(From "NEWSDAY" February 3, 1999)
By Ed Lowe

Barely on time to deliver a singing telegram (which for business identification purposes, he calls "Preppygrams"), Kerry Prep was driving south on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway four years ago, when what appeared to be a rolled-up carpet rolled violently off the roof of the car traveling in front of him. That car decelerated immediately and began easing toward the right shoulder. Prep braked and followed, his mind only having begun to sift through the information his senses had experienced and to absorb, detail-by-detail, that the rolled-up carpet actually might have been a man, and that the car in front of him had struck the man, catapulting him over the roof of the car and onto the pavement, probably killing him.

Prep slowed and then stopped his car behind the first car. He absorbed the horror of the moment and dialed 911 on his cell phone. As he was reporting the accident, he could see through the two windshields that the driver of the car in front of him was holding both hands to his head and rocking back and forth in what Prep knew could only be profound anguish. Prep decided to get out and inform the man that he had called the police, and maybe offer whatever meager emotional support he could conjure.

As he drew nearer the car, Prep saw his own reflection in its driver's side window and realized that he was dressed as a priest. He had forgotten that. The birthday party at a fruit and vegetable stand not five minutes away was for a young woman whose friends had planned to make sport of her jubilant lifestyle by presenting her with a singing telegram delivered by someone dressed as a cleric, who would first discuss with her the need for moderation in her pleasures and suggest that she pay some balancing attention to the liturgies of her more innocent, younger days. The idea was very amusing, until now.

Prep felt trapped. He could not turn back or hide, but he felt he could not approach the man and launch into an explanation of his own appearance as merely a party gag.  He would have to play the role for which his costume was designed. He glanced again at the body of the man on the road and winced.

He could do this, he thought. He was, after all, a trained actor. He had been acting in plays since ninth grade, when, as a Walt Whitman High School student, he auditioned for and won a role in a play at Holy Family Diocesan High School (now St. Anthony's) across the street from where he was raised in South Huntington. He had majored in theater at Adelphi University, played parts in local and New York theater and in daytime television soap operas.

The son of an Irish Catholic and a Russian Jew, Prep had married in the Episcopalian church, become a Buddhist for a while, and finally joined the Unitarian Universalist Church in Huntington. Now, he would play a priest in a real-life drama.

He knocked on the window of the car. When the driver rolled it down, Prep gently placed a hand on the man's shoulder. He told the driver to take it easy and said that he had already called the police emergency  number. "There's nothing more that you can do," he said.

"He's dead, isn't he?" asked the disconsolate driver.

"Yes," said Prep, guessing correctly.

"Don't you think you should give him last rites?"

Prep swallowed. He nodded, patted the man's shoulder and walked over to the body. He heard sirens from  rapidly approaching police and emergency vehicles. He fingered a religious medal that he wore whenever he donned the priest costume. It actually had been blessed by Pope Paul VI, which gave a vague legitimacy to what fakery Prep was about to perpetuate. Prep had gotten the medal in 1973 or '74, when, during an Easter recess, he had traveled to Rome with his theater teacher and mentor, Charlie Clute and a group of students from Holy Family High School.

He knelt over the lifeless man, who turned out to have been homeless, and wished aloud that somebody as powerful and as merciful as possible would take good care of his spirit. Worrying all the while that the arriving police might arrest him for his impersonation, he touched the medal to the man's forehead, and he made the sign of the cross.

A police officer approached and asked Prep what had happened. Prep said, "You'll want to talk to this man in the car in front of mine. But, listen. Can I speak to you for a minute?" The officer nodded.
"I have a confession to make", Prep said. The officer's eyes widened, perhaps realizing the absurdity of this sudden role reversal. "I'm not a priest." He could see the cop swallow and stare at him with incredulity and confusion.

Prep quickly explained who he was. "The guy needed comforting, " Prep said. "I don't know what you do in terms of last rites for somebody,  but whatever arrangements you usually make, make them, because I'm not the real thing."

"Yeah?" the officer said. "Well, I think you did just fine."