Forgiveness 4 You

I AWOKE TUESDAY MORNING TO THE SOUND OF A BIRD TRAPPED IN my apartment, an insistent chirping that had me up looking on window ledges and under the bed. There were only so many places it could hide.

I could see the bird nowhere, yet the chirps went on, stopping for a moment during which I—still on hands and knees in white underwear—listened intently. Then it started up again. I was crawling over my pants, which were lying where I’d discarded them on the floor, when I felt a vibration along with each twirp. I stuck my hand into the pocket and pulled out the phone Madeline had given me yesterday, now suddenly alive with motion and sound and lights.

I tried pushing “buttons,” but the screen was smooth and flat and nothing happened. Eventually the phone went dead in my hand. Then it started up for a third time, and when I poked at the picture of a telephone receiver, Isaac’s voice came through the device, tinny but real.

“Hey Father, sorry to wake you,” he called from the little black box. I put it tentatively to my ear. “I was hoping we could get some breakfast before work. I’m in your neighborhood. Okay if I pull up?”

I looked at the clock. It was 6:30 a.m., an hour that I avoided because I used to spend it in prayer. Waking at dawn but without my ritual, I felt furtive and unprepared. “Yes,” I said slowly. “But I really need to shower. Can you make it 7?”

“Sure,” Isaac drawled. “I’ll just wait here.” And that’s when I knew he was already in his car downstairs.

I hurried, dressing in the “business casual” outfit Raj had sold us. I once read in a magazine at a barbershop that men should dress to feel powerful. At the time, I hadn’t understood it. But now I had a sense I’d need my olive green shirt and bold purple tie.

“Looking good, Father!” Isaac said as I opened the passenger door of what looked like Batman’s car and folded myself in. “You must have read my mind. One of the things I want to talk about is a photo shoot we’ve got planned for 10 a.m. So don’t spill any anything on that Versace, okay?”

Thus, I sat in a booth at the Daybreak Diner swathed in napkins, drinking my coffee with an anteater’s extended lips. The room clattered and buzzed around me, that low happy noise that makes even a place you’ve never been feel homey. “Listen,” Isaac said. “I want to understand what happened yesterday, with Sandy.”

“Here ya go, gentlemen.” A woman wearing a nametag that said “Dora” and hair in a beehive straight out of 1965 slid our plates onto the table. “Egg white omelet and dry toast,” she said to Isaac, “and the Farm Hand special for you,” she cooed, turning toward me. “You’re my favorite. I like a man who eats ham in the morning.” Then she winked one spidery eyelash and walked away.

“I’m not sure I can talk about it,” I said, fork suspended above my plate. I was starving but stopped by this question. “Isn’t what people confess to me confidential?”

Isaac was already eating; he shook his head and swallowed. “We wrote the language of the contract very carefully. It’s got all the standard outs that priests get: You have the right to go to the police if some guy tells you he’s got a sex slave locked in his basement. But we also put in a clause about being able to discuss the content of your sessions ‘as a whole’ for business purposes.”

“Yeah. You’ve had one session so far. With Sandy. She is the whole. Go ahead and eat, Father.”

I piled a bite of egg and ham on toast and bit into it, closing my eyes and giving up silent thanks to God. When I opened my eyes again, Isaac was pushing his plate away. “Uh, I’ve gotta get going in about ten, fifteen minutes, and we have a couple things to discuss. So, about Sandy?”

“I felt I couldn’t offer her anything, under the circumstances. She’d abandoned a very ill friend who needed her—who still needs her—and she wanted me to forgive her, both from what she’d done in the past and, as I understood it, what she plans to do in the future.”

“But isn’t that the way it works? A guy comes in to confess every week, says I slept with my secretary, the priest blesses him and gives him ten Hail Marys with the understanding that he’s just going to go out and do it all over again? Isn’t that what Indulgences are for, perpetual forgiveness?”

I laughed involuntarily. “Your Catholicism shows up in random ways,” I told Isaac. “Like the way you have everyone at the agency calling me Father Gabe.”

“It’s a disease that leaves something inside you,” Isaac said. “Like chicken pox and shingles. I’ll never quite be cured.”

“Why did you leave the church?” My stomach was straining, but I was still hungry for something. I soaked up the last of my egg yolk with toast.

