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“You flatter me, sorceress from the future, and flattery is half of arousal. My manhood already chafes against the rough wool of my Getian breeches. Yes, I have sampled their women. They say that Orpheus himself hails from these parts. I can see why his lyre played such lovely tunes. The Get women of the patrician class wear short tunics like the harlots of Rome. Their legs are long and bronzed, and they wear sandals made from tree bark. Their toes are flexible like fingers—they can pick up things from the floor with their toes. One of the local refinements is for an Alexandra or a Clestea—they give themselves Roman names, the poor monkeys—to wrap her long toes around a man's phallus while tickling his piss hole with the big toe. I am well made, by Jove, and I can tell you that I scarcely believed it when the toes of such a wench went all the way around my manhood. Their fingers, though long and supple, cannot do that. The pleasure was doubled when I had two of these lasses, barely sixteen and already refined in pleasure, service me with their toes. It is said that the Gets are descended from wolves, and they are hungry indeed. At their festivals they daub themselves with red paint and run naked in the meadows, shooting their arrows into the sky to irritate their god, Zamolxes. When he is well irritated he sends down lightning, thunder, and rain. It makes their paint run and causes them to become frenzied. Their bacchanalia last for weeks.”

Ovid lay down on the bench, and Scheherazade sat beside him and put his large head on her silken lap. The poet's head was heavy; his coarse hair scratched her. His forehead was deeply lined, and a faraway light burned like a fever in the black depths of his eyes.

“I was sold into slavery to a barbarian ship, Ovid. The sailors took their pleasure with me for a month at sea. I have learned things I can scarcely describe, they were so painful and—I blush to think it—pleasurable. The barbarians liked to take me in clusters, leaving no part of my body unattended. I lay on deck naked with sore gums, bunghole, and cunt, rubbing salves on all my body. Only my mind was free to soar, and in my mind I saw all the pure things of this world: small babes in arms, fields of flowers, rain on mosaic tiles. One day, one of the barbarians took me for his own and kept me all to himself and to his cabin boy, a young lad of sixteen. I healed, but cannot forget all that happened to me.

“Did you enjoy my story, Ovid?”

“Yes. I am a poet but I don't make things up out of whole cloth, either.”

Felicity wondered what Ovid would think of Amelia Earhart. She thought that the author of the
Metamorphoses
might appreciate the aviatrix—in his time, only the gods flew. But she decided to wait before introducing them. There was time. Ovid lived in eternity.

Felicity liked herself much better as Scheherazade. She felt that she was an untapped fountain of stories and that her elusive pleasure would eventually be found at the junction of one story with another. In this respect, she was very much like all the other spirits in cyberspace.

When Ovid fell asleep, she logged off.

At dawn, a thick fog lay over the winding bayou outside, dissolving the Lord's Plantation House in a milky substance.

“Good God,” one of the girls said, “it looks like one billion sperms.”

“Souls of the unborn,” said another.

“Mixed in with fiendish souls,” added a third.

“Superstitious bitches!” said another, bringing out a tray full of coffee mugs, each inscribed
Spirit Industries
.

Upstairs, in a suite of rooms overlooking the cypresses by the bayou and the beginning of the Mississippi pine forest, Reverend Jeremy “Elvis” Mullin was staring blankly at a computer screen, waiting for Jesus to inspire him with a date. Several dates, actually. The time had come for him to put his money where his mouth was. Dear Lord, prayed Mullin, they are massing at the gates and calling for me to give them your deadlines.

The schedule Mullin needed to clarify was complex. He needed dates for the coming of the Antichrist, for the Rapture, for the Tribulations, for Armageddon, and for the Second Coming of Christ. The first was the most important right now, because the believers awaiting the Rapture were getting restless. He could sense that the Antichrist, though he hadn't revealed his identity, was nearby. The reverend's senses were prickly like the spines on a frightened porcupine.

