TD spoke so calmly Leah wondered why she imagined he was angry. "Control is your comfort, isn't it? You want to control how you're treated. You want to control this dialogue by not answering. You want to control your wife. This provides you comfort, but comfort doesn't interest us in The Program. Strength interests us. And you only get strong by rejecting comfort. I think you need some instruction in the matter. Janie? Where's Janie?"
Chris's flesh was a sickly, green-tinted hue, his face awash with sweat.
"Back here, Teacher!"
TD smiled at the crowd. "I think it's time we teach Chris about control."
Cheers of approval.
"I think Chris's unhealthy 'need' for his wife keeps him from maximizing his growth."
Clapping. Shouts. Boos.
"I think we should free Janie from his control."
"No." Chris's voice was barely a croak; Leah was sure she alone heard him.
"What do you say, Janie?"
"You know best, TD." She headed forward, her long hair swaying, brushing the back of her tight jeans.
"Stanley John, why don't you join Janie up here?"
Abandoning the kettledrum in the back, Stanley John strode down the center aisle.
TD helped them onstage and then stood between them, his arms spread across their shoulders. "Every time you confront a fear, you refuse to let it control you. That's the difference between your Old Programming and The Program. This, Chris, is for you." He kept his eyes trained on Janie's husband as he addressed the other two. "Go ahead. Undress her. Undress each other."
Leah felt delirious, drunk, hysterical with joy or terror. She dropped her gaze as noises emerged from the crowd, sighs and grunts and shouts of encouragement. Everyone seemed to be breathing in unison. Chris staggered out into the aisle, barely making it before he dropped to one knee, his other leg bent behind him but not bearing weight.
When Leah glanced up, Winona's eager stance obstructed most of the spectacle, though she made out Janie's hands pressed palms down on the floor, the wispy sheet of her hair spread like a fan from her back to her extended arm. Stanley John labored behind her audibly, blocked from Leah's sight; she saw only the jeans and underwear bunched at his sneakers.
TD stood with his arms crossed, his eyes not on the scene before him but on Chris's crumpled figure in the aisle. Stanley John and Janie finished in a crescendo of gasps and then stood. Neither, Leah saw now, had fully disrobed. Janie rotated her jeans around the leg they'd tangled on, slid her other foot through, and pulled them up, her face red not with embarrassment but exertion. She stood unembarrassed, though a whole room had just partaken of her private, most guttural sounds. Through an evaporating haze of disbelief, Leah realized she was supposed to admire her for it.
Praise and affection rang out for Chris. Staggering up the center aisle, twisting one hand in the other like a limp kitchen rag, Chris bellowed something, his words lost in the ruckus and applause.
"You did it, man!" someone yelled. "You let go."
Winona was shrieking, her voice cracked and throaty. "You're both free now!"
TD twisted off his mike, smiled, and hopped from the stage.
Some of the viewers started to spill out of their rows. Others stayed, slumped and exhausted in the metal chairs.
Eyes narrowed, TD observed Chris's tedious progress toward the stage. Chris spotted him at the head of the aisle and yelled something else – Leah made out, "…people…the truth about you…" – then darted from the hall, banging through the doors into the night. Skate was already turning from his sentry's post at the base of the stage, his eyes somehow expressionless and inquisitive at once. TD nodded, a subtle dip of his chin. Then he turned, smiling. "The truth about me is what makes this work."
Skate moved to the exit. Before the door swung shut a second time, Leah saw the two Dobermans resolve from the darkness, black forms gathering around Skate's legs like the billow of a raincoat.
The celebration lasted until almost two. Leah chirped and giggled and ate candy, bouncing from foot to foot. Her memory went in and out. She remembered being pressed in a full-body hug by the muscular guy who helped unstack chairs – Chad – and she remembered it felt nice. She remembered holding hands with Winona, petting the sun-beaten skin of her forearm in sheer gratitude that she'd told only on Chris and not her. She recalled the remorse in Chris's eyes when he'd apologized to her, the way his features had seemed intent and broken all at once, and the image hit her so deep she felt the tears running even before she could remind herself she was crying with happiness.
After cleanup she walked back down to her cottage. Janie, flying high after TD's praise and her copulating with Stanley John, didn't even notice her solitary departure. The silhouette of a night bird drifted across the five spikes of the cedars. The smell of a distant skunk tinged the air. The night hummed with vitality, more than she'd ever felt in her nineteen years.
As she approached her cottage, a growl froze her stiff. Stretched in front of the door, one of the Dobermans raised his head, collar jingling, pupils iridescent with reflected light. Eyes trained on hers, he tipped his muzzle and resumed licking a moist paw. A sticky substance matted his legs, its color lost in the darkened fur. It was only against the pink contrast of the lapping tongue that she saw the ribbons of crimson.
The air felt at once inordinately cool. The dog groomed and rumbled, fixing her with his stare. She tried desperately to tamp down her spiraling fear, which she knew was radiating from her, an incitement to the dog. The sleek head pulled back on a muscular neck, ears on point. Flat, dead eyes studied her unblinkingly; the upper lip wrinkled away from the teeth.
She shrieked when an icy hand grasped the back of her neck. TD's voice purred over her shoulder. "Skate trained them to attack at the scent of blood." He chuckled. "Even the dogs around here don't like victims."
The Doberman rose, growling, but TD waved it back down.
"Are you still bleeding, Leah?"
She shook her head, still too fearful to take her eyes from the dog.
"I think it might be nice for you to come back to my cottage."
Brambles crunching underfoot. The flutter of a bat overhead. Alone with the Teacher on a dark trail, weeds rising head high on either side of them.
Gathering her courage, Leah forced out the question. "Where did Chris go?"
"Chris couldn't handle The Program. Some people just aren't cut out for it. Like Lisa Kander."
"So…where did he go?"
TD turned to face her, still walking ahead, only a few inches taller than she was despite the lifts she'd found hidden in a box in the back of the shoe closet. She cringed, anticipating a burst of anger, but he just laughed. "What are you worried about? That I'd injure someone who didn't agree with me?"
"No…?"
"Of course not. Skate just gave him a ride down the hill."
"Oh my God I'm so relieved I saw the dog and it was bloody around the muzzle and I should have known I'm so sorry for even thinking -"
"Sh-sh-shhhh. It's okay. I'm sure he just got into a squirrel or something. See how negativity can corrupt your thoughts?"
Her head nodded earnestly.
Nancy and Lorraine were waiting back at TD's cottage. They'd prepared his bed and laid out all his nighttime toiletries. He touched them each on the head, palm flat against their crowns. Smiling, Nancy scurried to the kitchen counter and presented a glass of mineral water and a tray laden with vitamins.
A former born-again and TD's first Lily, Lorraine shuddered, her plain features twisting. "Nancy, I told you vitamins were for the morning only."
Nancy's lower lip was already starting to tremble.
TD said, "It would be nice to have milk and strawberries."
Nancy scurried into the kitchen and emerged with a glass and another tray, strawberries arranged around the edge. TD washed down the first mouthful. Eyes on Nancy, he extended his red-stained fingers and dropped the strawberry's leafy hull. It hit the wood floor with a wet tap.