I hadn’t seen Lenny for a while, not since he told me about Pamela May Donald’s message. Then he called me up, asked me to meet him at one of our motels. Lucky for him I had a cancellation. One of my regulars, ex-marine–a sweet fella–was feeling blue and wanted to postpone.

Anyhow, that day, Lenny burst into the room, snatched the drink I poured for him and started pacing up and down. Told me he’d just got back from a conference in Houston. He looked just like a little kid who’d been to Disneyland for the first time. He must have talked non-stop for half-an-hour at least. He was saying how he’d been hanging out with Dr Lund, who’d invited him to appear on his Sunday show. Said he’d even had dinner with Flexible Sandy–the fella who wrote those books I never got around to reading. Went on about how the room where he’d given his talk had been packed to the rafters with the faithful.

‘And guess who else was there, Lo?’ he asked while he pulled off his tie. I didn’t know what to say, wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d said Jesus himself, way he was talking about those guys with all that awe in his voice. ‘Mitch Reynard,’ he said. ‘Mitch Reynard! Dr Lund has given him his backing.’

I’m not one for politics, but even I knew who this fella was. Caught him on a couple of the news segments Denisha likes to watch. Smooth guy, ex-preacher, looked a bit like Bill Clinton, always had the right answers, used to be a member of that Tea Party contingent. He was never out of the news when it turned out he was running for the Republican presidential nomination. Got a lot of criticism from the liberals for what he was saying about feminism and how gay marriage was an abomination.

Lenny started getting carried away, talking about how this could even be his ticket to getting into politics himself. ‘Anything is possible, Lo. Dr Lund says we must do everything in our power to sway the vote, make sure the country gets back to a good moral footing.’

Talking about morals, far as I was aware, Lenny never saw anything hypocritical about paying for my services. Maybe he didn’t even see it as adultery. He didn’t talk about his wife often, but I got the impression they hadn’t been intimate for a while. Course, last couple of times I saw him, there wasn’t much adultery going on; he was too busy unloading on me.

Would I say that fame went to his head? Yeah, sure. After he set up the website and got involved with Dr Lund, he was like a kid with a new toy. He said he was in contact with people from all over the world. Fellas right down in Africa even. There was that Monty guy he said he emailed every day, and a marine who was doing his duty somewhere in Japan. Jake somebody. I can’t recall his surname even though he was all over the news later on. Lenny told me all about how that marine had been into the Japanese forest where that plane had crashed. ‘Where Pam breathed her last breath.’ He said that Dr Lund had tried to contact Bobby’s grandmother, wanted to invite Bobby onto his show as well, but wasn’t getting anywhere. I really felt for the poor woman. Both me and Denisha did. It couldn’t have been easy being the focus of all that attention when you were still in mourning.

Lenny went on and on about how he was getting requests to do interviews from all over–talk shows, radio shows, Internet blogs, the whole caboodle, and not just the religious ones either. ‘Aren’t you worried they’ll ridicule you, Lenny?’ I asked him. He let slip that Dr Lund’s PR team had warned him to be careful about talking to the non-Christian press, and I thought that was wise advice. What he was saying about the children being the horsemen, you could see how lots of folks would think that was just plain nonsense.

‘I’m spreading the truth, Lo,’ he said. ‘If they want to ignore it, that’s their business. When the Rapture comes, we’ll see who has the last laugh.’

We didn’t even do it that day. He just wanted to talk. As he left, he reminded me to catch Dr Lund’s True Faith Togetherness show that weekend.

I was curious to see how Lenny would come across, so come Sunday, I settled down to watch it. Denisha couldn’t figure out what the hell I was doing. I hadn’t told her that Lenny was one of my clients. I respect my regulars’ privacy, which I know sounds like a lie seeing as here’s me talking to you now! But I never asked to be outed, did I? I wasn’t the one who went to the reporters. Anyhow, first off, Dr Lund stood at this big gold pulpit, a huge choir behind him. That church of his, the size of a shopping mall, was bursting at the seams. He basically just repeated Lenny’s theories about Pamela May Donald’s message, stopping every five minutes so that the choir could sing a bit more and the congregation could chime in with their ‘Amen’s and ‘Praise Jesus’s. Then he went on about how the time was ripe for God’s judgement, what with all the immorality going on, the gays and the women’s libbers and the baby killers and the school boards who promote Evolution. Denisha kept clicking her tongue. Her church knows all about what she does for a living, and they have no problem with the gays, either. ‘It’s all the same to them, Lo,’ she said. ‘People is people, and rather be upfront about it than hide it. Jesus never judged nobody, did he? ’Cept those money-lenders.’ Most of those rich preachers and high-end pastors had skeletons in their closets, and every day there seemed to be a new scandal about one of them. But not Dr Lund. He was known to be squeaky clean. Denisha reckoned he had the right connections to keep his dirty doings out of the media; knew where the bodies were buried.

After his sermon, Dr Lund walked over to an area at the side of the stage, which was decorated like a living room, all expensive rugs and oil paintings and lampshades with gold tassels. On the couch waiting for him were Dr Lund’s wife, Sherry, Lenny and a skinny woman who looked like she needed feeding up. That was the first time I saw Pastor Len’s wife, Kendra. She couldn’t have looked more different to Sherry, who Denisha said had the look of Tammy Faye Bakker about her–all eyelashes and drag queen accessories. But Lenny came across okay. He was a bit agitated, kept fidgeting and his voice wobbled some, but he didn’t embarrass himself. Dr Lund did most of the talking. Kendra didn’t say one word. And the look on her face… it was hard to read. I couldn’t tell if she was nervous, thought the whole thing was just dumb, or if she was bored out of her mind.