In Ordinary Time

It's not the quickest route to his destination, but he traces the path of the postcards: a quick jump over to I-95, then down the Eastern Seaboard, into South Carolina, miles of pavement and Slim Jims, convenience store coffee and drive-thru burgers, Fritos and the sound of the latest U2 CD on repeat from his radio, an early Christmas present from Thomas. He smokes too much the first day, throws out his pack of cigarettes as he skirts DC, stops in Rocky Mount by the next day at noon to buy a new pack. Interstate 20 is a long stretch of nothing - wide bleached pavement cut through miles of empty rolling foothills, with almost none of the corridor development Ray's used to seeing along major highways, and he sheers northward again outside of Atlanta to hit Memphis. It takes him just days to cover ground that it took Miguel months to move across - although who knows what kind of stops and starts and doubling back and going to ground Alvarez did on his version of this trip?

Ray's pretty straightforward, always has been - he doesn't always get what he wants, but he generally knows what it is and how to achieve it, unerring forward motion like walking into the wind, steady roll of the wheels under him, eating up the miles. But this time, he's following someone else's lead, and it's not the quickest route, and he's not entirely sure why he does it - it's not as if he can ask people along the way if they've seen Alvarez, for heaven's sake. He gets that human drive for connection that makes people ask, infuriatingly sometimes, if you know Clarence Lee, when they find out you're from Toledo - as if, of all the people out there, you're likely to know that one guy who was Bridesmaid Number Two's brother-in-law from their sister's wedding that one time - but he's not going to fall into doing that sort of thing himself. Anyway, it's not as if he should be drawing attention to Alvarez, not as if he should be jogging anyone's memory.

Aiding and abetting, says a voice in his mind, and it sounds suspiciously like Devlin – which is almost a relief, really, because it makes him feel less guilty than when it was in the pained tones of Leo or, later, Murphy's betrayed imaginary voice – and he tightens his hands on the steering wheel, knuckles pale and taut.

He drives backward through changing seasons, slush of snow and ice giving way to sere hills of brown, sun-bleached grass, bare branches less stark among stands of pine, growing greener as he travels farther south. He never quite makes it back into summer - he can't drive fast enough for that kind of time dilation, but he watches the world thaw and soften outside his window, finally shifting into ochres and reds among grey-green foliage as he heads far enough west, red clay giving way to fine sandy dirt packed hard under the pale wheaten gold of winter grass. He stops a couple of nights at cheap motels, pulls in when his eyes start feeling sandy, sunset blooming crimson in his windshield, but he's back up and on the road before the sun can rise in his wake, and one night he drives straight through, restless urge sliding jagged under his skin, pulling him west like a fish on a line, and Birmingham already in his sights, Springsteen's Nebraska in the CD player. He feels recklessly like something out of Thelma and Louise, out under the stars - has to laugh at his midlife crisis or delayed teenaged rebellion or whatever this is - and he contemplates pulling off somewhere to buy a bottle of whiskey, just to complete the entire dramatic picture he's somehow succeeded in painting, steady, solid, reliable Ray.

He'd still pay for it, though, instead of holding up the place. That's just how he is. He doesn't break the law, he thinks, and he has to laugh at himself, again, out loud, alone in his car, because he's on the trail of a fugitive, got a stack of postcards in his back seat that he's been accumulating for months while a multi-state manhunt went on, is tracing the wandering path of flight as best as he can reconstruct, all while carrying a second stack of postcards he has no doubt he would have posted, if only he'd known where to send them.

What, exactly, does he think that all means?

San Antonio rises in his windshield midway through the fourth day, after too much time to think, and he's immediately distracted by what an exceedingly stupid idea this was. It's one thing to play headgames with himself about what Miguel's looking for, waiting for, and whether he's trying to draw Ray out, but then, what's Ray supposed to do, now that he's here? He waited days, weeks, while he made his preparations, hoping for another call that never came, and now, how is he going to find Alvarez - now that he's here, a thought and a jump, jack-rabbiting down the hole like he's got no more sense, no more foresight or planning ability, than Miguel, himself? How is Alvarez supposed to find Ray, when there are - without exaggeration - 80 Catholic churches in this city, turning even the most likely place for Ray to be into a crapshoot?

He ends up going to ground at St. John Neumann, a spare bed at the rectory offered by someone who knew someone who was related to someone in the diocesan office back home, doors willingly open for a fellow priest on a much-needed vacation, a place to doss down between wandering the city, temporary home base and sanctuary. Immaculate Heart, Holy Redeemer, St. Matt's - they'd also had spare beds where he could have holed up, but when he was arranging this, he touched the medallion over his heart, under his shirt, and dialed the number for the pastor at St. John's without a second thought. He doubts Miguel will make the connection - it's kind of a stretch, the same church name and nothing more - but there was, literally, nothing else to go on, and so he greets his hosts with the formal handshake and politic smile he learned at Abgott's elbow, laughs at their joke about pressing him into hearing confessions, doesn't tell them that he could listen all day to admissions about affairs with co-workers, or shoplifting, or lying to bosses, spouses, parents, children, nosy neighbors - as long as nobody is confessing to actually being a serial killer, it's practically like being on vacation.

He thinks of Lou, of Thomas, quick snatches of meals in the kitchen with the clattering of dishes around him and the purr of Angus where she lay draped over his feet, bird-boned and warm, and they'd acted like he was just off the front lines, every day, but that's all just his job, his everyday life, and he's made it this long, survived the world exploding around him or crumbling slowly, silently, piece by piece, and he's managed to pick himself up each time. It's all normal.

For whatever values of "normal" still exist in his world.

Advent's in full swing, despite the fact that it feels like summer to him, now, and he's reminded of his childhood in Sacramento, purple candles and open windows, Christmas lights and shirt sleeves, and he folds up his coat, tucks it away into the trunk of the Tercel. He thought he'd be glad to get out of the penetrating cold of Oz, but it's 69 degrees, and the fake snow on the store windows looks out of place, and can't help thinking about how many of these holiday traditions were developed in colder climates.

He fills his days with tourist fare, like an actual vacation, working his way around some of the attractions his hosts probably expect of him: He visits the Alamo and actually stands in the former chapel and offers up a prayer, hoping, maybe, to get some kind of answer about what he's doing here, some guidance about where to go next, and he's not entirely sure he's only asking about this mad quest to San Antonio. He goes to the River Walk, three times, and then he's been to the River Walk three times; a bridal party catches his eye out on Marriage Island on one trip, white gown brilliant among the cypress trees that remind him of Rome. It's still humid - he's not nearly far enough north or west for the dry heat to have set in, and the cool breezes that manage to cut through the air remind him of Ostia, and he remembers the ottobrate again, sunny and warm, the candy-colored double line of umbrellas along the river's edge - extra restaurant seating - a reminder of cafés and trattorie.

At night, las luminarias trace along the riverbank, signature decoration of the season, and he follows the path of their flickering flames, wishing his own were that easy to find. The other lights make him uneasy though, hanging heavy to drip from roofs and branches, reflected in the water like the river and its banks have been set ablaze, lightning flash burning from tree to tree. It reminds him of Miguel's postcard from South of the Border, and it's nothing like daylight; he can't help thinking the saying "bright as day" is always wrong - the quality of the light isn't the same, the shadows somehow more slippery and yet stark.

He goes to daily Mass, every day at a different church, working his way around the city. There's no immediately apparent best plan of attack, and so he begins scattershot, letting his own desires guide him. He could pretend he's paying attention to the different styles of different celebrants, the way he'd listen to Tomas or Father Brady's homilies back at OLF, but why lie to himself? He doesn't know why he thinks he's going to find Miguel at church, but it's better than nothing. He can remember Miguel front and center, every week, at Mass in Oz - Chico by his side, no matter what they had going down between them the rest of the time - and it's not like Ray's willing to fool himself into thinking Alvarez was there for him. He's not that far gone. Anyway, he worries too much about Alvarez to prefer that he'd look to Ray, rather than God, for answers - God, who's maybe the only one able to handle some of the shit Miguel gets himself into, especially this time.

That's what Mass is for, Ray supposes - the place where you can put some of it on the shoulders of someone big enough to carry it, and he genuflects at the end of his pew, signs himself with holy water, because isn't that what he's doing? At least, he tries to tell himself so.

What are you going to do when you find him, he thinks, noting clinically that he asked himself "when," not "if." He avoids the thought of which "him" - or "Him" - he means.

Thomas calls one night, checking in, Ray thinks, although he's also got a message, tells Ray that someone called looking for him.

"We told the guy you were out of town," Thomas tells him. "He didn't sound very happy about it. Got a little belligerent when we wouldn't tell him where you were."

"Ah," Ray says. "I don't suppose he left his name?"

"No, he wouldn't. Ray, is this someone we should be concerned about?"

Well, probably, yes, if Ray's going to be completely honest about it, but why start now?

"It's probably just one of the guys from the prison," he tells Thomas, and he supposes it's even sort of true.

"That's why we wondered if we should be concerned about it, Ray," Thomas tells him, patiently, as if this sort of thing isn't just Ray's job, his everyday life, really.

"No, forget about it," he says, adding an emphatic please silently, to himself. "I'll check in with Father Makaki. He's probably already taken care of whatever it is."

At St. Anthony's, Ray thinks maybe he sees Alvarez, a couple of rows deep in the nave - something about the way the guy carries himself reminds him of Miguel, but it's not the first time he's been fooled since he's been here. It's one of the few times it's taken him so long to catch on - there's a lot of slender dark-haired guys in this town, but not all of them have the same kind of sloping, loping grace that runs under Miguel's skin, whether he's still or in motion.

When he visits the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Little Flower, he wants to walk in there and get lost – although the color scheme is actually sort of tatty, he thinks critically. Apparently, he has strong feelings about architecture, not just literature; he has to admit the main altar's done up in some glaringly Precious Moments-style coloring and far more ... aqua than he really likes. The flickering votives set back in their dark alcoves, though - they soothe some place in his soul like a balm, like the candles from the advent wreath, like las luminarias, calming something in him, something animal, or maybe so very human, responding to the light of the flame in the short days, even under the hot Texas sun, responding to the living fire in the cool dim sanctuary. There's a Spanish mass going on, and he slips away after, to the smaller chapel, something indefinable there reminding him of the chapel at the Gregorian as he kneels and studies the altar frontispiece - Elijah being fed by the raven. He closes his eyes and reaches for grace and tries to let everything wash through and out and past him, thinking of the flickering candle flames, wondering - maybe hoping - that this was what he was really looking for when he headed out in the direction of the desert.

