It sure could, Hardy thought. It could hurt you, you fool. Most likely your “little brother” will wind up taking a chip out of your heart. But he didn’t try to argue with Eddie-there wasn’t much arguing with Eddie on anything.

But Hardy had said, “You think you can make a real difference, don’t you?”

The two-hundred-watt smile that wasn’t a put-on. “I doubt it.”

Except what got to Hardy was that, underneath it all, Eddie didn’t doubt it. He thought everything he did mattered a lot, that he personally really could make a difference. It reminded Hardy of the way he thought he used to be himself. Like Eddie. Long time ago.

Rose stood at the top of the steps by the back door of the rectory. Father Dietrick was crossing the parking lot, head down, returning from bringing Father Cavanaugh the news.

Bless them both, but it was going to be a hard month. June was always a hard month in San Francisco. It felt like God had given His promise in the spring and then taken it back. This morning Rose had thought it would stay bright and sunny, but already the fog was on them again.

She wiped her hands on her apron. Her eyes came up to meet the young priest, questioning. He sighed. “Not too well,” he said. “He took off.”

Though he wasn’t yet thirty, he mounted the stoop like an old man. Rose followed him inside.

“Just took off?”

He sat at the kitchen table, his hands folded in front of him. Rose brought over a cup of coffee, three sugars and a drop of cream.

“You know Father Cavanaugh,” he said, sipping the coffee. “There wasn’t an easy way to say it. He stood there getting out of his vestments and I thought I’d try to make him sit down, but as soon as I asked him to he knew something had happened…”

“I’m sure you did what’s best, Father.”

Father Dietrick sighed. “For a minute it was as though I’d hit him. Then he looked down at his hands, at the vestments, and just ripped the surplice off.”

Rose made a note to go pick up the surplice. She’d just sew it back up and no one would be the wiser. She pulled up a chair next to Father and ventured a pat on his hand. “You know how he is, Father. He gets upset and it’s like the priest in him gives up for a minute. He has to let something go. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“I know. But maybe I should have gone with him.”

Rose knew what Father Dietrick meant. Father Cavanaugh was a bit of a rogue priest. It was, she was sure, why he’d never made monsignor. Not that he’d ever done anything seriously wrong. Shoplifting that one time. Occasionally a little too much whiskey, but sure that was the good man’s weakness.

“He’ll probably go scream at the ocean,” she said. And Lord, why shouldn’t he, losing someone close enough to be his own son? Father had a temper, but he was still a beautiful man, and a fine priest, all the more human for his faults, she thought. Let him scream at the ocean-he had a right. Jesus himself had a temper. Didn’t He throw the money changers out of the temple?

But this-Eddie Cochran’s death-would not have loosed his temper. It would have broken his heart.

“I know where he’s gone,” Rose said suddenly. “Over to see Erin.” The priest acted like he didn’t know who she was talking about. She sighed, exasperated. “Come now, Father, you’ve got to learn to see things. Erin Cochran, Eddie’s mother. He’ll need to be with her.”

“You think so?”

Rose bit her tongue and said only, “I’d bet so, Father.” She didn’t say what she also knew, that he’d need to be with her because he loved her.

The water was a long way down, slate gray through the fog. Jim Cavanaugh, shivering, leaned out over the railing of the Golden Gate Bridge. His teeth were clenched to keep them from chattering, whether it was the cold or everything else. He should have grabbed a coat before rushing from the church, but he’d had to get out-get out now before he broke down in front of Dietrick.

So it had happened. Eddie was dead.

And Erin? What would become of Erin now?

He knew he ought to go see her, but would she want to see him? Would she ever forgive him?

Could he be a priest to the Cochran family ever again?

Last week he had tried to kiss her, to tell her… It had been a temporary weakness, that was all, but it had made a breach between them.

And now this, with Eddie.

The family would need him. He would have to be there now for them all. The kiss, her rejection and his flash of anger at her, now they could all be forgotten.

She would forgive him. He could live again.

He put his hands in his pockets and began walking back toward the tollbooths.

HARDY HAD loved his Suzuki Samurai when he’d bought it, but since learning that it tended to roll in strong winds or on weak grades, he had renamed it the Seppuku. Now he parked it at the corner of Tenth and Lincoln. The fleeting sun that had gotten him up had long since disappeared. The fog, the June freeze, insinuated itself into every corner out here, swirling, gusting. Hardy pulled his pea coat up around his neck.

Now he was staring at the sign over his place of employment, “The Little Shamrock, established in 1893.” He found himself marveling at man’s originality. The sign, cleverly, was shaped like a shamrock.

The sign itself had been established in its spot over the swinging double doors in 1953, and the green paint had chipped enough over the years that the sign at night now read “le rock.” Maybe it was a good thing, Hardy reflected, the shape of the sign. If it had been shaped like Gibraltar, people would think the bar was named the rock, or some French word that meant rock. Le rock.

Maybe they should paint the l to look like a capital letter. Maybe they should have the neon repaired altogether.

But no, he thought, it fit the Shamrock. The bar wasn’t exactly run-down, but it didn’t place too much emphasis on fixing itself up. It was a neighborhood bar, and Moses McGuire, Hardy’s friend and boss, the owner of the place, didn’t believe in attracting an unwanted element (tourists) with too many ferns, video games or flashy signs. The Shamrock was an Irish dart bar, as nonpolitical as any of them got. It poured an honest (sometimes more than honest) shot and did a respectable business with locals, both male and female. Hardy had worked days there, Tuesday through Saturday, two to eight, for over seven years.

Every night Hardy worked, Moses McGuire followed him from six until closing at two, and then until he’d rung out and cleaned up, sometimes having an after-hours drink. Sundays and Mondays a thirtyish raven-haired beauty named Lynne Leish with an eighteen-inch waist and more than twice that on either side worked double shifts and brought in a crowd of her own. But she was a good bartender, a pro at it. Moses McGuire would have no other kind.

It wasn’t yet noon. Most days Hardy would arrive to open the bar and get it set up in ten or fifteen minutes. Today, between his thoughts and the memory that they’d closed without the usual cleanup last night, he thought he’d come down and kill some time.

So he wiped the bar, took the peels cleanly off the lemons with an ice pick, cut up the limes, checked the wells and stocked the back bar. He ran himself half a morning Guinness and whipped up the cream for the hated so-called Irish Coffee, for which he cursed Stan Delaplane, the Buena Vista bar and the Dublin airport.

There were some glasses and bottles out front, left from the hurried exit of the night before. Some of the tables hadn’t been wiped down.

The cash register. It hadn’t been rung out. He refilled his pint glass to the halfway again.

Somebody knocked while he was counting the money. Through the door he saw that it was a retired schoolteacher, a regular named Tommy, who ought to know better.