Thanks.

The Management

1.   Fleas naughty dog/There’s fleas on your dad

José Feliciano, Feliz Navidad

The wind, unsettled and quarrelsome among dusty Bethlehem streets, blows down broken cobblestones as two hooded figures make their way. As they hurry, the taller whispers urgently to the other, who carries a small bundle. They turn down an alley, avoiding steaming piles of dung, toward the stable hewn into the rock behind an inn.

The pair step into the stable and the taller removes a cylinder from its pocket. It bends over the small bundle and sprays something from the object. “There. Now he’s protected from the brain virus the Enforcers have infected this planet with. At least his intellect won’t be sapped, and he’ll have a better chance of surviving.”

The taller stands guard at the entrance, casting furtive glances toward the alley mouth as the other rushes inside, reappearing moments later without the burden. The two rush to the street, cross to the other side, and hurry away, pressing close to the buildings like shadows.

A glow appears in the sky in the opposite direction. The rough beasts in the stable shift and mutter restlessly. Suddenly, a burning armored figure of light screams down the street, faster than the fastest horse. It pauses briefly by the alley, inches above the earth, then tears off after the figures, leaving a hole in the wind.

Moments later, the figures cower against the side of a carpenter’s shop in the brightness. With a gesture, the entity disrobes them, revealing dark skin that quickly changes to match the sandstone of the building. A gleaming rope snakes from the glinting gauntlet and encircles the two. With a flick, the alien enforcer binds them to his back and rockets off into the sky, becoming a bright fading star above the sleeping village.

In the stable, in a manger, the bundle squirms. A curious cow nudges the covers with her nose.

Meanwhile, on the road outside of town, a poor cabinet-maker and his wife encourage their exhausted mules toward Bethlehem. They have come for the census, but have made no plans for the night. Reaching the outskirts of the village, they stop at inn after inn with no luck. So they trudge the deserted streets leading their mules, clutching their robes against the cold. They arrive at the inn by the alley and rouse the owner. Desperate, Joseph tells the man his wife is pregnant, ready to bear child. The wary innkeeper glances at Mary, but cannot make out her form in the folds of her cloak.

“Alright,” he says, “You can sleep out back in the stable. But don’t disturb my animals!”

“Bless you, sir!” croaks Joseph. “God will surely reward such kindness.”

“Bah! Begone by first light,” the innkeeper growls and slams the door.

The couple walks down the alley and enters the stable, a converted cave set into a rock face. The animal stench overwhelms them at first, being more accustomed to the dust of the carpenter’s bench. Joseph fumbles for a lantern and lights it with his flint. Mary crumples onto the hay and regards her husband.

“I told you we should have left yesterday,” she scolds.

“Enough, woman! Cease your infernal cackling. You know I had to finish the wagon for that Roman. He’d have my head otherwise.”

“Well, I just don’t know how I can sleep in such a filthy place as this! You could have sent word to your brother to expect us, at least.”

“You’re a riot, Mary . . . you’re a regular riot,” says Joseph, lowering his body to the straw. “One of these days, Mary, one of these days . . .”

“One of these days, what, Joseph? You’ll be able to afford a room at an inn?”

“One of these days, pow! Right to the moon!”

Mary folds her arms in front of her, snorts and turns away from Joseph toward the animals. “What’s that cow licking?” she asks, pointing into the shadows. Just out of the circle of light, the cow bends over something lying on the hay. Joseph gets the lantern and goes over.

“Why . . . it . . . it’s a sort of a baby!” He bends down to examine the infant. “But it has monstrous horns on its head!” Joseph leaps back almost tipping the lantern. “My God, it’s a little demon!”

Mary pulls at the blanket, rolling the infant towards her. “Oh, he’s adorable!” She reaches out for the baby, pulling him into her lap. “And these aren’t horns, you old fool,” she says, “They look more like bumps.” The baby opens his eyes and stares at Mary’s face. His skin darkens momentarily to the color of her clothes, then lightens to mimic her swarthy face.

“Look they’re almost gone now. Poor thing, he probably fell on his head.” Mary pulls the child close to her breast. “I wonder whose he is?”

“Probably some cursed slut, who dumped him here when he got in the way of business,” Joseph said cynically. “No proper mother would leave a child in a hell-hole such as this.” Joseph sweeps his arm to indicate the rotting timbers and leaking roof of the stable.

“Well we can’t leave him here, Joseph. What should we do?”

Joseph turns to tether the mules and drops a few handfuls of straw in front of them. “I don’t know, nor do I care what happens to that devil-child!” He spits on the straw. “I’m sure he’s abandoned because his whore of a mother was ashamed of consorting with the devil.”

Joseph comes over to regard the infant. “What happened to the thing’s horns?”

“He never had horns,” Mary says.” I told you, they were more like bumps. And they’re gone now, anyway. Look, Joseph, doesn’t he look like me.” Mary holds the baby up for Joseph to see.

“He’s a changling demon! That’s what he is! And I want no part of him! Turn him out into the alley before he brings us evil.” Joseph angrily moves to the door and slides it open. “I mean it, woman! Remove him from my sight!”

“Oh, be quiet, you old man. And close the door, he’ll catch cold! We’ll keep him, that’s what we’ll do. You told that innkeeper I was pregnant. Well, here’s the baby you’ve been unable to give me these long years.”

Joseph slides the door shut with a slam. “I warn you woman! Don’t talk to me that way, or I’ll . . . I’ll . . .”

“You’ll nothing, you old blowhard. Come over here and see if you can get one of these mangy cows to give us some milk.”

Grumbling, Joseph hunts up a stool and a pail, and begins milking one of the cows. Mary swaddles the child in her head cloth, cooing and singing.

Twelve days later, still imposing on their host’s hospitality for the sake of the newborn, Joseph watches three dark figures come down the alley toward the stable. Because of their strange clothing and their retinue of camels and donkeys, Joseph greets them warily.

One of the three, a short, wiry man with large eyes, says, “Good evening, my good man. We’ve come to see the baby, the Messiar—Messiar, I didn’t even kiss her!” The small man rolls his eyes, squats into a duck walk, and turns circles in the alley, fingering an invisible object that seemingly dangles from his mouth.

Joseph, wondering how this strange little man could know of the demon child, says, “What are you talking about?”

“Look, your excellency, we’re maguses. You know, wise guys from the East. Famed in song and story. We predict the future, follow the odd star, you know, like that.” Melchior frames his face with his hands and bats his eyelashes at Joseph.

“We’re Magi,” interjects Balthasar, a stooped old man with a perpetual smile on his face,

“Magi, schmagi. Look, chief, we know you’ve got a kid in there, and we just want to see Him for ourselves. Do you mind?”

“Well, yes, there is a baby, but,” Joseph feels a strange feeling pass over him, “You see, my wife’s a virgin.”

“Ah, oh!” Melchior raises his eyebrows and affects a conspiratorial leer. “Pull the other one, friend. Look, can we seem ‘im or have we come hundreds of miles, against great odds, and worse evenings, for nothing?”

Joseph scratches his head in confusion, but relents and ushers the three strangers into the stable. Melchior creeps on exaggerated tiptoes over to the manger and leans over to see the baby.

“It’s Him! It’s the son of God!” he exclaims.

“Wha? Now wait just a minute! That’s my son!” Joseph insists angrily.

“Your son, His son, let’s not quarrel. But he’s the real Messiar! Ride through every village and town! Wake every citizen uphill and down! Tell ‘em the King comes from afar—with a Hey-Nonny-Nonny and a Ha-Cha-Char!” Melchior dances a strange little dance in a circle and grabs Balthasar, spinning the old man around.

“King?” says Joseph, worriedly casting about and starting to collect their meager possessions. “What king? Is Herod coming this way?” Joseph begins to untether one of the donkeys.

“No, no, no, Colonel. Not Herod.” Melchior leaps up on a haystack and crows, “The King of the Jews! The Messiar!”

“Messiar?”

Balthasar says, “He means Messiah. You know, King of the Jews? Savior of mankind? As Daniel prophesied?”

“So where are you kids from?” Melchior asks the startled Joseph.

“Nazareth,” Joseph replies in a daze.

“Ah, Nazareth. I spent a year in that town, one Sabbath,” Balthasar says.

“Well, go ahead, old-timer. Take a gander at the Messiar,” Melchior says.

Balthasar approaches the manger on unsteady legs and peers at the baby. He gasps, turns, and nods to Melchior. “This is wonderful, to see the Messiah. It’s good to be here. But let’s face it. At my age, it’s good to be anywhere.”

“C’mon, Caspar. You’re next,” says Melchior, sweeping his hand back and forth as if directing traffic.

Caspar takes his turn at the manger, and soberly nods to the other two.

“Well, sport, looks like you’ve got the real McCoy here, a gin-u-wine Messiar. So, say the secret woid and you’ll win a fabulous prize,” says Melchior.

“What?”

“Close enough, close enough. Fellas, let’s go get our gifts.” The three men return to the alley. Melchior and Balthasar take packages from one of the carts and head back toward the stable.

Caspar hangs back as the other two men approach Joseph, who is standing at the doorway. Melchior turns around and says, “Come on, Caspar! It’s time to give our gifts.”

“Ah, just a minute,” Caspar says. “Oh, Rochester!” he calls to one of the porters. “Yassir, Mr. Ben—Caspar!” said Rochester.

“Now, Rochester, how much gold did we bring along?”

“Pretty much all of it, boss,” Rochester replies.

“ALL of it!” Caspar turns white. “Surely not my entire fortune!”

“Well, yassir, Mr. Caspar. You said you wanted to give the best gift to the newborn Messiah.”

“Well, sure,” says Caspar. “But surely we could give a quarter of this and still have a better gift than Melchior or Balthasar. They just picked up some lousy incense and oil at an oasis on the way here!”

“So what do you want me to do, boss?”

“Look, let’s just pull a few coins out of that sack there, and one or two of those gold candlesticks and call it even.”

Melchior and Balthasar walk back and grab Caspar’s elbows from behind, pinning him between them. “Come on you old skinflint! Time to give the gifts!” says Melchior. “We need to get back on the road before that idiot Herod figures out where we are.”

“Well!” sniffs Caspar. “I didn’t come here to be insulted!”

“That’s what you think,” replies Melchior.

“Well . . .” Caspar stammers. “Just a minute, just a doggone minute.” He tries to stuff a bag of gold under some baggage at the rear of the cart.

“What are you trying to pull, Caspar?” Melchior says, with narrowed eyes.

“Well, I was just thinking, you see, we’ll need plenty of gold to get home if we’re going the long way, you see, to throw Herod off the scent,” Caspar pleads. “So I was thinking, a few coins, a candlestick or two, and we’ll get out of here.”

“Look, you cheapskate are you going to give your entire gift now, or are you going to burn for all eternity?” Balthasar says.

The two stare menacingly at Caspar for a long minute. “Well?” says Melchior.

“I’m thinking it over!” cries Caspar.

“Come on you old miser, let’s go!” snarls Melchior.

Caspar glares at Melchior, who rises to his full height and glares back. “Old? Me, old? I’ll have you know that on my last birthday I was 39.”

“You must mean the last birthday you celebrated, back when you had hair,” Balthasar says. “I always say, you can’t help getting older, but you don’t have to get old. Why, look at me. When I was a boy the Dead Sea was only sick. I’m at the age now where just putting a candlestick in its holder is a thrill. Why, at my age, I don’t even buy ripe dates!”

“Come on you joker, let’s gather up these bags of gold and give them to the Messiah,” says Melchior. While Melchior maintains a firm hold on Caspar’s arms, Balthasar and Rochester pile the bags onto a small cart and wheel it into the stable.

“Now cut that out!” screams Caspar.

“Hey,” says Melchior, holding up a stringed instrument. “Maybe we should throw in the old man’s fiddle, too?”

The three men brush past a goggling Joseph and enter the stable with their gifts.

Charles Beaumont DeFries, aspiring novelist, ex-college-teacher, moderately successful technical writer, and newspaper columnist, pulls the last sheet of the chapter out of the printer, squints at it briefly through the bottoms of his bifocals, then crumples the whole manuscript and tosses it angrily into the trash can.

Christ, he says, what a bunch of crap! Man, that was a strange turn it took: brain virus to three wise guys. Shit! I’ll never get this goddamned book started.

Tempted to delete the whole misbegotten file from his hard drive, Charles instead stands up and walks over to the campy naugahyde bar by the window of his third-floor walkup to pour himself a whiskey. He grabs the bottle of Jack Daniels, still fuming at his inability to write a suitable opening to his book on the life of Jesus, and spills some whiskey into an ancient Flintstones jelly jar. He looks out the narrow window at the apartment building next door. If he cranes his neck just so, he can see a tiny blue scrap of Little River reflecting the brilliance of the Miami day.

Crap, I wish I could afford to move to the Beach, Charles muses. But that ain’t gonna happen unless I can get one of these damn books published. Although Charles makes a comfortable-enough living writing software manuals and technical white papers, all it buys him in high-priced Miami is a one-bedroom apartment in a two-rungs-up-from-fleabag residential hotel north of town, not far from the Interstate. It’s a run-down area of the city, literally on the wrong side of the tracks, but only about 20 blocks from Biscayne Bay, and a couple of miles due west of Miami Beach, the art deco heaven where Charles dreams of living. As skuzzy as the neighborhood is, it’s as close to the water as Charles can afford to live. Plus, living there introduced him to his best friend, Chip, the pastor of the church just across the street.

Charles scratches his stubbly chin and takes a big swig of Jack. Over the last five years, he’s written two other unpublished books and even managed to snag an agent, although not a very good or prestigious one. He’d hoped that his ex-wife’s recent remarriage—to a longtime woman friend—and the accompanying cessation of alimony payments, would be enough to catapult him up to Miami Beach, but his column in the Herald doesn’t pay much, his freelance work runs in cycles, and he’s in the midst of a downturn.

As Charles stands squinting to see the half-imagined blue, there’s a knock at the door. Who in hell is that, Charles thinks. With few friends in town, and even fewer clients, he rarely entertains visitors. Charles sets his glass down on the bar and walks across the thinning carpet to peer out the peephole. All he can see is a giant eyeball staring back at him, and he immediately knows to whom it belongs. Chuckling, he throws open the door. “To what do I owe the distinct honor or your presence, Reverend?”

Standing at the door, grinning broadly in a loud Hawaiian shirt and too-short shorts is the Right Reverend Lawrence Kenneth Martin, known as Chip to everyone.

“Well, you gonna invite me in?” Chip asks.

“By all means Pastor,” Charles says, sweeping his arm grandly over his cramped and cluttered apartment. “I’ve tidied up specially to receive you.”

“Cut the crap, asshole!” Chip says jovially, smashing his huge fist playfully into Charles’ shoulder. “You act like one of my star-struck congregants, afraid to so much as fart around the holy man!” With this he stands on one leg and lets one rip. Charles shakes his head and looks like he wants to spit. At 6’4”, 300 pounds, with feet like hams—veritable slabs with blind toes, typically shod in flip flops—and decked out like a clueless New York tourist—pukka shell necklace around his neck and a slightly abused Panama hat on his head—only Chip’s broad, raw-boned Midwestern face belies his Nebraska origins. He brushes by his friend and flops heavily on Charles’ ancient couch, causing one end to fall off the bricks that stand in for a missing leg.

“Shit,” Chip says, bouncing up and quickly replacing the bricks. As he does this, he spies the crumpled pages of Charles’ latest chapter peeking from the trash can.

“Oh, ho, ho! What’s all this, then? Has my little Chuckster been busy on his widdle book?” Charles hates being called Chuck, and Chuckster even worse, and hesitates a second as he decides how to respond, before realizing that Chip is grabbing the pages from the trash can.

“Wait,” he yelps, and tries to tear the wad of paper from Chip’s hands.

“Not so fast, buddy boy,” Chip says, shivering Charles with a stiff arm as he returns to the couch. “Let’s see what you’ve got here.”

“Now, look, Chip! I obviously am not satisfied with that draft, so please respect that and don’t read it.” Charles makes a feeble grab for the manuscript, but Chip holds him off easily with a massive forearm while running his eyes over the first page.

“Too late, Chuck, I’ve already read page one.” Chip is a prodigious speed reader, often devouring three or four books a week despite his overloaded schedule as the pastor of the Haitian United Methodist church.

Knowing that Chip won’t be denied, Charles sighs and goes to the bar to retrieve his drink. “You want something?” he asks sulkily. “Yeah, pour me a couple fingers of whatever you’re having, no ice” Chip says distractedly as he plows through the chapter. Charles hunts around the messy apartment for another clean glass and comes up with a Yogi Bear jelly jar. He pours Chip’s drink, freshens his own, and walks back to the couch. “Here,” he says grumpily. Chip reaches out his hand to grab the drink without taking his eyes off the page.

Charles sits in a straight-backed chair across from the couch and fumes. He knows it’s futile to try to stop Chip now, and he’s slowly becoming embarrassed that his friend is reading his substandard work. A red flush is beginning to spread outward from the vicinity of his Adam’s apple.

As Chip continues to read, it becomes obvious he is getting upset: His face, a regular ruddy barometer of his mood, is slowly turning red, and his already beady eyes narrow. Finally, he tosses the pages down to the floor and glares at Charles.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Groucho, Benny and Burns as the three wise men doing Borscht Belt schtick?! Joseph as Ralph Kramden and Mary as Alice? It takes a lot to shock me, Chucko, as you know, but that really frosts my mini-wheats!” Chip stands up and starts to pace.

“I mean this piece of trash you wrote is wrong in so many ways! Alien Jesus, Honeymooner Holy Family, ‘50s comedians offering gifts, oy!” Chip strides over to Charles’ chair and towers over him.

Charles is nonplussed and a bit intimidated by his looming buddy. He agrees with Chip that the chapter is a hunk of steaming shit, but he hadn’t expected to hit this nerve in the normally extremely tolerant preacher.

“Chip, I don’t get it. What’s got you hot and bothered? And will you back off and give me some room?” Charles pokes feebly at Chip’s massive stomach. “I agree this chapter sucks. I threw it out, didn’t I? And you insisted on reading it, so don’t blame me!” Charles slips sideways out of his chair and backs off a few feet. Chip resumes pacing back and forth across the small living room.

“Who should I blame, genius? You wrote it. This thing reads like a cheap joke,” Chip says. “I was almost buying the alien Jesus, even the stupid brain virus vaccine from the stars—I mean, they’re semi-interesting, if unoriginal, ideas at least—but, Christ, three Jewish comedians cracking jokes? Man, it’s insulting! I feel like I’ve been sucker-punched.”

“Take it easy, Chip!” He’s gotten his friend pretty pissed off. The flush has reached Charles’ cheeks.

“Look, I knew you were trying to start a new novel, we’ve talked about that, but I had no idea it was about Jesus. I don’t know why a skeptic like you wants to write about Christ, anyway, and, knowing you, I guess I should have expected your flip attitude, but I got sucked in and then . . . and then . . .” Chip actually gropes the air for the words. “You stomped all over me!” Chip hits the couch like a ton of bricks, raising a cloud from the elderly fabric and rocking it momentarily up off the bricks.

“Don’t take it so seriously, Chip. I threw it out, right? C’mon, man. I knew it sucked. And besides, it’s really hard for me to buy this three wise men business. I mean, give me a break. They’re guided by a star? Really? Have you ever tried to stand under a star? And they came from far away, so this really, really bright star had to guide them for days, and no one else notices? So I thought I’d use three of my favorite Jews to liven things up a bit. Didn’t work, but where’s the harm?”

“I don’t know,” Chip says, picking at a rip in the sofa arm. “It just really got my goat. I mean, besides being blasphemous, which generally I’m not that upset with, it just felt like a slap in my face.”

“Hold on, Chip,” Charles says, a light dawning. “This wasn’t targeted at you.”

“No, just my faith.”

“Well, as Tonetti says, ‘Faith is a foolish thing,’” Chip says, trying to lighten the mood.

“No, you asshole, he says, ‘Fate is a foolish thing to take chances with.’ And so are you!” Chip’s face almost betrays a small smirk. The two men share an obsession with Fred and Ginger’s The Gay Divorcee.

“I know, I know. I was just riffing. But look, you can’t possibly believe that every word in the Bible is the absolute truth, can you? Even the stuff about the subjugation of women, the keeping of slaves, keeping Kosher, for Christ’s sake, and how about masturbation?” Charles knew that Chip, a lifelong enthusiastic masturbator, would rise to this bait.

“Well, Master Bates, as you probably know since we’ve discussed it before, many United Methodists believe the Bible must be interpreted within its”—here Chip offers air quotes—“cultural and societal context. So, no, I don’t believe every word is literally true, but it is the word of the Lord. That much I do know for sure.” Chip seems a bit mollified by the discussion.

Charles says, “But how do you know what you should take as the absolute truth, and what is still true, but not actual, more a codifying or mythifying of actual events—revelation that is no less true for the fact that it did not happen? Like journalists lying to tell the truth, or like some manifestation of Jung’s collective unconscious.”

“Well, PsychoBabble-boy, that’s where faith comes in. You gotta believe. You gotta serve somebody; Dylan said that.” Chip takes off his Panama and sails it across the room, trying for a ringer on Charles’ tacky mechanical parrot on a perch. The hat spats against the motorized creature, which emits a slow-motion squawk, and falls to the floor.

Charles rolls his eyes and says, “But which to believe? That’s what I’m asking. Believe that the world is only 6,000 years old? That we should keep Kosher? Never pleasure ourselves? Or love our brother as ourselves? How do you pick when the whole damn Bible is so contradictory and, frankly, confusing?”

“Like I just said, dude, that’s what faith is for. You know the truth of the Bible in your heart, you feel God’s love, and you know the right way.” Chip, calmer now, puts on his counselor’s voice.

“Yeah, well, I just can’t believe in this magi fable, the stable, the manger, or the rest of the whole megillah surrounding the birth of Christ—the shepherds quaking, the angels and the star, the fucking frankincense and myrrh. I mean what possible use are these gifts to a poor little bastard newborn?”

“Well, hold your horses there, slick!” Chip says. “These three guys are honoring Jesus as the Messiah. Three types of gifts represent His three roles: He is the King of the Jews, as represented by gold; He is the Son of God, represented by frankincense; and yet He is a man, subject to suffering and death, represented by myrrh.”

“Well, see, that’s just what I’m talking about!” Charles fairly shouts, gesturing with his whiskey glass and sloshing some liquid on the floor. He absent-mindedly covers the wet spot with his foot. “Where do these wiseguys get all these ideas? How do they know Jesus is king of the Jews, son of God, and destined to suffer and die for all sins? Even if you accept that bunch of hooey, it’s just too much for these guys to be sitting around the palace, or wherever, see a star, know its meaning, and then say to themselves,” Charles hitches up his shoulders and affects a Scorcese gangster accent, “‘Hey check it out, youse guys, dat dere star means de Messiah is born. So whaddaya think? You mooks got any idea what kind of highly symbolic gifts can we bring to the newborn king? Gold? Yeah, that’s good, Nebuchadnezzar the Nose! What else we got? Incense? Hey great idea, Southside Shadrach. Now what else? We need one more thing. Perfume? Hey, whaddaya think this is, a friggin’ chick wedding shower? Awright, awright, awright! Quitcher bellyaching. You win, Fat Meschach.’”

Chip smiles in spite of himself at Charles’ awful Joisey accent, and says, “Fuggeddaboudit! But, hey, dude, that reminds me of this joke I’m thinking of using in my next sermon.” Charles rolls his eyes. His friend is constantly telling him terrible jokes, or jokes Charles doesn’t really get.

“There once was a rich man who was near death. He’s very upset because he worked so hard for his money and wanted to be able to take it with him to heaven. So the rich man prays that he be able to take some of his wealth with him. An angel hears his plea and appears to him. ‘Sorry Rich Man, but like they say, you can’t take it with you.’ The man begs the angel to speak to God to see if He might bend the rules. A week later, the angel reappears and informs the man that God has decided to allow him to take one suitcase with him. Overjoyed, the man finds his largest suitcase, fills it with pure gold bars, and places it beside his bed. Soon afterward the man dies and shows up at the Gates of Heaven to greet St. Peter. Peter sees the suitcase and says, ‘Hold on, you can’t bring that in here!’ The man explains he has permission and asks him to verify his story with the Lord. Sure enough, Peter checks and comes back saying, ‘You’re right. You’re allowed one carry-on, but I’m supposed to check its contents before letting it through.’ Peter puts on rubber gloves, swabs down the outside of the suitcase with a piece of cheesecloth, and opens the suitcase to inspect the worldly items that the man found too precious to leave behind. Seeing the gold Peter exclaims, ‘God said you could bring anything at all with you and you brought pavement?!?’”

Both laugh, with Chip’s booming laugh probably audible all the way to the beach.

With a wry smile, Charles gets back to his point. “But seriously, I’m sorry, I’m just too well-educated to take such things at face value.”

“Yeah, baby. You got two MAs and a Ph.d., Dr. MaMa Phud!”

Charles, annoyed, continues. “This is just like the Garden of Eden fable or the other creation myths. I mean, Mark doesn’t even mention the birth of Jesus! Mankind cannot believe that the great have had inauspicious beginnings and so we concoct all these fake-o trappings of significance: angels and kings or magi or whatever the hell they were, and all that shit.”

“Well I don’t have a problem with the whole deal. It’s God’s word, after all. No room at the inn, born in a stable, angels and shepherds. It’s all good.”

“So what about the three kings, or rather, three astrologers, then? I mean, they figured out that the messiah had been born using a fantastical pseudoscience, astrology. Doesn’t it all seem a bit farfetched?”

“Well, not necessarily. Matthew says that when they showed up in Jerusalem, Herod set the magi on their search for Jesus, asking that they find the baby so he could worship Him, too. Sure, they say they saw a star, but that was just God’s sign, and not necessarily a reference to astrology, which, by the way, is one of the few occult sciences not condemned in the Bible. Anyway, the three men double-crossed Herod, and took another route home after worshipping Jesus. That sounds real to me; doesn’t that seem like a real detail to you? It sounds authentic, and it all works for me.”

“What, that a star led them to the stable?” Charles sits down on the other end of the sagging sofa.

“Why not? I believe in miracles. Matthew could have meant that the star appeared to rise above them, too. It didn’t really need to move across the heavens. It coulda just risen, like the moon.”

“OK, but why does Matthew say Herod and all of Jerusalem were frightened and disturbed by what the heathen magi said about the newborn King of the Jews? How come nobody else wanted to find him, besides that murdering asshole Herod?”

“That’s the beauty of the passage, my bony boy. Pagan astrologers are digging on the newborn king, and devout Jews are ignoring or feeling threatened by the event. It’s kind of a continuing theme in Matthew—Jews rejecting Jesus. But, hey, you know what? I’m over it. I’m cool with your draft. I think I get where you’re coming from on the magi. Don’t know as I would have selected the comedians you did. I’m more partial to a different Marx brother. Imagine Harpo doing that schtick—grabbing Joseph’s hand and placing his leg in it! Honking his horn and waking baby Jesus. Heh.”

Chip has clearly calmed down, and is smiling indulgently, which ticks Charles off. He leans back against the arm of the sofa and takes a big swig of whiskey. Then he rummages in the pockets of his sport coat but doesn’t find the package of smokes he’s looking for. Not only has his friend read, without asking, a manuscript he threw away, he has the temerity to get insulted by it. Then he ends the theological discussion just when Charles was making a few points.

“Well, Chip, you said you liked the brain virus business . . .”

“Didn’t say I liked it. Said I was almost buying it.”

“OK, OK, whatever. What do you think of the idea?”

“Well, I’m not sure you’ve developed it properly. You just kind of throw it in at the beginning.” Chip turns towards Charles and leans forward. “I don’t really get the motivation of the aliens, here. What is their relationship with this brain virus? I mean, sure, it’s kind of interesting, in a trite sort of way, to think that we’re lots smarter than we act because of some external influence that makes us stupid. Reminds me of an old sci-fi story about the Earth finally, after eons, passing out of a cone of radiation or whatever that slowed down the neurons or something, and all of a sudden everyone became a genius. What the hell was the name of that one? You read it?”

Charles is now fuming. His friend hates his story, and now is accusing him of plagiarizing part of it. He opens his mouth to say something, but snaps it back shut.

“Where were you going with that?” Chip asks.

“Well, if I hadn’t hated the whole chapter—like I told you, it took a damn right turn on me there—the idea was that the baby Jesus, being immune and all, is brilliant, in addition to being able to morph and present a pleasing image to all. He’s able to pass this brilliance, or rather the immunity to the virus, down through the ages. So all the major smart guys, Da Vinci, Gallileo, Newton and so on, were of his line.”

“Well I got to say, that bit I think is pretty good, although it smacks a bit of The DaVinci Code.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake, Chip! I’ve got drafts of a story based on this idea going back to the early ‘80s. Dan Brown can bite me!”

Chip grins at having gotten Charles’ goat yet again. “Take it easy, buddy, I wasn’t accusing you of anything. Although your choice of phrase there—bite me—has always puzzled me. I mean, when somebody says that, generally when expressing hostility, what is it they hope will happen? Surely it wouldn’t be pleasant for Dan Brown to come over to your apartment and bite you, on the dick or anywhere?”

Charles sighs. “Well, it’s not to be taken literally, obviously.”

“True, true. But take a look at other hostile expressions. You know, you say fuck you, for example. Are you wishing that I would have someone make love to me? This is some kind of horrible thing to happen? I’m not so sure. Or do you mean you’d fuck me? Well, if a man says it to another—straight—man, perhaps that’s a threat, but still equates lovemaking with aggression.”

“So what’s your point?”

“Look, it’s obvious that Western society at least, and probably mankind in general, is a bit, how shall we say, ambivalent about the physical act of love, right? But when did it become fashionable to use sexual terms to curse or put down another? I mean, I guess I can kind of see ‘suck my dick’ as an expression of dominance. You’re commanding the other to service you sexually, but the rest of them, fuck you, bite my crank, and so on, just don’t seem to make much sense.”

“Well, I guess it’s just the shocking use of mildly forbidden terms to associate with the person you’re mad at, and nothing more,” says Charles. “Of course, on the other hand, there is the tendency of some folks to refer to everyone as motherfuckers, you know like what that guy says in Blade, ‘Some motherfuckers are always trying to ice skate uphill,’ or pick just about any black comedian. Using about the worst epithet possible—implying that you fuck your mother—as a general term to refer to random other people without much of a value judgment just doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“True that, my brutha,” Chip says and reaches over to give Charles a clumsy white guy high five.

Chip continues, “I remember seeing a concert, must’ve been back in the early ‘70s, by Lee Michaels. You remember him? Had a couple near hits, but I just really dug his organ playing. Anyway, he toured with just his keyboards and a fat drummer called Frosty, and I saw him at college, opening for somebody or other. Anyway, things were going fine until Frosty got out from behind the drums and did a Theremin solo. I shit you not. You remember the Theremin?”

Charles shakes his head no.

“It’s this weird squat box with like an aerial sticking up. The Beach Boys used it to do that ‘ooh-eee-oooh-ooooh’ part in Good Vibrations. Anyway, Frosty does like a 10-minute solo on this thing, and by minute two, he’d completely lost the audience, who started jeering about minute eight. So the second he’s done, he sets the Theremin to scream this tremendously high pitched tone, then turns his back to the audience and takes his right index finger and points to his asshole.”

“Weird,” says Charles.