He's through his first full week in San Antonio when the postcard shows up, a map of Texas looking as big as his drive through the state felt, with messy, spare handwriting on the back that conceals a wealth of meaning. His skin prickles and his stomach hollows out as he turns the card in his hands, because this time Alvarez has written a message, along with Ray's name and the address of the rectory where he's staying: antes de morirme quiero echar mis versos del alma

before I die I want to loose my verses from my heart ...

Ray recognizes the line immediately - more Martí, and not subtle, but then, when has Miguel ever been subtle?

The card's postmarked San Benito, but there's something inked on it, down in the lower right corner of the state, almost as far south as its possible to go and still be in Texas, a thought and a jump from the border, something drawn with red felt-tip again. It's a stylized dove, he realizes, recognizing the shape from any number of liturgical banners, and he rubs a thumb over it contemplatively, like he can suss out its meaning through his fingertip, before he pulls out his map.

A thought and a jump – impulse, instinct - only not really, because he's already come this far. It's three days before Christmas when he puts his bag in the back seat of his car again and heads south.

•••

When he hits La Paloma, he turns around and drives back out - well, a little way, at least, because there's not a lot of choice about where he's going to stay. Once he gets out to the Tierra Alta Motel, though, he's got his pick of rooms. The place is on US 281 - Military Highway, it's called - near the intersection with the stunningly literally named Farm To Market Road, about six miles out from the ... what is La Paloma, anyway, he wonders. A colonia, probably - it's not even incorporated, apparently, and despite the fact it's got two truck dealerships and three houses with swimming pools, it was either the Tierra Alta or the back seat of his Tercel if he was looking for a place to stay. The next closest motel is the Super 8, northward toward San Benito, but that's not what was marked on the front of the postcard, even it was where the postmark indicated it was mailed from.

It's possible he's spent too much time searching for hidden meanings in what's probably a random assortment of postcards - whatever was closest to hand on the rack - but there's been little enough that Alvarez has added to any card, short of Ray's name and address, and so Ray will take whatever clues he can get and hold on tight.

The motel is ... not 5-star: 1970s-style paneling on the walls and a single bed with a comforter - cheap, thin, synthetic - in a shade of maroon that should make it easy to hide stains, particularly if you're planning on needing to hide a body. The brown carpeting seems clean enough, but like the comforter, it's a cheap, tight knit designed for high traffic - or long wear, Ray thinks, considering the low-level of traffic it looks like the place must get. There's a tiny mini-fridge though, and a small round side table with a cushioned chair that's shockingly comfortable, although he has to get up to change the channel on the television - the remote's been bolted to the end table on other side of the bed.

He's not surprised Alvarez couldn't find a postcard worth sending, he thinks, staring out his window at the scrub and dirt of the place's "yard," the two bedraggled palm trees standing guard at the entrance to the parking lot. He's not sure how Alvarez can even manage to get along in a place like this - how does anyone survive somewhere this small as an outsider, when you're not part of the tribe, when you're not born or networked in? Nowhere to disappear to, although Alvarez admittedly has better camouflage. Ray, himself, is the subject of stares like he hasn't been since moving to Toledo at eight years old, meets them with smiles that try to hide the edge of discomfort, the paranoia of a fugitive.

He hears the story of La Paloma and el Arca de Noé during his second meal at nearby Benny's, a greasy-spoon with some of the best coffee he's had since Rome. A Native American myth, his waitress tells him as she sets down his chilaquiles - although she really says "Indian" - the dove from Noah's ark originating in the area, or at least that's what the Indians told the Spanish settlers who showed up in this part of Texas.

"Or at least, that's what the Spanish settlers said they were told." She flashes him a wide grin that emphasizes her cheekbones, leaning hipshot against the side of the booth across from Ray, and he wouldn't be surprised if there was some Native American blood there, somewhere.

She's not wearing a nametag, but she tells him her name's Marty, says she'll be back around to check on him once he's had a chance to taste his breakfast, but that the guys in the back - she jerks her thumb in emphasis - do a pretty good job, most days. She reminds him of Asha, at the convenience store back home, if Asha had been dialed around to the Latina version, something about the friendly inquisitiveness and no-nonsense attitude, although Marty's shorter, curvier, compared to the stripped-down leanness that had only emphasized Asha's growing belly. Ray feels a brief pang at the thought- Asha must be due sometime soon.

Every time he goes to Benny's, he leaves Marty more money than he really ought, particularly when he's paying for a motel room, now, instead of staying at a friendly – and free - rectory. Their sandwiches are all kinds of crappy - various lunch meat on vaguely stale bread - but the pancakes are to die for, and, inexplicably, they seem to have the only line cook in America who can actually do poached eggs medium instead of soft-but-not-snotty. When Ray compliments on it, he learns the cook is Marty's cousin - whichever of the ones back there, it doesn't matter, they both are, the entire back of the house is a hotbed of nepotism, she tells him. She doesn't use the word "nepotism," of course, but she grins again, like she knows he's thinking it. She leans on the counter and reads a book between customers, with a casual disdain for looking busy and efficient that he's only ever seen from waitresses on TV, never in real life, but he thinks the owner or the manager - or whoever the guy in charge at the register is, Ray's not sure if he's the eponymous Benny or whether Benny even exists - puts up with it because she's almost invariably there to fill Ray's cup of coffee or his water whenever he needs it. She's usually got half an eye on the tables and half on the book, which is better odds than if they had her in the back cleaning something, she tells Ray in an undertone, early in the morning, as someone bangs around pots in the kitchen and she returns from rummaging in the refrigerated case for some half-and-half for his coffee. She flatly refuses to allow him skim milk and claims they don't keep non-dairy creamer in the place.

The couple of times she does get wrapped up in the book, Ray doesn't make a big deal about it when he runs out of water for a few minutes. After the first couple of meals, he foregoes a booth and sits at the scrupulously clean counter, generally with his own book - he's re-reading his Spinoza, and there's some Dumas in the wings for light reading next. Marty's halfway through The Phantom Tollbooth, he discovers with a frisson of delight when he comes by for his second dinner at the place. Well, she's reading La Caseta Magica, in Spanish. It was one of his favorites when he was a kid - the English version - and he's not sure how a lot of the wordplay, the idiom and pun, will translate, but he puts it on his mental list to pick up. Maybe he'll buy it for Eri, for her birthday, in return for the French Blue Bird - maybe package it with an Alice in French and a Peter Pan, which he might be willing to leave in English, unless he can find a copy in Italian.

Marty, he learns, went away to UTSA for three semesters before the money ran out - she's on deferred status, working at the diner while she lives with her brother Vince and tries to put away enough money for at least her next semester, before she expects to go through the cycle again. She'll probably graduate by the time she's 30, she says, rolling her eyes and lacing the number with the disdain of the still-young. She likes the idea of public policy, although it would probably mean staying in San Antonio, or moving to Dallas, or Houston, or Austin, for work, and she's torn over abandoning El Valle where she grew up, and Ray thinks about Jan's return to California.

He tucks his collar away in a side pocket of his bag back at the Tierra Alta, doesn't tell anyone he's a priest, keeps the fact small and secret and safe. When Al, one of the morning regulars, asks him what he does "back East," he tells them he does counseling - not technically a lie, he supposes - and goes so far as to mention it's in a prison. He tells them he grew up in California, is glad no one asks why he isn't with his family for the holidays, but then, looking around as the dinner crowd slowly filters out on the second night he's in town, he figures he's not the only one who isn't with his family for Christmas.

He should call them, really - Jan and Mark will coax his parents out to Torrence and from there, the family will head north of Sacramento, not far from the old farm, to visit Nainai at least for the day, and he makes a mental note.

Meanwhile, he never loses sight of the fact that he's waiting, and all he can do is wonder where Alvarez could possibly be hiding now.

•••
A couple of phone calls turns up the schedule for Mass over at Immaculate Heart of Mary in Harlingen, and Ray drives over on Saturday for confession - or some version of confession, he thinks, remembering Lou's patient voice and his own hedging words. He stays, afterward, spends some time with a parish group saying the rosary, beads slipping easily through his fingers as he loses himself, centers himself in the soothing repetition - Santa María, Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros, pecadores, ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte. The vigil Mass starts not long afterward, and he slides into a pew near the back of the nave, the comfortable weight of tradition soothing and safe around him, scent of incense and flicker of candles; the rippling sound of water from the baptismal font at one side of the church is peaceful like the cool, stained-glass light of Blessed Sacrament or the intricate curves of San Carlo.

He pulls over at the Stop'N'Shop before he heads back to La Paloma, wanders the aisles, thinking it should cure any stray homesickness or feeling of displacement, because there's an essential sameness to convenience stores anywhere, everywhere – it's part of what makes them convenient, with their chocolate-covered mini-donuts and bad coffee and shriveled hot dogs turning greasily on the heater. A postcard captures his gaze as he passes by the rack, and he can't help pausing, pulling it down - a junkyard, and the shot is supposed to be artistic maybe, close-up rather than vista, the arches of twisted metal like the curve and snap of broken wings. The edge of the card feels crisp against the pad of his thumb as he contemplates coming back the next night - Christmas Eve - for Midnight Mass.

Any plan - every plan - disappears like it never existed when he pulls up outside of the Tierra Alta and sees a figure sitting on the curb in front of his room, picked out in golden and bloody vestiges of sunset, a cigarette in one hand and the other curled around his waist in a familiar slouch as he hunches in on himself. A flush edges Miguel's cheeks, and his eyes are a little wild, a little wary, as he raises them, watching Ray get out of the car; his hair's grown long enough to start curling into little waves.

"I'm surprised they didn't call the police on you," Ray says, crouching in the gravel of the parking lot in front of him, keys digging into the palm of one clenched hand, and Alvarez looks down past the toes of his Chucks, scuffs a random rock.

"Might have, by now," he says, voice low and raspy, before he shifts his gaze back up to Ray with a shrug.

"I suppose we'd better get you inside, then," Ray says, standing. He stops on his way to the door when Alvarez stays at the curb, watching him skeptically. "Well, come on. Come inside."

Alvarez sits carefully on the edge of the bed, neatly made under its cheap comforter; he's wrapped in a sweatshirt that almost swallows him and he's silent as Ray locks the door, makes sure the shade is pulled like he's the fugitive. Miguel's shivering when Ray turns around - baffling for a moment because it's not that chilly outside - not before the sun finally disappears, even in December, not in the Rio Grande Valley.

"Alvarez," Ray says and crouches down again, beside the bed, hand on Miguel's elbow.

Alvarez flinches, and Ray almost - almost - pulls away his hand. Instead, he loosens his grip so the decision is up to Miguel.

He's not cold, Ray realizes, suddenly - he's barely holding on.

