“But you two go way back. You could talk with her and ask her to drop the suit against White Light Church in exchange for payment. I understand you now have a church of your own that is impressively funded.”
Wendy said, “A reality does not exist in which my client would do that for you.”
“Then can your client at least tell me what she knows about Dolores that might prove useful in this situation?”
Wendy’s nostrils flared almost imperceptibly. “If we knew something about her that could help anything, don’t you think we would have used that to fight our own lawsuit already?”
But Jessica did know something.
TELL HIM.
She almost didn’t recognize the voice, what with its slightly higher pitch and tone of helpful suggestion rather than forceful command.
Are you sure? If he knows the Devil is a woman, don’t you think he’ll use that against us?
LET HIM TRY.
The hair on Jessica’s arms stood up, and a small shiver ran through her. Yes, ma’am.
“She’s the Devil.”
There was silence, and Wendy sighed and took a rather large bite of her melting ice cream.
“Sorry,” Jessica said, “but God suggested it.” She turned to Jimmy again. “Dolores Thomas is the Devil.”
“Are you speaking as someone who is currently being sued by her or—”
“The literal Devil incarnate. I know you’re probably disappointed, because you wanted me to be the bad one, but I’m not. It’s her.”
Finally, Eugene spoke. “Many would call what you just said slander.”
Wendy went to snatch his recorder away, but he was quicker and held it just out of her reach. “It’s off the record,” she growled. He shrugged.
“You mean to tell me,” Jimmy said, a small glimmer in his eyes, “that I’m being sued by the Devil himself?”
“Herself. Yes.”
“Wow.” He slouched over, staring vaguely at a dent in the metal tabletop. “Wow.” He straightened his spine. “That only goes to show how important my work is, that the Devil wants to stop it!”
“Oh, get off it,” Jessica spat. “She just wants to ruin you because she wants to wipe any chance of people thinking I’m more than an average person off the face of the earth.”
He arched a brow, amused. “You think this is about you?”
“Yeah, Jimmy. I do. I think this is all about me. And so do you. You built a whole fucking church around me! Whether you like me or not, you’re definitely obsessed with me.” She wasn’t sure if that were true or not, but it sounded true, and his look of repulsion made it worth saying.
Eugene leaned forward. “Just to be clear, you’re asserting that you believe the woman who is suing you for infringing upon a contract that you willingly signed and then violated is the literal Devil.”
“She’s asserting it off the record,” Wendy snapped.
“On the record or off, it certainly makes her seem a little unstable. Not a great legal defense, either.”
“So I made a deal with the Devil!” Jessica shouted. “I didn’t know who she was at the time!”
Wendy leaned toward a group of teens two tables over who had halted their Bible study to gawk. “She doesn’t mean it literally, don’t worry.”
They giggled at each other then turned back to their phones, Bibles remaining open and unread on the table.
Jimmy muttered, “You ain’t kidding, are you?”
There it was. There he was. She recognized him in a heartbeat. Ice Cream Jimmy. “I’m serious. If you stand any chance of taking on the Devil, you need me, because I have God on my side.”
He nodded. “All right. What do you say we team up?”
Wendy waved a hand between them to break up the brewing conspiracy. “Why on her Father’s green—”
“Mother’s green—”
“—Mother’s green earth would she team up with you? What can you possibly offer her?”
Jimmy leaned back, lifting his chin to smile gently down at them. “I’ve only ever been truly gifted at one thing, and it just so happens to be the thing you need help with the most.”
Jessica narrowed her eyes at him. “And what’s that?”
“Starting churches. You have the resources now, but you completely lack the know-how. Sure, you have some rules, some commandments—yes, I’ve read them—but that’s like assembling a scarecrow out of twigs and saying you’ve created life. You’re lacking the spark, that special intangible something that transforms a building into a church and a few rules into a religion. But I can show you how to find that inside you.”
