"Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It has been a week since my last confession."

"Go on . . . "

"Father, I . . . I'm a normal kid. I mean, guy. I'm a normal sixteen-year-old guy . . . "

Sean sighed at the quaking, cracking voice that was struggling to find words on the other side of the metal screen. "Yes, go on . . . "

"What I'm trying to say is, I have impure thoughts, Father. For this girl, who lives down the hall from me. She's beautiful, Father. She's got theseeyes that just...oh, God. I love hereyes.But–what I wanted to ask you is, is that really that bad? I mean, doesn't everyone think like that, sometimes? It's what makes us human, right?"

Sean lifted his chin from where it had been resting on clasped hands, face one of slight surprise. "Well . . . "

"I mean," the faceless youth cut in quickly, "you're a man. Just like any other guy . . . don't you have them, once in awhile? I mean I know you're a priest an' everything but . . . "

Sean's collar suddenly felt very tight. "Well . . . " he choked out, "I suppose as long . . . as long as you don't act on these impure thoughts, things will be okay." He could hear the boy make a rather satisfied sound of agreement, to which Sean was quick to cut short by intoning, "but do try and keep those impure thoughts to a minimum. They are a sin, after all."

"Oh, of course, Father. I will."

Sean shifted uncomfortably on his hard seat. "Anything else?" he asked, praying that the answer would be in the negative.

"I...stole fifteen cents from my mother's purse the other day. To go to the Nickelodeon."

Fifteen cents? Nickelodeons' only cost a nickel. Sean opened his mouth to say as much, but then snapped it shut. All he wanted, really, was to get that kid and his inappropriate questions on impure thoughts out of there. "Stealing is a sin, and what's worse is stealing from your parents, who love you and provide for you," he said flatly, then made the sign of the cross with his hand in from of the screen. "Your penance is three Hail Mary's and two Our Father's. Go in peace."

After he was positive the young man was gone, Sean burst out of the confessional gasping like a drowning man. He wiped his face and leaned against the mahogany structure. Saturday's were the worst day of the week. Hearing all those people pour their hearts out, telling Sean sins that he had no place to reprimand, having committed, or at the very least thought about committing, them in some form himself rather recently. It was on Saturdays that Sean felt most like a pretender. A liar. A fraud.

From across the pews, Father Dominic appraised his young companion with a concerned stare. "Father Sean?"

Sean's head jerked up, and he tried to look unaffected. "Yes, Father Dominic?"

"Why don't you step into my office for a moment? You look like you need to talk to someone instead of just listening."

"So," began the elderly priest as he settled himself into a chair stationed behind a desk of considerable size, "I've been worried about you lately, Sean."

Having lowered himself into a chair of his own, Sean glanced warily at his peer. "Worried, sir?"

"Yes, Sean. Worried. Tell me, is the priesthood turning out how you thought it would?" Father Dominic pressed his gnarled fingers into a steeple and appraised Sean with a relentless stare.

"I–well . . . yes, sir. Yes, it is." Father Dominic raised a bushy eyebrow at this hollow statement, and Sean sighed, knowing he was caught in the lie. He shifted uneasily in his chair and avoided the old priest's avid gaze. "No," admitted Sean finally, with a defeated sigh, "no, I guess being a priest has not turned out to be what I thought it would. Not at all. Not even close." He pressed his lips shut and waited for the reprimand to come. Instead, his comment was met with laughter. Father Dominic was shaking his head, a bemused smile lighting up his face.

Sean's mouth all but dropped open.

As the old priest glanced up and caught the expression on Sean's face, he chuckled more. "Oh, shut your mouth, boy. What did you think I was going to do, assign corporal punishment?" He leaned back, the chair squeaking in protest. "If you had said that being a priest was everything you expected, I would have been considerably more surprised. You're a young man, Sean. How old are you?"

"Twenty-eight, sir. Not so young, any more."

