Catholic Guilt and the Joy of Hating Men (14 page)

“Are you okay?” the girl asked in passable English. “Is this your sister, Bradley?”

“Uh, Marguerite,” Bradley said, “you with us?”

“What are you going to do with those?” Marguerite asked.

Bradley shrugged. “We might throw them down the well... that’d freak out whoever’s standing at the bottom.”

Marguerite heard the chirp of a phone.

Bradley pulled his phone from the pocket and glanced at the screen. “Dammit,” he said, “I think I’ve got to run.” He turned to his date. “I can drop you back in town if you’d like.”

The girl gave a little pout. “But we just got here,” she said. “You promised you’d show me the well.”

“I can show you the well,” Marguerite said with a smile. “Bradley talks about it so much that I’m more than qualified to give you the tour.”

The girl looked her over for a moment before nodding. She gave Bradley a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll see you later?”

Bradley smiled at the girl before shooting Marguerite a quick angry look. “I’ll see you guys,” he said before turning to leave.

“Wait,” Marguerite said. “What about that garden gnome?”

Bradley tossed the orange gnome over to her, and she caught it without trouble. He stomped away, and Marguerite led the pretty long-nosed girl back to the glade of flowers and mushrooms. She wanted to make sure she repeated each step exactly.

They both nibbled on a mushroom as Marguerite started telling the story of the Templars, making it all up as she went. The girl seemed really nice, and Marguerite had a feeling that she would appreciate what was coming.

But there was still one thing left to do.

“Hold on,” Marguerite said.

“What is it?”

“Can I see your gnome?”

She held out the brown-hatted gnome with the stern and serious face. Marguerite handed the orange one over in exchange; she had no need for it.

“I like this one better,” the pretty Portuguese girl said. “He has a nice smile.”

“We all have our favorites,” Marguerite said as she held the brown gnome close to her chest. “Now let me show you the Initiation Well. It’s really like nothing else in the world.”

Marguerite started to feel her little gnome’s heart begin to beat; she knew it was real.

Marguerite woke up in the sunlight again, with the pretty Portuguese girl still sleeping beside her.

She gently squeezed the girl’s shoulder.

“I don’t even know your name,” Marguerite said.

“My name is Adelia,” she said. She started to cry.

“What’s wrong?”

“That was wrong. I don’t know what happened.”

“It was magic. That’s a good thing.”

“No,” Adelia said, “that’s not good. It’s wrong.”

“Fine,” Marguerite said. “Whatever.” She stood up. “If you hated it so much you don’t ever have to do it again.”

“Where are the...
gnomos
?”

“Probably where you and Bradley found them before.”

“The chapel,” Adelia said. “We must get them.”

She got up and started walking briskly toward the chapel.

Marguerite felt she had no choice but to follow.

They found the gnomes lying in a bed of purple and yellow flowers growing alongside the white walls of the chapel.

Adelia picked up the brown-hatted gnome and passed it to Marguerite.

“What are we going to do with them?” Marguerite asked.

“We’re going to be rid of them,” Adelia said. She picked up the other gnome.

“Let’s find a garbage can or something.”

“No... don’t be foolish. We have to destroy them.”

“Destroy them? What are you talking about?”

Adelia started walking back toward the glade of blue and white flowers, clutching her orange-hatted gnome.

She sat down on the grass, tossing the gnome down beside her. She started plucking flowers and laying them in a pile.

“What are you doing?” Marguerite asked.

Adelia didn’t answer.

“Adelia...”

“I’m going to light them on fire,” Adelia said.

She pulled out a lighter.

“You smoke?” Marguerite asked.

“I smoke... something...”

“You can’t start a fire in the middle of the garden,” Marguerite said.

“Don’t try to stop me.” She knelt down and struck the lighter.

The flame wouldn’t catch.

“We will take them to my house,” Adelia said. “And burn them.”

“No,” Marguerite said. “I won’t let you.”

“We had
sex
with them. That is wrong.”

“Why is it wrong?”

Adelia gave up on lighting her pile of dying flowers. “If it’s not wrong, you would want me to tell your brother?”

Marguerite’s mind filled with images of Bradley pointing and laughing, mocking her, probably creating a Facebook Fan Page for “Marguerite and the Brown Gnome: Love and Marriage in the Grotto” and inviting every last friend and relative to the non-existent nuptials. Bradley would do that. She knew he would.

And Diogo would find out. And Netuno would find out. And Rafael... well, he’d know, too, and he’d probably tell every last gamer on Xbox LIVE about it.