“The real answer is probably long and complicated and has something to do with my inability to be faithful. But the short answer is: because the Catholic Church teaches that who I am is perverse and a ‘violation of divine law.’”

“You could have gone to confession every week or month, or however often you chose, admitted that you sinned and received absolution. Many gay men do.”

“How does that make sense?” Isaac asked. “I’m still a gay man, and I intend to have sex with men. With one man, at this point—if I ever get to see him again. But receiving absolution every week like I’m punching a ticket? That sounds …”

“Pointless?” I was finally sated so I pushed my plate to touch Isaac’s and tore off the napkins that draped me. “What the Catholic Church teaches about homosexuality is wrong, on so many levels. But it’s also really shrewd. People buy it. Gay men and lesbians who’ve never done a thing to hurt anyone, at least not where sex is concerned, spend a lifetime feeling guilty. And Church doctrine locks them into this ridiculous merry-go-round of so-called sin and absolution—like a lifetime membership.”

“Excellent retention tactic.” Isaac waved at Dora and made a scribbling motion in the air.

“So am I,” I said. “I have nothing to offer someone who comes to me and says ‘I’ve hurt someone and I’m going to continue to hurt her, though it’s in my power to change things, and I want to be forgiven.’ Would the Catholic Church offer Sandy weekly redemption? Probably. But I can’t hand out my blessing like some … some … paid flower delivery.”

“So what you’re saying … Thank you,” he said to Dora when she dropped the bill in a puddle of water that had sweated off his glass.

“You come back soon, sweetheart,” she said to me, grazing my hand with her red-painted nails before she left.

“So what you’re saying,” Isaac began again as we left the café and climbed into his Batmobile, “is that we’re running a for-profit business with higher moral standards than the Catholic Church?”

“I wouldn’t say higher, necessarily.” The spires of Michigan Avenue loomed and glittered in the bright morning sun. “Just different.”

By the time we arrived downtown, Isaac had spoken at length about a photo shoot, “social media entry points,” and some campaign to make me a forgiveness hero, which sounded silly in the way so many wildly popular television shows do if someone tries to explain them to you.

He dropped me off at a salon a block past Mason & Zeus with instructions to go inside and submit to whatever Henry deemed best. “You’re irresistible, Father,” Isaac said. “Did you see that waitress? She wanted to rip your clothes off right there in the booth, despite your $9 haircut. Imagine what a really good style will do.”

I couldn’t imagine, or I was afraid to. I’m not quite sure which. The shop was still technically closed, so it was just the two of us. Henry—a man-and-a-half size person with long, graying golden locks of hair—draped me with something soft and began by massaging my neck with oil, which was startling at first. I might have objected, but it felt too good.

He talked in a shouting voice during the entire shampooing portion of the procedure. I could have sworn he said, “I was on a Bugis Schooner.” But the truth is, I wasn’t really listening. With my eyes closed, I could pretend it was Madeline holding my neck and rubbing fragrant soap gently on my head.

“Indonesia!” Henry boomed, as he toweled me. “No one here understands. It’s not like any place else on earth. Seventeen thousand islands! No way anyone could see them all. That gives me hope!” He propelled me back to the chair and gave a little shove on my back that meant I should sit. This was a little like ballroom dancing, with its gentle leading cues.

Henry had taken my glasses so his reflection in the mirror above my head was downright lion-like in its fuzzy unreality. I could imagine him in the jungles of Bali or Borneo (though I had no idea whether either place actually had lions), crouching as he did now to examine my right temple. “What do you think, Father? Highlights or just a cut?”

“Just a cut,” I said, inferring that “highlights” was the more involved process.

“All righty then.” Henry moved around me as if I were prey. “I think I can work with this. Have you ever been overseas, Father?”

“Not a big fan of France.” The scissors made a soothing, snippety sound. Full of food as I was, I could have drifted to sleep in Henry’s chair. “Now, Rome, on the other hand. Loved it. But it was mostly the food. Fagiole! You ever had fagiole, Father?”

I searched my memory for such a thing, but by the time I’d come up with the bean dish Mother Aemilia would serve on Sunday evenings, Henry had moved on. “Prague. Christ, I had more amazing women in Prague than anywhere else on this earth, literally.” He spun the chair to the left, my own little teacup ride. “You know where I never got, though, Father? South America. Would you believe it? Right down south, and it’s the only continent other than Antarctica that I never set foot on. Peru. There’s my goal. I mean, how hard can it be? It’s even the same time zone! Nothing to get used to. Except my Spanish is pretty rusty. But still.”

