Leo said, “I never heard of anything so dumb in my life.”
Jack said, “Our preferences are different, Leo, what I’ve been trying to tell you. Our likes and dislikes, what we enjoy, what lights up our eyes… You want me to tell you what attracted me to Helene? The first time I saw her? The very first thing I noticed about her?”
“I’m dying to know,” Leo said.
“It was her nose.”
Leo stared at him.
“That classic, what you’d call aristocratic, kind of nose. The most perfect fucking nose, Leo, I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Leo said, “Do you hear yourself?” He said, loud enough for Henry and Mario to hear and look over from the bar, “You’re gonna sit there and tell me you went to prison on account of this broad’s nose?”
Jack said, “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”
Even half in the bag, talking too much, he didn’t dare mention the fine spray of freckles or try to describe that pert tilt, that fragile beauty, her brown eyes…
Or the bare legs that went up into her skirt. Long slender legs, the high instep another delicate line with the high heel hanging from the toe, the young lady’s legs crossed on the bar stool in the Sazerac Lounge of the Roosevelt Hotel. Or the Monteleone or the Pontchartrain, the Peabody in Memphis, the Biltmore in Atlanta. It was never just the nose. But why try to tell all that to a man who prepared dead bodies, read novels that took place in times gone by, and was not drawn to live girls in cocktail lounges?
Leo would still have said what he did. “You’re never gonna grow up, are you?”
THE BUMS IN FRONT of Holy Family, squinting in the sunlight, shading their eyes, said, Hey, it’s the undertaker man. Who died? That ain’t for me, is it? I ain’t dead yet. Get outta here with that thing, Jesus. Come back after while. Hey, buddy, come back after we’ve et. They said, Here’s one good as dead. Here, take this guy. Jack told them not to touch the hearse. Keep away from it, okay? He walked through them in his navy-blue suit, white shirt and striped tie, sunglasses, nodding with a faint smile, careful to breathe through his mouth. One of them said it must be good soup today, it wasn’t all over the sidewalk. Most of them seemed to be hardcore alcoholics. They stood at the bottom of nowhere on a spring day, done for, but could make observations, even try to hustle him. Mister, gimme a dollar, I’ll watch nobody pisses on your hearse. He got inside the storefront mission with only a couple of them brushing against him.
There were bums hunched over shoulder to shoulder along two rows of tables that reached to the serving counter, where a pair of round, gray-haired ladies wearing glasses and white aprons were dishing out the meal. Jack said to a little colored guy in bib overalls and an ageless tweed coat too big for him, “Which one’s Sister Lucy?”
The man was coming out. He looked back over his shoulder, then turned all the way around and pointed to the line approaching the serving counter. “She right there. See?”
Jack said, “You sure?”
The man grinned, nearly toothless, at the way Jack was staring. “ ‘Nough to make you believe in Jesus, huh? She cook good, too. Come Monday for the red beans and rice.”
Jack saw a slim young woman with dark hair brushed behind her ear in profile. He took off his sunglasses. Saw she was wearing a beige, double-breasted jacket, high-styled, made of linen or fine cotton, moving down a line of skid-row derelicts, touching them. He had posed with girls in designer jeans-but this was a nun wearing pressed Calvins, a straw bag hanging from her shoulder, long slim legs that seemed longer in plain tan heels. Across the room in a bare, whitewashed soup kitchen-look at that. Touching them, touching their arms beneath layers of clothes they lived in, taking their hands in hers, talking to them…
She came over with calm eyes to take his clean hand and he said, “Sister? Jack Delaney. I’m with Mullen’s.” And was surprised again to feel calluses that didn’t go with the stylish look.
Though her face did. Her face startled him. The slender, delicate nose, dark hair brushed back though it lay on her forehead, deep blue eyes looking up at him. She was small up close and now that surprised him; only about five three, he decided, without the heels. She said, “Lucy Nichols, Jack. I’m ready if you are.”
The derelicts outside told her not to go with him. Stay outta that thing, Sister. That’s a one-way ride, Sister. Hey, Sister, you looking good. She smiled at them, put a hand on her hip, and let her shoulders go slack, like a fashion model. “Not bad, uh? You like it?” She stopped to look over the hearse, then at Jack, and said, “You know what? I’ve always wanted to drive one of these.”
She blew the horn pulling away and the bums sunning themselves on Camp Street waved.
“You can handle it all right?”
“This is a pleasure. I used to drive a ton-and-a-half truck with broken springs. Last month, when we had to leave in a hurry, I managed to buy a Volkswagen in León and drove it all the way to Cozumel. That was a trip.”
Jack had to think a minute. But it didn’t do any good. “You drove from where?”
“From León, in Nicaragua, through Honduras to Guatemala. We wore what passed for habits and had papers saying we were going to the Maryknoll language school in Huehuetenango. Then we had to scrounge more papers to get us into Mexico. After that it was fairly easy, from Cozumel to New Orleans and then to Carville. We could have flown out of Managua to Mexico City, but it seemed risky at the time, waiting around the airport. That feeling you shouldn’t be standing still. My one concern was to get Amelita out of there, fast, and continue her therapy. You know she’s the one we’re picking up.”
Jack said, “Oh.” The one they were picking up. Kind of an offhand way to refer to the deceased. But that was the name Leo had written down, Amelita Sosa. He wondered if Sister Lucy thought he knew more about her than he did. What she’d been doing down there. He wondered what she did with the VW, if she sold it. It was like coming in in the middle of a conversation. He didn’t want to sound dumb. He said, “You go around Lee Circle to get on the interstate. Take it all the way to the Saint Gabriel exit. You get tired, just let me know.”
She said, “You don’t know how much I appreciate what you’re doing.”
He kept quiet. What was he doing? His job. Then wondered if Leo had told them there’d be no charge. He couldn’t imagine it. Then looked out the window, trying to think of nun-related things to talk about.
“I had sisters all the way through grade school.”
She said, “You did?”
“At Incarnate Word. Then I went to Jesuit High.” Hearing himself it sounded like he was still going there. “I went to Tulane one year, but I didn’t know what to take, I mean that would help me. So I left.”
She said, “I did the same thing. Spent a year at Newcomb.”
“Is that right?” He felt a little better.
“Before that I went to the Convent, Sacred Heart.”
Jack said, “Yeah, I knew some girls that went there, but they would’ve been before your time. Well, there was one. Did you happen to know a Maureen Mullen?”
“I don’t think so.”
“She got out in, let’s see, ’70.”
Sister Lucy didn’t say when she got out.
He guessed she was somewhere in her late twenties, not more than thirty. Younger than Maureen.
“I almost married her. Maureen Mullen.”
“You did?”
“But, I don’t know. Everybody expected it, our families. I guess I felt pressured. Or didn’t care for what I saw, looking into the future. So I made a run for it.”
She looked at him and smiled. Then looked at the road again as she said, “It almost happened to me, too, the same kind of situation. I was at my own engagement party when I woke up.”
“Is that right?”
“My family and his wanted to set the date.”
“You felt pressured?”