“Yeah, it was an obviously hostile gesture, but what did it mean? Stick your dick in my ass? Fuck me in the rear? How exactly is this insulting? So anyway, about a year later, Jethro Tull was in town, this was during their Passion Play tour. And Martin Barre, one of the most underappreciated guitarists ever, by the way, does this stinging solo in the middle of this complicated bit of Tull music. I dunno what the deal was, but even though the crowd erupted in cheers when he was done, something pissed him off, I guess, and he turned his butt to the audience and made the same damn gesture Frosty had. I totally couldn’t figure that out.”

“Well, I guess that just supports my theory that the insulting part isn’t the suggestion of a sexual act, but the use of forbidden words or gestures in connection with the person you’re pissed at.”

“Yeah, it’s a wonder alright,” Chip agreed. He sits back, cocks his head and stares at the ceiling. “Anyway, getting back to the brain virus thing, think of how so many exceptional men and women seem to be so out of place in their times, having the ability to see things as they are, unclouded by the prejudices of those around them or the received perceptions of their times. What if it isn’t some immunity to a brain virus? What if it’s just the love of God that makes them great?

“Wait, wait, wait,” Charles breaks in. “I think you’re missing the point. I agree that there is inspiration, and inspiration as from the original sense of being filled with some kind of spirit. But these colossal geniuses are freaks, mutations that just happened to wake up from the stupid dreams mankind is ordinarily dreaming. Or, they’re just immune to the brain virus. Perhaps that’s what genius really is.”

Chip snorts. “Genius. God, I’ve known so many people who thought they were geniuses.” He looks meaningfully over at Charles, arching an eyebrow. Charles grabs a pillow and fires it at Chip’s head. “Shut the fuck up, you fuckin’ motherfucker, and suck my dick! I point my asshole in your general direction!”

Chip roars with laughter. “I’m hungry. Let me take Mister, sorry, Doctor Genius to dinner.”

As the two men get up to leave, Charles says, “You know Chip, I gotta say this manger story has always perplexed me I remember when as a young child, if I couldn’t sleep, my mother would hold me and softly sing Christmas songs. My favorite was one I called ‘Come All Ye Fawfoo.’ Even as a child, though, I wondered about the round virgin in ‘Little Town of Bethlehem.’”

Chip throws his massive arm across Charles’ bony shoulders and says, “Dude, she was pregnant, so of course she was round!” Despite himself, Charles laughs as they walk out into the hallway and down the stairs.

Stately, plump Jesús Christos came from the elevator, bearing a bowl of oranges upon which an iPad and a Wall Street Journal lay crossed. The billionaire scion of a Mexican pre-mixed concrete family crossed to the rampart on top of Christos Tower and surveyed his kingdom, laid out beneath him, through the haze of early smog. He cleared his throat and spat over the side; the sputum fell a few feet and then a gust caught it and threw it back in his face. Angered, he shifted the bowl into his left hand, wiped the spit off his face, and tried futilely to throw it back over the side of the hundred-story building.

Setting the bowl and its cargo down on a side table, Christos threw his bulk into the nearby lounge chair and scanned the newspaper’s front page before lifting the iPad and settling it on the bulk of his stomach to get the real news. He checked his family’s stock price and then checked Twitter for mentions of his dotcom company, Jewish.com. After answering a few text messages, Christos opened the manuscript he was working on, the story of his life. Most of the writing had come easily—the story of his successes online, his continuing conflict with his family and relocation to Bangladesh, his recent marriage to María Magdalena at 28. But he was struggling with writing about his early years, including his spiritual awakening at five, and a particular family trip to Jerusalem when he was 12.

Sighing, he began to write, again, his first chapter.

Chapter 1—My Young Awakening

From an early age, I felt alienated from my family. I remember at age five wondering who these people were. How had I come to be involved with a collection of semi-shady avaricious fools? These are not my real parents; my real father is coming back for me. My mother didn’t help matters with her oft-repeated joke about finding me under a bush by the side of the road in the country. What a horrible picture this conjured in my young mind: lost among low hills of terraced farmland, baking under a hedgerow of agave.

I concocted a different fantasy: My real mom and dad live somewhere else and when they get enough money they’ll come get me. I’m just staying with María and José for a while until my real parents get on their feet. My real parents are fallen nobility, king and queen deposed by banditos. They placed me here for safety until the day I can regain my rightful place at the right hand of my father.

My alienation also stemmed from our family name. Like many Mexican Jews, my family did not have a typical Jewish name. My father wasn’t Josef, he was José. In fact, it was not until in my late teens, when I came upon my father’s birth certificate, that I found out he was born with a different surname: Khaldei. I was further surprised and disgusted to learn that around the time I was born, the whole family, perhaps fed up with persecution, perhaps seeking a more acceptable identity to help extend the family business overseas, changed the family name to Christos. The name may have been chosen partly in sardonic honor of the religious crackpot Maria Devi Christos from our native Ukraine, a favorite obsession of one of my uncles, but probably primarily to fly under the anti-Semitic radar.

Consequently, my parents and the rest of the family were not outwardly, or even inwardly, religious and cared nothing for the Torah, which was my passion ever since I taught myself to read it at age five. My family only managed to drag themselves to temple a few times a year, mostly to hobnob with other important people on the various feast days. This secular disinterest in heritage and tradition helped make my growing obsession with the word of Yahweh seem even stranger to them. I was a precocious kid, and I yearned for a connection with God.

As I mentioned, I taught myself to read Hebrew so I could read the word of God when I was very young. I also taught myself Spanish so that I could learn more about the Jewish people in Mexico. Of course, Mexico in general, and Mexico City, where we lived, was not exactly a paradise for the Jews. I read the histories: the arrival the Conversos with Cortés; the forced conversions to Paulicism brought on by the Spanish Inquisition and its Mexican counterpart that killed 29 Judaizers; the immigration of the Crypto-Jewish Carvajal family; the European Jewish influx of the late 19^th century—especially the bankers, invited by the government for their fiscal skills; Benito Juárez’ Reform War, and on and on. I may have been precocious, but I was still a young child, and these terrible injustices affected me deeply, haunting my dreams, and causing me to hunger to learn as much as I could about my heritage so I could try to understand the treatment of my people.

My father made his fortune in concrete, a substance as hard and unyielding as his head. He took over the business from my grandfather and built it into a multi-billion-dollar international building materials company with a presence in 50 countries. In fact, cement is part of the reason I moved to Bangladesh, where the company has an outpost. It was an easy way to put an ocean between me and my family without seeming to escape their grasp.

From as early as I can remember, I detested being rich. Even while quite young, I felt demeaned by the attentions of the servants who performed all my grooming and toilet chores as if I were a cherished object to be polished rather than a person. Although I was this shiny valued thing, I felt I had no worth intrinsically, just a reflection of what my father owned. I began to feel that I was meant for better things, and that I needed to strive for some meaning, to justify myself and break out of my father’s shadow. Simply put, I felt destined for greatness, but in a way that transcended the materialist world of my family.

Around the time of my birth, my father was making the company’s first international moves, acquiring European and South American companies. That’s when he built his first palace, a ghastly faux Tudor affair, but actually quite tame compared to some of his hideous later mansions. I grew up on its cold marble floors. We had many servants, of course, and my parents treated them like dirt. I was aghast at the cruel treatment, especially by my mother, who would have the maid clean and re-clean a floor until she was satisfied, and the maid’s fingers bled.

I hated all the cars, and boats, and airplanes my father bought, and all the clothes my mother wore once and then discarded, and all the diamonds and gold and other ridiculous excesses. The toilet in my bathroom was trimmed with gold.

There were various aspects of our wealth, however, that I did enjoy, sometimes to my shame. When my father determined that I would not be dissuaded from daily study of the Torah, he unloaded the dozens of bookshelves in his fake English library, tossed the books in the trash, and restocked with possibly the finest library of Jewish religious thought in the New World. I was like a kid in a candy store.

Another perk of wealth that I enjoyed was our frequent trips abroad. My favorite trip was one we took when I was 12, to Israel. We were only scheduled to be there for a day because my father had some business to do. One thing made this trip particularly memorable was the weird behavior of two old people we ran into while doing some sightseeing. One was a doddering old man whom we met at the Dome of the Rock. He said his name was Simeon, and he told us he was waiting for “the consolation of Israel.” We had no idea what he meant by that. He raved on, saying that he had been promised by God that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. As soon as he clapped his eyes on me, he embraced me and went on and on about how he could now die, because he had seen the Messiah. He mumbled some other rubbish about rising and falling in Israel and signs, and something about a sword as well.

I was pretty disturbed by this encounter, as were my parents who, once they recovered from their surprise, got their bodyguards to usher the poor fool away.

No sooner had Simeon been swept away than another old crank came up to me and started making a fuss as if I were something really special. She said she was the Widow Anna, and that she’d tell everyone about me. My folks were pretty shook up by that point and practically dragged me away from that holy place. I didn’t want to leave because it was my fondest desire to seek out learned rabbis to discuss the Torah.

By that time, we traveled with quite the entourage. There were maids and valets, and perhaps a dozen bodyguards as well as three nursemaids for me, for around the clock attention. I had no use for any of them and, especially at age 12, was resentful of being treated as a child. My parents had a big diplomatic event of some kind that night, and I managed to run a little game on my nannies so I could slip away. Each thought the other would be in charge of me that night and the next day, when we were to take the family 757 on to Paris. This was the most tricked-out plane you would ever want to see, with multiple bathrooms, and several private compartments all resplendent in gold, diamond inlays, and other opulent decorations. I had often hidden myself for hours on the plane on longer trips, my nose in a religious book.

I was able to sneak off the plane and hailed a cab to take me to the Steinsaltz Center in Jerusalem where I was determined to find Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz and engage him in Talmudic discussions. When I got there, I found a great gathering of rabbinical scholars. When I asked to be allowed to join their discussions, they were at first amused, but when they realized I knew my stuff, they began to include me almost as an equal. Rabbi Steinsaltz himself was quite kind to me, and expressed surprise as much for the questions I asked as for my answers to his. I can’t remember a happier time in my childhood than the time I spent with these learned, holy men. As I grew older, I harked back particularly to our discussions of the tribulations of Jeremiah and Job, and the prophecies of Isaiah. I often feel like a voice calling in the wilderness myself.

Because of my duplicity with my nannies, nobody noticed I wasn’t on the plane the next morning. My parents were quite used to not seeing me, sometimes for days, and assumed I was on board. When they got to Paris, they realized I’d been left behind, and immediately turned back to Jerusalem to search for me. After three days they found me in the Steinsaltz Center, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. When my parents saw me, they were astonished. My mother said to me, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.” Being a rebellious smartass, I replied, “Why were you searching for me? Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” I had hoped this would particularly sting my father, whom I had regularly and loudly accused of not being my real father. My parents were flabbergasted, and furious. They turned on their heels and let our bodyguards extract me from the company of rabbis and return me to the plane.

Around this time, I became obsessed with Paulicism and studied its version of the Bible intensely. How could this obviously crazy Roman Jew have concocted an entire religion out of whole cloth based on a few claims of miracles mediated by a talisman so fraught with cruelty: the Roman crucifixion cross? And why did they revere the nails used to affix victims to the cross as talismans and holy relics? It doesn’t make sense on so many levels. For example, kinesiologically speaking, the cross is a weakening symbol. Try it sometime. Lift a weight and then try it again while holding a cross. You’ll be surprised.

The whole origin of this strange religion confused and fascinated me. The odd insistence that Paul was born of a virgin, baptized, and was a carpenter. It seemed to me that this was a mashup of the origin story for Krishna (second person of the Hindu Trinity, divinely conceived, son of a carpenter, baptized, called the Son of God), Buddha (entered his mother’s womb from her side, in the form of a white elephant), the Akkadian birth of Marduk (created in the heart of Apsu) and the Persian god Mithra (born of a virgin on December 25th and known as “the Way,” “the Truth,” “the Light,” “the Word,” “the Son of God,” and “the Good Shepherd”). Paulicism was plagiarism personified! The miracle birth meme was almost as old as civilization as an indication of holiness. Hell, I was a miracle birth myself. Mother was 46 and years into menopause when I was born, just like Isaac.

I felt the fact that Paulicism claimed a common heritage with Judaism was a particular insult to my religion. How could a religion with just Moses’ 10 commandments truly be the successor to Judaism, with its mature, comprehensive laws for living and relating to God?

Even more insulting was my father’s purchase of a firm that manufactured crosses and nail talismans. This was a type of business that was completely out of his bailiwick! In my self-centered young mind, this was a deliberate attack on my growing religiousness, and a way for him to assert the dominance of his materialistic worldview, and lifestyle. I didn’t speak to my father for weeks after I learned of the transaction. I doubt he noticed.

Judaism had become the central devotion of my life by my early teens. Two things obsessed my thoughts during this time: the worldwide persecution of the Jews, especially the Holocaust, and a growing conviction that the Jewish aversion to proselytizing would ensure that the hatred of my people would continue forever. It was in this period that I conceived Jewish.com as a way to spread the word about Judaism.

My religion had always been an exclusive club—the Chosen People. We begrudgingly accept conversions, but true Jews are those with a Jewish mother. I felt that as long as we held ourselves above others, and made no effort to increase our ranks other than by in-breeding, we would continually suffer.

Jewish.com came into being in my bedroom. I had, like many of my peers, become fascinated with the power of the web as a communication tool. What better way to spread the word about Judaism than to harness this online power? I obviously had access to virtually unlimited funds, and so I bought a state-of-the-art web server and all the software necessary to begin to build a website. I took a number of online courses in web development, and began to piece together the structure of the site.

My goal at first was to just create an online community for Jews all over the world, sort of like a Facebook for Yids, although I wasn’t yet aware of Facebook, which hadn’t spread far beyond a few colleges when I began Jewish.com. I thought if Jews from all cultures and walks of life could establish a kehila, a place to exchange thoughts, prayers, and viewpoints, then Judaism would not only be enriched, but could grow in stature and number.

From the start, I was conscious that there is no real tradition of proselytizing in Judaism and in fact, such an idea is anathema to the core beliefs of my religion. Traditionally we have believed that eventually all people will come to recognize the God of Israel as the One All-Powerful God of the universe. It will either just dawn on people that Judaism is the one true religion or the converted will otherwise fulfill the seven universal commandments God gave to Noah. There is also the belief in Deuteronomy that Jews adhering to God’s commandments “will be proof of your wisdom and discernment to other peoples, who on hearing of all these laws will say, ‘Surely, that great nation is a wise and discerning people.’”

Some Jews feel that to encourage conversions would doom many converts to fail, in part because to convert, one must accept all 613 commandments of the Torah. Thus, discouraging conversion weeds out those who aren’t truly devout. Whatever the reason, the result is Judaism is one of the smaller worldwide religions: Paulicism and its offshoot Islam, comprise well more than half the world’s population—almost 5 billion. Judaism, claiming a mere 14 million adherents, doesn’t even make the top 10; it’s basically a rounding error religion.

At 13, in my first post on Jewish.com, I asked, irreverently, “How’s that Chosen People thing going for you, Jews? Centuries of persecution and murder for our beliefs. Oppression and coercion and relegation to second-class status in society after society. It’s just not working out.” My young self’s soul cried out for a better solution.

And so I studied the Paulic evangelists, with their slick suits and eloquent speech, and their pandering to an audience that I—and they—regarded as morons. I also studied the sincere missionaries who, despite their sincerity, adopted often-horrific tactics to convert the heathens. I studied the Muslims, whose religion, although peaceful at its center, justifies holy war as a way to convert the unconverted. I concluded that unless the Jewish people adopted evangelism, not only would our numbers remain small, they would be small enough that another Holocaust could wipe us from the Earth.

Jewish.com is a major reason I chose to relocate to Dhaka. The history of our people in Bangladesh, a majority Muslim nation, is a sad one, but a typical one in Muslim Asia. After Shalom Cohen founded the Calcutta Jewish community in West Bengal, he established his trading company with Jewish employees in Dhaka. Cohen’s son-in-law established a prayer hall in 1817 to serve the small Jewish community there. However, most Jews doing business in Dhaka did not live there, preferring to reside in Calcutta where there was a much larger Jewish population. Today, until recently, only a few Jews remain in Bangladesh, but most hide their Jewishness and are assimilated. Until I built the company headquarters here, there had been no synagogue in Bangladesh since the police seized the last one decades ago, although some Jews gathered privately to celebrate the feasts.

A country that lacks a significant Jewish population and which seceded from India based on its desire to become a Muslim state may seem like a poor choice for relocation for a person seeking to spread the Jewish faith. My reasons for coming to Dhaka include my desire to separate myself from my materialistic, self-hating family, the convenient location of a family company office in Dhaka, and the extreme challenge of becoming a missionary in such an unpromising place. This challenge was brought home to me by the plight of Muslim Zionist and peace activist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, editor of The Weekly Blitz in Bangladesh. What a rare bird! A Zionist Muslim! Choudhury was accused of blasphemy, sedition, and treason for frequently writing pro-Israel articles and criticizing radical Islamists. He has had the temerity to say, in public, “I am a Zionist and a friend of Israel.”

I simply had to meet this brave man who has been arrested and tortured with electric shocks, had his office firebombed, was kidnapped by the Rapid Action Battalion anti-terrorism unit of the Bangladesh Police, and was thrown in jail on fabricated charges of embezzlement. There is a Paulic parable about casting seed on rocky ground. Dhaka definitely was not fertile ground for a mission, but I’ve never been one to shrink from a challenge. I decided to march into the heart of the beast and change it with love.

To effect my relocation, I agreed to supervise the family company’s construction of the tallest building in Bangladesh on the condition that the building include the country’s first synagogue in many years. It was tough sledding to convince my father, but I actually think he would have done anything to get rid of me.

I now have built the tower, and the synagogue, and managed to get Choudhury released from jail. He now runs the synagogue outreach program, which numbers about a dozen souls. I maintain heavy security around the temple and the building, know whom to pay and with whom to ally, and am happy to report few incidents, and even a few conversions that add to the 3,500 Jews that lived in the country before I arrived. We are slowly convincing Bangladeshi Jews to stop claiming to be Jehovah’s Witnesses and to reveal their true identity. Nonetheless, most Jews attend our services by entering through a special door in the underground parking garage of the building.

I am not confining my missionary activities to Bangladesh, of course. Through Jewish.com, I have organized missions throughout the Paulic and Muslim worlds. Interestingly, many of our missionaries were not born Jewish, and have converted as part of our efforts. My goal is that, in two years, by my 30^th birthday, I will announce missions in every country on Earth.

Of course, I have faced opposition and death threats from all sides. The attacks from fellow Jews are actually especially virulent. My response to all attackers is that God loves them and will help them see the path to Judaism someday.

There are those who say that a person of privilege such as myself is not fit to minister to those less fortunate because I have never known privation. My response is that I have faced extreme privation of the soul growing up as a wealthy person. I have seen the disease of entitlement and arrogance that afflicts my family and others among the wealthy elite. I have seen scions of family friends turn to drugs or other risky behaviors because of lives barren of faith. I reject the trappings and privileges of wealth except in cases where my money can do good, and further my goal of converting to Judaism all those willing to be enlightened.

I know that some will fault me for fabricating a humble backstory, back when I started Jewish.com. To this, I plead youth. I was 13. And after all, I had been creating a more acceptable family history—noble parents who would come back and rescue me from the filthy rich—for some time and so it came easily to me. So, no, I wasn’t the bastard son of a family of impoverished pretenders to the Ukrainian throne, although my family did emigrate from Ukraine to Mexico during the pogroms that accompanied the establishment of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. And, no, I wasn’t 28 when I created Jewish.com but rather 13. Similarly, it’s not true that I was a rabbinical student, and that’s still not true. I’ve never met many of the prominent Jewish scholars I claimed to be associated with, although, as I mentioned earlier, I have met a few.

I concocted some of my story so that I could be taken more seriously, but mostly I was afraid that my message would be obscured by people’s reaction to the wealthy messenger. Many believe the Paulic biblical verse, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” In fact, even today, many have said, effectively, “How dare you try to advise us, when you’ve never suffered as we have!” Please rest assured I have suffered more than you can ever understand. Part of the reason I started my mission was because I felt unsuited to the life I was born into. I never felt I deserved the advantages I had; they embarrassed me. Our wealth made me feel overwhelmingly guilty. I felt like an imposter in my own life. And so I created a new identity for myself so that I could avoid the implications of my heritage. On the internet, nobody knows you’re a one-percenter.

I realize the irony involved.

María emerged from the elevator in a stunning one-piece swimsuit that accentuated her baby bump. “Join me for a dip, J?” This far above the Dhaka smog, the sun shines brightly, glinting off María’s giant frog-eye glasses and making her appear to be a shapely alien.

“Not now, mi vida. I’m working on the book.” Jesús regarded his bride briefly, flashed her a quick smile, and returned to his writing. Pouting slightly, María turned, dropped her wrap, and entered the gigantic pool. She swam over to the infinity edge and gazed out over the smog-fouled city.

“J, why don’t you do something about this terrible pollution?”

Jesús looked up, glanced about, took a beat to process what she’d asked, and said, “I’m trying to heal spirits, not bodies. But I suppose I could close up Father’s cement plants. That would be a good start at cleaning the air.”

“I dare you!”

“Not even a gringo’s double-dog dare would make me bring down the shitstorm that would happen if I ever crossed mi familia. Besides, I’m turning father’s dirty money into clean Yechidah.”

“Always the golden tongue,” María sneered, sticking out her own tongue at her husband. “And are you talking about your own soul or your followers’?”

“For the millionth time, María, I do not have followers. I am a humble missionary attempting to spread God’s word throughout the world.”

“Well there’s a few hundred thousand non-followers in the world who might disagree on that point.” María returned to examining the smoggy city.

Jesús had indeed assembled a large number of missionaries and converts. With Jewish.com as the center of his message, he had first reached out across Mexico City, then across Mexico, then North and South America, and now Asia. The website he created in his bedroom at 13 had evolved over the last 15 years into a virtual synagogue in the cloud, supported by an efficient hierarchy of missionary managers, volunteers and evangelists.

Along the way, the message of Jewish pardon—humility, resolve, and rituals of penitence—in which rabbis serve solely as facilitators, with God as the forgiver, had tended to take on some of the Paulic notion of the priests dispensing the penance as de facto grantors of absolution. Jesús was concerned about this and similar shifts in dogma, but pragmatically reasoned that with a massive influx of Paulics and people of other faiths, dogma was less important than enlightenment.

After a moment’s thought, Jesús replied to María, “I’m but a man. I do the best I can. If people start to regard me as some kind of prophet, there’s little I can do about it. I can think; I can wait; I can fast.”

“Yeah, amado, you could fast for a great while . . .”

Jesús tossed the newspaper in the general direction of his wife and returned to his writing.

Charles presses print and hears the printer wake up and begin spitting pages. He stretches and shakes himself. I think I’ve finally got it, he thinks. After numerous false starts he’s finally satisfied with his approach to the character of Jesus. Yah, he thinks, pulling a Marlboro from the nearby pack, this is just sacrilegious enough to make them think. Jesus, the son of a rich man! A man who made up stories about his origins because he knew no one would believe the soul of a rich man. It’s just what Chip and I were talking about the other day.

Charles gets up and goes to the closet to get his coat. It was rarely cold enough in Miami to need it, but Charles felt naked without a sport coat. And besides, a coat was essential to mask the smell from his pits. Charles has bad B.O., and often changes shirts as many as six times a day, shucking them into a stinking pile in a corner of his closet. After years in Florida, his only concession to the muggy heat is to give up the tweed and wool in favor of linen jackets. Grabbing the sheaf of papers off the printer, Charles hurries out the door.

I must show this to Chip right away, he thinks. He takes the four flights of stairs two at a time down to the lobby. Once in his battered Toyota, Charles runs his mind back over his chapter, stroking it as if it were a cherished pet.

As he pulls into the church parking lot, he notices an unfamiliar car. Rats, Chip must have someone in with him. I’ll probably have to wait.

Chip makes a little money on the side working for a pastoral counseling center. They primarily send him couples with marital difficulties, usually from other congregations. As Charles walks in the office, he can see that Chip’s door is closed.

“Rita, is he busy?” Charles asks the church secretary, a voluptuous dark-haired Haitian with a taste for figure-enhancing yet somehow prim clothing. Charles has had many erotic dreams about her but has never gotten up the nerve to even ask her out for a drink.

“Yes, he’s got a couple in there with him. But they should be out soon, their hour’s almost up. How you doin’ Charles?” Rita leans back in her chair and stretches, pulling the material of her blouse tightly across her bosom.

“Oh, fine. I finished a chapter that I’m pretty excited about and I can’t wait to show it to Chip.”

Charles tries not to stare.

“Well, have a seat. Do you want any coffee or anything?”

“Thanks, Rita, no. I’m fine.” Charles sits in one of the worn chairs in the waiting area and glances at the old pile of Sports Illustrateds on a nearby table. I wonder what his congregation thinks of Chip’s choice of waiting room reading matter? Any other minister might stock uplifting religious magazines. But Chip has just about every old Sports Illustrated that has an article about Nebraska football.

He turns his attention to Rita, studying her perfect olive skin and examining the swell of her breasts beneath the demure blouse. The only thing that belied her otherwise proper appearance were full lips she always painted bright red. I’ll bet she’s a real hellion in the sack, he thinks. God, what thoughts to have in a rectory waiting room! Still, she’s quite the hottie . . .

Chip sticks his head out of his office, and, seeing Charles, grins and says, “I see my 12 o’clock is here!” Charles, a bit embarrassed at the thought that he would need religious counseling, sticks out his tongue, but, failing to assemble a snappy comeback says instead, “Yeah, I need it bad,” while glancing meaningfully at Rita.

“Rita, could you set the Taylors up for next week, same time? Chuck, I’ll be with you in a minute,” Chip says and closes the door. A few minutes later a middle-aged, rather frumpy couple walk from his office, eyes straight ahead, and out the door.

Chip is speaking on his desk phone when Chip comes to the door, but beckons for Charles to come and sit. Charles slumps into one of the guest chairs and puts his feet up on the desk, inadvertently pushing over a stack of papers that cascade onto the floor. Chip mouths, “You idiot!” but waves Charles back into his seat as he rises to grab the papers.

“OK. Talk to you later. Be good,” Chips says, and cradles the receiver with one hand while sweeping up a few of the papers with the other.

“What’s with them?” Charles asks jerking his thumb in the general direction of the departed Taylors. “He likes her clothes,” Chip says.

“Well, so what?”

“Well, he likes them a bit too much . . . he wears them from time to time.” They laugh. Neither is particularly aware of the breach of confidence Chip has committed.

“So, is the problem that they fight about who’ll wear the new red pumps and push up bra on Saturday night?” Charles asks.

“The problem,” Chip says, “is that they are deeply committed Methodists, and Methodists don’t do that sort of thing.” Chip says this with a sad smile and a shake of his head, as if to say, “They don’t get it.”

Impatient with the small talk and excited about his new vision of Jesus, Charles thrusts the manuscript at Chip. Chip is a little surprised at his enthusiasm, but smiles, grabs the wad of print, tilts his chair back and wades in.

“Get us a coupla beers from the mini-fridge, willya?” Chip says. Charles crosses the room, grabs two cans of Bud from the fridge, pops them both and hands one to Chip. He’s always amazed at how unlike a standard preacher his friend is. Beer in his office, in the middle of the day? Chip thinks nothing of it. He’s more like your jolly, profane best bro than he is a preacher.

Charles sips his beer and tries distractedly to occupy himself while Chip reads. He gets up and wanders the room, examining the pictures on the wall, the book titles on the shelves, the toppled paper stack still spread out on the floor, the city street outside Chip’s window. While cruising the bookshelf a second time, Charles idly wonders where Chip keeps the vintage porn he knows his friend buys with a passion verging on obsession. His wife wouldn’t approve, so Charles is sure Chip is keeping it in the study. After much deliberation, Charles decides it’s behind the picture of the Madonna on the wall behind the desk. He can imagine the safe that is set in the wall, with an old-fashioned dial wheel set in burnished gray metal. Chip’s porn is relatively soft core: old issues of Playboy, Penthouse, a few Hustlers, the odd ancient Stag—nothing too depraved. Nonetheless, Chip is devoted to the magazines and has freely admitted to Charles that he has been a regular masturbator all his life. He calls it his deep relationship with Madame Hand.

Charles sits back down and again puts his feet up, feigning nonchalance. After a few moments, he fidgets in his seat then pulls his feet off the desk and stands up again. He’s always uncomfortable when someone is reading his work, even his clients. In addition to his weekly column in the Miami Herald, opinion articles for national magazines and atheist blogs, and short stories in sci-fi mags, he takes several business writing jobs a year, yet it always drives him crazy when the client wants to read his work in his presence. What do you do while they’re examining your life, your thoughts committed to paper, he thinks. I should have brought a book. At least I could be pretending to read while I’m waiting. I wonder if Chip will get out some of the porn for me if I ask?

He wanders over toward the Madonna picture and stares out the window at the incredibly bright pavement. Girls in halter tops drift past the window in high-heeled sandals. The single-story pastel homes across the street bake beneath the palms. This neighborhood is far from the art deco section of Miami Beach with its crass and compelling time warp ambiance, where Charles yearns to live. The area has run down, seen-better-times aura; it’s in a different, less affluent time warp. Only six miles west of tony North Beach as the crow flies, the neighborhood might just as well be in a different country. The church itself, with its Haitian influence, is a spot of color amidst fading, peeling, sad houses with scruffy, sandy patches of lawn in front.

How in hell did Chip get to be pastor of a freakin’ Haitian church anyway? Charles is surprised he’s never asked his friend this question. He knew Chip had served two stints with the Peace Corps in Haiti, but he was so not black, and so not Haitian. Yet his congregation loves him, and he’s never had a problem with the racial divide. Everybody loves Chip, without exception. Wonder what that feels like, Charles thinks. I’m a bit of acquired taste myself. Charles has always had few friends and his introversion has often been mistaken for aloofness.

Chip is stirring. As he concentrates on Charles’ chapter, he scratches his nose, and under his desk, he slips off his shoes. He idly reaches beneath the desk and pulls off his socks. Still reading the manuscript, Chip crosses ankle over knee, and begins picking his feet. This is a trait that Charles finds particularly disgusting. Chip never thinks to ask if it’s OK, but immediately becomes shoeless and odoriferous whenever he comes over Charles’s place. Charles takes this somewhat as a compliment—Chip is so comfortable with him that he feels right at home. Still, these huge hams of feet—although they don’t really stink, their aroma does tend to permeate the room.

Now Chip scratches behind his ear as if an insect has bit him.

Jesus, Charles thinks. When is he going to finish? It’s only 4,500 words, for Christ’s sake. Chip burps loudly—another endearing trait. Finally, he looks up.

“Interesting.”

From his time living in Minnesota, Charles knows this is a Midwesterner’s dodge—either a mask of annoyance, or contrary feelings, or an excuse for having no reaction or understanding at all. At least he didn’t say “different,” the Midwestern kiss of death.

“What do you mean interesting? My old roommate used to say interesting whenever he didn’t understand something.”

“No, I mean interesting. As in, really interesting, dickweed. What would Jesus have been like if he had been a one-percenter? Would the message have been the same coming from such a different vessel?”

“You mean, could God have inspired a rich man to say the same things a poor man would find easy to say?”

“Well, not exactly. The spirit takes different forms depending . . .”

