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  He let the sound wash over me. When I shut my eyes again, I could hear how the music was alive, oceansize. Then the four-syllable chant kicked in: “A Love Supreme.” He sang along. “A Love Supreme.” He clapped his hands. “A Love Supreme.” He rapped my knees as we lay back on the couch. “It’s about the synchronicity of the four corners,” he said. “The harmony of being, feeling your place on the balance beams of big life.”

  I slapped him off me. “You double-dose your recommended daily allowance of E?”

  “Them doubts’ll do ya in, brotherman,” he said.

  “Just say no, huh?”

  “Yes!” He leapt out of his seat. “Yes, yes!” He spun round the room as I slumped back on the sofa, in awe of his rapture. As he turned toward the kitchen to mix his choice beverage—BYOB were Cyrus’ middle initials—I dove back into the music. There was symmetry in its structure, serenity at its core.

  Cyrus told me how the album was the artist’s “humble offering to Him,” how John Coltrane was cleansed in “the spirit of renewal” after years of self-annihilation. “Once he got it that ‘God is all,’” the Reverend’s son testified, spilling his too-full glass on his shirt front, “every moment of his musicmaking was an affirmation. Devotion and redemption. He didn’t need Christ. He didn’t need the Church. He lived and breathed with conscious knowledge. That’s how he was saved from the needle,” Cyrus said. “But too late to change fate. Damage done. Liver cancer. Forty years old. And yet the legacy lives on.”

  Cyrus nursed his drink as we listened to the last half of the recording in silence. My thoughts danced from the music to Cyrus’ words to the First Church work I was neglecting to fallenangels to Shannon to my son to how I would soon settle the score with the ex.

  When the music ended, neither of us budged, the sound or its spirit riveting us to our seats. I didn’t want to break the peace with nastiness about the ex. I would handle that business on my own. Cyrus seemed too eager to please anyhow. Instead, I told him about Shannon. How she was all that and a bag of pork rinds. But I couldn’t tell if she was being real with me. “She goes on about girls,” I told him. “How she loves to get with girls.”

  “And your problem is?” he said.

  The question carried the weight of an indictment. I knew the answer was me, but I wasn’t about to admit it. Not to him. Not to myself. Not presently at any rate.

  The Reverend rang my cell the next morning. I let the voicemail pick up. He’d noticed I hadn’t updated the web pages. “No day of rest,” he said, “for those in service to the Lord.”

  I emailed him after refreshing the PRAISE JESUS pics and posting his latest sermon, “In God We Trust.” I apologized, explaining how I had family in town. I didn’t feel guilty for the fib. Shannon was kindred in ways that transcended blood.

  Just like with us, little brother. Even though your dad was never mine, you and I were brothers from day one, hundred percent, never less than, never “half,” as they would tag us on a family tree. I knew your dad wasn’t your fault. Even as a kid, somehow, I knew. I must have seen mom in you, in us both, and so I saw myself too.

  From the time you were an infant, all gurgly in the crib, I was there for you, bro. You used to hang onto my thumb with your baby grip and I’d stare and stare as you’d kick around in those footy pj’s. Mom called me your guardian angel, said I was a godsend. She could catch her breath when I was on the watch. Then your dad would come home and I’d have to surveil on the sly. I’d spy him bouncing you on his shoulders, lifting you way up high, and you squealing with joy, pumping your fists like a champ.

  He never turned on you like he did me. I would mind you just the same, though. I was your angel, mom said. I wouldn’t let her down. Until I did. But how could I have known? Nobody knew what was going on back then. In God we trust. You were so young. We were both so young. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, bro. If I had been, if I’d had a clue, and spoken up, would our lives still be the same?

  A seasoned diplomat, the Reverend wrote back: “I’m pleased for you, JAG. It must be difficult being away from your kin. Charlotte says you should come by for supper this week if you have an evening free. Just give us the heads up.

  “That said, we do need to be consistent with the web site for the sake of our parishioners. You know how they look forward to reviewing the Sunday sermon and seeing their faces on the screen.

