“My name is Mamoulian.”
“How do you do? I’m Chad Schuckman, this is Thomas Loomis.”
“Both saints, eh?” The young men looked mystified. “Your names. Both names of saints.”
“Saint Chad?” the blond one ventured.
“Oh, certainly. He was an English bishop; we’re speaking of the seventh century now. Thomas, of course, the great Doubter.”
He left them awhile to fetch water. Tom squirmed in his chair.
“What’s your problem?” Chad snapped. “He’s the first sniff of a convert we’ve had over here.”
“He’s weird.”
“You think the Lord cares if he’s weird?” Chad said. It was a good question, and one for which Tom was shaping a reply when their host came back in.
“Your water.”
“Do you live alone?” Chad asked. “It’s such a big house for one person.”
“Of late I’ve been alone,” Mamoulian said, proffering the glasses of water. “And I must say, I’m in serious need of help.”
I bet you are, Tom thought. The man looked at him as the idea flashed through his head, almost as though he’d said it aloud. Tom flushed, and drank his water to cover his embarrassment. It was warm. Had the English never heard of refrigerators? Mamoulian turned his attention back to Saint Chad.
“What are you two doing in the next few days?”
“The Lord’s work,” Chad returned patly.
Mamoulian nodded. “Good,” he said.
“Spreading the word.”
” `I will make you fishers of men.’ ”
“Matthew. Chapter Four,” Chad returned.
“Perhaps,” said Mamoulian, “if I allowed you to save my immortal soul, you might help me?”
“Doing what?”
Mamoulian shrugged: “I need the assistance of two healthy young animals like yourself.”
Animals? That didn’t sound too fundamentalist. Had this poor sinner never heard of Eden? No, Tom thought, looking at the man’s eyes; no, he probably never has.
“I’m afraid we’ve got other commitments,” Chad replied politely. “But we’ll be very happy to have you come along when the Reverend arrives, and have you baptized.”
“I’d like to meet the Reverend,” the man returned. Tom wasn’t certain if this wasn’t all a charade. “We have so little time before the Maker’s wrath descends,” Mamoulian was saying. Chad nodded fervently. “Then we shall be as flotsam-shall we not?-as flotsam in the flood.”
The words were the Reverend’s almost precisely. Tom heard them falling from this man’s narrow lips, and that accusation of being a Doubter came home to roost. But Chad was entranced. His face had that evangelical look that came over it during sermons; the look that Tom had always envied, but now thought positively rabid.
“Chad . . .” he began.
“Flotsam in the flood,” Chad repeated, “Hallelujah.”
Tom put his glass down beside his chair. “I think we should be going,” he said, and got up. For some reason the bare boards he stood on seemed far more than six feet away from his eyes: more like sixty. As though he was a tower about to topple, his foundations dug away. “We’ve got so many streets to cover,” he said, trying to focus on the problem at hand, which was, in a nutshell, how to get out of this house before something terrible happened.
“The Deluge,” Mamoulian announced, “is almost upon us.”
Tom reached toward Chad to wake him from his trance. The fingers at the end of his outstretched arm seemed a thousand miles from his eyes. “Chad,” he said. Saint Chad; he of the halo, pissing rainbows.
“Are you all right, boy?” the stranger asked, swiveling his fish eyes in Tom’s direction.
“I . . . feel . . .”
“What do you feel?” Mamoulian asked.
Chad was looking at him too, face innocent of concern; innocent, in fact, of all feeling. Perhaps-this thought dawned on Tom for the first time-that was why Chad’s face was so perfect. White, symmetrical and completely empty.
“Sit down,” the stranger said. “Before you fall down.”
“It’s all right,” Chad reassured him.
“No,” Tom said. His knees felt disobedient. He suspected they’d give out very soon.
“Trust me,” Chad said. Tom wanted to. Chad had usually been right in the past. “Believe me, we’re on to a good thing here. Sit down, like the gentleman said.”
“Is it the heat?”