I went first to see what would happen. When Rae and the delivery guys caught a view of who was following me, they got exactly the same look on their faces—Whaaat?
“Everybody, this is Brother Brooks and Brother Zin Zan. They say they can change our lives.” I said it like I was introducing an act in Las Vegas.
Picking right up on it Dennis said, “Sounds good to me. Anything to stop delivering refrigerators!”
Rae stared at me like I’d gone nuts. Both of us hate door-to-door preachers with their ridiculous speeches and too many teeth. Her face asked, why had I let these guys in? Suddenly our house was like the dog pound—every stray in town under one roof, dripping on her carpets. I sat down but the Brothers kept standing. To my surprise, Zin Zan started talking. He had a strong accent. Then I remembered he was from New Zealand. The whole time he spoke, Brooks gave him an all-attention smile that looked as phony as a tinfoil Christmas tree.
“We represent a brotherhood called The Heidelberg Cylinder. Our avatar is a man named Beeflow.”
“Beef-low?” Dennis looked at his partner and me, then wiggled his eyebrows and O’d his mouth.
“No, sir, Bee-flow. We believe we are entering the Second Diaspora. It will formally begin with the Millennium and continue for another 16,312 years.”
“Sixteen thousand, you say? With or without intermission?”
My sweet wife tried to smooth that one over. “Would you two like some juice?”
“Thank you, Ma’am, but we don’t drink anything but water. Beeflow says—”
“Who’s this Beeflow?”
“Our spiritual master. Chosen avatar by—”
“What’s an avatar? Sounds like that new model Honda.”
Brother Brooks liked that one too. He smiled and for the first time it looked real. “No sir, an avatar is an incarnation of a deity. A kind of God in human form, you could say.”
“What did your Mr. Beeflow do before he became God?”
Maybe it was the way Rae said it, so respectful and serious. Or maybe because Dennis and I were watching each other when she spoke. Whatever, as soon as my wife asked her question so gently, the three of us guys cracked up. I mean big time. We laughed so hard we choked.
“He was a travel agent.”
“Good career move!” I said, which brought down the house again. Except for Rae. She FedExed me her stone face and I knew what that meant. I shut up fast.
“So what do you guys believe in? I mean, like a quick wrap-up of your religion?”
“We believe in rent control, a river view when possible, and forced air heating.”
The living room got silent fast. Real silent.
“Say that again?”
“Room, sir. We believe in the just and proper distribution of room. Human space. Apartments, houses, it makes no difference. A civilized place to live.”
“Geodesic domes,” Zin Zan added, nodding.
“What the Hell are you talking about? I’m not following you here, Brother Brooks.”
“Well sir, have you noticed all the furniture out on the streets of the city recently? Piles of it, looking like it’s waiting to be picked up?”
“We were just talking about that!”
“It’s the first sign of the beginning of the Diaspora.”
“What’s that?”
“A Diaspora is the breaking up and scattering of a people. The forced settling of people far from their ancestral homelands.”
“You mean they’re being moved out?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“By who? Who’s moving them?”
“Satan.”
I cleared my throat and snatched a quick glimpse of Rae. She gave me a look that said, “Don’t make trouble with these guys.” So instead of cracking wise about the Satanic Moving Company, I looked at the others to see if they were going to snap at the bait.
“All those piles of stuff out on the streets are there because the Devil’s throwing people out of their houses? Why’s he doin’ that?”
Zin Zan picked it up. “Because Hell is filled to overflowing, sir, and Satan needs the room. He plans to re-populate the Earth with the fallen.”
I didn’t know about the others but I was so embarrassed by the direction this conversation was taking that I could only stare at the floor and hope those Brothers would evaporate by the time I looked up again.
“So you’re saying that if I was bad and die now, there’s no room for me in Hell and I may end up back here living next door?” Vito said in a voice full of “you gotta be shittin’ me.”
My eyes still down, I heard Zin Zan’s thick accent field the question. “Why do you think the world’s in such bad