card from heaven, I imagine, and negotiations probably went something
like this.
"Bless me, father, for I am about to sin. I plan on raping, pillaging and
disemboweling my way across Southern Europe and North Africa, taking
the Lord's name in vain, committing sodomy with all and sundry, looting
the holy places of Islam, killing women and children and animals and
leaving them in smoking heaps . . . as well, of course, as getting up to the
usual soldierly hijinks of casual eye-gougings, dismemberment, bear-
baiting and arson. Given this sinful agenda, padre, how much is this
gonna cost me?"
"That'll be a new roof for the vestry, my son, perhaps a few carpets from
down there. I understand they make a lovely carpet where you'll be goin'
. . . and shall we say fifteen percent off the top, as a tithe?"
"Deal."
"Go in peace, my son."
Adam gets right with God with every proof rack of sourdough bread he
pulls out of the oven: every crispy, crunchy, deliciously blistered pizza.
It's God's little joke on all of us. Especially me.
I've hired him three or four times, and fired and rehired him again on
countless occasions. He's in his late twenties to early thirties, I think,
though he looks older. He's of medium height, with lank black hair,
thinning at the crown. He's barrel-chested, with the huge shoulders and
upper arms of a guy who's been balling dough for years. His eyes are
brown but they look coal-black, at once menacing and pathetic, set into a
mischievous baby face whose expression can change in an instant from
huggably endearing and childlike to slaveringly insane.
To sign on Adam to your crew is to buy, for a time, the best bread I've