Sacred Text

Carlos, with yet another totally transforming haircut (clipped close and kept gray), strides through our combined celestial white suites in clothes that cost the earth, cell phone to his now naked ear.

The rooms are glass, floor to ceiling. Altocumulus rows undulate around us. A Mogul for the Ages.  (That’s him.)  Master of the Religion Without Rules  (That’s me.)

[This post is an excerpt from Diary of a Heretic, the novel. Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

I sit festooned to an enormous white couch in new white clothes, which Maggie and I bought yesterday.  My pulse beats beneath a silk collar band.  It runs in a searing swath from my navel to my groin.  I can’t swallow.  I can’t breathe.

I’m supposed to be composing the RWR Doctrine.  The meetings have become weird and exhausting.  I go on, say my stuff, people clap and cheer and money rises like mountains.  Except, Carlos contends, not quite enough money;  not at this juncture. “We’ve got to hit big, and follow hard with residuals.”  So my personal trainer and ally, Maggie, sits opposite me, also in new white clothes (involving, as always with her, plenty of deep cleavage), culling “significant concepts” from a file of meeting highlights.  Or that’s what she’s supposed to be doing.  Actually, she’s text-mailing back and forth with Stephanie and Rafe, who are in the middle of a grand opening in Lincoln Park.

Apparently I signed leases and hiring agreements.  “You picked out the floor and ceiling tile with me.  Remember?  And you insisted on a limited menu.  Six kinds of bread, three kinds of donuts. . . ”

Head aching, I send e-mail from my laptop to hers, from the couch to the chair.

I can’t do this!

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Maggie says, flipping open a phone, then shutting it and calling Carlos, who’s perpetually on his phone:  “Hey, Carlos, we need to talk.  In the bedroom.”

Hey Maggie—I’m consumed by humiliation, wracked by guilt, filled with dread.

“Don’t be silly,” she says.

I can’t do this!

“Of course you can.  Right, Carlos?”

He swings through the suite, looking super-austere in his luxe tailoring and radically short gray hair.  And as he bends to whisper in my ear, “Just stay focused, Malcolm.  Put down what you think.  What you—”

“I know, I know, I know already!  What I believe.”

“Exactly.”  Hand on my shoulder, Carlos claims he’s within a hair’s breadth of negotiating a publishing deal.  “A best-seller, yes, they get that part, but what’s harder for them to grasp is that first and foremost we’re talking—” he raises an eyebrow, holds up a finger—“sacred text.”

“Ha ha, Carlos.”  I slump deeper into the pillowy silk couch.

“Lighten up, Chuckles.”  He pats my cheek.  “It’s not the end of the world.”

Maggie sighs and bows, motioning for Carlos to follow her into the bedroom.  They mumble furiously for what seems like forever.  At one point Maggie says, “Don’t be such an asshole,” and Carlos snaps, “Keep your voice down.”

(Click here to read the next episode)

Comments

[Bosco]

Beautiful picture! Not to overlook the writing, which as always is great. But the picture is cool. Malcolm becomes increasingly ethereal.

[Dan Leo]

...while everything around him grows less ethereal.

And Carlos getting a haircut -- uh-oh!

And Jesus thought He had problems...

[Kathleen]

Dan and Rufus, Yeah, Malcolm wishes he existed among the clouds.

[paisley]

i am really beginning to hate carlos...

[Kathleen]

Paisley, Carlos is not a nice man, that's certain. He knows it well enough not to try fronting a religious cult himself. He needs an innocent and has found one who's not only innocent but, gosh!, sincere albeit confused.