Blind Allie 3:2

“Jesus, Allie. I’d be busting a gut right now if I had one.”

“What’s so funny, Missy?”

“Don’t you see it? You put the damn spire right between the Virgin Mary’s legs. You really should have run this one by me first before sending it all the way to fucking France.”

Allie hadn’t seen it until Missy pointed out the pointed spire’s placement, and it was far too late for her to do anything about it. She certainly hadn’t noticed it when she was putting the finishing touches on her design over a year ago. Neither had her Bible study friends, who had come up with the idea of submitting something to the project in the first place. They had told Allie that her design was a beautiful expression of her faith and of the Blessed Mother’s mercy for the obviously fashionable boneheaded worker who had nonchalantly discarded his partially smoked yet still smoking Gitanes while up in the rafters and famously set the roof on fire (they had actually used the Latin word, misericordia, because that’s the way they talked). In hindsight, she should have gotten a second opinion.

At least the archbishop appreciated her intentions. He congratulated her on her morbid wit (par for the course for a skeleton) and apologized for the delayed response in the margins of the official award letter. It all came down, he wrote, to the matter of the immense spire, which he sat on for a while before approving her honorable mention.