Hits & Mrs.

by Karen Stollznow

  Claudia finished her glass of wine.

  “Do you want another glass?” he asked her.

  “No thanks,” she said, “but there’s something else I want.”

  She kissed him.

  She closed her eyes as she felt his lips trace her neck and shoulders with soft, lingering kisses. One of his hands caressed her thigh while he slipped his other hand under the jersey. He began stroking her breast firmly through her silken dress. He felt her nipple harden and she gave a little moan.

  “You need to teach me another Aussie word,” she said in a breathy voice.

  “What’s that?”

  “How do you say cunnilingus in Australian?”

  He smiled at her.

  “How about I show you instead?” he said as he knelt down before her and disappeared under her dress.

  The next morning, Jeremy cooked her breakfast, or “brekkie” as he called it. He made a hearty meal of eggs, sausages, bacon, baked beans, grilled tomatoes, and mushrooms with toast and a cup of tea. Claudia noticed that the egg yolks were bright orange instead of yellow. The bacon wasn’t thin, streaky and crispy like it was back in the States, it included the meaty loin and it looked and tasted more like ham. She tried Vegemite too and thought it tasted very bitter, but she liked something similar, a salty spread called Promite.

  “I have almost a week left on my vacation,” Claudia said as she sipped her tea. “What should I see around here?”

  “There’s lots to see and do,” he said. He stared at her with his gorgeous green eyes. “You know, I have this week off before I fly out to Hong Kong. How about I become your tour guide? After all, you need me as your translator.”

  “You’re on!” she cried happily.

  They smiled at each other.

  And so their one night stand blossomed into a vacation romance.

  The following week they were inseparable. Jeremy took her to the beach and tried to teach her how to surf, without much success. They went for walks along the beach, and hikes to see rainforests and waterfalls. They went to a zoo, where she fed kangaroos and she even got to pet a koala. They looked like cuddly teddy bears but they had sharp claws. He took her out to dinner every night to try a different ethnic cuisine, and he cooked breakfast for her every morning. They also spent lots of time in bed.

  Claudia hadn’t had this much fun in a long time. To her, the Sunshine Coast was paradise.

  At the end of the week it was time for them to go back to their lives. Claudia had to return home to the Bay Area and Jeremy had to fly out to Hong Kong. They promised to keep in touch and reconnect if they ever happened to be in the same zip code. They even discussed the possibility of Claudia returning to the Sunshine Coast sometime, or Jeremy visiting her in San Francisco. They just didn’t know when their busy schedules would overlap.

  Their goodbye kiss at the airport was fraught with sadness and they held each other tightly for the longest time. Claudia fought back tears and even Jeremy’s green eyes turned a little red. Sure, they met by chance in a pub one night, but they had grown close over the past week and leaving each other was more difficult than they expected it would be. Claudia knew this had just been a fling, but Jeremy was a guy, a “bloke”, that she could really go for.

  When the plane took off she couldn’t fight her tears any longer, and she cried silently into the sleeve of her hoodie.

  The kindly old lady seated next to her reached over and took her hand.

  “Aw, darl, did you just say goodbye to someone you love?”

  She paused.

  “Yes, I did.”

  Claudia realized she had just admitted she loved Jeremy to a complete stranger before she had admitted it to him, or to herself.

  Chapter 24

  Claudia had been home for a few weeks after her trip to Australia. She was back to work and everything was back to normal, sort of. She and Jeremy had started something that was quickly becoming a long distance relationship. He was in Hong Kong on business for the next few months and they spoke with each other whenever their time zone difference allowed them to. Claudia also discovered that she was much better at phone sex nowadays…

  She prepared for another job that night. Her target was a physics professor at Cal. His wife was worried that he was also teaching biology to some of his female students, because that was what had happened when she was his student. He claimed to be working late in the library every night but in truth he could be found in the college bar. Claudia poured herself a glass of merlot for some liquid courage. She didn’t like Coors in a plastic cup. She wanted to look like a graduate student so instead of wearing her usual sexy dresses and high heels she dressed down in a Bears hoodie and distressed jeans. In fact, her jeans were so ripped and torn they were positively distraught. As she piled her hair up in a baseball cap her phone rang.

