“I refused to allow the force per unit my studies exacted on my expendable brainpower to interfere with making up for all the sex I missed not being around in the sixties,” Kip Dynamite would pontificate. He often said stupid things like that, more often than required. Dynamite was a tall, undernourished-looking slob with bloodshot eyes, a red, runny nose, and a horsey face. Kip wasn’t fully awake at the time of Theresa Mendavey’s outburst. He had gotten himself really blitzed the night before at a family bar mitzvah.

“Good-bye, Kip,” said Theresa.

“What? Wait!” said Kip Dynamite. “What are you doing?”

“I’m leaving you,” explained Theresa Mendavey, stuffing her shoulder pack with the few possessions she had. “I’m finished wasting my precious youth with the likes of you, Gorchick.”

“My name’s Dynamite,” whined the junkie, “and I’m your boyfriend.”

“Were. Past tense,” said Theresa Mendavey, wondering how she ever allowed someone like Allan Gorchick to become her boyfriend.

Theresa Mendavey’s slide into serious decadence had begun picking up steam when she’d ridden off into the sunset sitting on the back of Andrew Jackson Brown’s “big ol’ hog.” Andrew’s mighty Harley took Theresa Mendavey from her home and family, leaving Theresa’s mother sobbing at her kitchen sink.

Anyway, Andrew Jackson Brown got on Theresa Mendavey’s nerves almost as fast as the standard poodle had her mother’s. The constant Harley this and Harley that. And all his stupid buddies with their imbecilic macho T-shirts and asinine conversations. Jesus Christ Almighty. What a bunch of lowlife, blowhard dickheads. Theresa couldn’t wait to get away from Andrew Jackson Brown, Andrew’s motorcycles, Andrew’s gang, and Andrew’s LA.

“So what are you going to do?” asked Kip, ripe with really bad body odor.

“I’m going back to school,” said Theresa.

“Good for you,” he said with a big smile. Kip Dynamite may have been a foul-smelling loon bird, but he was nice. “What do you want to be, T?”

“A brain surgeon.”

Home from Italy, Father Brady appeared somewhat distracted. He tended to forget things, lose track of conversations. His mind wandered.

“Still in a tizzy from all the wonders of the Eternal City, I suppose,” said the cardinal.

“Yes, Your Eminence,” replied Father Brady.

The cardinal must have been correct. The wonders of Rome obviously had caused Father Brady’s confusion, as the priest, over time, seemed less and less unhinged. After a few months, Father Brady became his former conscientious self and the cardinal breathed a sigh of relief.

And then one evening, more than a year after he had returned to Philadelphia, Father Brady was hearing confessions. A woman, speaking in Italian, said, “Father, I have fornicated with a priest.”

“Dóve?” Where? asked Brady, his heart suddenly pounding in his chest. He knew that raspy voice.

“In Rome,” replied the woman.

“In Rome!” repeated Father Brady.

“Yes, in Rome,” said the woman. “I have had your child, Father. She is a beautiful little girl. She is sitting on my lap.”