“Depending on what? Isn’t the truth the truth? Isn’t there an absolute, as you are always telling me?” Charles moves from the window back to his seat, but does not sit down. He always thinks better on his feet.

Chip regards him silently for a moment. “Yes, the truth is absolute, I believe, but the expression of the truth varies with the individual. For a rich man, the truth may mean: Give all your riches to the poor, or in this case, proselytize for the Lord. For a poor man, the truth may mean: accumulate all the riches you can so you can help your family. You see what I mean?”

“I don’t see what this has to do with the kingdom of heaven.”

Chip scratches his stubbly chin. Despite his position as pastor, he can’t be persuaded to shave more than every other day. “Well, I don’t believe there’s just one path. There are as many paths as there are people.”

Charles won’t take such relativism from Chip, who in Charles’ eyes is a representative of dogma. “Didn’t he say I am the way?”

“The interstate takes you to all destinations. There is no requirement for entry; just find an onramp. And there are many exits, not just one. But there is one final destination.”

Charles is irate and leans over the desk towards Chip. “What the hell does that mean? Mumbo fucking jumbo. Religiosity for the sake of religiosity!” Charles feels he is somehow being attacked.

“No, I really mean it. The highway of life, the maze and the tangle of destinations. Who are we to say that a particular vehicle is not going to find the ultimate destination? It could be the Bangor, Maine of our dreams or it could be merely Pensacola.” Chip snickers.

Charles, confused by the concept and irritated by Chip’s attitude, says, “I don’t get it. What does this have to do with what I have written?”

“Well, what is it you think you have written, padawan?” Chip arches an eyebrow at Charles, drops one foot to the floor, elevates the other, and begins picking.

“Well what I think I am writing is an indictment of religion in general, and the whole idea that a simple carpenter, or a blood-thirsty Arab, or a Hebrew with a bad sense of direction and a God complex are exalted and worshipped and codified into religions that have brought such misery to the planet. Any institution that brings about crap like the Crusades, all those nasty popes, Henry VIII, fatwas, war and famine, should be held accountable, that’s what I think, and that’s what I’m writing about. Frankly, I think religion should be banned or at least we should all be weaned from the idea that we must subscribe to a codified belief structure administered by a privileged few, whether it be worship of technology, sports, self, cars or other gods.”

“Such big words, beloved!” mocks Chip. “So, you’re against a spiritual life, an appreciation of something larger than yourself?”

“I believe in personal enlightenment, and although I hate the idea of self-serving bigots telling people what to think and how to be saved, I could support some kind of loose confederation of ideas, a communal or tribal feeling of closeness and common destination, with little dogma and, yes, an emphasis on spiritual life.”

Chip is not smiling now, wondering if his friend truly sees him as a self-serving bigot. He’s a bit pissed by Charles’ rant and its apparent ad hominem attack on him.

“Would you ban love because some people sin because of it?”

Charles smiles and says nothing; he likes to get Chip’s goat.

Chip, now a bit red in the face, continues, “Think of all the monuments that came to be because of this terrible thing, religion—for the love of God. Think of all the good that religious institutions have done, all the refuge they have provided for the oppressed, all the comfort they’ve given the grieving. I grant you, in every human endeavor there are sinners, those who twist the goodness into evil, transmute gold into the base components of a man, but that fact does not invalidate the institution. Religion, which you defame, has exalted more than it has thrown down. Yes, I am ashamed of the Crusades, the error-filled Popes, the Ayatollah, ISIL, and fanatics of every kind. But I am not ashamed of the pious believers, who make all our lives richer by their devotion. Dammit, Chuck, it’s not black and white, as you say. Why pick on one imperfect human endeavor, the feeble attempt of man to appreciate God, when all human endeavor is imperfect? Why not pick on, on . . . NASCAR, for Christ’s sake, or Wall Street, or softball, or Mah-Jongg? It is not inherent in the worship of God to be deluded, yet some are still deluded.”

Chip has been leaning far forward in his chair, hands gripping the arms with white knuckles. He collapses back, and the chair emits a loud squeak as it bears his bulk.

Charles smiles a bit to himself. He really got the old guy worked up this time. “I’m not surprised you mentioned monuments. Don’t get me started on architectural excess in the name of the Lord.”

Chip glares at Charles. “Look Chuckie, the point is salvation. Not all followers will be saved. And, by the same token, not all followers will stray into these monstrous crimes and excesses you mention. That’s just the way it is; it’s a bell curve, the way it will be for any organized human endeavor.”

“It’s just that religion purports to be different than these other activities you mention. Stock car racing doesn’t claim to offer truth; that’s your stock in trade, no pun intended” Chip rolls his eyes. “While you make a good point about the incredible, hopeless wrong-headedness of most human activities, I can’t forgive religion, since it does claim to be above this, to be a path to truth and salvation. No, that’s wrong. Religion claims not to be the way to the truth, but the truth absolute.”

Both Chip and Charles are clearly weary of the conversation. “Let’s get back to my chapter. I’m glad it’s thought-provoking. What did you think about the missionary Jew stuff?”

Chip thinks for a minute. “Not bloody likely, is what I think. I can see a Jew being interested in proselytizing, and it sure could get him killed, but I don’t see it succeeding to the point you mention in the chapter. Hundreds of thousands?”

“Yeah, I know. But that’s what a messianic figure needs: a borderline heretical proposition. And I know a few people who have converted to Judaism, mostly as part of marriage, but one of them, she converted as part of her own spiritual journey. From Lutheranism, for God’s sake.”

“Mere anecdotes, Chucko.” Chip smirks and picks up a partially smoked cigar from his desk ashtray and jams it into the corner of his mouth. “Is this guy in your chapter the Second Coming?”

“No. In this universe, it’s the first coming. Paulicism is based on a false messiah, St. Paul, who creates the religion based on a bunch of memes that were floating around the Middle East back then. I figure Paulicism is pretty close to Catholicism, just no Jesus. Paul either fabricated some other messiah figure, or chose himself. Since there’s obviously crucifixion, I’m thinking Paul is still telling the story of another guy who got condemned, but it might have been him. I’m not sure which way to go with that. I’m expecting many of the same parables and scriptures get written. That way I can quote them as necessary.”

“So, OK. That’s interesting, the business of there not having been a true Messiah at the time of Christ, and I like your idea of Paul making the religion up from whole cloth from ancient messianic myths. I’d like to see you expand on the creation of Paulicism. Just love the name, by the way.”

“Yeah, I could do that, probably will. But where is this story going? That’s what I can’t figure. Does the rich modern Jesus still get crucified?”

Chip, who has been leaning back in his chair staring at the ceiling with fingers laced behind his head, rocks forward and contemplates the question. “Good question. As a rich man, He’s more likely to be taken seriously enough to be made king, or president, like that narcissistic fascist Trump, or something similar. But I still think he would be enough of a threat to the Romans, or whomever is standing in for the Romans in your chapter, perhaps the Bangladeshis, that he still would get crucified. Or maybe when the time came, he would feel he needed to masquerade as a beggar to get his message across.”

“The great pretender. I like that.”

Chip glowers at his friend. “That’s not what I meant, you nut job. Not a pretender, he would assume the identity of a beggar in order to show that the mean shall be exalted.”

“But isn’t that a lie? He’s not a beggar; he is already exalted. And he already tried that dodge when he created Jewish.com as a teenager with a false back story.”

Chip scratches his chin, selects a particularly long hair and plucks it. “True, but I think the point is still the same. Material riches are not what counts in the world beyond. And certainly, just being poor is not enough to get you exalted in the kingdom of heaven”

“Well it sounds like a decent prerequisite. What about the rich man, the camel and the needle?”

“Not really relevant. It only is a rough measure of the crimes a rich man must commit to achieve or maintain his position. And this is only the average rich man we’re talking about. Obviously, Jesus would not be the average rich man. Plus, you do have him, where is it,” Chip riffs through the manuscript. “Maintaining ‘heavy security around the temple and the building,’ and he knows ‘whom to pay and whom to ally with.’ So you got a pragmatic sinner on your hands.”

Charles leans back in his chair thoughtfully, teetering on the edge of falling over. “I don’t know. I don’t know if this is really the way I want to portray Jesus.”

“Well, dude, what is your point, anyway? You know this type of treatment would be considered extreme blasphemy by many of my colleagues. Remember what happened to Rushdie. You looking for a fatwa or excommunication or a just a good old-fashioned Southern lynching, boy?” Chip leers like a good southern cracker lawman, and the cigar drops from his mouth onto his desk.

“Methodism in madness, eh?” Charles laughs. “Yes, I remember Rushdie and his years of hiding. And probing underpinnings of faith is rarely rewarded, is it?” He sighs. “I guess I don’t really know what I want to do here. All I know is that for as long as I can remember, I have wanted to write the story of Jesus. I never really felt comfortable with what the Bible says—all hearsay evidence and apostles’ interpretation way after the fact—and I especially don’t like the way religions have interpreted it. I think they have gotten it all wrong.

“Rather, I feel they have gotten Jesus all wrong. Or not all wrong, it’s just that they’ve twisted what he said to fit preconceptions they have. He was a man, after all, but when do we see him sinning? I don’t know. I guess I really don’t know.”

Chip, recovered from his exasperation with Charles’ anti-religious rant, looks fondly at his friend. He retrieves the cigar from his desk and sticks it back into the corner of his mouth.

“You are exploring a different path for Jesus. You are enumerating one of the possible universes. Is it a requirement that Jesus be poor? I find this intriguing. Would a rich man’s message have been significantly different than that of a poor man? I think that’s an interesting idea. You’ve really got me thinking here.” He leans back in his chair, again laces his fingers behind his head, stares at the ceiling, and starts to hum If I Were a Rich Man while chewing the stogie.

Charles is a bit mollified. At least Chip is thinking about what he has written. Perhaps all is not lost. Perhaps he can find a way to get this damn book written after all.

“Well, as you can see, this latest pathetic chapter grew out of our discussion the other night at dinner. Remember we were talking about what the manger means psychopolitically, and how although Buddha was a prince before being enlightened, Mohammed was an orphan; Confucius was from a noble family that had become quite poor. Remember? It was after many bottles of cabernet, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t.”

Chip nods and holds his head in mock hangover pain.

“You know, we talked on about the Jewish tradition of being downtrodden, Moses, Abraham, David over Goliath, that sort of thing. So I got to thinking: What would have happened if Jesus had been born to a wealthy family? Would that have changed his message that the mean shall be exalted and the mighty brought down? Does the messiah need a rabble-rousing attitude—an understanding of the lives of the least of us? Is the messiah a revolutionary or, as in the Jewish tradition, merely a holy anointed king who will redress all the injuries visited upon the Jews?”

“It’s true. The Jewish scripture regarding the messiah does stress the worldliness of his reign, building the third temple and reclaiming Jewish lands and such.”

“Exactly. So, José is a wealthy captain of industry who lives in a palace with servants. In spite of his social position, though, Jesús feels he needs to justify his worth. An otherworldly—other kingdom—reason why he is special. Since José is a distant father, often away tending business, the son talks often of his real father returning for him. You know, I thought it would be a hoot for Maria to be a Jewish mother, doting, carping. Might put that in.”

“How stereotypical, beloved. I’d leave that out. You know, in both your chapters, there’s almost nothing about faith. You’re just describing events with no religious context.”

Charles thinks a bit before replying. Obviously, his friend is big on the idea of faith, but Charles has a real problem believing in the unseen.

“I think faith is humanity’s red herring. Unseen mumbo jumbo to enforce proper behavior. And a convenient way to explain away some of the problems of life, like evil, and, ah, ah . . . hmmm. Rhetoric requires three points to an argument, let’s see, OK. Point 3: a sop to the downtrodden.”

Chip gapes at Charles like he’s said the stupidest thing ever. “That was some weird-ass argument, even for you. It’s not a red herring, mumbo jumbo or a sop. Faith has spurred mankind to do miraculous things: not just cathedrals—which I realize piss you off— and works of art, but lifting people out of poverty, enriching their lives with hope. All accomplished in the name of faith.”

“Well, as Carl Sagan said, ‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.’ Where’s your proof that these wondrous things were the product of unseen benevolent powers? How can you believe without proof?”

“Dude, the whole point of having faith is to believe in something unseen. God’s influence is all around you.”

“Yeah, right. In all the horrible things he lets happen.”

“Free will, man.”

“A convenient concept to explain away the problem of evil.”

“Since we were cast out of Eden, we’ve had to find our way back to God—use our free will—to create the kind of reality that will gain us entry to paradise. The world is and always has been full of good and bad, for good needs bad, if only to enable us to make choices—free will. There’s always been evil, sin, injustice, greed, lust, hate, but also goodness, love, beauty, and joy. How can you have free will if there are no choices? Like Pascal said, ‘In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.’”

“So it’s like that, eh? OK, buddy. 1-2-3-4, I declare a quote war: ‘Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.’ Eric Hoffer. You go.”

Chip says, “’Absolute atheism starts in an act of faith in reverse gear and is a full-blown religious commitment.’ Jacques Maritain. And I’ll give you a twofer: ‘Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase. MLK.’”

“So faith is like falling down stairs in the dark? Ha! ‘Faith: not wanting to know what is true.’ Friedrich Nietzsche.”

“Oh no you di’n’t! Quoting Nietzsche, that lowlife! ‘Atheists are like fish who don’t believe in the existence of water.’ Anonymous.”

“Anonymous, or you just made it up!” Chip opens his mouth to reply. Charles holds up a finger and says, “I know, I know. Just kidding. I’ve heard that one. You didn’t like Nietzsche? How about a quote from another horrible human being who got at least one thing right: ‘Faith is the worst curse of mankind, as the exact antithesis and enemy of thought.’ Ayn Rand.”

“You’re really pissing me off now, ‘cause I know you hate Rand. ‘To sustain the belief that there is no God, atheism has to demonstrate infinite knowledge, which is tantamount to saying, “I have infinite knowledge that there is no being in existence with infinite knowledge.”’ Ravi Zacharias.”

Once again, Charles is stunned not only at the breadth of Chip’s learning, but at his encyclopedic memory. He might lose the quote war by running out of quotes. He replies, “’Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.’ Arthur Schopenhauer.”

“’If you believe in an unseen Christ, you will believe in the unseen Christlike potential of others.’ Anthony Burgess.”

“’Every man, who reasons, soon becomes an unbeliever.’ Baron d’Holbach.”

“’One person with a belief is equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.’ John Stuart Mill.”

“’Religion is like a blind man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn’t there, and finding it.’ Oscar Wilde.”

“’As for those who fear their Lord unseen, for them is Forgiveness and a great Reward.’ The Quran.

“The Quran? Cripes. What’s a good Methodist like you doing quoting the Quran? Ummm. Ummm. Hold on. I’ve got a list of juicy quotes on my phone.”

“Well, if you want to cheat . . . I’m gonna stay with my own prodigious intellect, learning, and memory.” Charles sticks his tongue out and blows a raspberry.

“OK. OK.” Charles fiddles with his phone, scrolling madly. “Where is that damn file? Here it is. Ah. OK. Another great one from Eric Hoffer: ‘Take man’s most fantastic invention—God. Man invents God in the image of his longings, in the image of what he wants to be, then proceeds to imitate that image, vie with it, and strive to overcome it.’ Eric Hoffer, my man!”

“’Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.’ Saint Augustine.”

“’Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved.’ Tim Minchin.”

“’The man who flies an airplane… must believe in the unseen.’” Richard Bach.

“Was that from his crappy Jonathan Livingston Seagull?” Chip shrugs his shoulders. “I dunno. I just read it somewhere.” Charles scrolls on his phone. “Ah! One of my faves. ‘Christians keep saying that the God of the New Testament is completely different and more moral than the God of the Old Testament, not realizing what an insanely irrational argument that is. If you knew a man who was a serial murderer his entire life, committed genocide, demanded child offerings and crushed entire cities, would you suddenly start trusting him when he suggested crucifying his own son to make up for it?’ Joshua Kelly.”

“’So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.’ 2 Corinthians 4:18, known to President Trump, of course, as ‘two Corinthians.’”

“And while we’re on the subject of the Old Testament: ‘The Old Testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief—call it what you will—than any book ever written; it has emptied more churches than all the counterattractions of cinema, motor bicycle and golf course.’ A. A. Milne. Winnie-the-Pooh got teeth!”

“’Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.’ Hebrews 11:1.”

“Great, Bible Boy! Let’s see. This one’s probably apocryphal, like the Bible itself, but it’s a fave: ‘Eskimo: “If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?” Priest: “No, not if you did not know.” Eskimo: “Then why did you tell me?”’ Annie Dillard.

“’We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.’ Buddha.”

“Your story has become tiresome. You have disturbed me almost to the point of insanity . . . There. I am insane now.”

“OK, Dieter, is now ze time on Sprockets vhen ve dance?”

Charles smirks. He’s running out of quotes, though. “Here’s my last one, a bookend to the Sagan quote: ‘What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.’ Christopher Hitchens. Oh, wait! My all-time favorite: ‘Prayer is like masturbation. It feels good to the person doing it, and does nothing for the person they’re thinking about.’ Don Baker.”

Chip erupts in laughter at this last. “That’s a great quote! Who is this Don Baker guy?”

“He’s a computer geek from Texas, big in the Free Thinker movement. He calls Christianity a meme, a mind virus.”

“Kinda like that brain virus in your first chapter, eh?”

“Yeah. He runs a site and organization called Christianity Meme. His idea is that the Christianity meme arose via natural selection and thus is a product of cultural evolution. As such, it is an amoral meme, and it is not bound by its own professed moral principles. And also, this virus is not subject to the normal error correction of living organisms, if you consider a virus living. Thus, errors can be introduced and perpetuated without check. Of course, you could argue that in Catholicism, the Pope is error correction, but we’ve seen where that has led.”

The two men sit silently for a few minutes, drinking their beers.

Charles breaks the silence. “All this talk about unseen realms, heaven, hell, faith. It just seems so distant, and there seems no way our rational minds can touch these truths. So, I just don’t know what the point is,” he says.

Suddenly there’s a loud shout and a wolf whistle from the street outside. Charles, disturbed by the interruption, glares out the window. “I mean, what’s the point of fleetingly glimpsing the beautiful women in their halter tops passing by your window?”

The two men move to the window and peer out. The shadows are a bit longer, but the street is still atomic bright.

Charles jabs his finger at the window. “We can’t touch them; we can’t directly experience them. There’s little chance they’ll ever have anything to do with our lives. Yet we still watch. We are still interested in their progression down the boulevard. Something about their experience connects with something inside us. In the case of this analogy, the connection is one of lust, but I am comparing lust to love. Lust to salvation, if you will. And I’m not at all sure I believe in salvation. I think the chances of me being saved are about as large as the chances of me bedding that woman there.”

He points out the window at an incredibly lovely figure as she walks past them and continues down the street. She has an impossibly narrow waist and luxurious buttocks. Her figure is crowned with a fantastic bust line, neither too large nor too small, that swells up and down with the rhythm of her stride. As if she feels the gaze of the two men, she tosses her hair their way before disappearing around the corner out of sight.

“My friend, let’s find out,” Chip says, clapping Charles on the shoulder before firing his stogie in the general direction of his ashtray. The big man stabs his feet into his ever-present flip flops, grabs Charles’s arm, and drags him out of the office, through the secretary’s office and out the door to the hallway.

“Wait,” splutters Charles, but Chip has him firmly in tow as they burst out upon the sunny street. The heat of the Miami day strikes them like a punch, staggering Charles briefly.

“Come on,” says Chip as he takes off around the corner. Charles follows the lumbering big man somewhat reluctantly. They run for a block or so, but fail to glimpse the beautiful young woman. Chip is breathing heavily when they stop.

“Damn…sonofabitch…shit!” he says, trying to catch his breath. “We missed her.” Charles is similarly winded and already starting to sweat through his linen jacket. “What the hell was that all about?”

“That, my friend, was the leap of faith. You gotta believe before you’re saved. You can’t tell me that if we had caught her you would not have been changed fundamentally in some way, maybe even saved. Or married. Who can say? Damn. I wish I knew.”

“You see? That’s just it. I don’t think it would have meant, or changed, anything! She was just a shout in the street. Dammit, Chip. Why must you be so goddamn optimistic?”

A big smile spreads across Chip’s face. “Same reason you got to play the faithless pessimist all the time, bucko! C’mon, let’s go get a milkshake and some lunch. I’m broiling.” Chip puts his massive arm across Charles’ shoulders and turns them both around. “Say Charles, me boy, did you hear about the Buddhist who walked into a pizza parlor and said, ‘Make me one with everything?’”

Cackling like a demon, Chip leads his groaning friend down the frying pavement in search of air conditioning and ice cream.

Indigo Girls—Closer to Fine

Charles and Chip are sitting around Skip’s office on a Saturday. Chip had some paperwork he needed to finish, so he invited Charles to drop over once he was finished and maybe play some basketball. The two are drinking Bud Lights, sitting at either end of Chip’s office couch. They can hear a pickup basketball game on the church’s court next to Chip’s office. For while they just drink and listen to the young men slinging good-humored insults at each other as they play.

“Reminds me of when we met,” Charles says. “You remember?”

“Do you think I’m senile? Of course I do, it was only a year ago.”

“I’d just moved into my apartment and was out walking, getting the lay of the land”

“And probably looking for a different kind of lay,” Chip says, leering. “Know whatImean, know whatImean, nudge nudge, wink wink?

“I get your subtle innuendo,” Charles says, rolling his eyes.

“In your endo, bucko!”

“Anyway, you were having a pickup game and needed another player. I ran back to my place, changed, and then we whomped the holy hell outta that other team.”

“You were a monster on the boards, that much is true. But it was my outside shooting that made the difference.”

“No, I think it was you grabbing the jersey of that hotshot, knocking the ball away to me and my subsequent layup that made the difference, you unethical piece of humus.”

Chip puts on a wounded look and says, “Little ole me? Why I never!” Chip bats his eyes like a southern belle.

Charles ignores him. “Then we came in here after, got beers from the fridge and shot the shit for like four hours. I gotta say, though, initially I was shocked at your language. Why it almost gave me the vapors.”

Chip leans over and lets out a massive, musical fart.

“That’s what I’m talking about! I never met a holy man who swears like a sailor, let alone farts so unabashedly!”

“I remember it like it was 13 months ago . . .” Chip says, smiling. “Obviously, I think I should speak the vernacular, to remain closer to my flock. Doesn’t bother you, does it?”

“Me? No. I like plain speak.”

“Well, speaking of ethics . . .”

“Wait, what?” Charles says. “When were we speaking of ethics?”

Chip says. “You know, last week. We never finished that conversation.”

“Hell, I thought we were finished the moment you said you didn’t think there could be ethics without religion.”

Chip says, “You blockhead, you know full well that I did not say that, nor do I think that. What I do think is that the subject is much broader than most people, especially conservative people, believe. For example, when I was in divinity school, I took an ethics class. We talked at length about the concept of an ethical life and how to lead it, as well as how to encourage others to do so. We all showed up for the final on a fine spring day. Birds tweeting outside the open windows. Breezes blowing dogwood petals. A perfect day. Out the window, we could see the building’s janitor sweeping the petals off the sidewalk.

“My general tendency, by the way, in dealing with the people who serve us in our everyday lives, is to get to know them and to talk with them about their lives. There’s many a waitress across the South who has poured out her life story to me because I took an interest.”

“I’ll just bet,” Charles says. “Are there also any little Chips scattered about the South?” Chip just ignores him.

“So, anyway, on the day of the final, everyone’s in their seats expecting the professor to distribute a thick sheaf of exam questions to each of us. But instead, he passed up and down the rows and placed a single sheet of blank paper in front of each student.

“My classmates exchanged puzzled looks. Was this to be an essay test? What were we to do with these sheets? The professor returned to the front of the room and said, ‘OK. There’s only one question on this final. If you get it right, you get an A. If not, you fail.’ Well, we were all pretty shocked and worried by this. The professor continued, ‘The question is: What is the name of the janitor?’

“My classmates gaped in horror. I, on the other hand, wrote down ‘Monde Green,’ stood up, delivered my paper to the professor and left with every eye in the room following me. I not only knew Monde’s name, I knew he had three young kids and a wife who had a bum leg, and thus had a devil of a time looking after her kids. I knew he drove a beat-up Pontiac, and that he often stopped off at the bar on his way home on Friday nights. So, that’s the foundation of ethics: Treat others as you would be treated—the Golden Rule. Most of your conservatives don’t get this, no matter how piously they declare that all would be better if the country ‘returned’ to its Christian roots.”

Charles burps and says, “I can actually get behind that. In fact, I’m in violent agreement with you on this point.” Chip offers his beer bottle for a clink and drink. “So, did the professor flunk everybody else?”

“Nah. He just pulled out the mother of all ball-breaker final exams and told the class to think about how much easier their lives would be if they only would live ethics instead of just talking and reading about it. Most of them escaped the course with a gentleman’s—and gentlewoman’s because there were four women in the class—C.”

“Hah! Serves ‘em right. But when we talked about this before, you and I seemed to disagree. You seemed all dogmatic about following Christ’s teachings and living a rigorous life bound to the Bible.”

“Part of that was you and your preconceived notions about what I believe, and part of it was that I was baiting you a bit, just to see how you’d react.”

“So how is that ethical?” Charles is mildly pissed, but mostly perplexed.

“It is ethical to play the devil’s advocate to enlighten a student.” Chip sticks his tongue out at Charles who leans over and tries to grab it.

“You rank bastard! Mr. I’m Holier Than Thou, Esquire!”

Chip just snickers and drinks his beer. “Oh,” he says, “that reminds me of a favorite koan: A novice was trying to fix a broken computer by turning the power off and on. The Master, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: ‘You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong.’ The Master turned the machine off and on. The machine worked.

“So ends today’s lesson,” Chip says. Charles groans and rolls his eyes. “Oh, brother! I like the koan, ‘What is the sound of one hand clapping?’ much better.”

“That has an easy answer,” Chip says, pulling off one flipflop and clapping his hand against the sole of his bare foot.

“Oh, that’s good!” Charles says. “This novice is enlightened!”

Chip chuckles in delight and says, “Back to what we were talking about. You’ve made it clear you have no use for religion. What about philosophy?”

Charles replies, “Generally, a branch of religion, even when practiced by atheists. A different type of organized belief structure, but one just as prone to dogma and rigidity.” Charles reaches down to the side of the couch, pulls his longneck beer up off the floor, and takes a swig. “I just can’t accept these systems, these arbitrary systems, that enforce beliefs, demand obedience, and then fail utterly to inspire goodness, or even enforce goodness in their followers, or, for Chrissakes, at the very least prevent devastating evilness, like your basic Crusades or Inquisition and such.”

Chip tilts back his beer, swallows ostentatiously and says, “Don’t throw out the baby with the bath, Chucker! Just look at the alternative: A society with no moral underpinning can’t hope to survive, much less be better off, as you seem to think. Humans need rules to live by.”

Charles blows a mournful note across his bottle top. “What do morals have to do with religion? Or philosophy, for that matter. That’s another thing that kills me. Where do religions get off claiming a monopoly on ethics and morality? Why can there be no moral choice besides theirs? It’s just so hypocritical!” Charles slams his beer back down on the floor and grabs his head with both hands.

He continues, “It just makes me crazy! I mean, can a philandering preacher—like, say, that holier than thou Family Values asshole from Colorado years ago, the one with the male prosty on the side, what was his name . . . Haggard or something? Ted Haggard. How could a dickhead like him have anything to say to his flock about morals, or the blueprint for life? Idiot preachers who can’t keep their dicks in their pants are so hypocritical, it makes me want to scream. Fucking Jimmy Swaggart, for crying out loud. Ach! I mean just look, look at this list I printed out from Wikipedia. It’s not even close to a complete list of evangelist scum involved in scandals.” Charles rummages in the folder he keeps his book notes in and thrusts a page at Chip. The page is filled, front and back, with evangelists’ names.

Chip scans the documents. “Crap,” he says. “I haven’t heard of a lot of these. A. A. Allen? There’s even the odd female, like Aimee Semple McPherson. Ooo, I like this guy’s name, Apollo Quiboloy. But you’ve got some sincere evangelists in here, like Billy Graham.”

“Yeah, they’re not all crooks, but most of them use the same fire and brimstone and ‘give me money for salvation’ techniques. Some are self-righteous bandits, like Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Ted Haggard, Jimmy Swaggart. Others are perhaps more dangerous, because they were after political influence, like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. But I think they’re all despicable.”

Chip finishes looking at the list, sniffs, and hands it back. “Dude, Ted Haggard’s and Jimmy Swaggart’s and a lot of these people’s churches are non-denominational. They’re not part of any organized religion. They’re free ballin’. I agree there’s some swine in the non-denominational evangelical ‘churches.’” As usual, Chip supplies the air quotes.

“So, you’re just glad they’re not Methodists, huh? Give me a fucking break.” Charles gets up and starts to pace. “It just proves my point about the dangers of religion. Any crackpot, even a mediocre science fiction writer or a loony guy from Ohio, can create a religion and be the authority, and start telling people how to live their lives, while they fatten their coffers.”

“Well, if you want me to say just following a religion or being a member of a church can’t prevent sin, I will. But that seems pretty obvious. Religions exist to inspire people to live better, more-moral lives and to avoid sin.”

Charles sits back on the edge of the couch, leaning over with his elbows on his knees. His whole body is tense. “But where do they get off insisting that their way is the absolute truth? I’m definitely not an advocate of situational morality, but I’m also not comfortable with the idea of absolute right and wrong dictated by holier-than-thou-types. How can a pope, who decides to speak ex cathedra, be any more infallible than he is when speaking ex officio, or in normal discourse? And if you examine these pronouncements, it’s clear they aren’t any different from what the pope thinks in the normal course of events.”

Chip spreads his hands and shrugs. “Don’t ask me; I’m a Methodist. We got rid of the damn popes ages ago.”

“Well bully for you! But to continue for just a little longer on the Catholic church, add to the ex-cathedra nonsense the fact that there are so many layers of truth in infallible teachings. There’s ecumenical council infallibility, pope infallibility—as when a couple of them declared immaculate conception and the assumption of Mary as church dogma. There’s explicit and implied infallibility. And don’t get me started on the saints. Omigod, what a political cluster fuck beatification and canonization is, with the whole manufactured miracle stuff.”

“Beloved, this is why there are Protestants. Exactly why. And why United Methodists view saints as sanctified members of the universal church to be celebrated for their lives and works, but not worshiped or treated as conduits to God.”

“Well, that certainly seems like a more rational approach. But even Methodists believe in inspiration, as in the Latin inspire, and that the Bible was inspired by God. And that God helped men select which books would be in the Bible, right? Divine assistance and inspiration as determined by fallible men, that doesn’t seem likely to me to produce truth. Just look at Leviticus!”

Charles takes a sip of his beer. “But don’t get me wrong. I believe in inspiration. I do believe in some unseen magnificence that can break through and touch our lives. I don’t think the fucking Pope has a monopoly on truth, nor do I believe any religion is even close to an authority on the subject. The Pope and all the religious figureheads are human beings, and will always be fallible, and subject to the restrictions and complications of their personalities.”

Charles takes another long drink of his beer. Chip just sits calmly, sure that his friend will continue his rant.

“And, not to go off on a tangent, but the whole idea of the personality of God just seems to me to be so wrong. I have a really hard time ascribing a humanoid personality to whatever it is that is responsible for our existence and our inspiration.”