He paused and it roused me, the way the sudden absence of an engine sound will. “What took you to so many places?” I asked. “Was it a job?”

Henry snorted. “Hardly. More the opposite. I kept leaving jobs, because I’d get this feeling and the only thing that would make it stop was moving. Somewhere, anywhere. Except it had to be new.”

“What feeling?” I asked. I’d known people like this: priests who asked for assignments in remote locations, addicts who surfed from city to city always looking for something they never found.

“Loneliness.” Henry had stopped cutting, and he stood stock straight behind me, his blurred reflection looming in the mirror. “I can’t explain it. But when I was in one place for too long—and I’m talking months, not years—I’d get this feeling like I was going to die. The only thing that helped was to pick up and go to a place I’d never been. Where I didn’t know a soul. I know it sounds backward, but that’s the way it’s always been for me.”

He bent again and went back to the business of my hair, but he was slower, more deliberate now. “That’s how I ended up doing this,” Henry said, smoothing a section on my crown. “When I was younger, I worked construction and utility and docks. All hard labor. But a body can only do that for so long, and I knew this girl who taught at Aveda. We worked out a deal. You know.”

“So now you stay in one place,” I said. Henry circled the chair and crouched directly in front of me, pulling strands down on either side of my forehead. “What changed?”

“My parents died.” He sighed heavily, and his breath smelled like cinnamon gum.

“So was I. But not for the right reason. All those years, they were the people bringing me back. I’d work until I had enough cash for a one-way ticket and maybe two, three, four weeks of fun. Then, when the money was gone, I’d call my mom and dad and tell them how I was broke and stuck in Jakarta or Port-Au-Prince or Istanbul, wherever I was. And they’d wire me the cash to get home.”

He sighed again, from behind me, and I could feel the air on my neck in places that used to be covered. “When they died—my mom first, then my dad about six months later—there was nothing left. In fact, less than that. They’d taken a second mortgage on the house. It took me four years to pay it off.”

“The bank probably would have forgiven that,” I said. I’ll admit, this was a test.

He shook his head, and his ringlets swung; that hair had to have something to do with Henry’s getting this job. He looked like the man on the cover of the pornographic romance novels I sold—or rather, the way his much-older uncle might look.

“It was my debt,” he said. “Mine to pay. The sad thing is, I didn’t get that ’til after they were gone.” Then he turned on a hair dryer and our conversation disappeared in its roar.

When he was done, Henry holstered the hair dryer and handed me my glasses. “Have a look.” My reflection gazed back at me from underneath a neat businessman’s cut with an exotic fringe in front. “See? You look just like that guy on Mad Men,” Henry said, and I nodded, though I had only a vague idea what he meant.

He removed my cape, holding it carefully to cradle the fallen hair. “You know, your parents …” I said, but Henry backed away and held up one hand. He had to let go of one side of the fabric in order to do this and dark wisps fluttered to the ground as he spoke.

“I know what you do, Father. Isaac told me. And I’m not asking for your forgiveness. I know what I did, and I know I’d probably do it again. It’s how God made me, but that still don’t make it right.”

I could find no hole in Henry’s logic, yet it didn’t make sense. But he was determined now. “Bill’s all paid, and I got a nice tip,” he told me, offering me his huge hand as I dismounted. “You can just go.”

Walking the block to Mason & Zeus, I turned my face toward the pale sun. If I were about to go back into that room where I met Sandy, I’d need the memory of light.

“Father Gabe?” Candy squealed when she saw me. “I didn’t think you could get even cuter. But I was wrong!” She rose from her desk in an outfit so tight and intricately laced I wondered if she’d have to be cut out of it at night.

But instead of taking me to the eighth floor, Candy led me to the conference room where we’d met with the investors the week before. The large table had been shoved to one side and all but one chair removed from the room. There were lights on stands and large translucent discs like enormous Frisbees. Two of the younger people—including the girl, Joy, who’d recently driven me to work—sat on the edge of the table, waiting.

