He finished packing the suitcase, then wondered where to hide it. He decided plain sight was best, especially with Madeline’s new obsession with cleanliness and order. He returned it to the closet from which he’d taken it, taking pains to line it up perfectly with Madeline’s empty suitcase. In her bizarre psychological state, she might notice if the suitcases were even an inch out of line with each other.
Madeline cleaned for the rest of the day, washing the walls, vacuuming, scrubbing out faucets with a toothbrush, vacuuming the same carpets a second time, dusting-he felt exhausted each time he saw her. He sat in the living room and tried to watch something soothing on the wall, an old documentary about the Serengeti, but she insisted on vacuuming out the sofa and then rubbing some kind of foaming cleaner into the upholstery.
He retreated to his upstairs office. She was still cleaning when he went to sleep.
SIXTEEN
Ruppert considered skipping the Wednesday Men’s Meeting altogether, since it was futile at this point to continue trying to prove himself a citizen of impeccable character. Unfortunately, Madeline insisted on attending her Wednesday groups, though she’d slept little and cleaned constantly for two days now, leaving her hands fidgeting and her eyes scurrying back and forth like nervous creatures. He did not feel comfortable letting her drive all the way to the Palisades.
After the stomping rally of the Men’s Meeting, Ruppert made it almost all the way to the outer narthex door when Liam O’Shea tracked him down and took his arm.
“I’ve been praying about you a lot,” O’Shea said. “Almost every night.”
“That’s great, Liam.” Ruppert tried to edge forward, but O’Shea clung to his sleeve.
“I’m only starting out as a lay pastor. I think your problems are bigger than I can solve by myself.”
“That’s right, Liam. You wouldn’t understand my problems.”
Liam stuttered for a moment, his lips flapping but making no sound. He appeared off-balanced by Ruppert’s honesty. He finally recovered and said, “After much prayer and reflection, I came to believe that Our King intended for me to submit your name to the lay pastor council, with the recommendation that they forward my concerns to Pastor John’s office.”
“Liam, I guess I should say I appreciate your concern, but I don’t,” Ruppert said. “And I don’t think Pastor John is going to find your obsession with me that interesting.”
“Daniel Ruppert?” A man’s voice spoke behind him.
Ruppert turned to see a meticulously groomed young man in his late twenties, wearing a dark suit with a laminated badge clipped to one of the breast pockets, a golden cross with an eye at the center-one of Pastor John’s legion of assistant pastors.
“Can I help you?” Ruppert asked. He felt his heart pounding. He was only a dozen steps from the exit. He’d almost escaped.
“Pastor John wishes to speak with you in his office.”
A mealy grin curled across O’Shea’s wide face. It was a personal victory for him, confirmation that his incessant pushiness was valued by the church, and that Pastor John might now have heard that Liam O’Shea was an astute monitor of the flock, able to sniff out the wayward.
“Are you sure it’s me he wants?” Ruppert asked.
“Certainly. Please come with me.”
Ruppert followed, making sure not to look back at O’Shea, who looked as proud of himself as a three-year-old who’d punched a smaller child and stolen his toy.
The pastor led him down a flight of steps into the warren under the Sanctuary, past the rooms where choirs dressed and undressed, the vast closets full of musical equipment and stage dressing. Ruppert’s annoyance at O’Shea gave way to real fear about having a face-to-face with Pastor John.
Pastor John Perrish’s weekly audience extended far beyond the thirty thousand or so congregants who physically appeared on Sundays. His sermons were piped into the hospitals, nursing homes, and veterans’ organizations that Golden Tabernacle administered under their federal contracts and grants. They also remained available to the global web audience for seven days after he delivered them. Pastor John reached hundreds of thousands of viewers each week, and no politician could advance far in southern California without his support.
Ruppert could not imagine why such a powerful man would bother speaking to Ruppert. Ruppert might have some minor value as a television personality, but he could easily be replaced. Could O’Shea really be causing this much trouble just by reporting Ruppert? He wanted to go back, find O’Shea, and punch him in his flabby mouth.
The assistant pastor took him through an ordinary-looking pair of double doors into an elevator large enough to transport cargo, but lined with soft red carpet and oak paneling. They descended several floors-Ruppert guessed four or five-then emerged into a high, domed lobby that was a miniature of the Sanctuary overhead.
“Wait here,” the assistant pastor said, and Ruppert sat on a cushioned bench near a small flower garden. He watched a kind of modernist-style fountain at the center of the room, where water gurgled over smooth black and white rectangles. Nobody had fountains anymore, not even the big commercial or state buildings. It was illegal to squander water that way.
The assistant pastor marched across the marble floor without making a sound, then leaned down to whisper to a powerfully attractive young woman at a glass desk at the front of the room. She nodded, and the assistant pastor turned and left the room, passing Ruppert as if he’d become an uninteresting piece of furniture.
Ruppert waited for several long minutes, taking in the large room. There were some religious magazines on the end table next to him, but he was too nervous to read and, for that matter, wasn’t feeling particularly religious. He’d been raised a Presbyterian, in a loose, on-and-off kind of way, but now anybody of any importance belonged to the Dominionist church. After more than a decade, he still had only a vague idea of what the denomination was about. Sermons and studies focused heavily on Revelation, the holiness of war, the importance of morality and obedience to authority. He remembered the Gospels had figured pretty heavily in his childhood church, but Pastor John rarely referred to them. Not enough death and war in the Beatitudes, Ruppert guessed.
“Mr. Ruppert, Pastor John will see you now,” the woman at the desk said. She stood, checked her face in three angled mirrors mounted on her desk, then whipped her head to toss a heap of blond locks behind her shoulder.
She finally looked up at him. “You’re the guy from the news?”
“I am.”
She escorted him towards a recessed panel in the wall, which slid aside to reveal a long, narrow, mirror-lined hallway. They approached the double doors at the far end.
“What’s it like to be on GlobeNet?” she asked.
“Making the show is pretty much the same as watching it.”
“I’ve always wanted to be big onscreen.”
“Maybe you can have my job.”
She frowned at this. They reached the double doors, which folded inward to reveal Pastor John’s enormous office. The walls were all screens, depicting a lush rainforest.
The young woman stepped immediately to one side and curtsied towards Pastor John, who occupied a broad, hand-carved desk that looked as if it had been lifted from a medieval cathedral, dark wood engraved with hard- faced angels and leering gargoyles.
“Mr. Ruppert to see you, sir,” the woman said.
“Thank you, Alexa. Bring us a pot of tea and you can go home for the night.” Pastor John rose from his chair and shook Ruppert’s hand. “Good evening, Daniel. I hope you don’t mind sparing me a few minutes this evening.”
“Not at all, sir.” Ruppert was trembling. He’d never been so close to the man before, had really only seen him as a small figure in the distance and a gigantic face overhead. In person, Pastor John moved like an electric eel, fluid and effortless, the whole room thrumming with his energy. He did not make a sound as he returned to his high-backed chair.
“You may sit,” Pastor John said, and Ruppert took one of the row of hard wooden chairs facing the desk.
