Virgin by Mary Elizabeth Murphy

of you!" Now they were laughing aloud. The brunette tried
to hold her scowl but finally a smile broke
through and its brilliance lit the room.
    "Good
morning, Sister," Dan said.
    "Good
morning, Father," she said.
    Sister Carolyn
Ferris fixed him a moment with her wide, guileless blue eyes. Her normally pale
cheeks were flushed from the heat of the stove. The rising steam had curled her
straight dark hair, cut in a bob, into loose ringlets around her face. She was
in her late twenties dressed in the shapeless, oversized work shirt and baggy
pants she favored when working at the shelter. Her lips were on the thin side,
and her teeth probably could have done with a little orthodontic work in her
teens, but she'd joined the convent at fourteen so they remained au naturel. The way her smile lit up her face erased all memory of those minor
imperfections.
    As often as
he'd seen it, Dan never tired of that smile. He'd enjoyed it in all its
permutations, and sometimes he'd catch a hint of sadness there, a deeply hidden
hurt that clouded her eyes in unguarded moments. But only for a moment.
    Sister Carrie
was the sun and the Lower East Side her world; she shone on it daily.
    But for all her
gentle, giving girlish exterior, she was tough inside. Especially when it came
to her beliefs, whether religious or dietary. No meat was served at the
shelter--"We won't be killing one of God's creatures to feed another, at
least not as long as I'm in the kitchen"--- which was just as well because
the food dollars stretched considerably further with the Sister Carrie menu.
    And Dan, who'd always been pretty much of a beer-and-a-burger man
himself, had to admit that he'd got out of the meat habit under her tutelage
and no longer missed it. At least not too much.
    "Sorry I'm
late," he said. "What needs to be done?"
    "Our
guests should be getting low on bread by now."
    She always
called them "our guests," and Dan never failed to be charmed by it.
    "Consider
it done."
    She smiled that
smile and turned back to the stove. Shaking off the lingering aftereffect, Dan
gathered up half a dozen loaves and carried them out to the shelter area.
    A different mix
of odors greeted him in the Big Room. Split-pea and fresh-baked bread aromas
layered the air, spiced with the sting of cigarette smoke and the pungency of
unwashed bodies swathed in unwashed clothes.
    Dan squeezed
past Hilda Larsen's doubly ample middle-aged rump and dumped the loaves on one
of the long tables lined up against the inner wall as the serving area.
    "Good
afternoon, Father," she said, smiling as she stirred the soup with her
long, curved ladle.
    "Hello,
Hilda. You look ravishing as usual today."
    "Oh,
Father Dan," she said, blushing.
    Thank God for
volunteers like Hilda, Dan thought as he picked up the bread knife and began
cutting the loaves into inch-thick slices.
    A small army of
good-hearted folks donated enough hours here at the shelter to qualify as
part-time employees. Most of them were women with working husbands and empty
nests who'd transferred the nurturing drive from their now grown and
independent children to the habitue's of Loaves and Fishes. Dan realized that
the kitchen filled a void in their lives and
that they probably got as much as they gave, but that didn't make him any less
appreciative. Loaves and Fishes would never have got off the ground without
them.
    "Could
youse hand me wunna dose, Fadda?"
    Dan looked up.
A thin, bearded man in his forties with red-rimmed eyes and a withered right
arm held a bowl of soup in his good hand. His breath stank of cheap wine.
    "Sure
thing, Lefty."
    Dan perched a
good thick slice on the edge of the bowl.
    "Tanks a
lot, Fadda. Yer a prince."
    Looked as if
Lefty had got into the Mad Dog early today. Dan watched him weave toward one of
the tables, praying he wouldn't drop the bowl. He didn't.
    "Hey,
Pilot," said the next man in line.
    Rider in his
suede jacket. At least it had been suede in the sixties; now the small sections
visible through