2.

‘… Dot Luce, you say you’re sorry, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’ve endangered us all with your carelessness. How’re we supposed to trust you if you can’t even—’

‘Not just careless, arrogant,’ Luce’s ex-wife Joya, now ‘Joya Mendelssohn’, cuts Terra short. ‘Plain arrogance, to assume she had the right, without even bringing it to the committee! Where’d you get such a high opinion of yourself, Missy? I sure didn’t raise you that way!’

‘We didn’t,’ corrects Molly Hurmerinta, with a tug of her chevron cape.

‘Dot, you’ve always struck me as a young woman who puts care into everything you do.’ Meyer Mendelssohn, Luce’s younger and more with-it successor, sadly shakes his balding, long-haired head. ‘I would’ve thought you’d consider the consequences of your actions.’

Luce has to rack his brain to remember his daughter’s offense — showing old snapshots of the Promised Land to some non-Temple friends at her college — but he’s not going to let himself be outdone by Meyer, no way. ‘Makes me sick,’ he spits. ‘No better than your traitor-bitch sister!’

Risky, even three years after the fact, to mention the traitors. But sure to get a reaction. Dot’s tear-stained face turns a deeper shade of crimson, quivers like a foal’s legs.

‘Now, now, no need for that.’ Jim sits up on his sofa, positively glowing. ‘Dot, you’re gonna have to work to earn back our trust, but I know you ain’t no traitor-bitch, honey.’

A caressing quality to Jim’s voice that turns Luce’s white knuckles whiter. Dot lowers her eyes. ‘Thank you, Father.’

‘Course, you shoulda known better.’ Jim’s mood switches. ‘Dumb white bitch, what were you thinking? Showing pictures around like that?’

‘I thought … they’re nice pictures. I didn’t think anyone would m—’

‘You thought,’ Joya sneers. ‘Well, I guess you must be the best mind of your generation or something!’

‘Nice pictures,’ mutters Joseph Garden, their Agricultural Planner. Used to be with the Nation of Islam and has a militant arrogance that Luce associates with those men parading around the local mosque in robes and skullcaps. But Joe is clean-shaven, his muscular forearms shown to full advantage. ‘Our work in the Promised Land is better than your blurry-ass holiday snapshots.’

‘You should be showing them Phil Sorensen’s photography,’ coos Lenny Lynden’s mother, Liesl, a fine-boned lady about Luce’s age, who somehow manages to wear her drab Mao suit like it’s made of silk. Like Lenny, she’s got the brown hair, but curlier; a staccato European accent — not German, but something like that. Austrian? Austrian-Jew, that’s it. Old money, who lost it all in the war but married rich. If it wasn’t for the good of the Cause, Luce would feel sorry for the ex-husband she bled dry when she joined the Temple. ‘Phil is an artist.’

Phil Sorensen, he’s something, it’s true. Army-brat-turned-Vietnam-photojournalist-turned-official-Temple-photographer-filmmaker. ‘I’ve got some righteous shots from the December expedition.’ He accepts Liesl’s praise with a square-jawed smile. ‘How about I bring the projector to the campus sometime? We could even do a screening of the new film—’

‘The film is for members only!’ Jim bellows. ‘You bring that film on campus, how we know they ain’t gonna be making copies? Distorting our glorious footage and selling it to those right-wing media assholes? Vulture bastards, don’t give a goddamn what’s true and beautiful …’

As Jim launches into one of his tirades, and Phil respectfully bows his head, Luce concentrates on keeping his eyes open. Casting them up to the empty balconies, the pale soar of the ceiling. On the second floor, he glimpses movement: a doll-sized woman in trousers, circling toward the staircase like a figure in a Swiss clock. Descending to the stage and going straight to Jim.

Evelyn Lynden whispers in Jim’s ear. Placating him, you’d maybe think, but he keeps ranting and she keeps that same blank expression, stepping back when he waves his hand like he’s shooing a fly. Then she walks over to Frida Sorensen, Phil’s stuck-up skin-and-bones sister, and taps her on the shoulder, then Terra, who widens her eyes, shakes her head quickly. Evelyn slits her gaze, says something low and fast. Meekly, Terra dips her head and follows.

They go upstairs, pants swishing so urgently you’d think they were about to soil them.

‘… We have to keep our babies safe,’ Jim concludes, face sluggish. He glances around, flinching at the sight of Dot, still standing there in her pin-tuck blouse and ditsy-print skirt. ‘What you doin’, Sister? What you people doin’, letting her stand alone? Where’s your spirit of forgiveness?’ He waves his hand again. ‘Show her some love, goddamnit.’