Mullin reviewed several dates in the little time remaining before the end of the millennium, in 2000. July 4 might be excellent for the arrival of the Antichrist, who, it was known, had already taken over the U.S.A. through the bankers of the Tri-Lateral Commission. He was now only waiting for the signal to do his job. At last report, he had taken the form of an Italian banker named Ovid Publicus, who drove fast cars, owned a multinational telephone company, an on-line computer service, several television stations and newspapers around the world, and fancied himself a poet. He was handsome and persuasive, and, it was said, nobody could either resist or stop him.

Well, that was one opinion, anyway. Another school of thought maintained that Ted and Jane Turner were together the entity called the Antichrist. Everyone from Madonna to Hector J. Crackheart, a recluse billionaire philosopher in Montana, had been nominated by one faction or another.

So, if this Publicus, or whoever the AC was, were to declare himself on Independence Day, that would be perfect. “Independence” would then signify the opposite, which was slavery to the devil. It would behoove the Evil One to manifest amid the fireworks. Mullin was a patriot, but the United States, in his opinion, had long ago ceased to be worthy of the love of true patriots. A new United States would be born from the ordeals of the Tribulations. A cleansed, purified,
white
America.

Mullin waited, but the Spirit gave him no sign. His mind and his computer screen were blank. The scent of gardenias floated in through the French doors, and from downstairs, the silvery notes of the girls' laughter. This could be Paradise, thought Mullin, if only it weren't hell. Only my heart knows the extent of the darkness. But let the story unfold as foretold and this
will
be Paradise.

Sufficient time had to elapse, Mullin calculated, between the coming of the Antichrist and the Rapture so that people would believe that the millennium, the age of peace, had indeed arrived. In that time, the Antichrist had to inspire in humankind a feeling of well-being and accomplish the elimination of national currencies, replacing them with a world currency bearing the number 666. The Dow Jones Industrials would reach 66,666 at the beginning of this cycle. How much time was sufficient? The reverend thought that, at the accelerated rate of current events, two months might suffice. Which then could put the Rapture right around Mardi Gras 2000.

Mullin chuckled to himself. That would be perfect. The true believers would leave behind this world of wickedness on a pagan holiday, one that had already replaced Christmas in importance in Louisiana. It was very important that events fall on symbolic days. The success of Christianity had come about partly from the coincidence of holy days with older, pagan holidays. This had been no accident, and the End would not be accidental either.

Still, Jesus gave no sign.

Would everything be ready by Mardi Gras 2000? The reverend believed that the deadline could be met, if only Jesus would give the go-ahead. The domes were prepared. Everything was a couple of rehearsals away from completion.

There was a knock at the door, despite Mullin's order to leave him unbothered until twelve. His newest singer, the girl whom he'd baptized Pecan, stood at the door holding a silver tray with a message and a cup of coffee. The other girls, knowing his temper, had thought it prudent to send up the newcomer.

Mullin read the message and frowned. Then he hit his chest with his open palm and smiled. He took the coffee from the girl and slapped her behind. Jesus had spoken.

The message read:

Your Satanic Majesty:

I have taken the initiative of establishing our encounter inside Saint

Louis Cathedral at 8
P.M.
this evening.

The Messiah

God works in mysterious ways. He slapped his forehead. All the elements were
here
, though disguised in the parabolic way of the Lord: the cathedral (home of the Antichrist popes), the business he had to conduct (part and parcel of the Antichrist campaign against him), and the signature, “The Messiah” (which, though meant mockingly, was nonetheless one of Christ's names). The note had come through Felicity's hand, but it wasn't hers. It had been dictated by Satan himself. And here was his sign. Sometimes Jesus spoke loudest through Satan.

Pecan lingered, happy as a stray mutt who'd been given a pat on the head. The sting of the reverend's palm on her behind reverberated pleasantly through her whole person. She hoped that he would notice her again, but the reverend had returned to his computer. After a while she just tiptoed out of the room. Every day she had up to seven hours of choir practice. The other girls were better singers, but none of them, as far as she knew, had received any further sexual advances from Mullin after the initial splat of obscenity. Pecan vowed to become a singer so great the reverend would embrace her nightly.