  It was Banachek.

  “Hello, my friend.”

  “Hi, Banachek! What’s up?”

  “Me,” he replied. “I’m chained up and hanging upside down,” he said like it was an everyday event.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m in my hotel room…only kidding!” he joked. “I’m preparing for a show tonight in Las Vegas. The stagehands are testing the equipment for safety. I can’t come down until they’re done, so I thought I’d give you a call…”

  “Of course,” she said. “I would have done the same thing.”

  He chuckled.

  “Well, we have a scoundrel on our hands with Gil Godsend,” he said. “Sometimes the best way to predict what a scoundrel will do is to see what other scoundrels have done. Did I ever tell you the story about the Reverend Doctor Jimmy Lee Mercy?”

  When Jimmy Lee Mercy was a baby he developed diphtheria. His parents believed he fell sick because he hadn’t been baptized yet and he wasn’t protected by God, although it probably happened because his parents didn’t immunize him against the disease. His case was so severe that he nearly died, and the doctors said his recovery was nothing short of miraculous. As a result, his parents believed he was a miracle child sent from God to save lost souls. They started preparing him for this role from an early age. Jimmy Lee was taught to sing “Hallelujah!” before he could say “Mama” or “Papa”.

  His parents were members of a Pentecostal Church in Leakesville, Mississippi. One Sunday morning the preacher’s wife announced that the preacher wouldn’t be giving a sermon that day because he was suffering from food poisoning. 6-year-old Jimmy Lee ran up on stage immediately. He grabbed the microphone and delivered an impassioned sermon that blew away the congregation. It turned out the preacher got food poisoning from a pumpkin pie that Jimmy Lee’s mother had baked, but it was never determined if she had poisoned him deliberately, or if she was just a bad cook.

  Jimmy Lee was ordained at the age of 7 and he went on to become a famous child preacher. It was said that he received his sermons in his sleep straight from the Lord.

  Jimmy Lee was a precocious little boy who preached against the evils of alcoholism and adultery, not that he knew what alcoholism and adultery were, even though his father was an alcoholic and an adulterer. From around the country the faithful flocked to see the miracle child preach the gospel, cast out demons, and heal the sick. The contributions came flooding into the collection plates, which were not plates as such, but more like four-gallon plastic wastebaskets. Elderly ladies donated money for a cuddle and a kiss from the cute boy with a head of chestnut curls who wore a suit that made him look like Little Lord Fauntleroy. Jimmy Lee’s mother sewed extra pockets into his outfits so he could stuff money into them, and he did.

  His family lived high on the hog until Jimmy Lee hit puberty and his novelty wore off. Nobody wanted to kiss a teen preacher with pimples. Then his father took off with all of the cash. Jimmy Lee never saw a dime of the money he made for his family.

  It later came to light that Jimmy Lee’s powers weren’t divine. In fact, he didn’t have any powers at all. His father noticed his knack for mimicry and
public speaking and so he trained Jimmy Lee to be a preacher. He was a harsh disciplinarian. Jimmy Lee was forced to memorize his sermons from his dramatic gestures right down to every “Amen!” If he didn’t learn his lines correctly his father punished him by sending him to bed without dinner that night, although his mother might sneak him a slice of pie. Sometimes his father pretended to suffocate Jimmy Lee with a pillow in punishment, or he bit him on the head so he wouldn’t leave visible cuts and bruises that would mar his public appearances.

  In his twenties, gone were the pimples, and Jimmy Lee was now a handsome and charismatic young man. God called him to serve the Church, for real, this time. He became an evangelist. The Reverend Doctor Jimmy Lee Mercy seduced his audience with theatrical sermons as he sang and danced like a rock star. When he strutted across the stage and walked over the backs of seats his followers believed that God was with him. But if they’d seen the same thing at a rock concert they would have thought it was the work of the devil. Jimmy Lee held services across the southern United States where he converted thousands of people and baptized them in the Holy Spirit.