Dot’s slim legs buckle in relief as they catch her in a loving flop of hugs, arm squeezes. ‘That’s right. Hug her good. We know how to resolve our conflicts lovingly, hm?’ Jim yawns. ‘Makes you tired, don’t it? Makes me tired. Almost, makes me wanna sleep forever.’

Jim lies back, drooping his head in a pantomime of narcolepsy or death. Luce laughs edgily along with the others, for Jim’s shirt has crawled up to reveal a strip of abdominal pudge. Jim sits back up, tugs it down. ‘No, not time for sleep. We got too much to do, don’t we. But a little rest, darlings …’ He nods sleekly. ‘I know how hard you work. Time you all got to enjoy a token of my appreciation.’

Just in time, the women reappear on the stairs with trays of paper cups. ‘Sweet valley wine!’ Terra beams, high-pitched like she’s talking to a bunch of preschoolers.

‘Are we Catholics now, Father?’ jokes Sally-Ann Burne. From her snub-pretty face, easy goofball grin, you’d never guess she’s Evelyn’s sister. But maybe it’s always like that — a sweetheart for every bitch.

‘Gotta be over twenty-one!’ Joya affectionately ruffles Dot’s pageboy cut. Of course Dot was always their sweetheart, Joya’s favorite. ‘We aren’t all over twenty-one here.’

‘I’m only twenty, Father,’ pretty Polly Hurmerinta raises a hand.

‘Oh, you’re old enough,’ Jim chuckles, and there’s a hint of that caressing tone again. ‘And you’re a good socialist. We’re all good socialists here. We all drink.’

Evelyn, Frida, and Terra busy themselves passing out cups. As Evelyn bends to Luce, her collarbones gape, and he remembers she has a baby now, wonders where the weight went. As if sensing his scrutiny, she frowns into her blouse, pulls away to serve Phyllis.

‘Our vineyards have been blessed with a wonderful harvest,’ Jim explains, once all thirty-some of them have cups. ‘Dot, honey? Tell me that don’t taste like manna from heaven.’

Eyes still tear-bright from the confrontation, Dot sips daintily, sputters. Not the reaction Jim was hoping for.

‘It ain’t poison, Dot!’ Luce swoops in. Jim cackles, and it feels good, that he can still make Jim laugh after over twenty years. Luce drains his cup, grins through the bitterness. ‘Tastes like manna from heaven, it does!’

‘You heard Gene,’ Jim booms. ‘Drink your wine, drink it up, drink, drink. When I tell you to drink, I mean it.’

All around Luce, cups tilt up, crumple in fists. Evelyn, by the red stage curtains, looks at Jim steadily and drinks. ‘You all done yet? Show me. Alright.’ Jim knocks his own wine back, wipes his mouth, holds his empty cup aloft.

Frida magics a garbage bag out of thin air, starts making the rounds with Terra.

‘I’m out of practice.’ Phyllis leans close to Luce, flashing her wine-stained teeth. ‘Either there’s two of you or I’m seeing double?’

‘Just me and me twin brother … Steve,’ Luce offers lamely.

Phyllis throws back her head to laugh, and so does Luce’s ex-wife, face tomato-red against her cropped gray-blond hair.

‘Hiya, Steve! Didn’t see you there!’

Drunker than a skunk. She’d have to be, to laugh at his jokes these days.

‘Now that you’ve all had a chance to enjoy yourselves, I have an announcement,’ Jim speaks up from the front of the room. ‘Funny what Gene said. Ain’t poison.’ He chuckles softly. ‘Fact is, the wine you’ve just consumed contains a slow-acting lethal toxin. Within forty-five minutes, you’ll all be dead.’ He smiles. ‘I have drunk the same wine and will die with you. We will die together.’

We will die together.

There’d been a Planning Committee meeting, not long after Luce’s traitor-bitch daughter ran off with those Children of the Revolution, when Jim asked if he’d be willing to die for her betrayal. Joya, too, and all the other folks with treacherous blood. All of them, called to the floor, and Luce had been the first to say yes: gripping the .45 on his belt and vowing he’d kill himself, but first he’d kill her. Luce isn’t afraid of death. Luce is ready for death!

Luce looks sidelong at Phyllis. She doesn’t look ready: fingers stuffed in her mouth like cold cuts, muttering under her breath. Praying. Embarrassed, Luce glances away. Then his gag reflex kicks in.

Smells like … piss?

Somebody pissed themselves?

Bob Harris has pissed his pants. Bob, who’s good with engines and dogs, and whose caramel-colored mutt Luce helped bury after it was found dead (shot by neo-Nazis, apparently). Luce is disappointed in Bob, disgusted … and dreading the moment Jim makes an example of the poor candy-ass.

