I don’t like cathedrals, I decide. I don’t like steeples or churches or pews. And I especially don’t like self-righteous statues. I tell myself it has nothing to do with Mary. Her opinions are irrational, likely fueled by delusion. Mine are based in fact—this room smells weird and those statues look scary.

I spin abruptly and start in the opposite direction, and that’s when I see him leaning casually against the confessional—a polished wooden house with too many doors and a cross on top. It’s as if he were in a student lounge and not America’s oldest cathedral. He looks completely out of place in a shirt so thin I can see his nipples through the fabric, rumpled leather pants, and a shaggy goatee. One might suspect he’s been out all night. Which would make sense here. He’s attractive in that Run! sort of way. And he can’t be more than a few years older than me. His eyes are green sea glass, and his skin is bleached sand. They lock on mine, and a whisper in my mind says he’s the one who’s been watching me all along.

I lower my head and march toward the doors, determined to get back outside where the air is fresh. But just as I near the last pew, I can’t resist a glance up, and that’s where he has me.

“Pick your poison.”

“Pardon?” I stop midstride as he pushes away from the confessional and blocks my path.

He holds up a strand of red and purple Mardi Gras beads hanging around his neck, from which dangles a plastic shot glass. I realize there are two of them, identical in every way, right down to the alligator stamped across the red plastic. “Your poison? You know, what you like to drink?”

I look around wanting someone else to confirm the lunacy of what I’m hearing, but all the tourists are gaping upward. No one else seems to notice him at all. “We’re in a church,” I whisper, in case he was unaware. Maybe he rolled out of a bar at dawn and stumbled in here thinking it was just another bar.

He grins. “In this pocket…ta-da! Peppermint schnapps!” He produces a little green bottle from his left-hand pants pocket. “And in this one…bourbon!” Only all he manages to pull out on his right side is the pocket lining. He frowns and pats his chest down as though the bourbon might be hiding on his body. “Well, schnapps it is,” he sighs, and pours some into one of his waiting shot glasses. He holds the red plastic out to me.

“N-no thank you,” I respond, trying to peer around him to the door.

He shrugs. “More for me.”

“Excuse me,” I say. “Can I? I mean, you know?” I end up just pointing over his shoulder toward the doorway.