Jessica felt sickened by the truth of it. The magic that the West Coast cult leaders exuded, the exclusivity of the Mormons, the fear mongering of the Midwestern pastors, and the charisma of the southern preachers—Jimmy had mastered it all, and it amounted to a following that grew exponentially, limited only by the rate at which he could open new locations. And that’s what she needed if she stood any chance of changing the country.
“Would you give us a moment?” Wendy said, and then she grabbed her client by the arm and tugged her out of the booth and straight toward the ladies’ room.
Jessica leaned against a mural of a cow eating ice cream, mostly so she didn’t have to keep looking at it and wondering if that ice cream was made with milk from the cow’s own udder, and Wendy paced back and forth past the sinks, deep in thought. Finally, she planted her high heels on the black-and-white checkered tile floor and said, “I think it’s a good deal.”
“Are you serious?”
“Very. You have nothing you can genuinely offer Jimmy that would help him with Dolores, and he has all kinds of knowledge that could benefit your cause.”
“That assumes he’s good to his word.”
“Did you see the fear in his eyes? He now believes that he’s up against the Devil. Most people wouldn’t, but Jimmy is just narcissistic enough to believe that he’s important enough to have the Devil herself come for him.”
“But the Devil herself is coming for him.”
“But only because of his relation to you.”
“Ah, true. Does that make me a narcissist?”
“It would, if things weren’t truly all revolving around you. But you get to be the exception. By all means, let it go straight to your head. You could use the confidence.”
Wendy planted her fists on her hips and declared, “We’ll accept his offer, but we’re going to have to be incredibly careful every step of the way with him.”
“As soon as he doesn’t need my help, he’s going to betray us. He’ll probably start the early stages of it right away.”
“Of course he will. But because we know that, I can keep an eye out for it. In the meantime, we need to keep holding the Devil over his head to remind him that he needs us.”
“This feels dangerous.”
“It is. But I think it could also be great.” She paused. “Have you ever wondered why God has kept Jimmy’s crazy white ass around rather than giving him the smiting he deserves?”
“I always assumed God wanted to torture me.”
“You know what happens when you assume.”
“I’ve only learned it again and again.”
After Wendy laid out a quick game plan for the rest of the meeting, the women left the restroom and returned to the table. Eugene’s recorder was back on the table, and Jimmy was straightening his hair in the reflection of his phone screen.
Without sitting down, Wendy announced. “Okay, you have a deal. A verbal one, not a written one. We’re not signing anything. If you tell anyone about this, we’ll deny it to the grave.”
“Same goes for me,” Jimmy replied. “Last thing I need is my congregation catching wind that I’m in league with the Antichrist.”
“You can stop calling me that now, Jimmy. No one here’s buying it.”
Wendy turned to Eugene, who sported a sly grin Jessica wanted to smite right off his face. “And you?”
&nb
sp; “What about me?”
She turned to Jimmy. “Your fool ass brought him here. You better make him promise that this deal stays between the four of us.”
Jimmy nodded. “Eugene, do we have your word?”
“Off the record?” He paused the tape recorder. “Yes, you do.”
“You rat,” Wendy spat. “You’re going to tell everyone.”
“Of course I won’t. My word is as good as gold.” He slid out of the booth, the grin still plastered in place. “You asked for all of this to be off the record.”
“I did.”
Jimmy stood as well, straightening out any wrinkles in his suit with two flat palms. The pig hooves at the end of his red stole clattered together. “Eugene has always been a man of his word. I have no reason to doubt him on this.”
“Have you forgotten,” Wendy replied, “that he’s worked with the Devil herself only recently?”
Jimmy froze. Clearly that thought hadn’t clicked into place. He turned to his ally. “You did, didn’t you? You interviewed her for that exposé.”
Eugene nodded unabashedly. “I did. She was very pleasant.”
“She was the Devil, Eugene! Of course she was pleasant!”
The reporter laughed and tucked the device into his breast pocket. “No need to get worked up, Railroad Commissioner Reverend Dean.”
