THE EISENHOWER EXPRESSWAY IS the main escape route from Chicago to the western suburbs. Even on warm sunny days, it looks like a prison exercise yard for most of its length. Run-down houses and faceless projects line the tops of the canyons on either side of its eight lanes. L stations are planted along the median. The Eisenhower is always choked with traffic, even at three in the morning. At nine on a wet workday it was impossible.

I could feel tension tightening the cords in the back of my neck as I oozed forward. I was on an errand I did not wish to make to talk to a person I had no desire to see about the troubles of an aunt I loathed. To do so I had to spend hours stalled in traffic. And my feet were cold inside their open-toed pumps. I turned up the heat further but the little Omega didn’t respond. I curled and uncurled my toes to get the blood moving but they remained obstinately frozen.

At First Avenue the traffic eased up as the offices there sucked up most of the outbound drivers. I exited north at Mannheim and meandered through the streets, trying to follow Albert’s roughly sketched directions. It was five after ten when I finally found the priory entrance. Being late did nothing to improve my humor.

The Priory of St. Albertus Magnus included a large block of neo-Gothic buildings set to one side of a beautiful park. The architect apparently believed he had to compensate for the beauties of nature: In the misty snow the gray stone buildings loomed as ungainly shapes.

A small lettered sign identified the nearest concrete block as the House of Studies. As I drove past, a few men in long white robes were scuttling into it, hoods pulled over their faces so that they looked like medieval monks. They paid no attention to me.

As I crept slowly up the circular drive I saw a number of cars parked to one side. I left the Omega there and quickly ran to the nearest entrance. This was labelled simply ST. ALBERT ’S PRIORY.