Felicity sipped her midday double espresso with pleasure bordering on ecstasy. The Vietnamese personnel and the bohemian clientele of the Croissant d'Or coffeehouse looked exceedingly fresh, as if they'd been cleansed by a spring rain. She could feel their gentle vibrations making a cocoon of warmth against the foggy winter day outside.

From her seat she could see the white wall of the Ursuline convent. Proud locals claimed that their ancestors, French “casket girls,” so-called because they arrived with all their possessions in one small trunk, or
casket
, had resided there upon arrival in Nouvelle Orléans in 1723. Felicity chuckled. There had been only a few casket girls. In truth, most of the early female colonists to New Orleans had been Paris whores. Each of the casket girls would have to have given birth ten thousand times over to account for the number of present-day New Orleanians claiming descent from these virtuous women. No one, it seems, descended from the many more numerous prostitutes. How like us, thought Felicity, to reinvent even our roots. Everything here steams up and becomes tabulation, smoke, jive.

Felicity abandoned herself to worldly reveries about what she was going to do with the money. There was no question in her mind that Mullin would pay up. His televangelical empire pulled in over $300 million a year. He wouldn't risk all that for a puny $2.1 million. But a puny two-point-one was enough to set Felicity's dream choo-choo chugging.

First of all, she would remedy the lamentable state of her psyche by purchasing a mansion with a grand ballroom, where her favorite New Orleans musicians would play. She could even schedule regular evenings of musical entertainment for the amusement of the poor. She would set aside the lower floors for Shades, who would shower and stroll naked there in their splendid tattoos, jingling their jewelry and chains.

But then her responsible, social self woke up, and she was ashamed of her selfishness. She overheard a couple at another table.

“You know,” the man told the woman, “they say that Napoleon did actually make it to Louisiana. He died en route, and he's now buried right next to Jean Lafitte and John Paul Jones in the Berthoud Cemetery.”

That bit of trivia set her thinking that in the city of grand plots and conspiracies, she ought to do no less. Her uncle's plan to convert consumers into saints was unsettling because if the conversion was unsuccessful, the alternative was the murder of several millions of people. And why? Simply because they craved Big Macs and Whoppers! Such greed would surely destroy the earth, but how could one ask people to give up beefburgers and pork sausages and become ascetic nonconsumers? Physician, heal thyself, Felicity thought indignantly. Stop eating beer-fed beef and Armagnac-dazed shrimp, and then maybe you can expect the masses to give up their burgers and fries. But if they don't—as surely they won't—you can't just kill them.

Perhaps her mission was to present her uncle with an alternative plan. Her uncle, with his encyclopedic knowledge of revolution, would guide her to success. She could organize a campaign to sabotage the chemical plants that poisoned the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge to the Gulf of Mexico. The factories would fail and move away, if not proclaim outright their shame and self-dissolve. New Orleans could secede from the Union and proclaim itself an independent Republic of Pleasure and Music and Poverty. The alternative to consuming the world would be
musical poverty
. In a state of dancing ecstasy, people didn't eat much. Thus, dancing led to sainthood.

But just as swiftly as she was overcome by this happy vision, a black cloud of anxiety appeared. The cloud was composed of the word
DUTY.
Felicity remembered that she
had
a job. She had been charged by the major to find the Indian girl. Felicity remembered that she was very likely the target of two very angry naked goons, and she suddenly thought it entirely possible that the scaly reverend might
not
hand over the cash without a fight.

“Felix!”

Very few people called her Felix. Martin Dedette was one of them. When she and Miles were a couple, the dapper fashion editor of the
Times-Picayune
had been one of their best friends. They had clubbed and hung together for years. Felicity had actually slept with Martin once. Miles had really pissed her off one night when he'd gone to a party after his gig without her. Martin had driven her home and she'd asked him in. It had been awkward, but she remembered Martin's vigor with some satisfaction.

Martin must have remembered something similar, because he grinned suddenly. “Felix, you gone missing. I've called your old number one hundred times.”

“That would be twice,” smiled Felicity. She was glad to see him. She'd given him up along with everyone else, perhaps with even more eagerness than the rest. Their intimacy still embarrassed her.