  “Unless you are born again you cannot see!” he preached in his thick southern accent.

  Jimmy Lee whipped up his followers, and himself, into a frenzy of religious ecstasy. He ranted, wept, and thrust his leather-bound Bible into the air. Filled with the Holy Spirit his followers barked, jumped, twitched, babbled, laughed, rolled, and coughed up cash.

  They kept the faith and Jimmy Lee kept the money.

  Jimmy Lee and his first wife Bobby Sue left Leakesville, Mississippi, and moved to New Orleans where they founded LOVE Ministries. And Jimmy Lee certainly loved his female congregation. Bobby Sue accused him of knowing church secretary Mary Sue in the biblical sense. Jimmy Lee staunchly denied this accusation. He hired a replacement but then his second wife Mary Sue accused him of having an affair with the new church secretary.

  Jimmy Lee preached against “the demon lust” but his Ministry was rocked by sex scandals. One time he was vacationing in Italy when he was photographed by the paparazzi as he came out of a brothel. His excuse was that he asked a taxi driver to take him to a local casino. It just so happens that “casino” also means “brothel” in Italian, although that didn’t explain why he was in there for four hours. One journalist gave him the benefit of the doubt that he wanted to visit a casino and not a brothel but asked why a preacher would go to a casino anyway. Jimmy Lee replied that God told him to minister to the gambling addicts in the casino to save their souls from eternal damnation. Then he went to a gambling casino and ministered to the gambling addicts. Then he blew $66,000 on the blackjack table, earning himself the headline High Roller Holy Roller.

  Jimmy Lee was also the subject of many financial scandals. Most famously, his ministry was involved in a prayer request scam. He appeared on television beseeching his followers to mail in their prayer requests, accompanied by a donation, of course. Jimmy Lee promised to pray over each request personally. In their droves, people mailed their requests to him with cash, or if they didn’t have money, they sent in food stamps, or even their wedding rings. Jimmy Lee’s staff was instructed to pocket the donations but toss away the prayer requests without reading them. That is, after they’d collected the addresses and personal information to use in future mail outs. An investigative journalist discovered thousands of prayer requests in a dumpster. Jimmy Lee claimed they were planted there in a plot against him. A fraud investigation was launched and Jimmy Lee was indicted on six counts of mail fraud. He was eventually cleared of all charges.

  It was an act of God.

  Jimmy Lee made constant appeals to his followers, begging them to dig deep for Jesus. He once threatened he would die unless his supporters raised $2 million dollars for his ministry. They did.

  “You should have let him die,” wrote an atheist journalist.

  In response, the ministry raised an extra $3 million dollars.

  It seemed that his ministry was always on the brink of financial collapse but he had a net worth of millions of dollars, which was all tax-deductible. Jimmy Lee lived a lavish lifestyle and owned designer clothing, luxury cars, a private jet, a yacht (that he allegedly bought with donations raised for a children’s charity), and numerous palatial mansions around the world.

  “You’d be surprised how well you can praise God from the back seat of a Cadillac,” he once said.

  His followers argued in his support that God had blessed Jimmy here on earth. They would get their reward in heaven. And the end of the world was nigh. Jimmy preached from the Book of Revelations and warned of the end times when God would bring judgment on the world. His ministry sold survival kits for the apocalypse, including end of the world burgers, and rapturous hot dogs to sustain the faithful until the Second Coming. Jimmy Lee predicted the end of the world…again and again and again.

  Aside from doomsday prophesies, Jimmy Lee made other predictions. He was also believed to be a prophet and mouthpiece for God.

  “It’s not just anyone who can hear the voice of the Lord,” he said.

  He predicted earthquakes in countries that always suffer earthquakes, and wars in countries that were always at war. Some of his predictions were vague, like when he predicted that a celebrity would die or a politician would be caught having an extramarital affair. He was less successful when he predicted that God would destroy the homosexual community in America.

