Thursday, Sept. 26, 1991

     The oceans of Wyoming parted for the six lanes of Interstate 80. The moonlight threw distant chalky mesas into sharp relief, and a smokestack rose against the night sky like a dead lighthouse.  Rev. Rom Soriano, eastbound in a rented Lincoln Town Car, was having trouble finding a good radio station.
     He'd been on the road for two days and he liked it a lot.  He drank again from the Swingin' Donuts travel mug.  The coffee was hot and sweet and the donuts — two Sugar-Slicked and a Jelly Deluxe — hit the spot.
     He felt through the pack on the seat next to him, withdrew a cassette tape and put it into the deck. As "Taxman" stumbled into its first dynamic chord he thought of the wise-ass junior who'd given him the tape as a going-away gift.  Said he'd uncovered it on a recent archeology expedition.  Rom smiled at the image of his students and friends back in Portland.  It had been a difficult parting.  The story of the hospital episode had become the press sensation of the year in the Northwest — as well as a two-page story in a trashy tabloid called Midnite Peephole —  and Rom had been besieged with offers to write his story.  Several screenplay deals were proffered.  Agents left their cards.  TV crews loitered. Rom had no- commented his way through the microphones and refused to answer inquiries.
     Nobody had faulted Rom for dispatching the gypsy.  The F.B.I. had been looking for Ziko for years, ever since Sgt. Vinnie Soriano had enlisted its help after Asbury Park.  Ziko, man of a hundred aliases, had been wanted for manslaughter, assault, larceny, fraud, kidnaping, grand theft auto and a host of misdemeanors.  On a rainy afternoon in Colma, California, a cemetery town near San Francisco where the dead outnumber the living, Gregor Ziko, an ugly human inside and out, had been buried.  His sister, who'd attacked the security guard at the hospital, had received five-to-ten years when her assorted other crimes were uncovered.  The other two gypsies involved had vanished.  As for one of them, Ziko's son — Rom was sure it was he who'd fled the hospital, and who'd helped kill Maria — they would meet again some day.  The world was becoming a very small place.

     Rom set the Lincoln's cruise control at 70 and stretched in his seat.  He drained the coffee and wished he'd bought a larger one; there was still one donut to go.  He passed a sign: Laramie 63 miles.  He could hold out.  For a while he fiddled with the sound system and thought of Cardinal McCormick.   After the hospital incident, McCormick, carrying a small portable electric typewriter,  had come to the rectory and asked Rom to take his sabbatical, scheduled for the next year, immediately, and to replace another member of  their order — who "just couldn't make it" — at  the Vatican Outreach Committee to convene in Rome in October.   The big Irishman then had handed Rom the typewriter.  "And another thing," he'd said.  "Not that it's over, but you've lived a big life.  Go somewhere and look at it, and write about it before some third-rate hack does."

