ONE

Roger Moriarty was a true polymath. As a master of various skills, he had reconstructed the Citroen that awaited him from the chassis up to the coppery perfection of its paint job. Even in the gloom of St. Brigid's parking garage, he could gaze with wonder at the dull glow of his ancient sports car. He knew every surface, every bolt like he knew his own lanky and increasingly creaky body. He flushed with anticipatory pride at the prospect of roaring forth from his lair onto Van Ness Ave., the barrier road which prevented the great fire of 1906 from consuming all San Francisco. He loved the fantasy of security this residence gave, a feeling of being protected from the conflagrations that he had witnessed in his life and that seemed always about to consume him.

Walking toward his automobile, the pre-dawn fog swirled around him and the scattering of vehicles parked here. He ruminated about the rhythm of fog and sun that defined this city, his birthplace. The elements fought their battle perennially, with the fog firmly in control just now. He thought about this upcoming two hour drive to Sacramento to meet with old friends and new colleagues in the still vibrant movement to foster the tenets of liberation theology in the church, and to stand for social justice for the common people of Central America. The metaphor of the fog made him sigh, as he thought about the continued ascendancy of the forces of obfuscation and repression.

His own life seemed as ephemeral as the white mist that covered the path to his car. Only through the intervention of his friend Mark Doyle, somewhat miraculously the current archbishop of San Francisco, had he found this sinecure at St. Brigid's. Otherwise, he would have faced the insecurity and humiliation of working as an itinerant at fifty. The command to leave Managua stung as freshly this morning, as it did when he received it seven months ago, after nearly twenty years dancing along the edges of political involvement in Mexico, Guatemala, and finally with the relatively sympathetic Sandanista and post-Somoza governments in Nicaragua. All his tangible work in agriculture, hydrology and mechanics was nothing in the face of a single memo from the Vatican. At the shiny bumper of his vintage vehicle, he paused to yawn and stretch. The series of brightly colored stickers adorning the chrome caught his eye. "Sandino Lives!" "Keep Nicaragua Free." "No Peace Without Justice." "El Pueblo unido." These sentiments, uncompromisinly partisan, gave him a sense of passion and pride.

But a rush of moist air soured this sweet blush of feeling. The pangs of his dependency on Mark Doyle, at seminary a year his junior, tightened his guts. He didn't mind so much being personally beholden to Mark Doyle. He loved and respected his superior. But the sense of having to beg for a place at the table, from anyone, galled him. He and Mark had both excelled as athletes in school, but in the art of compromise and advancement, principle replaced ambition for Fr. Moriarty. Not that he judged the bishop who recently saved his butt from complete marginality in the church. The entire scenario of his life just left him confused. Had he stood for something only to see it taken from him? Or had his priestly vocation made taking a stand impossible? Maybe he was only a revolutionary reformer in his fantasies. He sighed again, as he took the old ignition key from his pocket, fingering its heft as he headed toward the driver's low-slung entrance.

One of his favorite metaphors in sermons and talks was the image of a key in a lock. Sometimes he talked about the simple opening of a door. Occasionally he spoke of the process of ignition in a vehicle as analogous to a plan of action he wanted to jump start. He wondered this morning, as the foggy waves kissed the shores of San Francisco, which approach he wanted to use in his breakfast presentation to Doctors Without Borders. They were meeting in Sacramento to lobby the California legislature for Central American immigrants. Originally a French group with a particular focus in Africa, Doctors without Borders had now taken a special interest in Central America. Like him, the organization sought the right key to help indigenous poor people, the overwhelming majority of the area's populace in their daily confrontations with landowning and governmental gatekeepers who denied them access to resources, education and land. As his sleepy brain free-associated from sensations of fog to feelings of personal oppression, from a key in his palm to metaphors in a presentation to over one hundred clergy and medical personnel, a critical task he had forgotten came to mind.

"Damn!" He could see the envelope he had prepared for his compadre, the archbishop, as clearly as he could see the slight opening he always left in the driver's window on his car. He could see the envelope in his file drawer. He had a new perspective, backed by solid evidence he felt, on the death of their mutual friend, Gus D'Amato, 'the Castro Street pastor,' as his parishioners had called him. Roger was certain he could come close to proving that D'Amato's death was part of a far-reaching conspiracy that resulted in the gay priest's murder. He had promised to mail the material to Mark when they spoke on the phone the previous evening. And again he had forgotten to bring it with him. "Ah well," and again Roger sighed, " at least it's safe in my office."
Drawing a few deep breaths into his lungs, he stood for a few moments more admiring the sporty gem that his own craftsmanship had rescued from oblivion. He cleared his mind of negative thinking, and prepared himself for the road ahead. He slipped the key into the lock, then opened the door to reveal an orange blossom of light, at once brighter and blacker than the most magnificent Pacific sunset. For just an instant, this marvel puzzled him, until the blast and debris from the bomb began to pummel his body. Shards of metal and glass pierced his skin, from just below his shattered kneecap to the top of his scalp, from which scorched remains of his still bright red hair protruded. Several bits of shrapnel entered through his eyes and lodged in his brain. The concussion combined with the fiery sucking of oxygen from the explosion to collapse his right lung. As he flew backward from the blast, his head smashed against the garage door railing, breaking his neck at the fifth cervical vertebrae. These constituted the primary injuries sustained by Father Moriarty, and they were sufficient, after he served a time in the limbo of critical care, to accomplish his execution.