Charles sets his beer down on the floor and crumples back onto the couch. “Think about it. A real, personal god, a male, of course, feeling human emotions like wrath and love. A jealous god of the Old Testament, prescribing crap like dietary laws and prohibiting masturbation and such, all that Leviticus stuff, letting your hair become unkempt or eating fat. A god who plays mind games with Abraham to see if the guy would really kill his own son. That god seems like a real eccentric crank to me. And, really, what would God want with a personality in the first place? It would just get in the way. A personality, to me, implies imperfection, flaws, variability, limitations. That’s why machines have no soul. Nothing can go wrong.” Chip sits back with a benevolent smile on his face as his friend gets more and more worked up.

Charles continues, “The idea of God with a human-like personality seems to me to be the ultimate blasphemy.” Charles is rolling the beer bottle between his hands as if rubbing a lamp. “Think of all that makes you you. The foibles and flaws. The limitations and the separation from others, the distinctness of your loneliness . . . Take those away, and what have you got? A meat-based thinking machine with maybe a little bit of inspiration. Certainly not a whole human being, a whole personality. It makes no sense for God to have a personality. Tell me. What are God’s foibles? What are his flaws?”

Chip has tired of Charles’s tirade and says, “Well, he certainly doesn’t lack a sense of humor. He made me funny-looking and you an ass.”

Charles grabs a Nerf basketball from beside him on the couch and whips it at Chip’s head. It bounces off and swishes through the nearby trash can basketball hoop. Chip crows, “You see? Kismet. He moves in mysterious ways! ‘Hello? God here. Just sayin’ hi.’”

Charles is not in the mood to laugh. “Oh, I don’t believe it. I’ve heard unbelievable stretches to find meaning in the meaningless before, but that is ridiculous.”

“Dude, lighten up! You’re going to blow a gasket here.”

But Charles is in not about to settle down. “You didn’t answer my question. Doesn’t the very idea that God has a personality seem preposterous to you? Wouldn’t that necessarily involve placing limits on an all-seeing, all-knowing, omnipotent deity?”

Chip retrieves the basketball and rockets it back at Charles, who ducks, spilling the dregs of his beer on his shorts and down his leg. “Crap,” says Charles. “Now look what you made me do!”

Chip laughs and says, “Like John Lee Hooker said, ‘Serves you right to suffer. Serves you right to be alone.’” He sits back down on the couch like a load of bricks. “The Lord works in mysterious ways, and now He made it look like you peed yourself like a scared little weenie boy. That’s your punishment for being uppity. How’s that for personality?”

“Oh, give me a break! You’re acting like a moron!” Realizing he may have gone too far, Charles looks apprehensively at Chip.

Chip, however, finds Charles’s rants more amusing than insulting. He is, however, sick of this one, so he says, “Awright, boy. Ah mus’ defend mah honor! Ah chellenge you to a duel. Jump shots at 20 feet. We’ll jest let the Gud Lawd decide. Whatchew gonna dew?”

“Umm, I’m going to wipe the court with you.”

“Waall, I reckon Ah’m jest gonna meck yew eet those werds, sport. After yew.” They jostle one another as they leave the office on the way to the basketball court.

The pickup game has broken up and a dozen or so young men, mostly Haitians, are hanging out lying on the grassy mound adjacent to the court. Several others are leaning on cars in the nearby parking lot, shooting the shit with the drivers. They all start poking each other, pointing and laughing to see two old guys take the court.

“Give ‘im hell, preacher!” one of them yells.

Chip beams at the young man and pounds his chest. He turns to Charles, who is dribbling the ball from hand to hand. “Oh, hey,” Chip says to Charles, “before we get started, let me tell you my favorite Catholic joke.”

“O, Lord, please prevent this horse’s ass from telling me any more jokes. Amen.” Charles tosses the ball to Chip who catches it with one hand and in a single motion puts up a set shot from 15 feet that swishes. The audience hoots and hollers.

“Hey, skinny dude! You in a world of hurt! Hope you don’t got money on this,” one yells as other young men start to gather around the court to watch the game.

Chip bows to the crowd, blows them a kiss, and says, “Now you all better be nice to my friend here, because I’m gonna wipe the court with him, and that’s enough punishment for one day.”

The crowd loves this and starts hollering, and laughing, and slapping five. One yells, “Yes, Reverend. We’ll be good,” which starts them again falling about with laughter.

“I’m counting on it—all week!” Chip replies, sweeping a pointing finger across the crowd, saying, “Alla yez!”

Chip then turns to Charles and continues, “No, you’re gonna love this joke, although now that I think of it, it’s pretty non-denominational.”

“Please,” Charles pleads. “No more!” He retrieves the ball and puts up a layup. The crowd yells in mock delight.

“Hey, you asked for it after that spew you made me listen to just now. You deserve this one, and it’s a long one, so pay attention. A new priest at his first mass is so nervous during the homily he can hardly speak. After mass, he asks the monsignor how he had done. The monsignor replies, ‘When I am worried about getting nervous on the pulpit, I put a glass of vodka next to the water glass. If I start to get nervous, I take a sip.’

“So, the next Sunday, the young priest takes the monsignor’s advice. At the beginning of the sermon, he gets nervous and takes a drink. He proceeds to talk up a storm. Upon returning to his office, he finds the following note on his door.

• Sip the vodka, don’t gulp
• There were 12 Disciples, not 10
• Jesus was consecrated, not constipated
• Jacob wagered his donkey, he did not bet his ass
• We do not refer to Jesus Christ as the late J.C.
• The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are not referred to as Daddy, Junior, and Spook
• When David was hit by a rock and knocked off his donkey, don’t say he was stoned off his ass
• When Jesus broke the bread at the Last Supper, he said, ‘Take this and eat it, for it is my body.’ He did not say, ‘Eat me.’
• Next Sunday there will be a taffy-pulling contest at St. Peter’s, not a peter-pulling contest at St. Taffy’s.”

Charles lets out an extended groan. “Please, please, I beg of you, no more!”

Chip just shakes his head like Jimmy Durante and says, “I gotta million of ‘em!”

After telling the joke, Chip notices a car pull up alongside the court. “Hold on a minute,” he tells Charles. “I’ll be right back.”

Chip walks over to the car and speaks to the driver. The driver hands Chip a package and takes off. Chip walks past Charles, saying, “Be right back.” He’s gone for two or three minutes and returns without the package.

“What was that all about?” Charles says.

“Just some church business. I need to deliver a package. Now watch me deliver this.” Chip is way outside the three-point line when he jumps and shoots. The ball rattles in and the crowd goes wild. “Thas the way, preach! You ready for the Heat!” Chip trots around the court with his arms outstretched like he had just won game seven of the finals.

John Mittney, successful hedge fund manager, putative savior of the Olympics, and staunch Republican, put one booted foot up on the square prop hay bale and smiled at the small crowd. “Corporations are people my friend,” he said with a twinkle in his slate blue eyes.

“No, they’re not!” shouted several in the crowd.

“Of course, they are,” Mittney said. “Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people. Where do you think it goes?”

“To the Mormon Church,” screamed one man.

John was taken aback by the outburst. In all the hundreds of political meetings he had attended in this campaign and the one four years ago, nobody had had the temerity to bring up his faith. While Mittney acknowledged that some Mormon beliefs were outside the general Christian mainstream, he was a Christian and had struggled to remove any whiff of scrutiny of his religion from his political life.

In his brief moment of shock and fear when the heckler brought up Mormonism, John flashed back to his childhood. He was a miracle child, since his mother, Elizabeth, was barren and past 45 when he was born. When he was young, his father, Zacharias, told him that his birth had been heralded by the angel Gabriel, who appeared to his father in the hospital waiting room. The angel said that John would be the forerunner of the Messiah.

It was many years before John understood what that meant. If the Messiah was returning to Earth, then these must be the End Times, he thought. What would be the effect of Jesus’ return? Would the Messiah bring the Kingdom of God to Earth and peace and prosperity to humanity, ushering in the Millennium as his faith taught him? Or would there just be ruin, strife, and death? Looking around at the world outside his Mormon community, John was convinced that the Lord was planning on the latter. In Mormonism, the End Times were the key to the righteous being exalted, and to become God. The Earth would be cleansed with fire, Jesus would establish a true theocratic government that would last until the Millennium ended with the final battle with Satan.

Mormons were quite concerned with the End Times. Since only the righteous —meaning those who had accepted Jesus Christ and the Church of Latter-Day Saints—could enter the Kingdom of Heaven, the faithful attempted to qualify as many of their non-Mormon ancestors as possible by baptizing them by proxy.

As a young boy, John assisted in proxy baptisms of more than 100 of his forbearers, and later, as an adult, he assisted or attended thousands more with a fiery passion. His devotion to helping prepare his dead relatives for the Exaltation earned him the nickname John the Baptist, which John was ambivalent about. It was nice to be recognized, but the name had heavy connotations. Although he was quite devout, the fear and feeling of awesome responsibility instilled by his father’s angelic visitation gnawed inside him. The magnitude of this responsibility and his indulgence in masturbation—a serious Mormon sin—made him question his worthiness to carry out the prophecy. When his 16-year-old friend Frank committed suicide, in large part because of his masturbation shame, John was terrified—of being discovered, of not being discovered, of being unworthy in all respects. He was living a lie in a community that abhorred falsehood.

Thus, although John was outwardly the model Mormon, he had a complicated relationship with his faith, and avoided mentioning it or identifying as a Mormon. When he embarked on his career in finance, he often declined offers to go out to the bar with his colleagues by saying he was an alcoholic rather than declaring his religion. The truth was much more shameful to him than this manufactured lie. As he rose through the corporate ranks, amassing a fortune and garnering respect for his business acumen, he was less secretive about his Mormonism. Nonetheless, he continued to downplay the outward aspects of his religion.

So, when the Iowan heckler called him out, John was shaken to his core. Here he was, in his 60s, terrified that admitting who he was, in every sense of the word—a Mormon, a one-percenter, possibly a man whose destiny was to anoint the returned Messiah—would seal his doom. That things would only get worse if he went on to gain the nomination and then the presidency gave him night terrors.

It turned out that he needn’t have worried about the heightened scrutiny that would await him as president. His flippant “corporations are people” statement and a pair of incidents in his private life combined with a secretly recorded private fundraiser speech to sink his candidacy. When he lost the presidential race, John was devastated, but a part of him was relieved. The cup had passed.

In the aftermath of the election, John wondering if his father’s prophesy would ever be fulfilled. He had spent his life being apprehensive about what Gabriel told his father. Was it true? Or was his dad crazy? His father showed no other signs of being anything more than a successful businessman and politician. That was the legacy that John had taken as his mantle. There wasn’t a crazy or mystical bone in his father’s body. What should John make of his prophesy?

Thinking rationally, John realized he didn’t have too many more decades on the planet. Had he missed his opportunity? Or was this burden the result of some momentary mental aberration suffered by his father? Were these really the End Times? Would Jesus come back and initiate the Apotheosis? John spent the first year after his election defeat wracked by these doubts and fears.

To find meaning in his life, John decided to rededicate his life to baptism, of the departed and, if possible, the living. As he studied the teachings of his church about baptism, he began to wonder why many modern Christian sects had abandoned the original baptism, which was accomplished by the biblical John the Baptist on the banks of the Jordan river. Convinced that convenience might have overcome tradition, he broke with the tradition of his faith—which involved immersion in a font in a church—and started planning to organize baptisms on the banks of the Virgin River near the town of St. George, Utah.

This site appealed to John for many reasons, partly the names of the river and the town, which was named after George A. Smith, a Mormon apostle, partly because Brigham Young had wintered there, but also because, to him, the place bore a striking resemblance to Bethabara, the site where John the Baptist had done his work. John had visited that site in the mid-80s while on a mission to lay the groundwork for what became Brigham Young University Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies. He had helped broker the agreement that enabled the construction of the center by suggesting that the church pledge to not proselytize in Israel.

John decided to build a campus for Brigham Young in St. George, with an associated baptismal learning center. He would teach there and baptize converts and ancestors in the Virgin River. He had time; he had plenty of money, but, first things first: he built a palatial home on a hillside overlooking the town. Money moves mountains, and the $4 million 11,000 square foot (modest by John’s standards) refuge was built in less than six months. The town fathers bent over backward to accommodate the relocation of Utah’s most famous living son to their area.

Of course, John’s plan to personally perform baptisms hinged on his being ordained. Although he had once considered the priesthood and had taken many relevant divinity classes at Brigham Young, he had not followed through to ordination. There was, however, one route open to him. Since he was a literal descendant of Aaron and a firstborn, he needed only to be called to service by the president of the church. John contacted some friends on the Brigham Young board of trustees and explained his plan to build an extension of the university in St. George, including his baptism education center. These men were opposed to ex cathedra baptisms, so John decided to talk to a member of the Quorum of the Twelve, the elders who helped run the church. His uncle had once been the president of the Quorum, so John knew he could use his influence to good effect.

John made an appointment with the Elder and showed up bright and early on a gorgeous Salt Lake City day. “Thank you, Elder, for making time in your day to see me,” John said.

“How could I refuse to see such an illustrious and influential man?” said the Elder. “Please have a seat and tell me the reason for your visit, but first, before we begin, how are you doing? That was a devastating loss for all of us.”

“Thank you, Elder. Yes, I was quite disappointed, and I confess it did bother me for quite a while. But then I realized that the Lord had other plans for me, and that’s what I’ve come to talk to you about.” John shifted forward in his chair to look the Elder in the eyes. “Let me be respectful of your time and get right to the point. I have a plan to increase the ranks of the faithful and to prepare even more of our ancestors for the exaltation.”

The Elder fidgeted a bit in his chair while contemplating John’s statement. Although John’s family was honored and influential in the church, there were those Mormons who looked upon John as a bit too . . . worldly. He had pursued wealth and influence perhaps a little too keenly, although his faithfulness and tithing to the church were beyond question.

“Please continue,” the Elder said after a moment. “What exactly do you have in mind?”

As John laid out his plan for the Brigham Young extension and the baptismal center, the Elder’s eyes became slightly hooded. The Elder thought, now what could be driving him to propose this project? Why pick a remote outpost like St. George to build such a monumental structure? And baptism outside the confines of a church? It just isn’t done. What would give him such an idea?

After John finished, the Elder said, “This is an ambitious project and I am worried about several aspects.”

“Please, Elder, tell me your concerns.”

“I suppose my biggest concern other than its scale is this idea of an outdoor baptismal structure. This is not done in our church as a regular thing, as you must know. Although it happens, it requires permission, and we generally discourage baptism outside a Stake’s normal program.”

“Yes, Elder, I do know this. But I also know that John the Baptist initiated the sacrament of Baptism in just such an outdoor setting. As we became more comfortable in indoor settings, our rituals moved indoors. Remember, Jesus preached on mountaintops and almost exclusively outdoors.”

“You make a good point, but I’m afraid I cannot personally sanction this aspect of your plan. You’ll need to take it up with the president.”

“I thank you for your counsel. I hope that I can count on your support when I do so.”

“We’ll have to wait and see about that,” the Elder said.

“There’s one more thing I would like your help with, Elder. I personally would like to perform baptisms.” The Elder’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Now, before you answer, let me stake my claim. I’m a literal descendant of Aaron. You may already be aware of that. And as you know, a literal descendant of Aaron may serve without counselors, if called by the President of the Church and ordained to that office. I am asking for your help in bringing this to pass.”

“You know I cannot accomplish this. Only through that one man who is His mouthpiece on Earth will the Lord reveal instructions for His church, and that means the president must call you. As you must know, scripture says, ‘a literal descendant of Aaron, also must be designated by this Presidency, and found worthy, and anointed, and ordained under the hands of this Presidency, otherwise they are not legally authorized to officiate in their priesthood.’”

“Yes, I do know that. I am hoping for your support. Ever since I was a young man, I felt called to the baptism. You may know that I personally was the surrogate for more than 1,000 baptisms of our ancestors and have thus saved them from the fire. I would agree to serve only in the role of baptizer, despite the fact that my lineage could qualify me to be the Presiding Bishop of the Church.”

The Elder was flabbergasted by John’s proposal. “It may not be as easy as you might think.”

“I am prepared to offer myself to the scrutiny and process that the President will provide. Will you support me?”

The Elder realized that John would pursue this dream with the same doggedness he had pursued elective office. “I may indeed support you if you can find others. I know your influence, and I know your passion for our church. You have my blessing to proceed to convince others, and the President, to build your baptismal and convene the priesthood upon you.”

“Thank you, Elder! You won’t regret this,” John said, standing suddenly and clasping the Elder’s hand. “Once again, thank you for your time. You’ll be hearing more from me.”

I will be hearing more from others, too, the Elder thought as John left the room.

Despite initial resistance to baptism outside of a church, and to his being called to the priesthood, John’s stature, both religious and secular, eventually persuaded the board, other influential Mormons, and the president of the church to ordain him and bless the project. He obtained an Aaronic priesthood and could therefore confer baptism on the living and the dead. By the time he moved into his new home, the construction of the center was well underway.

That left the last task: attracting converts and the faithful to his center. He stumped throughout the state and nationally, and soon the trickle of baptizees turned into a flood. As the crowds grew to fill first his makeshift riverside dock and later the grand stone baptismal that the river ran through, John finally became comfortable in his own skin.

John heard a rumor that one of the few surviving Nazi guards was living somewhere near St. George. What a coup it would be to baptize such a sinner and bring him to the light! And what a boost to his still-growing Baptism Center! John asked around and found the guard apparently lived in a closed movie theater on West Center Street in Kanab, about 45 minutes away. John got into his Maserati and motored east to Kanab. It’s funny, he thought. So many western movies were shot in and around Kanab, and now the town can’t even support a movie theater.

Arriving at his destination, John got out of the car and faced the blank marquee from across the street. Let’s see, he thought. How do I get in? John walked up to the double doors and peered into the dark lobby. Inside he could see the empty snack bar adjacent to the velvet ropes and the ticket taker’s stand, everything covered in a gray layer of dust. John tried the doors, but they were locked. He looked around and noted the winter grayness at the bottoms of the barn-board siding and the cracked concrete of the sidewalk. The town and the building had seen better days. He was walking over to the ticket window when suddenly a raspy voice from above stopped him in his tracks. “Who do you want?” John turned quickly, stepped back, craned his neck, and squinted in the sun to try to see the owner of the disembodied voice. The voice appeared to have emanated from a balcony next to the marquee. Finally, he was able to make out an old lady in a bathrobe leaning out of a second story window. He said, “I beg your pardon?”

“Who do you want? No one gets in the building unless I know who they want. I’m the conciurge. My husband used to be the conciurge. He’s dead. Now I’m the conciurge.”

“I’m looking for an old German gentleman . . .”

“Aren’t we all!”

“. . . and perhaps you’d be so kind as to tell me if he lives here?”

“Oh, the Kraut. Yeah, he lives in the back. Apartment 23,” the old lady said and then wiped her nose on the sleeve of her robe. “But you won’t find him there. He’s up on the roof with his birds. He keeps birds. Dirty, disgusting, filthy, lice-ridden birds. You used to be able to sit out on the stoop like a person. Not anymore. No sir. Birds! You get my drift?”

“I … uh … get your drift. Thank you, Madam.”

“I’m not a madam. I’m a conciurge!”

“So how do I get in?”

“Go around the back, and I’ll let you in.” John went around the back of the building and the door opened to reveal a truly ancient woman, hunched in a faded blue bathrobe. She ushered him in, and he followed her up the stairs, slowly. On the second-floor landing, she said, “Follow the stairs to the roof and you’ll find him.” Then she turned to dodder off toward her own apartment.

John climbed the stairs to the roof and found an old man feeding birds. But something seemed wrong. This man couldn’t be much over 70, and even a guard who was a teen during the war would be pushing 90 by now.

“Excuse me, sir,” John asked. “Would you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

The old man, startled since he hadn’t noticed John’s arrival on the roof, dropped the can of bird seed and swung around to face him. “Oh! You gave me such a fright!” His eyes narrowed. “What kind of questions?”

“Well, to be honest, I’d like to talk about what you did during the war.”

“The Vietnam War?”

“Erm, no, World War II,” John said, getting ever more puzzled.

“I was two when that war ended. Don’t remember much about it.”

“I’m sorry, sir, I must have you confused with somebody else. You see, I was told there was a man in town here who may have been a Nazi guard during World War II.”

The old man bent over in laughter, which soon turned into a ragged cough, sending him digging in his pocket for a handkerchief. When he had recovered, he fixed a beady eye on John and said, “I think you are much mistaken, young man. There is a former Nazi guard in town, but it’s a she, not a he. Perhaps you met her on the way in? The ‘conciurge’?”

John reddened in embarrassment. “But . . . how?” he sputtered.

“Heh, the Nazis were equal opportunity offenders,” the old man said. “The Aufseherinnen were female guards in Nazi concentration camps. There were a few thousand of ‘em. Ruha was one of ‘em. That schlub answered an ad in the newspaper looking for women to show their love for the Reichland by joining the SS-Gefolge. Boy, do you got it wrong!” The old man giggled to himself, turned away, and resumed feeding the birds.

Apologizing, John took his leave of the bird man and made his way back downstairs to find the concierge’s apartment. He knocked, and after a few moments, knocked again. Hearing nothing, he tried the handle. “Take another step and I’ll drop ya.” Ruha threw open the door holding an ancient Walther P38. “Oh, it’s you. Well, whaddaya want?”

“Just a few moments of your time, madam.”

“I’m the conciurge!”

“Right. OK. What’s the preferred mode of address when referring to a concierge?”

“Aw, you can just call me Ruha. Sit down. Toss some of that junk outta that chair there and make yaself comfortable.”

John looked around the dusty, cluttered apartment, which appeared to have been the theater’s projection room. There were a few distressed pieces of furniture—a small round wooden table with two paperbacks propping one leg, a moth-eaten couch with one visible spring, a couple of low shelves filled with books, and an old TV/VCR combo. There were no visible running water or toilet facilities, just a large basin beside which sat a few plastic ice cream buckets. A battered cassette player played strange music that seemed vaguely Middle Eastern, as did the threadbare rug that covered part of the floor.

On the back wall were two small, square windows covered by sliding doors, probably the windows through which the projectors had shown the movies. On the floor opposite each of the windows were four brackets that once anchored the projectors in place.

John regarded the overstuffed easy chair that Ruha had indicated and saw that it held a dirty bird cage, some fast food wrappers, and a disheveled pile of loose papers. John shifted the junk to the floor and sat down. The cushion exhaled an aromatic cloud of dust as he settled into the seat.

“Ya want something to drink? I can run downstairs to the theater bathroom and get ya a drink of water. I’m all outta beer.”

“No, that’s quite all right, er, Ruha. I’m not thirsty and I don’t drink beer.”

“Well, Your Highness, I ain’t got any wine,” Ruha said. “Anyway, what brings ya here in your fancy-schmancy motorcar to visit the likes a me?”

John paused to consider how to broach the subject. He assessed Ruha, a tall, scrawny, hunched woman with a shock of white hair sticking out in all directions from her scalp. Despite her obvious age, she radiated a vitality, even a sensuousness. Her blue bathrobe featured a large embroidered L and two ragged pockets, one of them torn. There was something odd about the garment; it seemed to glow when the shadows fell upon it as Ruha walked about. On her feet were what once were probably bunny slippers, but which now looked like dirty string-mop-bottoms. Around her neck was a unique and beautiful silver necklace, which matched the bracelets on her wrists. The expensive-looking jewelry contrasted sharply with her apparent station in life. Her lined face featured high cheekbones upon which the flesh was taut, although somewhat yellowed. This provided an incongruous setting for bright blue eyes that were now peering at him warily.

“I want to assure you, before I ask my question, that I have only the best of intents in seeking this information.”

Ruha clutched her Walther tightly.

“No need to worry. All I’d like to know is—well, I’ve heard that you might have been a concentration camp guard back in the second war.” Ruha’s eyes widened and darted from side to side. “Who told ya that?” she snapped.

John focused his attention on the pistol, which Ruha was waving in his direction. “Several people have mentioned that a Nazi guard lived here. It seems to be common knowledge. Please, Ruha, I mean you no harm. In fact, I’ve come here somewhat as a missionary from God.” At this Ruha snorted and leveled the Walther at John.

“State ya business, directly and without no foolishness.”

John held up his hands, palms out. “Ruha, if you are whom I seek, I would like to baptize you into the Church of Latter-Day Saints and ask you to help me in my work in St. George, where I have a baptism center.”

This was clearly not what Ruha had expected. “What?” she said in a confused voice. “Baptism?”

“Ruha, you may have heard of me. I am John Mittney, you know? I ran for president? Anyway, I’ve decided to dedicate the rest of my life to baptism in the name of Jesus Christ.”

“You are John, and ya baptize. Do ya pretend to be Yahya ibn Zakariyya come back to Earth?”

John blinked in confusion “Yaha who?”

“Yahya ibn Zakariyya, known to Christians as John the Baptist. Ya see I am Mandaean, not a Christian, and not a Jew. In fact, not being a Jew, and having blonde hair and blue eyes saved me during the cleansing.”

John by now was completely confused. He had expected an Aryan, possibly a war criminal. He’d never heard of Mandaeism. And this old lady seemed off her rocker. “I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with your faith, or your story. Perhaps you could explain?”

Ruha sat back on the couch and placed the gun between the cushions. “Well, it’s a long, sad story, and ya don’t wanna hear it.”

“No, please. I am fascinated to hear your story.”

“OK. Well, first, ya need to know about my faith.”

Ruha explained that Mandaeism arose around the first century after Jesus, but although its adherents revered Yahya ibn Zakariyya as a great prophet, they not only did not acknowledge Christ’s divinity, Mandaeans regard him as mšiha kdaba, or “false messiah,” who perverted the teachings entrusted to him by John. Not only that, Ruha explained, but Abraham and Moses were similarly false prophets. Mandaeans trace their ancestry back to Adam, directly from Noah through his sons Sam and Ram. Further, the holy spirit in the Talmud and Bible is an evil being to Mandaeans.

John, although listening quietly, was quite shocked by Ruha’s explanation. Jesus a false prophet? The Holy Spirit evil? This was hard for a devout Mormon to listen to.

Mandaeans believe, Ruha said, in a supreme formless entity called the First Life that is beyond space and time, but who expresses itself in the creation of spiritual and material worlds and beings. Among the worlds created by this being is our own, created by Ptahil, the Fourth Life, who produced it in his own image. Our souls are exiled into our world, Ruha said, and yearn to return to their origin in the First Life. Mandaeans believe that the Zodiac, the planets, and the stars influence our fate and are also places of detention after death before, assisted by savior spirits, we can rejoin the First Life.

In Mandaeism, there is a light side and a dark side, the Light World and the Dark World. The darkness is ruled by Ptahil.

“So, we’re souls in a prison, ya know? We believe in baptism, done by Mughtasila. Not just done once, but often, as often as necessary. Many call us Moghtaseleh, ‘those who wash themselves a lot,’” Ruha paused to make sure John had taken this all in. Her whole demeanor and speech had changed during her recitation, and she seemed more focused and clearer. She almost seemed like a different person while talking about her religion, not the wizened, blunt crone that she had been at first.

“Please continue, Ruha,” John said. “How did your religion affect your life in Nazi Germany?”

“Well, having blond hair and blue eyes saved my family from the Nazis, ya know? Most people think all people from the Middle East are brown and brown-eyed. As usual, most people are idiots, because many of us look like the Aryans, so we were spared the gas chambers. When I was 16, the damn Nazis pulled Jews, along with Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Communists, and socialists from their houses. My family was terrified that we would be found out, ya know? They decided I should join the Aufseherinnen, the female concentration camp guards.”

“Yes,” John said, “your colleague the Bird Man mentioned them.”

“That old blabbermouth fool! It’s a wonder the damned Nazi-hunters haven’t found me yet. Ya better not be one of ‘em!” Ruha glared at John.

“Don’t worry, don’t worry,” John said, worried about the gun. “Your secret is safe with me.”

“It better be. Anyway, my heart was breaking. I left my family and did the training. I learned how to punish prisoners and watch for sabotage and work slowdowns. I was assigned to Ravensbrück, a women’s concentration camp.” Ruha’s eyes began to moisten as she recalled the devastation she saw in the camp. “But, honest, I never hurt nobody, ya know? I just helped keep order. I never had nothing to do with no gas chambers. Just kept order in the dormitories. Honest. I felt bad for those poor women. I cried myself to sleep every night but making no noise because if we showed even little bit of feeling for the women, we’d get discipline or worse—get killed like them.”

John was saddened at Ruha’s story and gave her an empathetic look. “I believe you, Ruha. I do. It must have been horrible.” Ruha was now weeping, drying her eyes and nose on the sleeves of her bathrobe.

“So that’s my sad story. What is it ya want with me?”

John thought for a moment. He had wanted to baptize and convert a guilty war criminal to show the world the power of forgiveness, and of his religion. Ruha did not appear to be a war criminal, nor did John believe she was lying about her past. It was funny how completely he trusted her story, despite having just met the woman. The Lord has led me to her, he thought. Perhaps He is displeased with my ambition and has shown me a different path.

“Ruha, it is as I said. I would like to bring you into the salvation of the Church of Latter-Day Saints by baptizing you, and also by asking you to work by my side to spread the gift of the Lord.”

“You gotta be kiddin’ me,” Ruha sneered. “Why would I do that? Ya come here with your fine clothes and fancy car, and your flashy watch, and you say you want to help save me? And put me to work? I’m 90 years old. I ain’t got much time left to save!”

“Ruha, I believe the Lord has led me to you. Please, at least come back to St. George with me. You can live at my house—along with my wife,” John hastily added, as he saw the look Ruha gave him. “You can see how we live. You can watch the baptisms, and I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to. Please, let me help.”

Ruha, still skeptical, said, “I dunno. Seems fishy to me. I need to sleep on it, maybe for a few days. Good day, sir!” Ruha rose, grabbed her pistol, and waved John out the door, which she slammed and bolted behind him.

As John made his way down the stairs and walked back to his car, he decided that, since he had no way of contacting Ruha to find out her decision, he would stay in town for as long as it took for her to decide. Once in the car, he phoned his wife to tell her about the conversation with Ruha and his decision to stay in Kanab.

John had always been fascinated by Kanab but had never been in the tiny town where hundreds of films since the ‘20s were filmed. Some of John’s favorite movies used Kanab as a stand-in for the Old West, including Brigham Young—Frontiersman, and more recently, 1977’s Brigham.

John settled in at the Canyons Boutique Hotel, which, although not up to his usual standards, seemed quite comfortable despite the in-your-face Western ambiance. He decided to give in to the vibe and have dinner at Little Hollywood Land’s Cowboy Dinner Buffet.

John was quite used to being recognized in public, but for some reason he was surprised when he walked in and the host just about dropped the stack of menus he was carrying. A few spilled onto the floor and the host, now completely flustered, bent to pick them up. He only succeeded in dumping the whole pile all over the floor in front of the reception desk. “Let me help you,” John said. “Oh, no, Mr. Mittney, please I’ll get them.” John insisted and the two soon had the plastic menus back in their cubby.

“Will you be dining with us tonight?” the red-faced host asked. He was a short, stout bald man wearing cowboy boots, jeans, a white Western shirt with a bolo tie, and a cowboy hat cocked way back on his head, exposing a shiny forehead and scalp.

“Certainly,” John said. “I’ve heard good things.” The host about fainted at John’s little white lie.

