and the wide avenues of that city had suddenly transformed into a dark and lonesome path. It was dirt that now covered the ground and the two painted fences which he moved between seemed now to bend and warp, closer and closer, the path becoming narrow and twisted, the branches and vines hanging low, their leaves intermingled with tops of green bushes and the buzzing sound of broken electricity or bugs. But perhaps he had been walking for some time and had taken a wrong turn. Indeed there was no movie theatre in sight. He took from his pocket the two paper tickets and tried to examine them within the small patch of light cast from a hole in one of the fences. He moved the tickets into the light, squinting his eyes, but before he could see how late he might be, a hand reached through the hole and brushed gently upon his shoulder. Take your shoes off, the voice whispered from behind the fence. He turned around but immediately the hand drew back. As he bent down to peek through the hole he saw only the ordinary backyard of a two story house, early evening with the damp grass spread before a wooden deck and the sliding glass door into which would surely be a newly remodeled kitchen. Are you standing there? he asked, Just behind this fence? Yes! said the voice. Take your shoes off and you can come to dinner. Moving his head just so, He could barely see some blurred fabric of the sleeve on whoever he was talking to. I’ve already eaten, he said. Do you have any dessert? A moment passed between them and he had to put his hand up to the fence so he could keep bending down this way without completely sitting down in a bush. I might be able to pass you a small slice of pie, said the voice. But you would have to wait until dinner is over… We don’t usually bake the pie until the end of dinner… In the middle of the backyard rose an Oak of considerable age and, amidst a breeze, shadows of branches moved slowly about the grass, a light having been turned on upstairs in the bathroom where someone could thoroughly wash their hands. I’m already late, he said. I’m on my way to see a movie… I’m meeting somebody there and I have the tickets. As he said this he put the tickets back into his jacket pocket, leaving his hand there, his fingers pressing hard over the paper. Who are you meeting? said the voice, the sleeve shifted a little against the fence. I don’t know, he said. Just an old friend who I haven’t seen in a long time. You wouldn’t know them. Another silence. Well OK, the voice said after a while. Come back later if you want and I’ll save you some pie. OK, he said. Thanks. He stood up and backed away from the fence. He listened as the voice moved back towards the house, stepping up onto the deck and the sliding door leading into the kitchen. The breeze picked up, the warm air sweeping around him in a delicious rush. He continued along the path until it let out along a very familiar street. The movie theatre was just around the corner. Lightly, it began to rain.

And just as she had done it there was a noise at the open window. Looking over she was suddenly aware of the light breeze that had finally picked up against the dryness and the heat, but this feeling was secondary (and most likely only imagined later) to the great horror as she watched the gull, large and smooth, wings spread, hovering just out the window with the Monsignor’s rosary clipped ridiculously between it’s pale beak. And the bird, regarding Sister Linda joyously within it’s savage black eye, wanting to holler and whoop in triumph to all of its friends, all of them watching from the perch of a neighboring tower, but held back in doing this, if only to hold onto it’s prize: the heavy and jeweled rosary, glinting at parts in the afternoon sun.

Indeed Linda could only silently call, the look on her face as if the air had been swept from her lungs ages ago, and just begin to reach out towards the young brute when it was lifted softly away towards the sea by a gust of the picked up breeze that most definitely she had imagined only afterwards when gathering her thoughts and the feeble attempt at preparing an explanation to the fellow Sisters (and, of course, the Monsignor when he arrived back tomorrow from his trip to the capitol). The questions would come, no doubt about it, as to why she would have left the vacant rosary out like that in the first place, away from it’s velvet pouch which it was lent to her in, an offer of comfort really, from the great Monsignor upon learning of her nephew (who was actually her son) being sent to the clinic for further evaluation.

And Linda, pacing the room now, strung her hands painfully through her hair as she considered what lay in store for her when she was expelled from the Sisterhood and forced back onto the street. Only a girl of seventeen, and in all likelihood holding the Monsignor’s child, whose destruction could no longer be afforded without the assistance of The Church. She flung herself to the bed and pulled from under the pillow a portable radio and headset, turning it on and to a most colorful station. And burying her face in the sheets, her hands slowly moving down along her young fleshy body, between her convulsing legs, and the sheets absorbing her moans until she finished.

And sitting up now, taking the headset off and staring into the mirror on the door of her closet, pausing for a moment on her wrinkled, veiny legs. A much older Linda, her eyes moving from herself and searching for the rosary that is no longer there. And these notions are lifted away just in time, as she can hear the bell for dinner and the other veil which hangs in the closet behind the mirror.

Do you cry often? 

Cry?

Cry.

… she tapped the pencil to a beat on the table.

What do you mean? he asked. 

What do you think I mean? Near her hand and the tapping pencil was a blank sheet of paper. She uncrossed her legs.

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