“Okay,” Marguerite said, “we’ll burn them. We’ll burn them and we won’t tell anyone what happened.”

She felt ashamed, but she wasn’t sure if it was the memory of her threesome, or their foursome, or of her sudden betrayal of the little plastic friends she’d only just made.

Marguerite knew that everything that came after would be mind-numbingly normal.

Adelia mellowed once they reached her back garden. She even offered Marguerite a can of Sumol Zero, which Marguerite gladly accepted despite the fact that she felt the pineapple soda tasted a little bit like deer piss.

The two plastic gnomes sat on a stone ledge, looking quite natural beside the small garden of peas and potatoes.

“I’m sorry if I am seeming rude,” Adelia said as they sat down at a small lattice table. “I am...
envergonhado
.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It’s... shame.”

“Oh. That I get. But I don’t think it’s fair to them.”

“To the
gnomos
?”

“Yeah. They’re just doing what gnomes do, I guess.”

Adelia laughed. “You sound like a girl in love with
plástico
.”

Marguerite laughed, too. “Maybe I am,” she said.

Adelia leaned in toward Marguerite and placed her hand on Marguerite’s knee. “Did you like it?” she asked in a whisper.

Marguerite nodded.

“I liked it, also,” Adelia said.

“Maybe we shouldn’t burn them.”

Adelia nodded. “Maybe we should keep them here.”

“They look like they belong,” Marguerite said.

Marguerite stood up from her chair and walked over to the gnomes. She bent over and gave both gnome foreheads a kiss.

“In love with plastic,” she said with a grin.

The next few weeks were strange and wonderful for Marguerite, and she was sure they’d felt the same for Adelia. They’d meet every few days, when they both were free from work and study, and they’d take the two little gnomes up to Adelia’s bedroom. Sometimes they found mushrooms to eat, and sometimes they didn’t; they found in time that the mushrooms weren’t needed.

Bradley complained about their new friendship, telling Marguerite that she ought to have picked an uglier girl to be her bestie.

But Marguerite didn’t listen and she just didn’t care, and she found that nothing Bradley said to embarrass her, like joking to Diogo and Netuno about her shyness, or asking the boys from the nearby high school if they’d ever wondered just what a pale-skinned ginger girl looked like down below... none of it seemed to bother her anymore.

She wasn’t embarrassed. She had no reason to be.

And after those few weeks Marguerite had started to notice that the young men of Sintra were treating her differently.

Diogo and Netuno and even Rafael... they were talking to Marguerite like she was worth talking to, and not just worth looking at. And she was talking to them, and the old urges to throw up, or curl up in a fetal position... those urges were gone.

“Would you like to go to Quinta with me?” Diogo asked her one day as they walked along the Avenue. “I would love to show it to you.”

Marguerite laughed. “Have you forgotten who my brother is? He’s an old pro at taking girls to Quinta.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Then I won’t ruin this for you.” She grabbed his hand and squeezed. “I’d love to go to Quinta with you.”

They kept walking, but with their hands locked together.

“Oh...” Marguerite said, “do you mean right now?”

Diogo smiled and nodded. “If you have time.”

Marguerite leaned over and gave the young man a kiss on the cheek.

He took her through the gardens for a little while to start, telling her stories about Quinta that she’d heard two months before from her brother, although when Diogo told the stories they sounded far better, even with a few mispronounced words.

They reached the glade of flowers and mushrooms.

Diogo knelt down and picked up a mushroom. "Have you tried it?" he asked.

"I have," she said, "but I don't feel like having any today."

"Just eat it." He took an oversized bite and held out the rest.

"No," she said.

“I want to show you the
pozo iniciatico
,” Diogo said.

“The Initiation Well,” Marguerite said.

Diogo nodded and led her down the path.

“At the bottom of the well is the nine circle of hell,” Diogo said. “The knights would give an... oath, and they would say that they would be happier in hell than they would be to make dishonor to the
Templários
.”

Marguerite nodded. She was in heaven.

They walked together down the winding steps of the well, deep into the earth. Diogo was getting grabbier, moving from her hands to her thighs, to her hips, to her rear... she didn’t mind at all. It was about time someone made a big deal over her.

When they reached the marble floor and the red arrows, Diogo went in for the kiss. It was a little sloppier than she’d expected from a guy who’d seemed so smooth, but she still liked it.

“You are beautiful,” Diogo said, brushing a tuft of hair from her forehead.

“So are you,” Marguerite said.