"Miguel? Are you alright?"

"You're here," Alvarez says, before he coughs and clears his throat. Ray's not sure if it's a statement or a question, at first. "You're here, right?"

"Yes, I'm here, Miguel."

"That's good, because for a minute, I was worried, you know? I worried that maybe I died and I was in hell, or maybe, maybe I escaped from hell when I escaped from Oz, but I was still dead, and what was I gonna do but wander around for eternity? But then I saw you standing there, the sun all around you and shit, and I thought, well, maybe I am dead, but maybe I'm in heaven. 'Cause that must be an angel, right?"

He grins at Ray, eyes still a little wild, and shit, Ray thinks. How long has he been wandering around in the desert? And has he been doing it literally, not just metaphorically?

He reaches out a hand to press against the flush lying along Miguel's cheekbone, heat flare under his fingertips; as he moves to test the side of his neck, his forehead, Alvarez leans his cheek into the touch, and Ray's heart stops beating, for just a second, before it starts up again with a painful slam inside his chest.

"You don't use that as a pick-up line, right?" he says, forcing his voice to stay light, hoping he doesn't sound as out of breath as he suddenly feels, unable to pull in enough air, and no fever, he thinks - a little flushed, a little warm, but that could just be sun. "Because it's a really bad line."

"What, you got a suggestion?" Alvarez laughs again. "Maybe something about how your shirt looks great on you but it would look better on my floor?"

He reaches out and Ray thinks for a fragmented second of the white collar tucked into the side pocket of his bag as Alvarez winds fingers in the placket of his button-down, as those fingers tighten almost convulsively into fists, crushing the cotton material, pulling it tight against Ray's back, and Ray remembers solitary, Alvarez backed into a corner, skinny and scared, hands out to ward him off, remembers the press of Miguel's fingers against the curve of his jaw, his neck, remembers the frantic rabbiting of Miguel's heart against the palm of his hand, the scent of copper and salt and the hard silk bindings of his own stoles tying him down, and he knows the first thing he should do is call the police, but he can't make himself, because is that really justice?

He's not sure there's any such thing, anymore.

"Come on," he says, wrapping his own fingers around Miguel's wrists, rocking gently to loosen the death grip Miguel has on his shirt. He stands again, because he needs to focus, has to put one foot in front of the other, has to take his first step into the wind before he gets knocked over. "I don't know what you've been doing or where you've been staying out here, but you need a shower."

Miguel wears a match to Ray's medallion under his washed-out grey sweatshirt, glint of silver against his chest, and he leaves it on as he strips down on his way to the tiny bathroom, unconsciously unselfconscious, modesty stolen by years in Oz, and Ray's not sure what he's been doing to keep himself solvent lately, but he doubts it's simple hit-and-run on laundromats. Construction maybe, Ray thinks, turning over possibilities, day labor - something he could easily walk into and away from, quick cash under the table at the end of the day, and probably something outside. He's put on muscle, and he's darker from being in the sun. He winces as he tugs his threadbare T-shirt over his head, and Ray stops him with a word before reaching out, placing a hand along his side, running the palm across the span of his back, heat and muscle poised under Ray's hands as they skirt the edge of the tattoo.

"You haven't been taking care of this," he says as he realizes, counting back in his head, back to the feel of a Polaroid tacky under his fingers, and Miguel shrugs again, muscles shifting under Ray's touch.

It should be close to healed by now, Ray thinks, gaze running over the lines of script, across the bisecting ridge of spine - ... en un carro de hojas verdes a morir me han de llevar; in my tomb of green leaves, they are to carry me to die ... Alvarez can't have been taking care of it properly, and the realization winds a thread of concern tighter in Ray's stomach. Clearly, Miguel's been holed up somewhere in or around San Antonio for a while now - he's not actually wandering the desert, all hyperbole aside - so he should have taken the time for this. He was never one of those guys in Oz who let his personal hygiene slide, even in his most manic or depressive phases - always clean-shaven, hair neat, vestiges of that pride he'd tried to cut out of himself like a tumor, like a cancer, pride so hard to eliminate.

Of course, Ray feels like he knows, at this point, that it actually is possible to have all of the ego kicked out of you, and if he ever had a problem with humility, Oz surely has taken care of that.

You had too big an ego ... something tells me that's changed.
•••
The room's cushioned chair may be a surprisingly comfortable place to sit and read while putting your feet up on the bed, but it's just shockingly uncomfortable to sleep in, Ray realizes on waking the next morning. He contemplates the birthday just past with distaste as he sits at the edge and tries to loosen up his neck, remembering all of Jeremy's futile attempts to get him hiking, or biking, or something, as if Ray ever had the time.

Miguel's sprawled face-down on Ray's pillow, where he'd finally drifted off after Ray examined the tattoo, still damp from the shower and feverish under Ray's fingers as he smoothed them over lines of text the way he's done dozens of times on the photo; the skin of Alvarez's back was even hotter than the rest of him, like the sun had set in his flesh, burning him up, and he'd flinched again, almost imperceptible, before he relaxed into Ray's touch. Ray rubs a thumb absently across the pads of his fingers as he studies Miguel for a moment in wintry morning sunlight: The longer hair looks silky, almost curling on top, reminding Ray of the first time he saw Miguel, so damn young in a hospital gown, but Miguel's face is drawn, dark circles under his eyes even in sleep, and his body hasn't entirely lost its wary tension, like a spring coiled tight, motion barely held in check.

Ray levers himself up to take a hot shower, pulls on his clothes in the tiny bathroom, making a face at the way they stick to his still-damp skin in the humid enclosed space - he's never liked getting dressed before he's completely dry, hated gym class in high school, and his mother's old photo albums are the bane of his existence, pictures of him at 1 and 2 and 3 years old, running around bare-ass naked, when he's not wearing his underwear on his head - although he supposes that's also bare-ass naked. Pausing at the sink outside the bathroom, he studies himself in the mirror like he's a stranger, and maybe he is; he's almost surprised to see the same, everyday face staring back at him - he somehow expected his planes and angles to be bent out of true, and he just stops himself from smudging fingerprints on the glass surface as he reaches out to trace the arch of an eyebrow, the edge of his jaw, remembering Jan's light touch lifting his chin to tilt his face, greasy feel of the eyeliner and a scrunch of her hand in his hair to spike it up and his own kohl-rimmed eyes staring back from his 16-year-old reflection.

He sits on the edge of the bed to wake Miguel, but he's barely touched his shoulder before Alvarez is in motion, zero-to-sixty, instantly alert, grabbing Ray around the wrist, rolling him over so that he's on his back, Miguel over him, pushing him into the mattress, and Ray has a fragmented flash of memory - salt and sweat, Miguel's weight pinning him, fists and tears and the walls of solitary closing in – a flicker of fear and maybe a little bit of resignation before Miguel freezes, poised above him, one hand clenched hard around Ray's wrist, thumb digging into the soft inner skin before he relents, grip slackening, thumb smoothing over Ray's skin in a slow sweep, up the tender flesh of his inner arm to the thin skin inside his elbow, sending chills cascading through him, followed by a wave of heat. Ray realizes he's shaking and pulls in a deep breath, tries to still the tremors.

"You ..." Miguel breaks off, and Ray lifts his chin. Miguel unclenches his other hand from the pillow beside Ray's head, makes an aborted movement like he's going to touch Ray's face, maybe trace his features the way Ray did to himself in the mirror, before he stops himself and rolls off. "Don't ..." he says, his back to Ray as he sits on the other side of the bed, hunched over his knees. "Don't do that."

"OK."

"You can't wake me up like that. You have to give me some kind of warning."

"OK," Ray says again, from his nest in the tangled sheets, and he files away the reaction for future examination. "I'm sorry. It's time to get up?"

"What?" Alvarez rubs his eyes.

"Mass is at ten," Ray says, rolling his head between the pillows to study the long line of Miguel's back. He thinks the tattoo looks slightly less inflamed. "If you get ready now we can just make it to Harlingen in time."

"Mass?" Alvarez twists on the bed to look at him.

"Yes," Ray responds. "Christmas is a Holy Day of Obligation."

Alvarez looks at him like he's crazy, but Ray stares steadily back - he's done this battle of wills before - and Alvarez finally sighs and rolls out of bed.

"You can wear one of my shirts," Ray calls after him as he heads for the bathroom, and he waits for the click of the door before he draws in a shaky breath, rubs a hand over his own face, still trembling with the vestiges of adrenaline.

Alvarez eyes the button-down suspiciously, but what's roomy for Ray seems to meet Miguel's standards for snug – particularly with the muscle he's put on - and Ray's spare pants are a close enough fit. Ray hovers while Miguel buttons the cuffs of the shirt, lifts a hand to push back a stray wave of hair, smoothing it down above Miguel's ear.

"What?" he asks, catching Miguel's grin.

"Look at you, shining me all up nice to take me to church. You gonna to take me to home to meet your mama, too?"

"I'm taking you with me to church, Alvarez. That's sort of what I'm doing."

The entire experience of Mass is strange, disconcerting, in a way he can never remember it being, the sound of the choir off, the white winter sunlight sharp through stained glass - he's used to Mass in the nave just as well as the sanctuary, even after all these years, but not with Alvarez beside him, instead of in the congregation looking up at him. Ray can't shake his awareness of the body next to him, lying knife-edged against his skin - the heat and length and breadth of him, the breath of him, familiar from so many stolen minutes across miles on a telephone line, the light sound now accompanied again by the slow rise and fall of Miguel's chest at his shoulder, and he remembers the touch of Miguel's fingers on his jaw, his throat, his wrist, the slow sweep of Miguel's thumb over his skin, wrist to elbow, and he loses his place in the familiar litanies. Guilt threads its way through his stomach, his chest, as he stands to join the line for Communion, even though he went to confession just two days earlier.

Yes, but think of everything you've done since then, he tells himself.

We have willfully sinned ... we have been disobedient, we have committed iniquity ... we have been obstinate ... we have gone astray, we have led others astray ...

We have harbored fugitives, he thinks, wryly, then jumps as the woman in line behind him gives a discreet cough, a figurative nudge to get him moving.

He stares at the nape of Miguel's neck in front of him as they all shuffle forward, thinking that he probably should have heard his confession, if he was going to accept Communion today, although he wonders what good it would do, anyway.

Just fucking absolve me! Keller demands, in his head, and Ray knows Miguel won't ask forgiveness for the escape, Ray knows that, can see it, can practically hear him saying it – he knows what Miguel would say, how he'd respond if Ray said anything about it. Miguel won't ask for forgiveness for the escape because doesn't even think he should - doesn't think it's something he needs to be sorry for, or apologize for … although he probably thinks he deserves absolution for it, and Ray can't even say for sure that he's wrong about that.

