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  “Not much of a contest,” Pickett muttered.

  He took the next exit onto a stretch of county highway flanked by vast seas of asphalt that ran to a horizon of pastel colored boxes of glass and cinder block boasting everything from “Religious Equipment/WHOLESALE” to “TOTALLY NAKED GIRLS!” Above and to the left loomed a high white spire. Pickett drew abreast of it, and hung a left on a divided four-lane road marked “Gateway-To-Heaven Drive.”

  He faced a steep concrete pyramid flung high above a low, cast concrete dome painted a white that dazzled in the now high sun and in contrast to the flood of newly lined asphalt that spread from it in all directions. It rose from its blacktop bed on a band of tinted plate glass. It seemed suspended in air. Curved beams trimmed in gold rose from the asphalt, crisscrossing the dome like the spokes of a wheel. The structure hung above the blackened earth like a spaceship from another universe—one that knew nothing of humility or grace.

  Pickett passed a white sign bordered and lettered in gold that announced in gothic script, “The Temple of Glory Awaits You.” Below this it directed: “General Parking—Next Three Lefts/Reserved Parking (Partners in Heaven)—Fourth Left.”

  He took the fourth lane to the left. It ended at the base of the spire amidst an assortment of large American cars. He went right at a sign that said, “Media Annex,” around the dome, and to the front of a flat building attached at one end to the rotunda. A satellite dish and sundry antennae decorated the flat gravel roof. At the end of the parking lane, two tinted, plate glass windows framed a door made out of the same. Pickett squinted at it. He parked next to a white Chevy van hung with ladders and aerials of various sorts.

  Gold lettering on the door read, “Media Annex/Home of `The Hour of Witness',” and announced tours at three every afternoon. But Wednesday. The letters gave way into the coolness of a white modern lobby.

  An overly made-up blonde behind a sleek marble counter beamed a smile in his direction and chimed:

  “Can I help you?”

  “Could you direct me to the Sound Studio, please?”

  Her smile was still lit, but her eyes narrowed and moved quickly from the tall man's face, over his crumpled seersucker suit to his canvas shoes, and back again.

  “Might you be with the Millennium Club party?” she crooned.

  Without a pause, Pickett admitted that he might.

  The blonde directed him through an oak door to the left. She watched him go through it as if she didn't believe for a minute he was with the Millennium Club party but that she did believe, with faith, that anything was possible.

  Pickett closed the door behind him without looking back.

  The hall was well lit. Double doors opened onto two small sound studios packed with electronic equipment. He paused before each. At the last, he pursed his lips and blew a silent whistle. At the end of the hall he turned right.

  Right into a clot of middle aged men dressed in everything from Brooks Brothers' pin stripes to double-knit leisure suits and cowboy hats. They gathered around a plump young woman dressed in the navy blue pants-suit of an usherette. She stood before a double fire door that blocked the hall and underneath a blinking red light patting her neatly teased and enameled hair.

  The door said, SOUND STUDIO 3.

  The woman's left breast said, WELCOME! MY NAME IS KIMBERLY!

  The woman said: “… so everyone can see. And I must remind you not to take pictures.”

  She looked up at the blinking light.

  “Also, please refrain from talking and smoking.”

  She looked up at the light again. It was still blinking.

  “Thank you.”

  The light went out.

  Pickett frowned and nodded appreciatively. Kimberly leaned into the two doors and the group filed past her into the dark.

  “None too soon neither,” said a tall man standing next to Pickett. A paper tag on his lapel said, “Hi! I'm… ,” with something illegible scrawled beneath in felt tip marker.

  “Carrithers…” The man extended a thick sunburnt hand. “Fenton Carrithers.”

  Pickett took Fenton Carrithers' hand.

  “Pollock. Jackson Pollock.”

  The group filed into a bank of theatre seats, like a jury box, to the right of a dark set. Pickett sat down between Fenton Carrithers and a fat man who sported white patent leather shoes and a belt to match. He smelled of cigars and unearned sweat. The breast pocket of his rayon sports shirt proclaimed, “Hi! I'm… SEYMOUR PLOTZ”—the name printed in rough block letters like a ransom note. Seymour Plotz cocked a head of orange hair at Pickett.

