At the Vatican, the pope was sound asleep, having four hours earlier mumbled the simple benediction he had learned as a child. In New York City, the anchors at the major networks were preparing to sign off after reading the news of the most ingenious and entertaining samples of human depravity that had appeared in the last twenty-four hours. In Las Vegas, thousands of American parents were busy initiating their offspring into the deepest mysteries of the nation’s folklore. At a race track in Southern California, eight sleek thoroughbreds were pounding the turf and coming down the home stretch as the spectators either clutched their tickets in anxiously sweating hands or, resigned to their temporary fate, began to destroy those tokens of hope. And in the Kansas metropolis of Kirkland, not its real name, two men were preparing for a meeting that would launch a chain of events that was destined to have profound consequences both for America and for the largest and most powerful ecclesiastical organization in all Christendom. Unaware as yet of his significance in the grand scheme of things, the older of the two ambled down a nondescript hall toward an unexceptional office at the rear of an unimposing tan cinder block building standing at the foot of an ordinary radio transmitter at the outskirts of this typical Middle-American city
Benny squeezed himself into the chair across the desk from his smallish, kempt boss, who was dressed in a new Sears suit, a new Sears shirt, and a new Sears tie, a uniform designed to high- light a generic male managerial face still on the pleasant side of forty. Bright strummed his fingers on the desk. He adjusted his glasses. He cleared his throat. He inserted an index finger under the collar of his new Sears shirt and straightened his new Sears tie. He took a deep breath. He exhaled, slowly but audibly. “Benny,” he began. “This is not working out.” “It’s only been a month,” said Benny. Bright wagged his head sadly. “The numbers just aren’t there.” “One. Incredible. Month,” said Benny. Bright sighed. “‘Benny’s Begonias’ is not the blockbuster we projected.” “One month of lively discussion of the delights of indoor gardening!” said Benny, growing eloquent. Dennis Bright frowned as he tilted back in his chair and placed five pairs of interlocking digits behind his head. “Listen, Benny,” he said to the older man, “I hate to tell you this, but.” Benny carefully placed a foot on Bright’s desktop. That foot was fitted with a sandal. Between the sandal and a pair of wrinkled shorts stretched an expanse of hairy, well-fed leg. Between the shorts and a soiled T-shirt stretched an expanse of equally hairy, equally well-fed abdomen. The T-shirt bore the insignia of KKKS (“First in Alternative Programming for the Kirkland Listening Area”) and a pocketful of cigars (Nicos). Above this T-shirt rose a head that had frequently invited comparisons to the head of the late Larry Flynt—it had the same broad features, the same rugged handsomeness, the same wavy hair; some of Benny’s old colleagues used to take pleasure in observing that the
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