“I’d manage.”

“All right now,” Father Henry said. “I just want you to listen here. Let me know what you think.”

The church was empty except for the two of them. Quasiman sat in the first pew, his misshapen back making him look like he was praying. Father Henry, leaning against the altar, cleared his throat, pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose, and read from his notebook.

“Jesus could change water to wine, but it didn’t put him in AA meetings the way it did me. These days, somebody walking on water would hardly get them looked at funny, and I know of two or three people who have raised folks from the dead. The virus has changed more than our bodies. It has changed what we mean by ‘miracle’ and… Now boy, you’re laughing, and I haven’t got to any of the funny parts yet.”

Quasiman’s attention had flickered away, his eyes fixed on a spot in the aisle. Something about the carpet seemed to have given him the giggles.

“Oh,” Quasiman said, pointing to the space and grinning. “That’s sad. I mean that’s just… sad. I wish I was going to remember it.”

Father Henry closed his notebook and smiled, trying to swallow his annoyance.

“I’m sorry, son. Am I interrupting something here?”

Quasiman flickered rapidly for a moment, reappeared without his left arm, and frowned vacantly at him.

“I don’t know who you are right now,” the hunchback commented. “There was something I was supposed to do.”

Father Henry took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. Talking to the man was like preaching to an electrical problem.

“That’s all right. We can try this another time.”

“Try what?”

“You were showing me how to polka,” Father Henry said and headed back for the sacristy.

He paused at the head of the basement stairs. He’d talked with the girl more in the night-her name was Gina, she was seventeen and running away from her pimp. That wouldn’t have been difficult, except that the pimp was also an informant for the police, and so she wasn’t likely to get help from that quarter. She needed to stay in town for a couple more days until her brother drove in from Seattle to get her.

He believed about half of it. Still, it was clear enough that she needed help. And if the Church wasn’t there to help out whores in trouble, well then it wasn’t the church Mary Magdalene had thought it was. Besides, he had a feeling about the girl…

Which didn’t mean she’d be a good person to talk his sermon over with, but Lord knew she couldn’t be much worse. He rapped his knuckles on the wall as he went down the stairs.

“Gina?”

“Hey, Father,” she said. She sat on the cot, her legs tucked beneath her, watching a soap opera on the old, grainy television. He’d shown her where the clothing donations were, and she’d picked out a blue wrap-around skirt and an oversize white men’s shirt. The outfit made her look like a normal girl, maybe just about to start college.

“You feeling better today?” he asked.

She nodded and turned down the volume on the set.

“Fine,” she said. “Whatshisface got me a sandwich this morning.”

“Good, good. I was wondering… well, I had a little trouble with the sermon last week. And I was working on some material, as it were, for Sunday. And while Quasiman is a good hearted fella, he doesn’t listen for spit, and I was thinking, if it wasn’t too much of an imposition…”

“Cool,” she said and thumbed off the TV. “The show’s boring, anyway. Fire away.”

He smiled, nodded, and opened his notebook, searching for a moment to find the right spot. Gina tilted her head, her expression serious.

“Jesus,” he began, “could change water into wine…”

She listened patiently as he moved through the homily, cited the passages of the bible that supported him, cracked wise a couple times, then took the tone down to somber at the middle and ended with a bright, hopeful, but also realistic finish.

Gina leaned back, considering. He took off his glasses, polishing the lenses on his shirttail.

“No,” she said. “Sorry, father. You got it wrong. I mean it’s a nice talk, but it’s all about nats and aces. You’re preaching to jokers. Jokers don’t give a shit about miracles-except for miracles that make jokers not jokers anymore, I guess.”

“But faith is a universal. The proof of Christ’s holiness…”

“No one gives a shit,” she said. “Sorry. I mean I know you’re a priest and all, but really, jokers don’t care. They want to hear about how even though they’re fucking ugly, someone still loves them. Or that they have beautiful souls. Or that the righteous are made to suffer. Like with Job. That kind of shit.”

“Watch your language, young lady,” he admonished, but his mind was already elsewhere. “So you don’t think it’d go over well?”

“You’re not selling what they’re buying,” she said. “They don’t want another challenge. They want comfort. It’s what they come here for.”

“I suppose…” he said, and sighed. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. I hadn’t looked at it like that. I’ll go see what can be salvaged.”

“Put in someplace how ugly men are better because the world makes them tough,” she said.

“Oh, I don’t know. That seems a little harsh.”

“Always works for me,” she said, shrugging. “We’re kind of in the same business that way. Making jokers feel better.”

She winked and lay back on the cot, turning the TV back on as she descended. Father Henry found himself speechless for a moment, then walked up the stairs laughing.

The revisions took the better part of an hour, but in the end, there was more that could be saved than he’d imagined. With a little work, he had his very first jokers-only sermon, and by God, he was proud of it.

So proud and so excited, in fact, that he forgot to knock on his way down the stairs.

“… unload it now, Randy. Don’t tell me you… buyer.”

Father Henry stopped, slowly easing his foot back to the step above. Gina’s voice was muffled, but he could still make out some words here and there.

“Hundred thousand… tomorrow… would never guess where I… shit, really? Is she okay? Shit… No, I’ll call you.”

The plastic clatter of the telephone handset slipping into its cradle ended the conversation, and Father Henry slowly backed up the stairs. That certainly didn’t sound much like her brother calling in from Minnesota.

Well Lord, he thought, if this lesson is not to get took in by a pretty face, I could have sworn we’d covered that already.

He went back down, knocking this time. Gina was all smiles and pleasant company.

Oh yes. This little girl was going to take some watching.

Joey smiled. Not a hey-that-was-funny smile. More like hey-I’m-gonna-take-your-eyes-out-with-a-fucking-spoon. Jerzy didn’t seem to know the difference.

“Human target, get it?” the skinny Jew said again, like repeating it would make it funny. “Like that guy with the arrows.” He pantomimed plinking a bow at Joey.

“That guy with the arrows killed my boys and tried to cripple me,” Joey pointed out coolly.

Jerzy’s shrugged, smile fading, and he sipped his coffee. It was the closest he ever came to apology. The foot traffic going past the café was pretty light for the garment district, but it was still early in the afternoon. Come five o’clock, the overflow from Times Square would fill things up a little more. Joey wanted to be out before then.

“You got the coroner’s reports?”

“Nah,” Jerzy said. “I don’t make copies. What you want to know, I’ll tell you. I got a photographic memory.”

Joey looked around. The whole place was the size of a school bus-the short kind for the dumb kids. The guy behind the counter looked archly back it him. An old lady in a puffy blue ski jacket was sitting right up against the window and muttering to herself. Other than that they were alone.