DEBBIE CAME OUT TO THE lobby bar wearing jeans and a light raincoat, her prison dress and shoes in a canvas bag. She saw Fran waiting and was sure he'd say something about the set-nice going, anything. No, her first gig in more than three years and Fran goes, "Here, I want you to meet my brother."

The one turning from the bar with a drink in his hand, Fr. Terry Dunn, black Irish in a black wool parka, the hood hanging about his shoulders. Now she saw him as a friar, the beard, the gaunt face, giving him kind of a Saint Francis of Assisi look. He came right out with what she wanted to hear:

"You were terrific" with a nice smile--"really funny, and you made it look easy, the conversational style."

"That either works," Fran said, "or it doesn't." Fran serious about it. "You have to have the personality and be naturally funny. You know what I mean? Not just recite punch lines." He said, "Debbie, this is my brother Terry."

He held her gaze as they shook hands, still with the nice smile. She glanced at Fran and back to the priest.

"I don't have to call you Father?"

He said, "I wouldn't."

Now she didn't know what to say. How was Africa? But then wondered if they were there for the whole set. "I didn't see you before I went on."

"You'd just come out," Fran said, "giving your DOC number as we sat down, in back."

Terry was nodding. "You were about to run into your ex with the Buick."

"The Buick Riviera," Debbie said.

He smiled again. "I wondered if you tried other makes. A Dodge Daytona?"

"That's not bad."

"Cadillac El-doray-do?"

"Eldorado was on the list, but what'm I doing driving a Cadillac?

So

I went with the Riviera."

"Yeah, that worked."

Fran, antsy in his tweed sport coat, a sweater under it, said,

"We'll go someplace we can talk and get something to eat." Debbie lit a cigarette, Terry holding her bag, while Fran told them he'd forget to eat with Mary Pat and the little girls in Florida.

"This guy"-meaning Terry-"all he eats is peanut butter since he got home. Eats it with a spoon." That was something she could ask: why there wasn't any peanut butter in Africa. Fran led them out of the Comedy Castle, on Fourth in Royal Oak, and around the corner to Main, Fran telling his brother how he'd suggested she act nervous when she comes out, scared, so if the act doesn't exactly rock, the audience would still sympathize with her, like her spunk.

The palest said, "Debbie doesn't need spunk. She's cool." Surprising the hell out of her.

She hunched her shoulders saying, "Actually I'm freezing," almost adding, "my ass off," but didn't. The priest, huddled in his parka, said he was too. So then Fran had to tell them it wasn't cold, it was spring, forty-seven degrees out. Terry said, "Oh, then I guess I'm not cold," and she felt in that moment closer to him and knew that if she'd said, "my ass off," he still would've agreed, maybe given her the smile.

They got a table at Lepanto. Fran, still on, asked the waitress if they had banana beer, the only kind his brother here from Africa would drink Debbie wishing he'd please get off the fucking stage.

The waitress said with no expression, or showing any interest, "We don't carry it," and Debbie could've kissed her. Fran was out of it while she ordered an Absolut on the rocks, but then got back in when Terry said all he wanted was a Scotch, Johnnie Walker red if they had it. Fran told him he should eat something besides peanut butter. How about an appetizer and a salad? Terry said he wasn't hungry. Fran was studying the menu now while Terry sat there in his parka.

Debbie thought he looked beat, maybe some African disease like malaria hanging on. She loved his eyes, his quiet expression. She said to him, "I've been trying to picture where Rwanda is exactly."

"Right in the center of Africa," Fran said, his nose still in the menu, "practically on the equator. You're a missionary over there you come home every five years to cool off and get your health back." He looked up now to say, "If you're not gonna eat I'm not either." But now the waitress was back with their drinks and he ordered a Caesar salad and some rolls.

Looking at Terry she said to Fran, "Did he always want to be a priest?"

Terry smiled as Fran said, "Even as a kid he felt he had a vocation.

Like you might've thought of becoming a nun when you were at Marian."

"The Academy of the Sacred Heart, please. I was a rich kid." She was dying to ask Terry about smuggling cigarettes, but would lose her nerve when he looked at her. She asked what order he belonged to. He told her the Missionary Fathers of St. Martin de Porres.

"There's a school in Detroit with that name," Fran said, "all black kids, but there's no connection."

"Other than Martin de Porres was black," Terry said, "on his mother's side. His dad was a Spanish nobleman. They weren't marfled and for a long time the father wouldn't have anything to do with Martin, since he was a mulatto. Or you could say he was African-South American. This was in Lima, Peru, around sixteen hundred. He was canonized because of his devotion to the sick and the poor." There were no comments, a silence, and Terry said, "Martin de Porres is the patron saint of hairdressers."

Fran said, "Yeah, well that was a long time ago."

Debbie passed. She might ask why some other time. So she asked if he'd run into any comedy over there. "Any African standup?"

Terry seemed to think about it as Fran said, "Deb, it's hard to think of anything funny when hundreds of thousands of people are being killed. Terry was right there during the entire period of the genocide."

Debbie said, "I can't even imagine that." She couldn't remember hearing much about it, either, the genocide.

"On the altar saying his first Mass," Fran said, "when they broke into the church. A scene that'll stay with him the rest of his life."

Terry's expression didn't change. She thought of it now as kind of a saintly look, the dark hair and beard part of the image, the hood of the parka hanging like a monk's cowl. She hoped he might add something, so she'd know what Fran was talking about.

But now Terry was telling her again, "You were really funny. You must've felt good about it."

"Most of it," Debbie said.

"Where'd you get the pet bat?"

"Out of the air. I wanted to describe Randy as evil in a funny way, if you know what I mean, this good-looking but sinister guy with a bat flying around the house. It didn't get much of a laugh."

"It worked for me," Terry said, "but then I'm used to bats. They'd come out every night and eat a few tons of bugs. I liked the skin on the bathroom floor, too, Randy the snake molting."

"That's right," Fran said, "you were gonna see if you could make that work."

"It either didn't," Debbie said, "or only a few people got it. Or if you're gonna do weird humor you have to establish it right away, not slip it in somewhere."

"The only thing I didn't get," Terry said, "was the worst thing in the joint being the TV show. But then I never saw it. What's the name of the show? Urkel?"

"He's the character," Debbie said. "The show's called Family Matters. Urkel's a nerdy black kid with the most annoying voice I've ever heard, and the ladies in the dorm'd cry laughing at him. But you're right, it doesn't work. I'm getting rid of Urkel."

"Maybe do more with Randy."

"I could; but I get mad thinking about him and then it's not funny.

I didn't hurt him enough."

"You mean there is a Randy and you hit him with a car?"

"A Ford Escort. But you say you happened to run into your exhusband, beat, with a Ford Escort, it doesn't make it. And I didn't just happen to run into him."

"She ambushed him," Fran said, eating his salad now, "laid in wait."