The Stolen Gospels by Brian Herbert Read Free Book Online Page A

Dixie Lou asked, “Shall we begin now?” She gazed at Lori, who sat cross-legged beside her mother.
    The attention disturbed Lori, and she looked away. On a side table across the room, she noticed pots of herbal tea and ceramic mugs. She smelled something acrid, like the residue of marijuana smoke on clothing, and wished she could get to the stash in her own purse in order to relax her nerves. She thought the source of the odor might be a middle-aged woman near her who wore a cotton dress with a batik print and a bead necklace. An overage hippie by all appearances, she was the type Lori’s friends derisively referred to as “granola,” based upon a common food they were said to favor.
    Lori considered teasing her mother, telling her there was a marijuana aroma in the room, but Dixie Lou distracted her by pressing the transmitter and saying, “ Unless someone objects, we’re recording this.”
    No one spoke up.
    In a corner of the room, the red light on a holo-recorder blinked on.
    Dixie Lou spoke for several minutes about a women’s issue that bored Lori, since she didn’t care much about such matters. Why should she? Adults didn’t understand the problems she was going through as a young woman, so why should she pay attention to their concerns? She’d rather be with her friends when they gathered at a waterfront park in the middle of the night, or at their pool hall and bowling alley hangouts. She missed Jeremy, a boy she’d met at a party the week before, and with whom she’d grown close in only a few days. She thought he was cute, and liked his hip way of talking and the tiny pearl earrings he wore on both ears.
    Most of all she missed her best friend, Alicia Koppel. For more than two years they’d been inseparable, and had shared the endless problems of growing up. Now she needed Alicia more than ever, but couldn’t reach her.
    In memory she heard Alicia’s voice, saying in street slang, “ Hey dopegirl, you high-flyin’? ”
    Then Lori noticed the dog had come around behind her and was sniffing at her purse, whimpering again. It had been a police dog.
    No! Lori thought. Get away from me !
    The dog pawed the purse, and Lori pulled the bag away, holding it on her lap.
    “Bobo was the top drug-sniffer in the department,” the blind woman said.
    Thinking fast, Lori said, “I had some food in my purse today, and he probably smells it.” She nudged the animal away, and reluctantly it returned to its master.
    The “granola” woman—despite the aroma around her—appeared to be of no interest to the dog.
    Without looking, Lori knew her mother was staring at her, and the teenager felt her face burning. Maybe she could get to the bathroom and flush the stuff down the toilet.
    Dixie Lou asked everyone to hold hands, which Lori refused to do, and instead she kept her arms folded across her chest. Jackson uttered a strange prayer to an entity she called “She-God,” which she described as “all-powerful” and “the hope for womankind.” Then she asked those in attendance to identify themselves by name and occupation.
    She-God ? Comparative Religion was one of the few classes Lori had enjoyed in high school (and she’d done well in it), but she’d never heard of a deity by that name. She wanted to tell herself it was just another absurdity in a long line of ridiculous things in her mother’s life. But Lori wasn’t so certain this time.
    One by one the attendees identified themselves, with Camilla going first, providing a bland description of her secretarial job for the Fort Lawton Army base in Seattle, in a civilian secretarial pool. The participants moved around the circle away from Lori, and a wiry woman with dark hair said she owned an herbal pharmacy in the suburbs, with exotic ingredients imported from all over the world. The sari-adorned woman, with a pinched face and tiny eyes, spoke of a She-God temple—whatever that was—in her backyard, and said she sold handmade religious paraphernalia.