‘Oh God … Oh God … I don’t wanna die …’

Distracted by Bob’s pissed pants, Luce hadn’t noticed Phyllis’s rising desperation. Now folks are turning to look at her.

‘What’re you saying, sister?’ Jim asks, in a tone Luce knows isn’t as affable as it sounds. Surely Phyllis knows, too. That doesn’t stop her repeating herself.

‘Oh please God … Help … I don’t wanna die!’

‘Phyllis says she doesn’t want to die,’ Joya reports, with a sweet, condescending, utterly Midwestern cluck of the tongue.

‘You don’t want to die, sister?’ Jim puffs himself up. ‘You don’t want to leave this life of misery and injustice? Sister, to leave this life behind is a protest. To lay our lives down, that’s the most revolutionary act in this inhumane world. Our deaths won’t go unnoticed.’ He moistens his lips. ‘As your leader, I’m glad to die tonight. My individual life ain’t nothing. You think your life has meaning? You think some sky-god’s gonna swoop down and save your ass?’

But Phyllis isn’t listening. Breathing too fast, in-out, in-out, her face like a sheet in the wind. Could that poison be working already? Luce doesn’t feel it. Maybe it works on women quicker? As he wonders, Phyllis shoots to her feet.

‘P-lease!’ she bleats. ‘I have to get to a doctor!’

Maybe Jim nods at Luce. Maybe he doesn’t need to. Mongoose-quick, Luce springs up and blocks Phyllis’s path, grabs ahold of her fleshy wrist. Phyllis lets out a tiny, ‘Oh! ’ Then, just like Luce feared, her eyes flutter white; her body falls against his like a tipped cow.

‘Looks like she’s fainted, I guess?’ Luce says awkwardly, doing his best to hold her up like she’s a Hollywood damsel in distress.

‘Get her out of here.’ Jim gestures dismissively. ‘We don’t want no traitors here.’

‘I never trusted that bitch!’ Terra bursts out, shaking her hair like an actress. A few folks stare at her and she pinkens, swallows her words.

It’s Meyer who helps Luce move Phyllis. Luce would’ve preferred someone with muscles: Joseph, Phil, even Ralph or Tobias, those fit young queers who’re always palling around with Liesl Lynden. They push backstage, where a couple of young guards are slouching around by the musical equipment, Dot’s on-off sweetheart, Paolo Jones, among them.

‘Jesus!’ Paolo, irreverent as his dad, slaps burly Quincy Watson on the shoulder and the two take over, lie Phyllis flat on her back like the world’s most well-fed mummy. Meyer finds a sheet to cover her with, then stands by the guitars, pinching his nose-bridge. Paolo flashes Luce a cocksure smile. ‘We got this.’

Joya always hoped to see Dot and Paolo married, to be co-in-laws with Jim and Rosaline. Luce guesses that won’t happen now.

‘Alright, Gene?’ Jim asks as Luce wanders back in. Luce nods, ‘Alright.’ Then, as if in proof that all is right, Lenny Lynden lies back, hands behind his head like he’s cloud-watching.

‘What’re you doing, Lenny?’ Jim crows. ‘That poison can’t be working already!’

‘Not yet,’ Lenny says. ‘I’m just making myself comfortable for the next life.’

‘How d’you feel about dying, Brother Lenny?’ Jim persists, amused.

‘I feel glad,’ Lenny says flatly. ‘I’m glad to leave the pain behind forever.’

Luce looks at Lenny Lynden: over thirty by now, no longer the kid he used to drool over, brown hair already beginning to recede. But stunted-looking, young in the face, like something stopped growing in him at twenty-three. Once again, Luce feels like gagging.

‘I’m glad to die too, Father. Oh, you betcha, I’m glad,’ Joya asserts. ‘Just one thing I’m wondering …What about the kids?’

Luce knows she can’t be talking about their full-grown kids: Dot, right there in the meeting with them; Roger and Danny, living with their wives in the Promised Land; the traitor-bitch, living wherever traitor-bitches live. Hattie, she means, and the others she’s adopted with Meyer since — Tremaine and Alisha. Luce hadn’t even thought of them or of his new wife Juanita, fast asleep back at the Potrero Hill commune. He looks at his cheap wedding band and his throat slimes up with guilt.

‘What about my wife?’ he chokes out. Jim looks dumbfounded. Embarrassed, Luce prompts: ‘Juanita and me. We got a full house in Potrero Hill.’

At that, other folks snap out of it. Jim rolls his tongue around his mouth, tilts his head away from their questioning. With a flick of her wrist, Evelyn steps forward.