  “How much you in for?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “How much you in for?”

  Fenton Carrithers tilted his grizzled head at Seymour Plotz. “Ten grand.”

  Pickett pulled his head back out of the line of fire.

  “Hargh!” said Seymour. “They hit me for ten grand twice this year already. You'd thought these smart ass college boys they got round here could've put it together by now. Shit.” He said it in two syllables. “Those fuckers want another fifty grand.”

  Fenton snorted.

  “If they think a buggy ride round this place is gone spring me for fifty grand, then they're figrin bout as poorly as this here dump looks.”

  “Shit,” said Seymour.

  “Now I'm a God-fearin man, as Christian a gentleman as you're lakly to meet, and I don grudge ten. Hell,” said Fenton, “that's near on the ten points the Lord axes for. I do my tithin.”

  “Shit.”

  “I aint no shirker. But hell, boy, they aint bout to sell me no poodle-piss bout vestin in paradise.”

  “Shit, no.”

  “Y'know what I mean?” said Fenton.

  “You bet,” said Seymour.

  “Know what I mean?” said Fenton again, stabbing an elbow into Pickett's ribs.

  “Damn straight,” said Pickett.

  They both looked at him.

  “You say you was from where, Pollop?”

  4

  “Whomp!” said a bank of flood lights.

  “Please, we must not talk,” said Kimberly. A black, back-lit figure standing before the brightly lit box, she shook a finger in Bodie Pickett's direction. “If we're not quiet,” she chirped, “we may have to leave.”

  Fenton Carrithers rubbed his eyes. Seymour Plotz pulled at a pair of large sunglasses caught in the hem of his breast pocket. Kimberly cleared her throat—and her smile.

  She tried to look serious.

  “In a moment we will tape the last segment of tonight's `Hour of Witness.' As members—” Kimberly smiled indulgently. “-- and prospective members of the Millennium Club, you are well acquainted with the great ministry of our Brother Edmund and the Temple of Glory.”

  “Amen,” said a voice to Pickett's left.

  Lights began to thump on around the studio. A half dozen technicians prowled through a jungle of cables, booms, and TV cameras.

  “And, of course, his Lovely Family.” Kimberly paused for a short burst of Amen's and Praise the Lord's. “But, before the taping begins, I would like to invite all members and”—she smiled—”prospective members to a special get-together this evening.”

  Only the scrabbling of technicians broke the expectant silence.

  “Brother Edmund has invited you—all of you—to his home.” Kimberly smiled through the ooh's and ah's, and leaned forward, beaming. “Brother Edmund would like to meet each and every one of you individually.”

  Seymour Plotz grunted to Pickett's amusement. Kimberly ignored it.

  The set below exploded into a blaze of light, revealing what appeared to be a Victorian parlor. On a rectangular flat, two walls papered in a wine-colored brocade met at right angles. Against each stood a massive mahogany bookcase containing all manner of bric-a-brac as well as large volumes of what could only have been the World's Great Literature in some late night TV edition. Plush oriental carpets covered the floor. Several wingback chairs sat round
a large lion-footed sofa, in front of which stood a squat teak coffee table. A girl in Levy’s and a headset placed a large and ornate silver coffee service on it and withdrew.

  As Pickett smiled, massaging his forehead with the first two fingers of his right hand, Kimberly looked hurriedly over her shoulder.

  “The bus will leave the Media Annex at six pee-em. You will have the rest of the day to complete your tour of the Temple. If you are traveling by private car, however, please see me for directions before you leave.”

  Pickett's eyes moved to the side of the set, where several figures wound their way through the dark studio toward the light. Kimberly looked over her shoulder again: someone was signaling for silence.

  “And thank you for being a part of our historic ministry.”

  A loudspeaker said, “Fifteen seconds.”

  The same imagination that designed the set must have designed the small family that now filed onto it. The Father, who settled on the sofa next to The Mother, counterpointed the broad pink face of a cherub with the sloped, pin stripe shoulders of an investment banker. The Mother, who flourished a head of Dolly-Parton-blonde hair and a green gown heavily sequined and padded at the bodice, nestled her narrow hips into the sofa as if laying an egg. The Son lit stiffly on a wingback chair to her right as if sitting on several.

