Act of God

intended. “I guess being an altar boy doesn’t carry quite the resume value it once did.”
    Nancy took my arm, letting my bicep rub against something that felt awfully good under her summer-weight blazer and blouse. “How would you know?”
    “How? I was an altar boy, Nance.”
    She stopped dead, dropping my arm. “No.”
    “God’s truth.”
    “No pun intended.”
    “You know, I’d been thinking that but had the restraint to—”
    She took my arm again. “You really were an altar boy?”
    “I was.”
    “In South Boston ?”
    “I was a little young to ride circuit through the outlying parishes.”
    “John, I don’t believe it.”
    “Why not?”
    “Well, you are kind of an eagle scout, but altar... I just can’t imagine it.”
    “I can prove it.”
    “How? Your age, all the priests you served with must be dead by now.”
    “Canonized, most of them. But the way you can really tell if a kid was an altar boy is if he has some embarrassing stories to tell about it.”
    “And you have some.”
    “Many.”
    “I want to hear one.”
    “Why don’t we bail out your car first.”
    Nancy gave the attendant her ticket, and he let us find the Honda ourselves. Instead of my old-style Prelude, she had a hatchback Civic that was comfortable, quick, and still got as many miles to the gallon as a go-cart.
    Once we were in traffic, Nancy started weaving, the little car like a roller derby star. We stuck to the city streets rather than the jammed Central Artery, always wending southward.
    I said, “We’re going to the beach.”
    “You’re down to seventeen questions.”
    “That last one wasn’t in the form of a question.”
    “Doesn’t matter.” She swerved around a beer truck. “Let’s hear the altar boy story.”
    “One of the many.”
    “Any one of the many will do.”
    “All right. It was a Saturday morning Mass, the nine o’clock with Father Dolan. Nobody wanted to do that shift, because Dolan was a real stickler for ceremonial detail and the timing wrecked your day off from school, but I was low man on the totem pole, so I drew it. Well, you were supposed to wear dark slacks under your cassock, but I’d forgotten and worn some beige Levi’s that didn’t quite do justice to whatever feast day it was. I knew Dolan would crucify me, but fortunately I remembered that one of the other kids about my size left a spare pair of pants hidden in a corner of the sacristry, just behind the armoire with the priests’ robes in it. So I stripped down to my briefs and was crawling back there to get the spare when a nun walked into the room and screamed. On my hands and knees, I turned my head to see her and said, ‘It’s okay, Sister Regina, I’m just waiting for Father Dolan.’ ”
    Nancy didn’t laugh. “Is that a good example of altar boy humor?”
    “It was the best I could do at the time.”
    We passed the street where Value Furniture would be. I craned my neck but couldn’t see it.
    Nancy said, “What are you looking at?”
    “Looking for. I got a case in today that might involve the killing of the store owner down here a couple of weeks ago.”
    “The busted robbery.”
    “That’s the one.”
    “We aren’t on it yet.”
    “I don’t think the cops have anybody yet.”
    Nancy nodded, and I could see the wheels turning toward changing the subject. One of the limitations our professions impose on our relationship is that I can’t talk about any cases that she, or even her office, might end up litigating. It’s a good limitation to observe, especially for her.
    Nancy said, “No more curiosity about where we’re heading?”
    “South is south.”
    The smile of a cat that hadn’t eaten the canary but had just figured out how to work the latch on the cage door. “This will be an education for you beyond geography.”

    It was held in a union hall about six miles below Boston , and you could see the whole layout from the entrance. The main part of the room had folding chairs in long rows with a center aisle. Around the perimeter of the hall in the back were some folding tables with paper cloths and paper plates, tuna sandwiches for a dollar and cans of Pepsi or Sprite going for the same. They charged us four bucks each to get in the door, Nancy paying since the evening was her treat. We were given two cards with three-digit numbers on them. I promptly folded mine in half and secured it in a pocket of my suit jacket. Nancy also got a listing of all the items for the night by lot