“Ready for your photo session?” Joy came forward with her hand out, but I didn’t know where to look. Her breasts were high and mostly exposed, a thin gold necklace with a cross disappearing between them. I was afraid if I moved I might touch one. When I didn’t shake her hand she stretched up instead to kiss my cheek. “Don’t worry. You’re going to be great. Have you met Ted?”

A young black man with my exact haircut came forward. He wore a shirt striped like Joseph’s coat of many colors and a small diamond stud in each ear. I wondered what these dazzling people would have thought of the younger me, trading in his Levi’s and Freddie Mercury glasses for a novitiate’s robe. “Good morning, Father. Ted Roman. I’m in charge of interactive media.”

“Nice to meet you, Ted,” I said, shaking his hand. “I have no idea what that is.”

He grinned and clasped my hand with both of his. Ted was slender and boyish, but his grip was sure. “Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Snapchat. Basically everything that happens on a device.”

“It doesn’t matter, Father Gabe,” Joy said, darting in front of Ted to take my arm. I sensed a tug-of-war with myself as the rope; if this was the case, I was hoping he’d win. “We’ll talk you through this.”

But “talk” turned out to be not what this was. I was placed in a chair where Joy hovered over me with a container of makeup in her hand. “There’s really nothing to do here,” she said, wiping me here and there with a little puff. “The five o’clock shadow really works for you. Maybe just a little …”—she leaned straight over, and the cross popped out of her shirt to dangle in front of me—“right here around the eyes.”

By the time she’d pronounced me done, there were three more men in the room. I reached for my glasses, but Joy put her hand out and said, “No, try these,” handing me a pair of frames with no corrective lenses. “Perfect!” she cheered somewhat too effusively, as I wobbled to stand. It would be a day of wandering blind as my blurred vision made the shifting glare of the lights even more intense.

Across the room stood a grizzled wolf of a man, two cameras hanging on thick straps around his neck. The other two men—black-clad Ted-aged creatures from what I could tell—milled around with more enormous lighted shells. I was placed in the midst of these and blinked madly in the glare. The wolf came forward. “Try to stay still, Father,” he growled. “Just relax. You’ll get used to the lights.”

My body was contorted into positions that seemed outlandish: one hand to my chin; head forward and arms behind me as if I were skiing; legs spread apart while my arms were crossed. “That’s great, just great, love. Sorry … Father,” the wolf said. He was lying at my feet, camera pointed up. “There! Hold that. Don’t. Move!!” His shutter clicked as fast as machine-gun fire. I grimaced and sweated in the lights.

“I think we need something a little more natural.” I heard Madeline’s voice and turned toward it, but her body, her face, were veiled by light. “Here …”

There was a shuffling as she came toward me, first just luminous movement and then, gradually, the form of Madeline emerging from the glow. When she got right under my nose, I saw she was in a pale blue dress that wrapped around her body in different, confounding ways. Why was every woman in this place wearing clothes that seemed like puzzles I wanted to solve?

“Gabe, why don’t you try this?” Madeline pushed me gently to sit on the edge of the table. Then her hands were on my tie, loosening the knot.

I looked down and my lips brushed her hair. It was accidental, and no one seemed to notice—not even Madeline—but it was as if an animal in my body had woken up. It was more than just the hard ache rising against the front of my pants. That, I was used to. But this? There was urgency everywhere in me, my chest and legs and neck, pulsing with the desire to touch her. I crossed my arms, clenching my hands inside soggy armpits.

“No, no. Let’s take these out.” Madeline began prying at my biceps, which only made me tighten my grip. “Gabe! This isn’t funny.”

By this point, I was wild. The wolf and his assistants were watching me. Ted was pressing a bottle of water on me, asking if I needed to rest for a few minutes. Madeline stood close enough to lick, and I felt certain that if I let myself lose vigilance, I would turn and lift her off the ground, drive her against a wall, and rip through the maze of her dress.

I don’t know what would have happened next if I hadn’t been saved by Joy, who must have left the room unnoticed at some earlier point. Now, blessedly, she burst back in. “There’s white smoke! They’ve elected a new pope. Isaac says we should all go to the war room to watch. This will definitely affect our strategy going forward.”

“Christ,” said the cameraman. “Fine, but you’re paying me for the time.”

Madeline backed away a few inches, and my heart rate improved. “Shall we?” she asked. And I looked into her dark eyes, not at all sure what she meant. Everyone else was filing out. My relief at no longer being on display was too immense to contain. I loosened my arms and sat back on the table, reaching for the water Ted had left there and drinking half the bottle at once.