... rest of my life in a little fucking box ...

Miguel's not sorry, and the last thing he wants is to be reconciled to Oz.

Ray isn't sure he can act as Miguel's confessor anymore, anyway, isn't sure he can act as his priest, his spiritual advisor, any kind of impartial counselor. Maybe he never could, or maybe he could at one point, but no longer, he thinks, counting back to quick, frantic breaths on his face and the hard silk of his own stoles tying him down. He remembers his own outraged words to Sippel - You were his priest! - and he almost balks as the priest holds up the Eucharist in front of him, rote muscle memory and the paranoia of the fugitive, the fear of drawing attention, the only things bringing up his hands, like puppet strings, and then the host is in his own open palm, and it's not like he can give it back, not like he can toss it away, not like he can do anything but follow through, the unleavened wafer papery on his tongue.

He's too compromised, he thinks, as he sits blankly through the announcements at the end of the service - he was too compromised the minute he hung up the phone after that first phone call and didn't pick it right back up to call the police. They are way past a fucking smuggled peanut butter and jelly sandwich, at this point. This whole thing has just been a process of getting deeper and deeper until ... what?

What now?
•••
Benny's is closed, along with any other decent restaurant in a 20-mile radius, families gathered together around Christmas trees and dinner tables, and so they pull over at the Stop'N'Shop on the way back to La Paloma and get hot dogs, eat them leaning against the side of Ray's car in the convenience store parking lot. Seventy degrees and it feels almost like summer; Ray can't help blinking up at the sun, wants to stretch like a cat, like Angus in the window, on the sill over the radiator. Something's stirring to life in his chest, in his veins, slow and golden like warm honey, and he thinks of Sacramento winters and autumns in Rome, the scent of distant salt in the air instead of sand, but the same mild breeze gentle against his skin.

"So I guess no presents, huh," Miguel says, leaning back on his hands against the hood of Ray's car.

"I just bought you a pair of sunglasses," Ray tells him, crumpling up their napkins to toss in the trash can that stands outside the store's automatic door. "So I guess you mean no presents for me."

"Well, I already sent you something." Alvarez reaches out to press a fingertip against the medallion resting in the open collar of Ray's shirt, and Ray heart speeds up, fluttering against the inside of his chest, under Miguel's hand; he knows it's body heat warming the thin silver disc - his own, Miguel's - but it's like the sun's trapped between them, between his skin and Miguel's touch. "I mean, I know it's kind of cheap ..."

"No …" Ray says, lifting a hand to capture Miguel's wrist, and then he remembers, tries to speak normally, to find the space to catch his breath. "I do have something for you."

"What, you brought me something?" Miguel grins as Ray drives back to the motel, drops his head and shakes it, looks back up out of the corner of one eye; he's got his left knee drawn up, against the seat, his back to the passenger door so he can face Ray, and his tone turns wheedling, cajoling. "What is it? Come on. Tell me?"

Once back in the motel room, though, he falls silent as Ray digs through his bag, sits down with a thump on the bed, sheets tangled around him, when Ray pulls out the first small yarn-wrapped bundle of postcards he's collected, laying them aside; Alvarez picks them up, runs two fingers over the "ATLANTIC" in Atlantic City, flips over the pile to examine the postmark from San Benito, rubbing a thumb over it. He looks up when Ray shoves the second stack of postcards under his nose.

"Already tied with a red bow," Ray jokes, awkward suddenly, pasting on a smile to hide the fluttering anxiety in his stomach.

Alvarez shifts his gaze down to the new set of postcards - shot of the river on top, the river Ray drives over every day to get to and from Oz, but somewhere upstream, the deep green of pines lining either bank to the bend in the distance, water reflecting rising foothills, faintest hint of mist rising in a light that looks like morning and the skeleton of a dilapidated pier at the photographer's, Ray's, Miguel's feet. He raises his eyes to study Ray's face again before he lifts a hand to take the stack, flipping the bundle over and over, spotting Ray's spiky handwriting on the back of the most recent card - toshi kurenu - on the bottom of the pile.

"I didn't send these," he says.

"And I didn't either," Ray says, as he rises from kneeling over his bag, stomach still hollow but back straight, head up. "But I'm giving them to you, now."

Alvarez spends the afternoon lying on the bed, reading the cards - no, not just reading them, Ray thinks, surreptitiously looking up from Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge in quick snatches of a glance. He runs his fingers over the pictures and photos on their fronts like he's trying to suss out their meaning through touch, glides them over Ray's writing like he's trying to pick up the sense of the words through his fingertips, like Braille. When Ray gets up - because he's got to get outside for a minute, he's got to, the room is to small and too full - Miguel leans into Ray's brief touch on his shoulder like that's a gift too, and Ray has to get out of here, he thinks, frantic for a moment, barely holding himself still when Miguel grabs his hand, fingers curled into Ray's palm and brushing his wrist, thumb on the back of Ray's hand, a slow sweep across his skin before Miguel looks up to meet his eyes.

"Grácias," he says.

"De nada," Ray manages to murmur, staring at him a moment, wide-eyed, sure Alvarez can feel the pulse fluttering wildly in Ray's wrist, under his fingertips, before Ray manages to extricate himself, to escape to the curb outside in the chilly evening air, to light a cigarette and feel the steadying raw burn against the back of his throat, in his lungs, as he studies the flat, scrubby brushland like something new will have grown up overnight.

He sits and smokes until Alvarez joins him, collapses down with easy grace beside him, one knee drawn up to his chest, offering to share his own cigarette, but Ray shakes his head - he's smoked himself close to sick, can feel a cigarette hangover looming in his future. Alvarez takes a drag, lean figures curled around the cigarette, and Ray watches the cherry glow red in the dimness, remembers the scrape of brick and a bass beat against his back, scent of hair gel and sweat, a rough thumb along his cheek bone, over his own hot blush, but nothing ever happened, then.

"Mira,", Alvarez says suddenly, pointing up at the first couple of stars prickling their way into the night sky, before he takes another drag, exhales noisily. "You never see that back home. Too much light and pollution and shit blocking it out. That's one of the reasons I wanted out here, to see the stars like that. You think you'd ever see that from Oz?"

"Make a wish," Ray says, face turned to the sky.

"What, you mean like, 'star light, star bright?'"

"Yeah, I mean like 'star light, star bright,'" Ray says, almost challenging, and turns his head to look at Miguel, holds his gaze.

They study each other for moment before Alvarez raises his eyes to the heavens again. Ray watches him, doesn't look away until Alvarez drops his gaze to the horizon and takes another drag of his cigarette. He doesn't move away when Alvarez shivers and leans against him, shoulder to shoulder, in the cool night air, and they huddle there together while darkness falls around them.

"Come on," Ray says finally, nudging him.

Inside, they eat crappy turkey sandwiches from the cooler, over paper towels, sitting cross-legged on the bed, while Ray insists that turkey is traditional for Christmas and Miguel rhapsodizes about the empeñadas and roast pork his mama made when he was growing up.

"How did you find me, anyway?" Ray finally asks him, tearing slivers off the edge of his paper towel.

"I called around," Miguel says and laughs, a sharp bark, when Ray stares at him. "Yeah. I called the diocese office and told them mi abuela had something for that nice young priest from back east, the one whose church her other grandson attended, and could they give me an address I could send it to."

"You told them that, and they gave you the address?"

"Well, OK, not me. You got me. But they told the girl I convinced to call for me."

"That doesn't sound like a bad stalker movie, at all."

"You're the one following me all over the country, hermano."

"You wouldn't have left a trail of breadcrumbs if you didn't want me to find you," Ray responds, indignant, and he can't believe he said that out loud, feels his face heat, but Miguel ducks his head and doesn't deny it.

Miguel pulls the extra blanket out of the closet that night, gets ready to curl on the floor in some kind of atavistic nest as Ray turns down the bed, and Ray stops to stare at him.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm not putting you out of your bed, man, not another night."

"Well, you're not sleeping on the floor," Ray says,

"You think I haven't slept worse places in the past six months? At least I know the roof ain't gonna leak on my head and nothing else is going to try to get under this blanket with me."

"Alvarez, get in bed."

"I told you, I'm not ..."

"Alvarez." Ray knows his tone's gone sharp, but he can't get the image out of his head, Miguel curled in on himself in the dark and rocking, in his bunk, after the baby died, and he's not sleeping on the floor at the foot of Ray's bed like some kind of dog. "Get your ass in bed."

It's a little awkward again, when he turns out the light, something unspoken lying between them in the dark. Ray presses his hands to his own chest, feeling the rise and fall, the heat of Miguel next to him, the length and breadth of him, and he finally falls asleep to the sound of Miguel's breaths, familiar from long miles across the phone line.
•••
They spend a couple of days holed up at the Tierra Alta, venturing over to Benny's for breakfast and dinner but otherwise doing a lot of nothing - Alvarez sleeps a lot, and Ray's gaze drifts constantly over to the bed from his chair, attention pulled from his book to study the easing of tension in the long muscles of Miguel's back, the lines of his face, as telling as anything he says in words. He looks young - younger than Ray's ever seen him, even that first day, years ago now - more years, it feels like, than you can count on a calendar, as if time sped up in Oz, some twisted form of faster-than-light-travel, where you age in stasis while everything goes on around you. When Miguel's awake, Ray catches him reading the postcards again, tracing the lines of the reproduction Ray found of Schiaffino's El Reposo in a small bookstore and couldn't help picking up. They both ignore the specter of Brownsville to the southeast - the prison, the border - mostly, anyway, never mentioned but always present like a humming in the back of Ray's mind, barely there, an incipient migraine that pushes his vision just out of true. At night, they sleep curled back-to-back on the single motel bed, like they're afraid to touch each other but they can't quite help it, and Ray suddenly understands Pete more than he ever wanted to - her questions, her uncertainties, those papers that were still lying on her desk when he left Oz, waiting for a signature to sever her ties to the convent.

They drive out into the surrounding scrubland, hours and miles of fine sand and dry wheat-golden winter grass, broad and empty and sun-warmed to shirtsleeve weather, Tejano on the radio as Alvarez searches the dial. They end up, one afternoon, near the Free Trade Bridge at Los Indios, watching truck after truck haul used cars across the Rio Grande to Mexico, Alvarez intent as he studies the bridge, and something jagged slides under Ray's skin, scrapes his nerves raw.

"You know, from here, you could make your way through Mexico, down to Guatemala … Nicaragua … Columbia," Alvarez says, finally, pushing up his sunglasses, shading his eyes with a hand to study the bridge in the distance. "Go up the Andes through Chile, 'til you hit this little spot called Tierra del Fuego. You know about Tierra del Fuego?"

