Scene One: The Church.

His face beams; short, dark, an angelic sixty year old, the star of the show in the small choir in front of the small congregation in the large church that was built for hundreds. It would probably fit a thousand. The short angelic man has dark hair greying at the ends, and expressively reverent hands, like a French silent comic who has washed his face paint off. He sings in a quavering alto. The Lord’s Prayer is the highlight of his day, or maybe the moment he takes communion. You can see it on his transcendent face.

He’s in everything. He runs around with the collection basket on a long stick that comically looks like a butterfly net. He shuts the church after mass. One year before the Easter vigil he tried to light the brazier, but overloaded it with some kind of incendiary or propellant, like an over-enthusiastic Holy Spirit, and nearly set some hovering parishioners on fire. The white-light glare lit their gathered, aging faces in a two-second photographic capture of surprise turning to shocked fright.