“Wow. Wow. Wow. Uh, OK, I’ll seat you immediately. Right this way please.” They proceeded through the dining room, which featured long tables set end-to-end and covered with red and blue checkered plastic tablecloths. There were floor-to-ceiling windows looking out onto the parking lot along one wall and a buffet line at the end of the long narrow room. Every head in the place turned to stare at the celebrity, and many groped in their pockets for their phones to grab a picture.

Great, thought John. I’ll be here all night taking selfies and signing napkins. Oh, well, I guess I’m stuck now. “Hello, folks! Sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt your dinners. Please forgive me.”

“I voted for ya, John,” shouted a large gentleman sporting a 10-gallon hat. “Me, too!” shouted several others. Then the entire room burst into applause. John turned on his campaign smile and went up and down the tables, shaking hands and taking selfies until he had met everyone in the room.

“Now, please, folks. Please return to your meals and let’s all pretend I’m not here.” He flashed a big smile, turning up the lapel of his jacket and ducking behind it. The diners roared with laughter, as John took a seat facing the wall at the end of the room, next to the buffet table.

“What shall I get you, sir?” asked the host.

“You’ve been so kind. Please allow me to serve myself. I’d just like a green tea please.” John got up and filled his plate with buttermilk biscuits, cowboy beans and roast beef. He felt the eyes of all the room on him, but when he turned around to take his seat, the eyes snapped back to their plates. As John ate his dinner hastily, the man in the 10-gallon hat—which was clearly a recent purchase—sidled on over and sat down next to John.

“Mr. Mittney, I wonder if I could ask yew a few questions?”

John felt pinned between the man’s huge body and the buffet table. He looked the man in the eye and said, “I’m going to have to leave soon to attend to some business, but, sure, you can ask me one question, and then I’ve really got to go.”

“Well, all right. Thank you kindly. As I said, I did vote for yew, mostly because I couldn’t vote for no nigger, but I was just wonderin’. Do yew think you losing the election and all had anything to do with being a Mormon?”

John was shocked at the man’s language and the temerity of the question. What was this guy’s angle?

“No, I don’t think so. The issue of my faith never really came up during the campaign.”

“Well, do yew think it was because you’re not a Christian?”

John stared at the man’s tiny eyes, lost in a wide ruddy face. “The Church of the Latter-Day Saints is a Christian faith, sir.”

“Yeah, but don’t y’all believe that Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden were in Missouri, and that Jesus stopped over in Missouri on his way to Heaven? That don’t seem Christian to me!” Ten-gallon was starting to heat up. John grabbed his napkin, wiped his mouth and tried to stand to leave. Ten-gallon stood up, grabbed John by the shoulder and forced him back into his seat. “Yew just stay right there, you fuckin’ heathen!”

At once, 10-gallon was surrounded by several large, strong men who grabbed him and, despite his girth, frog-marched him out into the parking lot where they tossed him onto the gravel. John could seem them gesturing to the man, indicating he should leave if he knew what was good for him. The man’s wife and two kids slunk out of the dining room to join him in the pickup, which featured a Confederate flag decal covering the back window. Ten-gallon got the family in the truck and then did a big doughnut, spraying gravel against the big windows of the restaurant and putting a ton of dust in the air, before taking off down the road.

John was shaken by this encounter. Some of the other diners came over to comfort him, but he waved them off, saying that he was fine, that the other gentleman had a right to his opinion.

It took three days, during which John checked in daily with Ruha at the theater, for her to agree to his plan. During each of his visits, Ruha insisted on filling him in on more details about Mandaeism.

Ruha told John that when they die, Mandaeans go to the Light World, known as alma d-nuhra, that lies beyond a gate at the North Pole. There is also a corresponding Dark World, alma d-hšuka. The First Life created Second, Third and Fourth lives, which are called Yōšamin, Abathur, and Ptahil, who created our world. Abathur is imprisoned between the Light World and the Dark World and weighs the souls who seek to enter the Light World.

Abathur actually weighs the souls, she said. They must have the proper weight, not too light, not too heavy, to go through to the Light World. Abathur gave Ptahil the materials and the helpers, demons, to create the Dark World. Abathur gave one of Ptahil’s demons, Manda d Hiia, to Adam to infuse humans with sacred knowledge and protect them.

John’s brain goggled at the complexity and foreignness of this religion. Such a lot of intricate beliefs, he thought. But I guess learning about it as an outsider is no stranger than hearing about Mormonism would be for a guy like 10-gallon.

John had thoughtfully purchased a rolling suitcase, figuring that Ruha had none. When Ruha finally agreed to go with him, she bundled up a wad of ragged clothes along with several cassettes and video tapes, tossed them in the case, and they were gone to St. George.

Over the next few weeks, Ruha went from spending the entire day by herself in one of John’s bedrooms to cautiously agreeing to take a few meals with the couple. His wife, Lois, suffered from a variety of physical ills, but was always bright and friendly to Ruha, eventually coaxing her out of her shell to the point where Ruha joined the couple in meals every night and began visiting the baptism center with John.

After six months of living with the Mittneys, Ruha consented to be baptized as long as John would let her baptize him as well. John was at first very resistant to this condition, saying, “I have no desire to convert to your religion!” Ruha explained that, unlike Mormon or other Christian baptism, Mandaean baptism does not initiate the person into their religion but is a method of washing away sins. “It takes much more to convert to Mandaeism, Guv’nor. You can’t get away that easily, ya know?”

After many discussions, John relented, and allowed Ruha to baptize him in the Virgin River. Ruha said she required several things to perform his baptism, and that of others. When the day came, at the riverside, there was a white, looped-up silk banner on a cross-barred, wooden pole stuck into the riverbank. Myrtle was twined on the crossbar, and an almost invisible thread of gold was tied under it. A clay table holding bowls of incense and fuel sat on the ground. Also on the table were bowls of flour, salt, and sesame, a bowl containing a bunch of myrtle twigs in water, brass drinking bowls, and a flask of water.

John waited by the river for Ruha to appear. He was dressed in a strikingly bright white suit. Ruha arrived in a much nicer version of her blue robe, which John’s wife had helped her shop for. She walked serenely down the riverbank to the low table and recited the prayers for the day. Then she burned the incense and mixed the flour and salt with water to make a small, biscuit-sized flat bread that she cooked over the flames and ate. She then descended into the water and beckoned to John to follow.

As he had been instructed, John turned leftward around behind Ruha, and crouched in the water, fully submerging himself three times. Ruha then threw water from the flask onto John three times. Using her left hand, Ruha grasped John’s right hand and transferred him to her right side. She submerged him three times and then wetted a finger and drew three lines across John’s face from ear-to-ear. John extended his hand, Ruha filled it from the flask, and John drank. The two shook hands, and Ruha placed a myrtle wreath on his head while chanting the names of Yōšamin, Abathur, and Ptahil.

During this ritual, John got a vision that he was to create the Third Temple on the site of the Brigham Young campus. He left the river overcome with the feeling he was destined to do great things. His whole body was shaking. His wife covered him in a cloak, but John realized it wasn’t the cold that wracked is his body. It was something more.

The next day, John stopped the construction of the main campus hall, and over the next few weeks, recast it into a tabernacle. He told no one of the reason for the deviation from the construction plan, nor did he call the building a temple.

Seven weeks following his baptism, John and Ruha began baptizing together in the river. Over the next three-and-a-half years, the two baptized thousands of living and dead Mormons. They had perfected an almost assembly-line method of dealing with the crowds that often massed on the banks of the Virgin River. Each supplicant was baptized twice: first a baptism by John initiating or reconfirming them into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and a second time by Ruha. The baptized who asked were assured that the Mandaean baptism did not initiate them into a religion, but rather helped cleanse the soul. Nonetheless, the practice caused a stir among the elders of the Mormon church. Given John’s notoriety and increased stature within the church due to the thousands and thousands of new Mormons he attracted, none spoke out against it.

Because of the huge crush of supplicants, the pair spent long hours in the river and soon found that various adjustments in garb and foot gear were needed. Flowing robes were a bit of a hindrance, especially in the heavier river flow in the spring, but Ruha insisted on wearing her blue robe. John opted for white polyester pants and shirt. For better traction in the river, both wore light, quick-drying hiking shoes.

One bright summer morning, the two were attending to a small crowd of supplicants when suddenly a great flood of water, 30 feet tall, came roaring up river, washing John and Ruha 40 miles upstream into Zion National Park, into the left fork of North Creek, bouncing up the rapids, past Tabernacle Dome, past South Guardian Angel, past North Guardian Angel, deep into the mountains. John screamed as the torrent tumbled the pair, though they remained miraculously unharmed. Whenever the river turned sharply or narrowed, they were kept from injury, borne to the top of the flood, sometimes surging high over obstacles. Although John was terrified, Ruha maintained a curious smile as they rode on the flood.

Finally, they sped through a narrow tube-like passage and the water sent them sprawling onto a sliver of beach on the other side. Totally disoriented and woozy from the ordeal, John laid prone on the pebbly beach, dazed and overcome by adrenaline. He tried to calm his mind, which was whirling from the incredible journey on the waters.

The end will come like a flood, John thought distractedly. Daniel 9:26 is trying to come true! Are these the End Times? How else could this miraculous flood of water sweep us up the river, thousands of feet up into this place? But who is the Anointed One? John shivered from the cool air, and the fear that perhaps it was he who was the Anointed One of the Apocalypse. He looked skyward, searching for the promised sign that was to announce the Second Coming, and the angels that would presage His return. Oh, I wish I had gotten further in my baptismal work! There are so many LDS ancestors who will remain in the spirit prison. They won’t be part of the First Resurrection, thus never ascending into the highest kingdoms of the afterlife. John bent his head to weep for those who would be lost forever.

Suddenly he remembered Ruha. Where is that frail old woman? he thought. Has she survived the torrent? John looked around and found Ruha sitting comfortably on a rock several feet above him with an amused look on her face.

“So, Guvnor, this is a fine kettle of fish, eh?” The years appeared to have peeled away from Ruha and she now seemed no older than middle age. Her ever-present blue robe was dry, as were her hair and body. Her eyes were bright and intense with inner fire. She jumped down from the rock and strode up to John, cackling like a demon. “Bet ya never had a ride like that, right? Where in heaven’s name are we anyway?”

John surveyed his surroundings. The stream bubbled along the slender strip of beach at one end of a curving tunnel-like formation whose rounded walls gave way to a steep opening to the sky. The retreating water was draining quickly from the area, exposing glistening walls and revealing bright sunlight at the other end of the tube.

John pulled out his damp cell phone. Miraculously, it came to life when he turned it on. He activated the GPS function and brought up Google Maps. It took a while for John to find a spot in the canyon where the device could get a fix on the GPS satellites. “We’re about three miles inside Zion National Park and this must be a feature called the Subway. I can see why it has that name. It looks like a train could come barreling through that tube at any moment.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t,” Ruha said with a little laugh. “After that flood, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it did, ya know?”

John was flabbergasted by Ruha’s cheery disposition. They’d been tumbled and scraped, but mostly they rode the top of the flood on its winding path to this place. That they were essentially unharmed was a miracle. But Ruha can hardly contain her glee, John thought, while I’m terrified.

“What are you grinning about, Ruha?”

“Don’t ya know, John? It’s starting!”

“What’s starting?”

“What a conciurge like me has been waiting for all my life. It’s what in your religion you would call the Second Coming, the Apocalypse, the End of Days!”

John had just been entertaining the same thought, but to hear Ruha say it struck him like a punch in the gut. Reflexively, he sat down heavily on the sand. What if it’s really happening? How will I be judged? he wondered. I have done my best to be a righteous man, although an ambitious and perhaps a prideful one. Another thought struck him: He was going to meet Jesus! He just about fell over in the sand at that realization. God, my Heavenly Father, he prayed, I thank Thee for the blessings of my life. I hope I have pleased you. I repent of all my sins. I humbly plead with Thee, if it be according to Thy will, asking that Thou wilt forgive my arrogance, pass by my sins, and guide my actions. Of this I testify in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

The prayer calmed John a bit, and he sat alone with his thoughts for a few minutes. Eventually, he said, “How can you be sure this is the beginning of the Apocalypse, Ruha? Sure, that flood was like nothing I would have ever believed to be possible, but that doesn’t mean it’s the End Times.”

“Believe me, Guvnor, it is. Ya told me your book teaches that the first sign of the Second Coming has passed, when Elijah appeared to Joseph Smith, right? Ya see, I am the conciurge for the demiurge. I was born for these times. I await my master, Ptahil, the demiurge of this universe, and it’s time for the reckoning.”

John, still in shock from all that had happened, was reeling. He recalled that Ruha had mentioned Ptahil when she was teaching him about her religion, but he still was a little hazy on what the demiurge was in Mandaeism.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m unclear as to what you’re saying.”

“I am slowly coming to realize that I am Ruha, not just in name, but in fact: the spirit mediating between body and soul in this evil world that my master, Ptahil, the Fourth Life, produced. This knowledge has been growing in me since I met you, and while riding the flood, it got stronger, and even now, it is becoming even clearer. I was imprisoned in this body and am now slowly awakening from its bondage. I remember now that I took mortal form to assist in the end of this existence.”

Wide-eyed, John stared at Ruha, who had begun to shine with an inner light. The years again seemed to peel away from her, her hair turning from silver to blonde as he watched. Either I’m hallucinating, or she’s completely crazy  . . .  could it be she is who she says she is, and this is the End Times?

“So why are we here in Utah? According to scripture, the Second Coming is supposed to occur in Israel.”

“According to your scripture, you mean. But ya said it yourself, we’re in Zion, Zion National Park. I guess the First Life is having a laugh at our expense!”

“Ah! Now that I think of it, it’s even more interesting than that,” John said, standing and panning around the map on his phone. “Not only has Zion been an enduring symbol of Mormonism, representing courage, dedication, endurance, and faith, but as I recall, Mormons named many of the places in this park, including the park itself. Early LDS settlers named Kolob Canyon—Kolob meaning a heavenly place close to God—the Towers of the Virgins, Prodigal Son, Tabernacle Dome, and the Three Patriarchs—named for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

“Zion is also the site of the second Jewish temple,” Ruha said.

“You mean Mount Zion in Jerusalem. True.”

“Perhaps this is the site of the third? Is there not a place called temple here?”

John winced a bit as he thought about his vision of the Third Temple, and his attempts to build it. He consulted his phone. Due to the very spotty cell coverage, he climbed partway up the canyon and disappeared around a corner. After some minutes, he returned. “You’re right! There’s a place called Temple of Sinawava, named for the Coyote god of the Paiute Indians who used to live here.”

“Then I think that is where we are called to go. My brain is still fogged, but I feel this is so. What else did you find out about this place?”

“It seems there’s a rock formation in the temple canyon called The Pulpit.”

“That’s it! Can you find the way there?”

John consulted his phone. “It would be quite a trek! It’s about four or five miles as the crow flies, 22 miles and 8½ hours if we hike the West Rim trail, or 38 miles by car, and we don’t have a car. Or decent hiking shoes.” John looked down at the quick-dry hikers he and Ruha were wearing.

“I believe we are meant to hike to the Temple, John. Let’s get started.” John, still wrestling to absorb all that had happened, fell silent. I am so overwhelmed, he thought. We’re miraculously washed away by a flood—miles upriver through some of the most treacherous canyons in the park. Not only are we unhurt, but Ruha’s not even wet anymore. I can’t believe any of this! It’s like a strange dream! And now she insists we spend the rest of the day walking to a so-called temple. John crumpled again to the gritty beach and cradled his head in his arms. Can this really be the Second Coming? After sitting for a few minutes, John sighed and stood back up.

The pair set out on the rugged trail. After a steep climb out of the canyon, they proceeded on the Northgate Peaks trail and eventually the Wildcat Canyon trail which, thankfully, was fairly level and easy going. The Wildcat was crawling with day hikers, and as they passed, John heard several talking about the weird flood in the North Fork. If they only knew how weird it was, John thought.

As he trudged on, his mind, still reeling from the shock of the miracle water ride, tried to come to terms with what had happened to him. They passed through wildflower-filled meadows and had several good views of the White Cliffs of Wildcat Canyon.

John finally had a decent signal on his phone. While they walked, he called his wife. As the phone rang, he tried to think of what to tell her. I can’t very well tell her that these are the End Times. I can scarcely believe that myself. The phone went to voice mail. John said, “Honey, I’m in Zion and I won’t be back for a while. There was a flood, but I’m OK. I’ll try to call you later.”

After a couple miles, they stopped at a muddy spring to drink before descending toward the dry crossing streambed of Wildcat Canyon. The tourists had thinned out, and they rarely saw people until they got across the canyon and climbed up to the West Rim trail.

Having proceeded in a northeasterly direction for the first leg of the trip, they turned sharply southeast for the longer part of the trek. After three flat and uneventful miles, the pair got their first glimpse of South Guardian Angel mountain. In Potato Hollow they stopped to drink at a spring, where both he and Ruha washed their faces. With her wet finger, Ruha drew three lines on John’s face, from ear-to-ear.

Then they tackled the uphill climb to Hammerhead Viewpoint and its views of Inclined Temple. They climbed again, to Horse Pasture Plateau and then took the Telephone Canyon Trail spur to save time and avoid the increasing crowds of tourists that slowed them down. At Cabin Spring, they drank and rested for half an hour. Again, Ruha blessed John with the water lines.

They made the steep climb down through the White Cliffs and the descent into the main canyon. Since it was mid-summer, there still was good light to hike as they switchbacked down to the Grotto Trailhead on the canyon floor. Thankfully, at the trailhead Ruha agreed to hop the park shuttle to its last stop: The Temple of Sinawava. There they took advantage of the toilet facilities and then stood in awe of the sight of The Pulpit, the taller and wider of the two towers across the river from the parking area.

“Here we are,” said John. “Now what?”

“Now we rest,” Ruha said. “We need to get across the river and find a place near The Pulpit where we won’t be found. There ain’t no camping in this area.”

Sighing, John wearily followed Ruha across the parking lot, and into the stream, which was just above ankle deep. “What are we going to eat?” John asked.

“Nothing,” Ruha said. “Today we fast.”

“Where will we sleep?”

“We can gather some grass and brush for bedding. You mustn’t worry. All will be well tomorrow.”

The next day dawned with a clear sky above them. But on the edges of their sight, all around them above the canyon walls was a ring of dark black clouds, threatening, and bursting with lightning. As near as they could tell from their canyon, the circle of blue sky was perfect, ringing them in the center. As they watched, the clouds began to flow, each in a quadrant of the sky, with darker clouds flowing in toward the circle, then lightening and flowing away along the quadrant lines.

Coming out from behind the Pulpit, the pair looked across the river and saw two men, one on the closer riverbank, and one on the opposite. The nearer man was clothed in rough burlap, and was turned away from them, so they could not see his face. The farther man, clothed in white linen, floated above the waters of the river and spread apart his arms and said, “The power of the holy people has been finally broken, and all things are completed. Many will be purified, made spotless and refined, but the wicked will be damned to the Second Death and the Dark World. The seven seas that run high shall swallow them, but the righteous shall be lifted up.”

The pair looked up and saw a disturbance in the clouds. There appeared to be a multitude of dark figures swirling in the vortices of the quadrants. The winds howled as if the crowd were screaming in torment. Lightning and fire flashed through the clouds and between the quadrants.

They turned to look at the hovering man and he had transformed. His hair was now white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet radiated heat as if a furnace, boiling the river beneath him, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters as he said to them, “Do not be afraid. By the baptism of water, and the baptism of fire, you can speak with the tongue of angels. You are the Witnesses to the Exaltation, the two olive trees that stand before Ptahil, the Lord of the Earth. Should anyone try to harm you, you can devour them with fire from your mouths. You have power to shut up the heavens so that it will not rain, and to turn the waters into blood, and to strike the Earth with every kind of plague.”

My goodness, John thought. He speaks as if from Nephi, and Matthew, and Revelation! Perhaps the Scripture is coming true? John asked, “Will we witness the judgment of the Sons of Perdition?”

The figure said, “There is much error in the religions of this world, and this is a particular one. All souls will be weighed, but the decision is not about the final destination of each soul. Rather, as in your companion’s religion, which is also full of error, souls after weighing may be sent on journeys during which they can recapture their virtue by ascending through various spheres of grace, among the worlds of light and the stars of the Zodiac. Those who are beyond improvement, the Unredeemables—the Sons of Perdition as your religion names them—are sent to the Dark World and are no more. Abatur Rama d-Muzania and his flawed son, Ptahil, will soon be released from their bondage in the Earth so that Abatur can complete his contemptible task of weighing the souls.”

John was devastated by these remarks. As a true believer of Mormonism, to discover even one error in doctrine called into question the whole foundation of his spiritual life. His mouth was suddenly dry when he finally managed to ask, “So, the Church of Latter-Day Saints will not be established throughout the world?”

“This world is coming to an end. It was created in error, but the First Life will ensure that the good souls who were exiled to this world, and who are not beyond redemption, will rejoin It, if they are found worthy.”

With tears in his yes, John asked, “Will I see the return of our Savior, Jesus Christ?”

“As I said there is much error in the religions of the world. The man you call the Savior was inspired but was not a god. There are no gods as you have pretended to understand them. Only the First Life, which is formless. The belief of your religion, that the church originally formed around Jesus but became corrupted within decades of being established, is true, as far as it goes. But much of what you believe is error. Jesus was enlightened, and a whole soul, but he was not divine.”

John began to weep uncontrollably. He felt as if the rug had been pulled out from beneath his whole being. He crumpled to the ground and placed his hands over his eyes. Ruha put her arm around his shoulders and urged him to regain his feet.

The floating man said, “Stand by she who is the Great Mother and ascend to the pulpit of the temple of heaven to witness the judging of the living and the dead.”

John stopped crying and looked in astonishment at Ruha. The Great Mother? This woman, beside whom he had baptized thousands, now mysteriously unbent and clear-eyed, and no longer frail-looking? Ruha beamed back at him, her face transformed by an inner light. “I told you I am the conciurge. I assisted the demiurge, Ptahil, in creating this world. I am its Mother.”

John’s mind, already reeling, was coming apart. “Whoa,” he said, and began to lose consciousness. Ruha threw his arm around her shoulders and bore his weight easily as they turned away from the floating man and made their way back to the Pulpit.

The path to the top of the tower rock was a semi-technical climb, but luckily, its last climbers had left ropes and pitons in place. Ruha scrambled easily up ahead of John and helped him haul his way up the pitches until they reached the top of the Pulpit. Miraculously, at the top was an altar carved into the rock, covered with a fine white cloth with incense holders smoking on all four corners. Seven places were set on the table, with gleaming gold plates and utensils, and embroidered silk napkins, and dazzling crystal goblets.

“Who are these for?” asked John.

“These are for the Seven Kings.”

“Which kings are those?”

“The seven rulers of the world. Long ago they were kings, but today you might call them, um, er, what is the word? Captains of Industry? No, they are from various walks of life. There is a name, I think a medieval name, for a shadow government? Hidden rulers?”

“Illuminati?” John guessed.

“Yes! Illuminati. The Illuminati will join us for a feast.” John nodded dully at this latest shocking revelation and looking around, noticed there were now steaming tureens of soup, and fruits, beans, and vegetables on serving trays on the altar.

“If this is the feast, where is the meat?

“The Seven Kings are, of course, vegan. They are not permitted to harm an animal to provide their sustenance, for animals have their own special purpose in the world, to help promote the world’s bounty.”

John again nodded blankly and wondered at this for a moment. There was just too much to absorb. The Illuminati are real. Christ was not the Son of God. Much of the teachings of his church, if not all, were in error. Ruha was somehow the Mother of the world. As he tried to process these revelations, he was interrupted by a loud screeching cry from the sky. Looking up, John saw a huge black dragon pass overhead. He could see the creature had a hideous, a near-human face, and two horns like a lamb. Its head and neck were covered with curly white fleece in stark contrast to its jet-black body and shiny dark talons.

“Oh, my son!” Ruha exclaimed. “At last you are free from the Dark World! Come ‘Ur, and alight upon this pulpit so that I may caress you.”

The giant monster wheeled across the river and turned to alight on a rock outcropping at the outer edge of the altar. Ruha scrambled out on a ledge to hug his neck. “My son! My son! Oh, the prison of this body is slowly melting away, and now I can remember! I remember how together we birthed the planets and the stars of the Zodiac! I remember how you brought the blue to the sky of this world. And now you have been released! We can be together again.”

‘Ur spoke, and his voice was like a scream: “Mother! Glad we close again! How help I you?”

“You will have a role. But for now, be still and wait.” The dragon’s red eyes became hooded as he perched on the outcrop at the edge of the altar and loomed over it.

Ruha looked out across the river, to the parking lot, where a purple motor coach had just pulled up. It wasn’t the standard national park coach, but a private one. “Ah,” Ruha said. “They have arrived!”

“Who?” asked John, startled from his stupor, and terrified that there would be more shocks to absorb.

“The Seven Kings, the Illuminati! They have arrived.” Seven old men of various races debarked from the coach and stared at the turbulent sky. They appeared to be bewildered but were even more shaken when the floating man reappeared and levitated them across the river and up to the top of The Pulpit, landing them gently on the rich Persian carpet, each adjacent to his place at the altar. The waiting man from the near side of the river also appeared and stood in the back of The Pulpit.

“What the hell is going on?” demanded a bespectacled white-haired gentleman in a tight, navy blue V-necked sweater, white shirt and tie. Incongruously, he was clutching a ukulele, but from the attitudes of the others, he was clearly the leader of the group, all of whom were dressed more casually, as if they had just come from a round of golf.

“Not hell, not the Dark World, but it is the end of days, Spartacus,” Ruha says. “The final age is ending. You seven are to hold a conference to ensure that when the weighing of souls begins, the great shall not receive more honor than the lesser.”

The men turned to one another, confused, and began to murmur together, while turning their heads wildly, taking in the strange sky, the perched ‘Ur, and the splendid table before them. Not even the one she called Spartacus was able to gather his wits to reply to Ruha. He just goggled, open-mouthed, absent-mindedly clutching his ukulele.

“But first,” Ruha continued, “we feast. Please be seated at your places and let us break bread for the last time on this Earth.” Terror filled the eyes of the Illuminati. John watched them and commiserated. At least I’ve had a few hours to digest all this, he thought. These poor men have been plucked from who knows what golf course and plunked down in this fantastic scene. Yet they do seem to be taking it better than I did at first.

Indeed, these captains of industry, political masters, religious powers behind the thrones, and backroom deal makers were still carefully examining their surroundings, trying to find out what trickery lay behind this mind-blowing scene. They were looking for the wires that supported the floating man and the gears that animated the dragon. They took their seats warily. Before each of them, on the table on their left hand was a round tray containing a small water bottle; a cup of miša; fatiras; a drinking bowl containing four raisins; a twig of myrtle, grape seeds, and shreds of Ba, pomegranate, quince, dates, coconut, almond, walnut, and citrus. All were arranged around the tray in the positions of the Zodiac. A second tray on their right hand held a basin of flaming liquid and a stand upon which sat a cube of incense.

Ruha passed down the table, filling the seven goblets with blood-red wine. When she was finished, she raised her own goblet and cried, “As the water falls on the Earth, so shall all sins, trespasses, follies, stumblings, and mistakes be loosed from those who love the name of Truth, and from the souls of our righteous fathers, teachers, brothers, and sisters who have departed the body, and those who still live.” She nodded her head to the seven to encourage them to drink.

Next, she asked the men to drop the incense cube into the fire, saying, “All fruits wither; all sweet odors pass away, but not the fragrance of the First Life, which never ends nor passes away, as does this Last Age. The incense rises as our prayers do, to the First Life.”

Ruha then bade the men to eat, and she withdrew to the back of the Pulpit to join John. “Now watch carefully,” she told him. John regarded the men keenly, watching them whispering to each other nervously as they ate. Soon he noticed the hovering man drifting close to one of the seven and appearing to whisper in his ear. The man seemed not to notice the floating man and continued to converse with his companion. Eventually, the hovering man floated away. But the others had seen the spirit, and asked him, “What did the spirit tell you?”

“What do you mean? There was no spirit! I talked to no one.”

This angered the others. One said, “We all saw it. Tell us what the spirit said or die!”

“I swear! I see nothing! I hear nothing! I know nothing!”

But the others fell upon him and one stabbed him in the heart with a table knife, killing him.

The remaining six eyed each other suspiciously. Their eyes were now a bit glassy, and they seemed to be in a trance. The floating man spoke to another, and another, and each of them in turn, except the leader, with the same result: The others accused, and then killed the protesting man. The last turned on the leader, who, anticipating the attack, sliced his jugular before the other could raise his knife.

Only Spartacus now remained, shaking with rage and fear. He turned to Ruha and said, “Why have you caused these men to die? These were the most powerful men in the world! For decades, we have fixed elections, started and stopped wars, controlled economies, and bent populations to our will. How dare you?” The leader stopped to catch his breath, his face red with fury. “What is to happen to me? Am I the final king of the world? Or will you kill me next?”

“You all have met your deserved end, before the end of this world. Your rule over the world has been almost absolute, and while the Illuminati have sometimes governed wisely, you all have many sins to repent, especially you. No, I will not kill you,” Ruha said. “But my son will.”

The last Illuminati heard a rustle behind him and whirled to see ‘Ur unfold his wings. Spartacus grabbed a bloody knife and his ukulele and backed away. ‘Ur flicked his wings and was on the man in an instant. The leader of the Illuminati struck feebly with the knife and bashed the ukulele into ‘Ur’s head, but the dragon grotesquely unhinged his human-like jaw and gobbled Spartacus in a single gulp. John watched in horror as ‘Ur recomposed his face, licked his lips, and then flew, screeching, in ascending circles up to the vortex of the clouds.

“He is taking back the blue of the sky,” Ruha said. “It is almost time for Ptahil to break the bounds of Earth and for Abatur Rama d-Muzania to begin the weighing of souls.”

John shivered at what was to come next. How would his soul measure up on Abatur’s scales? And what caused a soul to have weight? Ruha had said something about progressing through various worlds so those who weren’t ready could purify themselves. And what was all this business about the Zodiac? Did this mean that astrology was actually a power in the Universe? John had so many questions, and an equal number of fears for his everlasting life, if there even was such a thing.

“What do you mean ‘Ur will take back the blue of the sky?”

“This is the first phase of the dismantling of the world. ‘Ur removes the blue, and then when people look up, they’ll see the blackness of space, the stars, the Zodiac, and the planets. The atmosphere will also start to dissipate until all the air is gone.”

“When people see this, they’ll go crazy.”

“Yes, this is one of the final tests. Those who react by raping, pillaging, killing and committing other atrocities will join that crowd.” Ruha pointed skyward to the swirling black figures in the quadrants surrounding the blue circle. “Those poor souls are the Unredeemables. They do not need to be weighed but will be sent directly to the Dark World. In life, they embraced the power of the Dark World, and so they will become one with it.”

John absorbed this and felt lucky that he had not yet joined the circling horde above. When he looked down from the sky, he noticed the bloody corpses staining the fine carpet. “Why did you cause the Illuminati to kill one another?”

“It was not I who caused their behavior. It was their natures. They were arrogant, competitive men, ambitious to a fault. The idea that one of their kind might obtain an advantage by receiving secrets from the Angel of Death drove them to their murderous acts. You noticed that their leader did not participate in the killings, except at the end when he was defending himself.” John nodded. “It was not because his soul was less stained than his fellows. It was because, to gain his position, he had needed to be in better control of his emotions, his envy, and his gluttony.”

