Cardinal Whiting was so ancient, it was impossible to guess how old he might be. He didn’t leave his apartment often but spent a great deal of time in front of the television. Frank and I found ourselves in front of the set, too, eating warmed leftovers from a tray. A crucifix hung on the wall nearby, and the shelves were filled with very old, very dusty books: the works of church philosophers and the ancients. Some of these Whiting regarded as blasphemy, but he hoarded them all the same, along with rows of religious journals of varying stripes, in the margins of which he wrote—in fine blue ink—his objections and qualifications to the views expressed therein. Along with these publications were stacks of tabloids he read assiduously—not for pleasure, he insisted, but in order to keep track of the moral decay of the world.

When we visited, I took care to dress modestly. I wore no makeup and made myself dowdy: my hair in a bun, my face pale.

“It’s so kind of you to have us over, Uncle.”

“I know why you are here.”

“It’s not the only reason,” Frank Paris said. “But it’s true. The cost of living . . .”

These monthly visits were always something of a humiliation, but unavoidable. Cardinal Whiting held tight to the purse strings he’d been entrusted with decades ago by his nephew’s mother.

“Oh, it’s always so pleasant here,” I said. “So contemplative.”

His quarters stood adjacent to Quirinal Hill, in a building run by the clergy. Though they were communal facilities, many of the apartments were quite elaborate. I asked about the origins of a fresco in the coffered space at the top of walls.

“Franceschini?”

“No.” Whiting puffed up a little. “Baldassare Franceschini did no work here. That’s the Virgin as rendered by one of Rafael’s students, before Rafael himself died. He’d been too dissolute to finish.”

“Well, she’s as buxom as the last time we visited,” Frank laughed. “Like all of Rafael’s women.”

His uncle didn’t see the humor.

“Rafael died of debauchery,” he insisted.

I started to perspire. Though I had scrubbed myself before we came here, I could still smell the sex on my body.

“That’s true,” I said.

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