The Gospel According to Luke

  Luke agreed with every word Belinda said, and equally, he was convinced that he was stronger and more in love with God and more respectful of his special friend than the average strong, loving, respectful Christian man. If he could hold Aggie’s hand, if he could touch her crazy hair, if he could feel her breast pressing against his arm and her hipbone knocking against his and still not give in to the temptation to commit sexual sin against his own body, then surely taking her face between his palms and drawing her mouth towards his would not cause an unstoppable slide into adulterous sin.

  He waited until the kids had filed out of the hall, then ran to his office to put on his good denim jacket and fix his hair. He wondered if he should go to his room and brush his teeth or if sucking on a Mentos would be enough. Out the window he could see Kenny playing a game of rugby with some of the younger boys and that Leticia and a few of the girls from this morning’s group were cheering from the sidelines. Normally, he would go and join them, but today was not normal. Today he was going to kiss Agatha Grey.

  ‘Ah, Luke?’

  He turned and smiled, even as his heart sank. ‘Belinda. Great presentation this morning. I was thinking we could do something similar for the juniors? Maybe tone down the kissing stuff a little, talk more about the importance of having a broad range of friends?’

  Belinda beamed. ‘Great idea. I’ll work on it this weekend and you can let me know what you think.’ She sat in his visitor’s chair, crossed her legs and looked him up and down. ‘You’re all spruced up. Going somewhere?’

  ‘Yeah, I was just on my way out. Did you want something?’

  ‘Actually, yeah . . . I, ah, I was hoping we could chat?’

  He thought of Aggie’s lips. Rosy pink with deep red corners which flashed at you when she laughed or yelled or yawned. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘What’s on your mind?’

  ‘Well, it’s just . . .’ Belinda’s smile slipped into a grimace. ‘It’s kind of a sensitive topic, Luke, and I’m a little nervous about bringing it up.’

  Luke resisted the impulse to roll his eyes. ‘You should know not to be nervous with me. Come on, now.’

  ‘Right, it’s just . . . It’s about Aggie Grey.’

  ‘Yes?’ Luke was pleased at the neutrality of his tone.

  ‘People are wondering if . . .’ Belinda raised her eyebrows. ‘People are wondering about your relationship with Aggie. Wondering if she’s your, ah, girlfriend?’

  ‘Who’s wondering?’

  Belinda shrugged. ‘Everyone who’s noticed how much time you spend with her.’

  ‘Aggie is not my girlfriend.’

  ‘Right, okay. So, ah . . .’ Belinda grimaced again.

  ‘So, ah, what?’

  ‘Luke, come on. A month ago you had everyone in the community writing letters and printing banners against the woman, and now you spend all of your free time hanging out with her.’

  ‘The campaign was never against Aggie. It was against the clinic.’

  ‘Whatever. Point is, suddenly the clinic is okay and the woman who runs it is your best friend? What gives?’

  Luke smiled and clenched his fists beneath the desktop. ‘The clinic is certainly not okay, and I’m shocked you would make such an inference. It became clear to me that we were going about things in the wrong way. Jesus taught understanding and peace, not aggression and righteousness. He was known for the company He kept. Prostitutes, thieves, people other religious leaders wouldn’t go near – Jesus drew them close. He befriended the worst sinners in the land; He ate at their tables and drank from their cups. He didn’t do that because He approved of their way of life. He did it to be the best friend a sinner ever had.’

  ‘Surely you don’t compare yourself with Jesus? He was without human weakness; His motives were always pure. You must recall what Paul said about bad company?’

  ‘I am familiar with Paul’s teachings, thank you, Belinda. And I am most certainly not comparing myself with Jesus; I am simply trying to live by His example. We can talk all we like about how great God is, but it is through our actions that the unsaved judge us. By acting with compassion, tolerance, love, we show them the grace of God.’

  Belinda smiled. ‘You’re right, of course. I’m sorry for doubting you. It’s just that people talk . . .’

  ‘Wonderful. Let them spread the word. We welcome sinners. We embrace them.’