I closed my eyes and recalled the smells of Vatican City. Seawater and the dust of old stone. The metal-and-earth scent of a thurible packed with incense. I could still feel the weight of the chain in my hands. I did not know if I was actually longing to be there, in St. Peter’s Square, or if I only wished to long for it. Whichever it was, yearning unfolded in me, and I felt the hope that I had during two previous papal elections: that this would be the man who could show me the lighted way.

Years ago I had applied for a papal audience, believing I could finally unburden my soul. That was during the reign of Pope John Paul II. I showed up at the appointed time and had been waiting for three hours when handlers—Italians who looked and dressed oddly like Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black—told me that the Holy Father had been called to Church business, and that I should come back some other day. The next available slot was nineteen months hence.

Madeline came and sat next to me, hoisting herself primly up onto the tabletop—which made my heart pick up again. “This is ridiculously hard on you, isn’t it?”

I considered her question carefully. To say yes struck me as unmanly, certainly unpriestlike. We were trained to remain as oblivious as possible to earthly things. Nothing mattered but one’s relationship to the Church and to God. I’d spent years “praying away” both lust and fear.

“I have to ask. Why are you doing this, Gabe?” Madeline inched closer. “I know I started it, so that may seem like a strange question. But I’ve been watching for the past few days and this just isn’t … you.”

I sat heavily. It was clear that Madeline was providing me with an escape. This time there was no need for tearful, confusing speeches. I could leave all this—the photography sessions and frantic cab rides, Isaac’s early-morning chirping from my phone—and I could go back to … what? I would continue to be haunted by memories of Aidan and hear the guilty stories of nearly everyone I met. But I would do so without these people who fed me Thai food and got me drunk and cut my hair like some madman on TV.

“You’re right, this isn’t me,” I said to Madeline. And in the single bravest act I’ve ever committed, I took her hand. “But. Nothing is.”

She clasped my fingers in her tiny, steely grasp. Then Madeline drew closer, her breasts grazing my side from inside that wonderfully perplexing dress. She tilted her face up, and this time I kissed her, just the way I had imagined a hundred times since that night in her car. Her lips were chapped, parted. She smelled of coffee and a peachy hair gel—or perhaps that was me.

“Gabe.” Madeline stood to slip her arms around my still-damp chest. Then she leaned against me, her body tight between my legs, and I lost consciousness everywhere else. The room and its scatter of lighting equipment were gone. I was kissing Madeline slowly and it was wet, and I was feeling her swivel against the thing I had become. Hard, hot, huge to bursting. My mind was erased, filled with nothing but the need to be inside her. In the combined history of my mostly disappointing sexual encounters, I had never experienced this.

“Father Gabe, they’ve elected a … Oh!” I focused as well as I was able on the doorway beyond the soft, dark hair in my hands. A blur that seemed to be Joy stood there, hand clapped to her mouth. Inside my arms, I felt Madeline curl in defeat for the briefest second then turn with determination to face Joy.

“We’re going to need a few minutes here,” she said. “Could you get the door? And please, sweetheart.” She paused to draw a breath. “Keep your mouth shut.”

I was frozen, waiting to see what would happen next. Humans have free will; it’s one of the first things young priests grapple with. You can never assume where choice is concerned. But Joy backed away, still watching us, dragging the doorknob in one hand. When finally the door clicked shut Madeline—now facing out—slumped back against me and lay her head on my chest. “Oh, we are in a world of shit,” she said, rocking gently from side to side. “That girl is telling someone right now. I guarantee.”

I adjusted myself discreetly then reached up to stroke Madeline’s hair. I’d deflated to a degree that was, in one sense, more comfortable. But I could tell what had happened before was imminent. My body was lying in wait. Should Madeline turn to face me or put her hand on my thigh I risked pushing her up against the door and lifting her skirt. Just thinking about it, my breathing became ragged. I calculated her weight and whether I could lift her sufficiently to enter her while standing. I decided I could.

“Gabe?” she said, and I heard something lonely in the word. “What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to fix ourselves up and go out there,” I said, pulling her in closer until the friction made me nearly lose the thread of what I was thinking. “We’re going to find out who has been elected to lead the Church. Then what happens is up to you. But I’m hoping we’ll go somewhere together and find a bed.” My mouth was so near her ear I had lowered my voice to a whisper, which made me braver. “Or, it doesn’t have to be a bed. A couch. A car seat. A park bench. Anywhere but here.”

