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Show Acting Alone Page 358 Most of the other nuns seemed to have been congregated in the cafeteria, at a party or ritual of some strange description. Axelrad had heard incongruous, ugly, hybrid rock/pop sounds screeching out of the old frame building, sounding like a revivalist meeting; but the back of his mind hadn't till now taken the time to wonder if the Catholics might really be doing that sort of thing these days, or if he just imagined or misinterpreted those sounds. They were newly into Pentecostalism, it's true, and succumbing to the mindless, manic Southern Protestant influence more and more each decade, like some mammoth organism deteriorating from some slow nervous disorder, and - Who the fuck cares at this point? The point was, the nuns were probably by now proceeding in an orderly fashion down into their own shallow region of the tunnels, to the relative safety they could find there. Good for them. So you stick around and risk your skin for the sake of one strange old malingerer. Are you a good man, or what, Axelrad? He stole up in front of her, under cover of the intervening pew. Hoping surprise would compensate for what he freely acknowledged were his less than ominous dimensions, he jumped up and screamed in her face, "Get out, Granma! Hell fire's coming!" She stayed put. She stiffened slightly, as though she'd been expecting him; but she neither moved nor broke the rhythm of her solitary prayer. She didn't even look at him. The yellowish-grey hag stayed steadfast, as though some ancient, awful obligation had riveted her knees to the bare chapel floor. Even the sirens had not budged her, so how mere Axelrad? |