“Why were you—can I sit down somewhere?”

“Careful, now. Christmas!” the Reverend said. Frankie felt a warm hand around his upper arm. He’d nearly toppled, and was dangling now over a torrid sea. A cow was swimming for its life beneath him, trying to get a hoof onto the roof of a half-submerged barn. “Careful,” the Reverend said again. “Right over here.” He guided Frankie to the flaming armchair. It crackled beneath him. “Just sit. I’m going to get you a glass of water.”

Frankie closed his eyes. He felt the breath of the fan across his face, heard a faucet running in the next room.

“Drink that,” the Reverend said.

He opened his eyes and took the glass. The Reverend sat down on one end of the coffee table, facing him, and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. His red bathrobe dipped into the floodwater around his boots.

“Tell you what I don’t see—not that it matters to me one way or the other. I don’t see somebody who came here to buy something.”

Frankie had nearly reached the bottom of the glass. He looked over the rim at the Reverend as he drank.

“Let me ask you something, son. How old are you?”

“Twenty-nine.”

“That’s a hard twenty-nine. You eat anything today?”

“Breakfast,” Frankie said. And then, remembering, “Lunch too.”

“Where are you from, again?”

“Jacksonville. But I grew up lower down the coast, on Merritt Island. Where NASA is.”

The Reverend glanced at the ceiling. “Those whores of Babel.” With a thumb and forefinger, he wiped the sweat from his eyes. “The heat does catch up. It makes you slow, is how it does it. Really, now. Tell me what you’re doing here.”

“What’s the Eleventh Coming?”

Frankie saw the dark skin tighten over the man’s forehead. “Don’t toy with me. You weren’t sent, so why do you want to know?”

“I saw it on your sign, out by the road. It’s not about God. It’s about them, isn’t it? On the calendars.”

The Reverend’s lips moved thoughtfully against each other. “Depends on who you consult.”

“I’m … consulting … you.”

“Mm-hmm. There’s a fee for that. Same as before.”

Frankie dug into his wallet again and counted out five one-dollar bills.

The Reverend took them with his free hand and tucked them away. He leaned back and seemed once again to x-ray Frankie with his stare. Finally, he said, “The Eleventh Coming is the eleventh time they come. They’ve been eight times, which I know only because they told me. The tenth time, they take final inventory.”

Frankie looked down into his empty glass. “Inventory of what? Of … souls?”