Chapter One of The Twitter Gospels!

"I’m what’s called a seminarian. I’m working towards becoming a Jesuit priest.” Paolo spoke while he leaned against his apartment door, so badly chipped that another coat of paint was pointless. His neighbor faced him in the hallway, two meters away, hands on hips. A shock of dark hair covered the outer point of her left eye. Longer strands crossed her cheek before following the curve of her face and then disappearing under the brightly colored hi-jab draped across her head and left shoulder. The arrangement, Paolo realized, made it impossible to know the actual length of her hair. 

He tried to recall if she had mentioned her name.

Her eyes were hazel, lips thin and her general expression, entitled. Determined. As if on a mission to establish authority within the apartment building. Curiously, it was working. He felt as if he was somehow blocking her way, even though the door that pressed against his back led into his apartment.

Paolo waited through the always awkward pause. He knew that neither age, gender, or anything else affected the mild astonishment that followed his answer to " … and what do you do?"

"You are becoming a Jesuit priest," she repeated in a cadence that was half-question, half-statement, slowly forming each word on its own. Like Paolo’s, her English was accented, though it flowed more lyrically than his.

"Right," he said, nodding. "It’s been about nine years so far and it will most likely be another several before I take my final vows and actually become a priest. After that, I’m hoping for an overseas assignment. Perhaps America." He half-smiled across the space while anticipating the next comment in the scripted sequence. Something politely meaningless, along the lines of “how interesting” or “well, good for you.”

"And that means ... what exactly?” she responded instead. “I mean, I know what a Jesuit is, more or less, and I know what a priest is supposed to be," she said, her words gaining speed. "We're drowning in them here. But saying ‘I'm going to be a Jesuit Priest’ doesn't give me any information about what you actually do. I suppose it tells me something about what you believe in, but not a hint, really, about what you do with your days or what purpose you serve. It's a bit like you telling me that you're a vegetarian."

The resting kindness in Paolo's face evaporated as the damp coating of grime from carrying furniture and boxes, mostly books, up three flights of stairs into a sweltering, filthy apartment suddenly chaffed at his flesh. His head throbbed. A baby somewhere in the building wailed as three songs, each in a different language, collided around them and the faint smell of diesel, which seemed to Paolo to be everywhere in East Jerusalem, was nauseating. His Duck-Duck-Goose Championship t-shirt, a remnant from his year as a high school exchange student in Minnesota, was soaked through.

Paolo briefly looked down at his sneakers and wiped the salt off his lips with the shoulder of his shirt before responding.

"Shirin," he replied, her name suddenly appearing while he took an otherwise useless calming breath. "I am, in this exact moment, miserable," he said slowly, as if speaking to a child. "So far, my misery includes a Ryanair flight that went to Bari instead of Florence with no explanation, a seven-hour bus ride, a missed connecting flight, lost baggage and a terrifying taxi ride to an apartment I foolishly rented sight unseen. The air conditioner is broken, there's a dead cat in my bedroom, the refrigerator is buzzing so loudly I can’t think, and I’ve now learned that in the very first moment of meeting, I have a neighbor who prefers interrogation as a form of introduction instead offering some help or a glass of water or, I don’t know … perhaps just saying hello. How do I spend my days? What purpose do I serve? My name is Paolo Venticinque from Pennabilli, a small town in Italy.” 

He shook his head in weary disappointment. “You can look me up on Facebook if you want to learn more. Also, you should know, I am a vegetarian."

Paolo took a single step into his apartment as a flutter of uncomfortable energy rolled through his chest. He tried to maintain an air of disinterest as he flicked at the door. Just enough, he hoped, for it to close completely. Scratching with both hands at the tingling on his chest through the damp t-shirt, he turned away just as the sound of the door’s latch connected to the frame and split the silence. His unsparing tone was already sprouting grains of guilt in his gut.

"What does it look like?" Paolo heard through the door as he took a step in the apartment’s short entryway. The baby’s muffled wails were still ringing in the background.

He stopped and tilted his head back. "What?" Paolo asked.

"The dead cat in your bedroom. What color is it?"