A three-by-five card-browned with time-was stuck to the window beneath the larger sign. The cellophane tape was likewise brown, curling away from the card and cracking in places. The card had two words and an arrow pointing upward at an angle.
CHURCH UPSTAIRS
I headed upstairs.
The steps looked as though they would creak as loud as bullfrogs in heat. I ascended slowly, touching only the outermost edge of every other step. It took awhile, but I reached the top of the staircase making as much noise as a foggy night.
The landing had been swept, at least, and the closed door had a small, engraved plastic sign.
ST. JUDAS CHURCH OF HOLY TRIBULATION AND TAX EVASION
I listened at the door. Voices beyond spoke casually. I liked that. I could hear every word. I liked that even more.
'If God is dead,' asked a pleasant male voice, 'what have people been getting at Communion?'
'A Guest Host.' This voice was deep and gruff-the voice on the telephone. 'Can we get back to work?'
'Okay. How's this one-`Bored with the Lord? Feast with the Beast!''
'Catchy,' the deeper voice replied, 'but we need something that'll really inflame them. I want you to escape within three inches of your life.'
The other man laughed. It was a warm, exuberant laugh. 'You'd be happier if I were torn apart and martyred.
would give you some publicity.'
'Don't think I might not prefer it. How about this-you could explain that all good Christians should actively support the Beast and the Antichrist because the Kingdom of God won't return until we've had a thousand years of tribulation. After all, if it's in the Bible, it's God's prophecy. And any good Christian can see the necessity of allowing God's prophecy to proceed. Hence, the most blessed Christians are the ones who put the Antichrist on the throne of the world.'
There was a long pause. 'Nah,' said the higher voice, 'too subtle.'
I tickled my knuckles against the door. A couple of paint flakes stuck to my skin. I brushed them off as the door slid open.
I stood eye to eye with a beautiful man.
I couldn't call him handsome-his features weren't rugged enough. I couldn't call him pretty, because he looked in no way delicate. He was beautiful, that's all. And I'm not that kind of guy, either.
He looked at me with eyes the color of a morning sky near the ocean. They gazed intently, yet not disturbingly so. His hair was a mass of ringlety waves that curled down to his shirt collar. To call the curls blond would be to call gold a 'yellowish metal.' They shone, even in the dimly lit room, like the 'yellowish metal' glows in bright sunlight. His face looked as though its expression could change from sardonic to dead serious with just a turn of his lips. At the moment, he was sardonic.
He scanned me with a grin. 'Welcome to the holiest of holies-the church of He Who Would Turn the Last Supper Into a Friar's Roast.' The grin was a beautiful grin-it didn't belong in this dump.
The room in which he stood was nothing more than a fifteen-by-twenty office. One dingy window looked out on a brick wall. What light the room had came from a pair of flyspecked bulbs overhead that burned uncovered. It gave the place all the hominess of a prison cell. Or maybe a prison library.
Shelves constructed of bricks and boards strained under the weight of books against every wall. There might have been fewer books in this room than in the home of Theodore Golding, though only because the sloppy, warped shelves could not reach all the way to the ceiling without danger of toppling. They looked as if a well-fed flea could have knocked them down.
In the center of the room-on a rug that had as much pile on it as a piece of burlap-sat a plain white altar with a man perched on top.
'Let the guy in,' the man said in a tough, husky voice. 'He doesn't need the spiel.'
Adonis stepped aside. I stood in the doorway without moving. The man on the altar sat cross-legged, studying me. His thick, muscular body barely permitted the contortion.
He wore a suit that had been through three recessions, a depression, and maybe a panic or two. Someone such
