Free A Private Business by Barbara Nadel

then don’t bother to come here,” Maria said. “Don’t talk to me.”
    Her mother stood up. “Maybe I won’t,” she said.
    When she later reported back to Lee, Mumtaz said that she felt that some of Maria’s responses to her mother were excessively confrontational. “To me, she seems to be as much in conflict with herself as with anyone else,” she said.
    â€œSo could a person in a state like that imagine things, for want of a better word?” Lee asked.
    â€œYes, it’s possible. Very possible.”
    They both looked at the computer screen that gave them visual on the inside of the house and they watched Maria feed her cat in the kitchen. It was cramped and airless in the back of the surveillance van and Lee felt stiff and tetchy—people paid a lot of money for round-the-clock surveillance with good reason.
    â€œSo all this stalking thing could be in her head?”
    â€œIt’s plausible.”
    Lee looked back at the screen and wondered what to feel. If Maria Peters was unhinged in some way—and to him anyone in touch with God
had
to be a bit barmy—then she needed the sort of help only a doctor could give her. But, in the depths of winter, in a recession that the government was insisting was not a recession, she was paying him very well.

VI
    â€œAs you sit and you listen to the words of the Lord your God, I want you to bear in mind your prayer. This isn’t a prayer that anyone has taught you. It isn’t even a prayer that you have learned from the pages of the Holy Bible. This is your prayer, your conversation with your God and with His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Eyes closed and heads bowed in supplication, you nonetheless know that the might of God is nothing for you to fear. Among the Elect you are safe, you feel warm and at your ease in the grace of His Holy presence.
    â€œWe all know that the glory of his Rapture is almost come upon us. We feel a yearning for it and yet at the same time we experience a deep sense of calm. Because we know it’s coming. Jesus is coming, ‘as a thief in the night,’ to take all of those who have been faithful to His name, who have toiled and have witnessed and have given freely to the coming of His glorious kingdom. Safely gathered to His bosom, we will every one of us escape the Dayof Trouble, the Apocalypse, when finally and completely the Lord Jesus Christ will rid the universe of Satan and all his manifestations of evil. When death and pain and blasphemy and perversion will be washed away forever and Jesus will build a paradise on earth with us, his pure children.
    â€œI want you to pray for that, pray for that now, Chosen People of Christ. Ask him to usher the time in now. You, me, all of us, we’re all ready. Yearning, reaching toward the right words that will please Him, that will allow Him to pour His grace down upon us, to hasten His return. Mouths forming sounds that only God and His Holy Son Jesus can understand, words that …”
    A boy of about fifteen convulsed in his seat, his thick blond hair flapping down across his face as he muttered, “
Ya Ha’Mashiach! Bethel! Da ach, waa kaarch, veton Israel!
”
    And then in that cold, mist-shrouded place, people began to come to the boy and they all tried to hold him. Many of them wept, a few said they felt their souls begin to ascend.
    Betty Muller was among them, but she didn’t go to the boy. She made straight for Pastor Grint and she said, “Oh, Paul, again you’ve called the Spirit and it has come!”
    Her big, violet eyes burned with fervor and Paul Grint smiled.
    â€œI love you, Paul!” Betty said, a blurt, pouring out of her mouth almost unconsciously. Then she blushed.
    â€œBut you love the Lord above all else, don’t you, Betty?” Pastor Grint said.
    â€œYes. Yes of course I love Jesus,” she said. “Of course I love him too. And we must get Marie to the Lord