"That's a good question, Nicodemus."

"What did you call me?"

"Nothing bad. Come over here by me."

But she keeps standing, hands on her hips.

"Why don't you go to the fellowship meeting with me tonight? The children are going."

"I think I'll stay home. But right now-"

"I know exactly what you're going to do."

"What?"

"Have five big drinks and watch another stupid rerun of Barnaby Jones."

"That's so. But for now, why not come over here by me? You're a very good-looking piece."

She sighs, but takes her hands off her hips, holds them palms up, looks up to heaven: what to do? Actually she's quite content to have it so, as am I.

"Come by me."

"All right." She sighs again, comes by me-a wife's duty- then smiles.

We get along well. It is my practice which is shot.

11. HUDEEN KEEPS WELL, still reigns, seated on her high stool, in her tiny kingdom bounded by sink, stove, fridge, counter, and stereo-V.

She still keeps an eye on the soaps, mumbles amiably in a semblance of conversation, making sounds of assent and demurrer. But once she made herself clear.

It was Thanksgiving. Ellen had quit her bridge tour and was home for good. The children had quit Belle Ame Academy. Chandra had landed her new job as weatherperson, and even as we watched, there she was! On TV! Slapping the black Caribbean with her stick, she as black as the Caribbean.

"Bless God!" cried Hudeen, who can't believe it, a person, someone she knows, Chandra herself, up there on the magic screen. "Bless Jesus!"

"It's a good Thanksgiving, Hudeen," I said.

"And you better thank the good Lord!" cried Hudeen, clear as a bell.

"We will," said Ellen, who says a blessing indistinctly, speaking in tongues, I think.

Hudeen is not speaking in tongues. "I say bless God!" said Hudeen, looking straight at me. "Bless his holy name!"

"All right."

"You be all right too, Doctor," said Hudeen straight to me.

"I will?"

"Sho now."

"How do you know, Hudeen?"

"The good Lord will take care of you."

"Good."

12. THE LITTLE CEREMONY which was supposed to celebrate the reopening of the hospice turned out to be a fiasco.

Father Smith, who I had understood from Max to have come down from the fire tower in his right mind ready to take over St. Margaret's, behaved so strangely that even I, who knew him best, could not make head or tail of what he was saying. To the others he appeared a complete loony, or, as Leroy Ledbetter put it, crazy as a betsy bug. To make matters worse, he also managed to offend everyone, even those most disposed to help him and the hospice.

It was doubtful at first that the hospice was going to succeed, after all.

Local notables gathered to welcome the staff, a civic and ecumenical occasion, not only other priests, ministers, and a rabbi, but many of my fellow physicians both federal and local-good fellows who were ready to donate their time and services-the mayor, a representative from United Way and the Lions Club. Even our Republican congressman showed up and promised his support of legislation to divert at least some of the federal funding of the Qualitarian program to the hospice movement.

Chandra had even arranged for a NewsTeam-7 remote unit to tape the highlights for the "People and Places" segment of the six o'clock newscast. It was one of those occasions, Chandra assured me, which has "viewer appeal," like helping old folks, flying in kidneys and hearts for dying babies. Americans are very generous, especially when they can see the need in their living rooms. And NewsTeam-7 had 65 percent of the market in the viewing area.

It, the hospice, couldn't miss.

There was to be a Mass in the little chapel at St. Margaret's, a few words from Father Smith, followed by a televised tour of the facility, with perhaps short interviews with a malformed but attractive child, a spunky addled oldster, and a cheerful dying person.

It couldn't miss.

But one look at Father Smith as he comes up the aisle of the crowded chapel and I know we're in trouble.

He's carrying the chalice, but he's forgotten to put on his vestments! He's still wearing the rumpled chinos and sneakers he wore in the fire tower for months, plus a new sweatshirt. It is a cold January day.

People turn to watch, as a congregation watches a bride enter church for her wedding. I am sitting in the front row with Max. There is a stir and a murmuring at Father Smith's appearance. But it is not his clothes I notice. Something else: a certain gleam in his eye, both knowing and rapt, which I've seen before, in him and on closed wards.

