Generosity: An Enhancement (42 page)

Unit two on his obsolete syllabus: mannerisms, traits, and core inner values.

“Do we really need characters?” he bleats. “I hate characters. It’s such a cliché,
characters
.”

“Okay, fine. No characters. That’s new. That’s fresh. I
like
it. So what’s this thing about?”

On the second Sunday after Easter, Mike Burns, one of the inner circle of younger, magnetic ministers at the two-hundred-acre campus of an interdenominational megachurch in South Barrington, preaches a sermon at the third of four mammoth weekend services on the theme:
Do we still enjoy God’s most-favored-nation status?
The analysis is blunt—blunter than any recent balance sheet from Washington. Pastor Mike lists the symptoms of a national fall from grace. Drugs, promiscuity, and the occasional massacre plague the nation’s schools. Whole communities are drowning in the Internet’s cesspools. The Chinese economy is set to eat our lunch, along with most of our between-meal snacks. The banking industry has vanished into imagination and unemployment is booming. Violent crime and homosexuality are everywhere, and by any objective measure—standard of living, health care, and general quality of life—the whole country is scraping chassis.

At the climax of his daunting catalog, with a storyteller’s timing, Pastor Mike shifts to a checklist of bounties remaining to those who have kept faith. Americans are still God’s elect, the vicious envy of the rest of the world. Just as the lost could not abide Christ’s serene power and had to put Him to death, so, too, do other clans, terrified by the freedom of America, long to harm it.

But who cares what the enemy wants?
the preacher chants.
God wants your joyful noise. The best thing you can do for Him here on Earth is to parade His elation.
And in the closing minutes of his sermon—a commanding moment cut into the highlights reel for inclusion in the church’s weekly videocast—Pastor Mike gives his flock a true-to-life parable:

“Now let me tell you about a young lady you may have heard about in the news, a girl from a persecuted minority family who somehow escaped from the fanatical, Islamo-sectarian hell of Arab Africa, a pilgrim soul who managed to make her way safely to college in one of the luckiest cities in the luckiest country on earth . . . Science gives this survivor’s joy a medical name and tries to pretend that her perpetual
bliss is nothing more than a random, chemical accident. My math—
my
science—works differently. Do you think it’s just an accident that this woman, who has been through horrors that make our own safer souls shudder to imagine, that this recipient of God’s unstoppable love just
happens to be
Christian? Do ya . . . ? Huh? Just
chance
?”

The laughter of the congregation plays loud and long, on desktop and handheld devices everywhere.

Candace and Russell lie flank to cold flank, facing heaven, effigies on the lid of some Renaissance marble tomb.

“National novel-writing month coming up,” she whispers. “Fifty thousand words in thirty days. Last year they had 95,000 entrants and 19,000 finishers. What do you think?”

“Excuse me for a moment,” he tells her. “I have to go take my own life.”

Shortly after the megachurch posts Pastor Mike’s sermon to their site, a member of its sprawling congregation shares the results of her research in the church’s online forum: the street address of the pilgrim soul herself, should anyone wish to share with her their appreciation of God’s blessing.

Response is swift and enthusiastic. Even faith enjoys economies of scale.

Stone is sanguine enough these days to pick up the phone, even when he doesn’t recognize a new number on his caller ID.

“Mister Stone! You have to help. They’re after me!”

Her. The ground goes soft around him. “Who?”

“Very Christian people with too much free time. They’re mailing me gifts. Bringing me things. They want to meet with me for prayer!”

She tells him about the sermon and its aftermath. Even now, she’s more amused than panicked.

“You are the native,” she says. “Tell me what am I to do with this.”

He starts filing furious lawsuits, taking out restraining orders, threatening to prosecute everyone who mentions her name in public.
“Are you all right?” he asks, mimicking Candace’s competence. “Is anyone harassing—”

“I’m perfectly fine. It’s just embarrassing. They’re sending me stickers and pins, pretty guitar-music discs, and crazy little Jesus trophies. One lady brought a whole nest of leftover chocolate Easter eggs in a little green-and-pink basket for my dorm room. I told her that chocolate eggs are a fertility ritual. At least that one didn’t stay too long!”

