Underworld

"Sisters, look," he says.

They see a little kid, Juano, seated on a stationary bike pedaling frantically. The bike is linked to a World War II generator that Ismael got cheap at an armory liquidation. The generator is throbbing in the basement and there are cables ru

Gracie is delighted and sits with the graffiti crew, eight or nine kids, watching the stock market cha

Ismael says, "What do you think? I did okay? This is just a start-up. I got things I'm pla

Edgar disapproves of course. This is her mission, to disapprove. One of the stern mercies of the Wall, a place unlinked to the usual services, is that TV has not been available. Now here it is, suddenly. You touch a button and all the things concealed from you for centuries come flying into the remotest room. It's an epidemic of seeing. No conceivable recess goes unsca

Ismael says, "I'm pla

On the screen an image flicks and jumps. It is a man's discoid head, a fellow in a white shirt with blue collar, or blue shirt with white collar-there is a fairly frequent color shift. He is talking about the big board composite while numbers and letters flow in two bands across the bottom of the screen, a blue band and a white band, and the crew sits watching and the kid on the bike is bent and pedaling, a furious pumping boy, and the names and prices flow in two different directions with active issues blinking.

Ismael says, "Some people have a personal god, okay. I'm looking to get a personal computer. What's the difference, right?"

Ismael likes to tease the nuns. Edgar watches him carefully. She admires the graffiti wall, the angels arrayed row after row, blue for boys, pink for girls, but she is wary of the man who runs the project and she tries to understand the disappointment she feels, seeing Ismael in good spirits and evidently healthy.

Does Sister want him to be deathly ill? Does she think he ought to be punished for being homosexual?

Everybody's watching TV except for her. She's watching Ismael. No pallor or weight loss or lesions or other visible symptoms. The only thing he shows is a snaggle smile from out of his history of dental neglect.

Why does she want to see him suffer? Isn't he one of the affirmative forces in the Wall, earning money with his salvage business, using it more or less altruistically, teaching his crew of stray kids, abandoned some of them, pregnant one or two, runaways, throwaways-giving them a sense of responsibility and self-worth? And doesn't he help the nuns feed the hungry?

She studies him for marks, for early signs of incapacity. Then she steals a look out the window, hoping to glimpse the elusive girl. Sister has seen her a number of times from this window, almost always ru

Two of the charismatics come in to watch TV These are people from the top floor, operating the only church in the Wall, a congregation of pentecostals seeking to receive the gift of the Spirit, laying on hands, shouting out words, prophesying-the whole rocking socking package that makes Edgar want to run and hide.

Of course they look at her a little sideways too.

Ismael appoints four members of the crew to go with the nuns and distribute food in the area. But the crew is rooted right now. They urge Juano to pedal faster because this is the only way to change cha

They're saying, "Go, man, fasta, fasta."

The bicycle boy bends and pumps and the picture wavers briefly but then springs back to the round a

They're saying, "Fasta, fasta, you the man."

The boy cranks and strains, bouncing on the seat, but the numbers keep flowing across the screen. Electronics slightly up, transports down, industrials more or less unchanged.

Three weeks later Edgar sits in the van and watches her partner emerge from the red brick convent-rolling gait, short legs and squarish body. Gracie's face is averted as she edges around the front of the vehicle and opens the door on the driver's side.

She gets in and grips the wheel, looking straight ahead.

"I got a call from the precinct near the Wall."

Then she reaches for the door and shuts it. She grips the wheel again.

"Somebody raped Esmeralda and threw her off a roof."

She starts the engine.

"I'm sitting here thinking, Who do I kill?"

She looks at Edgar briefly, then puts the van in gear.

"Because this is the only question I can ask myself without giving in to despair."

They drive south through local streets, the tenement brick smoked mellow in morning light. Did Edgar know this would happen? Lately, yes, a knowing in her bones. She feels the weather of Grade's rage and pain. In recent days she'd approached the girl, Gracie had, and talked to her from a distance, and thrown a bag of food and clothing into the pokeweed where Esmeralda stood. They ride all the way in silence with the older nun mind-reciting questions and answers from the Baltimore Catechism. The strength of these exercises, which are a form of perdurable prayer, rests in the voices that accompany hers, children responding through the decades, syllable-crisp, a panpipe reply that is the lucid music of her life. Question and answer. What deeper dialogue might right minds devise? She reaches her hand across to Grade's on the wheel and keeps it there for a digital tick on the dashboard clock. Who made us? God made us. Those clear-eyed faces so believing. Who is God? God is the Supreme Being who made all things. She feels tired in her arms. Her arms are heavy and dead and she gets all the way to Lesson 12 when the projects appear at the rim of the sky, upper windows white with sunplay against the broad dark face of beaten stone.

When Gracie finally speaks she says, "It's still there."

"What's still there?"

"That knocking in the engine. Hear it? Hear it?"

"I don't hear a thing."

"Ku-ku. Ku-ku."

Then she drives the van down past the projects toward the painted wall.

When they get there the angel is already sprayed in place. A winged figure in a pink sweatshirt and pink and aqua pants and a pair of white Nike Air Jordans with the logo prominent-she was a ru