  ‘Yes, wonderful!’ Belinda got up. ‘You’re very good to be so kind to unfortunates, Luke. We should all follow your example.’

  ‘Aggie is hardly an unfortunate. She’s an accomplished young woman. She is not an object of pity, I assure you.’

  ‘So she has been saved?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Then I pity her.’

  ‘But she will be. It’s my mission.’

  Belinda came around to Luke’s side of the desk, bent low and embraced him. He sat unmoving, allowing her to press his head to her chest. Her breasts were soft and warm beneath his face, but he felt nothing. ‘You’re a good man, Luke.’ Belinda straightened and smiled down at him. ‘If you say you’re going to save her, then I believe you will.’

  She left the room. Luke put his head on the desk. He stayed like that for an hour or more. When he lifted his head again, his vision was blurred and his temples throbbed, but his mind felt clearer.

  ‘Ag, it’s me.’

  ‘I was just thinking about you.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about you too.’

  ‘Good things, I hope?’

  ‘I want you to sign up for introductory Bible study classes.’

  She laughed. ‘What?’

  ‘Classes for people from a non-Christian background. We hold them at –’

  ‘There’s no way.’

  ‘It’s very important that you do this.’

  Silence.

  ‘Aggie?’

  ‘Yes, that’s me. Who are you?’

  He closed his eyes and asked God to fill him up. ‘I’m trying to help you.’

  ‘You want to help me, then go get me some noodles from down the road. I’m starving.’

  ‘This is serious. I’ve been neglecting my duty. Your soul is in –’

  ‘Enough, Luke, okay? Drop it.’

  He was silent.

  ‘Are you going to say anything?’

  ‘Why, Aggie?’

  ‘Because I don’t like one-sided conversations.’

  ‘Why won’t you open your mind to the possibility that I might actually know what I’m talking about? I truly have your interests at heart here.’

  ‘I swear to God, Luke, I’m going to hang up if you don’t stop this shit.’

  ‘I don’t mind the swearing, but can you please not blaspheme?’

  Click.

  13.

  ‘How can anyone be so completely – ugh!’ Aggie stalked the length of the clinic, glancing at the NCYC each time she passed the window. She had been doing this for so long her legs were getting tired, but sitting down felt like giving up. ‘He doesn’t seem to have the slightest clue how to talk to other human beings. It’s like he’s been brought up by wolves!’

  ‘Maybe if you did some work you’d feel better?’

  Aggie pulled a face at Mal, who was intent on his monitor and so did not see her anyway. ‘I have a client at twelve. Until then, I intend to pace.’

  ‘Can you do it elsewhere? I’m trying to concentrate.’

  Aggie stuck her tongue out. ‘You’re a shitty friend.’

  ‘You’re a shitty employee. Do some fucking work.’

  Aggie sat on Mal’s desk, pushing several thick folders to the floor. He swore. Aggie lay down, her head on his keyboard, her feet hanging over the edge. Mal poked her in the ribs. ‘Get off my desk.’

  Aggie spread her arms, knocking something cold and heavy off the desk and crumpling several papers under her elbows. ‘I just don’t get it. The chemistry is out of this world. Every time we see each other it’s like . . . God, you’ve seen us together, Mal, don’t you thi
nk he seems keen? He seems so . . . ah, I don’t know.’

  ‘He’s a wanker; you’re great and deserve much better. Now get off my fucking desk.’

  ‘I feel like Luke’s the one. Like this is meant to be, you know?’

  ‘You said that about Matthew.’

  That was true. But she had only said it because he kept coming back to her, and it seemed impossible that someone as brilliant as Matthew would keep returning to someone as dull as Aggie unless the hand of fate was pushing him. This was different; when she was with Luke she knew that they were destined to be enemies, but that she would easily tear the universe into shreds if it tried to stop her having him. Aggie told Mal this and he stopped trying to force her head off his keyboard and instead stroked her hair.

  ‘However strong the attraction, it would never work long term. His values are diametrically opposed to yours.’