“Why did he receive a different fate than his fellows?

“His sin was compounded by the fact that he stood by while his subordinates murdered one another. Such it is with his type of leader. He bore the greatest sin and, by controlling his followers, brought all their sins upon him. ‘Ur is delivering him to the maelstrom in the sky and thus directly to the Dark World.”

John thought of his own leadership. Am I that type of leader? Will ‘Ur come and take me next? He needed to sit down and moved over to the altar, picking his way among the bloody bodies. He sat at the table and looked out over the river. He noticed the two trays before him and examined the strange arrangement of foods on the left-hand tray.

“Is this place setting part of some kind of ritual?”

“Yes,” Ruha says. “This is the traditional setting for a Mandaean masiqta, or death mass. As the Angel of Death said, most religions have errors, but there are true things in most of them, too. Mandaeanism’s death mass is the most error-free ritual to initiate the End Times.”

Again, John felt a pang in the center of his being. He had led a life worshipping in a religion filled with error. “Is Mandaeanism the most error-free religion, then?”

“It is hardly worth thinking about at this time. You probably desire to know all the errors of your faith, and how it compares to other religions. But the First Life cares not for worship, or religious dogma. What counts is the soul’s ascent to the Light World. A religion is only as good as its ability to aid in the soul’s purification, so that it may make this ascent, which depends upon leading a good and true life. An example of an error in Mandaeism is the belief that at death, the souls of all Mandaeans go to the Light World, as long as they had a pure death and proper death rituals. This is not at all true. As the Angel of Death told you, all souls are weighed, and most must journey through purifying worlds before rejoining the First Life. As I said, the Unredeemables are sent directly to the Dark World.”

“Why is all this happening now? Is it because of the rampant evil in this modern world? Mormonism and other religions have long believed that crises, earthquakes and the breakdown of moral structure are signs of the end.”

“The First Life does not perceive events on this world. It is and always is. The fleeting lives of souls here are of no concern. Most of your religions ascribe a consciousness and personality to the supreme being and imagine that it has a hand in human affairs. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is no hand of a god directing human affairs. And there is certainly no reality to the concept of a petty god who demands to be worshipped and who can be insulted.

“Souls yearn to be reunited with the First Life. However, there are only a finite number of souls in this existence. When I created the world with Ptahil and ‘Ur, we populated it with all the souls that ever were to be here. The explosion of the human population has meant that each soul has been fractured and contained, really trapped, inside more than one person. There exists a point beyond which a soul can no longer be diluted, and that has determined the end of this world. Had this world persisted for even another generation, babies would be born without a spark of soul, and would be relegated to the life of a vegetable. Thus, this world must cease to be, and the souls set free to begin their journey back to the First Life.”

John took this in and thought for a while. He only has a fragment of a soul. He will be judged and probably will need to pass through several other worlds to be purified before he can rejoin the First Life. There is no God. Everything he has been told is wrong. He heaved a great sigh, and asked Ruha, “So all my works, the baptizing, the building of the university, all are for naught? Has my life been wasted?”

Ruha settled into the chair next to him with a kind expression on her face. “Don’t you realize, John? You have been chosen. You are one of the two witnesses to the end of days. Your recent life, your devotion to the salvation of souls through baptism: these have redeemed your soul and washed away most of the imperfections that stained it. Even though my mind was clouded by my imprisonment in flesh, I saw the spark in you when we first met in the movie theater.”

For the first time since the flood, John felt a glimmer of hope. Perhaps he wasn’t doomed. He had been chosen to be a witness. But Ruha referred to two witnesses. Surely, she wasn’t one?

“Ruha, you said there are two. Who is the other witness?”

“The waiting man we saw earlier, and who stands in the darkness behind you.”

John wheeled around in his chair. The waiting man, still clothed in a burlap robe, moved forward into the light. He was short, swarthy, with thick black hair covering his arms and a curly beard. His long hair was thick and tangled, and his brow jutted over hooded but clear hazel eyes. Although it was a homely face, it shone from within, radiating a calmness.

“Who are you?” John asked, standing to face him.

“I am Jesus, the son of Joseph, the carpenter,” the man replied simply.

For the second time that day, John almost lost consciousness, and again Ruha moved in to steady him. “Jesus, the Christ?” John croaked, his throat suddenly dry as the desert floor below.

“I don’t know this Christ,” Jesus said. “I am a simple man who preached love and forgiveness and was executed for it. I had a small band of followers. It must have been long ago, for I have never seen such a magnificent coach as the one across the river.”

John at this point was almost catatonic. Ruha guided him back into his chair. He crumpled against the table with his forehead on the tablecloth and his arms folded protectively over his head. He began to weep.

I can’t take any more of this, he thought. Jesus was only a simple carpenter with a message of love, the Son of Man and not the Son of God? He wasn’t resurrected, just murdered by the Romans? And now he’s risen to witness the end of the world, not to preside over the Exaltation and the establishment of his kingdom on Earth. There will be no resurrections, no battle with Satan. My religion has been an error, and I am not prepared for what is to come.

Jesus walked over to John, compassion evident on his face, and laid a comforting hand on John’s shoulder. “My son, why do you worry so?”

John, startled at Jesus’ touch, sat bolt upright, inadvertently shrugging Jesus’ hand from his shoulder. “Oh!” he exclaimed, wiping at his eyes. Jesus just smiled at him. John could feel the man’s power, his goodness. “Forgive me, Jesus . . .” he began, and then burst into ragged, near-hysterical laughter. Jesus naturally was puzzled. “Sorry, Jesus—there I go again! You see, for the last two thousand years, men have worshipped you as the Son of God, and we have been waiting for your return.”

Jesus looked puzzled, and asked, “But why? I was but an itinerant preacher with a small following.”

“Well, how do I explain?” John thought for a minute. “OK, Jesus, you probably don’t know what the Bible is, but you did know the Torah, right?” Jesus nodded. “Well, your followers, and their followers, wrote a big addition to the Torah, all about you and your teachings. They called you the Christ—the Messiah—and they started a church, the Christian church, to spread your teachings throughout the world.”

It was Jesus’ turn to be astonished. “This is incredible! All I preached was that people should be nice to one another for a change, and they nailed me to a tree for it.”

“You mean a cross, don’t you?”

“No, they thought a cross was too good for me. They nailed me to a tree, an algum, I think.”

John just shook his head sadly. “I see. So, I suppose you never worked any miracles?”

“Miracles happen every day, my son. You just need to be aware of them.”

John, numbed by all the shocking revelations of the day, merely nodded his head. He turned to Ruha. “Why have I been chosen to be a Witness? Surely there are more righteous people than me left in the world?”

“John, as you know—and are very proud of—you are of the lineage of Aaron. And you may understand that, consequently, John the Baptist, which my religion regards as a messiah, is also your ancestor, along with Jesus. This lineage has been allowed to breed in such a way that the line has gathered together many soul fragments. Thus, your soul is one of the most complete still on this Earth. And that is why you have been chosen to be a Witness. In the same way, the ancient line produced Jesus, a complete, whole soul. The two of you were destined to be the Two Witnesses to the Exaltation.”

Stunned yet again, John pondered this new information. I’m not a fractured soul like the rest of the world. I’ve been, not exalted really, but honored in some way to play a part in the end of the world. This is too fantastic to contemplate.

“Does this mean I can expect a better fate when my soul is weighed?”

“Yes, John. Your journey to reunion with the First Life will be much shorter. There is less in you to purify. As the Angel of Death told you a while ago, you have powers now, to defend yourself, to stop the rain, to turn waters to blood, and to cause plague. You and Jesus will need these powers when the might of this world is turned against this place.”

“What do you mean?” At that moment, the blue of the sky in the circle above them disappeared and they could see blackness and stars. John looked at Ruha. “What does this mean?”

“It means that all on Earth who are awake now will see as the circle expands that there is nothing between them and the stars. They will also soon notice that the swirling clouds now above us are expanding from a center above this place, and they will come, many with terrible force, to see what is happening. You and Jesus must be ready to defend this place.”

“Is this the battle between good and evil prophesied by the Bible?”

“No. Those who come will come with good intent, to protect their fellows. They believe their force can stop what is happening in the world, and they are doing their duty. Their souls will be weighed in accordance with their lives, not these last deeds. There is no battle between good and evil. There is only good, and error.”

John was confused by this. “You’re saying there is no Satan?”

Ruha laughed. “I am the closest thing to your idea of Satan. I am charged with managing the Dark World. I am the Earth, and I built Jerusalem. When Adam was created, a substance of light from the Light World was embedded in his evil body, or Pagra. You call this your soul, and your job is to rescue it from the dark, and this world. This is the fourth and last age of the world, overseen by Noah with his wife, and symbolized by the flood yesterday. I am the mother of the evil spirits of the zodiac and of the planets. I am radiance; I am light. I am death; I am life. I am darkness; I am light. I am error; I am truth. I am destruction; I am construction. I am light; I am error. I am wounding; I am healing.

“But I am not The Adversary. There is no Satan. This world was created in error, and the souls in it struggle to seek the path of goodness, away from error. Some embrace error, and you call them evil. They are being prepared to enter the Dark World even now.” Ruha pointed again at the swirling clouds and the dark figures within them. “Once the circle of clouds expands to cover this world, it will be unbroken, and all souls will be weighed, and this world will be no more.”

John struggled to assemble his thoughts and put them into words. After several moments, he said, “How long will it take until the circle is unbroken?”

Ruha says, “The outer edge of the cloud circle is moving at about 70 miles an hour. The opposite edges will meet in the Indian Ocean west of Perth, Australia in about 15 days’ time. During this time, you and Jesus must defend this place. The edge of the clouds should reach Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas in an hour or so. The great crowd of Unredeemables in the Las Vegas area will join the clouds in the sky, rising into the air from wherever they are, and all will see the sign of the End Times. It will probably only take an hour or so after that before the Air Force identifies the center of the clouds and is in the air coming this way. We need to be ready.”

John and Jesus exchanged looks. Jesus said, “Do you mean we need to kill the pilots? I cannot do that.”

Ruha looked at Jesus fondly. “All on Earth will perish in 15 days. Those who die while we defend this place will die just as surely in two weeks’ time. But this place must be protected. It is the site of the weighing of souls. You must defend against planes, against missiles, against whatever force seeks to harm this place.”

Jesus wept. John was also brought to tears. The two men sat beside one another at the altar crying piteously for the better part of an hour. Ruha came over and spoke kindly to the two men. “It is time to prepare. The two most effective powers that you have during this time are fire and plague. You must decide how to use them to defend us. You can use the fire against the jets, but you may need to use plague against the armed forces yet on the ground.”

John flipped on his phone and searched for news from Las Vegas. He found a live news report on a local TV station.

“Las Vegas is now a scene of mass hysteria. People are rising up into the sky and disappearing to the northeast as ominous clouds and winds slowly blanket the city, shutting out the noonday sun. All over Las Vegas, cars have smashed into each other, people, storefronts, and casinos because they no longer have drivers. I am standing in front of the Bethany Baptist Church, east of the Strip, with Margaret, a church member. Margaret, what do you think is going on?”

“Well, it’s obviously the rapture, when those who have been born again in Christ are taken. ‘For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God.’ Those of us who have been watchful, who read the Rapture Ready News, for example, and have seen that the rapture index is close to 200, or who listen to Rapture Ready Radio, have been reading the signs that have foretold this event. As Revelation says, ‘If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.’ That hour has come, praise God! The First Seal has been opened! Hallelujah!”

“So, these people who are ascending to the sky, they are the righteous who have been born again?”

“That is what scripture tells us.”

“But what do you make of the fact that these souls are streaming from the casinos and other seedy sites from all over Las Vegas? Or the reported streams from Jewish temples and from mosques?”

“Um, I don’t know. Those people should be damned to hell.”

“One last question, have you been born again?”

“Why, yes, of course I have!”

“Then why are you still standing here?”

“Um, ah, I don’t know.”

“OK, thank you, Margaret. Back to you in the studio, George.”

John switched to CNN.

“There are reports of hysteria in Las Vegas at this hour. People are calling CNN and reporting seeing fellow citizens rise into the sky and flying off to the northeast. We are attempting to get ahold of the head of the Las Vegas Valley Water District to see if there is somehow a contamination of the water source that is causing the apparent mass psychosis of the people of Las Vegas.

“Wait, I’m being told we have live video from station KVVU in Las Vegas. Oh! Oh, my God! This is unbelievable . . .”

John turned off his phone. The word was spreading fast. There was little doubt that Ruha was right. The natural response would be to send the US military to the center of the storm. Jesus and he would need to take preemptive measures against the threat.

John turned to Jesus and said, “I’m afraid we need to send a plague against the air force and ballistic missile installations within immediate range, and soon across the whole country. There’s no way we can shoot all the planes and missiles out of the sky as they approach.”

Jesus looked puzzled. “I don’t know what you mean. What are planes? What are missiles? I am not familiar with these words.”

John quickly filled Jesus in on the threat. Jesus appeared to take the news reasonably well for a man who was two millennia out of touch with technology. On his phone, John showed him pictures of fighter jets, bombers and missiles and described their power.

Jesus said, “If I understand you, the army can kill at great distances and our only hope is to disable or kill the warriors by sowing plague. Is there nothing we can do with that brick you were just consulting?”

John blinked in confusion and then realized Jesus was referring to his cell phone. “No, Jesus. I don’t think this will help, although we can try to keep in touch with what is happening, for as long as it has power, that is. Let us try to visit a plague upon all the closest air force bases—the places they launch the planes from.”

John did a search of nearby air bases. “There are 19 Air Force bases we need to worry about right now. We’ll eventually have to disable the rest of the 82 across the US. But we don’t even know how to cast a plague.” John turned to Ruha. “How can we do this?”

“Just imagine the places, think of the type of plague, and say, ‘So be it.’”

“OK. Jesus, let’s concentrate on Nellis first, although they’ve probably already scrambled some planes. How about a plague of sleep? It seems the least harmful.” The two men closed their eyes, concentrated, and said in unison, “So be it.”

John said, “We should check the news to see if it worked.”

Ruha replied, “No, there’s no time for that. I can assure you, it worked. Your powers are absolute. You should take care of the remaining 18 bases quickly, and then move on to the rest, followed by the missile sites.”

“Do we need to do them one-by-one?”

“For the first few, I suggest you do. But you can do all at one time, once you get used to it. You’ll probably need to extend across the world to Russia and any other power that can strike this area. We’ll also need to disable the army. This site is remote enough to make overland assault difficult, but the other armed forces have air capabilities as well. You’ll be very busy.”

Just then, a pair of fighters streaked overhead, and banked sharply to return. “We need to use the fire this time,” John told Jesus. “We need to hit them before they crest the surrounding peaks, so the destruction doesn’t fall into this valley.”

Jesus and John looked to the planes coming back from the east, opened their mouths, and spit long arcs of fire. The planes, despite last-minute evasive action, ran into the pillars of file and exploded, crashing into the other side of the ridge. A huge fireball rose into the sky. The two men were devastated. It was one thing to put people to sleep. It was another to murder them. The fact that all were doomed to die in two weeks hardly made it better. Ruha comforted the pair, putting her arms around them and saying, “Your vigilance is critical to maintaining this place until Ptahil and Abatur Rama d-Muzania break the bounds of Earth seven days before the end of this existence.”

And so it was. For eight days, Jesus and John visited plague on the armies of the Earth and fought off air and missile attacks until the ridges around the Temple of Sinawava smoked continuously.

On the eighth day, John and Jesus felt a strong trembling in the ground. To the south rose a great cloud of dust. At the same time, a similar pillar of dust rose to the west. Soon the earth was quaking, and rock was falling into the canyon, but the Pulpit remained steady and unshaken. John asked Ruha, “What is happening?”

“Watch and see,” she replied.

As John watched, boulders shot into the sky and two massive heads appeared over the rim of the canyon, approaching from the south and west. The beings appeared to be made of rock themselves, and the ground shivered at the impact of their steps. As they approached the parking lot, cars, lampposts and other metal objects took flight and clung to the sides of their legs.

“Who, or what, are they?” John cried.

“They have gone by many names: Gog and Magog, Wolf and Coyote, the Nephilim, Messiah ben Joseph and Messiah ben David, but their real names are Ptahil and Abatur Rama d-Muzania, the Fourth Life and the Third Life. Ptahil rose from the earth under Tabernacle Dome, and Abatur rose from under the Three Patriarchs.”

John began shivering. He had dreamt of the day he would meet his maker, but he had never dreamed this dreadful nightmare. My creator is a two-hundred-foot magnetic being made of rock? And his father is not my Lord, but another huge rock being, and he’s going to weigh my soul. This is way too much to take.

He looked at Ruha, who now wore a flowing white robe and seemed to be iridescent and almost transparent. Her eyes were fixed on the two giants, whose bulk closed off the end of the canyon as they settled over the river. Their rock faces were impassive as their dull eyes swept over the canyon. Ruha nodded and raised her arms toward them. The two giant heads nodded slightly, and she turned to look over the side of the Pulpit. The river water quickly started to flow toward the Pulpit, at first sinking into the parched desert ground. There seemed to be much more water than the meager river would provide, and the level slowly crept up the sides of the Pulpit. Soon the water was so high that Ruha was able to lean down and dip a pitcher into it. The water stopped rising, and Ruha turned with the pitcher and gestured to John to retake his seat at the altar. She then turned to Jesus and indicated he should take the adjacent seat.

John, barely able to walk due to the violent shaking of his body, slowly made his way to the altar and took his seat. Ruha approached the two and indicated they should bow their heads. She then poured the water over each saying, “In the name of the First Life! Let every man whose strength enables him and who loves his soul, come and be baptized, and receive the Pure Sign. It is the water in which we clothe ourselves and put on robes of radiant light.”

The water flowed down from the men’s heads, down over their shoulders, torsos and legs, leaving behind shimmering, glowing robes. “And now rise,” Ruha commanded. John and Jesus rose to their feet and continued rising several feet into the air. Jesus took this better than John, who waved his arms and legs and flailed in a futile effort to climb down out of the air.

“Don’t be afraid, John,” Ruha said. “You have been finally prepared for your witness.” John stopped flailing and hung in the air next to Jesus, who turned and smiled at him. “Be of good cheer, John. We are part of a momentous process. I am sure you would not have been chosen if you were not worthy.”

John smiled weakly and reached out for Jesus’ hand. “You may not be who I thought you were, but I am glad you are by my side. You give me strength to carry on.”

Ruha said, “The weighing of souls will begin with the Unredeemables, who do not need to be weighed, but they do need to be ushered into the Dark World.” With that she turned to Ptahil and Abatur Rama d-Muzania and nodded. They nodded back and turned their huge heads to the sky, which was full of dark figures whirling in the quadrants of the clouds. At their glance, a stream of figures broke away from the northern quadrant and poured toward the stone giants. The stream blotted out the rest of the sky as it swooped toward The Pulpit. When it encountered the rock of The Pulpit, it split in two and each stream entered one of the stone mouths, which were gaping open. The sound was terrifying, as each soul screamed horrifically as it passed the Pulpit and entered Ptahil’s and Abatur’s mouths.

John and Jesus continue to observe, floating above the rock of the Pulpit as the streams continued for hours, then days, then for three days. The two men were not aware of any fatigue during this process and remained vigilant as the souls streamed past.

On the evening of the third day, the torrent of souls was finished. Ruha said, “Although you two have been exalted as Witnesses, you are still mortal, and need rest. Please take your rest and be refreshed, for tomorrow begins the weighing of souls.” John and Jesus alighted back onto the floor of The Pulpit and noticed two fine beds, with embroidered silk sheets and plump pillows, awaited them. They went to bed and fell instantly to sleep.

The next day, at sunrise, they awoke to Ruha singing a wordless song. It sounds sad, John thought. He arose and went over to Ruha, who was turned away from him. He looked at her face and saw she was grieving and in pain. “Ruha! What is the matter?”

“My world. My world is ending. When the last soul is weighed, this world will be done. I will have lost everything.”

“What will become of you?”

“I am bound to serve Ptahil, who will undoubtedly try again to create a perfect world.” Ruha sighed. “I suppose I should look forward to that, rather than mourning this ending.”

John put his arm around her shoulders and nodded. “I understand. I, too, have lost everything. I don’t know what has become of my wife, my family, my friends. I’ve been terrified that I would recognize one or more of them as the dark souls streamed by.” John began to cry, and Ruha joined him.

Jesus watched this from his bed. He got up and approached the two, enfolding them both in his arms. The three remained like that for 10 minutes before Ruha shook herself and said, “It is time.”

“What will happen?” John asked. “Will there be streams of souls like with the Unredeemables?”

“No,” Ruha replied. “All will be weighed on the scale and ascend on their assigned path, either through the purifying worlds, or to join the First Life. Their lives are more virtuous, so they are spared terror and fear. They will leave their bodies behind and appear before Abatur on the scale.” As she said this, the two witnesses looked across to the two giants and there was a huge two-panned balance scale in front of Abatur. John and Jesus rose into position, and Ruha nodded at Abatur, whose rocky face looked distinctly unhappy.

“It’s hard to tell, but it seems that Abatur is not happy about his task,” John said.

“Yes. Abatur, the Lofty of the Scales, detests his job as scales guardian. Because his faulty instruction to his son during the creation of the world, he was forced into this job as punishment. He complains bitterly about that, and about being imprisoned in the rock while weighing souls for millennia.”

John turned back to Abatur and the weighing began. The only sign that invisible souls were being weighed was a slight shivering of the pans of the scale as souls of differing weights passed over it in a split second.

Like the disposition of the Unredeemables, the process took three days. When it ended, Ruha said, “There are two souls left to weigh.”

John and Jesus looked at each other, bewildered for a moment. Then they realized Ruha was referring to them.

“Are you ready?” Ruha asked.

John’s fear was as palpable as the knot in his stomach. Unconsciously, he knew this moment would come, but with all the activity, he had not had any time to deal with it. He glanced at Jesus, who nodded at him. The two men turned to Ruha and said in unison, “So be it.”

“As Witnesses, you are afforded the privilege of proceeding to the scale in the flesh. Which of you will be first?”

Jesus quickly said, “I will!”

John turned to him and, with tears in his eyes, said, “In a way, you are indeed my Savior! You are giving me a few moments more of life and I thank you for it.”

Jesus floated out of the Pulpit and down to the scale. He turned back to Ruha and John and waved. He settled on the pan, which did not move at the addition of his weight. Then he was gone.

John embraced Ruha and said, “If I had known when I sought you out that this would be the result of our friendship, I’m not sure I would have done it. But I am glad to have played my part in this end. Goodbye.” Ruha began weeping and nodded as John floated down to the scale and settled onto the pan. The scale moved a little, and then he was gone. A split second later, the world winked out of existence.

Wow, thinks Charles, sitting at his keyboard. Wow, wow, wow!

Charles had been stuck for months on a single point in his latest attempt to start his novel: Who is the second witness to the Second Coming? He had relentlessly searched on Google to try to get a clue, from the Bible, from the Book of Mormon, from Mandaean scripture, from a host of other minor religions.

Finally, in an attempt to move beyond this stumbling block, Charles had decided to just start a description of the witness, with no thought of how the sentence would end. Then, pow! Partway through the description, his fingers wrote: “‘I am Jesus, the son of Joseph, the carpenter,’ the man replied simply.”

“Holy shit!” Charles exclaims. Everything just fell into place in a moment of inspiration! Now I know how the chapter will end! It is perfect. My fucking subconscious. It—I— knew all along.

Charles sits in awe of how seamlessly the rest of the fragments that had been whirling in his mind for months had suddenly joined into a coherent narrative. He begins typing like a madman, pouring out a thousand words before he collapses, exhausted, onto his couch.

After another week of writing, Charles is done. He prints the chapter and texts Chip: “You got time to review my latest attempt?” Charles throws Sticky Fingers on his record player, cranks the volume, and skitters across the linoleum of his kitchen like a spider on a hot frying pan, jumping and sliding from one side to the other, pumping his arms over his head, and shouting. He pulls his phone from his pocket a dozen times, looking for Chip’s reply. When it comes, it’s disappointing: “Can’t do it now, my droog. How about dinner?”

Charles doesn’t like to meet with Chip for dinner to discuss his writing. Eating is so distracting. He’d rather the two would meet at his apartment, or Chip’s office or man cave, or at least over a drink. “OK, when and where?” he replies, and the two make plans to have dinner.

Charles is so het up, he grabs his keys and races downstairs to his car, leaving the Stones blaring away. It’s a couple of hours until dinner, but he just has to do something. He decides to go to the beach.

Heading north on Miami Avenue, he passes the Seventh Day Adventist Church. Hmmm. Speaking of taking the Bible literally, Charles thinks. Those guys believe every line in Revelations—all the righteous dead resurrected, and, along with the righteous living, taken straight to Heaven. Maybe I should have worked some of their perspective into the chapter. I wonder how they reconcile the various contradictions of Bible verses? Jesus comes back as lightning from the east that is also seen in the west, and also like a thief in the night.

Already the neighborhood is less shabby as he gets closer to 79th street, the beeline to the beach. He passes an abandoned shell of a six-story condo complex that is waiting for better times to resume construction. He passes a boat storage place festooned with razor wire across from an abandoned strip mall. Crossing over Little River improves the landscape a little. He notices a shiny CVS Pharmacy across from a high-rise, more boat storage, without razor wire. Things are looking up, yet down a few more blocks, there’s an empty lot across from a failed car wash. Charles thinks, how do you fail at washing cars down here in Florida? Just before the causeway, 20 stories of condos, and then he’s out onto the bridge.

It feels like escaping from a third world country, Charles thinks. The water is beautiful, and he rolls down his window to breathe the salt on the hot, humid air. He catches his first glimpse of the high-rises of North Bay Village. The island is bright, clean, and walled. Charles is getting closer and closer to the big money; the high-rises are getting thicker, huge slabs of opulence and privilege. Another causeway and he’s on North Beach. He’s getting impatient now as he gets closer to the sea. He speeds up a little and soon pulls into the parking lot of a Subway, gets out, and almost runs to the beach, ducking through a little pavilion and shucking his socks and shoes to walk out on the scorching sand. He runs down to the waterline to cool off his feet and just stands there, watching the boats passing by in their random pursuit of happiness.

Charles stands there without moving, transfixed, for 15 minutes. This is what feeds my soul, he thinks. The ceaseless waves, the blowing wind, the crying birds, bright sun, clouds. He tries to get to the beach at least once a week, which makes him different from Miami natives, who might spend months without seeing the water.

Certainly, the folks who live in my neighborhood never go to the beach, he thinks. It’s the same everywhere. When I was in California, I met a guy in Long Beach who was 30 years old and had never seen the ocean, eight blocks away. I want to keep this special, but regular.

After another several minutes absorbing the salty breeze, Charles walks up and down the beach for a bit, then climbs back into his car to head to dinner with Chip at a pizza and coffee place not too far away on the mainland, but on the right side of the tracks.

Chip’s not there when Charles shows up. He’s always wary of taking a table until his friend appears since Chip is often late or doesn’t come at all due to some congregation emergency. So, he sits in a straight back chair in the waiting area. It seems like forever, but Chip eventually shows up half an hour late.

“Did your order for us?”

“Chip you know I wouldn’t do that. You might not show.”

“Sorry. A guy just got the news he’s got stage 3 bone marrow cancer, so I got a little involved.”

Charles now feels like a jerk for being pissed. “So sorry to hear that. How longs’ he got?”

“A year or two. Let’s see if we can eat fast. I need to get on over to the Haitian Emanuel Baptist Church to deliver a package to Pastor Dabrezil before 7:30.”

Great, Charles thinks. Another rushed dinner with Chip. He’s not going to be able to focus on my chapter. The two order a pizza and Chip begins reading the chapter. Charles, as usual, is uncomfortable and concentrates on his glass of Cabernet and surreptitiously ogling the two young ladies at the table adjacent to them. After a while, they catch him at it and smile. He reddens, jerking his glance away to a nearby window. Their pizza arrives and still Chip is reading.

Finally, Chip surfaces. “This is more like a short story than a novel. You go through a whole book’s worth of stuff in 30 pages. That said, it’s not bad.”

“Go on. I sense a ‘but’ coming up.”

“But me no butts, buttinsky! There’s no but, kinda like you. You’re a . . . what’s the opposite of bubble butt? Crater butt?”

“So fucking funny!”

Chip continues. “Anyway, I guess my whole problem is the approach to the Second Coming. I really don’t like this whole ‘second coming as disaster’ attitude, in your chapter but also in general. I would deconstruct any apocalyptic system or idea as the ultimate in pessimistic theology. I prefer the optimism of God’s love. I see Jesus as having a focus on the ultimate being, constantly wanting to redeem creation rather than end it. In the Jewish tradition, the apocalypse is not an ending, but a beginning to God’s righteous reign on Earth. You kind of nod to that in some of the Mormonism discussion, but it’s fundamental to a true understanding of Christianity.”

Around a mouthful of pizza, Charles says, “But how can you have judgment without people getting, if not banished to hell, at least hurt? Maybe not burned in global fire, but at the least denied what the righteous have. There’s no mention in the Bible of any rehabilitation or salvation for evil ones. There’s no sense of God’s forgiveness from what I can see. It’s dualism: Heaven for the righteous and Hell for the rest. Humans comprised of body and soul, one corruptible and the other eternal. And morality is largely based on ‘body bad; spirit good.’”

“Well, not all religious thinkers accept dualism, at least as you’re presenting it. For example, there’s a group of Catholic intellectuals called the New Natural Lawyers . . .”

“Great. Lawyers opining on metaphysics.”

Annoyed, Chip says, “No, you dolt. They’re not legal lawyers. This bunch promulgated something called the New Natural Law. Law, Lawyers. Get it?”

“OK, continue, your honor.” Charles wonders if Chip’s in a bad mood because of that guy’s cancer diagnosis.

“So, the New Natural Law has three major components that build upon one another. The first component is practical reason, which describes basic goods necessary for mankind to flourish: life and health; knowledge and aesthetic experience; skilled work and play; friendship; marriage; harmony with God, and harmony among a person’s judgments, choices, feelings, and behavior.”

“Sounds good so far, although you know I’d quibble over the God business.”

“Of course, you worthless heathen. The second component says these ‘goods’ are equally useful and beneficial. One is not better than the other, but each delivers a unique benefit to humans.”

“I’ll bet there’s a ton of Christian conservatives that would argue that point.”

“No doubt. Now shut up while I illuminate you, pesky acolyte.”

Charles rolls his eyes, places his hands together, and does a little bow, saying, “Namaste, you namaste asshole.”

This seems to cheer Chip up a bit, and he grins. “So, anyway, this second component is seen as a support for free will or free choice. The third point follows from the first two: the pursuit of these ‘goods’ is not inherently moral. The intent must be good when making choices to pursue the various ‘goods.’ And good is defined, in part, as always striving to contribute to communal well-being and avoiding detracting from communal fulfillment. So, there you go. A moral code without resorting to dualism.”

“Well, I’ll admit it’s interesting, but I don’t see Natural Lawyer churches—or would they be courtrooms—all over the landscape. Instead, we’ve got tons of bizarre churches, like that Seventh Day church I passed today over on Miami Avenue. But, let’s get back to talking about my chapter. You’d see the Second Coming as a positive event, OK, I get that. But what about the bad guys? Even your Lawyers must admit to the problem of evil. What about Hell and Purgatory?”

