Thrice Fooled

"I've felt it too," he now said.

"So—"

"I don't think so. I haven't done this to get a place to stay."

"But this isn't the last time . . . you'll come again?"

He gave a low laugh. "I can come again in about twenty minutes, if you want. I'm not as young as I once was, but I haven't had any trouble getting it up with you."

We both laughed, me a bit more nervously than he did. "That's not what I mean. I mean—"

"Yes, I'll come home with you again, if that's what you want."

And he did, over the next three days. On the third day, we were on the bed, in each other's arms, cooling down, when I heard her enter by the front door—Mary. She was home a day early.

"Timothy. It's me," she called up the stairwell. "Are you here? You must be. Your car's out front. I came home earlier. Laura's cousin died and they have to drive out to California."

Noah sat straight up in bed and looked down at me accusingly. "You're married. You told me you were an Episcopalian priest, not a Catholic one, but you didn't tell me you were married."

"Noah," I said, but he wasn't listening to me. He was out of the bed like a jack rabbit and pulling his clothes on. Before I could say anything else, as I was pulling on my clothes as well, to go out into the hall to block Mary off from seeing him and letting her know I indeed was home and forming an "I was taking a nap" exclamation, Noah was out the French door unto the deck above the kitchen and shinnying down a trellis to the ground.

I didn't see him again for the two days leading up to Good Friday. He didn't come into the Mission House and I didn't see him out on the streets while I was gathering up homeless people to take into the shelter.

The next time I saw him was at the 11:00 p.m. candlelight Easter Eve service at St. John's church. I was up at the altar, of course, helping to set up and deliver communion, and I saw him enter the sanctuary—or at least I believed it was him. He was shaved and in a suit and looking very prosperous. He sat near the front. I may not have known it was him if he hadn't made—and maintained—eye contact with me. His expression was one of being wounded and disappointed. I wanted to go to him, to explain, but I had duties to perform.

He didn't come up for communion. When that started, he stood, turned, and walked back up the aisle and out of the church.

I wanted to cry.

* * * *

My next encounter with Noah, who wasn't named Noah at all, came as a major shock. A week into May, a board meeting was held of the Mission House program and, for the first time, I attended, representing St. Johns Episcopal church and as one of the staffers at the shelter.

Noah, introduced to us as Noel Sinclair, chairman of Sinclair Manufacturing, the major nonchurch benefactor of the Mission House program, was sitting at the table at the front of the room. His eyes latched onto me from the moment I entered the hall, and I could see there was a change in his expression. He no longer looked hurt. He now looked more beseeching and apologetic. I wasn't surprised—but was still in shock—when he approached me during a break in the meeting and asked if I would stay beyond the end and go someplace for a cup of coffee with him.

Despite all—including the shock of him not being who I thought he was at all—I would have gone anywhere he asked me to go. My feelings for him had only intensified since the church service the evening before Easter Day.

In a nearby coffee shop, he started off by apologizing.

"I've been such a fool. I thought I was being clever and looking out for my company's interests, but I didn't take into account who you were—and that you were you."

"That I was me?" I asked "I don't understand. Of course, I'm me."

"You aren't the 'me' I thought you were."

"It seems you aren't the 'you' you claimed to be," I said. "You presented yourself as the homeless Noah, but it turns out that you're rich Noel Sinclair, the major benefactor of the shelter. What? Did you think I'd only have interest in a homeless man? Or were you checking up on what sort of staffers they had at the shelter?"

"For starters I thought you were a Catholic priest and were gay and might be preying on your charges and I was completely fooled," Noel said, his voice contrite. "Then I found you were an Episcopalian priest, and the religion accepts gay clergy. But then I fooled myself into thinking you were married and messing around with men."

"Married? I'm not married. Oh, you mean Mary? Mary's my sister. She lives with me and takes care of me. But she isn't in my bed. She also knows I'm actively gay."

"I know—the not married and she's your sister part. I checked. I cared enough to check."

"But you were prepared to be fooled in the first place."

"I should start at the beginning. I knew you were gay and actively went with men."

"You knew? How did you know?"

"I go to the clubs in Albuquerque too," Noel answered. "I've seen you there. I've seen you leave with men—men I knew to be dominant and roughly so. You attracted me even then. But then I saw you at the shelter, in a clerical collar, and the shelter mainly being Catholic, I thought you were a Catholic priest. My company is heavily invested in the shelter, so I thought I needed to check out what was what—not just because of you. I thought I needed to check on how everything was being run, so I went there in the guise of a homeless man. It all checks out. I think I should tell you that."

"And you did your part in hooking up with me and following me home and bedding me," I said.

"At first I wanted to know if you were doing that with men at the shelter and if that was doing damage to the shelter's mission."

"And, fool that I am, I fell right into that trap. And it was just that—a trap."

"No, it wasn't just a trap. In wanted it. I wanted it with you. By the time we were at your house, none of the rest of it mattered to me. I'd fallen for you. It was just when you sister came home and I thought she was your wife. I let myself be fooled. I let myself be fooled by so much. I just wish . . ."

"You just wish what?" I said.

"I wish we could start over. That the air could be cleared and everything I'd let fool myself could just be whisked away."

"We can't clear the slate and start from zero," I said.

The pained expression on his face made me ache, and I had to save him quick. "I don't want to forget what we've already done. I want to do more of it, to build on it. I don't want to forget our first time—or our second time. Let's just start from here, you big lug. But I don't know where—"

"We obviously can't go back to your place," he said, with a relieved laugh. "Your sister. But I live alone. There's no wife or boyfriend or anything like that in my house or life. I'd like to have a boyfriend, though. So, let me pay for the coffees and then let's go home."

And that's what we did.