[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

sings in the courtyard over at CDSP. I've seen you there."
"Oh,him. But he's not homeless."
"Do you know where he lives?" Kate asked.
"Of course not, but he can't be homeless. I mean, he's clean, and he doesn't
carry things or have a shopping cart or anything."
"Right," said Kate. "Where is CDSP?"
"Just across the street," the man said.
"I'll take you if you want to wait a minute," said the woman. (Priestess?
Reverend Mother? What the hell did you call her, anyway? wondered Kate.) She
waited while the woman rang up her purchases, and Kate glanced at these
titles, then looked again with interest:Living in the Lap of the Goddess,
Texts of Terror, Jesus Acted Up: A Gay and Lesbian Manifesto. Well, well.
"Thanks, Tina," she said to the cashier.
"Have a good one, Rosalyn."
Kate followed her out the door and down the wide steps. On the sidewalk the
woman stopped and turned to study Kate.
"I know you, don't I?" she asked, uncertain. Kate became suddenly wary.
"Oh, I don't live around here."
"I know that. What is your name?"
There was no avoiding it. "Kate Martinelli."
Page 36
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"I do know you. Oh, of course, you're Lee Cooper's partner. Casey, isn't it?
We met briefly at a forum at Glide Memorial a couple of years ago. Rosalyn
Hall." She held out her hand and Kate shook it. "You won't remember me,
especially in this" she stuck a finger into her collar and wiggled it "and
with my hair longer. I was into spikes then."
"Sorry," Kate said, though she did remember the forum on community violence
and vaguely recalled a woman minister. She relaxed slightly. "I go by Kate
now," she added. "I grew out of Casey."
"Amazing how nicknames haunt you, isn't it? My mother still calls me Rosie.
Tell me, how is Lee? I heard about it, of course. It's one of those situations
where you feel you should do something, but to intrude seems ghoulish."
"She's doing okay. And I don't think it would be intrusive. Actually, she's
lost a lot of friends in the last months. People feel uncomfortable around
wheelchairs and catheters and the threat of paralysis."
"I hadn't thought of that. I'll try to find some excuse to go see her.
Something professional, maybe. Her profession, I mean. Is she working?"
"She just started up again, and that would be ideal, if you need an excuse."
"Fine. I'm glad I stumbled into you, Kate. I've got to get myself together
for a lecture, but we'll meet again. Oh stupid of me. Brother Erasmus. I'll
show you where he holds forth."
They crossed the tree-lined curve of street with its sodden drifts of rotting
leaves and winter-bare branches and went through an opening in the brick wall
into a broad courtyard, at the far side of which were doors into two buildings
and, between them, steps climbing up to more buildings. Rosalyn went to the
doors on the right, and Kate found herself in a long, dimly lighted and sunken
room with a bunch of tables, some of them occupied by men and women with paper
cups of coffee.
"This is the refectory," said Rosalyn. "The coffee isn't too bad, if you want
a cup. And that's where Brother Erasmus usually is." She nodded toward the
opposite windows, which looked out on another, smaller courtyard, this one
grassy and with bare trees, green shrubs, and a forlorn-looking fountain
playing by itself in a rectangular pond. Rosalyn glanced at her watch. "He may
be in the chapel. I'll take you there, and then I have to run."
Page 37
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Across the refectory, out the doors at the corner of the grassy space, and up
another flight of stairs, more brick and glass buildings in front of them the
place was a warren, Kate thought, built on a hillside. Up more stairs, more
buildings rising up, and then suddenly confronted with what could indeed only
be a chapel. Rosalyn opened the door silently and they slipped in.
"That's Erasmus," she murmured, nodding her head toward the front. "In the
second pew from the front on the right-hand side. He's sitting next to Dean
Gardner," she added with a smile, then left.
It was a small building, simple and calm. The pews were well filled, Kate
thought, for a weekday morning. There were two priests near the altar, and a
woman at the lecturn reading aloud earnestly from the Bible. Kate chose a back
pew, sat one space from the aisle, and listened to the service. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]