Choke

Chapter 14

LEANING HER HEAD BACK, her little black brain, Paige Marshall points up into the vaulted beige ceiling. "There used to be angels," she says. "The story is they were incredibly beautiful, with blue feathery wings and real gilded halos."

The old woman leads me to the big chapel at St. Anthony's, big and empty since it used to be a convent. One whole wall is a window of stained glass in a hundred different colors of gold. The other wall is just a big wood crucifix. Between the two is Paige Marshall in her white lab coat, golden in the light, under the black brain of her hair. She's wearing her black glasses and looking up. All of her black and gold.

"According to the decrees of Vatican II," she says, "they painted over church murals. The angels and the frescoes. They weeded out most of the statues. All those gorgeous mysteries of faith. All gone."

She looks at me.

The old woman is gone. The chapel door clicks shut behind me.

"It's pathetic," Paige says, "how we can't live with the things we can't understand. How if we can't explain something we'll just deny it."

She says, "I've found a way to save your mother's life." She says, "But you may not approve."

Paige Marshall starts undoing the buttons of her coat, and there's more and more skin showing inside.

"You may find the idea entirely repugnant," she says.

She opens the lab coat.

She's naked inside. Naked and as pale white as the skin under her hair. Naked white and about four steps away. And very doable. And she shrugs the coat off her shoulders so it drapes behind her, still hanging from her elbows. Her arms still in the sleeves.

Here are all those tight furry shadows where you're dying to go.

"We only have this small window of opportunity," she says.

And she steps toward me. Still wearing her glasses. Her feet still in their white deck shoes, only they look gold here.

I was right about her ears. For sure, the resemblance is awesome. Another hole she can't close, hidden and frilled with skin. Framed in her soft hair.

"If you love your mother," she says, "if you want her to live, you'll need to do this with me."

Now?

"It's my time," she says. "My mucosa is so thick you could stand a spoon in it."

Here?

"I can't see you outside of here," she says.

Her ring finger is as bare as most of her. I ask, is she married?

"Do you have an issue with that?" she says. Just one reach away is the curve of her waist going down along the outline of her ass. Just that far is the shelf of each breast pushing up a dark button nipple. Just my arm away is the warm hot space where her legs come together.

I say, "No. Nope. No issues here."

Her hands come together around my top shirt button, then the next, and the next. Her hands spread the shirt back off my shoulders so it falls behind me.

"I just need you to know," I say, "since you're a doctor and everything," I say, "I might be a recovering sex addict."

Her hands spring my belt buckle, and she says, "Then just do what comes naturally."

The smell of her isn't roses or pine or lemons. It isn't anything, not even skin.

How she smells is wet.

"You don't understand," I say. "I have almost two whole days of sobriety."

The gold light shows her warm and glowy. Still, the feeling is if I kissed her my lips would stick the way they would on frozen metal. To slow things down, I think of basal cell carcinomas. I picture the bacterial skin infection impetigo. Corneal ulcers.

She pulls my face into her ear. Into my ear she whispers,

"Fine. That's very noble of you. But how about if you start your recovery tomorrow...."

She thumbs my pants off my hips and says, "I need you to put your faith in me."

And her smooth cool hands close around me.