“Wait.” He feels as if a nearby gunshot has just dragged him up from the dead of sleep. “They’re coming by your
place
?”

“Tell me how I’m supposed to stop them. Help me! I’m running out of tea and cakes. And you know, I have finals coming up. I need one hundred more hours to finish, and I have only sixty left.”

“They’re . . . What do they want from you?”

“Simple. They haunt me for being born a Christian. They want me to be their team . . . what do you call the funny little things . . . ?”

“Mascot.”

“Exactly. I’m some kind of Jesus mascot. Or I’m going to cure their lives. Mister, it’s pitiful. Some of them think I’m a messenger angel, sent down to earth with a secret message about the future. Tell them, Russell. I’m no fucking angel!”

The word stops him dead on the line. She doesn’t swear. She must not know what she’s saying. The French or Arab equivalents are just costume jewelry, and Tamazight can’t even have a word that taboo. But, come to think of it, neither does English anymore: the word is fucking everywhere.

She breaks his silence. “Hey. You’re not a Christian, are you? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt.”

He has dreamed of mailing her things himself—old folk mix tapes, guides for surviving America, essays that her essays reminded him of, dizzy little books of Hopkins and Blake. “No. I was born . . . My parents brought me up . . . It doesn’t matter. I’m not really anything, really.”

“Good. I’m nothing, either. I’m a Maghreb Algerian Kabyle Catholic Atheist French Canadian on a student visa. I can’t help these people.”

“We should ask Candace.”

“I don’t know, Russell. I love Candace. That’s not the point. But Candace always tells me to do just what I think is right. She’s a big
one for self-discovery, that Candace. I’ll simply pretend I already asked.”

He could suggest other solutions. But he doesn’t. He’s weakened by his recent bout with joy. Joy does little to increase one’s judgment. Happiness is not the condition you want to be in when you need to be at your most competent.

He asks if she has someplace in the city to hide out until finals. She can think of no place, and he doesn’t offer any. He tells her to protect herself, to be gentle but firm about her time. The main thing is to get over the semester finish line and get back home.

“Home,” she agrees. “That would be a beautiful place to get back to. One small problem, Mister. No trips home anytime soon. I’m enrolled in Summer One courses!”

They share an awkward pause. He thinks about offering her his place. But that’s crazy. They both hold still. For a moment, it’s so quiet I’m afraid they’ll hear me listening in. Then she asks him how his book is going, and we’re all safe again.

“Great.” He laughs. “I have a coauthor. Friend of yours.”

“Candace? Are you serious?” He can’t read her, her nonnative register. But he can hear her doing the math. “You and Candace are together?”

As together as anything, he supposes. “Yes. Yes, we are.” His answer surprises him more than her question.

“That’s wonderful, Russell. I’m happy for you. I’m happy for Candace. You are great with Jibreel. And I’m happy for this book you’re working on together. Now could you please tell me what it’s about?”

He smiles at her petulance. Sunniest petulance ever. “It’s an adventure story. It’s about someone breaking out of prison.”

“Really? You should talk to me. I have a cousin who broke out of prison. I can tell you stories.”

Imagination dies of shame in the face of its blood relation.

“I miss you, Mister Stone. Miss how you are. We should go somewhere together, sometime. See some sights.”

He has to remind himself. It doesn’t mean anything. She would take even the Christians out sightseeing, if there weren’t so many of them.

A buzzer rasps on her end. “Oh my God. More visitors. Wait a moment.” She’s off to the intercom and a short chat. She comes back laughing. “It’s two sweet old women. I can see three more spinning
around, down in the street. They want me to autograph some magazine clippings and talk about blessings.”

“Tell them you’re studying for exams.”

“I give them ten minutes. Then I ask if they would like to sacrifice some goats together, out on the balcony. That sometimes speeds them up.” She makes a kissing sound into the phone. “Thank you for everything, Russell. Love you. Bye!”