Listening in secret was one of my favorite things to do. And having lived my whole life at the Angelus, I knew a hundred ways to get close to other people, to eavesdrop, without them knowing I was there. Sabina had caught me a few times, and we’d made a deal: she wouldn’t tell and I wouldn’t sneak around behind her with secret ears. The room between was part of our arrangement. We’d both agreed to leave it as a buffer, a dead zone between us.
But a change had happened: in me, in the Angelus, in the city. Since Django’s show, everything felt different. The rules I’d gone by for years hadn’t been totally thrown away, but I understood them differently now. And if Sabina was going to change—having guests in her room in the daytime—then I could change too.
I used the key that no one knew I had and entered the abandoned room. It smelled of dust, of rust, and of old lady lilac perfume. The curtains were drawn, making a blurred, reddish afternoon gloom. The bed had never been stripped, and the desk still had a crystal vase holding the dried bones of a very dead rose.
Going to the closet, I edged the door open just enough to get inside and put my ear to the listening spot I’d made years before. The music was definitely coming from next door. It wasn’t so mysterious now: a reedy little organ making soft minor church chords. And a voice was speaking something that might have been a prayer.
I’d spent my whole life in a city full of churches, but only been to mass a few times. Our father had to get along with the Archbishop and the monsignors who ruled. So he showed respect and paid the right tithes to the right accounts. A few times a year, he attended services at St. Florian’s, paying with his time, with his kneeling and bowing, another kind of debt to the Archbishop. I liked the spicy traces that clung to his clothes when he came home from church: burnt sandalwood, myrrh, frankincense. Other than the change in the tolling of the bells, however, Sundays were no different at the Angelus than any other day. All of this is to say I didn’t know much about religion, and I cared even less. The old music, the capes and crowns, the robes and relics were beautiful. Gorgeous church spires and domes surrounded the Angelus. Still, religion itself didn’t mean much at all to me.
So hearing what sounded like prayer from my sister’s room was odd indeed. And even odder were the bursts of high, riotous laughter, as though one of her other guests thought the whole thing was a joke or a ridiculous put-on. I leaned in closer to my listening spot, pressing my ear hard against the bare wood where I’d scraped off the plaster. At first, it was just a cloud of noise.