  During his services, Jimmy Lee preached that his congregation would witness signs, miracles and wonders. When they moved into the glory, the faithful’s teeth were filled with gold or supernaturally whitened. Miraculous weight loss was commonplace at his services (although this miracle never seemed to work on Mary Sue). It was said that when bald men were anointed with holy oil they grew hair. Sometimes when Jimmy Lee spoke about his love for Jesus, gold dust appeared on his skin and clothing. Heavenly diamonds and other precious gemstones rained from the ceiling during worship. His followers believed these were blessings, and signs that God was manifesting Himself to them. A skeptical journalist attended one of Jimmy Lee’s services and secretly collected samples of the gold and diamonds and took them to a laboratory to be analyzed. The scientists concluded that the “gold” was just glitter and the “diamonds” were cheap plastic baubles.

  The journalist remarked that God must shop at the Hobby Lobby.

  In the tradition of evangelists, Jimmy Lee was also a faith healer. His healings were miraculous, just like his miraculous recovery from diphtheria when he was a baby. He was a modern-day apostle and people believed that the power of God flowed through him. During his healing crusades the faithful lined up to be healed by his divine surgery. Sometimes the line was around the block. These people were desperate and Jimmy Lee was their last hope. In one case, a man was released from hospital to attend a service. He waited in line so long to receive prayer that he died. That was God’s will.

  When the faithful approached Jimmy Lee he knew everything about them. He had the “Gift of Knowledge”. He laid hands on them, prayed fervently and begged God for their healing. “In the name of Jesus!” he cried out as he struck them on the forehead with his magical right hand. They fell down flat on the floor every time. (Skeptics argued that they were pushed over.) Slain in the spirit, sometimes they stayed on the ground for hours.

  People who took medication were ordered to “Break free of the devil” by throwing their pills on stage because they wouldn’t need to take them anymore. If they arrived with canes or crutches Jimmy Lee threw them away because they wouldn’t need them anymore. In one of his biggest crowd-pleasers, he would heal someone in a wheelchair and order the person to jump out of the chair and push Jimmy Lee down the aisle in it! His followers believed that disease and disability were no match for a prayer and a touch from Jimmy Lee, but if someone wasn’t healed it was because their faith wasn’t strong enough, or they hadn’t donated enough money.

  Jimmy Lee was a hypocrite. Whether it was adultery, drugs, lies, or thef
t, he did all of the very things he condemned from the pulpit. Then he righteously accused his rivals of the same moral transgressions and aggressively orchestrated their downfalls. He didn’t like competition. One journalist commented, “There are numerous disgraced evangelists, but Jimmy Lee Mercy is the biggest crook of them all.” It was true, but Jimmy Lee sued the man for defamation in a bogus lawsuit and the journalist’s insurance company forced him to settle out of court.

  Every time Jimmy Lee was exposed for his exploits he confessed his sins in a tearful and repentant apology to his followers, and to God. Then he preached that to sin is human and to forgive is divine.

  “The foundation of Christianity is forgiveness!” he shouted. But he never fell from grace in the eyes of his flock. He could do no wrong because they were true believers. Instead of feeling deceived, they were relieved. Brother Mercy was saved!

  “Having forgiveness in your heart brings you closer to God!” he preached.

  His flock was very close to God.

  Even the non-religious forgave Jimmy Lee because of his abusive childhood. No wonder he was so screwed up, they thought. He was so charismatic and charming that he had a way of winning people over.

  Jimmy Lee was an American icon. It seemed that he could do no wrong.

  That is, until Banachek and his team investigated Jimmy Lee and found his faith healing to be fraudulent. They discovered many tricks and lies behind Jimmy Lee’s shows. The audience members who threw away their crutches and leaped out of their wheelchairs were Jimmy Lee’s paid stooges. But they weren’t all actors. Jimmy Lee prophesized that a woman with heart disease had many years to live. She died two days later. At one meeting Jimmy Lee prayed for a man with cancer of the spine.