‘All our members will be taken care of.’ That high, finicky voice that could give a snake tinnitus. ‘The sleeping quarters have been fitted with diffusers containing poisonous gas. Within twenty-four hours, everyone will be dead.’

Evelyn folds her arms, steps back, stares to the side, profile razor-sharp, hair flat against that dainty skull. From Jim, such words would seem necessary; from her, they inspire a surge of hate. Luce reminds himself yet again that she has a baby.

Jim looks at Evelyn curiously, then nods.

‘You’ve all been carefully chosen on the basis of things I’ve seen in your karmic makeup. It is very important that you die with me, so you can realize your full potential during reincarnation.’ Jim inclines his head at Joseph Garden. ‘Joe, your work in the Promised Land has not been in vain. The project will continue to flourish in the hands of our pioneers.’

Roger and Danny will live. Be fruitful and multiply with their pretty, colored wives. Luce guesses he should feel grateful: lines continuing, seed spreading, all that. Luce guesses he’s done his job. Luce would’ve been fifty next month. Old.

‘What’ve you got there, Mey?’ Joya swivels her head as Meyer slips back in through the curtain, guitar in hand. ‘Oh no, you didn’t!’

‘Thought we could have a little sing-along,’ Meyer confirms with a sheepish grin.

Stupid thought, Luce thinks. But nobody’s asking him, and Jim is beaming. ‘That’s nice. We’ll leave this world singing. Ain’t that nice?’

Meyer takes a place by Jim, starts strumming gently.

‘Thank you, Father!’ Diane Chatswood rises to testify, clutching her breast, tears in her eyes. ‘Thank you for choosing us to cross over with you!’

Molly gives Bob her big chevron cape to cover up his piss-stain. Diane kisses her Temple-wife, Regina O’Neal, a busty real estate broker. Other folks give out hugs. Dot taps Luce on the shoulder and, serene as can be, says, ‘See you in the next life, Dad,’ wraps her arms around his neck like she’s a cuddly seven-year-old again. Terra ambushes Luce with one of her full-body flowerchild hugs, whispers, ‘Later, Officer,’ her smile wavery. Petula Bellows, breaking away from Isaiah and their younger daughter, Alice, to choke up a verse from Revelations, ‘… Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore.’ Liesl Lynden and her queers, offering their svelte bodies up to him like he’s one of their own. Joseph. Phil. Then Joya, with a canny grin, a gruff little laugh, seizing him in a bear-hug. ‘Looks like you’re in heaven already, big guy!’

But over Joya’s shoulder, Luce has noticed something fishy. Evelyn and Frida consulting, scratching notes. Terra, after finishing a round of hugs, going to them, peering at the notes. Then Terra swoops back to the floor, starts clapping and singing with exaggerated zeal. Evelyn points Frida behind the red stage curtain. Returns to Jim.

‘There grows a tree in Paradise …’ Jim halts his singing as Evelyn withdraws from his ear. ‘Forty-five minutes! The forty-five minutes have elapsed, people!’

Everyone stops, unsure if they should be keeling over. Kay Harris coughs uncertainly. Joya’s face sags. A group of young people trade glances, then crack up.

Lenny sits up, running a hand through his thinning hair.

‘I know you’re eager to step over to the other side. But not today, darlings,’ Jim announces in a sacrificial tone. ‘This was a test. Most of you have made me proud.’ At that moment, Frida opens the curtain to Phyllis, leaning on Quincy’s arm. ‘Phyllis, you are still too attached to life in America. A true socialist would prefer death to this corrupt existence. Until you understand this, you cannot be trusted.’

‘Oh! Father—’

‘It has been decided, Phyllis: you will go to the Promised Land in two weeks. This is not a punishment, but a chance for you to learn a new way of living.’

‘Two weeks, Father?’ Phyllis rounds her lips. ‘But I … My asthma, Father, it’s worse in the heat, and I burn … real easy. Wouldn’t it be better, if someone young and health—’

‘How dare you question your leader, after you’ve proven yourself so unworthy? ’ Jim booms. ‘How dare you insult our pioneers? Dr. Katz is a medical genius and our clinic will soon be the world’s best! Miserable bitch, I shoulda let you choke.’ As Phyllis gapes like a fish, he turns conciliatory. ‘No, Phyllis, the decision is final. This will do you good, my love.’

Jim rises slowly from his sofa

‘It has been a long night. We are weary, very weary.’ He beckons to Terra, who beckons Dot, who touches her pale pageboy and dutifully takes Jim’s arm. ‘Sweet dreams, darlings.’