Tuesday, Oct. 8

     I see by your file that you're a priest."  Felice Rosano, R.N., was about 50, silver-haired, tired looking.
     "Yes, I am."
     "Your HIV antibody test came back positive, Father.  Now, that doesn't mean that you have or will develop AIDS, only that you've been exposed to the AIDS virus.  Do you understand that?"
 Rom sat shaking on the metal folding chair.  He felt faint.  "I understand."  His own words sounded hollow, far away.
     "With your permission, we'll take another sample and retest to eliminate lab error, OK?  Are you alright, Father?"
     "Not really.   I'm, I'm wondering how this can have happened."
     "I understand how you're feeling," she said, preparing the blood sample kit.  "We're finding out that incubation can stretch as long as 10 or 12 years.  Did you have sex or share a needle with anyone since 1979, Father?"  She eyed him levelly.
     "Sex, yes.  With women."
     She reached for his arm and slid his sweater sleeve up.  She quickly tied off his arm with a thin rubber hose and swabbed a spot over his vein with something cold and brown.  She put on a pair of latex gloves.  "Did you know every single woman well?  Whom she had slept with?  Can you swear none of them shared a needle with anyone?"  She removed a syringe from a sterile package.  "Do you visit AIDS patients?"
     "Yes, many.  We have an outreach program."
     "Outside chance of infection through a cut on your finger.  Did you shake hands?"
     "Yes, always."
     "Where there's a virus, there's a way to catch it, Father.  So don't start beating yourself up."
     "What if this one comes back positive?"
     She inserted the needle.  Rom didn't feel it.  "No need to panic. You may
never develop symptoms.  But you'll need to take special care of yourself and get set up with blood count monitoring and so on.  Naturally you'll refrain from having unsafe sex with anyone.  Sorry, Father, I have to say that."  She smiled professionally.
     "I've, uh, been following the medical news, of course, but is there anything, you know, lately, that will help?"
     "No cure, no, but there are some promising treatments.  But let's not worry about that yet, OK?"  She covered the puncture with a little cotton ball, withdrew the needle and folded his arm back to hold the cotton tight.  She transferred the blood to a vial, put the syringe tip into a red plastic box, snapped it off and discarded the remainder into another plastic box.  She carefully labeled the vial and handed Rom a duplicate tag, then removed the latex gloves.
     She gave him some literature and a business card with an AIDS counseling hotline number.  Rom, who'd only had coffee so far that morning, felt nauseous and hot, and said so.  Nurse Rosano gave him a cup of water and asked if she could call a cab for him.  Rom declined and thanked her, then found his way out through the oppressive waiting room with the nagging smell, where all eyes sized him up, read his face and walk, followed him to the door.
     He walked in a daze toward Penn Station, oblivious to the traffic and the chilly rain.  No, he thought, he didn't get this from shaking hands at the AIDS hospice.  It was the hooker in Portland.  From a blow job, and not a complete one at that.

     The three dirty aluminum, electrified cars of the 12:40 p.m. New Brunswick local started their crawl along Track 4, deep below Penn Station, New York, moving west under the massive General Post Office and out into the rain and steel and cable and grime of the switching yard.
     The train clacked past shunted rail cars, piles of lumber and rusting brake shoes, past a work crew in rain gear drinking coffee from plastic containers.  All tracks converged into two that disappeared into two tunnels that sloped under the Hudson River and emerged into the swamps of Weehawken, N.J., en route to New Brunswick, Philadelphia, Washington and points south on the old Pennsylvania Railroad line.
     In the last car, Rom Soriano sat at the window regarding the grim scenery. When the train entered the tunnel the reflection of Rom's sharply shadowed face filled the window.  He watched as the light bulbs that sped by made the shadows dance across his face.
     Death.
     He had faced it once before — had sought it out.  Had accepted it.  Wanted it.  But he had come to love life.  His faith had taught him that death was a reward, a goal.  The passage to eternal life with God, the time and place to be chosen by God Himself.  But another part of him, closer to his brain than his heart, couldn't accept what was happening now.  Something inside him was killing him.  People just didn't recover from this thing.  He had seen that in the hospice.  He would not grow old.  As the train sped out of the tunnel and slammed into the rain, Rom leaned his head against the cold window and began to sob.
     He got off at the first stop, Penn Station, Newark, with a terrific headache and took a cab back to the Colonnades, debating what, if anything, to tell Cassandra.  He entered with the keys she'd left him, then dropped them on the coffee table next to the note she'd left.  He now picked it up and read it.
