Come on, Hosiah. Pull off the damn Band-Aid, he thought.
He pressed the button. It moved downward with a slight, whispery click, and almost before it had returned to its originalposition, a knock sounded from the wall opposite his desk.
“Come,” Hosiah called.
A previously invisible seam opened in the wall and expanded into a door. A young, extremely slim man entered—Brother JonasBlock, Branson’s executive assistant. His pinched, frowning face sat above a black suit and tie, with a crisp white shirtbeneath. Undertaker chic.
“How can I help, Reverend?”
Brother Jonas’ complexion was never robust, but at this moment he looked positively cadaverous, like a man made of white candlewax. His eyes darted to either side—he wasn’t able to meet Branson’s gaze. Not a promising sign.
“It happened, I assume?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” he said. Jonas’ mouth twitched, and his eyes rolled toward Branson briefly before skittering away. “The Site’sprediction about the woman in Boulder winning the lottery. Confirmed true, just a few minutes ago. But that’s not—”
Branson slammed his right hand down on the surface of his desk. He’d spent almost twenty thousand dollars to make this officeas acoustically neutral as a space could be—even so, his palm hitting the desk was a gunshot, cracking out into the room.
He spun his chair to face away from Jonas, cradling his wrist in one hand. He looked around his office, decorated in mutedtones, except for a few tasteful splashes of color here and there. A blue lamp, a couch upholstered in celadon silk. A largepainting on the wall directly behind his desk.
A sanctuary.
Branson’s hand was already starting to hurt. He looked up at the painting on the wall, his eyes narrowed.
It was a work by a Filipino artist, depicting in thickly applied oils a procession of penitents being carried through thestreets of Manila on Easter Sunday. Each year, certain individuals opted to demonstrate the depth of their faith by allowingthemselves to be crucified. The truly devout put nails through their wrists and thorns on their heads.
“Sir . . .” Jonas said, his voice tentative. “That’s not all.”
“What else?” Branson said, his voice tired.
“You know that new predictions occasionally appear on the Site—a few at a time?”
“Yes, of course.”
“A new set of predictions was released just after the Colorado lottery prediction came true. Just three, but one of them . . .”
Jonas trailed off.
Hosiah spun around in his chair. He slapped another control on his desk, and without a sound, a screen rose up, followed bya keyboard sliding out from just below it. Branson sat down and tapped a few keys, pulling up the CNN home page.
He stared at the screen. A long moment passed.
“Sir, one of them . . .” Jonas began.
He swallowed, producing a froglike sound fully audible in the silent office, then finished.
“. . . it’s about you.”
And so it was. Shorter than most of the predictions, just a single innocuous sentence:
AUGUST 23: REVEREND HOSIAH BRANSON WILL PUT PEPPER ON HIS STEAK.
“I’m so sorry, Reverend,” Jonas said.
Just over ten words, and yet they changed everything.
Everything.
Chapter 5
The waiter—an elderly, aproned man—gingerly placed a large white platter down on the middle of the table. The platter containeda single enormous steak, a porterhouse, resting in a near-to-boiling, savory-smelling lake of juices.
“Very, very hot,” the waiter said in a slightly German-accented voice, making eye contact with both Will and Hamza. “You touch,you’ll be sorry.”
“Understood,” Hamza said. “I’ve been here before.”
The waiter produced a set of carving tools and went to work on the steak, slicing it into bite-size chunks and serving outportions, dragging the meat through the sizzling puddle of melted butter on the platter before depositing it on each of theirplates. A little bit of creamed spinach, some mashed potatoes, topping up of wineglasses, and he withdrew, with one last fingerwag toward the platter.
Will picked up his fork and speared a piece of steak. He stared at it.
“I get it,” Hamza said. “Savor the moment. From now on, your life will be forever divided between the time before you’ve hadthat bite and after. There is no place in this world like Peter Luger’s. This is the best steak in the world, since 1887,right out here in Williamsburg. Make it count.”
“That’s not why I’m waiting,” Will said. “I’m just . . . it’s hard to process all this. This is a ninety-dollar piece of meat.This meal will cost like three hundred bucks. That’s a month’s grocery budget for me. It all seems . . .”
Will put his fork back down on his plate. Hamza watched it go, frowning.
“No, don’t let it get cold, man.”
“You said you’ve been here before, Hamza. I haven’t. I never, in a million years, thought I ever would go to a place likethis.”
“We can afford it, Will. You could buy every meal served here for a month and not even notice.”
“That’s not the point. All my instincts are off. I don’t know what to do. I’ve spent a good part of almost every day of mylife since I moved to New York worrying about where my next gig would come from. If I’d get hired enough to make rent, andpay bills, and eat.”
“You don’t have to think about that anymore.”
“I know. But I don’t know what I’m supposed to think about. I wanted all this money because you’re supposed to want money.And now . . . it’s hard to believe any of this will last. It’s too big. I keep waiting for something to happen to balanceit out, to fuck it up.”
Hamza pointed to Will’s fork.
“Pick that up, and eat it. Then, I’ll tell you how to deal with this.”
Will glanced down at his fork, then popped the bite into his mouth. The steak was tender, and savory, and buttery, and withouta doubt one of the best things he’d ever eaten in his life.
“Well,” he said.
“Right,” Hamza said. “Now, you keep working away at your plate, and just listen to me. Back at Corman Brothers, I regularlysaw completely talentless assholes, managing director level and above, take home five million bucks as
