The tail thumping increased in frequency and velocity.
“Honestly.” I unclipped the leash and rolled it up, but left the harness on. “Get used to it.”
Aaron was early, as promised. It was still dark when I heard the wheels of a car crackle on the gravel outside. The sound stirred a vague concern about the FBI and SWAT vans, so I set down my notebook and picked myself up, the Wardbreaker in hand. I heard a door slam, and then feet on the ground outside. One pair of feet.
“Good morning, Rex.” Aaron peered in around the edge of the unlocked door, his polite smile wilting around the edges when he saw me holstering my weapon. I had much the same impression of him that I’d had on first meeting: the priest was gym-fit, with a pleasantly attractive round face and an annoyingly thin mustache set beneath two button eyes. “Sorry to disturb you. All ready to go?”
“Almost.” I packed the books away into a suitcase, slung my overcoat on, and wrapped Binah’s unattached leash around my hand. She had come out to sit and study with me for a time, but had now made herself scarce. Following my intuition, I went to the bathroom and found her scrabbling in the new litter box. Just as welclass="underline" I doubted the senior pastor would be amused if she were to borrow a corner of his office.
“You… uhh…” Aaron reached up to adjust his collar when I returned with Binah clinging to her favorite place over my shoulder. “Is that…?”
“She’s a necessary tool of the job.” I walked past him without pausing. Someone who didn’t stop to permit criticism was often allowed to continue doing what they were doing. “Today will be interesting. I don’t know much about the Church, but I had a colorful encounter with a member of your congregation once.”
I’d expected an NYPD police chaplain to arrive in a squad car or a mid-range sedan of some kind, like a Volvo or a Camry. Instead, I passed through the garage door and found myself before a very large, very new top-of-the-line Cadillac. It crouched like a panther, gleaming under the lights over the entries to the clubhouse and Strange Kitty.
“Colorful?” Aaron went around to the driver’s side with the casual bearing of a man who wasn’t immediately conscious that he was getting into a thirty-five thousand dollar car.
“Uh… yes. Colorful.” I swallowed, recomposed myself, and opened my door to sit down. Binah and I were immediately engulfed in padded black leather, polished wood, and the unmistakable smell of new money. “He was a violent, judgmental sort.”
“Violent? If he’s part of Pastor Christopher’s congregation, I hope he’ll teach this man that the only one around these parts who’s allowed to judge anyone is God.” Aaron fired up the car and started us on our way. The mouthfeel of the engine was at least as pleasant as Zane’s Harley. “Where was this?”
“Outside the Manhattan Center.”
“He may have been dropping in for his first service,” Aaron said. “We get a lot of crazies come in just for the coffee, too. A lot of people attend church with this very superficial mentality, you know… “I’ll just pray and everything will be fine.” They think they’ll just turn up and not have to do any work. But that’s not what being human is about… real effort is the best form of worship. Jesus was a carpenter, for crying out loud.”
I stroked Binah’s head and nodded along. I couldn’t disagree with the sentiment, but according to the Bible, I was also a heretical inheritor of Simon Magus and expressly condemned to eternal torment. I had never seen eye to eye with the religious.
“Well, looks like I got ranting again. I get a bit carried away sometimes.” The Pastor laughed a little, starting us north towards Manhattan.
“To be very honest, I’m mostly sitting here and wallowing in your Cadillac. The NYPD must be paying better these days if you were able to buy this without selling your kidney.”
He laughed again, louder this time. “Oh, this? Well, like I said… work is the best form of worship. I work two jobs and have a few investments tucked away.”
The cynic in me had to wonder if those investments were of the kind able to be cut and snorted, but I erred on the side of social grace and held my tongue.
We didn’t go to the Manhattan Center. Instead, we went to Times Square and rumbled down a one-way side-street, pulling up to park across from an elegant Art Deco facade. It was built into a strip of stately old hotels. The flagpoles outside carried an American flag, and a royal purple and gold INRI flag with the cross and crown.
“You know, I always wondered something about, well, sorcerers,” Aaron said, once we were out on the pavement. “What your familiar actually do?”
“She likes to eat shoelaces and vomit them on the bathroom rug.” I set her on the ground. Binah froze in place, watching cars rush by. What little fur she had stood on end, so I sighed, scooped her up, and put her on my shoulder to cross the street. “I think it’s less about what she does, and more about what she is. What she is, is deeply attuned to me and my work. She sees a lot of things I would otherwise miss… I’ve noticed that my memory has improved significantly since she came into my life.”
“Oh, I see. Well, perhaps you should get her one of those little service animal vests? It’s hard for people to know why you’re carrying her around, otherwise.” Aaron smiled, a little frazzled and a little tired, and then led the way in through the rotating glass doors.
The doors led into an ornate Gotham foyer: black marble floor, dusky granite walls, a lot of glass and old polished wood. There were two receptionists, one male and one female. Banners and flags were on display in here, too, along with a large gold crucifix mounted on the open balcony railing, directly over the reception desk.
“If services are held in the Hammerstein, what’s this place for?” I asked, as Aaron led me up one of the swooping staircases to the balcony level.
“We mix around a few venues, actually. The mass public services are for Receiving members and seekers, people who are curious or who would like to worship in a safe space,” Aaron said. “This is our headquarters for the East Coast. We hold services and classes for Confirmed members of the Church.”
“Confirmed?” Both Binah and I were looking around as we were lead an open-plan bookstore. It was comfortable and elegant up here, but a little less personal than a pre-modern church facility. I felt a twinge of instinct as Binah looked towards a room off-side the bookstore. The wall was painted in intricate Biblical murals which prominently featured a very blond, remarkably fit White Jesus. There was a bean-shaped sofa, and a video playing on a large screen in front of it. I caught a glimpse of a man speaking at a lectern across a massive sweep of congregation. Father Zach’s TV show, I supposed.
“The Confirmed are people who have been baptized into the church. They make some pretty strong commitments to banish their inner evils, commit to work and grow into the rewards worship offers.” Aaron drew up at an inset door at the back of the room, swiped a card, and punched in a sequence of numbers to let us inside. “We’re fundamentally a Reformed denomination, so Confirmed members are those who have been ‘confirmed’ as elect.”
“I see.” I’d never heard of ‘banishing inner evils’ as being part of any Christian denomination, but humans were always finding new and elaborate ways to beat themselves up. “How do you determine if someone is… ready for baptism?”
“They have talk to one of our auditors. Counselors, basically. They work through their goals and their strengths and weaknesses with them, look at what they need to fix inside themselves and in their relationships with other people and God.”
We emerged into a narrow white-brick service hallway, and took another door into a larger, far more welcoming corridor. The old hotel rooms had been converted to what looked like glass-fronted classrooms or seminar rooms, a few of which were already occupied with teachers setting up for the day. Tables and chairs, books on the tables, whiteboards up front. The rooms were all named according to the donors who had furnished them.