"What about it?" Ray asks, turning to look at him, but Miguel's eyes are still on the bridge, the border.

"It's the end of the earth. From here, you could walk all the way to the end of the earth, if you just walk long enough." He finally turns to look at Ray. "You think they'd go that far to find someone? The end of the earth?"

"I don't know, Miguel."

"What about you? Would you go to the end of the earth for someone?"

Have you ever loved someone too much?

And Ray looks back toward the bridge, at all the kingdoms of the earth, and wonders what his answer will be.

He wants to say yes, wants it to be that simple. If he's going to be honest, lay himself bare, this is what he's been headed toward this whole time - he can act like he hasn't known, couldn't guess, act like he's just now chased the idea around and pinned it down, given shape to its chameleon form, but all that dancing, it's only been avoidance, hasn't it? They are way past the stage of a fucking peanut butter and jelly sandwich, have been for a while now, and lying to himself, well. That's kind of a sin, isn't it? Just as much as lying to someone else would be.

He can feel the decision point coming, a deadline looming in his mind, and he knows he can't avoid the whole thing much longer, but he's still not sure what kind of prayers to send up for Alvarez, other than continued safety, no matter what happens. What even counts as help, at this point?

"Miguel, have you thought about going back?"

"What?"

"Have you thought about turning yourself in? If you turn yourself in, maybe they'll go easier on you ..." He dies off because his words sound hollow, even to himself.

You are fucking this up.

How much time has been added on to Miguel's sentence at this point? How much more is he facing?

I don't want to end up like my grandfather ... I don't see it going down any other way.

"That's not funny," Miguel says, jabbing a finger at Ray before he gets in the car and slams the door.

"I'm not trying to be funny," Ray says, leaning down to look at him through the open driver's side window. "Miguel, you can't keep doing this ..."

"I can't go back there," Miguel says, voice rising with every word. "I'll die back there, why are you trying to make me go back there?"

"What are you going to do, Miguel? What are you going to do? Keep running for the rest of your life? Live like this?" Ray makes a frustrated, sweeping gesture with his arm, not even sure what he's trying to encompass.

"And what are you gonna do, huh? Are you gonna stop them from beating the shit out of me? You gonna stop them from beating me to death this time? We tried that once. That didn't turn out so well, did it? For me, I mean."

"Oh, Miguel."

"No. We're done with this."

A tense silence lies between them all the way back to La Paloma, stretched almost unbearably, and Ray detours into the parking lot of Benny's with a sense of relief. Marty's off-shift already, but she's sitting at the counter, eating her own dinner, and she looks up from her book as they enter - Spinoza, passed on from Ray when he finished it this go 'round, and he thinks maybe that's the reason for the little furrow between her brows, before he realizes she's looking past his shoulder to Alvarez brooding behind him.

"He's not speaking to me," Ray tells her, lightly, trying to play off the tension without drawing too much notice, the paranoia of a fugitive.

"Debe tratarlo mejor, papi," she tells Alvarez, talking over Ray's head like he can't understand what she's saying.

"Estás celosa," Alvarez accuses, low, shooting her a death glare, as tiny blonde Celestina shows up to take them to a booth, and Marty grins and waves after them.

Ray sits up late that night with Dumas pére, in a small pool of light from the tabletop lamp; he can hear Alvarez shifting restlessly against the sheets.

"Come to bed," Miguel says finally, and when Ray turns another page, he sits up. "Hey, come get in bed."

"I hear you should treat me better," Ray says, looking up from his book, folding down the page corner to save his place.

"Are you kidding me with this?"

"Also, I highly doubt Marty is jealous," Ray continues, laying the book neatly in the center of the table. "She thinks I'm old. She won't say that to my face, but …"

"Jesucristo, will you get your ass in bed?"

Lying in the dark, Ray can feel Miguel's breaths, steady, measured, in and out, a puff of air against his shoulder, and he turns his head to meet dark eyes in the sliver of light cast through the curtains by the single sodium lamp in the parking lot.

"I have to go," Miguel says.

"OK."

"I can't stay. I've already been here too long."

"OK," Ray repeats.

"Like, tomorrow."

"I've been wanting to see Arizona again," Ray says. "We can leave in the morning."
•••
Marty looks at Ray knowingly as he pays the bill after their last breakfast, asks him if they're heading out to the Lands Beyond.

"Don't get stuck en el Bache," she warns, as she offers La Caseta Magica to Alvarez, despite his protestations that he's traveling light. Ray leaves the Spinoza with her, and two slim volumes of Dumas, even though he hasn't finished both of them, yet.

They end up on I-10, actually out into the desert, suddenly, and Ray's still not sure what Alvarez was doing all that time wandering, where he was spending it, because there's a shitload of nothing, that's for sure, emptier than I-20 through South Carolina, and dustier, too.

O God, thou art my God, he thinks, sudden flash of Terry Chicot mouthing the Psalm along with him before Ray made the sign of the Cross on his forehead. I seek thee, my soul thirsts for thee; my flesh faints for thee, as in a dry and weary land where no water is.

He knows this area vaguely, from passing through during vacations and family visits - everything seems half-familiar, at least, but he's not sure how much he's seen and how much he's heard and how much this all just looks like Nevada, one big sand painting of bronzes and golds and terra cottas knifing into a cloudless azure sky. They drive most of the day, check into ratty motels at night, sleeping together, Miguel's breath on Ray's shoulder, his heartbeat under Ray's palm, the stroke of a thumb over the back of Ray's hand, the tender skin inside his elbow. Ray wakes up to find Miguel curled in on himself, back pressed to Ray's chest, like Ray's shielding him with his body, no more nor less than he's done before, the way he did when he looked up into Leo's angry face and heard the crack of the diverted baton against the table, Miguel's chest pressed to his shoulder - the way he did all those times he tried to thrust his own body between Miguel and the bars as Miguel beat himself against the inside of his cage, a human shield from the hurts of the world.

Sometimes those hurts aren't physical, he figures, lying in the silvery half-light of dawn, fist half-clenched against Miguel's chest - sometimes they're loneliness and despair, no one realizing that you hurt and ache and want and love, and he has to speak to Miguel in a language that means something. Ray learned long ago that Miguel will lapse into Spanish for emphasis, and at least Ray can follow that, but this new thing between them, it's a dialect Ray has no experience with, he's stumbling and stuttering his way through it, but he's getting a full-immersion course, locked up with Miguel in hotel rooms and the close confines of the car, sharing cigarettes and sodas and breath, standing under the bright, scouring sun in the middle of the desert. They came all this way from Oz, both of them, just to stay locked up together, breathing each other's air, smelling each other's skin, counting each other's breaths in the dark.

They drive and they stop and they sleep, or at least, they lie together in the dark, and Ray touches his fingertips to his own lips, his throat, his chest, feels the rise and fall of his own breath under his hands, remembers damp heat pressed against him, the length of Miguel's body, scent of copper and salt and smoke, weight pinning him, and he looks over to meet Miguel's eyes in the shadows, watches Miguel raise a hand, feels the light touch on the scar beside his eyebrow, unerring even in the dark.

"How'd you get this?" Miguel asks, voice still hoarse with sleep, and Ray laughs into the pillow, shifts to lie facing him.

"My sister," he says. "She knocked me into a bookcase face-first when I was six. I'm pretty sure it was an accident, but I milked it for four years before she decided I was too annoying to feel guilty over, any more."

"Sister?" Miguel asks, and his fingertip smoothes absently across the edge of Ray's eyebrow.

"She's a librarian. Married a doctor. Our parents would have preferred she be a doctor who married a librarian, but these things happen."

He catches Miguel's hand and traces the scar on his palm, cutting across life line, heart line - the physical reminder of his son that he carries with him, reminder of his helplessness in the face of forces he can't control, and Ray remembers walking away from him, restrained in an infirmary bed, face and hands newly stitched, voice rising as he begged for help to get out of the restraints, out of the hospital, to get to see his baby.

That was the first time Ray walked away from Miguel, head up, back straight, shoulders set. He did it again when Pete told him to stay away from the interventions.

He doesn't know that he has it in him to do it a third time.

You are fucking this up, he thinks and tries to avoid the voice in his head, the voice that sounds too much like his own.

It's not the fucking, it's the love, he thinks, remembers Keller, remembers the dangerous part, the intimacy his vow is supposed to guard against. But he's breaking the spirit of his vow already, every time he lets Miguel touch him, every time he touches Miguel, like they're picking up a sense of each other through their fingertips, reading each other like Braille, still unwilling to put words to it, to lock its chameleon, elusive nature into singular, recognizable form. But it's true, already, whether there are hands or mouths or ... other things involved - he still shies away, still unwilling to chase that idea down.

Ray is ... was ... is a virgin. Isn't he? But how can he devote himself to God if he feels like this when he lies down with Miguel - even if all they're doing is lying there? He feels the slow beat of Miguel's heart under his hand, and he knows Miguel's body more intimately than he knows any other, understands that Miguel knows his body, maybe more intimately than anyone else does.

Forbidden fruit, he thinks - going to get kicked out of the garden - but he clutches his fingers in tight, tight, while he still can.

He wakes in the morning curled alone in bed and rolls over to see Miguel framed in the window, shirtless, pants riding low on his hips to expose all the long lines of his torso, the stanzas of his tattoo bisecting the dip of his spine, just smooth skin and dark marks now. The curve of his body reminds Ray of those long ago pictures of St. Sebastian, of the first time he saw Miguel framed against an infirmary window, haloed in smoggy sunlight, all lean muscle, even if he did look small in the hospital gown, and tattoos peeking out of the bottom of the sleeves. He remembers thinking that Alvarez must have put a lot of thought into that pose, worked hard to perfect it, calculated its precise effect - like the cant of Keller's hips or the loose sprawl of Zanghi's body - and he thinks it again now, maybe a thought that should be unworthy of him, but he can't help a curl of pleasure, this time, low in his stomach.

Are you fucking with me?

Ray's long past the point, apparently, where he can deny Miguel. And what else does Miguel have?

My job is not to make judgments. My job is to be by his side. My place is with him.

Ray can feel the border to the south, to his right side as they skirt along it, humming like some kind of electromagnetic fault line. A right turn, he thinks - a right turn and then, what? twenty? thirty? minutes, and it'd be done.