  “Strengthening the Spirit, by the Grace of the Lord, that’s our duty, JAG.

  “You’ve done excellent work for our community. I trust you’ll continue to do so. Vigilance is our obligation. Please mind that constancy is key, the bedrock of faith. I trust you’ll do right going forward.

  “God bless.”

  Remiss for a single day, I didn’t deserve such a tone. I apologized once more, declining their invite, assuring him he could count on me.

  His response: “I’ll see you on Sunday.”

  I worked the rest of the day into the night to free up time tomorrow evening for Shannon, who must have messaged back and forth with me a dozen times before I saw her again. Our correspondence was flirty and fun, but so unfamiliar, I was on guard. We had both been beat down. While I know it’s foolish to compare, my wounds were skinned knees to the violation she’d suffered. Yet she walked tall with open arms and an open heart. Still unsure of my role in the play we were improvising, I was determined not to choke as the curtain rose on Act Two.

  When she messaged she was coming over with a homecooked meal, I wrote back: “I see you in the kitchen with only an apron on.”

  Her reply: “It does get hot, all that meat slow-broiling in the oven.”

  I couldn’t tell her how hungry she made me. But I intended to show her, however she wanted me to.

  If I didn’t mind, she suggested tuning in to American Dream Gods, her number-one TV program, while we ate. Non-judgment, I told myself. “Anything you want is yours,” I wrote.

  Her too sweet response: “I want to know you more. I want to feel you, feed you, hug and kiss and touch you.” She promised me a massage.

  Compromise is a sign of maturity. I could bear one evening of “reality music in real time,” as the show’s pitch put it. I’d wear earplugs.

  “Yes please,” I wrote back. “Feed me, hug me, kiss me, touch me with your healing hands.”

  “I like it when you say please. I would be honored to touch you in a healing-loving way.”

  “The act of giving is receiving?”

  “You understand this part of me.”

  I used to feel the same back when I was a father, a husband. Now I didn’t know how to feel. But I was willing to be there for her, whatever that might mean.

  _________

  “I’m sorry, sweetie,” she said, once in the door, arms loaded with plastic bags. She had been up all night, couldn’t get it together to cook for us. She kissed me on the cheek. “I brought some Mexican. Hope that’s good for you.”

  “You’re good for me,” I said, helping her empty the bags on the kitchen table. I told her the foodstuff didn’t matter as long as we were together. In truth, I rarely eat Mexican. The beans and spices disagree with me.

  “My son,” she explained. “His sleep’s a mess. Sometimes he gets so scared.” As we served up the dishes, she related last night’s horror story.

  Every time he’d close his eyes, she said, her little boy would see the blinding lights of a semi barreling down the road in front of their house. “I’d be sittin in his red wagon smack in the middle uh the yella lines, evidently, swingin my legs and wavin at him with a huge smiley face. He’d call out, ‘Mommy!’ he said, and once he did, bam! The rig would plow right into me. He said he saw my head smash on the pavement like a pumpkin with the insides all spilt out.”

  I laughed.

  “I told him mommy never plays in the street, but he fretted all night on the phone. His father, that no-good so-called man, kept tellin him stop bein a baby. That led to a bawlin that broke my heart. I nearly jumped on a plane then
and there, but I couldn’t well afford it.”

  I brushed back the hair from the nape of her neck, kissed her softly. She handed me a bottle of Chilean cabernet, asking me to uncork it. A simple task, to be sure. A reasonable expectation. But I didn’t have an opener, so I felt inadequate, phony, spanking the forks and knives in the utensil drawer.

  “I do the best I can,” she went on. “But it’s never enough.” I was stirring up a racket, knocking around the silverware. “I can’t be my boy’s mother and father. That man needs to step up. I don’t know what I’ll do. We got into it again last night. Why can’t he just be a man?”

  I figured she’d lay into me next for my ill-preparedness, “no common sense,” “stupid bitch behavior,” the ex used to say.

  “I’m sorry, sweetie.” Shannon came up behind me now with a baby bear hug. “You don’t need to deal with my drama.”

  “Yes!” I shouted, remembering the corkscrew on the Swiss Army knife in my backpack.

