strung around her waist, worn like a belt yet looking like rosary beads; she caught me staring.

“You find my sole vanity interesting?” Without breaking eye contact, she put the chain of amber beads into a complex motion that, pretending to describe a simple circle, actually moved along more than a single axis, flashes of yellow and shards of darkness shooting randomly from the ovals of amber, “Of course, the origin of amber being fossilized tree sap is rather pedestrian, however, some are convinced these are distilled from the life-sap of a singular Tree, a very, very long time ago.”

“Did you really just pronounce tree with a capital ‘T’?”

With a smile that promised as much as threatened, she leaned close enough to caress my face with her breath, “Mr. Devereaux, I believe we have the basis for a beneficial connection.”