      "Rom — This is close-out day (we go to press!), so I'll be at the office until we're done.  Probably not before 10 or so.  Call me if you need anything. Help yourself to anything you want (yes, anything).  LOCK UP when you go out!  XOX, S."
     Rom found some aspirin and took a shower, then brewed some coffee and drank two cups black.  For hours, as the sky darkened and the streetlights of Newark flicked on to inherit the rainy Tuesday, Rom sat before the windows, wondering how he would manage to get through the week before he'd get the retest results.  He held out little hope, and he wondered how in just a few hours his faith had turned to fatalism.  He determined not to think about it.
     Occasionally he looked back at the cigar box and considered Cassandra's offer.  He tried to remember the last time he'd smoked pot.  He thought of Maria, who rolled perfect joints.  Now he saw her face, her slender arms, her pretty, nimble hands.  His body remembered her warmth.  He stood at the windows a while, then abruptly went to the cigar box.  He sat down and clumsily rolled a joint, smiled at the soggy construction and lit the drier end with an "I Love NY" lighter from the box.
     The first lungful of the strong, spicy sinsemilla reefer came right out again in an eye-watering spasm of coughing. But a second, smaller hit stayed down, and then a third, and a pleasant buzz crawled over him.  He relaxed.  Why shouldn't he smoke whatever he wanted? What would it do — stunt his growth? Kill him?
     He went over to the radio and tuned around until he came upon a station playing the Rolling Stones' "19th Nervous Breakdown."  Rom laughed, relit the joint and sat back down in the comfortable leather chair.  A sensual gravity filled him.  His troubles moved to arm's length, and he felt released from them.  His thoughts drifted for a while in a hazy chase of tangents, and soon he nodded off.
     At about 7:30 he came to, starved.  He raided the fridge and devoured half a small salami and a pint of three-bean salad.  He felt better but decided he didn't want to face Cassandra just yet.  He pocketed the rest of the joint, tidied up and left Cassandra a note saying he would be "setting up housekeeping" in his "new digs" that night.
     He left the apartment but returned a few minutes later to make three phone calls: one to the police to report the theft of his leased Lincoln, one to the car rental company, and one for a taxi.
     The driver insisted on being paid in advance for the trip to the neighborhood Rom had specified, and as they neared N. Fifth Street, Rom's confidence in his impulsive relocation began to fade.  Darkness obliterated whatever bright spots he had struggled to find the day before.  The neighborhood looked stark, hopeless.
     Just north of Sixth Avenue, a couple blocks before Rom's destination, several cars blocked N. Fifth Street.  Already a few drivers were sounding their horns.  Impatient, Rom got out of the cab and began to walk the rest of the way.  As he passed the bottleneck he saw that a drive-by dope customer apparently had gotten into a misunderstanding with a salesman and was being pummeled by four young black men.  A fifth was trying to pull a screaming woman out of the passenger seat.
     Despite the violence and noise, Rom walked over to the car.  "Let her go!" he  yelled.  The young man stopped and looked over at Rom.  He had an Oakland Raiders cap on his head and showed two gold teeth in front.  "You a cop?" he asked.
     "No, I'm not a cop, I just — "
     Rom never finished his sentence.  From behind came a pair of fists, raining blows on Rom's head and body.  He fell to the pavement and saw stars.  He heard voices yelling.  One said, "Stick him! Stick him!"   Almost immediately someone else yelled, "Five-O!"  Rom raised his head and saw the police cruiser speeding down the street from the wrong direction.  He got to his knees.  The thugs had vanished, as had the onlookers.  The victim lay in the street writhing; the woman, whimpering, was trying to start the car.  Horns still blared.
     Suddenly a shot rang out, then another.  The police car screeched to a halt and backed up several yards, then stopped again.  Rom could hear another siren approaching.  He got up and walked painfully back down Fifth Street, past the taxi, and around the block.  From windows, from cars and darkened porches, he felt eyes followed him.
     He went around the block and up Fourth Street, and in a few minutes he reached the old, red-brick apartment house and climbed the stairs to the third floor.  He walked down the hall past the strange noises coming from behind closed doors.  He found the key, entered his new home and bolted the door behind him.  He went over to the window, raised it and stood there facing the dark expanse of the park, trying very hard to separate the smell of chocolate from everything else around it.