Fear Nothing

ceiling as He dreamily meditates, waiting for parishioners in need to come to Him with problems to be solved.
        This night, however, I felt sure God was keeping His distance from the rectory adjoining the church, which gave me the creeps when I cycled past it. The architecture of the two-story stone house - like that of the church itself - was modified Norman, with enough of the French edge abraded to make it fit more comfortably in the softer climate of California. The overlapping black-slate tiles of the steep roof, wet with fog, were as armor-thick as the scales on the beetled brow of a dragon, and beyond the blank black eyes of window glass - including an oculus on each side of the front door - lay a soulless realm. The rectory had never appeared forbidding to me before, and I knew that I now viewed it with uneasiness only because of the scene I had witnessed between Jesse Pinn and Father Tom in the church basement.
        I pedaled past both the rectory and the church, into the cemetery, under the oaks, and among the graves. Noah Joseph James, who'd had ninety-six years from birthday to deathbed, was just as silent as ever when I greeted him and parked my bike against his headstone.
        I unclipped the cell phone from my belt and keyed in the number for the unlisted back line that went directly to the broadcasting booth at KBAY. I heard four rings before Sasha picked up, although no tone would have sounded in the booth; she would have been alerted to the incoming call solely by a flashing blue light on the wall that she faced when at her microphone. She answered it by pushing a hold button, and while I waited, I could hear her program over the phone line.
        Orson began to sniff out squirrels again.
        Shapes of fog drifted like lost spirits among the gravestones.
        I listened to Sasha run a pair of twenty-second “doughnut” spots-which are not ads for doughnuts but commercials with recorded beginnings and endings that leave a hole for live material in the center. She followed these with some way smooth historical patter about Elton John, and then brought up “Japanese Hands” with a silky six-bar talk-over. Evidently the Chris Isaak festival had ended.
        Taking me off hold, she said, I'm doing back-to-back tracks, so you've got just over five minutes, baby.”
        “How'd you know it was me?”
        Only a handful of people have this number, and most of them are asleep at this hour. Besides, when it comes to you, I've got great intuition. The moment I saw the phone light flash, my nether parts started to tingle.”
        Your nether parts?”
        “My female nether parts. Can't wait to see you, Snowman.”
        “Seeing would be a good start. Listen, who else is working tonight?”
        “Doogie Sassman.” He was her production engineer, operating the board.
        “Just the two of you there alone?” I worried.
        “You're jealous all of a sudden? How sweet. But you don't have to worry. I don't measure up to Doogie's standards.”
        When Doogie wasn't parked in a command chair at an audio control panel, he spent most of his time with his massive legs wrapped around a Harley-Davidson. He was five feet eleven and weighed three hundred pounds. His wealth of untamed blond hair and his naturally wavy beard were so lush and silky that you had to resist the urge to pet him, and the colorful mural that covered virtually every inch of his arms and torso had put some tattooist's child through college. Yet Sasha wasn't entirely joking when she said that she didn't measure up to Doogie's standards. With the opposite sex, he had more bearish charm than Pooh to the tenth power. Since I'd met him six years ago, each of the four women with whom he'd enjoyed a relationship had been stunning enough to attend the Academy Awards in blue jeans and a flannel shirt, sans makeup, and outshine every dazzling starlet at the ceremony.
        Bobby says that Doogie Sassman (pick one) has sold his soul to the devil, is the secret master of the universe, has the most astonishingly proportioned genitalia in the history of the planet, or produces sexual pheromones that are more powerful than Earth's gravity.
        I was glad Doogie was working the night, because I had no doubt that he was a lot tougher than any of the other engineers at KBAY.
        “But I thought there'd be someone besides the two of you,” I said.
        Sasha knew I wasn't jealous of