David Wallace - Broom of the System

“Shows what?”

The rhythm of the rumbling in the lobby walls and floor increased. The wreath of roses abruptly fell off the switchboard wastebasket. Cigarette ashes and part of Mr. Bombardini’s latest note fell on Lenore’s socks. She didn’t see them.

“Lenore,” said Mr. Beadsman, “I am now officially insisting.”

Lenore’s eyes stayed closed. She looked as if she was asleep. Mr. Beadsman looked at Dr. Jay. Andy Lang worked on a hangnail.

Peter Abbott was grinning and shaking his head at Candy and Walinda. “The upshot here is that your particular line tunnel looks like it’s kind of decided it’s a real freakin’ human being or some. thing,” he said. “You want my opinion, this whole thing could get on television real easily.” He looked around at everyone. They stared at him blankly. “You don’t get it, do you?” Peter said. “Look. Your tunnel’s like I said supposed to be around like sixty-some degrees. And instead our test cable shows it’s a perfect ninety-eight point six. You believe that?”

“Boy what you talkin’ about?” Walinda folded her arms.

Lenore opened her eyes.

“I’m talking about your subpar service is due to your lines are bleeding calls into each other because somehow your tunnel’s ninety-eight point six goddamn degrees,” Peter said. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

Mr. Beadsman looked at Lenore. Dr. Jay’s head popped up. The lobby positively shook. Lenore was looking up at Wang-Dang Lang:

“Hey.”

/a/

PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT OF ‘THE PARTNERS WITH GOD CLUB,’ SATURDAY, 11 SEPTEMBER 1990, 8:00 P.M. EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME. HOSTS: THE REVEREND HART LEE SYKES, AND HIS VERY WELL KNOWN COCKATIEL UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT, THROUGH WHOM THE LORD HAS BEEN HEARD PERSONALLY TO SPEAK ON SEVERAL TELEVISED OCCASIONS.

THE REVEREND HART LEE SYKES: Friends.

THE PARTNERSHIP SINGERS:. (Personalty directed and accompanied on the xytophone by Mrs. Fanny May Sykes) Friends…

REVEREND SYKES: Dear, dear friends.

UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: God bless everything and everybody! THE PARTNERSHIP SINGERS: Friends…

REVEREND SYKES: Friends, what is a partner?

UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: Friends.

REVEREND SYKES: Friends, I stand before you tonight to say that a partner is a worker. That a partner is an individual who recognizes that individuals working together are stronger in the service of the Lord than individuals going their own separate, individual ways.

THE PARTNERSHIP SINGERS: Oh yes, a partner is a worker… REVEREND SYKES: Friends, a partner takes what is in his hand, and casts it down into the soil, to grow. A partner sows, friends. A partner sows. And friends, who reaps?

THE PARTNERSHIP SINGERS: Oh yes, a partner is a worker who sows…

REVEREND SYKES: We the partners take the seed of faith which is in our hand and sow it in the soil of partnership, and now who reaps?

THE PARTNERSHIP SINGERS: Who reaps, oh, who reaps…? UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: Jesus reaped!

REVEREND SYKES: That’s right friends we can see together tonight that the one who reaps is none other than Jesus.

UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: That’s right friends.

REVEREND SYKES: That’s right: Jesus. And now friends we have this question, to introduce tonight’s food-for-thought segment of our time together tonight. Friends, who is Jesus?

UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: Who?

REVEREND SYKES: That’s right friends who is Jesus?

UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: Who?

REVEREND SYKES: Who is he?

UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: I have to do what’s right for me. REVEREND SYKES: Who?

UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: He is we! We are He!

THE PARTNERSHIP SINGERS: Oh, we are He and He is we… REVEREND SYKES: That’s right friends we are Jesus! In a theologically important sense we are Jesus!

UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: How can this be?

REVEREND SYKES: Shall I tell you how this can be?

THE PARTNERSHIP SINGERS: Tell, oh tell us, how all this can be… REVEREND SYKES: Friends I stand before you tonight to say that it is for no other reason than that we, like Jesus, are partners with God.

The Partnership Singers begin to hum a pleasing harmony.

UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: Hart Lee, we are He.

REVEREND SYKES: You’re so right, little miracle. We are Jesus. We are Jesus because Jesus is a worker. Like us. And a partner. Like us. Can we not see friends that in partnership, and now friends I mean here true partnership, everything comes together?

UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: God bless everything! Make me come together! Like this!

REVEREND SYKES: So friends we come to see together once again tonight that the answer… is partnership.

UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: I don’t know what you mean by that word. Tell me what you mean by that word.

REVEREND SYKES: Friends what I mean is nothing less than a miracle.

THE PARTNERSHIP SINGERS: A miracle…

REVEREND SYKES: Friends, whether you choose to become a partner with God by just picking up your telephone and dialing us here at the Partnership Pledge Center at 1-800-PARTNER, and becoming a Lifetime And Beyond Partner with your contributing subscription of five hundred dollars or more, or whether you choose to dial us here at 1- 800-PARTNER and become a Lifetime Partner With God for two hundred and fifty dollars, or a Star Partner for one hundred, or a Personal Friend Of Ugolino Partner for fifty, or yes friends even an equally important Prayer Partner for just twenty dollars, whatever you choose, something will happen. Friends, what will happen?

UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: Friends, as subscribing members of the Reverend Hart Lee Sykes’s Partners With God Club you can expect the entry of the Almighty Lord Jesus into your own personal life in twenty-four hours or less.

REVEREND SYKES: That’s exactly right the entry of Jesus into your life. The habitation by Jesus of your own heart. The existence of the Lord Himself inside each of you, as He is inside all of us here at the Partnership Pledge Center studio. What a glorious and miraculous thing! Partnership!

THE PARTNERSHIP SINGERS: Miracle, glory, partnership…

UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: Inside out!

REVEREND SYKES: What was that, now?

UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: Let us not forget, friends, that all subscriptions are deductible from love.

REVEREND SYKES: Were you trying to say just now that the entry of Jesus into an individual’s life will in some theological sense turn that individual inside out?

UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: Pardon me?

THE PARTNERSHIP SINGERS: What, oh what, was he trying to say…? REVEREND SYKES: Friends, did the acknowledged tweeter of the Lord’s own sound system mean that when Jesus dwells in us, we dwell in Jesus? Can this be what he meant?

UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: I’m a pretty boy.

THE PARTNERSHIP SINGERS: Oh, is he not a pretty pretty boy…? REVEREND SYKES: But friends this would have the spiritual consequence that all our dreams and wishes and needs and goals and desires of our own lives also become Jesus’s desires. And thus that in true partnership with God, the desires of each individual man, woman and child become the desires of Jesus, in Jesus’s name.

UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: Women have desires, buster. Don’t think they don’t have desires.

REVEREND SYKES: Of course women have desires, friends, everyone has desires in their lives, that’s part of the experience of what it is to be human in God’s world. We all have desires, friends. And now we can see that if all us partners work together, in the Lord’s soil, our desires are automatically spiritually transformed into Jesus’s desires, too. UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: Holy cow!