The Sixth Station(29)

“No.”

“What choice do you have? You can trust me, or you can stay there until you get older than the wine.”

“Not funny.”

“But I think you have more important things to do.”

“What?”

“Alessandra, Alessandra, Alessandra,” he said more like a frustrated dad than a frustrated father. “Haven’t you started to figure anything out yet? Me? I think you’re the one who gets to tell the story.…”

“I don’t know what you mean!” I looked at him, one hand held out like a lifeline, while in the other he held a gun that could end my life.

When I didn’t move, he raised the hand with the gun, as I let out a groan. “Oh, God…”

“Here,” he said. “Take it.”

Was he going to fire the instant I grabbed the gun? Self-defense and all that? With no choice, I took the gun from him. Just like that.

He took my free hand. “Come on now, we don’t have much time.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. Time? As of that morning, I either had too much time or none at all. I slipped the gun into my red bag and held on to his hand. Crazy? Definitely.

We walked through the church’s tunnel once more, came up the opposite stairs, and emerged into the same area we’d walked through the night before. School was not in session. The crowds made it too dangerous.

Sadowski and I walked through the play area, filled with the overflow crowd avoiding the construction site, onto Forty-eighth Street.

How can life go on normally when everything in yours is in upheaval?

For now we were just two clerics walking through. There was a full contingent of guards at the Libya House across the street where Gadhafi used to stay when he gave his rants at the United Nations.

If I’d thought that a press pass helped in parting the crowds, it was nothing compared to a nun’s habit. Nobody messed with the sisters. The sea of humans parted like the Red Sea before Moses. Sadowski chuckled at my reaction. I was starting to trust him again.

“There are some advantages to a life of celibacy,” he yelled above the noise of the protesters.

We managed to turn onto Second Avenue, push through the walls of people, and finally make it to Grand Central. There were police posted at every entrance. I boldly pushed forward and stood on the line to get in.

“Ah, you can’t pass through the metal detectors,” Sadowski reminded me. “The gun?”

“Oh. What now?”

I felt him reach into my bag and slip the gun out and under his cassock.

“How will you get on the subway with the gun?” I asked.

“Clearly, I won’t. You’re on your own. The parking garage is West 125th Street between Adam Clayton and Malcolm X. You can’t miss it. Well, you could, but most people wouldn’t.” He handed me a key and said, “It’s spot number G156—self-park.”

When I was near the front of the line, the priest handed me his iPhone. “Good luck. And remember, God is on your side!” In a second he was swallowed up by the crowd—just another cleric in a city full of them. I climbed down into the belly of the station until I got to the “7” train’s dirty platform, where I peered down the tracks for an oncoming train, and then back around the platform for—what?—I didn’t really know. The “German”?

The train finally roared into the station, and hundreds of passengers rushed out as an equal number rushed back in. It was beyond “SRO,” so I planted my fat stacked heels on the floor, grabbed a pole, and held on, making sure not to curse un-nun-like at anyone who would have dared to push me. But no one did. It was the habit. In fact, two people got up to offer me their seats. I took one, I’m ashamed to say.

I switched to the “D” train at the Bryant Park station. I was a nun—not a reporter. Don’t call attention to yourself, I kept repeating like a mantra.

Again several people who’d probably gone to Catholic school offered up their seats. The fear of nuns runs deep.

I exited at 125th Street, Harlem’s busiest, where fast-food chain restaurants thrive along with the local fried-chicken joints, coffee shops, and mom-and-pop clothing shops blaring old-school funk out of their exterior speakers.

I almost cried at the real life out there that had nothing to do with the unreality that my life had become.

I walked a couple of blocks in my nun’s habit noticing how people nodded and smiled and showed the kind of respect that New Yorkers just don’t give to people wearing normal clothes.

In the middle of the block, I saw the big illuminated plastic UPARKIT.COM sign mounted sideways to the building. A low-rent joint if ever I’d seen one. It would be safer to park on an abandoned street. Didn’t Sadowski ever watch TV? Everyone who walks into a parking garage on TV gets beaten, killed, and/or raped.