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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."
    "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."
    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.
    She hadn't even thought to ask what kind of church this was.
She knew that each school in the