More laughter issued from the portly priest. "Not so young, he says! My boy, twenty-eight years of life is nothing. You'll realize that, when you're old and fat and grey, like me. Twenty-eight..." he repeated, as if he was relishing in the taste of the numbers, the feel of them on his tongue, "I was twenty-eight when I got married."

It took all the will-power Sean possessed not to fall off his chair. He stared, bug-eyed at Father Dominic, who was too busy gazing wistfully off into the distance to notice Sean's reaction. "Married, sir?" He finally managed to choke out, almost positive that he had heard wrong. Married?

"Yes, Sean. Married. To the most beautiful girl on Staten Island . . . " he paused to assess the result of his words, and was not surprised at what he saw. "Why is your jaw unhinged? Is it that shocking to imagine me married to a beautiful woman?"

Sean cracked a smile at this and shook his head. "No, no . . . I just didn't know that–"

" . . . that I had a real life before coming to the Church? That I was a real person, who loved and sinned and lived?" He glanced at his folded fingers, then back at the gaping young man across the desk. "Well, believe it, boy. And it was a good life, too. It was a great life."

"W-what happened?" ventured Sean, hesitancy coloring his voice.

It was Father Dominic's turn to avoid a stare. He turned to glance out a sunlit window. "She died."

"Oh," said Sean quietly, knowing he should drop the obviously painful subject but, pushed by his inherent street-rat curiosity, asking instead, "how?"

Father Dominic turned his usually lively brown eyes toward him, and Sean was sad to see how flat they looked now. "She was killed. Murdered. Someone burglarized our home and found her to be in the way of his plans. We had been married for three years. She was two months' pregnant." The finality of the words came though loud and clear to Sean, who commenced chewing on his lower lip.

"I-I'm sorry."

"I'm not telling you this because I want your pity, Sean. I'm telling you this because I want you to understand that you have a choice."

"Sir?"

The old man sighed. "After Theodora died, I wanted to die. I did not want a life anymore, not without her. The Church was the alternative to suicide. I threw myself into the seminary. Thankfully an old priest took me aside and talked some sense into me. He made me delay going into the priesthood for a year or so. He told me that I needed time to clear my head, to realize that life is precious and not so easily given up. 'Everyone has a choice', he told me. I needed to understand what I was leaving behind and what I was coming into." Father Dominic leaned forward, pressing his massive hands on the desktop. "He was a wise man, my old teacher."

"And did you make the right decision?"

Father Dominic considered this question for a long moment. Finally, he shrugged, saying, "I don't know for sure. I've been a priest for almostforty years, and I still don't know. I suppose I never will know. I'll never know if there was another woman out there for me to love as much as I loved Theodora. I'll never know what my life would've been like if I had found life to be to precious to leave behind. But my choices are not what I wanted to talk about."

"No?"

"No. I wanted to talk about your choices."

Sean swallowed hard, and as he met Father Dominic's imploring gaze he felt as if his heart was going to beat right through his chest and end up on the desk between them, flopping around like a caught fish. How did he do it? How did the old man know, so clearly, of the battle that was waged daily in Sean's soul? And more importantly, what was he saying about it? Panic rose in his throat like bile, and before he realized what he was doing Sean was standing up, so abruptly that he almost upset his chair in the process. Father Dominic watched his actions with a quizzical, slightly pained expression creasing his already wrinkled face. " I'm sorry, Father. I just recalled an appointment that I had this afternoon. They'll um, they'll be waiting. Thank you forthe talk, though. . . "

And then he ran. It occurred to Sean, as he did, that he had been running away a lot lately.

How easily New York pushed him back into old habits, like a coaxing mother, gently enough so he never even noticed he was right back where he began. Sean was never a confrontational person. Henever took joy in it, like the other boys did. Blink pulled out his brass knuckles. Jack preferred bare fists. Spot brandished his cane.

Sean ran.

But there was no running when Sean was asleep. He couldn't run from dreams. Even, as it seemed one rain-swollen, lightning streaked night, when he was awake.