Before the blow to his neck closed completely the window of consciousness, for a brief instant, he entered a beautifully bright corridor, in which he laughed internally at the brutal irony of his life. His final thought, however, was a panic stricken demand: "My God! Mark! I've got to reach you."

A watcher, stocky and bundled against both chill and any prying eye, emerged once he felt certain the Citroen's gas tank would not ignite. For at least half a minute, nearly an eternity under the circumstances, the man rifled the tattered jacket of the dying Moriarty. He collected everything that resembled a document or a folder, including the smoldering briefcase, and disappeared into the foggy shadows.

TWO

"Go and observe," my master said.
"Alas, poor Roger, may you rest in peace. You lived by the zeal of revolution and here the zeal of your opponents has brought your end."

I see now the wisdom of sending someone who wears clerical garb. Who better to lurk about the domicile of priests than one who was once among them. The collar inspires me.

As I stood over Roger, he was still alive, I thought, but not for long. His jacket smoked from the heat of the blast. I amaze myself; I hadn't intended to do it, but I said a quick prayer for him. Even after what I went through in the priesthood, the symbols are too potent to let go. Maybe that's one reason why I was there. As instructed, I looked for documents -- briefcase, portolio, folder -- and I went swfitly through his clothes and his wallet, hot as they were, but I little.

The people with whom I've thrown in my lot are brutal. But they are effective in their own way. God knows, if he exists, that Rome will sweep my zealous masters aside like so much riff-raff whenever it suits them.

So why do I do this? Vengence is sweet, and my anger at church liberals for having me sacked burns hotter than the blast in the garage. I was once like them, that is, before I became enlightened. Enlightenment has to do with rejecting easy answers and embracing the order of the ages. The church of Mark Doyle would upset that order. But it's more than that, too. I've suffered too much from the direct actions of this apostate bishop and all he represents. I was defrocked by them. So it's a pleasure to put on the frock in defiance.

Doyle and his ilk took away my life, gave me no presence in the world. He probably has no idea of what he did, since it was at a distance. But if a man has lost his place, he doesn't exist. I now exist; I've found a new place. I'm not a sociopath. God rest Roger's soul. Action, direct action, can put one in line with the true forces of the universe. I knew I could stay in tune with these forces of order if I had a place. I'm alive again with a new purpose. It's the way of nature: some die that others may live.

THREE

His frame filled the brick entry way, a dark silhouette against the fog. Six foot three inches tall, his hat nearly brushed the bottom of the arch as he passed. Wrinkles cut lines into his crusty face, making his appearance approximate his fifty years. But his body was still powerful, lean and fit. In fact, he regularly drilled perimeter shots against bigger men, darker hued, and half his age. Three years ago he joined a few other Americans at the highest level of advancement in the art of self defense called Aikido. He quipped that Aikido was the perfect martial arts style for a Jesuit priest, which was his calling in life, because being a Jesuit meant having to get out of the way of, or redirect, almost everybody else in the church. Father Mark Francis Doyle for over two years had served his church as the Archbishop of San Francisco.

The early evening breeze of a Bay Area autumn blew through his hair, as dark as his clerical black suit, while he waited. Before him, an oaken door painted bright red offered access to a condominium. An ornately tiled patio, equipped with wrought iron furniture, joined the brick path of the entry way to the unit. The condo belonged to Miriam Faberini, the bishop's former therapist and a prominent adjunct faculty member at the University of San Francisco.

Doyle hesitated on the threshold of Ms. Faberini's condo because, eight months ago she and the archbishop became lovers. Prior to that, the forty-nine year old priest had been at least a technical virgin. His congress, as a seminarian, with a visiting high school sweetheart, though filled with fevered groping and resulting in all sorts of heated emissions, had yielded no coital connection. His Excellency hesitated each time he arrived here. Whatever the counsel of his own heart, each time he knocked on Miriam's door, conflicting feelings gripped him. He was betraying church discipline and putting himself in what used to be called an occasion of sin. No matter that he really didn't believe the sin part any more, there was still the danger of public scandal, because he was publicly proclaiming one thing and doing another.

