“In the Middle Ages, there was widespread religious persecution of non-Christians by the Catholic Church—that’s why St. Patrick’s is looking more medieval today,” Mr. Barlow proclaimed in her schoolteacher’s voice; the rise and fall of her voice had a classroom intonation, as if she hadn’t been speaking only to me. The little English teacher knew how to attract and hold an audience. In the overall disarray of the deteriorating demonstration, sundry protesters were drawn to the snowshoer’s voice; Elliot was now accusing Cardinal O’Connor, the archbishop of New York, of religious persecution. We had no hope of finding Em among the disparate elements in the protest, which was petering out. We feared that she might be one of the demonstrators who’d been arrested. It would be just like Em to be among the persecuted.

We’d tried to talk to the cops, behind their barricades—to ask them how we could find Em. “We have a friend who doesn’t speak,” the snowshoer had said to the policemen. “What will happen to her, if she was arrested? Is there a precinct where we might find her? Is there a number we can call?” Elliot had kept asking the cops. They told us to stay back, on our side of the barricades. Our worrying about Em was hypothetical to the cops. They were fixated on the actual—on what was happening then and there. The cops cared about what they could see; their focus was on the waning demonstration in front of them.

I was praying Elliot Barlow wouldn’t recite the part of the First Amendment that the Roman Catholic Church ignores, but she went ahead anyway: “ ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’ ” Those cops who’d told us to stay back were watching the little English teacher now. They couldn’t hear what the pretty Mr. Barlow had been saying, but they saw she’d found a few followers; they could see she’d attracted a motley group within the lingering mob.

Some lost-looking souls were carrying condom signs; they hovered around Mr. Barlow. I didn’t see Nora’s favorite condom poster, the one of Cardinal O’Connor’s smiling face alongside a condom twice the size of his head. KNOW YOUR SCUMBAGS, the poster said. In smaller letters, under the condom: THIS ONE PREVENTS AIDS. Nora had loved that poster, but the condom protesters who were hanging around Elliot Barlow carried tamer signs. CONDOMS NOT PRAYERS, one protest sign said. TAKE ONE AND SAVE YOUR LIFE, said another condom sign; rows of condoms were attached to this sign. God knows how long those condoms had been outside in the cold.