7. MY TWO OLD FRIENDS, ex-Jesuit Kev Kevin and ex Maryknoller Debbie Boudreaux, who had long since abandoned belief in God, Jesus, the Devil, the Church, and suchlike in favor of belief in community, relevance, growth, and interpersonal relations, have now abandoned these beliefs as well.

They went their separate ways.

Debbie works quietly as full-time bookkeeper at her father’s new Nissan agency in Thibodaux.

Kev has given up writing political tracts and now writes commercially successful paperback novels about nuns and ex-nuns, priests and ex-priests who engage in a variety of political and sexual activities, both heterosexual and homosexual, gay and lesbian, Marxist and Fascist.

We remain friends. They are in fact quite solicitous of me and my troubles. They call regularly. In turn I call on them to help me out at the hospice. I need them. They are good. They willingly volunteer and often spend a day with me in the AIDS wing or the Alzheimer’s pavilion. All you have to do, I discover, is ask people. They do it because they’re generous and, I think, a bit lonely. I work with them because I need their help and I’ve nothing better to do. In return, I give them couple’s counseling, no charge. They might get back together.