Comeback

naked, and remained the only woman in Archibald's experience to overflow her birthday suit. 'Is there something you want, honey?' she asked.

He looked at her standing there, open, amiable, those round cheeks bracketing a full-

lipped mouth succulent with sleep. 'Come to think of it,' he said, 'there is.'

Fifteen minutes later, Archibald was whistling in the shower while Tina ordered breakfast from room service. By the time he was dressed in his pinstripe blue suit, white shirt and figured blue tie, his sleek jowls gleaming with aftershave and his pewter hair brushed into corniche waves, breakfast was waiting in the living room of the suite, set up at the table by the big window overlooking the view, which Archibald ignored. Every town was the same, finally, if you didn't live in it; just a collection of tall and short buildings containing people who might be helped by Reverend Archibald's ministry, and might help the reverend in return. Now, seating himself before his bacon and eggs, home fries, orange juice, toast and coffee, he said a heartfelt, 'Thank you, Lord,' and tucked in.

Tina appeared ten minutes later, having completed her daily transformation. In her pale gray suit, white blouse with neck ruffle and low-heel black shoes, with her hair tamed into a bun, her pale and subtle makeup, and her horn-rim spectacles—she was blind as a bat, and wore those glasses everywhere except in bed, where she got along quite well by feel—she was no longer the compliant and indulgent Tina of their nighttime hours, but Christine Mackenzie, conductor of the Reverend Archibald's Angel Choir. The mouth was still loose and carnal now, when she smiled hello, but when singing 'Just a Closer Walk with Jesus' those lips could appear to be swollen with nothing more than heavenly love. Heavenly.

At Tina's place, across the table from Archibald, the breakfast consisted of half a grapefruit, two slices of dry toast and tea without milk. Tina was a lush girl inside that gray suit, but it was a lushness that could spill into over-ripeness, as they both well knew. Limiting herself to a diet that the monks of the Middle Ages would have chosen for penitent reasons, to the castigation of the body and the greater glory of God, but doing so for rather different reasons of her own, Tina managed to hold her abundance in check, to keep herself at a level that was no more than what the kikes call zaftig. (The bastards even have their own language.)

From the very beginning of his ministry, William Archibald had understood that the appearance of propriety was the name of the game. It wasn't merely that the appearance of propriety was as good as propriety itself, but that it was much better. If the appearance of propriety were steadfastly maintained— religiously maintained, you might say—a reasonably careful man could have it all; the rich rewards of religion and the rich rewards of life. And that's what he wanted: it all.

Archibald wasn't a hypocrite. He believed that man was a sinful creature and he said so, publicly and often, never excepting himself. He believed that his ministry had held back many a fellow human being from committing crimes and sins untold. He believed that his contributions to the social order, his civilizing influence on men and women who were in many ways still one small step from the apes, were practical and immense, and he firmly believed he was worth every penny he made out of it. His ministry had rescued drunkards, saved marriages, reformed petty thieves, struggled successfully at times against the scourge of drugs, cured workplace absenteeism and given a center and a weight and a sense of belonging to unnumbered empty, drifting, useless chowderheads. If, in his leisure moments, he liked to ball a big-titted woman, so what?

They were finishing breakfast when Dwayne Thorsen came in, looking brisk and competent in a gray suit that managed to be as respectable as Archibald's without competing with it. Dwayne's twenty years in the Marine Corps had left him lean and mean, and his seven years as Archibald's executive assistant had done nothing to change him. He still preferred his old cropped-short Marine haircut (the stubby hair pepper-and-salt gray now), his comfortable but ugly black oxford shoes, and his government-issue wire frame round-lens glasses, through which his pale eyes skeptically gleamed like the coldest sunny day in Norway, from which his thinlipped hard-working farmer forebears had emigrated a century ago.

'Morning, Dwayne,' Archibald said. 'Order yourself some coffee.'

'Ate.'

There was a third chair at the table, facing the view. Like the other two, it was armless, with a cushioned seat and delicately scrolled wooden back. When Dwayne's big-knuckled hand reached for it, the chair seemed to flinch, as though sure it would be kindling in a minute, but Dwayne merely pulled it out from the table, sat in it, ignored the view as much as the others had, ignored Tina as well—he usually did, facing her when he absolutely had to with a fastidious sneer—and said, 'All set.'

'Well, naturally.' Archibald smiled at his assistant. 'If you're in charge, Dwayne, it's all set.'

Dwayne shrugged that off. 'Morning news says six hundred of them camped at the arena last night.'

Not unexpected. Since Archibald's crusades offered no advance sales and had no reserved seating or credit card sales or anything else except cash on the barrelhead as the customer walked in the gate, and since his draw had only increased with the television ministry, it was usual these last few years for a number of people to bring sleeping bags or deck chairs and camp out the night before at the gate of the stadium or arena where he was to appear, to be certain of getting in. Still, six hundred was a pretty impressive number, and Archibald couldn't help a little smile of satisfaction as he said, 'Radio news or television news?'

'Both. Local insert on Today, and just about every local radio news spot.'

Good. Archibald would have no trouble selling out this twenty-thousand-seat arena, but it was nice anyway to let other people, people who so far were insufficiendy aware of the Reverend William Archibald, know that this attraction was such a grabber it drew six hundred overnight campers. Better than the World Series.

Dwayne went on, 'Security's shitty at this place, though I don't suppose it matters.'

'Dwayne,' Archibald said comfortably, sopping up the last of his egg yolk with the last of Tina's second piece of toast, 'you say that every place we go.'

'It's true every place we go,' Dwayne said. 'These outfits today, they're not used to cash.'

'Dwayne, Dwayne,' Archibald said, 'who's going to steal from the ministry?'

'Well, we've had some, now and then.'

'Pilfering. Employees, misguided smalltime people. You find them out, Dawyne, you always do, and I give them a good talking-to.'

'And then I,' Dwayne said, 'kick their butts into the street.'

'But we haven't had anybody like that for a long time,' Archibald said. 'You pick those people with a great deal