Island of the Sequined Love Nun

the man's voice, weary but awake. It was 2:00 A.M. The Sorcerer had been working all night.
    "I think we've found our pilot," she said.
    6 – Who's Flying This Life?
    At the last minute Mary Jean changed her mind about sending Tucker Case to her cabin in the mountains. "Put him in a motel room outside of town and don't let him out until I say so."
    In two weeks Tucker had seen only the nurse who came in to change his bandages and the guard. Actually, the guard was a tackle, second-string defense from SMU, six-foot-six, two hundred and seventy pounds of earnest Christian naivete named Dusty Lemon.
    Tucker was lying on the bed watching television. Dusty sat hunched over the wood-grain Formica table reading Scripture.
    Tucker said, "Dusty, why don't you go get us a six-pack and a pizza?"
    Dusty didn't look up. Tuck could see the shine of his scalp through his crew cut. A thick Texas drawl: "No, sir. I don't drink and Mrs. Jean said that you wasn't to have no alcohol."
    "It's not Mrs. Jean, you doofus. It's Mrs. Dobbins." After two weeks, Dusty was beginning to get on Tuck's nerves.
    "Just the same," Dusty said. "I can call for a pizza for you, but no beer."
    Tuck detected a blush through the crew cut. "Dusty?"
    "Yes sir." The tackle looked up from his Bible, waited.
    "Get a real name."
    "Yes, sir," Dusty said, a giant grin bisecting his moon face, "Tuck."
    Tucker wanted to leap off the bed and cuff Dusty with his Bible, but he was a long way from being able to leap anywhere. Instead, he looked at the ceiling for a second (it was highway safety orange, like the walls, the doors, the tile in the bathroom), then propped himself up on one elbow and considered Dusty's Bible. "The red type. That the hot parts?"
    "The words of Jesus," Dusty said, not looking up.
    "Really?"
    Dusty nodded, looked up. "Would you like me to read to you? When my grandma was in the hospital, she liked me to read Scriptures to her."
    Tucker fell back with an exasperated sigh. He didn't understand religion. It was like heroin or golf: He knew a lot of people did it, but he didn't understand why. His father watched sports every Sunday, and his mother had worked in real estate. He grew up thinking that church was something that simply interfered with games and weekend open houses. His first exposure to religion, other than the skin mag layouts of the women who had brought down television evangelists, had been his job with Mary Jean. For her it just seemed like good business. Sometimes he would stand in the back of the auditorium and listen to her talk to a thousand women about having God on their sales team, and they would cheer and "Hallelujah!" and he would feel as if he'd been left out of something-something beyond the apparent goofiness of it all. Maybe Dusty had something on him besides a hundred pounds.
    "Dusty, why don't you go out tonight? You haven't been out in two weeks. I have to be here, but you-you must have a whole line of babes crying to get you back, huh? Big football player like you, huh?"
    Dusty blushed again, going deep red from the collar of his practice jersey to the top of his head. He folded his hands and looked at them in his lap. "Well, I'm sorta waitin' for the right girl to come along. A lot of the girls that go after us football players, you know, they're kinda loose."
    Tuck raised an eyebrow. "And?"
    Dusty squirmed, his chair creaked under the strain. "Well, you know, it's kinda…"
    And suddenly, amid the stammering, Tucker got it. The kid was a virgin. He raised his hand to quiet the boy. "Never mind, Dusty." The big tackle slumped in his chair, exhausted and embarrassed.
    Tuck considered it. He, who understood so much the importance of a healthy sex life, who knew what women needed and how to give it to them, might never be able to do it again, and Dusty Lemon, who probably could produce a woody that women could chin themselves on, wasn't using it at all. He pondered it. He worked it over from several angles and came very close to having a religious experience, for who but a vicious and vengeful God would allow such injustice in the world? He thought about it. Poor Tucker. Poor Dusty. Poor, poor Tucker.
    He felt a lump forming in his throat. He wanted to say something that would make the kid feel better. "How old are you, Dusty?"
    "I'll be twenty-two next March, sir?"
    "Well, that's not so bad. I mean, you might be a late bloomer, you know. Or gay maybe," Tuck said cheerfully.
    Dusty started to contract into the fetal