How dare you?”
“You may be curing some of them,” I said, “but you’re pissing on all of them. I’ll leave now. I don’t need Mr. Stamper to show me out.”
I started back toward the front door. I was crossing the rotunda, my heels clacking on the marble, when he called after me, his voice amplified by all that open space.
“We’re not done, Jamie. I promise you that. Not even close to done.”
• • •
I didn’t need Stamper to open the gate, either; it rolled back automatically as my car approached. At the foot of the access road I stopped, saw that I had bars on my cell, and called Bree. She answered on the first ring, and asked if I was all right before I could even open my mouth. I said I was, and then told her that Jacobs had offered me a job.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes. I told him no—”
“Well, damn, of course you did!”
“That’s not the important part, though. He says he’s done with the revival tours, and done healing. From the disgruntled demeanor of Mr. Al Stamper, formerly of the Vo-Lites and now Charlie’s personal assistant, I believe him.”
“So it’s over?”
“As the Lone Ranger used to say to his faithful Indian sidekick, ‘Tonto, our work here is done.’” As long as he doesn’t blow up the world with his secret electricity.
“Call me when you get back to Colorado.”
“I’ll do that, Swee’ Pea. How’s New York?”
“It’s great!” The enthusiasm I heard in her voice made me feel a lot older than fifty-three.
We talked about her new life in the big city for awhile, then I put my car in drive and turned onto the highway, heading back to the airport. A few miles down the road I looked into my rearview and saw an orange moonlet in the backseat.
I’d forgotten to give Charlie his pumpkin.
X
Wedding Bells. How to Boil a Frog. The Homecoming Party. “You Will Want to Read This.”
Although I talked to Bree many times over the next two years, I didn’t actually see her again until June 19th of 2011, when, in a church on Long Island, she became Brianna Donlin-Hughes. Many of the calls were about Charles Jacobs and his troubling cures—we found half a dozen more who were suffering probable aftereffects—but as time passed, our conversations focused more and more on her job and George Hughes, whom she had met at a party and with whom she was soon sharing accommodations. He was a high-powered corporate lawyer, he was African American, and he had just turned thirty. I was sure Bree’s mother was satisfied on all counts . . . or as satisfied as the single mother of an only child can be.
Meanwhile, Pastor Danny’s website had gone dark and Internet chatter about him had thinned to a trickle. There were speculations that he was either dead or in a private institution somewhere, probably under an assumed name and suffering from Alzheimer’s. By late 2010, I had gleaned only two pieces of hard intelligence, both interesting but neither illuminating. Al Stamper had released a gospel CD called Thank You Jesus (guest artists included Hugh Yates’s idol, Mavis Staples), and The Latches was once more available for lease to “qualified individuals or organizations.”
Charles Daniel Jacobs had dropped off the radar.
• • •
Hugh Yates chartered a Gulfstream for the nuptials, and packed everyone from the Wolfjaw Ranch on board. Mookie McDonald represented the sixties admirably at the wedding, turning up in a paisley shirt with billowy sleeves, pipestem trousers, suede Beatle boots, and a psychedelic headscarf. The mother of the bride was just short of eye-popping in a vintage Ann Lowe dress she’d gotten on consignment, and as the vows were exchanged, she watered her corsage with copious tears. The groom could have stepped out of a Nora Roberts novel: tall, dark, and handsome. He and I had a friendly conversation at the reception, before the party began its inevitable journey from tipsy conversation to drunk-ass dancing. I had no sense that Bree had told him I was the jalopy with the rusty rocker panels on which she had learned, although I was sure that someday she would—in bed after particularly good sex, likely as not. That was fine with me, because I wouldn’t have to be there for the inevitable masculine eye-roll.
The Nederland group went back to Colorado via American Airlines, because Hugh’s gift to the newlyweds was use of the Gulfstream, which would fly them to their Hawaiian honeymoon retreat. When he announced this