Back in the here and now, Jude's memories are interrupted by a call from Devil Eunice, who is feeling whimsical enough to tell Sister Jude that it's her conscience calling. Jude asks Eunice what she's done. Eunice is like, "Ohhhh, more like what did YOU do?" She tells Jude what she already knows: that the hotel room has been decked out with paraphernalia from a 15-year-old hit-and-run case. Sister Jude asks how she knew and Devil Eunice replies that she knows everything. "I was in your head, remember?" Jude does remember: that boy with the devil inside him, how the demon was cast out and Sister Mary Eunice was knocked flat on her back. On the phone, Eunice suggests Sister Jude start running now. Though, she muses, how far does she think she can even go. Instead, she's left a bottle of "Kentucky something-or-other" and a razor blade on the nightstand. You know, in case Judy feels particularly enterprising.

Judy considers the razor. She heads out to a diner, excuses herself to the ladies' room and imagines slicing deep up her arms, her blood gushing out. She imagines herself dying alone in that cramped room on that dirty floor. She doesn't though, thank God. There are prettier ways to die, for one. She returns to her booth at the diner, only to find the Dark Bird of America there waiting for her. Surprisingly (or not surprisingly?) Judy greets her like an old adversary. "You jumped the gun again," Jude tells her. "It was a passing thought. Nothing but a passing thought." They proceed to have a captivating conversation about all the times the Angel has visited her. Jude calls herself the little girl who cried wolf. The Angel says her "song" was more piercing and plaintive this time. Jude, crying, wonders what was so different than the first time, when her fiancé left her after he'd given her syphilis and left her barren and despairing. All she ever wanted was a family of her own, she says. "Why didn't I die that night?" The Angel tells her she was still young and holding on to hope. And the night she ran over that little girl? "That was the night God revealed his plan for you," the Angel says. He gave her a calling. Jude despairs that He's now taken that calling away. She figures He figured out that she never quite rose to His challenge. She calls herself a drunken whore and a murderer. Hey now! Only Devil Eunice gets to talk to you like that! She takes a swig of her bourbon as the Angel tells her she deserves some peace, a peace befitting her "extraordinary tireless efforts to find meaning in this life." Okay, true. She's also exhibited extraordinary tireless efforts to inflict pain and torture on her patients. That too. The Angel wonders how Jude plans to ride out the long, cold winters, subsisting on crackers and coffee and bourbon. "Peace is so close, sister." Okay, this seems like proselytizing. No fair for Death to go for the hard sell. Alas, Jude tells her she's ready. She just has to do one last thing. Over by the counter, two waitresses look over at Jude, dining alone, and cluck sympathetically: maybe they should call Briarcliff. At least there she could get a bed for the night. Aw. Maybe Jude can subsist on coffee, crackers, whiskey and irony.