Mack," she said. "You don't know how important it is that I know you, and you know me."
"It's just spying to you."
"No, Mack. It's discovering. It's making something. It's the love of my life."
"I don't want you to be the love of my life," said Mack. "I want to love someone who thinks I'm complete by myself."
"Then that someone would believe in a lie. Because you aren't complete. You're the best part of someone great, marvelous, powerful, and addicted to cruelty. You don't know that side of you, but I do. What I never got to know was this part of you. Oh, Mack Street, don't hide yourself from me any longer."
They weren't sitting on the couch anymore. They were sitting on a moss-covered stone, cool but not cold, and the sun was shining through the canopy of leaves and warming their naked skin. He did love her, just as she had told him he would. In fact, he discovered that he already knew her body in ways that he had not imagined. They were not strangers. They were husband and wife.
He wondered if he actually looked like Oberon, or if things like that didn't matter. What was she seeing when she kissed him and held him?
Not Mack Street.
But here, in her embrace, naked among the trees, he didn't care.
Word and Rev Theo carried their whole PA system out into the street. Once this had been a thoroughfare, and these storefronts had been full of business and the streets full of people and cars, but now hardly anybody drove along here, and if some cop came up he'd see it wasn't a riot or a demonstration, it was church, it was religion. Nobody would interfere.
Because the thing that possessed him wouldn't let them.
It doesn't rule me. If it tries to turn this thing to evil, I won't let it. I'm still Word, the same man I've always been. I searched for God and this thing came instead, but that doesn't mean it wasn't also an answer to my prayers. Couldn't God have sent this to him? Given him this power in order to fulfil a mission from the Lord?
Wasn't this what it felt like for Jesus, when the multitude came to listen to his word, and then he reached out and healed them, and gathered up their children and blessed them?
"No collection today," Word said to Rev Theo.
"You're joking, right?" said Rev Theo. "This ministry could use a shot of cash."
"You can set up baskets by the door. Let them come up if they want to contribute. But it can't look like people are paying to get healed. Afterward, if they want to contribute. But nothing gets passed around."
"That's just crazy," said Rev Theo.
"Please," said Word. "Don't ask for it. Let them give it out of their own hearts."
Rev Theo studied his face. "You think we'll get more that way, don't you?"
"I have no idea," said Word.
"Rev Theo, I know your ministry takes money. But money didn't buy what happened last night."
"Money paid the rent on the roof under which it happened," said Rev Theo. "Money paid the light bill and paid for the benches and the doors and the locks on the doors that keep the vandals out.
A lack of money tore my wife and me apart for a long time, and now that the Lord is bringing us back together, I got to pay for me and her to live decently. Don't despise money, Word."
"I'm just afraid that... I don't know if it will ever happen again."
"It happened last night and we had a collection, didn't we?" Rev Theo patted his shoulder. "But for you, tonight, we'll try it your way. A couple of deacons with bowls at the door, and those who want to walk up front and contribute, we won't refuse them. The others can do what they want."
"Thanks," said Word.
They lay entangled on soft grass, and still the sun shone overhead as though time had not passed, though it felt to Mack like infinite time, and it also felt like no time at all. It wasn't over because he still held her, and her heart still beat between her breasts as if it were his own heart, pumping his own blood. His hand rested there, and he never wanted to move.
"Did you get what you needed?" he asked her.
"Mm-hmm," she said.
"And me," said Mack. "Did I get what I needed?"
"You got what he needed," she said. "You were already perfect."
More silence. More birdsong in the