Madeline laughed, and I was elated. There was a flicker of my old self, counseling the new; this predicament was of the earth, utterly human, hardly dire.

“What a story that would make,” she said. “Ex-priest and local executive arrested for public indecency. I don’t know if that would kill our business or help it! You could get a bad boy reputation: the Anthony Bourdain of forgiveness.”

I tightened my arms around her and placed my chin on her shoulder. I felt more at peace, more certain of my place, than I had since my early days in the priesthood. But I knew this was a fiction. As soon as we stepped out of this room, the pressures and constraints of the outer world would come upon us. I reminded myself that God was with us, He had made us this way. It was our duty to find grace in freedom.

“You’re right,” Madeline said, as if she could hear what I was thinking. “We need to go out there.”

She pulled away to check herself, running her hands over hips, breasts, and hair to make sure everything was smoothed down and contained. Once she was satisfied, Madeline shook her body slowly from her pointed high heels all the way up to her shoulders, rolling them back as if marching into battle. I imagined her doing exactly that move naked under me, and before I could think of something else, something somber or gruesome, every drop of blood in my body surged toward my loins. “Ready?” she asked.

Madeline was wearing her CEO face now. “But you were the one who said …” Her voice was strained, her mouth set and verging on grim. “All right, fine. I think it’s important that you make an appearance though. Go on about the day. We’re launching in forty-eight hours, you know.”

“I know.” I looked down at my lap, which I realized ten seconds too late looked weak. Like avoidance or betrayal. When I was really only doing the thing I remembered so clearly—so painfully—from adolescence: looking to see if the tent in my pants was obvious. Waiting sweatily for it to collapse.

As a young Catholic boy, I had taken the warning against masturbation to heart. But in my late teens, I’d run like a freight train over all the lessons of my youth, jerking off two, sometimes three times a day between hazy hours of getting high. It was brilliantly effective. A couple quick strokes in a men’s room could relieve me. And there were half a dozen times I’d reverted to this out of necessity as a priest: before a baptism or a dinner party when I could not crouch or stay seated. I assumed that God in all his wisdom would understand.

Madeline, however, did not seem to. And shame over my lack of control, my arrested, still-adolescent approach to sex, made it impossible for me to explain.

“All right.” She walked away, and the distance grew between us. “I guess I’ll see you later,” she said softly as she opened the door. And then she was gone.

Okay, people, I hope you’re studying up. This is what we’ve been waiting for, and let me say, in case you haven’t figured it out already, Pope Vincent is throwing a monkey wrench (what does that phrase even mean? Abel???) into the marketing plan for F4Y.

Remember, we’re basing audience response among former Catholics—our primary market at launch, according to Joy’s Opportunity Landscape—on people feeling distanced and disillusioned by the Church. But this new pope may change the game. I wish I could tell you I saw this coming. But never in my wildest dreams did I think the conclave would elect a guy like this.

First, he’s a Jesuit. Literally that means he’s part of the Society of Jesus, a band of priests that wears rags and lives in poverty, serving the poor and the sick. These are the saints who wash the feet of the homeless. They consider themselves “soldiers” in the battle to make this world a better, more godly place. These guys rescued hordes of Jews during the Holocaust! Bottom line: Jesuits rock. Great historical PR.

Second, people love him already. Think Obama, November 5, 2008. Pope Vincent is the great white hope, so to speak. Right now, Catholics are a little high on his goodness. They’re relieved to be done with the old, cranky bad pope and feeling better about who they are.

What does all this mean? A) We may have to change tactics. For instance, we might have to remove all references to the Church. B) We’re going to reassess how to talk about Father Gabe. We might want to drop the priest connection altogether. Or we might go ahead and tie him to the Church but do it carefully, with reverence. I’ve got a couple focus groups working 24/7 to tell us which. C) We’re going to delay launch by three days. I think it’s ill-advised to go out there the same week as this papal election. So let’s start fresh next Monday. By that time, we’ll have more information and a revised creative brief.

