The Considerate Killer Read Free Page B

that he was gifted and that he worked hard. He had studied so strenuously for his exams last week that you would have been able to wake him up at any point in the night to make him recite the properties of the elements, explain the Coriolis effect, and demonstrate differential equations. But whatever being of “good moral character” meant, it seemed less tangible, and all he had to go by were Father Abuel’s injunctions to keep sex inside holy wedlock, honor your parents, and so forth.
    He was a virgin, which could not be said to be entirely his own doing. Bea was the one who had kept cool for them both on the rare occasions when they had been alone together and had kissed for so long that everything had gone up in flames. He was not sure he could credit those bonus points to his own moral account.
    And there were those damnably autonomous nightly erections followed by just as damnable ejaculations, with or without his own active intervention, a sin that according to the church was almost as severe as sex outside of marriage. If purity and fidelity were counted as a subject, he was not at all sure he would pass, and he shrank from confessing such embarassments to Father Abuel. The priest had taken a vow of silence, of course, but it still felt as if the sinful words might somehow leak from the confessional and find their own way to Bea during the Sunday mass in San Marcelino. Also, it was Father Abuel who had written the recommendation that finally had secured the St. Joseph scholarship for Vincent. It did in fact say that Vincent was “of good moral character” and that he pursued “a Christian way of life.” After that, Vincent had stopped going to confession entirely.
    As far as honoring your parents went, he was doing better. Quite respectably, in fact. He did what he was told. It wasn’t really that difficult. Any idiot could do homework until ten every evening. It was easy. Or had been in elementary and high school anyway, with his mother providing a newly ironed school uniform, clean T-shirts, and three meals a day.
    So he was, when he summed it up, hard-working and quite intelligent and he honored his mother and father, as it was written in the Bible. He could not think of any other positive personal characteristics. There wasn’t really anything to hold on to, he thought, other than the information on his identity card. Vincent Bernardo. Twenty years old, engaged to Bea; son of his parents and big brother to Mimi. Not poor, but far from rich. Whether this was enough to get him accepted into St. Francis College of Medicine, he had no idea.
    â€œHey!”
    Vincent jumped.
    The heavy, dark door to the street had been opened and a young man stepped into the hall. His face was narrow and boyish, and his body had not yet found its mature proportions. Still, he did not look as if he was Vincent’s age. It was his posture, Vincent decided. He carried himself with the confidence and weight of a grown man who knew his own worth.
    He looked directly at Vincent and raised his chin impatiently.
    â€œHow long have you been sitting here?”
    Vincent looked at his watch and quickly did the math. Five sweaty hours had passed. According to the letter from the university, he had had an appointment at one, but apparently all the other candidates had as well.
    â€œCrap,” said the newcomer explosively.
    He let himself drop into the chair next to Vincent, fiddling restlessly with a cigarette. He was wearing two gold rings—one on the ring finger and an extra wide one on his thumb. While that in itself was not so unusual, still there was something unmistakably sleek, something of the dandy, about him. A kind of natural arrogance in the way he folded his slender arms behind his neck, his legs slightly apart, and in the restless boredom he exuded.
    â€œI hate waiting,” he said. “Every minute we spend in these chairs is a goddamn waste of precious time. Waste of life. If