“What in Christ’s name are you talking about, boy?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head like he was trying to sober up. “I thought you said something.”

With an apologetic shrug, the hunchback vanished. The spoon he had been stirring with slid into the sauce with a low plop. Father Henry looked at the sudden absence, shook his head, and went over to turn off the flame before the steak burned.

When Father Squid had called him with the news-the world tour with Senator Hartmann, the chance to see the fate of jokers in third-world hellholes around the globe-Father Henry had been half-afraid that the tentacled padre was going to ask him along. The request that he come up to New York and perform the Mass for a couple weeks had been such a relief that he’d agreed to it without really thinking. Now he found himself hundreds of miles from home preaching to a bunch of New York jokers and trying to keep a barely-present hunchback from scorching dinner.

He grabbed a fork and trawled the sauce until he pulled out the stirring spoon. It was too hot to hold. He found out by trying and dropped the spoon back under the surface.

The sauce wasn’t quite right. Stirring with the fork with his left hand, he took a glass off the sideboard with his right, reached over for the faucet and started a thin stream of water flowing. He set his mind to the clear ribbon until his wild card surged down his arms, through his fingers, and the water blushed, bloodied, and became a cheap Merlot. He filled the glass and poured half of it into the sauce to let the alcohol cook off. The faucet was running clear again when he closed the faucet down.

He hesitated before emptying the glass, but he did. A thirteen-year-old Alabama boy, finding he can change water to wine, never took it as a sign he should become a priest. Like any right-thinking Southerner in the situation, he became an alcoholic. A thirty-six-year old recovering drunkard and closet deuce, on the other hand, had been known to hear the call of the Lord. Even cooking with wine was actually against the rules, and tempting as it was to scootch a little farther off the wagon, Father Henry held to his resolve and had a pop with his dinner. The steak was good-juicy with just a little blood-and the sauce was tart and sweet, just enough to season the meat without drowning it. He’d give the hunchback that-the man could cook.

He cleaned his dishes when he was done and left the remains in a Tupperware box, in case Quasiman showed back up hungry. He looked over his notes one last time, sighed, and hefted himself up the stairs and out the rear sacristy door into the cool night air. Father Squid had lent him the use of the cottage for the length of his stay, and he strolled through the small herb garden and up to the locked metal door.

Back home in Selma, he would have taken a short constitutional, down to the coffee shop or possibly over to flirt for a few minutes with the Widow Lander, before going home to his own modest apartments, pictures of St. Peter’s and a lovely Roman sunset over his own simple wooden desk. He might read or write letters for an hour or two before packing himself off to bed.

Father Squid’s cottage was gray and close compared to his home, and it did smell like a fish market. His bags were still half-packed. He sat on the bed. It was barely eight at night, and still much earlier than he was used to going to sleep. He had hoped that the caretaker of the church might be put upon to show him around, but that had been before he’d actually set eyes on the man. Which left him with his present options.

Jokertown after dark, a lone yokel braving the meanest streets of New York or Takis or whatever you decided Jokertown was really part of. Sounded stupid. But ministering to the twisted bodies and souls around him without having the courage to meet them face straight on seemed like hypocrisy. With his luck, they’d find him floating in the bay, and Quasiman would have to find some poor Episcopalian to perform next Sunday’s mass.

He snapped his fingers and snatched open his notebook. Flipping to a clean page, he wrote “In this age of empty wonders, a real miracle is something small and precious. Like me walking through Jokertown at night and not getting killed.” He grinned, then frowned and crossed it out. Maybe when he got home. These New York jokers might not think that was funny.

He loaded up all the little presents his sister had sent him when she heard he was going to take the assignment-a hand-held stungun, a canister of pepper spray, and a large gaudy crucifix that mirrored the one above the pulpit with its two-headed joker Christ impaled on a DNA helix. It wasn’t the sort of iconography that went over well with the Archbishop, but here it might mark him as belonging. And, of course, a camera so he could give a slide show when he got home.

“Oh, Mother,” he muttered, “God bless you. You gave birth to a fool and a papist.”

Despite the chill of the night, there was a good bit more foot traffic than he’d expected. Most folks ignored him, hurrying along their own business. Some jokers had their bare faces out, however disfigured. Others wore masks. Father Henry found himself falling into his old habit of smiling and nodding to people as he passed, like he was back home.

He stopped by the Crystal Palace because it was famous and, once he introduced himself as Father Squid’s stand-in, had his picture taken with the eyeless bartender. The twist-spined, grey-skinned clerk at an all-night bookstore along the way home asked him with a genteel grace whether he was out whoring and still treated him respectfully when he said no. Even the thin figures standing around trash fires, rubbing their hands or tentacles seemed more benign than he’d expected. For all the fear and angry talk-joker orgies, gang war, streets it was death for a nat to walk down after dark-Father Henry could name three or four road-houses in Alabama that had felt more threatening to him than this.

There were some moments when he felt like he’d walked into a bad hallucination-once when a section of sidewalk yelped under-foot and shifted off to become part of a wall, another time when something like a giant tongue called to him from a storm-sewer grate and asked the time. Despite all that, by the time he stopped to buy a newspaper from a poor walrus-man, he felt almost at home.

“You’re new around here?” the walrus said, smiling jovially.

“You could say that,” he agreed. “Father Henry Obst. I’m filling in for Father Squid for a couple weeks.”

“Well, welcome to the neighborhood,” the walrus said.

“Thank you. That’s very kind.”

“And don’t worry about it too much. I’m sure next Sunday will go better.”

A true miracle would be a place without small-town gossip and slander, he thought, but kept his smile all the way back to the cottage.

The problem was, of course, how to get through the crust of anger and despair-and self-pity, worst of all self-pity-that came with drawing the joker. He’d spent enough years himself living with scorching self-hatred to know the smell when he was up to his asshole in it, as his sainted mother would have said. It was poison, but he’d seen strong souls overcome it.

The problem with despair, he thought, was that it wasn’t really despair when you could see your way clear of it. If he could only…

“Father?”

He blinked. The woman was crouched down beside the cottage door. Woman, hell. Girl was closer. Maybe eighteen years old with black hair and eyes and a tiny little skirt. She didn’t seem to be a joker of any stripe.

“Well now, miss,” he said gently, “what can I do for you?”

She stood up. Poor little thing barely came to his chin, and Father Henry had never been called a tall man. Her face, now that it was more in the light, was sharp as a fox’s and her shirt streaked with blood.