Watchers

Chapter 7: Blessings All Around

Father Gary greets a gathering crowd in the center of the room. They're all waiting for their blessings and the promised prayers, and some of them clamor to touch his robes as if that act alone will bring them comfort. Daniel wonders how long all of them have been here, and whether they think of Father Gary as their savior. He has clothed and fed and nurtured them, and they love him in return - that much is clear.

There's still a small crowd around Daniel, the ones who are more interested in earthly matters than spiritual ones and who are, no doubt, itching to start asking him questions about his father. The Capitol Hill Massacre was one of the worst mass killings in history, and Daniel hasn't met many people who are not gluttons for the gory details as soon as they learn his connection to it.

Sasha, on the other hand, is still standing possessively in front of her cot. She's watching Daniel, but the look in her eyes is more like curiosity about how he'll react than a thirst for macabre gossip. One thing is for sure - if he continues to stand where he is, the people around him will begin to close in, inching toward him and asking questions he doesn't want to answer.

So he walks over to Sasha and gives her a shrug and a look that he hopes will convey disinterested amusement - not quite a smile, but not as helpless as he really feels in moments like this. She smiles at him, and the small expression seems impossibly optimistic in a place like this - it lights up her whole face, brightening her caramel-colored skin and igniting something in her otherwise steely gray eyes.

She sits down on the cot and pats the spot next to her that Jane had formerly occupied. Daniel is grateful when she chooses not to acknowledge anything that Father Gary just revealed about him. She could have asked a million questions, but instead she offers him the sanctuary of her cot.

He sits down next to her and everyone who had been studying him begins to direct their attention elsewhere. They move on to Father Gary, or else wander away to resume their earlier conversations. Only a few of them linger, not looking at the two of them but straining to listen. Daniel doesn't mind this as much - there will always be listeners to any conversation, but being on the cot with Sasha has provided him with at least the illusion of privacy.

Daniel and Sasha sit quietly for a minute, until he spies Jane in the crowd surrounding Father Gary. She is waiting patiently for his attention, not pawing at him like those in the center of the circle, but Daniel can see in her eyes how desperately she wants the priest's attention, just like the rest of them.

"She's really bought into the whole 'haven and salvation' schtick, hasn't she?" Daniel asks, and Sasha shrugs.

"She's had a much harder life than me," she says. "And she's been on the street a lot longer, too. I think she just knows that it's wise to take comfort in whatever you can, while you can."

"And you?" Daniel asks.

It feels like such a prying question. He's only spoken a handful of words to Sasha, but he has gotten the impression that she's a very guarded person. Daniel prepares to be ignored or rebuffed, but instead she answers honestly.

"I don't think Father Gary and I worship the same god," she says slowly, reflecting on her words as she speaks. "But no one can live on the streets for any length of time without the belief that someone or something is looking out for them. We get to keep living in this world for a reason, even if we don't understand it. Otherwise we'd all have been dead a long time ago."

She goes quiet and Daniel wants to ask her a half-dozen follow up questions, but Sasha seems contemplative so he lets her be. They watch as Jane gets her turn with the priest, too far away to hear the prayer that they share.

Then Sasha asks, "What about you?"

Daniel says, "I don't know anymore."

The truth is that he has a hard time believing in a benevolent god after everything that has happened in the last three months, but it doesn't seem like the time or place to get into a theological argument with a girl he just met. Sasha might need her version of God just as much as Jane and the rest of them need Father Gary's, and Daniel can't bring himself to stomp all over that.

Sasha picks up his meaning anyway, observing, "But you don't buy into the 'haven and salvation' schtick."

"I don't know," Daniel says. "It would be foolish to look a gift horse in the mouth, and without this place, I'm sure I'd be on the street right now, looking for my next score. I've just never met a man of the cloth who didn't unnerve me a little bit."

Before Sasha can offer a response, Jane comes away from the crowd around Father Gary. The group has begun to dwindle and people are starting to get ready for bed - Sisters Mary and Therese are helping people get cots and blankets out of a storage room on one wall of the great room.

Sasha says quietly to Daniel, "I know what you mean."

Then Jane comes back, grinning, and Daniel gives up his place on the cot. He isn't sure whether the nuns will take note of the fact that he's left his room, or if they'll want to bring him back there, but he's determined not to go. He can't bear the thought of spending another night alone in that sick room, and he decides that he'll stay here and sleep next to Sasha and Jane.

He goes over to the storage room and grabs two more cots and three blankets, then sets them up next to the one where Jane and Sasha are sitting together. Daniel isn't sure how long he'll stay - maybe by morning he'll have built up the courage to go home and face his father - but in the meantime he finds comfort in being near Sasha.