Lawyers, Nuns & Money, Part III: Houses of the Holy

"Mr. Bloomsday?" A voice from behind interrupts his spontaneous cinematography. He turns from the cemetery behind St. Ruth's to find Sister Beatrice or Bernice approaching with a curious smile.

"Oh, good morning, Sister..." He pauses, unsure of which nun he's talking to.

"It's Bernice," she says.

"Yes, well you and your sister look so much alike, I can never..."

"It's perfectly fine. We're as identical as they come, except I don't have webbed feet."  She sees my shock, and reassures me that she's kidding. "An old joke between me and Bea," she says. "I'm happy to see you. Out for a run?"

"I jog through the grounds regularly to short cut down to the river valley, and the cemetery and statues put me in a peaceful frame of mind."  That and the shuffled Led Zeppelin soundtrack in my ears, he thinks to say but doesn't.  A few minutes earlier, he had been, in fact, intent on a longer and less muddy route to the valley's jogging path, but Houses of the Holy started playing as he approached St. Ruth's, and he felt strangely compelled to modify his course.  Guilty, perhaps. He hadn't packed the kids up for church in weeks.

"I trust you heard the wonderful news about the little girl we though was murdered, but wasn't?" she asks.

"Yes. A remarkable story. You know, if you hadn't gone to consecrate the landfill where you thought she had been dumped, I suppose her reunion with her family would never have happened," he says.

"And if you hadn't so graciously driven us there, we'd have never consecrated the landfill.  Funny how things like that unfold, traced back to the prime mover."

"Primum movens," Bloomsday offers.

"Aristotle by way of  St. Thomas of Aquinas," she says. "A perfectly acceptable detour. Enjoy your run, Mr. Bloomsday."

A perfectly acceptable detour, indeed, he surmises as he heads into the valley, Page and Plant blaring in his ears.