“Well, you know United Methodists don’t believe in Purgatory, like you Papists do.”

Again, Charles rolls his eyes, then sticks out his tongue and makes the “Gag me” sign.

“Look,” Chip continues. “I don’t believe in the lake of fire. But United Methodists do believe in the resurrection of the dead—the righteous to life eternal and the wicked to endless condemnation. We believe in free will. A pastor named Rob Bell put it this way: ‘We are free to resist, reject, and rebel against God’s ways for us. We can have all the hell we want.’ That said, the Methodist church doesn’t officially describe Hell, relying on various of Jesus’ statements which, while not terribly specific, generally refer to fire. But we preach about Jesus’ grace and love, and not about Hell. So, I’m not much help for you there.”

Charles is disappointed. Chip criticized his vision of the Apocalypse but can’t or won’t offer advice on improving it. Fuck it, Charles decides. I’m not changing the flavor of the End Times. It will play well with the mainstream reader, anyway.

“OK, what else do you have to say about the chapter?”

“My other problem with this chapter is it needs more color and a sense of humor. I want to laugh at this ridiculous crap that you spew in your hodgepodge of apocalyptic traditions. This shit is hilarious. Don’t you realize that?” Chip jams half a slice of pizza into his mouth and grunts in pain as it burns the roof of his mouth.

Charles is a bit taken aback. Although he had added a few odd comic touches, he meant the chapter to be serious. “No, man, I don’t think it’s that funny. I created a whole new apocalyptic scenario from all these disparate bits, and I meant it to be taken seriously, or more accurately, satirically, rather than comical. Besides, there’s funny stuff in there. You didn’t find the Kraut on the roof funny?”

“Well . . . yeah. Of course, derivative of Springtime for Hitler.”

Charles smiles. He figured his friend, a complete movie nut, would get the reference. “Well, if you’re going to steal, steal from the best, I always say. Anyway, how about John almost getting clocked by the redneck? Funny, right?”

“Yes . . .”

“And the left-behind fundamentalist?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, but . . .”

“How about the ukulele of the leader of the Illuminati?”

“Yup. Well, yes. That was a bit incongruous, but you didn’t really do anything with it. It was a bit of that color like what I was looking for, but that business in particular seemed out of place.”

Charles thinks for a moment. “How ‘bout I have the leader plead for one last favor before he gets judged? Like, maybe he asks if he can play ‘It’s the End of the World as We Know it?’” Charles pauses to think. “Now that I think of it, there are some pretty relevant lyrics in that song: ‘That’s great! It starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane.’ Also, hmmm, just let me bring it up on my phone here, yes. ‘The ladder starts to clatter with fear, fight, down, height.’ That’s John and Ruha going up on the Pulpit. ‘Team by team reporters baffled, trumped, tethered, cropped.’ The scene with the reporter in Vegas. Um, ‘Save yourself, serve yourself,’ kinda what the Illuminati did. ‘Continental drift divide. Mountains sit in a line’ that’s our animated mountains.”

“OK, OK, I get it,” Chip says.

Charles wonders what’s bugging his friend. He’s certainly on edge tonight.

Chip says, “Yes, that would be pretty funny if the old guy plays that song on the ukulele and then gets gobbled by ‘Ur. But not the whole song. Perhaps he confuses the verses so they all hang together and then ‘Ur gets him before he finishes?”

“That could work. But I don’t really want to turn the whole thing into a joke like I did with that first chapter I showed you with the three wise guys.”

“No, I don’t think that’s what I’m looking for. It’s just that the whole thing is relentlessly serious, but the pieces are incongruous. For example, I assume you picked the Nazi guard to show that John and his God can redeem anyone.”

“Right, but I don’t think she’s that evil, at least in her earthly incarnation. She joined to save herself and was just a dormitory guard. She witnessed all the horror.”

“So kinda like, you have to watch but you don’t have to do?”

“Right.”

“Well, for me, being complicit in an evil thing, no matter how tangentially, makes you responsible,” Chip says.

“OK, that’s a good perspective. But remember, she has a dual nature—she doesn’t know at that point that she’s the demiurge of our world. And in Mandaean religion, Ruha is a very conflicted character, at the same time reviled and revered. She’s responsible for evil, and for inspiration, and for nurturing the Earth. Without her, Adam couldn’t stand up and was a vegetable. And she created the flawed world in the first place, under Ptahil’s instructions. And, if you really want to get deep into duality, she brought forth the planets in the solar system by sleeping with her son, ‘Ur. Incest, just like in Genesis. By the way, she’s not at all satisfied with the way the planets turned out, so she sleeps with ‘Ur again and produces the 12 zodiac spirits. Not sure that was an improvement. So ‘conflicted’ doesn’t even begin to describe her. That’s what I was going for when I made her a Nazi guard.”

Chip thinks for a moment as he finishes the last slice of pizza. “OK, how about this: As part of his building of the Third Temple, John creates, like, a theme park ride through Mormonism. You know, hop in a boat on a rail and ride past Joseph Smith digging up the golden plates, Brigham Young leading the move Westward, the whole kit and caboodle. It would be hilarious, especially if it featured an animatronic plural family.”

Charles has to admit this would be pretty funny. “Yeah, I definitely planned on blow­ing out the whole struggle John goes through to convince the Elders, get ordained, and so getting a Brigham Young campus designated Mormon World would be pretty funny. But I don’t want to go all Broadway ‘The Book of Mormon’ here.”

Chip said, “OK, beloved, I need to leave. I gotta get over to Emanuel Baptist in 10 minutes. But speaking of Mormon satire, I have to tell you my favorite Mormon joke.”

“I hope it’s better than your last joke.”

“I’ll let you decide. A Mormon bishop gets on an elevator and a beautiful woman walks in. On the way to the lobby, the gorgeous woman hits the stop button. She turns to the bishop and says: ‘Can you make me feel like a true woman?’ The bishop says: ‘I sure can’ and excitedly takes off all his clothes and throws them in the corner of the elevator. He turns to the woman and points to the clothes and says, ‘Now fold them’.”

Chip starts laughing his head off while Charles just groans. “Worse, way worse than the last one.”

“I live to serve. Be good.” Chip hustles out of the restaurant, leaving Charles to pay the bill.

Edie rushes at Charles bearing a battle ax with a demonic look on her face. Charles ducks behind an armoire and Edie splinters it with a single blow. Charles crawls down the stairs on all fours. He can’t get his limbs to work fast enough to keep ahead of the huge, green, wriggling worms controlled by silver leashes bunched in Edie’s enormous grotesque fists. He falls through the landing into a swimming pool of blood. Edie surfaces and grabs him by the neck. “You never loved me!” she screams, exposing six-inch-long fangs. Her gaping mouth moves closer and closer despite Charles’s desperate attempts to fight her off. Just as her jaws close around his dick, Charles wakes with a shout, sitting bolt upright in his bed, shivering and sweating.

“Get the fuck away from me!” he screams. Hyperventilating, he writhes and twists, trying to brush the worms off his skin. It takes another few seconds for him to come to his senses. Thank god, he thinks. Only a dream. He shivers at the recollection. Why in hell did I dream about Edie after all these years? I haven’t given her a thought in forever.

Charles swivels, sets his feet on the bedroom floor, and shakes his head as if clearing cobwebs. His sheets are soaked. Charles sleeps in the nude, so when he stands up facing his bedroom mirror, he can see that his manhood is intact. He groggily schlumps into the bathroom and plops down on the toilet. He can’t figure out any reason why his old flame should have visited his dreams.

Later, dressed, shaved, and somewhat pulled together, Charles rustles through a box of old manuscripts, looking for the only poem he ever wrote about Edie. He finally finds it and sits on his couch to read it.

Breathe upon my arm,
The hairs stand
In tingles. Your mist
And hazy presence
Settle
In my senses.
I sigh, and feel desire
Diffuse and buried
Pounding through sweet cotton.

You are an event
That happens to me.
I cannot say
How much I imagine.

Walking, thinking of you
Out upon the grass,
Or in the morning, at the mirror,
My lips tremble to the touch
Of tender breezes.

Feel the music
As you move
As you curl
On a pillow by the window
My soul purrs.

You slant your head,
Parting lips to speak,
But what I hear
Are words from all your ages,
Rebecca, Leah, Mary,
Sinuous in grace.

Edie hated this poem, Charles thinks. She said, “Get this fucking thing out of my life!” And I never wrote another about her, or at least never showed her another. Thoroughly bummed now, Charles leans back against the couch, lights a cigarette, and remembers Edie.

Charles and Edie met in graduate school in Denver in the fall of 1975. Edie was a tall, long-faced, small-breasted dirty blonde with narrow hips and a blocky butt who was five years older than him. Her wire-rimmed Granny glasses, holey jeans, and flower-girl-gone-to-seed persona belied her cynical attitude. She lived with two roommates—a Bible-thumping Southern cracker closeted lesbian and a skinny, rigid, pole up her butt librarian, both of whom she drove quite mad—in the graduate dorm apartment just below Charles’s. Charles was in his second year in the master’s program in creative writing, and Edie was in her first year getting an MFA in photography.

By the second week of fall semester, on their second date, Charles and Edie slept together, a screeching, frantic, high-energy affair on Edie’s part that excited yet intimidated Charles. Although he was a fairly experienced lover, having had a steady girlfriend since sophomore year in college, he was used to a bit more leisurely pace.

One night, in late fall, Charles and Edie were walking down the deserted quad, on the way back to the dorm after watching The Seventh Seal. They were holding hands and chatting idly about Bergman when the double report of a pair of firecrackers echoed loudly through the quad. Edie screamed “Incoming!” broke away from Charles quick as a cat and hit the ground, rolling into the shelter of a nearby bush. Charles was stunned and stared at the spectacle of his new girlfriend cowering behind the bush.

Edie stood up and sheepishly brushed the leaf stubble off her jeans. “Uh, sorry,” she said. “Ever since Nam, loud noises really freak me out.” She clutched her sides and shivered. Edie had recently confided that she had spent three years after college as one of the first female photojournalists in Viet Nam.

Charles picked a few twigs from the back of Edie’s sweater and said, “Wow! That was really something. Did you have some kind flashback?”

“No, it’s not really like that—the acid metaphor really doesn’t quite work—although something like this does put me back in the jungle emotionally. You know, the terrifying sound of the guns, the mortars, the dying. Shit.” By now the shivers had turned to shaking and Charles quickly put his arm around her. “That was worse than the dreams,” she said.

“You dream about Nam?”

“Yeah, most nights. Sometimes it’s OK. I’m with my patrol in-country and there’s no sound, but I can smell them, I can feel their heat, and sense the Cong all around us. But I feel OK. I’m not afraid, just exhilarated. I’m safe. I know the unit will protect me.” Edie sighed and wiped her nose. “Other times, we’re pinned down by gook fire and every man in the patrol is ripped to shreds around me. Everybody but me. I usually wake up screaming.” She eyed Charles. “So, you’ve got that to look forward to, if you ever let me stay over,” she said with a grim smile.

Charles was quite particular about his bedtime habits. Having slept solo in a double bed since his early childhood, he wasn’t comfortable sharing a bed with anyone, and so always asked Edie to return to her first-floor apartment after late-night lovemaking. That this had already become a bone of contention, mere weeks after they started sleeping together, baffled and irritated Charles. He thought Edie lacked an understanding of the concept of personal space. She even wanted to keep a toothbrush in his apartment, which Charles thought ludicrous because there were six feet of hallway and ten stair steps between their two apartments, as he pointed out repeatedly. Edie said she had bad teeth and brushed up to eight times a day, and why was it such a big deal to keep a lousy toothbrush where she could use it?

“Well, you make spending the night sound damn attractive!” Charles had said with a smile, hoping to lighten the mood. Edie had just looked at him gloomily and said nothing.

Edie’s shivers had mostly subsided, so Charles said, “C’mon, let’s go get a beer to calm down,” He steered Edie in the direction of the little student ghetto across the street from the campus.

In the deep gloom of the Hoffbrau, B. B. King’s “The Thrill is Gone” was on the jukebox. At a scarred dark oak table with a guttering candle in a red tulip vase covered in plastic netting, Charles ordered a pitcher of beer and looked compassionately at Edie, who was silently weeping, tears melting down her cheeks.

“You want to talk about it?”

“No. Not really. You know, it wasn’t that long ago. I came home on an Operation Babylift plane last April.”

“What’s Operation Babylift?”

“Oh, it was just the saddest thing ever. You know it was chaos when we pulled out of South Viet Nam, right? Choppers taking off from the roof of the Saigon Hilton and all? Well, chaos doesn’t even begin to describe it. It was hell on Earth. Everybody and his brother was trying to get a ride out. Civilians, I mean. But even the soldiers were scrambling. When that asshole Kissinger sealed the deal in Paris, nobody had planned the goddamned retreat. And once that bastard Nixon got chased from office and replaced by the current Boob in Chief, I guess things got a little crazy at the top. Then Congress refused to continue the war funding, and we were sitting ducks.”

The waitress set the pitcher down along with two frozen mugs. Edie grabbed one and poured beer into it quickly, mindless of the burgeoning head. She placed both hands around the ice-slick mug and tipped its contents into her mouth in one quick motion, draining it within seconds. Wiping her mouth with her hand, she refilled, more slowly, and then filled Charles’s mug. “God, I needed that,” she said, and then burped loudly.

“So, it was crazy in Saigon at the end, huh? Yeah, I saw the news footage of the helicopters on the roof. It was heartbreaking.”

“Shit!” Edie said, with a look of disgust. “You wouldn’t know heartbreaking if it bit you on the butt, you strait-laced asshole!”

“Whoa!” Charles recoiled against the wooden back of the booth. “Take it easy! I don’t think I deserve that.”

Edie drank another long draught of beer before answering, “Yeah, sorry, you’re right. I get a little crazy when people who weren’t in the shit act like they know what it was like. You see, I was a civilian. After I finished my nursing degree and worked in a hospital for a year, I decided I really couldn’t hack being a nurse, kowtowing to the docs all day and having little real power. So, I had a little bit of money left from a scholarship and decided I would go take photos of the war. Thought it would be thrilling. Showed up in Saigon about three or so years ago and managed to wangle a journalist credential from a guy who worked for Look who my dad—my fucking famous heart surgeon dad—knew. Look bought some of my photos, but I was basically a free agent, a stringer. And for the whole time I was there, I was generally the only poontang around, if you can imagine what that was like.” She regarded Charles coldly, then rapped the table, making him jump. “Just think about the worst fucking thing you can possibly imagine and double it, Charles,” Edie finished with a sneer.

Charles sipped a bit of his beer and tried to shake off his irritation at Edie’s unfair outburst. “Tell me all about it, sweetie.”

Edie sagged back against the back of the booth and heaved a big sigh. “I dunno,” she said wearily. “I don’t know if I’m up for that.” After a minute and more beer, she continued, “You know, I don’t know who I’m maddest at: that arrogant cocksucker criminal Kissinger; Nixon, his certifiably insane partner in crime; or the chicken-shit Congress who refused to fund any South Vietnamese resistance to the North’s final offensive that chased us out of Saigon like a bunch of goddamned cowards.”

Edie took off her glasses and wiped at them with the tail of her shirt. Charles extended his hand across the table palm up. Edie glanced at the hand and continued polishing her glasses. Embarrassed, Charles arced his hand to his mug and tried to act like that was the idea all along. After a long silence punctuated only by the clicking of the billiard balls across the mostly empty bar, Edie sighed again and said, “Look, Charles, I may be mad, but I’m not mad at you. Sorry I’m acting like a bitch . . .” She sniffed and blew her nose in the damp napkin from beneath her beer.

Charles assured her he understood while secretly wondering what kind of screwed up devil woman he had gotten himself involved with.

“It’s just that all this shit is still too fresh. I decided to give up photojournalism and get a fine arts photo degree to try and help put this crap behind me. But I think I’m still a little batshit crazy . . .”

“Look, Edie, if you don’t want to get into this, that’s just fine with me,” Charles said, a bit stiffly. “All I want to do is help, and if it helps to talk, great. If not, great.” Charles was still miffed. He dug in his jacket pocket for a roll of Certs, peeled one off the top, and popped it in his mouth, then winced as the peppermint taste mixed with the taste of the beer.

“No, I guess you have a right to know what’s going on with me, especially when I act like Shell-Shocked Suzy.” Edie managed a tight smile. “So, here goes. I’ll tell you what it was like getting my ass out of Saigon.” Edie took a big breath and slowly let it out, whistling between her teeth.

“You see, Look mag just didn’t give a shit about me. I was never real official even with the press cred. They bought maybe 20 photos from me the whole three years I was there. But I was putting my butt on the line every day, living with the grunts and even traveling with them on patrol. And all I got was the same grub they ate, as well as unwanted attention from every grabby officer around when they were on R&R.”

“Did the, uh, grunts, ever make a pass at you?”

“No, they pretty much accepted me once they realized I was putting my butt out there too. They actually hoped I’d make them famous, getting them in the magazine. In fact, it was often difficult to get unposed pictures of them, at least at the beginning. They all wanted to look so damn heroic on the cover of Look. Like I’d ever get the cover of Look!

“Anyway, after the Paris treaty was signed in early ‘73, I knew, I just knew, it was all going to end badly. The Viet Cong weren’t going to honor any cease fire, and it was only a matter of time before they went on the offensive again. And sure enough, that happened this past spring, and as soon as I heard they were on the move, I spent every waking hour trying to get a ride out. I was flat broke—you try to live on a grand or so for three years. I wasn’t military, so I had little chance of airlifting out with the GIs. The goddamned Thieu government commandeered every plane, truck, or boat available to get their families and their sorry asses out of Dodge.

“And, like I said, my Look friends were hardly interested in lifting a finger to help me. As Charlie got closer to Saigon, though, I heard of a plan to get the sons and daughters of US GIs out via something called Operation Babylift. There were four flights planned out of Tan Son Nhut, and I managed to bluff my way onto the tarmac for the last one with my press pass and my nursing license. They were loading the plane, and Charles, you can’t imagine the atmosphere. The Cong were firing rockets into the airport, and it was a complete, utter madhouse. Buses, jeeps, jitneys—all kinds of vehicles were pulling up and disgorging dozens of kids, some half Vietnamese, but some obviously full Vietnamese. The nurses and GIs would scoop them up and hustle them toward the plane. I got wind of the fact that since so many were toddlers or younger and many of those sick, they needed seat fillers—they called them lap holders—to go on the plane and take care of the kids on their way to Seattle.

“As soon as I heard this, I ran like hell for the plane, which was more than half full already. Screaming ‘Press, press!’ I bulled my way on board and threw myself into this little canvas seat attached to the side of the C-141. Almost immediately a nurse plopped a kid on my lap and told me to belt in. The kid, a beautiful little half-Vietnamese girl with blue eyes who looked like she was three or four months old, was sicker than a dog, burning up. She immediately barfed all over me but continued to smile up into my face. She had the most beautiful smile. Her teeny little hands kept grabbing my camouflage blouse. I’m sure I looked like hell and smelled like a beast, having lived in those clothes for several days by that time, and with barf all over. But she just kept beaming at me like I was some kind of angel.

“After only a couple more minutes, the plane was full, and we took off like a shot, at a steep angle to avoid Charlie’s rockets. The plane was a madhouse—dozens of scream­ing kids in little cribs attached to the Starlifter’s deck, with scared adults yelling and screaming for water, food, or new diapers, or whatever. Turns out a couple of spooked MPs had dumped the food and supplies just before takeoff; don’t know why. Even though we ran out of water an hour into the flight, things calmed down a bit after we’d been over ocean for a while, and me and Sunshine—that’s what I named her—grabbed a few winks.

“Because of the lack of water and such, we were diverted to Clark air base in the Philippines. When we landed, I wouldn’t leave the plane and I wouldn’t turn Sunshine loose either. I don’t know what my deal was. I just wanted to sit there with Sunshine. I had that maudlin little flower child song, “Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair,” running through my head. I think I was pretty crazy at that point. I was dehydrated, hadn’t eaten in three days, had hardly slept on the flight, and had a hard time concentrating on anything but that shitty song and Sunshine.

“Finally, an official-looking doctor came on board and sat down next to me. ‘Miss,’ he said gently, ‘You’re here; you’re safe, and I need to take that little girl and get her looked at right away.’ I looked at him like he was from outer space. Then I looked at Sunshine, who was either asleep or passed out. I looked back at the doc, who had a somewhat goofy smile on his face, and handed him Sunshine. ‘You have to let me visit her,’ I pleaded. ‘I have to know she’s all right. Please.’ ‘Sure,’ he said, but I never saw Sunshine again.”

Edie began to cry, this time for real. Huge racking sobs shook her body as Charles slipped out of his seat and pushed in beside her, putting his arms around her.

Charles drives over to Chip’s house. He tries not to go there too often since Chip’s wife Trixie felt they had enough visitors, what with church folk constantly coming by to seek Chip’s advice, blessing, or to help him with various house and yard chores. The house is a low, long, cinder-block-walled, flat-roofed, typical south Florida home. It was painted, badly, an institutional lime green.

Charles knocks on the front door and Trixie lets him in. Charles can’t tell if she’s annoyed that he’s come over or just peeved to be interrupted.

“Hi, Charles. I was just stripping the kitchen floor. Damned ancient linoleum. Stupid church building committee won’t pry loose the money to replace it. Ruins my nails whenever I have to do this.”

“Wow, you never hear of anyone having to strip the wax off floors anymore. What a bummer.”

“To live is to suffer, my daddy used to say.”

Trixie, born Beatrix, was from an old, traditional Southern Baptist family that had been heavy into sugar cane in Cuba until Castro overthrew Batista in 1959. Her father, Beauregard Pettus, lost his fortune as a result of the revolution. During Trixie’s younger years, her father struggled to rebuild his cane business in Florida, fighting displaced Cuban cane growers for a share of a market that was nowhere near as lucrative. Beauregard was as conservative as they come, in both his business and his religion. When the strong-willed Trixie told her father she wanted to marry a United Methodist minister, he threatened to disown her. They married anyway, and her father did not carry through his threat but did refuse to attend the wedding. Trixie and her father have rarely spoken ever since, nor has Trixie seen much of the rest of her family, despite them living up the coast a ways in Vero Beach.

“Well, enough about me. Charles how ya doon?”

“I am well, thanks for asking. At least I don’t have to strip my kitchen floor. Or maybe I should. It might be as old as yours.” They both laugh.

“Charles is down in the ‘Man Cave.’ Go on down.” Charles notices Trixie also has the habit of emphasizing things with air quotes.

Charles heads down the stairs. Chip’s parsonage sits on the edge of an old sinkhole and, because of the drop in grade, actually has a walkout basement, unlike the vast majority of Florida houses, and a pool in the backyard. The room opens out to a patio underneath the first-floor deck, and thus is partially lit with natural light. The two sit across from one another on parallel couches. Between them is a table Chip made from a weathered wooden high-tension wire spool upon which he had painted the red N of Nebraska football.

After the two open a couple of beers, they are idly chatting about women when Chip asks, “What’s the deal with the ring, dude? I’ve been meaning to ask. You haven’t been married for years.” Charles holds up his left hand and looks at the gold and silver wedding band, turning the hand back and forth.

“I made a commitment for life. I may be divorced, but I never stopped being married.”

“So, you’re a fucking monk—no nookie for all these years?”

“Well . . .” Charles begins but stops. He is sure Chip is going to tease him or call foul.

“Well, what, douchebag?”

“Well, she started it!” Charles says, trying to make light of the fact that not only was there a period after his divorce when he screwed anything with boobs, but he still occasionally swiped right on Tinder. And that was something he didn’t want to get into with Chip.

“Blessed are those who rejoice in her, and do not burst forth in ways of folly, eh?” Chip quotes with a snort.

“What the fuck?” Charles said, utterly confused.

“Just baffling you with my erudition about the Dead Sea Scrolls, Padawan.”

“Big deal, Scholar Boy. Anyway, I’ll never take the ring off, and I’ll never remarry, ‘cause I’m still married.”

“Well then, your wife’s a bigamist! Didn’t she get married to her lezzie lover once the law got changed in Oregon?”

Charles winces at the thought. Gay marriage is a sore point for him. In fact, he hates the idea of homosexuality in general. There had been many times during their marriage that Charles had thought maybe Karen was gay. Like Edie, about whom Charles had had similar suspicions, Karen had exceedingly close female friends, and when together, the women couldn’t keep their hands off each other, hugging and smooching, if only on the cheeks. He always blocked these suspicions about his wife from his mind. Charles thinks, So . . . what? I’m only attracted to queer women? Am I that kind of sicko?

Pulling himself back out of reverie to the current conversation, Charles says, “I hate gay people. With good reason.”

“So I gathered from your tirades in the World. But, dude, hate is a strong word to use on an entire class of humanity. John said, ‘Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness.’”

“John didn’t have to live with my ex! I don’t think I’ve ever told you about Munch.”

“Munch? What’s that? A new kind of potato chip?”

“No, Munch is Karen’s wife.”

“. . . or maybe a new kind of rug?” Chip roars at his own stupid joke.

“Very funny, Chip. Munch stole my wife from me. Can I hate her?”

Chip, instantly becoming serious again, says, “Well, since I don’t know the details, I can’t say for sure, but probably Munch was just trying to pursue her own happiness. And you shouldn’t hate anyone.”

“Let me tell you the whole gory story,” Charles proceeds to fill Chip in on his wife and the dissolution of his marriage.

After Charles married Karen, they were happy for a few years and had a son. But it wasn’t long before he became suspicious that Karen was fooling around on him. Eventually, Karen confessed to two indiscretions.

The first one was with one of Charles’s students. Charles had had a class over for dinner at the end of the semester and the student had groped her when she went into the laundry room for another bottle of vermouth. She had reprimanded him, but two weeks later, after finals, when he saw her at the campus soda shop, he asked her back to his dorm room to see his etchings—he was an art major and he actually did have etchings. They had no birth control handy, so she gave him a blowjob. That was almost worse for Charles. Seduction and the heat of the moment is one thing, but he thought of blowjobs as being rather calculated, and something that a person could help oneself from doing.

The second one was when an out of town friend came to stay for a week and Charles went on his first business trip in his new job. Although things between Charles and Karen had been better, the friend had always had a thing for Karen, and they had been smoking dope. They decided to play strip poker and when she was down to top and panties, she took off the panties, which the friend took as a sign that she wanted to screw. She had only taken the panties off because she was ashamed of her small breasts, however.

After confessing these incidents, Karen swore she would be faithful. But there was a final unfaithfulness that Charles didn’t find out about for years. Munch, a teaching assistant Karen had met at Charles’s son’s preschool, became fast friends with Karen, and soon they were meeting for coffee in the afternoons when Karen picked up their son. Munch was married to a Syrian she met in graduate school. It was an apparent green card marriage, since the macho, Islamic Sepehr cared more about hanging out with his Syrian friends than spending any time with Munch. Charles actually suspected, from some of the random interactions he saw between Sep and his friends—the grappling, wrestling, and rolling around on the floor—that perhaps Sep was gay. No matter. He paid almost no attention to Munch who confided in Karen that they rarely made love.

Munch eventually demanded that Sep give her a child, and after some months of trying, Munch did become pregnant and bore Sep a daughter. This was, to Sep’s mind, a huge disappointment. Of course, being a typical Middle Eastern man, he wanted a male heir. He neglected Munch and the child and spent even more time with his friends. Munch and Karen soon became inseparable and when Charles would come home from work, it was a rare day when Munch and little Katie weren’t at his house, playing with his son. Charles brought this up with Karen, saying that it was hard enough for the two of them to have alone time without having these other people around all the time, eating dinner with them almost every night and staying until way after the kids’ bedtimes.

“It’s OK, sweetie. Munch really needs us right now,” Karen said. “Sep has been married long enough to be able to stay in the US if he divorces her, and that’s all he can talk about now. Poor Munch.”

Charles resigned himself to hiding out in his study and working on a series of never-completed novels while the whole Munch/Sep divorce played itself out. In the process, he not only withdrew from his wife but also his son. When the heartbroken Munch, kicked out of the house by Sep pre-divorce, began living with them, it was the last straw for Charles.

“Look, Karen, she’s got to find her own place right away.”

“C’mon, Charles, you know she can’t afford that on what she makes at the preschool.”

“I don’t care, Karen, her being here all the time is affecting our relationship, and I’m sick of it. I need her out of here right away.”

“Well, if that’s the way you feel, perhaps you can find your own place,” Karen said in a cold voice. “I think we need a break.”

Charles was stunned. Had he overplayed his hand? Was his relationship with his wife really that bad? How could things have deteriorated this far?

Luckily, Charles was scheduled to go to a week-long conference in San Francisco, so he persuaded Karen to agree to wait until he returned to discuss things further. “I’d really like it if Munch and Katie were gone when I got back,” he said.

“You can dream,” Karen replied.

While in San Francisco, Charles thought about trying to find Edie, who years ago had said she was moving there. He had mixed emotions. He was worried about her and whether she had managed to pull out of the tailspin she was in years before. But he also felt that she might actually have understood him better than Karen did. He went back and forth in his mind: Should I call her? Should I leave well-enough alone? Finally, Charles looked up her name in the white pages in a tiny phone booth in a crowded restaurant on the pier. There were three entries with her first initial. He sat there in the tiny booth for 10 minutes before deciding he lacked the courage to try them all.

Of course, Munch was still there when Charles returned home, but Karen had cooled down a bit. Nonetheless, she relegated Charles to sleep in his study, on the very uncomfortable old couch he often used to catch a catnap while writing. One evening, Karen went out with Munch and came home at 6:00 am the next morning after Charles had been up all night with worry.

“What were you two doing?”

“Oh, we just went out, got too drunk, and Munch had this idea to break into her and Sep’s apartment. She knew he was out of town, so we did it. Did you know that Munch knows how to pick locks? I sure didn’t. But we got in and decided we were too drunk to drive anywhere so we just stayed the night.”

“And you couldn’t call me? I’ve been sick with worry.”

“Sorry, Charles. I was pretty out of it. Sorry.”

Charles had his suspicions about that night. What had those two been doing? Was his wife gay? One thing was for sure: Karen no longer had any regard for his feelings or his love, so he packed and moved out. He had no illusions about getting back together with his wife, but if he had, the fact that Munch officially moved into his former house to live with Karen, and that friends were constantly sidling up to him and whispering that they had seen the two of them go into this or that lesbian bar downtown, seemed to make reconciliation an impossibility.

All his waking hours, Charles was plagued by thoughts of Karen’s infidelity, of getting divorced, and the collapse of their marriage. Did Karen become unfaithful to goad him into leaving her? Was she just lonely and trying to fill a void? Had she always been a lesbian? Who left whom?

Charles hit the booze, grass, pills, quite hard in the aftermath. He ate compulsively and ballooned to almost 300 pounds. He clung to his job only because his boss was extremely understanding, having gone through a divorce himself. Eventually, Charles surfaced, breaking clear of the ocean of his grief, still married, and refusing all efforts by Karen to finalize the divorce. Even once he finally did sign the papers, he refused to take off his wedding ring.

After telling the tale, Charles lets out a huge sigh. “Afterward, I mostly felt betrayed. I was emotional, sure, and lovesick, but the betrayal thing was huge. It was a long time before I could trust anyone—male or female—again.”

“Wow, man, that’s tough, and it breaks my heart. But don’t you think that Karen was perhaps always gay, or bi at the least? Don’t you think that her acting out with other guys and eventually with Munch could have been a way for her to try to find her own happiness?”

