The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell [54]
He stood, and Jimmy got to his feet as well. "Congratulations, Mr. Quinn, on a historic discovery." Masao Yanoguchi, arms at his sides, bowed briefly; later, Jimmy would realize he was more surprised by this gesture than by anything else that had happened that day. "Permit me to give you a lift home," Yanoguchi suggested. "I don’t think you should be driving. I’ll have my chauffeur pick you up tomorrow morning as well. You can leave your car here overnight."
Jimmy was too dazed to say anything. Masao Yanoguchi laughed and led the boy out toward the parking lot.
THAT NIGHT, FOR the second time in as many nights, Emilio Sandoz had trouble falling asleep.
He used this apartment gratis because the house was too close to the encroaching ocean; no one else dared to stay in it anymore and the landlord had given up trying to rent it out. Tonight, alone as always in the little bedroom, Emilio stared at the cracked and patched ceiling made beautiful by moonlight reflected off the sea, and listened to the hypnotic sound of waves nearby. He knew sleep would not come easily and did not close his eyes to coax it.
He’d been prepared, to some extent, for nights like the one he’d passed the previous evening. "Lotta people in this ole world," D. W. Yarbrough had warned him once. "Sometime, somewhere, one or two of ’em gonna ring some bells for a man. Count on it, son." So even before he met Sofia Mendes, he understood that he’d have to reckon with someone like her. He no longer denied the turmoil she aroused in him; he simply accepted that it would take time to bring a natural response into congruence with his vows.
He’d never really questioned the vows. He accepted them as essential to the Apostolate—for making him readily available to work for the good of souls—and when the time came, he took them wholeheartedly. But at fifteen, when it all began? He’d have laughed himself stupid at the idea of becoming a priest. Oh, sure, D.W. got the charges dropped and got him off-island before anyone else took a shot at him, and he was grateful in a half-articulate way but in the beginning, he only intended to lie low until he was eighteen and could do as he pleased. Go to New York. Break into the minors. Box, maybe. Flyweight. Welterweight, if he filled out more. Sell again, if he had to.
The first months in the Jesuit high school were a shock. He was as far behind the other students scholastically as he was ahead of them in raw experience. Few of the boys talked to him, except to goad him, and he returned the favor. D.W. made him promise one thing: not to hit anyone. "Just master your hands, ’mano. No more fighting. Get a grip, son."
Nobody from his family ever wrote or called, much less visited. His brother beat the rap, D.W. told him toward the end of the first semester, but still blamed Emilio for what happened. Well, fuck him, who gives a shit? he thought savagely and swore he’d never cry again. He went over the wall that night. Found a whore, got wrecked. Came back defiant. If anybody noticed he was gone, no one said anything about it.
The tide began to turn for him about eight months into his sophomore year. The quiet orderliness of life in the boarding school began to seduce him. No crises, no sudden terror, no gunshots and screaming in the night. No beatings. Each day planned, no surprises. Almost in spite of himself, he did well at Latin. Won a prize, even. "For excellence." He liked the sound of that. Rolled the word around in his mind.
He did better junior year, despite the fact that he spent nearly all of it arguing with the priests. So much of what he knew about religion struck him as