Free Blood of Angels by Reed Arvin

just walk over and ask her,” Stillman says. I swear to God, if he doesn’t stop smiling, I’m going to deck him.
    â€œAny reason why not?” Carl asks.
    Rayburn sits thinking a moment, then nods. “Thomas,” he says, “I’d say it’s time to see if this preacher keeps office hours.”
    Â 
    IT ’ S NEARLY THREE before I can leave for the Downtown Presbyterian Church, or DPC, as it’s known locally. There’s the usual pile of paperwork, and I need to make a dent in it now, before the Buchanan thing takes all my time. The church is only about eight blocks away from my office, and I decide to walk. My experience with preachers is next to nothing, having previously been limited to two: the first, who buried my father in a flat, dusty monotone, and the second, a flowery Episcopal priest who married me to my ex-wife. At least he looked like something, with robes as ornate as his speech. Since then, I haven’t darkened a door to a church. Towns, to me, is still a mystery. Unlike Rayburn, I don’t assume the worst about people without an actual reason. All I know about Towns right now is that we’d have a not particularly interesting argument about presidential politics and whether or not McDonald’s or Disney or whatever other big corporation is the embodiment of evil. Why she’s willing to risk her church on springing Moses Bol is still up in the air, as far as I’m concerned.
    I make it to the church in about ten minutes. I stop at the bottom of the concrete steps, looking up at the structure. The building is framed by two brick, rectangular towers that rise sixty feet on either side of a surprisingly narrow main building. To reach the entryway you pass between two formidable pillars of white stone that rise almost to the roof. Above them is a portico covered in strange hieroglyphics. Behind the pillars are three substantial, aged wooden doors, the kind of doors it would take a battering ram to knock down. The whole is covered with decades of city pollution and grime. Apparently, the wealthy white southerners who once maintained the place have long since retreated to the safety of the gated suburbs. Making matters worse, what was once an imposing structure now crouches forlornly between skyscrapers of metal and glass, and in the face of so much progress, the church looks decidedly out of place.
    There are about twenty steps, and I take them two at a time. I try the middle door, and I’m surprised to find it open. This particular block is fairly well traveled by the city’s homeless community, and I figure in a place like the DPC there are quite a few artifacts that aren’t nailed down. I enter a wide inner chamber with walls of white rock. There’s a bulletin board across the chamber, with a number of broadsheets tacked to it: Inter-Asian Alliance for Justice; Lesbian Council on Reproductive Rights; Latinos Unidos. A dozen or more groups have posted meeting times and agendas. Apparently, the Reverend Towns has put out an all-points bulletin for every victim group in the city, and the downtrodden are answering the call.
    A second set of doors opens to the sanctuary. I pull one of them open, step in, and stare. For a moment, I wonder where I am. The room is dark and brooding—the only light streams in through stained-glass windows badly in need of cleaning—but it’s not so dark that I can’t make out great towers of what look like sandstone rising at the opposite end from the floor to ceiling. Egyptian writing and symbols are visible on the walls, and a substantial molding that rings the entire room is covered in depictions of palm trees. The stained-glass windows depict scenes from the Egyptian desert, rather than the acts of apostles. The ceiling is composed of interlocking panels, each painted as part of the sky. After a few moments, things fall into place: there is the sky above, sandstone pillars around me, scenes of