  It was the boy—nearly a man, lean and handsome in a well tailored blue suit, white starched button down shirt and rep tie—that engaged Pickett's attention, however. He was true to type—save for the eyes. They seemed borrowed—quick, troubled, and perhaps a bit embarrassed.

  “Ten, nine, eight… ,” said the loudspeaker.

  It could have been the set of the Perry Como Christmas Special, but the loudspeaker said: “The Hour of Witness with the Reverend Edmund Ayers.”

  An earsplitting burst of recorded music offered proof of the loudspeaker's assertion, though the music seemed designed less to evoke reverence than to awaken the Aryan Race. The lights above the box seats went black. Pickett blinked twice before two monitors directly in front of him flashed to life, their screens filled with the cherubic face of the Reverend Edmund Ayers. Pickett smiled with half his mouth at the plump, rosy cheeks; he nodded his head in recognition, then shook it in disbelief.

  All the while, and in the dulcet drawl of a Kentucky Colonel, Brother Ed made his pitch for God, Country, and the tithes of the Faithful—”that the coffers of Heaven may be full, and that the Ministry of this Great Temple may go forth.”

  His Lovely Wife Jan glowed at his side, interjecting heartfelt pleas to those as yet untouched “by this Great Evangelical appeal” to pick up their phones right now. “There are operators waiting for your call.”

  From a glass booth to the left a director artfully cut between two cameras. He caught Ed's boy scout mug from every conceivable angle, filling the screen with images of robust good humor. Earnest down home homilies filled the air.

  Pickett no longer watched the monitors, but only the young man with the troubled eyes, Our Son Mark—which is how the Reverend Edmund Ayers referred to him. But Mark paid little attention to Reverend Ed; instead, he glanced nervously to the side and a black haired girl who sat in a folding chair immediately off camera.

  She was lit full-face by the set's reflected light. She never looked at Mark, though his brown eyes pulled at her with palpable force. Her own dark eyes focused with near fanatical intensity on Brother Edmund Ayers. Her pale brow was long and placid; black hair was pulled tightly off her face to the back of her head, and from there it fell to well below her shoulders. The mouth was large, full, and very red.

  Pickett, brow knit, gazed at her intently. His eyes narrowed, then opened, and he leaned his head slightly toward her, as if bent under the weight of his own concentration.

  For her part, the black haired girl seemed aware of nothing but the face of Brother Edmund Ayers. Her hands folded calmly before her, she sat bolt upright, taut, exuding a tensile strength that seemed to charge the air around her, and to stand clearly at odds with her youth. The maturity that she wore rang somehow false: she wore it like a protective mantle, heavy and chaste. The strain told in the rigidity of her posture. And though her face was smooth and unlined, it was also cold and translucent, like marble.

  As the now familiar orchestral music welled up from the racial memories of a bank of loudspeakers, Pickett started. Telephone numbers emblazoned across the breast of a sentimental portrait of Christ filled the monitors replacing the Reverend Edmund Ayers.

  On the set, Brother Ed stood, head bowed, before the sofa; My Lovely Wife Jan sat in the same manner. Mark, however, looked from camera to camera as if ready to bolt at the dousing of a red light.

  Pickett suddenly stood, his jaw slack, his face pale.

  He pushed past Fenton Carrithers and several other club members into the jungle inhabited by headsetted technicians. Relays clicked, floodlights hummed. The smell of their hot steel housings blended with that of honest sweat. Pickett inhaled sharply, pulling in a lung full of close, overworked air. This startled the boom operator, fat and red faced, who nearly took Jan Ayers' hairpiece off with a twist of his wrist. The fat man swore under his breath in syllables short, crisp, and sweet as a nut.

  Pickett smiled.

  At that instant, Mark received whatever signal he'd been waiting for. He walked off camera, one arm raised toward the black haired girl; but she moved swiftly past him without even acknowledging his presence.

  Pickett stepped around a camera in time to see the black haired girl gazing deeply into the eyes of the Reverend Edmund Ayers. A good head taller, Reverend Ed stared down at her with the indulgent smile of an insurance salesman who'd just missed a sale. The black haired girl clasped Ed's hand, and her mouth moved, apparently voicing a worshipful appreciation of his message.