They drive and they stop and they sleep, or at least they lie in bed at night, cocooned together, and what would they become if they break out of this chrysalis?
•••
Ray wakes, restless in the dark, sprawled across the bed, Miguel asleep beside him, on his stomach, breath against Ray's shoulder and arm slung across his chest, two fingers twisted in the collar of Ray's shirt so his knuckles press into Ray's collar bone, familiar heat and scent and touch, and Ray can't figure out what woke him until there's another flash, and another, pop-pop, reminiscent of camera bulbs, and what the hell, he thinks.

Miguel makes a small, grumpy noise as Ray extricates himself to slide off the bed toward the window; he shifts against the sheets as Ray pulls back one side of the curtain to lean against the frame, trying to figure out if the eerie winter storm in the distance is just a dream - flashes of lightning through rolling clouds, high in the sky and distant enough that they light up the world in silence, too far to hear the accompanying thunder. He doesn't know how long he stands there, watching cascades of electricity arc across the sky - pop, pop-pop - before Miguel comes up behind him, rests a chin on his shoulder, sliding one hand along Ray's shoulderblade, tracing bone through the light cotton of Ray's shirt.

Sustain me with raisins, refresh me with apples, for I am sick with love, Ray thinks and feels his lips twist, wry, at his midlife crisis or delayed teenaged romanticism or whatever this is, before he turns to meet Miguel's gaze, close enough to share breath, trading it back and forth in the flickering light. He feels something in his chest, his stomach, hollow out as Miguel brings up a hand, rubs a thumb across his mouth, pad rough, pulling against Ray's bottom lip, and Ray can't help flicking out his tongue, slicking it along his lips, catching the tip of Miguel's thumb, taste of salt like the sea, and he hears the hitch of breath, recognizes the sound, scent of blood and phosphorus in his head as Miguel leans forward to press their lips together.

It's clumsy, still half-unexpected even after all this, sliding against each other, the chill of the window seeping into Ray's back, but he can feel heat run through his veins, lighting him up, spreading slow and golden like honey, something expanding in his chest, and he tilts his head, opens for Miguel's tongue as they stumble toward the bed.

He sits down hard, looks up at Miguel standing, bare-chested, wide-eyed in the dim hotel room, still lit by intermittent flashes of distant lightning; Ray notes absently that Miguel's mouth looks bruised, and he raises fingers to his own mouth, touches his lips curiously, pulls down his fingers to examine them like he's expecting blood. Miguel makes a small, pained noise at the gesture, and Ray almost doesn't know what to expect when he looks back up, holds out his hand.

They're almost as silent as the storm, dreamlike - and maybe it is a dream, Ray can't help thinking - all bright fire and midnight darkness, strange and yet familiar - the new taste of Miguel on his lips and the same weight solid above him, against him, around him, pinning him down, fingers around his wrists. He twists in the grasp this time, struggles against it, pushes back instead of going lax, and gets his fingers in the waves of Miguel's hair as Miguel works his way down Ray's body, laying open his shirt, following his progress with teeth and tongue. Miguel runs a thumb along the length of Ray's collarbone, dips his head to lay down a trail of moist heat, and Ray pulls in a desperate breath, digs his teeth into his bottom lips, feels the instinctive strain in his hips, all too human, rocking up into the weight above him.

Miserére nobis. Miserére nobis. Miserére, he thinks, one hand twisted in the sheets at his side, and then he can't think anymore.
•••
He wakes in the morning curled alone in bed. Miguel's medallion is on top of the dresser, cheap silver chain pooled beside the messy pile of postcards Ray brought west with him, tangled in the sunglasses he bought in a Quik-Mart or a Stop'N'Shop or a 7-11 on Christmas Day.

Ray could say that he waits, that he thinks Miguel's just run out to pick up coffee, maybe some of the half-stale Danish these places always serve for breakfast, but he's been tuned to Miguel from the minute he laid eyes on him - years ago, framed in the window of a prison infirmary - and he knows from the minute he swims up from sleep, knows from the emptiness in the room. It feels curiously like abandonment, like he felt when Miguel escaped from Oz without telling him - although he thinks maybe he has a little bit more right to be angry about it, this time.

On the other hand, maybe it's what he gets for aiding and abetting a known fugitive.

Miserére mei, he thinks, scrubbing a hand over his face as he sits in bed, sheets pooling around his waist, and he wonders which of them is Bathsheba in this scenario.

Stop wallowing, he tells himself and stands to examine the fingerprints coming up along one hip, a smudge of shadow in the hollow of bone, a sign of mortality, of being all too human, and he remembers the sting of unhealed cuts, flesh split by knuckles and fingernails, taste of copper on the rare occasions when he tried to smile - lip torn open and him unable to stop poking at the puffiness with his tongue like a kid with an empty tooth socket. He's always bruised too easily.

Unto dust, he thinks, and gets down on his knees for Prime.

The first day of the new year is always the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God - Holy Day of Obligation - but it's also a Monday, special dispensation; he finds himself wondering if he should go to Mass anyway, paging listlessly through the phone book after he finds his pants and unwinds his shirt from the comforter kicked off onto the floor. He'd rather stay in bed, he thinks, fucking breaking his heart over a handful of feathers left behind.

I opened to my beloved, but my beloved had turned and gone.

He stays one more night, long enough for the phone to ring in the dark.

"Come back," he says, as soon as he picks it up, half a ring in and still three-quarters asleep, and he's not even sure what he means, not sure where ... who ... where he's urging Miguel back to.

"Come back where?" Miguel's voice is hoarse over the phone line, voicing Ray's own question. "That prison? Or are we gonna stay locked up in a motel room for the rest of our lives? For the rest of your life? You want to live like that? Looking over your shoulder, waiting for a knock on the door? No. It's better this way. You can go back to your life now."

"So you're … what? Doing this for my own good?" Ray asks, and he can see himself in the mirror over the dresser, out of the corner of his eye, head tilted, furrow between his brows.

He's oddly touched for a moment by Miguel's altruism, and he understands - just a little - how he got himself so twisted up over this guy, before the anger hits, fist clenching in the sheets, because Alvarez thinks Ray can just walk back into Oz after this? Thinks he can disappear back inside those walls like a cloister, just another hack in black doing his rounds, casually pulling on that cloak of supernatural reserve, whatever defenses he needs to put on his uniform, walk through the halls of a prison every day looking like nothing's getting to him, like he doesn't ache and hurt and want and love?

... the rest of my life in a little fucking box ...

He realizes he's shaking, and he wonders if he'll ever forgive Miguel for this.

"I'm a grown man, Alvarez," he says, icy now, biting out the words like they've been ripped from between clenched teeth, sharp and bloody. "I can make my own decisions."

"No. I never should have sent you those cards, man, never should have called you in the first place. You burn that shit; you burn it, and you go back there like none of this ever happened."

"No," Ray tells him, and for the first time in the course of this, he hangs up.

Through my fault, through my own fault, through my own most grievous fault, he thinks and tries to avoid the voice in his head, the voice that sounds too much like his own.

He lies in the dark, staring up at the ceiling, for half an hour, wondering if the phone will ring again, before he gives up, gives in, throws his clothes into his bag, moving swift and sure, shoulders set, no hesitation, like walking into the wind. Why not, he thinks. He's never going to get to sleep. He might as well get some miles under his belt.

He keeps his mind blank as he collects the postcards, piles them together, winds them with the chain from Miguel's medallion before he tucks them into a side pocket. His fingers catch on something and he pulls out the photo of the tattoo, nestled deep; he unfolds it long enough to run fingertips over the fresh wound, red and weeping, like stigmata, his touch ghosting over the dark lines of the poem set in Miguel's flesh:

Do not put me in the dark to die like a traitor ...

Sacrificial lamb, he thinks, has a flash of phosphorus and fire and blood marking the door, before he shoves the Polaroid back into his bag. Scapegoat - the one cast out, sacrificed to the spirits of the desert, left broken in the end, and he shivers, stops to stare at himself for a moment in the mirror, reaching out to touch the reflection of the curve of his own lips, the arch of an eyebrow, the edge of his jaw, taking the measure of himself.

Then he heads out under the stars to find ... something ... in the desert.
•••
Eventually, he stops somewhere, he doesn't know where - the ass-end of nowhere - gathers his resources enough to slow his undirected flight and call St. Margaret's. He goes through three convenience stores before he can find one with a pay phone; he doesn't recognize the voice who answers at the other end of the line, in the parish office, just asks her to tell Lou that Ray would like to talk to him and yes, he'll hold - for the value of hold they manage with the ancient phone in the parish office, which is setting down the receiver, muffled in someone's sweater if you're lucky, and so he hears the rumble of Lou's voice before he's even on the telephone properly.

"Where are you, Ray?" There's a thin undercurrent in Lou's voice - concern, maybe? Worry?

"Carlsbad," Ray says, thinking, sure, why not?

"Carlsbad?"

"Arizona," he adds, because that, at least, maybe, is true.

"Arizona," Lou repeats.

"You remember how we called it a retreat when it was really a vacation? I think maybe I need a little bit of a retreat. For real, this time."

There's silence on the other end of the line, while Ray waits patiently, waits it out, because he's had this battle of wills before.

"Are you finding yourself in the desert?" Lou finally asks, and Ray can't tell if his tone is careful or joking, and he wonders if Lou himself knows, so Ray laughs to reassure him, a laugh he doesn't feel.

"Maybe?" he says and remembers Thomas, bed-headed and blurry, soft sock-footed in the middle of the night, accent burring through his vowels - The thing you have to understand about Ray is that he desperately wants to believe that God isn't as hard on people as he is.

That'd be nice, he thinks, distracted - to know God's not going to be as hard on him as he is on himself.

"You are coming home, right?" Lou's voice breaks into his reverie, more laughter, less edge, but there's still an unspoken question there, and well, Ray thinks to himself.

Are you?

He reassures Lou, of course, asks for his help in arranging some extra time - he had a few more days before he was supposed to be back, and they were planning on keeping Makaki for an extra week, anyway, but it would help if Lou can manage to squeeze another week or so out of the diocese, and if anyone can manage it, he can, Ray knows. When he hangs up the phone, he stares at his hand for a minute, clenched on the receiver, knuckles tight and pale.

Don't look at them like that. It only ends up costing you in the end.

If you were going to run away from home, you couldn't just, oh, join the circus? he asks himself. You're a little old to be the daring young man on the flying trapeze, but you could have tamed lions, eaten fire. Ridden in the clown car.

Finding himself in the desert, though - at least it has the advantage of being, maybe, true. He remembers tales of peyote and dancing suns, fountains of light and golden rainfall, mystic revelation - wanting to believe, even when you don't know in what, or where to find it.