  ‘Not all of them. He’s honest and trustworthy. He’s a pacifist. He believes that ending poverty is the way to stop terrorism. He’s on the front line of the battle against racism and prejudice, and he is just so unbelievably compassionate. You know he –’

  ‘Ag, he hates gays.’

  ‘No, he doesn’t. He loves the sinner and hates the – fuck, Mal, I know, okay? I know. But it’s not his fault. He’s a good man who’s been brainwashed into believing these awful things. He’s ill, really. He uses religion the same way an alcoholic uses booze. And Mal, I know addiction, right? I’m good with addicts. I just have to get him to –’

  ‘Lose his religion?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Aggie sighed. ‘How do I do that?’

  ‘Auschwitz did it for me.’

  ‘What? You were never religious.’

  Mal snorted. ‘I try and block out the memory, but I was a genuine guilt-racked Catholic boy for the first decade and a half of my life. I went to confession every single day the year I turned fifteen, constantly terrified that a bus would hit me between my boyfriend’s house and the church, and I would be condemned to an eternity in the fires of hell. Then I learnt about Auschwitz, and I was instantly cured. I sat there in history class, listening to Sister Marguerite recite the list of diseases and tortures and extermination techniques, and I was just hit with this . . . this epiphany. Not only did God allow this atrocity to occur, but He would surely approve, since He Himself condemned fags and Jews to eternal torment. I decided that if God was on the side of Hitler, then He could shove His heaven up His supernatural arse.’

  ‘Hurrah for you. Did you convert your mum too? She’s the least religious old broad I know.’ Aggie went to Mal’s mother’s for Christmas dinner every year and the three of them got shit-faced and competed to invent the filthiest substitute lyrics for popular Christmas Carols. Mrs Addison had won last year with her rendition of ‘The Twelve Lays of Christmas’.

  ‘Dad was the mad Catholic. When he died, Mum kept going out of habit until Father O’Brien told her she couldn’t continue to take communion as long as she allowed me to carry on my lifestyle under her roof. She never took communion again. She still calls red wine “blood of Christ” sometimes.’

  Aggie felt lucky to have escaped the strange mythical education that the majority of Australian kids endured. Her father worshipped his wife, his daughter and money, in that order; her mother worshipped herself. Christmas was a picnic of Greek salad and crunchy baguettes at Bondi Beach; Easter meant too much chocolate and three days of sleeping late. When Aggie’s paternal grandmother died, the extended family took turns to read poems in her honour and then cast her ashes out into the Pacific. There was no talk of heaven.

  Aggie’s wedding, too, had been strictly secular. A hired yacht, a celebrant from the yellow pages, a bunch of drunk fishermen and stoned uni students, a teenaged bride who was simultaneously drowning in grief and flying high on sexual passion, and a groom who insisted that only the best would do for his wife, and so spent a great deal of her dead father’s money on first class tickets for a honeymoon in Italy.

  Religion was a big thing in Rome, and Aggie remembered how disgusted she felt when she finally saw Vatican City after walking half a day through streets crawling with beggars. The place was filled with more priceless art treasures than she could take in. ‘Evil pays well,’ Kip said, in a rare sombre tone. He wouldn’t answer any of Aggie’s questions and was quiet the rest of the day, but she knew he had gone to an Anglican boarding school and so figured that had something to do with it. From then on she noticed that whenever they passed a church he would look at the ground and walk faster, like a child desperate to escape the attention of a gang of bullies.

  ‘I have to save him,’ Aggie said.

  ‘He doesn’t want to be saved, Ag.’

  ‘So I should just give up? Just forget I ever met him?’

  Mal was silent, twisting her hair around his finger. After a while he bent over and kissed her forehead. ‘Get up.’ He hauled her to an upright position. ‘Listen. Don’t think I approve of this, because I don’t.’ He looked out toward the NCYC, shook his head, then looked back at Aggie. ‘But I will say this: he’s crazy about you. He blushes like a schoolgirl when you so much as smile at him through the window. If you’re determined to win him over – against my best advice, mind you – then I say just be yourself. His faith is unlikely to crumble under your poorly constructed theological arguments, but if he loves you, he’ll have to have those arguments with himself.’