     Luxuriating in the leather comfort of the Town Car and the solitude of his journey, Rom followed Interstate 80 over the Rockies and through the Midwest, with stops at the Strategic Air Command Museum near Omaha, where he'd used a roll of film taking pictures of B-52s, F-4s and other favorite vintage jets, and the National Studebaker Museum in South Bend, Indiana, whose vintage cars filled another roll .
     He picked up a hitchhiker Saturday morning near Cleveland and swung south to the Pennsylvania Turnpike to deliver the young man to Allentown.  Shortly after, he crossed the Delaware and continued across New Jersey on I-78, to Route 22, still a four-lane free-for-all, then up Route 1, past Newark Airport to Highway 21, which took a short hop over the railyards before becoming McCarter Highway and paralleling the elevated railway tracks to Newark Penn Station.
        Having endured a week of motels of varying quality, Rom splurged on an eighth-floor room at the Gateway Hilton, a modern behemoth across the street from — and connected via enclosed walkway with — Penn Station.  The window faced west toward downtown, and after the bellboy left Rom stood and looked at the sunset framed by the still-beautiful Newark skyline: the elegant old Fireman's Insurance Company building; the formal Lefcourt Building and boxy neighbor National Newark Building; the sleek Prudential monolith; off to the north, the twin white dominos of the Colonnades Apartments, and, to the northwest, the stunning Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, reigning over the green and gold dominion of Branch Brook Park.  Beyond the park, out of sight and shrouded in memory, Roseville waited.
     Rom unpacked his bag and lingered over a photograph tucked into his breviary.  When the hospital incident hit the Associated Press wire, it hadn't taken long for his old friend John Fitzgerald Lopez — who now lived in Manhattan and worked for WBLT-TV as a news cameraman —  to track down Rom at his rectory.  He'd written a long letter, enclosing a photo of himself, a comical self-portrait taken at arm's length.  It showed a  handsome Hispanic, getting thin on top, neatly trimmed beard with a touch of gray, and the top half of a Yankees sweatshirt. Posing next to him was a slightly cross-eyed, strikingly beautiful woman whom Rom recognized after a heart-stopping moment as Cassandra.  On the back of  the photo was written, in her now grown-up penmanship: "Rom — call me when you get to town!" and her phone number.
     After a superb room-service meal of prime rib and an impressive beaujolais, Rom showered and drifted off to sleep watching TV.  The next morning he rose early and attended Sunday Mass at the cathedral — an immense Gothic triumph with the twin towers set diagonally, as if to funnel the faithful into the bosom of the church — visiting afterward with Monsignor Stawarski, an 80-year-old friend of Cardinal McCormick.  The old cleric invited Rom to pray with him in the St. Stanislaus Chapel behind the main altar, tried to enlist him for Confession duty Tuesday or Saturday evenings, then brought him along to dinner at Big Stash's restaurant in Linden, 15 miles south on Route 1.   The copious quantities of kielbasa sausage and cold beer pre-empted Rom's plan to visit Roseville, and instead Rom enjoyed a nap before bedtime.
       Early Monday morning, dressed in jeans and a sweater, he caught a Jersey Transit train to Penn Station, New York, and took a cab to the offices of Archdiocese of New York on E. 91st Street to meet the senior member of his upcoming mission's delegation, an effeminate middle-aged Bostonian named Father Parisi.  After a wearisome two-hour orientation session, Parisi dismissed Rom, reminding him to report for another session the Saturday before departure for the Vatican.
     Glad to be through with the wildly meticulous cleric — who had planned the group's itinerary down to the restroom breaks — Rom left the Archdiocese office and proceeded to the Savarin Clinic on Seventh Avenue for his physical exam and inoculations.  For nearly an hour he cooled his heels in the crowded waiting room, reading months-old magazines and trying to identify an insistent, unpleasant smell.  Then a lab assistant, a lean young Hispanic with round eyeglasses, a fierce flat-top and two silver rings in his right ear, scanned Rom's marching orders, neatly typed on official Archdiocese stationery, and rather inexpertly drew two small vials of blood.
     He then removed his latex gloves, picked up a pen and looked at Rom.  "Now I have to ask these questions, Mr. Father," he said, "so don't take it personal."  The disclaimer,  Rom thought, sounded gleeful.  He then asked if Rom had shared a needle with anyone or had unprotected sexual contact with anyone.    Rom frowned and took a quick inventory.  Not counting the unfinished business behind the Portland warehouse, Rom hadn't had sex, except with himself, since Maria, and that was 11 years back. Before that, a few affairs with women, usually during private cocaine parties. A one-nighter here and there.  Nothing kinky.  No shared needles.  And he'd made it through the seminary intact, not for lack of invitations from future vicars of Christ.
     "Mr., uh, Mendez," Rom said, looking at the man's name tag,  "I don't have sex, of course, and have not had sex since becoming a priest"
     "More than 12 years?"
     "Twelve years?  Well, no, I've been a priest about seven years.  But I had sex with women before that, yes."  A twitch of annoyance crossed his face.
     Mendez read off some high-risk groups and asked if any of his partners had belonged to them.  Rom leaned forward and looked directly at him.  "Like I said, I haven't had sex with anybody lately, OK?"
     Mendez looked at him over his glasses.  "Getting defensive, are we?  Sure you don't need more time to think?"
     Rom looked at his watch.  "Let's get this over with, OK?" he said evenly.
     The young man regarded Rom and made a few hurried checks on his sheet.  "And yadda, yadda, yadda," he said.  "You're done, Mr. Father.  Inoculations down the hall, bring these with you, fill out this pink one before you go, goodbye."   He started slapping tags on vials.
     As he waited for his shots, Rom filled out the form.  At the space for "local contact phone," Rom paused a moment, then consulted the back of the photo he now carried in his wallet, and wrote in Cassandra's number.
     After his shots he left the clinic, glad to get back onto Seventh Avenue.  Morning clouds had cleared and it was a brilliant, warm day in the West Village.  He strolled down to the White Horse Tavern on Hudson Street and washed down a bacon cheeseburger with a couple pints of Bass ale.  He devoured the Daily News, giving special scrutiny to the extended weather forecast at the Jersey Shore.  He paid his bill and navigated cleanly to the PATH station on Christopher Street, where a "Hudson tube" train, as some still called them, whisked him to Newark Penn Station.  He crossed the elevated walkway into the hotel, went up to his room and packed his bag.