He gets in the car and drives some more, gets as far as Sierra Vista before he stops to stand beside his car, exhausted and blinking in afternoon sunlight, taking in the encircling mountains. He finds an RV park with its winter migration in full occupation and uses its rundown public bathroom to wash his face, brush his teeth, shave. There's a group of kids - college-aged, maybe - playing dodgeball out beyond the bounds of the RV park, in the sunburnt winter grassland, and he sits cross-legged on the warm hood of the Tercel and watches them for a while, occasionally turning his face up to the late afternoon sun before he turns to the Liturgy of the Hours, losing himself in the familiar rhythms of None.

Rédime me, Dómine, et miserére mei; Redeem me, O Lord, and be merciful to me.

One of the kids sitting out the game, a girl in a long skirt, heavy sweater wrapped around a swelling belly, approaches him, grins at him when he tilts a look her way. He wonders what it is about him, why he seems to run into so many pregnant girls, before he reminds himself that this is what the majority of the human race does - is fruitful, and multiplies.

"You play?" the girl asks him. "They don't have even teams since I got too big to run around."
•••
It's ridiculously easy to fall into the rhythms of the winter encampment, the routines of its inhabitants and hangers-on: Louisa and her sketch of hippie friends living off the grid; Johnnie, who organizes fantan tournaments in the dilapidated clubhouse once a week, the games well-attended by the aging population of snowbirds; Horace and Wallace - one white, one black, one from New Jersey, the other from Minnesota - who come out and sit with Ray most nights at the campfire that someone always gets going, making coffee in a tin pot over the flames as they compare endless fish tales. Ray supposes it's shitty coffee, but it can't be much worse than what they make in Oz, and anyway, he's grown up eating crap, still does most of the time - boxes of mac and cheese, packages of Ramen in styrofoam cups, mass-produced doughnuts covered in waxy chocolate. It's the food of his middle-class, suburban American childhood. Not bologna, though. He never could stand bologna, and he shakes his head when the guys fry it up in a pan and offer it to him.

On Saturday, he counts backward on his fingers to confirm the date, pulls out his Rosary, loses himself in the litany, the calm meditative space of it, beads slipping easily through his fingers – Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae.

It's the closest he's been to attending First Saturday Devotions in years, since he ended up in Oz. He could do the full devotions, he supposes, because church is wherever he is, Mass is wherever he is, right? And wasn't that one of the reasons he wanted to be a priest, to make sure he kept the sacred in his everyday life? But no, he thinks - he doesn't have the vestments he needs to say Mass, his chasuble, the alb, the silken stole. And he can't help wondering, is he still a priest? Do the formalities matter if he knows he's betrayed his vows?

He should go to confession, he knows, and he thinks about calling Pete from the phone at the nearby convenience store, or from the bar a couple of miles up the highway, even though it wouldn't really count as confession. Psychoanalysis is confession without the absolution, he thinks and laughs, the sound startling in the crisp morning air. Pete would be the one to call, then, wouldn't she? She always saw straight through him anyway, particularly where Alvarez was concerned. The potential for this kind of charlie-foxtrot is probably precisely why she banned him from the victim interaction with the Riveras in the first place.

Pete is apparently a million times smarter than he is, and he should listen to her more often, he decides. All the time, in fact.

The evil in things is not intended, he tells himself, refuge in Aquinas, but Ray's beginning to think that managing not to inflict hurt, in some way or other, is beyond man's ability. He briefly contemplates the idea, again, that they're already dead and in hell: Maybe Oz was just limbo, maybe he and Miguel weren't willing to do their time there, so they managed to move themselves into hell. He wonders when someone will be showing up to offer him all the kingdoms of the earth, before he remembers Los Indios in the distance and thinks maybe he already missed his chance to sign on the dotted line, already turned down temptation.

Funny, how it doesn't make him feel any more righteous.

He's living day-to-day out of the back of the Tercel, using the RV park's community bathrooms to shower and shave, avoiding his own gaze in the mirror, pulling the hatchback down to curl asleep at night, like some kind of fucking mystic, one of those crazy guys wandering around in the desert, undergoing his very own personal Catholic Enlightenment. He leans against the back passenger side tire of the Tercel, sitting cross-legged in the sun after Terce -- Sana ánimam meam, quia peccávi tibi; Heal my soul, for I have sinned against thee ... - and scrubs his hand through his hair, pulling strands between his fingers to fall tangling in his eyelashes. He'd already been due for a haircut when he left on this trip, and he hasn't bothered to think about it since.

He considers growing a beard. If he's going to be melodramatic, going to wallow in this midlife crisis or delayed teenaged angst or crisis of faith or whatever the hell this is that he's doing, there probably ought to be some actual trudging through the desert, thirst and heat, cracked lips and a croaking voice and hallucinations in the sand. But then, Ray's never been comfortable with the idea of a hair-shirt: too close, too real, no soft-focus centuries of myth like those laid over the martyrs of the early Church, just sweat and spit and misery, sharp edges and torn flesh, flashfire and midnight darkness. He's never been one for flagellation, mortification for the glory of God, although he's got to wonder whether he hasn't cut himself open as surely as Miguel did with a scalpel, whether he's got scars that he'll carry forever, scars that only he and God can see.

Do those count?

He vaguely remembers the feeling of looking for something - the urgency – remembers thinking he'd find it in the desert, but he doesn't feel like he's searching for anything anymore. He doesn't feel like he's doing anything, doesn't feel like he could move if he wanted to, suspended in still air, wrapped in some kind of muffling cocoon - waiting, maybe, although for what ... well, he doesn't know that, either.

Some kind of word. Some kind of Word.

A postcard or a phone call.

A burning bush.

An angel to break his fall, although it's little bit late for that, he thinks to himself, wry - he already cast himself off the temple with barely a glance around him - and he laughs out loud in the still desert air again.

He's doing this wrong, he knows. The thing about being an anchorite is, you're supposed to withdraw into your cell, away from the secular world - not run away from your vocation into the wide-open spaces. Not that the version of the secular world he's run to is what most would think of, he supposes, looking around himself. You've probably been locked up too long when the desert looks good by comparison.

Just ask Alvarez, he thinks, before he shuts himself down.

He tries not to think about Alvarez - especially when he wakes up in the back of the car, aching, hand on himself, in the middle of the night, wakes from dreams of breath and damp heat, edge of teeth and weight pinning him down, scent of copper and salt and smoke in his head, on his tongue, fingers tracing his wrist and the inside his elbows, the length of his thighs, taking the measure of him. He tries not to think about Miguel, who's out there somewhere, in the desert - maybe across the border into Mexico by now, into Guatemala, Chile, on his way to the end of the earth. He catches himself staring at the stack of postcards Miguel left behind: the Angel of Marye's Heights, bronze fingers clasped in a dying soldier's hands; the bones of a bridge in Georgia, skeleton of ironwork like bleached wings; the West 146, the bridge and the road, a blaze of autumn color behind them.

Not hearing is worse than hearing - he remembers that. He learned it, over and over and over, it's why he came out here in the first place. Well, he supposes it's one of the reasons he came out here, looking for something, in need of something, even if he can't figure out what, can't remember what it was or where to find it.

He takes to sitting around the community campfire in the growing twilights with Tanner, their army vet, who hunkers down in a tent each night on the outskirts of the camper city and says he's in the desert now because he never wants to see fucking ice and snow again, not after the slog to Tuzla through a Balkan winter, knee-deep mud sucking you down, flooding from the rivers washing your shit away no matter how you tried to tie it secure.

"Merry fucking Christmas," he says, reminiscently, toasting Ray with a battered tin cup of rotgut coffee - he doesn't have the money to be an alcoholic, he told Ray, when they started this nightly tradition. He still wears a shirt with a white-and-blue shield patch, "IFOR" in Roman and Cyrillic alphabets down either side - Task Force Eagle, he tells Ray - took over for the UN troops in Bosnia.

"Those poor fuckers." He shakes his head as the first stars prickle through the deep blue velvet swathing the night sky. "Nobody ever gave them the backup they needed to do shit. When you end up being used as a human shield by the people you're supposed to be keeping in line, your ROE are pretty fucked. What do you do with that?"

Ray worries his bottom lip with his teeth, remembering the sting of torn flesh and the taste of copper and salt, tape sticky and chafing around his wrists, the choking burnt-insulation stench of tear gas, and he supposes it's true enough.

"They should at least let you protect yourself, right?" Tanner pokes moodily at the fire with a stick. "Shouldn't have to put yourself in that position in the first place."

Don't look at them like that. It only ends up costing you, in the long run.

"They couldn't have set those poor fuckers up better if they were trying," Tanner goes on, conversationally, and Ray wonders if the Cardinal had any idea what he was doing, if the Cardinal knew exactly what he was doing.

At least Ray was never so naïve as to want it, right?

He spends his evenings listening to Tanner the way he listened to George when he was 14 years old, the way he listened every week to Marty Ward's hopeless longing for Officer Mabrey, to Jack Ellis and his constant quest to put anything he can up his nose, in his veins, endlessly inventive, and the punishment he inflicted on himself when he managed it, the way he listened to the fresh fish with their haunted looks and tight lips, to Kaminski's furtive whispers about the dreams, every night, the dreams where the two women he strangled came back for him. He listens the way he listened to Cyril O'Reily offer up his weekly confession of frustration and bad words, the small selfishness of a child, the way he listened to Miguel talk about smothering in the close confines of solitary, walls pressing in, Ricardo's voice whispering in his ear - all the graft and extortion and abuse and sex and despair, the general misery of the human condition.

"'Never again,' huh?" Tanner says, tossing the dregs of his coffee at the coals where the fire's burned down, and his words sizzle like liquid smoking away on embers. "There's guys I served with, already back in Kosovo, doing the same goddamn dance all over again. The human race - it's fundamentally fucked. Don't let anybody tell you any different, Ray."

The long decline, Ray thinks and drops his head back to stare at the starlit sky with open, sightless eyes.
•••
A couple of bikers show up for few days, warily skirted by the regulars, although they do a little business with the hippies, and Ray's perspective is skewed, he thinks - maybe irrevocably - but he's not sure he could find anyone outside of a prison, anyone outside of a prison riot, remotely threatening anymore. If he could survive the riot - and Devlin's takedown - he supposes he can survive whatever happens to him. So he tosses a smile and a "good morning" to one of them - broad and graying, skulls tattooed across the backs of both hands - as he leaves the Stop'N'Shop one morning with a wave to Esteban behind the counter with the hand that's holding cigarettes instead of coffee.

