Another woman stood up and began to babble.

"Three!" Brother Robert cried. "The Spirit is strong with us tonight! And always the same tongue! I understand that in other groups they speak in many tongues. But since I have been here, the Chosen have spoken in only one tongue!"

Grace suddenly felt flushed and weak. This wasn't the safe, sane, staid Catholicism she knew, with its comfortable rituals and regimented responses. This was like one of those crazy holy-roller tent revivals. This was chaotic, frightening.

"I need some air!"

"Of course you do," Brother Robert said.

She let him take her elbow and lead her upstairs to the brownstone's front foyer where it was cool but protected from the drizzle and the March wind.

"That's better," she said, feeling her pulse begin to slow toward normal.

"These prayer meetings can be upsetting at first, I know," Brother Robert said. "I was not sure what to make of them myself when I first came here. But they prove that the Spirit is with us, on our side, urging us forward."

Grace didn't know about that, wasn't really sure of anything right now.

"Is that what He's doing?" she said. "Urging you?"

"Yes!" Brother Robert's eyes hardened. "This is war! Evil such as the world has never known is coming. Satan in human form, here not just to claim our lives but our very souls as well! War, Grace Nevins! And you are part of God's chosen army. The Spirit has called you! You cannot say no!"

Grace could say nothing at all at that moment. Brother Robert was frightening her.

"Look," he said in a softer tone, pointing through the door glass at the street outside. "Even now we are being watched. I have seen him here a number of times this week."

Grace looked and saw a gray-haired man of about sixty standing under a tree across the street, facing their way. As she stared at him, he turned and walked away.

2

The leafless trees offered no shelter as Mr. Veilleur walked west on Thirty-seventh Street through the rain, shaking his head, baffled at the turmoil he sensed in the world around him.

What was happening?

Not far away, to the east, he sensed a kernel of chaos, throbbing like an open, infected wound. All these years of peace, and now this. How? Why? What had triggered it?

Questions with no answers. At least none that he wanted to hear. For the news could only be bad. Worse than bad.

And yet here on East Thirty-seventh he detected a warm glow. He had sensed it faintly before, but today it had been unusually strong, calling to him in a familiar voice, drawing him here.

Something was going on in that brownstone, something playing counterpoint to the festering discord to the east. Those inside were receiving a warning. They were interpreting it in their own fashion, dressing it up in their personal myths, but at least they were responding.

That gave him some hope, but not much. The battle lines were being drawn again. For what? A skirmish, or an all-out assault? Hopefully a standard-bearer would emerge from the group clustered in the brownstone.

Not that it mattered much to him. He had served his time. Someone else could shoulder the burden this go-around. He was out of it. Out of it for good.

He stopped when he reached Lexington and raised his hand, searching for a taxi—a usually futile quest on a rainy day. But just then a battered yellow cab pulled up to the curb in front of him and discharged two elderly women. Mr. Veilleur held the door for them.

"Where y'goin', mac?" the cabbie said.

"Central Park West."

"Hopinski."

As he slipped into the backseat Mr. Veilleur mused that if he believed in omens, he would take this near miracle as a good one.

But he had long ago stopped believing in either.

3

"I know what this is about," said Catherine, the older, heavier sister. "And we can't take him in with us. At least I can't."

Carol sat before Mr. Dodd's two daughters in her office at Monroe Community Hospital. It had taken her a week and a half to get both of them together in one place. This was the only day they could all do it. Kay Allen, her supervisor, would send her for psychiatric evaluation if she found out she was in on a Sunday.

"Neither can I," said Maureen.

"He's very depressed about going to the nursing home," Carol said.

Mr. Dodd's welfare paperwork finally had gone through and she had found a bed for him at Sunny Vale in Glen Cove. He was due to be transported there on Thursday. She had seen a rapid deterioration in the old man since he had learned that he was now "on the dole," as he put it, and destined to spend his final days in a nursing home among strangers. He no longer cared about eating, shaving, or anything else.

"No more depressed than we are about sending him," said Catherine, her tone daring Carol to challenge her.

Carol sensed the guilt underlying the hostility, and empathized. The sisters saw themselves in a no-win situation.

"He can dress himself, feed himself, bathe himself, get himself up in the morning, and put himself to bed at night. He doesn't need a nursing home. He needs his meals cooked and his clothes washed and someone to keep him company. He needs a family," Carol said.

Catherine rose from her chair. "We've been over all of this before on the phone. Nothing has changed. My sister and I and both our husbands work. We can't leave Pop alone in the house all day. The doctor told us his memory is bad. He could start to boil some water for coffee or soup and forget about it, and then one of us would come home to a roaring fire where our house used to be."

"There are ways to overcome that," Carol said. "You can hire people to stay with him during the day—we can get him an allowance for a visiting homemaker for a while. Believe me, there are ways, and I can help you work things out if you'll give it a try." She decided to play her ace here. "Besides, it won't be forever. He's seventy-four. How many years does he have left? You can make them good ones. You can say good-bye to him."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Most people don't get a chance to say good-bye to their folks," Carol said. She swallowed the sudden lump in her throat.

She thought of her own parents, as she always did in instances such as this, thought of all the things she wished she had said to them while they were alive, not the least of which was good-bye. It seemed she would live out her life with a feeling of something left forever undone. She had added sparing others that burden as an unwritten, unspoken addition to her job description.

"I mean," she went on, "one day they're here, the next day they're gone."

Maureen took out a tissue and blotted her eyes, then looked up at Catherine.

"Maybe we could—"

"Maureen!"

"I'm serious, Cathy. Let me talk to Donald. Let's think about it. There must be something we can do besides dumping him in a nursing home."

"You think about it, Mo. And you talk to Donald. I already know what Tom will say."

Carol figured this was as good a time as any to end the meeting. One of the sisters, at least, was having second thoughts.

They're weakening, Mr. Dodd! I'll have you back with your family yet!

After they were gone, she slumped into a chair. She'd have enjoyed this moment more if she felt better physically. It was those dreams. Night after night—the blood and violence, the pain and suffering. None as vivid as Monday's, but she kept waking up in cold sweats of fear, trembling and clutching Jim, unable to remember specific details, only their overall effect. Memories of the incident in Greenwich Village added to her malaise.

Her stomach was adding the coup de grace. Always sour. She'd be ravenously hungry one moment, but when she'd go to have something to eat, the sight and smell of it would nauseate her. If she didn't know better she'd almost think—