While Jessica did love to see Jimmy’s feathers ruffled, she couldn’t fully enjoy it this time, since she, too, was feeling terribly uneasy about the way this was unfolding with the reporter.
Eugene made for the exit, leaving the others behind. Jimmy hurried to catch him, grabbing him high on the arm just before he made it through the front door. He slung the reporter around to face him. “Look me in the eye and promise me it was off the record. All of it. I need you to promise me that.”
Eugene didn’t hesitate. “I promise it was all off the record. Come on, Jimmy, it’s me! We’ve been working together for years. Have I ever led you wrong?”
Jimmy let his arms fall from the reporter’s shoulders. “No. No, you haven’t.”
Approaching the two men with Wendy in lockstep, Jessica said, “And Dolores didn’t lead me wrong until she did.”
As Eugene stepped out onto the sidewalk, Jimmy turned to the women, his arms outstretched like he was delivering a sermon. Church Jimmy just wouldn’t let up, would he? “Fear not, my new partners! Our agreement still stands. All of it will be off the record.”
And so it was at that very moment that, through the large front windows of Maggie’s Ice Cream, Jessica witnessed a genuine act of God.
Or later she would classify it as such. In that moment, however, it felt more like permanent trauma.
The piano-size decorative typewriter wasn’t there one moment, and then it was. It fell from the sky at a terrifying speed, landing with divine aim upon the head of Eugene Thornton. Or what was the head of Eugene Thornton one moment and little more than mush the next.
A violent splash of blood painted the windows, and only then did Jimmy drop his arms and turn toward the source of the crash.
Wendy let out a little squeak, but nobody moved. Somewhere behind them, a scoop of ice cream that had been twirling through the air fell to the floor.
Jessica hurried out to the sidewalk fueled only by morbid curiosity. Eugene’s blood and guts were everywhere, but she suspected the bulk of him was still smooshed underneath the decorative typewriter. She looked for the source of the object. Five stories up a man stared off his tiny balcony, hand clasped over his mouth. “Is he okay?” he called stupidly.
Jessica ignored him.
Eugene Thornton was definitely not okay.
As the other two survivors of the Ice Cream Summit carefully stepped outside, Jimmy foolishly covering his head in case another giant object dropped from one of the condos above, Jessica spotted something silver on the ground. No … it couldn’t be. What were the odds?
Slim. But she had to admit that odds didn’t seem to be much of a factor here.
Splotches of blood peppered the metallic object, but upon closer inspection, she determined it was the voice recorder. It had fallen free from his breast pocket as his breast was pulverized.
Did you do this?
She waited, and just when she was sure there would be no response, one came.
IT WAS NOT OFF THE RECORD.
Jessica nodded, and then, with the heel of her shoe, she stomped the recording device as hard as she could. “It’s off the record now.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
340:07:29:59 until Doomsday
The “private room” of Bat-Ass Brew was more of a storage closet and less of a space that would pass health inspection. Spare toilet paper and eco-friendly to-go lids lined the walls in stacks, making the tight space even more claustrophobic. Jessica cradled a hot cup of Guano’nother between her palms and mentally reviewed the explicit rules Wendy had laid out for her prior to this encounter.
Jimmy didn’t knock before letting himself in. He slipped inside quickly and, to Jessica’s shock, was dressed much like a normal human being. That is, if the human being thought he was a jewel thief in a heist movie. Above his shiny black sneakers, he wore black tailored jeans and a long sleeve, button down, black shirt that was simply too hot for early August. Only once he’d closed the door did he remove his dark sunglasses, tucking them in his breast pocket.
“That was close,” he said. “I’m pretty sure the man behind the counter recognized me.”
“That’s because I told him I was meeting you.”
Jimmy’s mouth formed a little O of betrayal.
“Easy there. It’s just Rebel. I asked him to keep this on the DL, and I resurrected him one time, so he owes me. Also, I’m pretty sure he thinks he has a shot with me.”