But he knocked, nonetheless, and she opened her door to him as quickly as they opened their arms to each other. His broad shoulders engulfed her lithe frame, though she was nearly as tall as he and whip hard from her own athletic pursuits. Their embrace persisted while the flickering light from a dozen candles bathed them, and the mixed scents of vanilla and patchouli caressed their nostrils.

Skeptics may never believe it, but love often reveals itself in eerie, bizarre and sometimes hilarious ways. Whenever Miriam and Mark met, their first kiss evoked for them both the memories of the first time they saw each other. The similarity of their thoughts, every time their lips rejoined, after even a short separation, was a marvelous evocation of synergy. Although neither of them was aware of this strange aspect of their union on this particular evening, they would have agreed that this unity signified something fateful for their connection.

* * * * *

The lovers' initial sightings of the other had occurred on the same day, although at different times, nearly two decades prior. The Sandinistas were on the verge of overrunning Managua, and Miriam was running messages for her diplomat father, who had agreed to parlay with the French and the Spanish for the revolutionaries. Doyle watched as she crossed and re-crossed the square, mortar fire dropping randomly around her as she flew from one embassy to another. She spied him late that afternoon, as she waited her turn for one more chance to speak with the French ambassador. The priest emerged from the ambassador's office, face flushed with emotion, laughing uproariously. He was leading a delegation of American priests sympathetic to the Sandinistas, quite a courageous thing to do, in May, 1979, amidst the little blossoms of death from random mortar fire.
Neither realized at the time that they were glimpsing the future love of their lives. Both swore, however, that they were smitten on the spot.

FOUR

A single kiss, by recalling the sweet desire of their initial sighting, inflamed the couple's passions anew. A shadowy dance engaged them as they drank from the other's mouth. They careened around furniture and effects, increasingly drunk on each other. Anything which separated the lover's flesh fell away, until Miriam's living room resembled a messy adolescent's domicile. Their lust disconnected them from any conscious consideration of consequences. Miriam had let her practice's insurance lapse, and Mark Doyle's myriad naysayers had been sniffing for years for the scent of sex on the hunky prelate. Despite their lack of caution, however, neither thought that they had chosen their liaison. It had just happened to them, they thought, as a force of nature might visit anyone, carrying gifts inside a furious dynamic of change.

* * * * *

The pair met for the second time when Doyle sought Miriam's counsel as a psychotherapist, in April, 1992. Dr. Faberini's practice consisted largely of Catholic clergy experiencing crisis or ennui. He insisted that he did not connect her name with the coltish beauty dodging artillery in Managua. She was positive she had no clue that the then assistant bishop coming to call was the man who had pranced through her dreams, from the night she first observed him to the night prior to their first session.
But, a single glance was sufficient for both of them to recognize the lover they had first fantasized about thirteen years before. When they shook hands, a shudder passed through them, hardly palpable on the surface but as lively as an infarction in both their chests. They were adults, however, adept at overlooking and subverting the obvious. They used humor, reason, and avoidance to dispel the necessity of acting on the alchemy that was fusing them.

"I love your hair," he told her after their first hour of therapy. "Sure," she responded with mock pique; "I'm ten years younger and the salt's beating the pepper. You're still as black as cloudy night. Is it good dye, or good genes?" He smiled, saying the celibate life recycled all his juices so efficiently that he feared living forever. She rocked with laughter at that, and they embraced, as they did at the culmination of every session for the next five years. And each hug became harder to break. Each enfolding goodbye foreshadowed a connection of less restrained carnality. While a therapeutic conversation defined their relationship on the surface, at another level a powerful chemistry was at work.

* * * * *

She whispered into his ear, between nips at his lobe that caused him to clasp her more tightly, "aren't you afraid you'll go gray overnight, at the rate we're spilling your juices?" She worked herself on his hips with a scissor grip, so that while he chuckled at her query, he simultaneously groaned with the rigors of her ecstatic purchase. The lovers still swayed from their vertical connection, like a pair of trees in a gale. The bishop carried his lithe lover through the french doors that opened into Miriam's bedroom. There, at the foot of her canopied bed, the pallid flicker of a single candle, guttering at the dressing table mirror, permitted the lovers to share their eyes as they moved from an upright to a horizontal embrace.

Less demanding, less athletic, this hold caused them almost to languish in each other, nearly motionless, covered except for occasional flashes of flesh in the downy duvet on Miriam's bed. On the surface, their pose might have appeared as slumber. But inside, penetration was deep and they felt that momentary loss of identity and control. At just this instant, another bizarre congruence occurred, a connection of souls that seemed to defy the laws of physics and society without compunction. Miriam and Mark both tranced the first time they made love.

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