She was wrong.

2

"I'm sorry about your friend. Father Bill."

"Thank you, Nicky," Bill said.

He looked at the boy standing on the far side of his desk. There seemed to be genuine sympathy in his eyes. Bill realized with a pang that most of the boys here at St. F.'s were all too familiar with what it was like to lose someone.

It was Bill's first day back and he had three days' worth of adoption applications, reference checks, and assorted mail piled on his desk, and more coming. Outside it was rainy but warm, more like May than March.

"Aren't you going to be late for class?" he asked the boy.

"I'll make it on time. Was he a good friend?"

"He was an old friend who used to be my best friend. We were just getting to know each other again."

A lump formed in his throat at the thought of Jim. He had walled up the grief since the horrors of Sunday, refusing to shed a tear for his old friend. Jim would mock him out if he knew Bill had cried over him.

And what would Jim say about his dreams of Carol, more carnal than ever, now that she was alone in the world.

"Is it true what the papers said—"

"I'd really rather not discuss it now, Nicky. It's all a little too fresh."

The boy nodded sagely, like someone many times his age, then began his habitual wandering around the office. He stopped at the typewriter.

"So," he said after a moment, "when are you leaving?"

The question startled Bill. He glanced up and saw the half-written letter to the Provincial still in his typewriter. God! The teaching job in Baltimore! He'd forgotten all about it.

"How many times have I told you not to read my mail?"

"I'm sorry! It's just that it was sitting there in plain view. I just looked at it for a second!"

Bill fought the guilt rising within him.

"Look, Nicky, I know we had a deal—"

"That's okay, Father," the boy said quickly with a smile that was heartbreakingly weak. "You'll make a great teacher. Especially down there near Washington. I know you like all that political stuff. And don't worry about me. I like it here. This is home to me. I'm a hopeless case, anyway." „

"I've told you not to talk that way about yourself!"

"We've got to face facts, Father. You wait around for me to get adopted and you'll be in a wheelchair from old age! The deal's off. I screwed up my end of it, anyway. Wouldn't be fair to hold you to yours."

Bill stared at the boy as he turned away and continued his casual meander around the office. And as he watched him he heard Jim's voice echoing back from sometime during that night of beer and bad music and near death in the Village.

We should clean up our own yards and tend to our own neighborhoods first, then worry about the rest of the world. If we all did that, maybe there wouldn't be so much in the world to worry about.

Bill suddenly knew what he had to do.

"Give me that letter, will you, Nicky? Right. The one in the typewriter. And the one from the Provincial beside it."

Nicky handed them to him, then said, "I'd better get to school."

"Not so fast."

Bill neatly folded the letters in thirds and then began tearing them up.

Nicky's jaw dropped. "What are you doing?"

"Keeping a promise."

"But I told you—"

"Not just my promise to you but one I made to myself a long time ago." The one that brought me to the seminary in the first place. "Like it or not, I'm staying."

Bill felt lightheaded, almost giddy. As if a tremendous weight had been lifted from his shoulders. All doubts, all conflicts were gone. This was where he belonged. This was where he could make a real day-to-day difference.

"But I'll never get adopted!"

"We'll see about that. But you're not my only concern. I'm here for the duration. I'm not leaving St. Francis until this whole place is empty!"

He saw tears spring into Nicky's eyes and run down his cheeks. Nicky never cried. The sight of those tears tripped something inside him and he felt his own eyes fill. All the grief he had dammed up since Sunday was breaking free. He tried to shore up the barriers but it was too late. He opened his mouth to tell Nicky to run along but only a sob escaped, and then his head was down and cradled in his arms on the desk and he was crying.

"Why'd he have to die like that?" he heard his own voice say between the sobs.

He felt a small hand pat his back, then heard Nicky's teary voice saying, "I'll be your friend, Father Bill. I'm going to be around a long time. I'll be your friend."

3

The traffic light shifted to red, and Jonah Stevens braked to a stop on Park Avenue South at Sixteenth Street. It was late on a weekday night but traffic was still heavy. It never seemed to stop in this city.

For days he had been in a state of anxious depression, fearing that thirty years of fitting himself into the straitjacket life of a regular member of the smugly comfortable community of Monroe had come to naught. The adopted boy—the Vessel—was dead. The suddenness of it had caught him unawares. The Vessel had been Jonah's responsibility. If the Vessel had died before completing his purpose…

But the One still was. He sensed that. And now tonight, a vision… a crimson vision.

He was nearing his destination. Carol's aunt's apartment was not far from here. She lived in the area called Gramercy Park. That was where the vision was sending him.

He cupped his hand over his good right eye to see if there was anything perking in the left under the patch.

Nothing.

The vision had come a number of times during the day. He had seen Grace Nevins's head being crushed by a steel ripping bar. He had seen his own hand wielding that bar. The vision was assigning him a task.

Grace Nevins was to die.

Tonight.

Jonah wondered why. Not that he minded a bit. He had as much feeling for that fat biddy as he did for anyone else. He was just curious as to why her specifically.

Revenge? She hadn't had any direct involvement in Jim's death, so that didn't make sense. Why? Did she pose a future threat to the One? That had to be it. And the threat must be in the near future. That would explain the sense of urgency that had accompanied the vision.

He drummed his bony fingers on the steering wheel, waiting for the light to change. He had made good time in from Long Island, but still the sense of urgency plagued him.

Outside the car, the city sang to him. Its daily bumps and bruises, its long-term festering sores of agony and despair were contrapuntal melodies undulating through his head. Around him he heard the harmonies of the filth, the disease, the pain, the anguish, the misery of the people packed together here, humming from the alleys, cooing from the shabby apartments above the stores, shouting from the subway tunnels below the pavement. To his left, Union Square seemed to glow and seethe with the lyrics of a thousand tiny deaths as its drugged denizens destroyed themselves by slow degrees.

He wished he could stop and savor it, but there was work to be done. He reached over and patted the hexagonal shaft of the three-foot curved ripping bar that rested on the seat beside him.

Work.

At last the green. He pressed the accelerator and eased ahead.