Jack O'Connell - The Skin Palace

“As some of you know, my name is Raymond Todd and I am a broadcast journalist at Quinsigamond Radio WQSG.”

“Jesus,” Sylvia says into Perry’s ear, “I thought the voice was familiar.”

“He’s just doing the intro,” Perry whispers.

Todd waits for everyone’s full attention, gives an annoyed glance to a waiter still taking a drink order, then begins. “It is my great honor tonight to have been asked down to the museum to introduce you to some new friends of ours. Some very brave, very hard-working people who have decided to lend a hand in the struggle of a lifetime. Now it may be apparent to you that Raymond Todd is in an extraordinarily fine mood this evening. And it may occur to you that this is not the demeanor you’ve come to expect from Raymond Todd. My friends, I will not argue with you. I yield to your incisive judgment. I agree with the verdict. Because, my friends, Raymond Todd has been waging a very lonely crusade that began to appear less and less winnable with each passing dark day.”

He does his trademark pause, goes into the rubbing of the sore neck and the slow, daunted shaking of the head without ever breaking eye contact.

“I, like you, have watched this, my native land, my native city, the place of my birth on this planet, plummeting downward, racing brakeless toward the bowels of damnation. You know, people, you don’t have to be some historian, some insulated, book-touting academic, to know that at some point in the past few decades, every value and moral and treasured teaching that our chosen nation has embraced has been uprooted and cast to the ground, trampled under the feet of everything from progress to good intentions. You’ve heard me speak before. I’m not going to run down the whole litany for you.”

“Wanna bet,” Sylvia whispers, but Ratzinger hears her and gives a patronizing smile.

“Simply put, we have lost track of what is important. We have, through ignorance or willful pride, turned our backs on the only things that should matter during our time on this earth. Now I’m as guilty as the next man of losing heart, people. You’ve all heard it. You’ve heard me throwing in the towel, ready to forsake the good fight. Seems I’d forgotten one small truth that should have lit the way.”

And he closes his eyes and delivers the patented slap on the lectern that echoes through the gallery and causes at least one gin and tonic to crash to the marble floor.

Then Todd opens his eyes, points a finger into the thick of the crowd, lets a greasy smile spread across his lips and intones, “The wheels of God grind slowly, but they grind surely.”

A pocket of listeners down near the front breaks into applause. When they die down, Todd takes a good breath and speeds up, loudens up, gets wildly dramatic. “The wheels are in motion, my friends. That’s why we’re all here tonight. We’re here to turn the key together. We’re here to watch the mighty wheels of judgment begin their trip through the city of Quinsigamond.”

He spread out the last word with this weird, pseudo-Southern drawl and widens each syllable. There’s a wave of murmuring throughout the hall but Sylvia can’t tell whether people are spurred on by this misplaced evangelical sermon or just plain confused. Todd claps his hands together and raises his arms over his head like some uncoordinated boxer. Sylvia looks around to see if anyone else is finding this pretty bizarre entertainment for a museum reception sponsored by a WASP law firm.

“Without any further delay,” Todd bellows, “I give you the national coordinating director of Families United for Decency, Reverend Garland Boetell.”

The gallery floods with applause and whistles and hidden speakers somewhere play “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Sylvia changes her position to get a look at Reverend Boetell as he walks in under an exhibit banner that reads Goya: Moralist Amid Chaos. He’s a little battleship of a character, a short, pink bull, all permanently rouged cheeks and a spray-cemented cover of silky, golden-white hair. He’s got on a navy blue double-breasted suit that clamps in his girth and he takes the lectern holding a leathery, bendable Bible that he uses to wave to the crowd. On his heels is a small, reed-thin Hispanic kid of about eighteen years, dressed in a plain white robe and hemp belt, leather sandals on his feet, stooped forward and looking extremely uncomfortable.

The applause seems excessive, verging on the raspy kind of hum you’d get at a small rock concert. Perry leans into Ratzinger and whispers something in his ear. Ratzinger continues clapping his hands together, but turns his head and whispers back and they both give guilty smiles.

Sylvia puts her hand on Perry’s back and he looks at her and shakes his head, rolls his eyes and says, “The crowd up front, they’re all shills. The radio guy, Todd, he brought them with him.”

Sylvia nods, but somehow this information isn’t as funny to her. She wants to ask Perry when they can leave, but Reverend Boetell raises his hands up like an Olympic high-diver and the crowd starts to quiet down.

“My good people,” the Reverend says. “My good northern neighbors. What a genuine thrill it is to be here with you tonight in the splendid museum here. What a wonderful honor to be asked to break bread with my new friends.”

“Amen,” someone down front barks out.

“Amen is right. And bless his holy name. I am the Reverend Garland Boetell. And I know you are all familiar with my trusted assistant Fernando, saved as a child from the horrors of São Paulo on our very first Brazilian mission. Praise the Almighty.”

Boetell pulls the young man in the robe forward, this walking prop of redemption, and pats his shoulder as more whistles and cheering erupt. It’s like a high-fever dream — the staid Quinsigamond art museum transformed before everyone’s eyes into a tent revival. Sylvia looks around at the tapestries and the Rodin sculpture, a little fearful they’re suddenly going to transform themselves into something else. Hay bales. Burning crosses.

“Now I want to start off by thanking the esteemed legal firm of Walpole & Lewis for throwing this beautiful reception and helping us inaugurate the campaign they are going to remember. Praise Jesus, they will not forget this night, my friends. Years from now, when our coming battles are righteous memories, when you sit with your children and try to tell them how the ways of justice and virtue finally triumphed in our land, you will begin with this very night. You will recall these moments in this great hall, as the start of the new crusade.”

The gallery explodes with Amens and Sylvia suddenly starts to feel hot and squeamish. She looks around, trying to see if anyone else knows what the hell this man is talking about.

“It is no secret, ladies and gentlemen, that there is blight on this country. That our very nation, selected by the Lord above himself, has fallen under the wheels of a most heinous corruption. We have lost the way. We have lost our vision. We have sacrificed our divine birthright, people, handed it over like change at the tollbooth. When Mr. Todd speaks to you of pessimism, I know from whence he comes. I know how sick and lost a soul can feel when it looks out upon this sprawling land, this once pure paradise, this once chosen Judeo-Christian Eden, and sees how terribly far we have fallen. I, too, lived through that very dark, very long night of the soul’s despair. I, too, my people, have felt the fires of the evil victor’s breath on my weakened shoulders.”

A big, sudden yell now, “I have seen doom on America’s horizon and I have shuddered in the abandonment of the e-tern-al savior.”