Jimmy maneuvered in the close quarters to his chair across the folding table from her. “Just like your mother. Using your sinful allure to control men.”
“Oh, fuck off, Jimmy. Seriously. You can drop the act here. I assume it’d be a relief for you. Must be exhausting to be so insufferable all the time.”
“I wouldn’t know.” He adjusted his right sleeve to check his wristwatch that was probably more expensive than Jessica’s car. “I don’t have long. Why don’t you start by telling me what your efforts are thus far.”
Can I trust him?
OF COURSE NOT.
God’s voice was on the deeper side today, but she didn’t let that worry her—the pitch varied day-to-day now based on recent donations to the church, which were affected by all sorts of strange factors like day of the week, moon phase, and low pressure fronts. On the whole, God’s voice was trending up.
Then what do I do?
TELL HIM THE TRUTH.
That seems stupid.
THIS WHOLE ALLIANCE SEEMS STUPID. BUT ONLY BECAUSE THERE ARE SLIM ODDS THAT IT WILL NOT BE THE END OF YOU.
Thanks for the reassurance.
She filled Jimmy in on the website and the fact that money was still flowing in. She didn’t provide specifics.
“So, you’re telling me you have enough to pay consulting fees,” was his reply.
“If you think I’m putting your name on any paperwork associated with my church, you’ve officially lost your mind.”
“No, no … of course not. You put it under one of my assumed names.” He paused, and when she showed little sign of understanding, he added, “Wait, you haven’t created any assumed names to help with cash flow?”
“No.”
He exhaled loudly and dragged fingers through his salt and pepper hair. It fell back into place immediately. “This is a bigger job than I was led to believe. I don’t see how it’s a fair exchange without adding some payment to the mix to balance it out.”
“You’re right. I guess I can just not tell you what I know about the Devil and you can go home and deal with lawsuits coming at you from both ends on your own.”
He was silent for a moment, took a small sip of his drink. “You can’t be everyw
here at once. You need to bring on more people. Those who will help spread your word.”
“Like … disciples?”
“Exactly. But more zealous than the ones in the Bible. You need them to step up and spread the gospel before you’re dead and gone. And, also unlike Jesus, you must pay them.”
“So, what, I just stick up a job posting somewhere?”
“No, no. You recruit through established channels. You have a sorority, correct? Start there. Don’t mention money. You need people who would do it for free. But then once they’re hired, you pay them, and you pay them well.”
“Because?”
“Because nothing’s free, Jessica. Not really. Life is a constant negotiation of power and position, and you must maintain power at all costs.”
“So, I pay them because it … gives me power?”
“You’re good at math for a girl, right?”
She nodded.
“Think of it like that. Money equals power. But it’s not the having money than brings power so much as it is the spending of it. Labor always converts into money, and since money equals power, labor converts into power. You following along? Good. Now, imagine you have a scale, like the justice ones, right? There’s your side and theirs. When you owe someone something—whether that’s money or labor—you have a little weight added to your side. The lower your side of the scale, the less power you have. And your debt to certain people, those who have lots of power themselves, will weigh more than debt to someone you could, say, have murdered without much fuss.” He leaned closer. “Your side of the scale must always be higher than the person you’re dealing with if you wish to maintain loyalty and control. If they give you labor and you pay them nothing, then it’s weight to your side. Why, you may ask, when you got something from them for free? Because that’s not the case. Nothing is free, nothing is free! They will recognize the imbalance instinctually and feel entitled to more power for themselves. They’ll do that by seeking personal ownership of the endeavor. Nothing will lose you your power faster than bringing on volunteers. No, you pay them twice what they think they deserve, always. Remember, the spending of money is power. Keep it so that they feel indebted to you. Make sure they truly believe they cannot get from anyone else what they get from you. If you do that, they’ll work harder and defend you more fiercely than you can ever dream.”
The End Is Her Page 16
