Jerome entered the room,
murmuring the Lord’s Prayer under his breath,
and stopped short at what he found.
Everything was dark, elegant, sexy,
simple lines and suggestive curves
and executed with Japanese precision.
In the center of the room
was a long white table
with an exotic floral and bone arrangement
for its centerpiece.
All the dim light in the room
came from beeswax candles
obscenely overflowing their sconces.
Two places were set
at either end of the long white table;
one for him, and one for the beautiful, regal redhead
who sat observing from the far end.
“It’s good to see you,” she said finally,
sipping her glass of blood-red wine.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
Jerome swallowed hard; he’d never met
this woman before, but she was talking
so familiarly to him.
“Sit. Drink. Eat. You’ve had a long and trying journey;
take your just reward. I’d stand and greet you,
but I fear my leg has been bothering me all evening.”
Jerome, normally a man of modesty and restraint,
dove into the feast like a sacristan to a pile of heavenly treasure.
The wine was practically divine, the fruit like the first bite in Eden,
and the flesh, oh the flesh was most sumptuous. Soft to the teeth,
warm as a girl’s thigh, and so rare there was still blood in it.
The tastes swam in his head, stirring a sensual ecstasy
that threatened to grip his whole body;
never in all his many years had he eaten so.
If he had tasted such delights, he’d likely not
have taken on his vocation.
“This meat – where is it from? Certainly not
common beef, and too experienced for veal;
it hasn’t the sweetness of pork, nor deer’s gaminess;
I know goat, and horse, and all the edible things from the sea
– but never have I eaten meat such as this!”
“Did you never partake of the transubstantiated host?”
“Aye, and Christ’s meat leaves a metaphoric aftertaste
– but this flesh does not.”
“Eat,” the female conductor of souls smiled,
“and worry about where it comes from later.”
Under the table and beneath her ballgown
she scratched a phantom itch on her thigh.
