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he doesn’t take it”—she lifted the puppy’s ear, peered in—“chances are this little fella’ll be put up for adoption. But it’s hard. To find them a home. Pit bulls. More often than not?” She looked at Bob. “More often than not, they’re put down.”
    Bob felt a wave of sadness roll out from her that immediately shamed him. He didn’t know how, but he’d caused pain. He’d put some out into the world. He’d let this girl down. “I . . .” he started. “It’s just . . .”
    She glanced up at him. “I’m sorry?”
    Bob looked at the puppy. Its eyes were droopy from a long day in a barrel and whoever gave it that wound. It had stopped shivering, though.
    “You can take it,” Bob said. “You used to work there, like you said. You—”
    She shook her head. “I can’t even take care of myself.” She shook her head again. “And I work too much. Crazy hours, too. Unpredictable.”
    “Can you give me ’til Sunday morning?” Bob wasn’t sure how it was the words left his mouth, since he couldn’t remember formulating them or even thinking them.
    The girl eyed him carefully. “You’re not just saying it? ’Cause, I shit you not, he ain’t picked up by Sunday noon, he’s back out that door.”
    “Sunday, then.” Bob said the words with a conviction he actually felt. “Sunday definitely.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Yeah.” Bob felt crazed. He felt light as a communion wafer. “Yeah.”

CHAPTER 2
Infinite
    T HE DAILY 7:00 AM mass at Saint Dominic’s hadn’t drawn a crowd since before Bob was born. But now the numbers, always grim, dwindled by the month.
    The morning after he found the dog, he could hear the hem of Father Regan’s cassock brush the marble floor of the altar from the tenth row. The only people in attendance that morning—a bitter one, to be sure, black ice all over the streets, wind so cold you could nearly see it—were Bob; Widow Malone; Theresa Coe, once the principal of Saint Dom’s School, when there was a Saint Dom’s School; Old Man Williams; and the Puerto Rican cop, whose name, Bob was pretty sure, was Torres.
    Torres didn’t look like a cop—his eyes were kind, sometimes even playful—so it could be surprising to notice the holster on his hip when he turned into his pew after Communion. Bob, himself, never took Communion, a fact not lost on Father Regan, who’d tried several times to convince him that the damage done by not taking the Eucharist, if he were, in fact, in a state of mortal sin, was far worse, in the good priest’s opinion, than the damage that could be wrought by partaking of the sacrament. Bob, however, had been raised old school Catholic, back when you heard a lot about Limbo and even more about Purgatory, back when nuns reigned with punitive rulers. So even though Bob, theologically speaking, leaned left on most Church teachings, he remained a traditionalist.
    Saint Dom’s was an older church. Dated back to the late 1800s. A beautiful building—dark mahogany and off-white marble, towering stained glass windows dedicated to various sad-eyed saints. It looked the way a church should look. The newer churches—Bob didn’t know what to do with them. The pews were too blond, the skylights too numerous. They made him feel like he was there to revel in his life, not ruminate on his sins.
    But in an old church, a church of mahogany and marble and dark wainscoting, a church of quiet majesty and implacable history, he could properly reflect on both his hopes and his transgressions.
    The other parishioners lined up to receive the host while Bob remained kneeling in his pew. There was no one around him. He was an island.
    The cop Torres was up there now, a good-looking guy in his early forties, going a bit doughy. He took the host on his tongue, not in a cupped palm. A traditionalist too.
    He turned, blessing himself, and his eyes skipped across Bob’s before he reached his pew.
    “All rise.”
    Bob blessed himself and stood. He lifted the kneeler