  Aggie hugged him. ‘I love you.’

  ‘Ag, be careful. It might work out, but it probably won’t.’

  ‘I have to try.’

  ‘You sure this isn’t just some kink? Getting hot over a minister?’

  ‘You forget I have no religion. A minister is totally not taboo. A virgin on the other hand . . .’

  ‘He’s a . . .? That’s it.’ Mal held up his hands. ‘Now I know you’re insane. I’m getting out of here before you infect me.’

  Aggie laughed. ‘Don’t go, Mal, I’m having fun.’

  He was putting on his jacket, struggling to stuff his arms into the narrow sleeves. ‘I have stuff to do, be back about eleven, okay?’ He paused at the door. ‘Don’t call him until I get back. You need supervision with this one.’

  14.

  Honey was late again, but it wasn’t her fault, since Muzza had sold her clock radio for dope money and her mother had forgotten to bang on her door before leaving for work like she’d promised. When she did finally wake up at 8:40, she found that there was not only no coffee or milk but there was not even hot water. She wondered how long it would be before they paid the bill this time. She was not strong enough to go three months without hot showers like she had last winter. She’d had just about as much as she could stand.

  Honey made it to the bus stop in time for the nine-thirteen, which would have at least got her to school in time for second period, but then the nausea kicked in and the bus came and went as she was spewing behind the fence of the retirement home. She reminded herself that after today the sickness would be gone. After today it would be gone and she could get on with her life. No, not get on with her life – start a new life. The old one sucked. The old life got her into this disgusting mess. She would make a clean start. Stop hanging around with Steve and his lot. Stop smoking dope and stealing from Woolworths. Stop turning into her mother. Clean start, new life, fresh chances. As soon as she got rid of the thing inside her.

  It was an hour until the next bus, and by the time she got to school it would nearly be time to leave again because she had to be at the clinic by twelve. She decided to walk straight there. Even with stopping twice to throw up and once to dry-retch, the trip only took twenty minutes. She’d missed morning classes and knew education was the key to getting out of there, but really, the importance of three hours of English and History was nil when compared to the importance of not being another damn teenage mother.

  When she got to the car park she lit a cigarette and pulled out of her backpack the tampon box containing the cash Steve had nicked for her. She
counted the notes and smoothed out the creases, thankful that Muzza refused to touch ‘disgusting women’s things’. She slipped the money into her shirt pocket and tossed the tampon box on the ground. According to the girls’ dunny experts you had to wear giant mattress pads for a week after an abortion. Honey didn’t care if she had to wear them for a year; at least it would mean there was nothing in her except blood.

  She wished that Steve were here, that he was the kind of boyfriend who would hold her hand during the interview and then stroke her face and tell her it was all going to be alright, and they were making the right decision and he loved her no matter what. But then, if he were that kind of boyfriend she wouldn’t be here craving comfort, because if he were that kind of boyfriend he would’ve used condoms in the first place. And if she wasn’t such a comfort-needing, spineless, sentimental little moron she would have made him. That was the truth when you got right down to it: she had only herself to blame, and she had only herself to hold onto if she was feeling scared. Which she wasn’t. Much.

  Honey finished her cigarette, dropped it on the asphalt and put it out with the thick glob of bile that had been lining her throat all morning. Head held high, chest out, shoulders back, she made her way across the car park towards the glass fronted office with Sexual Health Advisory Service in bold black type on the door. As she pushed the door open, someone whistled and she turned, heart hammering in her chest, expecting to see Muzza or her mum or one of the teachers.

  There was no one behind her or anywhere close by. A lady with a pram passed on the other side of the street, and a kid on a bike cut through the carpark to get to the council reserve. No one was paying any attention to Honey at all. It was nerves. Plain old dumb nerves. Something flashed in the corner of her eye, and she turned toward it as another flash blinded her. A yell rose in her throat, but then her vision cleared and she saw that sunlight bouncing off the side mirror of a white van was causing flashes of light as it drove slowly by. She took a deep breath and entered the clinic.