  “That’s the spirit,” she said, patting my chest. I wriggled around, planted my lips on hers, then raced off to the bedroom to fetch the opener.

  We settled onto the cushions around the coffee table in front of a micro TV I’d borrowed from Cyrus. When I told him why I needed it he cracked on the degradation of my cultural standards. “Ya give away a wee bit uh your soul,” he said, “every time ya patronize them scrub-a-dub-dubbed poster childs for the Conformist Nation.”

  “Consider the greater good,” I said. “Shannon’s crazy about this show.”

  “Cra-zeeee . . .” he crooned. He said he’d do anything for young love, though he was concerned for my moral values. “All the churchgoin in the world won’t save ya once ya wrong your right mind, sonny boy. Keep that in mind.”

  The competition was in its early stages. This meant a two-hour program of karaoke performances, judged by the Wrath of the Almighty (a panel of music-industry overlords), plus Q&A sidebars with contestants who coveted stardom like it was the end of the rainbow. “I’ll do anything,” they’d say. “I was born to be the next American Dream God.”

  Not to sound pretentious, but it was painful for me to witness the total absence of artistic intent on this show. I’d like to hear Good Charlotte weigh in. I knew Cyrus was with me. The episode I saw had nothing to do with creative expression or exploration or even a nod toward music’s transformational power. Songs were merely used as a means to an end: judgment as entertainment. This was a slap in the face to the music, and more so, to those musicians whose main instruments are their voices. Nina Simone, Polly Harvey, Gillian Welch, Chan Marshall, even Billie Holiday, I’d wager, would never have made the ADG cut. Such sacrilege sickened me. But out of respect for Shannon, who had so few diversions in her life, it seemed, I kept my observations to myself.

  She was giggly like a school girl at the start of the show, telling me the bios of everyone at the microphone. There was the Sioux City farmboy who sang cowboy ballads to the cicadas, the single mom from Chicago who belted out blues on the blustery streets, the Born Again from Charleston, claiming to know by heart all the top-charting tunes of the last five years. When asked if his passion for pop conflicted with his faith, the pockmarked teenager said, “I believe the Holy Spirit’s the guiding light behind each and every hit record.”

  After we had our fill of fajitas, chimichangas and taco salad, we moved from the floor to the sofa, lying together like cutlery. We only stirred during the ad breaks to finish off the cabernet. By the time the credits rolled, Shannon was snoring and I was restless. Unsure if I should wake her, I lay still, listening to the cadence of her sleep, feeling the roundness of her ass against my lower abs, my insides surprisingly at ease.

  I flexed in my jeans. Harmless exercise, I told myself. After undoing my belt I unsnapped the tops of the button fly to relieve scrunch. Her black skirt was cotton. I rubbed against the soft fabric, tentative at first, then with more conviction. I wondered if the pleasure would be the same if she were conscious.

  Smelling her body’s response, I inched up her skirt. She wasn’t wearing panties. I pulled down my jeans to get lengthwise between her cheeks. That’s when her breathing shifted and I froze.

  She pushed back against me. “Hey, sweetie,” she said.

  I reached around and with the palm of my hand brushed light circles on her nipple. She groaned, matching the rhythm of her hips with my own. I kissed her neck, traced my fingers across her lips, throat, breasts and belly, working my way down between her thighs. She was hairless, her hood pierced with what felt like a tiny horseshoe. I tugged on it and she moaned. “I want you to fuck my pussy.”

  Maybe I didn’t believe her. While I’d been dreaming this moment for days, I didn’t have protection. Or the ex was right. I was a stupid bitch. Perhaps I couldn’t bring myself to believe. I saw Shannon’s past and whispered, “Have you been tested?”

  “No,” she said. “Have you?”

  “Not since the ex.”

  The mood was broken.

  “I never cheated and I don’t think . . .” I wanted to say the ex never slept around on me either, but I didn’t know for sure. The ex can’t be trusted, that much is certifiable. I couldn’t imagine the partners Shannon had been with. I faded at the thought.