Any questions, please see me or Madeline personally. I cannot stress this strongly enough: YOUR DISCRETION IS CRITICAL. Don’t talk about F4Y to anyone—and by anyone, I mean your wives or husbands or brothers or sisters or one-night stands. If you need to talk to someone, call me. Midnight, 4 a.m., I don’t care. Just keep it between us.

Also, if you have any weekend plans, cancel them. We’ll be revising straight through, Friday to Sunday. No excuses. Let’s get this sucker launched!

Mommy—

Before you get upset, I want you to know you should be proud of me. I did the right thing and called some people about what Madeline and Isaac are doing with Father Gabe. It’s lucky Daddy is a lawyer because I violated my non-disclosure agreement and I probably could get sued, but it was worth it and I know you’re going to think so, too.

I’ll be honest. I’ve been drinking tonight. Cosmos, because I was feeling very Carrie and Samantha and remembering how we went to the first Sex and the City movie together back when I was in junior high. I was with the whole Forgiveness team tonight. We worked till like 9:30 then went to McGill’s for a “planning session,” which was really just a big drunkfest. Scott was there, too, but we totally avoided each other.

I don’t think I really explained everything that happened, so I’ll start at the beginning. A few days ago, Madeline asked me to drive Fr Gabe to the bookstore where he works. (I know that sounds strange, but he does.) So we got in Madeline’s car and he was really tense because he’d just had a forgiveness session with some older woman who got v. angry and stormed out.

As we were driving, Father Gabe loosened up with me and started telling me things about his childhood and how he felt about the pope. It was nice and I started to really like him. That’s when I had this brainstorm about making him into a “forgiveness hero,” making that his brand. It’s the kind of creativity a strategist doesn’t usually get to contribute, so I was really proud. But I stupidly told Scott, who STOLE my idea! That was the day I broke up with him and maybe you’re thinking I got what I deserved because what we were doing was dishonest. Well, don’t think I haven’t thought of that! I do feel guilty for sleeping with a married man. But you have to remember, Scott lied to me when he told me how unhappy he was and made it sound like he was definitely leaving his wife.

Anyway, this morning I saw the older lady in the elevator and asked her what happened w Fr Gabe. At first she told me it was none of my business and I said fine, I was only trying to help; then she said she was sorry, but it still made her upset. She paid for a forgiveness, but then she got into the room and Fr Gabe refused! He said he wouldn’t forgive her at all and he wouldn’t give her a good reason so she thinks the whole thing is a rip-off b/c she’s been trying to get ahold of Isaac to get her money back and he hasn’t returned her calls.

Part of me was on the side of admiring Father Gabe. I mean, this woman must have done something really terrible if he wouldn’t forgive her. I really believed this was about his integrity. But then, after we had a photo shoot (where he looked really hot thanks to the haircut and glasses I suggested), I found him making out with Madeline!! Seriously, they were going at it right on the table in the conference room. And this is while the new pope was being announced! I mean, there was white smoke coming out of the chimney, and I thought, “Oh, Father Gabe shouldn’t be missing this,” so I went to find him and that’s when I saw them. It was so gross. Madeline is practically your age. No offense.

Then, after all that, Madeline came into the room where we were all watching TV. It was right at the moment when Pope Vincent was coming out to talk and bless people. But she made us turn it off so we could work another 29-hour day. Later, I saw her talking to Isaac (he’s the PR guru from Texas), and next thing you know we’re getting this memo that says the pope is all bad news for us because he’s a Jesuit and Catholics might like him enough to stick with the Church instead of confessing to Fr Gabe.

Well, I’d just gotten to a boiling point where the hypocrisy was making me furious. So I told Candy that I had a really bad period and I needed to go home and change my clothes, maybe take a nap, so could she cover for me? And she did. She watched my email and sent vague answers that said things like, “On a research call right now. Can I get back to you in 30 minutes?” Then I took my iPhone (thanks for still paying the bill for that, by the way) and went to a coffee shop a few streets over and called every newspaper and TV network I could think of.

The first two were like, “Yeah? So what’s the big deal? There’s a priest starting a business in Chicago. Doesn’t sound like news.” So I got an iced mocha, and I tried to figure out how Isaac would talk to people about this. So the next call I made, I kind of spun the whole story about how it was the very same week that the new pope was elected and Mason & Zeus was going out with this very anti-Catholic start-up and did that seem like just a coincidence?