The chalice is held in one hand, properly, the other hand pressed on the square pall covering, but there is something at once solemn and unserious about him, theatrical, like my daughter, Meg, playing priest.

Oh my.

Well, at least he is going to say Mass, where it's hard to get in trouble. Perhaps the friendly crowd will take his old clothes as a mark of humility, albeit eccentric-but you know what a character he is!-or maybe they'll see him as a worker-priest or a guerrilla priest.

But instead of mounting the single step to the platform of the altar, he turns around in the aisle, not two feet from me, exactly between me and Max, and faces the little crowd, which is still well disposed if somewhat puzzled.

"Jesus Christ is Lord!" he says in a new, knowledgeable, even chipper voice. Then: "Praise be to God! Blessed be his Holy Name!" A pause and then, as he looks down at the upturned faces: "I wonder if you know what you are doing here!"

Well then, I'm thinking, what he's doing is what Catholics call pious ejaculations, which are something like the Pentecostal's exclamations-Glory! and suchlike-that plus a bit of obscure priestly humor.

But no. They are uttered not as pious ejaculations but more like a fitful commentary, like a talkative person watching a movie.

All is not yet lost. Sometimes priests say a few words before Mass, especially on a special occasion like this, by way of welcome.

No one is as yet seriously discomfited.

Father Smith begins to make short utterances separated by pauses but otherwise not apparently connected, all the while holding chalice and covering pall in front of him. They, the utterances, remind me of the harangues delivered by solitary persons standing in a New York subway or in the ward where I was committed by Max and later served as attending physician.

But his remarks, though desultory and disconnected, are uttered in a calm, serious voice. During the pauses he seems to sink into thought.

"The Great Prince Satan, the Depriver, is here."

Pause.

"It is not your fault that he, the Great Prince, is here. But you must resist him."

Pause.

"I hope you know what you are doing here," he says.

Pause.

"The fellows at Fedville know what they were doing."

Pause.

The audience is trying to figure out whether the pauses are calculated, as some preachers will pause, even for long pauses, for purposes of emphasis. They listen intently, heads inclined, with even a tentative nod or two.

"True, they were getting rid of people, but they were people nobody wanted to bother with."

Pause.

"Old, young. Born, unborn."

Pause.

"But they, the doctors, were good fellows and they had their reasons.

"The reasons were quite plausible.

"I observed some of you.

"But do you know what you are doing?

"I observe a benevolent feeling here.

"There is also tenderness.

"At the bedside of some children this morning I observed you shed tears. On television.

"Do you know where tenderness leads?"

Pause.

"Tenderness leads to the gas chamber."

Pause.

"This is the feast day of my patron saint, Simeon the Stylite.

"Simeon lived atop a pillar forty feet high and six feet in diameter for twenty years.

"He mortified himself and prayed for the forgiveness of his sins and the sins of the world below him, which was particularly wicked, being mainly occupied by the Great Prince Satan.

"I don't see any sinners here.

"Everyone looks justified. No guilt here!

"Simeon came down to perform good works when his bishop asked him to, but when the bishop saw he was willing, he let him go back up.

"I'd rather be back up in the tower, but I do know what I'm doing here.

"Do you think it is for the love of God, like Simeon? I am sorry to say it is not.

"I like to talk to the patients here.

"Children and dying people do not lie.

"One need not lie to them.

"Everyone else lies.

"Look at you. Not a sinner in sight.

"No guilt here!

"The Great Prince has pulled off his masterpiece.

"These are strange times. There are now two kinds of people.

"This has never happened before.

"One are decent, tenderhearted, unbelieving, philanthropic people.

"The other are some preachers who tell the truth about the Lord but are themselves often rascals if not thieves."

During one of the pauses Chandra and the NewsTeam-7 crew turn off their lights, fold their cameras, and quietly creep out.

"What a generation! Believing thieves and decent unbelievers!

"The Great Depriver's finest hour!

"Not a guilty face here!

"Everyone here is creaming in his drawers from tenderness!"

Long pause.