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rain, I. can feel my roots begin to wither and my disposition sour.
    Thus, while I found my own company less than amiable, I didn't mind eating alone. Milo was busy, Vida had to go to the mall, Carla and Ginny were off somewhere together, and Leo seemed to be functioning in his own little world. As I waited for my burger basket, I thumbed through the August 23 issue of my professional pride and joy.
    “How can you put out a rag like that?” The gruff voice belonged to Nunzio Lucci.
    Looking up, I assumed he was kidding and grinned. “Hi, Luce. How's the family?”
    To my surprise, Luce seemed a bit jarred by the rhetorical question. But then he ignored it, and shook his grizzled, balding head. “You know, Emma, I expect better from you. When some dumb cluck and his fat wife go to Hawaii for a week, you guys write it up like they flew to the moon. But then comes some real news, and it doesn't even get in the paper. How come?”
    I turned a puzzled face up to Luce. “Like what? Did somebody jump off the bridge over the Sky and I missed it?”
    Without being invited, Luce wedged himself into the opposite side of the booth. “I mean last night, up at St. Mildred's. You were there—I saw you. Now if it had been Vida and her freakin' Presbyterians, it'd probably be on page one.” His brown eyes narrowed and he thrust out his heavy jaw with its hint of stubble.
    “Look, Luce,” I began, ever weary of trying to explain deadlines, “we'd already locked up the paper before the meeting. The story will be in next week's edition.”
    “Right, sure, gimme a break.” Luce folded his arms on the table and leaned forward. “You know what those damned non-Catholic yuppies are up to, don't you? They're tryin' to turn St. Mildred's into a private school.
    Get it? Not a
parochial
school—a
private
school. They don't want their precious little brats taught religion, they want 'em to learn Japanese, for God's sake! Look at the old-time parishioners like Polly Patricelli and Annie Jeanne Dupre and Marie Daley—they feel all at sea. Nothing but change, change, change these last thirty years.”
    I waved an impatient hand at Luce and almost knocked my burger basket out of Jessie Lott's grasp. “Okay, okay,” I said, with an apologetic glance for the middle-aged waitress who also happened to attend St. Mildred's. “So which changes in the school bother you most?”
    “What changes?” Jessie's plump face was suddenly anxious. “I've got grandchildren in second and fourth grade.”
    “It's nothing, Jessie,” I said in reassurance.
    “It's a big mess,” Luce declared. “Jessie, bring me turkey on white, with a side of potato salad and some dill pickles and coffee, okay?”
    Jessie, apparently feeling put in her place, wheeled heavily on her rubber-soled shoes and headed back to the kitchen. Luce sat up straight in the booth, squaring his broad shoulders. “What about that school board? Greer Something-or-Other, one of those freakin' yuppies. Buddy Bayard shows up in church when he damn well feels like it. The only real Catholic is Bill Daley, and sometimes I think the main reason he goes is to sell carpets and easy chairs from his store. A real glad-hander, that's our Bill.”
    I was sinking my teeth into my burger and wishing it were Luce's hairy arm. “So you're saying that the school board is already stacked in favor of the less-than-fervent faithful?”
    Luce looked at me as if I were the village idiot, which I was not, because at that moment Crazy Eights Neffel wandered into the Burger Barn playing a ukulele. Crazy Eights may not be an idiot, but he is definitely crazy.
    Jessie Lott and Doc Dewey, who happened to be sitting next to the door, hustled Crazy Eights out of the restaurant before he got through the first few bars of “The Frozen Logger.”
    “Look,” Luce said as Doc Dewey returned to his table and Jessie Lott picked up the coffee carafes, “that Greer yuppie is one of those antireligion types, and if they