of aspirin, was beyond her scope of understanding. Total cost to the taxpayer: seven million dollars in drugs that would never be used. Not for the first time since her arrival, Sun felt underpaid.
“Look at this,” Andy said. He handed her a piece of paper written in a language other than English.
“Spanish?” she asked.
“Italian. It’s from Pope Pius the tenth.”
Sun briefly returned to the long, boring mornings of her youth, trapped in Sunday school memorizing prayers.
“St. Pius,” she corrected. “He was canonized in 1954.”
“You’re Catholic?”
“I was.”
“When did you leave the church? Or is that too personal a question?”
“I don’t think I really left the church. More like the church left me.”
“How so?”
Sun hadn’t ever talked about this with anyone. No one had ever asked.
“Five years ago… it was a bad time for me. I had a lot of problems. I met a man, Steven, he was a psychiatrist. I didn’t meet him professionally—I met him in a bar, actually.”
Sun turned away from Andy and busied herself moving papers around on the desk.
“He was a very sensitive man. Compassionate. We fell in love, got married. We wanted to start a family. I’m sure you know where this is going; woman gets a new shot at happiness, drunk driver kills her husband, woman loses faith in God. Cliché. Soon after that I lost my veterinary clinic.”
Sun thought back to the creditors, one even calling her at Steven’s wake. Steven had been kept alive for almost six months. Six months of wretched, useless hoping. Six months, at a cost of three thousand dollars a day. Insurance didn’t even cover a third of the expense, and of course the asshole who ran head first into Steven was uninsured as well.
“So you blame God for taking him.”
“What? No. At first, sure. It made no sense. When Steven died, I lost everything. But then it did make sense. I didn’t blame God, because there was no God to blame. Shit just happens.”
Sun finished fussing with the papers and turned back to Andy with a question of her own.
“You said to the holies that you were an atheist. Why?”
“It’s kind of complicated. I never had any sort of organized religion in my life. God was something that other kids believed in.”
“So you never learned about religion?”
“I had a friend, in grade school, his parents tried to take me to church once. I loved it.”
“Why’d they only take you once?”
“Oh, I didn’t love the Mass. I loved the language. The priest spoke in Latin, asking a question, I think it was something like
‘Are you truly thankful?’
or something like that. Well, I thought he was asking us, so I answered.”
“In Latin.”
“Yeah. And it freaked him out. Everyone else too. So he asked me, in Latin, how I knew Latin. So I told him I knew about ten different languages. And he said that it’s a miracle, that God has blessed me with the gift of tongues. I told him, in English, God didn’t bless me, I studied my ass off!”
Sun laughed.
“Needless to say, the family never took me with them again. When I got into college, I read a lot of religious texts—for the language, not the content. But some of the content leaked through, obviously. And in every case, whether I was translating Hebrew, Latin, Greek, Arabic, Hindi, whatever, I found the same theme within the writing.”
“Which was?”
“Scared men, looking for answers. I think that as a species, being self-aware means we have questions. Some of those questions are: What created the universe, where do we go when we die, and why do bad things happen? These questions don’t have answers, but need to be answered. That’s why men, all men, every people and tribe from Cro-Magnon on up, had to create gods. To answer these questions.”
“So here we are, two atheists, trying to find the origin of a demon.”
Andy grinned. “Almost seems as if God put us here, to show us the truth, doesn’t it?”
Sun could tell Andy was
“Look at this,” Andy said. He handed her a piece of paper written in a language other than English.
“Spanish?” she asked.
“Italian. It’s from Pope Pius the tenth.”
Sun briefly returned to the long, boring mornings of her youth, trapped in Sunday school memorizing prayers.
“St. Pius,” she corrected. “He was canonized in 1954.”
“You’re Catholic?”
“I was.”
“When did you leave the church? Or is that too personal a question?”
“I don’t think I really left the church. More like the church left me.”
“How so?”
Sun hadn’t ever talked about this with anyone. No one had ever asked.
“Five years ago… it was a bad time for me. I had a lot of problems. I met a man, Steven, he was a psychiatrist. I didn’t meet him professionally—I met him in a bar, actually.”
Sun turned away from Andy and busied herself moving papers around on the desk.
“He was a very sensitive man. Compassionate. We fell in love, got married. We wanted to start a family. I’m sure you know where this is going; woman gets a new shot at happiness, drunk driver kills her husband, woman loses faith in God. Cliché. Soon after that I lost my veterinary clinic.”
Sun thought back to the creditors, one even calling her at Steven’s wake. Steven had been kept alive for almost six months. Six months of wretched, useless hoping. Six months, at a cost of three thousand dollars a day. Insurance didn’t even cover a third of the expense, and of course the asshole who ran head first into Steven was uninsured as well.
“So you blame God for taking him.”
“What? No. At first, sure. It made no sense. When Steven died, I lost everything. But then it did make sense. I didn’t blame God, because there was no God to blame. Shit just happens.”
Sun finished fussing with the papers and turned back to Andy with a question of her own.
“You said to the holies that you were an atheist. Why?”
“It’s kind of complicated. I never had any sort of organized religion in my life. God was something that other kids believed in.”
“So you never learned about religion?”
“I had a friend, in grade school, his parents tried to take me to church once. I loved it.”
“Why’d they only take you once?”
“Oh, I didn’t love the Mass. I loved the language. The priest spoke in Latin, asking a question, I think it was something like
‘Are you truly thankful?’
or something like that. Well, I thought he was asking us, so I answered.”
“In Latin.”
“Yeah. And it freaked him out. Everyone else too. So he asked me, in Latin, how I knew Latin. So I told him I knew about ten different languages. And he said that it’s a miracle, that God has blessed me with the gift of tongues. I told him, in English, God didn’t bless me, I studied my ass off!”
Sun laughed.
“Needless to say, the family never took me with them again. When I got into college, I read a lot of religious texts—for the language, not the content. But some of the content leaked through, obviously. And in every case, whether I was translating Hebrew, Latin, Greek, Arabic, Hindi, whatever, I found the same theme within the writing.”
“Which was?”
“Scared men, looking for answers. I think that as a species, being self-aware means we have questions. Some of those questions are: What created the universe, where do we go when we die, and why do bad things happen? These questions don’t have answers, but need to be answered. That’s why men, all men, every people and tribe from Cro-Magnon on up, had to create gods. To answer these questions.”
“So here we are, two atheists, trying to find the origin of a demon.”
Andy grinned. “Almost seems as if God put us here, to show us the truth, doesn’t it?”
Sun could tell Andy was
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