“‘I look like a prettier Jesus.’ Love it. Do you recall?”
“No,” replied Clemenesta, not as convinced as her partner Laura about the ineffectiveness of Christianity in comparison to TILE. Or FILE.
“Back behind the church. Underneath the neon sign — practically neon itself with the day-glo. And then there was something else behind it, away from the dumpster.” Laura tries to make out the words in her mind but can’t. “Nah, it’s gone.”
That dumpster is sin, thought Clemenesta here, drawing a line. I do not accept the eradication of the rank in total favor of the FILE; I will not accept that. Nor the things written upon it. “Who’s prettier than Jesus?” she decides to word her skepticism. “You?”
“*All* of us, maybe,” replied Laura, waving her arms around the bar even though no one else is there — oh, here comes someone, she then sees. Two young people walking in. Probably tourists in town what with the look in their eyes. Maybe from the hills.
“I think it’s *one* particular person you believe is a prettier Jesus,” spoke Clemenesta, acting like a maw now, which she was. To Laura, who was her daughter. “I think you know who that is. You worship *her* — try to weasel your way out of that (!).”
Laura thought of the 7th, and what *could* happen there if one allowed it. The pew was all set up. The gap between humanity and God filled. Blue and yellow blue and yellow blue and yellow. And from it the green and the red, in that order. Or so most Tilists say; there are some who put red over green as they do 6 over 7. But they are in the minority: every 6 out of 13 or so.
“Maw,” she finally relents. “The FILE is everything. The FILE saves, just like TILE saves. Jesus, the rank, can be cast aside now. It is *his* will, even. Yes, I went ahead and said it. It is his will,” she repeated. Clemenesta kept giving her that look (“the eye”). She would not be won over that easily.
Harking back to the neon cross, Laura envisions Jesus sacrificing his central s to saves to be done with it.
(to be continued)
Sunklands 