Reverend Powell shrugged.
"Right?" said Maharaji Dor.
"Eyes see and legs move when God wills it."
"Good enough. Now ask yourself about the whole package. Are you supposed to walk around with the feeling that you're unhappy? That something's wrong? Unfulfilled? Nothing is ever as good as you thought it would be, right? Right?"
"Jesus is as good as I thought he would be."
"Sure, because you never met him. If that Jewboy were around nowadays, he'd be here if I got hold of him. Not hanging with nails in his hands. I mean, baby, what kind of deal is that? I'd never give you that deal."
"Praised be the Blissful Master," said Joleen clapping.
"Quiet, child," said Reverend Powell sternly.
"What I'm laying down is that I make you feel like you ought to feel. Your body is going to tell you I'm right. Your senses will tell you I'm right. Just don't try to turn 'em off. But if you do, I'll win anyhow, because I am the way. Dig?"
"Blissful Master," cried Joleen and threw her pink linen head wrapping at the two pudgy brown feet. Her blond hair settled over the pinkness of her sari. Reverend Powell saw her young breasts quiver under the dress.
Maharaji Dor snapped his fingers, and Joleen ripped the sari from her body. She stood pale and nude, smiling proudly. Like showing a tomato for sale, Maharaji Dor squeezed the left breast.
"Good stuff," he said.
Reverend Powell saw the pink crest of her breast harden between brown thumb and forefinger.
"You think she doesn't like this?" said the boy. "She loves it. So what's wrong? Right." Squeeze.
Reverend Powell turned away. He was not going to be put upon by arguing with these heathens.
"Want this stuff? Take it."
"Good night, sir, I'm leaving," said the Reverend Mr. Powell, and the Dor lad smiled. As Powell turned, he felt two hands at his elbows, and as he struggled, he felt a collar being placed around his neck and locked, and his hands were shoved into shackles and pulled down behind him. His head fell backward, and his feet were being tugged. He braced his body for the cracking fall, but he landed on softness. Even the hand shackles were soft as they tugged at his wrists. He tried to get his legs under himself, but they went out in soft bindings to the right and left. Hands worked at his clothes, unbuttoned the jacket and shirt, and in a way he could not fathom, they got his clothes off his wrists and ankles without removing the shackles. He saw the lights from the ceiling and the soundproofing mosaic set around the strips of light.
He saw Joleen's face right above him. He saw her tongue dart out and felt it in the center of his head. Her firm breasts brushed his chest, and her tongue moved down his nose to his lips. They parted his lips briefly. He turned his head away and felt the wet tongue on his neck.
"Some things you can turn, nigger, and some things you can't," said Maharaji Dor.
The tongue tickled the reverend's belly button, and by the time it reached his loins, he knew he was out of control.
"I see your body is telling you something, nigger. What do you think it's telling you? You know what it's telling you? You think it's wrong. You think you know better than the body God gave you, you say. When you need air, you need air. When you need water, you need water. When you need food, you need food. Right?"
Reverend Powell felt the moist hot lips closing on him now. He did not want it to be nice. He did not want it to excite him, to grab him, to move him, to bring him to the trembling edge of exquisite tension. And then the mouth was gone, and he was still wanting. Quivering out there, his body begging.
"More, please," said Reverend Powell.
"Finish him," said Maharaji Dor.
As the exquisite, surging, pounding relief consumed him, Reverend Powell began to feel his own wrath upon himself. He had failed himself, his God, and the girl he had come to save.
"Hey, baby, don't sweat it," said Maharaji Dor. "Your body's healthier than you are. You feel bad, not because of your body, but because of your big, big pride. Pride, Christian. You put your head on the block for a cup of coffee, but it wasn't for civil rights. What sort of man looks down the barrel of a gun and says, "Shoot"? A man who feels inferior? Bullshit. You knew damned well you were the best sonofabitch in that drugstore. Big hero. Same reason, hero, you came here for the blond twiff, what's her name? You were being the great Christian. Turning the other cheek to the richest white man in that town, what's its name? Right? Big man.
"When the young loudmouths started calling you Uncle Tom, you didn't mind. You knew they didn't have the balls to do what you did. Look down the barrel of a shotgun and order coffee, big man. They had the beads and the clothes and the raised fists, but you had God. Wonderful Titus Powell. I'll tell you what you're doing here. You came here to prove you're just the most wonderful nigger in God's kingdom. Well, you black bastard, you ain't getting your pride massaged with any shotgun here. You ain't gonna get martyrdom here. No lynch mob. You're getting what you've run away from all your life. So first, we get rid of the damned guilt."
A pricking sensation in his right arm and then a rushing surge of everything being all right filled Reverend Powell. His fingertips felt a tingle and his knuckles felt a tingle and his wrists were alive and calm as were his forearms. His shoulders that had known so much lifting in his life eased into beautiful floating joints, and his chest became like bubbles beneath the ice of a frozen, smooth lake. His legs melted into the floor, and he felt cool fingers apply ointment to his eyelids, and then there were stars, tingling beautiful stars. It was heaven he was in, and there was a voice. A hard, rasping voice, but if you said yes to that voice, everything was all right again. And the voice was saying he should do whatever the Blissful Master said he should do. The bliss continued for "yes" and ended with "no." Reverend Powell thought it might be minutes or it might be days. The faces above him changed, and once he thought he saw night through a very close window. In it all, he tried to tell God he was sorry for his pride and that he loved Him and that he was sorry for what his body was doing.
Every time this happened, Reverend Powell felt the bliss leave, and when he cried out Jesus' name, there was downright pain. His palms felt crushed with heavy needles, and he cried the name again. And his legs felt a snapping of bone and the crushing through of iron, and with the total breath of his lungs, Reverend Titus Powell cried out the love of his lifelong friend. "Jesus, be with me now."
And then there was a sharp piercing in his right side, and before the dark eternity of nothing, he thought he heard his very best friend welcome him home.
Maharaji Dor was at his electronic game, winning, when one of his priests told him of the failure.
"What do you mean, he's dead? He just got here."
"A week he's been here, Blissful Master," said the priest, bowing a shaved but sweating head.
"A week, huh? What did you do wrong?"
"We did as you prescribed, Blissful Master."
"Everything?"
"Everything."
"What do you know? Huh? Well? Huh? Does the government know about this? Any word from Delhi?"
"We have no word, but they will know. The passport office will know. The foreign office will know. The Third World representative will know."
"All right. That's 300 rupees right there. Anyone else?"
"The Third World representative will want more. While the Reverend Powell might have been a United States citizen, by virtue of his blackness he was also a member of the Third World."
"Tell the Third World representative that he's only getting the hundred rupees to keep quiet because what's his name had an American passport. Tell him if he had been African, there wouldn't even be a pack of cigarettes for him in this, dig?"
"As you command."
"How'd the twirl take it?"
"Sister Joleen?"
"Yeah, her, Jo whatever."
"She cried because she said she truly loved Reverend Powell and now he had lost his chance at bliss."
"Good. Get lost."
"I am still worried about the government."