you were going to say before you said it and it judged those words pointless before they left your mouth.
"Loretta," Joe said, "I sell a product people enjoy so much that the Eighteenth Amendment will be overturned within the year."
"That's not true," Irv said, his jaw set.
"Or," Joe said, "it is. Either way, Prohibition is dead. They used it to keep the poor in line and it failed. They used it to make the middle class more industrious, and instead the middle class got curious. More booze was drunk in the last ten years than ever before, and that's because people wanted it and didn't want to be told they couldn't have it."
"But, Mr. Coughlin," Loretta said reasonably, "the same could be said of fornication. People want it and they don't want to be told they can't have it."
"Nor should they."
"I'm sorry?"
"Nor should they," Joe said. "If people wish to fornicate, I see no pressing reason to stop them, Miss Figgis."
"And if they wish to lie down with animals?"
"Do they?"
"I'm sorry."
"Do people wish to lie down with animals?"
"Some do. And their sickness will spread if you have your way."
"I'm afraid I don't see a correlation between drinking and fornication with animals."
"But that isn't to say there isn't a correlation."
Now she sat, hands still clasped in her lap.
"Sure it is," Joe said. "That's exactly what I said."
"But that's just your opinion."
"As some would call your belief in God."
"So you do not believe in God?"
"No, Loretta, I just don't believe in your God."
Joe looked over at Irv because he could feel the man seething, but, as always, Irv wouldn't meet his eyes, just stared at his hands, which were clasped into fists.
"Well, he believes in you," she said. "Mr. Coughlin, you will renounce your evil path. I just know it. I can see it in you. You will repent and become baptized in Jesus Christ. And you will make a great prophet. I see this as clearly as I see a sinless city on a hill, here in Tampa. And, yes, Mr. Coughlin, before you can make fun, I realize there are no hills in Tampa."
"Well, none you'd notice, even if you were driving fast."
She smiled a real smile, and it was the one he remembered from a few years ago, coming across her at the soda fountain or in the magazine section of Morin Drugstore.
Then it transformed into the sad, frozen one again, and her eyes brightened and she extended a gloved hand across the desk to him, and he shook it, thinking of the track scars it covered, as Loretta Figgis said, "I will one day spirit you off your path, Mr. Coughlin. Of that, you can be sure. I feel this to my bones."
"Just because you feel it," Joe said, "doesn't make it so."
"But that doesn't mean it isn't so."
"I'll grant you that." Joe looked up at her. "Now why can't you grant my opinions the same benefit of the doubt?"
Loretta's sad smile brightened. "Because they're wrong."
Unfortunately for Joe, Esteban, and the Pescatore Family, as Loretta's popularity rose, so did her legitimacy. After a few months, her proselytizing began to endanger the casino deal. Those who'd initially brought her up in public company had done so mostly to ridicule her or marvel at the circumstances that had brought her to her current state - all-American police chief's daughter goes to Hollywood, comes back a raving loon with track marks in her arms that yokels mistake for stigmata. But the tone of the conversation began to shift not only as the roads clogged with both cars and foot traffic on nights it was rumored Loretta would appear at a revival, but also as regular townsfolk were exposed to her. Loretta, far from hiding from the public eye, engaged it. Not just in Hyde Park but also in West Tampa, Port of Tampa, and Ybor as well, where she liked to come to purchase coffee, her one vice.
She didn't talk religion much during daylight hours. She was unfailingly polite, always quick to ask after someone's health or the health of their loved ones. She never forgot a name. And she remained, even as the hard year of her "trials," as she called them, had aged her, a strikingly beautiful woman. And beautiful in a conspicuously American way - full lips the same color as her burgundy hair, eyes honest and blue, skin as smooth and white as the sweet cream at the top of the morning milk bottle.
The fainting spells began