  “JAG,” she said. “Touch my pussy.” I loved how the word dripped off her Dirty South tongue. “Don’t you wanna fuckfuckfuck my wet pussy?” I was full-strength again.

  I licked my fingers, stroked her lips, polished the hood ornament as if she were a Rolls Royce. “Want isn’t the question,” I said, gnawing on her earlobe.

  She twisted around to guide my finger up inside her. She was hot caramel. I reached for her sugar walls.

  “Listen,” she said, gripping my wrist. “You can play my pussy like a piano.”

  She pushed my other fingers inside her, up to where I used to wear a ring. I could hear Mozart’s “Fantasia in D minor.” Then she pressed the knuckle of my thumb, making a warhead of my hand. And shoved.

  When she yelled I almost pulled out. “You okay?”

  “I’ll always be okay,” she said, clutching my forearm, ramming me into her up to my wrist. She screamed again, full-voice, eyes thunderstruck.

  I gave her what she wanted, punching like a piston, afraid I was hurting her. But this was what she made me do. I gazed at her features, twisted beyond recognition: the face of ecstatic annihilation. I was awed by her desire, her self-knowing, her need, frightened by the beast she called to service within me.

  EIGHT

  Shannon messaged me on fallenangels in the morning. She thanked me for last night and apologized for passing out without delivering on her promise. I could have used her healing hands. While we were doing our Dream Gods deed, the web sites of the storefront churches I worked with had vanished. Now the ministers were all crying foul at once, like the apocalypse was on and they’d been caught with their pants down, circlejerking on the Scriptures. Shannon blamed the cosmos, something about Mars and Saturn and the moon in dangerous alignment. I knew the culprit was a hacker and fixing the problem would require skills far greater than mine.

  I raced around the city, meeting in person with each of the church officials, assuring them their online identities would emerge intact from this unfortunate turn of events. I told them I’d work round-the-clock on repairs. I urged patience and faith.

  After each appointment I’d text Shannon. Her unconditional support kept me from falling apart. “Think of me touching you, sweetie,” she’d write back. “Everything happens. That’s the way it is. It’ll all work out.”

  “What would I do without you?” I’d reply.

  “Don’t worry yourself on that, sugarpie.”

  “What will I do when you’re gone?”

  “Everything happens,” she’d text. “That’s the way it is.”

  This was her favorite line. Despite all she’d been through, Shannon was a believer in what she called “higher purpose.” She’d say, “God is the power of the universe
in you and me, together and alone, in everyone and everything, always and forever.” She was Cyrus’ soul sister.

  In the evening I bought a liter of Jim Beam. Immobilized by the workload before me, I drank more than half while messaging Shannon on fallenangels. I wanted to be fair to each of the ministries, but I didn’t know how to prioritize my efforts. Shannon talked me down online until well past midnight.

  The next morning I woke up with cotton mouth and a headache. The Wrath of God. I hadn’t drunk that much in years. No common sense. I dragged myself to the laptop, anxious to see what fun the new day would bring. When I punched in firstchurchofthechurchbeforechurch.org, the screen flashed SERVER NOT FOUND—the message I feared most.

  The e-body of First Church had been violated, its sanctity compromised, if not cast into oblivion. If my maiden design had been wiped like the others, my credibility as a professional would be called into question. The Reverend didn’t strike me as the forgiving sort. He revered the Second Coming, confident where he’d stand personally on the Day of Judgment, but he was tight-fisted in doling out second chances to others. If I lost his trust, word would get around and I’d be back to scrubbing floors for survival. With no cash flow, my attorney would bail and my son would be lost to me forever. My head pounded at the thought.

  Terrified, I sent the Reverend a preemptive email. My note bounced back: PERMANENT FATAL ERROR. I considered calling but I couldn’t bring myself to pick up the phone. Instead, I’d race to the church, hoping to catch the Reverend before he realized there was a problem. But first, I prayed. (Can you believe it, bro?) I got down on my knees, closed my eyes, bowed my head, clasped my hands and prayed. “Are you there, God? It’s me, Jesús Ángel García, or Green, depending . . .”