The other - a little younger, a little slighter, dark hair held back by a red bandanna - follows Ray with his eyes after that, not precisely avid, but speculative. It's not as if Ray was completely oblivious before this, not as if he's never known, not as if he's completely naïve, but he can feel that gaze on his skin in a way he never did before, a heat and pressure that's almost tangible, like fingers on the nape of his neck, the slope of his back, the soft skin inside his forearms, blood pulsing close to the surface of thin skin, like a part of himself that's been asleep - that he's kept asleep - all this time has woken up and is stretching itself under the attention. The taste of smoke in his mouth brings back the pulse of a bass through brick and fingers trailing light along his wrist, the stroke of a thumb over the back of his hand, and he remembers Pete's words - A woman and a nun. All are parts of me ... - but he remembers Sippel's words, too.

A man but not allowed to be a man. A priest but not allowed to be a priest ...

You are a priest forever, like Melchizidek of old - the words from the psalm, from his ordination come back to him.

"No," he says. "Thank you," and he smiles, shoves his hands in his pockets and wraps his sweatshirt around himself when the guy offers him a toke at the campfire that night, and he can see himself again in his mind's eye, flashes back to college, the scrape of brick against his back, remembers tilting his head to look through his lashes as he accepted a cigarette, before he pulled the smoke into his lungs.

"No charge," the guy says and tilts his head to study Ray in the firelight, soft dark gaze brushing over him - the curve of his mouth, the line of his jaw, the hollow of his throat - like a thumb stroking over Ray's skin. "Not for a pretty thing like you."

He lifts a hand, and for a sudden, disorienting moment, Ray wants to tilt into the rough touch on his cheekbone. He can feel what it would be like, to let the guy lay him down in the back of the Tercel where he wakes up hard and aching, hand on himself in the middle of the night, can feel what it would be like to let the guy lay him down and fuck him. Frankly, it would be less of an affront to his vows than what he had back when he was curled with Miguel in a motel bed, fingertips barely touching, feeling Miguel's breath ghost across his lips. This would merely besmirch his chastity, not his celibacy, make him unvirtuous but not an oathbreaker.

It's not about the fucking, he thinks - it's about the love. He wonders if Keller has figured that out yet. He closes his eyes and remembers Miguel's light fingertips tracing the scar over his eyebrow, thumb dragging against his mouth.

Upon my bed by night, I sought him whom my soul loves; I sought him, but found him not; I called him but he gave no answer.

"Don't," he says, sudden, sharper than he means, ducking out from under the touch, one hand up in a visceral denial, a renunciation, unexpected enough that the guy rocks forward, balance lost, and Ray finds himself scrambling away before he manages to still himself, crouched beside the campfire, trying to clear his head enough to cobble together an explanation - for this stranger, for himself, he's not sure which - even if it's only half true, hedging his words. "I'm sorry. I just ... can't. I had a ... bad breakup. I'm not really ready for ..."

"I could help you get over him."

Yeah, well, I'm not really ready for that, Ray thinks, because this is probably something he ought to carry. He kneels in the flickering firelight, a rock sharp and uncomfortable under one knee, and his perspective is irrevocably screwed up, he realizes, because he's crouched beside a campfire in the middle of nowhere, facing a guy half again his size and weight, and he's not worried about this guy, it's not like he could worry about this guy, not after living through a riot and a takedown and the aftermath. Ray's no fresh meat, and he's made it this long, survived the world exploding around him and crumbling slowly, silently, piece by piece, and he's managed to pick himself up each time, walk back into it like walking into the wind.

May the Lord Almighty grant us a quiet night and a perfect end, he thinks as he shivers through the solitary walk to the outskirts of the encampment, familiar words of Compline, his bedtime prayer for more than twenty years, now, the weight and comfort of tradition behind it, and he closes his eyes, centers himself, lets it pass through him and out before he curls himself alone in the back of the Tercel, hands pressed to his own chest, feeling the rise and fall of his breath.
•••
Tucked into his sweatshirt against the morning chill, cross-legged on the still-warm hood of the Tercel, he scalds his mouth on weak coffee from the Stop'N'Shop down the road and watches sunrise pink fade from the sky as Ruth pokes at a cactus in the garden outside her camper. She's collected close to a dozen of the spiky plants, short and tall and fat and squat, one with spatters of yellow blooms and another with a single florid orange flower at its crown. Ray rubs his thumb across two fingertips, remembers heavy silken fur and purring rumbles against his hands, and he never thought something prickly could bring someone so much satisfaction. But Leon, two rows south, told him this is something Ruth does every year, passing on the garden when she leaves each April. One of the hippie boys from the mini-commune of three tents on the campground's western edge comes around every couple of days to dig for her, shifts rocks, shirt open and bandanna holding back dirty blond curls, sticks himself on thorns and grins as he sucks on his fingers, working up a sweat in the afternoon sun while Ruth supervises. She used to transplant it all herself, she tells Ray - before she got so old and fat and creaky.

She drinks wine out of a box - one glass a night as she sits under the tiny overhang outside her front door and watches the sun set - and she paints, too, Ray discovers. "Bargain-basement O'Keefe" she calls her swooping detailed designs, and somewhere in that camper, she's stacked three or four canvases that she rotates, painting over them again and again. He spends a couple of hours one afternoon just watching her, sitting in the shadow of the Tercel, leaning against the back driver's side wheel with the minutes ticking from Sext to None - ... kindly mother of our redeemer, great portal of heaven ever open, the sea's far-shining star - succor thy people who, though fallen, strive to rise again ... - watching as she puts a wash of white over one of the canvases, the image growing hazier and more indistinct with each layer until it disappears into a clean, blank slate.

She travels light, she says, pushing an escaped strand of white hair off her forehead, and anyway, the point is not the having of them - it's the making of them. Like memories, she tells him, offering him wine in the other glass from the cupboard in her tiny kitchen as the sun goes down. That's not a place you can live, she says, the faintest question in her tone, as if she's still looking for her own answers. You have to build it and keep going.

"Walk on," he says, and she raises her glass with a tiny smile.

She's got two of everything, it looks like - two glasses, two plates, two sets of flatware, two small towels in the closet of a bathroom, although only one of them looks used, tilted slightly on its bar so the corners don't match up. All her friends back in Michigan were surprised, she tells Ray - as they watch purple bands chase red across the horizon = when she came back here again this winter, the first without her husband, but why would she want to miss out on a season in the canyons? He was a geologist, she says - he liked the rocks, never cared about the sweeping vistas, always wanted to look closer, deeper - and Ray's not sure she's even still talking to him, not sure it matters that it's him she's talking to, something like a confessional, maybe, when you need to put something on someone else because it's too big for you to carry alone.
•••
Ray's in the Roadhouse on a Saturday night when he sees the news spot - sees it, because he certainly can't hear it - and he's not sure at first what made him look up, but then he's not surprised that he recognized and homed in on the flicker out of the corner of his eye like a hunting dog. It's not as if he's spent way too much time more attuned to Alvarez than is good for him, right? So he somehow looks over at the TV mounted up in one corner in time to see the b-roll shot - Alvarez in an orange jumpsuit and cuffs being escorted by guys in brown - and a mug shot, a graphic of a map with a red star further west, along the border, at Lochiel, dated two days ago.

He's got just enough change in his pockets to call Pete, although he probably ought to know better, and he huddles in on himself in the chilly air at the outside payphone, willing to pay a little discomfort for the privilege of hearing her over the din in the bar where he's left Horace and Wallace playing darts. Who would have guessed, he thinks, this time last year, that he would be the one who'd run away from home, who spent his time making furtive calls, hoping no one would catch him? How the wheel turns.

"You saw the news?" Pete says, when Sister Anna Michael calls her to the phone, and it's no surprise, Ray thinks, as he lights a cigarette - Pete's always been able to find out what's gone on in the privacy of the confessional, always been able to get Ray himself to confess to it. He knew she'd read him like a book. "When are you coming home?"

"Soon," he tells her, even as he wonders whether by "home," he means the city or the rectory, the church or the prison, the familiarity of concrete walls, the random banging clanging sounds, even the cooking smells, all the things he thinks of as "his" - his office, his cafeteria, his guys - and the way a constant flow of prisoners in and out, kitchen crews and mealtimes, marks his days as surely as the Liturgy of the Hours, a familiar cage that feels like home.

That prison, it's in my blood and my bones. Like pollution in the water, down to the molecular level, and there ain't no way to unwind it.

Maybe he's just as trapped as Miguel, he thinks, as he hangs up the phone, and he wonders how Oz has shaped him, how he's allowed himself to be shaped by the structure around him, wonders whether it was natural, inevitable, something he couldn't avoid, like the course of a river carved through soft rock. He wonders what kind of chance he gave up by not taking the opportunity for flight, remembers the sight of Los Indios, that long bridge, first step toward the end of the earth, remembers the sun on his back and Miguel's skin under his fingers, gritty with sand.

He can't carry that home with him, he knows - he won't survive the weight of it, back inside the walls. He might not even be able to walk back in, and what then?

Alvarez was right, he realizes - has to shut this down like it never happened.

Sacrificial lamb, he thinks, has a flash of phosphorus and fire, blood marking the door, and he shivers, takes a long drag on the cigarette, bouncing on his toes in an effort to stay warm as he thinks about Oz and about Tolkien, the lesson he learned as early as high school: You never defeat anything really, it's all just a long, slow decline. But it can be the genteel decay of a neighborhood going to seed instead of the world exploding around you, and he thinks about Ruth's garden, the spikes and the thorns and the care she lavishes on them.

He wonders if Abgott had any idea what he was doing when he sent Ray to Oz, wonders if the Cardinal knew precisely what he was doing. Either way, it's not like Ray can go back to the beginning, not like he can toss all this away - it's not like he can do anything but follow through. Maybe by the time he gets home, wherever that is, whatever it means, he'll be past it, he thinks. Maybe he'll have let it move through him and on, he'll be scorched and scoured clean and empty by the sun and sand.

He owes Alvarez that much, at least.

Dómine, avérte fáciem tuam a peccátis meis, et omnes iniquitátes meas dele, he thinks. O Lord, turn thy face from my sin and put out all my misdeeds.

Back at the winter encampment, he packs quickly, efficiently, the weight of routine behind it by now, throws his clothes into his bag, moving swift and sure, shoulders set, no hesitation, like walking into the wind.

Why not, he thinks. He's never going to get to sleep.

He might as well get some miles under his belt.

fin

Notes:

The Museum of Tolerance has collected some oral histories from members of the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion as part of its online teacher resources; these testimonials were invaluable for bringing George Mukada to life for this story. Ray's maternal grandparents are written as being interned at the Gila River War Relocation Center; their neighbor, Samuel Davis, is based on Bob Fletcher, a California resident who quit his job as an agricultural inspector to take care of three farms for Japanese-American families when they were interned during WWII.

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In Ordinary Time

marylex

Chapter 3: Book III: The Book of Ray

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