Page 21 - Tales the Maggid Never Told Me

Comet Klenzer

like your show—and explain the rather lengthy rap sheet the
local police undoubtedly have on file, and presumably cross-
referenced against half a dozen aliases.”
Blood screamed, “Persecution! All my life, crucified at every turn
by the powers of darkness and evil! You are just another stone in my
path, Brother Daniel. I’ll kick you out of the way, same as the rest.”
Daniel raised his palms in pacification. “Please, Reverend. I have a
roomful of telephone pledge workers next door, and these walls are
not as thick as they look. Let us attempt to resolve our differences
calmly and rationally.”
Blood abruptly remembered where he was, looked around the
corners of the room as if for hidden microphones, and flopped into a
chair. “Fine with me. You’re not going to provoke me into a fit of
apoplexy, not if I can help it. Let me spell it out for you. I have a nice
fat dossier on you, buddy. I know your grammar school teachers’
middle names. I know the address of every bed you’ve slept in for the
past eighteen months—and who was in them with you. I’ve got bank
statements, tax returns, expense reports—amazing what people
throw in their trash, isn’t it?—and the fact that you are not much of a
Christian. No, not much at all.”
“Never claimed I was. The end of the world was prophesied
long before Christ showed up to distract people with salvation.”
“Blasphemy!” Drew Blood’s professionally sheepish smile
suddenly contracted into a wolfish grin. “I am going to expose
you for what you are: a New York intellectual; a Jew; a former
assistant professor of astrophysics who couldn’t get tenure and
was ridiculed by his peers in three different academic journals.
You are Daniel Klenzer, and you are poaching in my preserve,
fishing in my stream, stealing the bread out of my children’s
mouths. I will not stand for it.”
Brother Daniel rotated his wrists, transforming his gesture of non-
aggression into one of offering, a bit of dramaturgy he often used to
great effect before the camera. “Do you really want to start a war
with me, Reverend Blood? Why not join up with me instead?
Together we could really get the message across.”
Blood snorted. “Message? You? What would I possibly want
with an apostate atheist like you?”

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