  Our Lovely Wife stood to the side watching them. Her expression was noticeably blank after the exuberance she'd presented to the TV cameras.

  Mark remained where he'd been when Amy passed, his back to the odd trio on the other side of the flat. He looked down at his feet; then, without looking back, walked off the flat and out of the lights.

  Pickett turned in the same direction, but a long charcoal-grey suit blocked his way.

  The head attached was too small for the shoulders, the hair so blond and short that, from a distance, it would have looked as bald as a baby's. A mouth without lips moved.

  “You're with the Millennium Club, I take it?”

  With these words, a hairless hand dropped onto Pickett's narrow shoulder. Pickett, face blank, looked at the hairless hand, then at the charcoal grey suit. His hazel eyes glowed unnaturally.

  “You can take what ever you can get, friend.”

  He looked from the lipless mouth to the eyes. Small and milky blue, they were without eyebrows. They said nothing; but the hairless hand squeezed Pickett's shoulder. Pickett bridled.

  “And I'd be happy to tell you where to take it and where to keep it while you're getting there—”

  “Ahhh…” the lipless mouth said, tensing the hand on Pickett's shoulder, and removing the other from its pocket.

  Pickett spread his feet slightly, looked at the hairless hand on his shoulder, then to the browless eyes. He moved his lips slightly, freezing them in a thin smile. The two stared at one another, their eyes locked.

  Suddenly Pickett relaxed, shifted his weight to one foot and dropped the opposite hand into his pocket. His eyes broke from the other's. They smiled.

  “Y'know, I aint seen ol Brother Ed in a coon's age. And, well, y'know, I jus got to thinkin how, well, aint it somethin what the kid's made of hisself and all. So I says to myself I says, `Self, whyn't you go on down to that Temple there and say howdy to ol Brother Ed. And, well, shucks, wouldn't y'all like to go tell Brother Ed that his ol buddy Bo's out here jus dyin to see `im and how'd you like to have your fuckin hand cut off at the shoulder?”

  Small ears set flat against the side of the man's head turned pink, but his expression d
idn't change. He stared at Pickett a moment longer, then let the hand on Pickett's shoulder fall limply to his side.

  “Brother Edmund sees no one after a taping,” the man said blankly. “I would suggest that you call his secretary to arrange for an appointment.”

  He paused, then added mechanically: “May I show you the door?”

  “Thanks, but I've seen one just recently.”

  And Pickett turned away in time to see the black haired girl shake off Mark's hold on her shoulders and rush through a side door. Mark's face crumpled in anger; with obvious embarrassment he looked around him, then wiped his face with the back of his hand. His eyes caught Pickett's and held them. They flickered, then he turned and left through the same door as the black haired girl.

  Fluorescent ceiling lights suddenly buzzed on, bathing the studio in cold white light. The man in the charcoal-grey suit seemed to be having trouble adjusting his eyes, and Pickett wound past him, through the tangle of equipment, and to a set of double doors like the ones he'd entered by. He pulled one open and stepped into a vast, white domed auditorium.

  The high ceiling hung above multi-tiered rows of red plush seats arranged circularly around a central dais carpeted in the same red plush, but trimmed in gold. It supported two plexi-glass pulpits. A white and gold cross rose from the center of the rostrum and ascended halfway to the ceiling. A group of figures sculpted at its base were apparently meant to represent a coterie of the faithful, got up in angelic robes and tunics, raising the Cross above the dais like Marines on Iwo Jima. Their expressions were cow-eyed, though, and unabashedly maudlin.

  Pickett paused before it in slack-jawed amazement. He started as the fire door closed on its own behind him. He put a hand to each temple, pressed his eyes tightly closed and smiled. He relaxed with a soft laugh, and chose a pair of fire doors farther to the left. He put his shoulder to them, and stepped out onto the hot asphalt and into the midday Florida sun.

  He was fifty yards or so from the Media Annex entrance and from his car. Angry voices rose from the other side of the white Chevy van. The black haired girl pulled at the door of a beat-up sky-blue Volkswagen, trying to get in; but Mark wouldn't release her arm.