Requiem for a Realtor Read Free Page A

a sanctimonious ass, and a case could be made for that judgment. But sanctimonious asses had souls, too.
    â€œAnd it’s not too late, David. How old are you?”
    â€œI’ll be forty my next birthday.”
    â€œThere are seminaries for delayed vocations. For that matter, most vocations are delayed nowadays.”
    Jameson looked wistful. “You make me feel like those people in the parable who had an excuse for declining the invitation to the wedding.”
    â€œYou never married?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œSurely you must have thought of it.”
    This was sailing close to the wind, but it seemed to emerge naturally from the conversation.
    â€œOh, I suppose everyone does.” He stopped. “I mean lay people.”
    â€œIt’s the normal course of life.”
    â€œLife gets into choppy waters sometimes.”
    â€œSo you have thought of it?”
    â€œSome day I will tell you all about it, Father. Maybe sooner rather than later.”
    â€œI look forward to that.”
    Jameson hesitated, as if sooner had come sooner than he expected. But he remained silent.
    â€œOf course permanent deacons can marry.”
    Jameson brightened. “That’s what got my mind going on it.” His smile dimmed. “But what if it is a temptation? What if I am turning away from what I ought to be?”
    Father Dowling had not met many cases of true scrupulosity, and he doubted that David Jameson was one of them. However devoid in imagination and humor, the dentist obviously enjoyed agonizing over the road not taken. Maybe his vocation was imagining he had a vocation. The subject of the permanent diaconate seemed to have been sidelined, which was all right with Father Dowling. He was not a fan of permanent deacons. He had never met a bishop who was. Yet they kept ordaining them. Not as many as formerly, but what was the point? What was needed was more priests. Or housekeepers like Marie Murkin.
    Two hours later there was a pastoral twinkle in Marie’s eye when she stuck her head into the study and said, “Phyllis Collins to see you.”

5
    Before closing the study door, Marie gave Phyllis Collins the once-over, and it was pretty clear that the visitor had failed some test.
    â€œIf tobacco smoke bothers you we can sit in the front parlor,” Father Dowling said, still standing.
    â€œOh, I’m used to it. My husband smokes.” She settled into her chair, began to cross her legs, then thought better of it.
    She must be forty, but she dressed like a girl. A dangerously short skirt with corresponding decolletage and her hair, worn long, was of several colors, brunette streaked with blonde. She raked it with the painted fingers of one hand. “David Jameson suggested I talk with you.”
    â€œI see.”
    â€œHe has been a great help to me of late.” Her voice quavered and she seemed about to cry. Father Dowling wished he had taken her to the front parlor, or that Marie had left the door open.
    â€œMy husband is unfaithful, Father. He has been running around for years.”
    He adopted an appropriate expression, but, of course, her words confused him. Stanley Collins had sat in that same chair and accused his wife of having an affair with Jameson, but now Phyllis Collins was telling him that her husband was a womanizer.
    â€œWe weren’t married in the Church, Father.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œStanley talked me out of it. What a fool I was. Or, at least, that is what I’ve come to think.”
    â€œYou’ve changed your mind?”
    â€œIs it true that a civil marriage doesn’t count?”
    â€œOf course it counts. But not in the way a sacramental marriage does.”
    â€œBut even they get dissolved, don’t they?”
    â€œYou want to dissolve your marriage?”
    She sat back in shock. “No! Stanley does. He has fallen in love with some tramp and wants to leave me for her.”
    It was tempting to tell her of