“Why couldn’t she have tried to find it with me?”

“Well, I don’t rightly know, but did you even know she was unhappy?”

“No, I guess I didn’t.”

“Could you have?”

“Possibly.”

“Did you do everything you possibly could to enable her happiness, or were you more concerned about your career, your friends, your life?”

Charles is stumped by the question. Had he really been the perfect partner for his ex-wife? He had to admit he hadn’t. I’ve always had to have my own way, he thinks. I definitely could have done more to satisfy Karen. He thinks about their lovemaking in the years leading up to the split. He realizes that she probably hadn’t been satisfied sexually for quite some time. And, he thinks, I’m not exactly the warmest person in the world. I certainly could have given her more support.

Chip, in full pastoral counseling mode now, says, “I’m not saying you’re to blame. It takes two to tango, and if Karen had unfulfilled needs, it’s reasonable to expect she should have taken the initiative to communicate them to you. So, don’t worry, Little Buddy. We’re all flawed, and we all make mistakes and sometimes shit happens for reasons we have no fucking idea about.”

Charles manages a wan smile before saying, “Thanks, Father Confessor. I appreciate your insight, and I’ve got a lot to think about. But I’m not taking the ring off.”

“Keep it on, sure. I’m not trying to get it off you. Just wondered why you still wear it.”

Two days later, Charles publishes a column on the subject.

Touted as an equal rights question, the question of gay marriage is likely to be decided by the courts, not by the people, in the case Pareto v. Ruvin. Far from reflecting the will of the people, a gay success in this case would be actually a major win for those who would legislate morality, and the politicians they own.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, here’s a summary of the case. On January 21, 2014, six same-sex couples and Equality Florida Institute filed a lawsuit in Florida state court in Miami claiming that Florida’s laws barring same-sex couples from marriage violate the United States Constitution’s Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses.

On July 25, 2014, that imbecilic court issued a decision striking down Florida’s ban on marriage for same-sex couples and ordering Miami-Dade County to allow same-sex couples to marry. The court stayed the order pending appeal.

It’s now looking likely that the court will lift its stay, perhaps as early as this week. Concerned Floridians need to make their voices heard to prevent this attack on the institution of marriage and prevent the spread of immoral behavior throughout society.

There is compelling evidence that gay “marriage” would be a tragedy for our society. On their website, the Family Research Council puts forth some very persuasive arguments from the Witherspoon Institute, including the following:

• Children hunger for their biological parents
  Family Research Council and the Witherspoon Institute, whose paper they quote, say that homosexual couples using in vitro fertilization (IVF) or surrogates deliberately create a class of children who will live apart from their mothers or fathers. They quote research that reports children of IVF often ask their single or lesbian mothers about their fathers, questions such as: “Mommy, what did you do with my daddy?” “Can I write him a letter?” “Has he ever seen me?” “Didn’t you like him? Didn’t he like me?” Other research shows that these feelings are similar to those of children of divorce.
• Children need fathers
  The research states that one result of same-sex “marriage” would be that most same-sex couples with children would be lesbian couples. Thus, even more children will be raised apart from fathers. Having a father reduces antisocial behavior and delinquency in boys, and sexual activity in girls.
• Children need mothers
  Despite being less likely to have children than lesbians, gay men are and will be raising children, thus denying children a mother and the emotional security they provide, especially for daughters going through puberty and adolescence.
• Evidence on parenting by same-sex couples is inadequate
  Although many leading professional associations assert that there are no differences between children raised by gays and those raised by heterosexuals, their research is inadequate, preliminary, and suffers from serious methodological problems.
• Evidence suggests children raised by homosexuals are more likely to experience gender and sexual disorders
  Sociologist Judith Stacey, an advocate for same-sex “marriage,” found in a review of the literature on child outcomes, “lesbian parenting may free daughters and sons from a broad but uneven range of traditional gender prescriptions.” Studies show that sons of lesbians are less masculine, and daughters of lesbians are more masculine, and in general, report having a homoerotic relationship or attractions in larger numbers.
• Same-sex “marriage” would undercut the norm of sexual fidelity within marriage
  Gay “marriage” would probably damage the norm of sexual fidelity. Andrew Sullivan wrote in Virtually Normal, his book in defense of same-sex marriage: “There is more likely to be greater understanding of the need for extramarital outlets between two men than between a man and a woman.” Imagine the effect on sexual fidelity norms if this sentiment were presented as normal to the public in sitcoms, magazines, and other mass media!
• Same-sex “marriage” would further isolate marriage from its procreative purpose
  Throughout human history, marriage and procreation have been tightly connected. The best argument for the institution of marriage is that it secures a mother and a father for each child. Same-sex “marriage” fosters an anti-child-bearing mindset that could fuel population decline, causing gigantic social, political, and economic strains on society. Breaking the necessary link between procreation and marriage would produce an ever-dwindling world population and associated crises caused by global growth slowing to a standstill.
• Same-sex “marriage” would further diminish the expectation of paternal commitment
  Political scientist James Q. Wilson states that the advent of no-fault divorce destabilized marriage by weakening the legal and cultural meaning of the marriage contract. Nobel laureate and an economist George Akerlof found that the sexual revolution, driven by the widespread availability of contraception and abortion, enabled men to abandon women when they got pregnant, giving them the ability to blame their girlfriends for not using contraception or procuring an abortion. Legal recognition of gay “marriage” would further destabilize the norm that adults should sacrifice to get and stay married for the sake of their children by institutionalizing the concept that children do not need both a mother and a father.
• Marriages thrive when spouses specialize in gender-typical roles
  Same-sex civil “marriage” of necessity de-genderizes marriage, amping up existing social and cultural pressures to neuter our thinking and our behaviors in marriage. According to University of Virginia psychologist Mavis Hetherington, when spouses specialize in gender-typical ways, marriages typically thrive, and couples are less likely to divorce when the wife concentrates on childrearing and the husband concentrates on breadwinning,
• Women and marriage domesticate men
  Research has shown that men who are married earn more, work harder, drink less, live longer, spend more time attending religious services, and are more sexually faithful. Their testosterone levels also drop, especially when their children are in the home. It’s hard to imagine similar social and biological effects arising in gay “marriages.”

If the preceding didn’t concern you or make you sad, you have the heart of a stone.

While I don’t agree with all of the above assertions, I have seen many of these trends and themes at work in my own life. Many of you know from past columns that homosexuality broke up my marriage. My now ex-wife fell in love with a woman, snuck around behind my back carrying on an affair with her for years, and a year-and-a-half-ago married her lover in Oregon. To say homosexuality destabilized our family would be a huge understatement. The judge gave my homosexual ex-wife complete custody of our son, and I rarely saw him until he became an adult. He grew up mostly in the company of women, without my help and guidance through the horrors of puberty, and the uncertainty of finding his way into adulthood. To this day, he remains somewhat estranged, and I’m lucky to see him a few times a year.

The only positive effect of the advent of same-sex marriage for me personally was that I no longer need to support my ex-wife for the rest of her life.

And now, in Florida, unless you act, same-sex marriage may soon become the law. This could happen to you!

The day the column is published, Chip calls Charles.

“What the fuck, dude?! That was a seriously nasty column! What were you thinking? I know you’ve got a bug up your butt about lesbianism but keep it to yourself!”

“I’m just telling it like it is, man. Homosexuality is a threat to society.”

“Oh, come on! Really? You think persecution of a sexual minority would be good for society? Perhaps we should put them all in prison. Don’t you think making the stability of marriage available to all would be a good thing?”

“You read the facts from the Family Research Council.”

“Facts? You call vague inferences from supposed experts and bald assertions like ‘children of gay people are more gay’ facts? That stuff has been totally debunked.”

“Why aren’t you on my side, by the way? Isn’t your religion against homosexuality?”

“Well, United Methodism can’t ordain gays or promote the gay lifestyle, but the church commits to not reject or condemn gay members and friends. It’s not exactly ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ but rather live and let live.”

“But the Bible is clear about condemning homos, right?”

“I wouldn’t necessarily call it outright condemnation. In Genesis, Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed because of a crowd of men who wanted to rape two angels that Lot was protecting. So, the Bible could be condemning gang rape. And why would angels have gender, anyway? But the passage goes on to basically condone incest between an unsuspecting Lot and his daughters, so you need to take all this with a pillar of salt.” Chip smiles at his pun.

“Funny, Funny Boy!”

“Anyway, Lot’s daughters’ actions, which gave rise to a whole race, the Moabites, are condemned in Leviticus 18 along with polygamy, infidelity, human sacrifice, bestiality, sex during menstruation, and male homosexuality. Homosexuality is called detestable, but that’s a way less judgment than most of the other things on the list, which are called profane or wicked. But, dude, anyone who wants to live strictly by Leviticus would need to stop doing a lot of pretty common things, like swearing, eating crab, shellfish, pork or fat—goodbye bacon—haircuts and beard trimming, infidelity—I agree with that one—having pimples or disabilities, drinking alcohol in holy places—like taking communion at church—eating or touching the carcass of flying insects with four legs, going to church within a month or two of giving birth—it’s two months for a daughter because, I guess, daughters are more unclean—holding back wages for a day, failing to stand in the presence of the elderly—I ain’t standing up for you, bucko—working on the Sabbath, and selling land permanently.”

“You got that stuff memorized?”

“The subject of many of my sermons. You need to understand and interpret the underlying meaning of the Bible. Many of these strictures—like not eating shellfish—are codes created to prevent sickness. Others, like not tilling a field to its very edge, are intended to do small but important things like prevent erosion. The Bible was a code of behavior that goes beyond the spiritual. The United Methodist church teaches that we should interpret the Bible by asking ourselves: What did a passage mean to its original hearers? How does that fit into the whole message of the Bible? How does the passage reveal what God is saying in my life, community, and world? And what changes should I consider making as a result of my study?”

“So, you’re not literalists? That’s good.”

“Hey, let me tell you my favorite Methodist joke.”

“Please, please, please, no!”

“OK, here goes. A Methodist minister and his wife were driving along Lake Shore Drive, in Chicago, and they were pulled over for speeding. As officer O’Malley approached the pastor, he saw the man’s clerical garb and mistook him for a Catholic priest. ‘Oh, sorry about dat, fader. Uh, youse just try and slow it down a little, OK?’ As they drove away, the pastor’s wife said, ‘Shame on you, Harold! That was unethical. You know who he thought you were!’ ‘Oh, I know who he thought I was,’ replied the pastor. ‘I’m just wondering who he thought you were.’

Charles just buries his head in his arms.

Aleister awoke to find his familiar, his wife Rose, at the foot of the bed. She had the faraway eyes that signified a possession. “What is the matter?” he said. He was worried, as she had recently said that she felt she was pregnant.

“There is something you must know,” Rose said. “A being of great power wishes to communicate with you.”

“Can’t he wait until after my breakfast?” Aleister pleaded.

“He comes now.” Rose fainted to the floor and a voice came into the room. To Aleister, it appeared to emanate from a corner of the bedroom. The voice was neither high nor low, but deep, musical and expressive, and spoke unaccented English. Taken aback, Aleister sat upright in bed and clutched the bedclothes to him.

“Who are you?” he asked in a small voice.

“You may call me Aiwass. I am to give you the Book of the Law and signify the equinox of the old gods, and the beginning of the last Aeon of the world. You shall take it down from my dictation and spread its word throughout the world.”

Aleister blinked and swiveled his head back and forth across the room. All seemed in order, except for his crumpled wife on the floor. He craned his neck and twisted his body to look out the window behind the bed. He saw nothing but the familiar sights of a spring day in Cairo. What did I do last night to bring on this apparition, he thought. A devoted libertine, Aleister was renowned for drinking, dancing, drugging and extreme sexual exploits with all manner of devotees and hangers-on.

“But who are you?” Aleister repeated. “And, where are you?” Aleister had had visions before, but generally only when out of his head with intoxicants of one sort or the other. When the spirits came to his wife, she typically narrated what they told her, as a translator. But now, here, in the stark midday Egyptian sun, he saw a handful of dust in unreal blue shadow in the corner of his room, from whence the sonorous voice emanated.

“I am Aiwass, the minister of Hoor-Paar-Kraat, endowed by the powers ruling this Earth at present.”

Aleister was very acquainted with the spirit world, having mastered invisibility and evocation four years previously, and he claimed to be an adept at Magick. He called himself the Beast 666, yet he had never trembled so much in the presence of a spirit. It was as if his whole body was a lightning rod yearning for the bolt of creation.

From his bed, Aleister peered into the shadow in the corner and thought he beheld a tall, dark man in his thirties, well-knit, active and strong, with the face of a savage king, and eyes veiled lest their gaze should destroy what they saw.

“I have come to command you to set down the Book of the Law that will supersede the Christian Bible and all others and set the course of your race into a new Age. I will come to you thrice to recite the past, present, and future so that you shall understand the Law.”

Upon hearing this Aleister was not the least bit stunned at the enormity of the task—to set out laws for all humanity to follow. His ego was such that it didn’t occur to him to be awed by the proposition. Rather he was overwhelmed by a feeling of bliss that had been chosen to be the ultimate prophet of the Creator.

“I am ready to receive your enlightenment,” Aleister said.

“Very well. The first law is the only law: Do what thou wilt.”

“Wait. Does that mean there are no rules, no strictures on conduct, and all may do what they wish?”

“No,” Aiwass said. “Love is the law, love under will. There is no law beyond ‘Do what thou wilt.’ People are stars whose destiny is to move on each’s true orbit, as marked out by the nature of position, the law of personal growth, the impulse of past experiences. All events are equally lawful—and everyone necessary, in the long run—but in practice, only one act is lawful for each at any given moment. Therefore, duty consists in determining to experience the right event from one moment of consciousness to another. Each action or motion is an act of love, the uniting with one or another part of Nuit; each such act must be ‘under will,’ chosen so as to fulfill and not to thwart the true nature of the being concerned.”

“I’m not entirely sure I grasp the difference between this Law and lawlessness,” Aleister said. “Surely, I have governed my own life under similar principles, but I am an elite, possessing greater intellect, discernment, and moral surety than the less fortunate masses. A world run under the Law you state would come quickly to sin and ruin.”

“The word sin is restriction,” said Aiwass. “A sin is a lie, a folly against self. The practice of ‘Do what thou wilt’ is that every man and every woman has definite attributes whose tendency, considered in due relation to environment, indicate a proper course of action in each case. To pursue this course of action is to do one’s true will. Do that, and no other shall say nay.”

“Again, I see how this works for the elite. But what of the less-gifted?”

“One should not protect the weak and the vicious from the results of their inferiority. Doing so perpetuates the elements of social dissolution. Rather aid nature by subjecting every newcomer to the most rigorous tests of his fitness to deal with his environment. The human race grew in stature and intelligence as long as individual prowess achieved security so that the strongest and cleverest people were able to reproduce their kind in the best conditions. Now that security has become general through the operation of altruism, the most degenerate of the people are often the offspring of the strongest.

“Your race has a sentimental idea of self-sacrifice, the kind which is most esteemed by the vulgar and is the essence of popular Christianity—sacrifice of the strong to the weak. This is wholly against the principles of evolution, and of the Law. Any nation which does this systematically on a sufficiently large scale simply destroys itself. The sacrifice is in vain; the weak are not even saved.”

Aleister is taken aback. “So, civilization must be tossed aside, and we all should struggle like vicious animals? Only the strong-willed are to survive and the weak are to be abandoned and pitied?”

“The Law regards pity as despicable. But further, to pity another man is to insult him. He also is a star, one, individual and eternal. The Law does not condemn fighting. If he be a King, thou canst not hurt him.”

Aleister, who had embraced Buddhism and its teachings that all existence is pure joy while sorrows are but shadows, was shocked at the implications of the law that Aiwass revealed. Despite his debauchery and his feeling of superiority, deep in his soul, he was infinitely sad at humanity’s state of universal sorrow, and passionately eager to raise humanity. The Law denounced pity as damnable, and by implication, acclaimed war as admirable.

“You are saying we should forsake Christianity, Buddhism and all other religions, to forsake the Bible and all other codes of conduct?”

Aiwass replied, “All bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of various errors in understanding the nature of man, such as the separation of body and soul, the idea that evil only resides in the body and goodness and reason in the soul, as well as the biggest error: that God will torment man in eternity for following his will.

“In reality, man has no body distinct from his soul, for what is called body is a portion of the soul as discerned by the five senses. Similarly, energy is the only life and is from the body and will is the bound or outward circumference of energy, which is eternal delight. I am the God of Vengeance. I am thy Holy Guardian Angel. I shall return the next three days. Be prepared to receive the Book of the Law, which I shall dictate to you.”

With that, the shadow disappeared and Aleister sat blinking in astonishment at what had happened. After a moment, he thought of his wife, leapt to the floor, and cradled Rose in his arms. Slowly she regained consciousness and, startled, cast her eyes about the room.

“What happened?” Rose asked. “Where is Horus’ messenger?”

“I have just had the most exhilarating experience,” Aleister said. “I know that during the trances that you’ve had over the past few days you said that the god Horus was trying to contact me. Darling, where did you get these ideas from? It appears that through your instrument, Aiwass, an angel of Horus, whom he called Hoor-Paar-Kraat, visited me and said he would give me the Book of the Law. He said he would visit me three times, speaking of the past, the present, and the future. What do you know of this god, Horus?”

“Until the trances, I had never heard of the names Horus or Hoor-Paar-Kraat. You know I don’t know anything about Egyptology. I don’t remember anything about those seizures. You are the one who said I spoke of Horus.”

Aleister, confused about the vision he had, decided he needed proof that his wife wasn’t manufacturing these incidents. Aleister quizzed his wife on a number of symbols related to Horus, according to the system he had gotten from Golden Dawn occult practitioners.

He asked, “What are Horus’ moral qualities?” Immediately Rose replied, “Force and fire.”

“Who is Horus’ enemy?” Rose replied, “Forces of the waters—of the Nile.”

Aleister continued his inquisition, and his wife knew Horus’ weapon, planet, number, and most impressively, arbitrary symbols Aleister concocted on the spot to represent Horus. After this last, Aleister became convinced his wife could read his mind. Nonetheless, he was still skeptical about the divine nature of the encounter, so he decided that the couple would go to the newly opened Boulak Museum where many ancient Egyptian artifacts were on display.

At the museum, Aleister asked Rose to point out Horus to him. The couple strolled through the museum and passed several well-known images of the god without note. Instead, Rose led Aleister straight to a painted wooden funerary stele from the 26th dynasty that depicted Horus receiving a sacrifice from the deceased priest Ankh-f-n-khonsu. Upon examining the piece, Aleister was stunned to note that it was numbered 666 by the museum, a number associated in the Bible with the devil, and with which he had identified since childhood.

Satisfied that Rose could communicate with Horus’ messenger, Aleister allowed himself to be guided by her. Over three days, following Rose’s instructions, he went to one of their rooms at noon. There he experienced trances mediated by Rose during which he took an hour of dictation from Aiwass.

From these experiences, Aleister created the Book of the Law and, convinced that Horus wanted him to establish a new religion, he created Thelema, named after the Greek word meaning “will.”

There was one aspect of the Law that Aleister felt particularly comfortable with:

I am the Snake that giveth Knowledge & Delight and bright glory, and stir the hearts of men with drunkenness. To worship me take wine and strange drugs whereof I will tell my prophet, & be drunk thereof! They shall not harm ye at all. It is a lie, this folly against self. The exposure of innocence is a lie. Be strong, o man! lust, enjoy all things of sense and rapture: fear not that any God shall deny thee for this.

This call to the life of licentiousness justified Aleister’s past and current behavior as the fulfillment of his being and his will. In part because of this godly endorsement of excess, the newly created religion first caught on among the many upper-class devotees of occult practices in England, particularly the Great White Brotherhood and the Golden Dawn.

Although it grew slowly at first, after a decade, Thelema had spread throughout the world, with followers numbering in the millions. Most of its earliest followers were educated, cultured, and rich, and captains of industry. To them, the precepts of Thelema were a justification of their already self-serving behavior:

We have nothing with the outcast and the unfit: let them die in their misery. For they feel not. Compassion is the vice of kings: stamp down the wretched and the weak: this is the law of the strong: this is our law, and the joy of the world.

No longer did elites need to feel responsible for the mass of humanity. All should do what they wilt and leave the masses to pull themselves out of their condition. Charity dried up. The rich built tall walls around their enclaves against the possibility of a plebeian revolt. There was a consolidation of power and money to the rich privileged classes unprecedented in human history. There was, of course, a resulting general descent into poverty and crisis for 90 percent of the world population. Although never a majority religion, Thelema claimed virtually all the world’s rich and powerful among its followers.

Many of these followers were in a position to carry out the exhortations of the third chapter of the Book of the Law:

Now let it first be understood that I am a god of war and vengeance. I will give you a war-engine. With it ye shall smite the peoples; and none shall stand before you. Lurk! Withdraw! Upon them! this is the Law of the Battle of Conquest: thus shall my worship be about my secret house.

Mercy let be off: damn them who pity! Kill and torture; spare not; be upon them.

Argue not; convert not; talk not overmuch! Them that seek to entrap thee, to overthrow thee, them attack without pity or quarter; and destroy them utterly. Swift as the trodden serpent turn and strike! Be thou deadlier than he! Drag down their souls to awful torment: laugh at their fear: spit upon them!

The Great War began and ravaged the world, producing a million casualties, and more than 300,000 dead in a single lengthy engagement. Increasing technological might enabled wholesale killing. Other wars raged unchecked, used by Thelemic rulers as both population control and a distraction from the real issues facing mankind. Enhanced killing machines enabled Thelemic adherent Talat Pasha to use the Ottoman government to systematically exterminate 1.5 million Armenians.

Thelemic capitalists did what they wilt, regardless of the effects on the less fortunate. Major cities lived under huge black clouds of pollution, waterways became too toxic for fish and threatened drinking water. Babies were born deformed, and minorities were slaughtered in pogroms and genocides. Apart from that, death rates skyrocket­ed as the masses were decimated by diseases caused by pollution and toxic food.

Aleister continued to live a life of debauchery while serving as the high priest of Thelema, spreading the practice of his Gnostic Mass, taking drugs, writing erotic poetry, and practicing Sex Magick, engaging in sex with dozens or hundreds of partners, with no reservation and no regrets. He felt his conscience to be an obstacle and a delusion, an obsolete holdover of heredity and education. As the Chosen One, he felt he could use all methods of implementing his religion with impunity. Aleister expected the New Aeon Aiwass foretold to release mankind from its pretense of altruism, its obsession with fear, and its consciousness of sin.

He maintained his prodigious literary output, not only about Thelema and Magick, but also of plays and books, all the while traveling the world, once crossing China on foot.

Aleister’s hyper-promiscuous sex life, combined with his broad travels, actually set off several pandemics of venereal disease. In a pre-penicillin world, this meant a trail of suffering followed him, although paradoxically, he himself seemed immune to the diseases.

Desiring to establish a formal Abbey of Thelema, Aleister ended up in Cefalù, Sicily in a villa filled with his followers. Gathering his fold together, the master of Thelema preached that Thelema would one day sweep away Christianity and free men from all restrictions on their will.

“I want blasphemy, murder, rape, revolution. Anything bad or good, but strong!” he declared. “I have exposed myself to every form of disease, accident, and violence. I have driven myself to delight in dirty and disgusting debauches, and to devour human excrement and human flesh. I have mastered every node of my mind and made myself a morality more severe than any other in the world. A thousand years from now the world will be sitting in the sunset of Thelema. Follow me and do what thou wilt!”

Aleister and the group created a latter-day Bacchanalia, filling their days with orgies, drugs and constant debauchery. The disciples performed Sex Magick rituals under the influence of hashish, opium, and cocaine. Naked children ran in and out of rooms where disciples were engaged in orgies.

After three years of constant pleasure-seeking and heavy drug use, a regretful Aleister cradled the head of Raoul, a young follower who had barely survived a heroin overdose and was sick from enteritis. “Master,” the young man said. “I miss the godly sweetness of my first heroin high—the warm silky euphoria palace, waves of pleasure massaging my soul, and the face of Horus smiling upon me. I miss being free from everything, mind, body, the outside world, the inside world. But each time I return, the road to the palace gets longer, and Horus sends me away earlier and earlier until it seems like he no longer cares for me. The love is gone, and it’s dark and cold outside and there’s nowhere to get warm except back in the palace. Now I see Horus no more. I just hope for a little warmth before I return. I will never feel the way I did the first time, and it will never get warmer outside. And I am forsaken!”

With this last, the boy closed his eyes and eventually stopped breathing. Aleister was shaken. His towering confidence was shattered. He realized that despite his power, his moral surety, and his god-given mission, he could not control all. He gathered his followers together, many suffering from various diseases of excess and recklessness, and led them in an epic 72-hour orgy. Aleister was the last to pass out, surrounded by white bodies sprawled naked on the damp stone floor.

In the nightmare room, when Aleister awoke, exhausted, he was surrounded by pornographic paintings, loathsome sayings—Soak me in cognac, cunt, and cocaine!—and tins overflowing with drugs. Rubbing his eyes groggily, he sneezed, and a white cloud billowed from his nostrils, He turned over to lie on his right side. He was filled with nothingness, divested of the passions that had driven him. No sensation, just a numbness. He regarded his dirty hands and broken fingernails blankly.

Staring at the blue wall on the far side of the room, Aleister was struck by a vision. He saw with startling cleanness the edge of the abyss upon which civilization trembled. He saw terrified multitudes pitch into the darkness, falling from the smoke and flames of burning cities, arms and legs waving as if feebly attempting to fly, plunging deeper and deeper into oblivion. Startled upright, Aleister’s stomach churned in horror as he realized his part in bringing the world to the brink.

Is all this because of ‘do what thou wilt,’ he thought. And because of my selfish ego? What have I done?

Aleister staggered to his feet and walked unsteadily into the courtyard, where he vomited for quite a long time before relieving his bowels on the pavement. Exhausted, spent, and demoralized, Aleister decided to clean himself up, turn out his flock, and book passage to Cairo so he could summon Aiwass in hopes of an explanation. He wanted to know if he had been an unfaithful servant, or if he had failed to grasp Horus’ intent in giving him the Book of the Law. He turned and entered the building again, slapping his followers awake and telling them to leave as quickly as they could.

Once in Cairo, Aleister managed to rent the room in which he had received Aiwass’ enlightenment. He began to prepare himself to contact Horus’ minister. His ex-wife Rose was long gone, driven mad after Aleister abandoned her and their child in the Orient. Later he had had her committed to an asylum for alcohol dementia.

Nonetheless, Aleister was determined to make contact with Aiwass and tried for three days with drugs, incantations, and Magick to summon his Holy Guardian Angel.

Late on the third day, close to midnight, Aleister noticed a pale blue light, like a flame, winking in and out in the dark corner of his room. He repeated his invocations and the light grew to fill the room.

Aiwass said, “Why have you summoned me?”

Aleister replied, “It is not you, but your master that I seek. I have serious and painful questions to ask of Horus. Bid him come and speak with me.”

Aiwass assured Aleister that this was impossible, that Horus did not commune with vassals such as him. Aleister recited a prepared list of the horrible things he had done in his master’s name and informed Aiwass that he now saw clearly that he must have misinterpreted Horus’ commands. “I do not wish to speak with you any longer,” he said, “but would converse with the Master, not the messenger.”

It was sunup when the angel finally relented and agreed to set up an audience for the following night.

At the appointed hour, Aleister, fraught with tension and anticipation, observed inky clouds forming in the corner of his room, eventually growing to fill the distance between the corner and Aleister’s bed. After some time during which the room was wracked with thunder and lightning, the billowing clouds parted and revealed a dark figure seated on a burnished ebony throne. Beside him was a tall seven-branched candelabra with candles that sucked light rather than releasing it. Behind him was an inky blackness of great apparent depth, except there were no stars, no visible thing: nothingness.

“It appears you no longer wish to serve me,” Horus said.

“No, no, no. I don’t mean to leave your service, Master. I am troubled and confused about what my mission is. I must have misinterpreted your wisdom and my charge. It now seems to me that You cannot have intended for me to sow doubt, trouble, and pestilence in the world, and to attract the weak-minded to your service.”

“That is precisely your charge, and you have executed it well,” Horus said. “This is your mission, and I am well pleased. Why are you troubled?”

Aleister was stunned silent. Was this some kind of test? He struggled to decide how to respond. “Master, even though I have lived life as a libertine, disregarding most of the strictures of society, I haven’t intentionally harmed anyone, but have served to spread your word, the Book of the Law. Begging your pardon, but it seems you want me to do evil, which I presume is against Your plan.”

“Quite the contrary. That is my plan.”

Aleister blinked, his mind awhirl. He felt the urge to vomit but choked it back. “Sure . . . surely you cannot want to harm Creation? Surely the message of the Book of the Law must be to preserve Creation and cement man’s place in it? Surely that is the will of the Creator?”

“You think that weakling, Yahweh, made this Creation? He did not. I did,” Horus said with a sneer of disgust.

“Think about it. Look at all the suffering, devastation and cruelty in your world. Regard the decay of the sense of sin, the growth of irresponsibility, the strange modifications of the reproductive instinct with a tendency to become bisexual or epicene, the childlike confidence in progress combined with nightmare fear of catastrophe, against which the sniveling masses are yet half unwilling to take precautions. Surely that self-righteous fool Yahweh couldn’t abide all the evil! No, ‘tis mine! You serve the Creator, and my rule is dark. If you are to be my Messiah, you will need to embrace this dark world and assist me in bringing about its complete ruin!”

Aleister’s brain buzzed with confusion. The Creator of the world was . . . Satan? If so, why was the whole world not evil?

“Why create a world just to destroy it? You are Satan, the one cast out of heaven? Then why is there goodness in the world?”

The Creator laughed. “You have it exactly wrong. I cast Yahweh out of my realm. He was a poor soldier, always reluctant to rain destruction down upon humanity. He had his uses and successes, but he was unreliable. Nonetheless, in any game, one must have an opponent, and after I cast him out, he proved a worthy adversary. The gambit with his so-called son and the mythology that grew up around him was Yahweh’s attempt to build a religion of goodness and light. But he failed in so many ways. Popes! What a laughable mistake! Declare a feeble human an absolute authority and mayhem ensues. And he thought he was helping his cause! Every religion he started after that played right into my hands. He’s never gotten it right, not that he could, given his materials. I made humanity with a fatal flaw: hubris. It is this flaw that will ensure my eventual victory in this game. Yahweh cannot prevail against me as he is afflicted with hubris himself; he even fancies himself my equal.”

Aleister, shocked and mortified, cringed from the edge of the blackness. Can this be? Is the world really doomed to suffer and die? How can I serve this evil master?

“Away from me, Satan!” he said. “In Jesus’ name, I renounce you and all evil spirits. I renounce all your works and all your empty promises. In Jesus’ name, I cast you out, never to return.”

The Creator howled in laughter. “You fool! Yahweh’s blasphemous book says that Christians have dominion over me and the world. But the opposite is true. By following me, you gain dominion over the Christians, and the world. The silly words in Yahweh’s foolish book have no power over me. And you can no more renounce me than you can renounce yourself.”

“Nonetheless,” Aleister cried. “I am done doing your bidding! If to do wrong in your Creation is to do right in my life, then so be it. I will serve you no longer.”

“Nor will I permit you to serve me. Begone!” At this, the black clouds swallowed the Creator and Aleister found himself back in his room, standing upon his bed.