I lucked out this time because the woman I was talking to said her station wasn’t really interested but I should call the religion reporter at the Chronicle. She even gave me his direct number. So I called and talked to this guy who sounded like he was about 100 years old, but he said, “Oh, yeah, Gabe McKenna …” and it turns out this guy covered it when Father Gabe left the priesthood. And here’s the amazing part: He also remembered that there was some cover-up, like a police record on Father Gabe. And I said that makes sense, because there’s something wrong with him and I think he’s a total manipulator.

Finally this old dude said he was going to find the business reporter, the guy who covers stuff like advertising, and maybe they could work this from two angles and come up with a story, because it sounded interesting. But they absolutely had to have someone who was willing to speak on the record. Without it they’d look stupid, like they were just harassing a Chicago-based business, plus an ex-priest who never hurt anyone. And I said fine, I’m done with Mason & Zeus anyway. They’re all liars and cheats.

I’d been gone like two hours, so I had to call Candy and say the cramps got so bad I had to make a hot water bottle and take six Advil, but I’m finally on my way back. And she was sympathetic, but she said Madeline was looking for me and I should hurry. I’d been planning to go somewhere and buy a different pair of pants so Candy wouldn’t think I was just using her, but at that point I decided it wasn’t worth it, I should just go back and see what happened.

So it was after five o’clock and I knew I’d be in big trouble. I went into the office and found Candy right away to thank her and promise I’ll take her to lunch next week—which I’m probably not going to do because I doubt I’ll still be working there. But she was very sweet and said I should go find Madeline and tell her the truth (which was actually a lie) because like five people had noticed I was gone. And SCOTT, that jerk-face, was making a big deal about how everyone else was staying late but there seemed to be different rules for me.

But when I went to Madeline’s office she was actually nice to me, which was kind of confusing b/c it could have been real or she could have just been worried I’d tell everyone at the office about her kissing Father Gabe. She said she appreciated my hard work and told me how valuable I was to the team and I was starting to regret talking to the reporter, but at the same time I could feel my phone vibrating over and over and I knew he was trying to call me back.

By this time it was about six o’clock. We had dinner where they served bad, soggy pizza and talked about strategy for about an hour. We were going to go out with a whole alternate ad campaign that doesn’t use words like “absolution” (because it’s too religious)—this was Scott’s idea. But I said I think it’s a mistake because you want your advertising to be consistent, and we can’t have one billboard saying one thing and another one saying something else. I mean, does Nike say “Just Do It!” in New York but something else entirely different in DC? No.

Then the most amazing thing happened: Madeline said I was right and she told Scott to stick with the campaign we have, just tweak the language a little. Also, it turns out they’re interviewing like three guys to back up Father Gabe and one of them is an ex-priest but two of them are like ministers or rabbis, I’m not sure. Afterward, Isaac came up to me and said, “Good work,” and I decided right then that I wasn’t going to call the Chronicle back for sure.

Only you’re probably wondering why I still think I’m going to get fired? Because after we got to the bar, finally, after working till nearly nine, and I had a little more to drink than I should have, I went into the ladies room and checked my messages. And you’re not going to believe this. The reporter had left two voice mails and a text telling me that he was going to put the story about Forgiveness4You in Thursday’s paper, along with information about Father Gabe BEING A COCAINE DEALER. I swear, that’s exactly what he said.

And maybe it was the Cosmos, but it all just totally added up in my head: the business, the scene with Madeline, the way I can’t get a read on Father Gabe. Now this drug thing. So I texted back yes, they could go ahead with my quotes and use my name, and then I went back out to the bar and had one more drink—because I didn’t want to look suspicious—before I left. (Of course, I took a cab.)

So I just wanted to warn you and Daddy before the story hits. And I need to confess a few things. My new apartment overlooks the lake, it costs $3,200 a month, and Rebecca moved out last November, which I never told you b/c I knew you’d be mad. Also I got a little behind on my credit cards. All to say, if I get fired I’m either going to need to come home for a while or $12,000 to tide me over. Maybe both. But you’ll get every penny back. I think I’m pretty good at my job, and if it weren’t for all the craziness going on around me, I might have been promoted to associate director next year.

I’m going to bed now. And I’ll probably be hung over in the morning, so if you want to call me please don’t do it till after noon.

xoxoxoxoxo

Joy

XI