Butterfly (3 page)

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BUTTERFLY

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Lear, counted top politicians and movie stars among her friends, gave
the
parties of every

season, and had the most elegant pool of all the ones on Jamie’s ritzy route. But she was

something of a mystery. At least, Jamie thought now as he started to unzip his jeans, she

was a mystery to everyone else. But not to him. He decided he had figured her out.

Beverly Highland was known for her staunch morality. She was one of the biggest sup-

porters of the founder of the Moral Decency movement, Reverend what’s-his-name, the

television evangelist. Everyone thought of the chaste Miss Highland as a regular Miss

Prim and Proper, a pursed-mouthed disapprover of all fun things. But she had a dirty lit-

tle secret, Jamie decided. She got her kicks from watching young men swim naked in her

pool.

Well, he figured, what the heck. If he got her horny enough, maybe she would invite

him in for a romp among her dollar bills. He knew delivery boys who had gold Rolex

watches because they serviced these old Beverly Hills dames.

He got his zipper down, then he very slowly, teasingly pulled his jeans down. He

paused for a moment on the edge of the pool, giving her a good look at the body he was so

proud of, that he worked so hard to keep in shape, and then he dived in. Smoothly, cleanly,

like a hot knife going through warm butter. He torpedoed under the water the length of

the pool and surfaced at the other end, where his golden head emerged into the bright sun-

light. Then he did his laps. Casually, lazily, shooting out each long arm and scooping the

water back behind himself, effortlessly, back and forth, back and forth, finally rolling over

on his back to let the water run off him and make his tanned skin glisten.

When he pulled himself out, not even breathless, he stretched his arms over his head

and shook the water off. Knowing that she was watching him was a turn-on for Jamie. He

felt himself get hard, which pleased him because it made his cock bigger. Then he pulled

on his jeans and got down to the business of cleaning the pool.

He glanced up a few minutes later and saw that she was gone.

Beverly let go of the drape and turned away from the window. She had found out his

name. Jamie.

Then she put him out of her mind.

Her office was very businesslike. Contrasting with the rest of the house, which was lav-

ishly designed for luxury and elegance, Beverly Highland’s workplace was practical and no-

nonsense. There were two large desks—hers and her private secretary’s—mahogany file

cabinets, a Macintosh Plus computer, and a Canon copier. Maggie, her energetic secretary,

had not yet reported for work. There were letters to be dictated, guest lists to go over,

requests for charitable donations to wade through, and invitations to consider to see which

Beverly would accept, which she would decline. Beverly Highland held board directorships

for several large corporations, sat on the Board of Trustees of American Women for

International Understanding, was the chairperson of the cultural resources committee for

the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, and served on the President’s Committee for the

Arts and Humanities. There was also personal bookkeeping, which her accountant would

attend to, and three press releases to be written, which her publicist would see to. Beverly’s

staff also included two social secretaries and a public relations liaison.

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Kathryn Harvey

Resuming her place at her desk, Beverly poured some herbal tea from the silver pot

into a Sevres cup. The aroma of its spice filled the morning air. She didn’t add sugar and

had nibbled on only one of the delicate lemon biscuits set on a plate. At fifty-one, Beverly

Highland was very careful about her diet.

She looked at the calendar on her desk; it was set in an antique gold frame, a gift from

a publisher who very much wanted to publish her life story.

There was a date on it, circled in red: June 11.

It was the day Beverly Highland lived for. The day the Republican Convention

opened in Los Angeles. Everything she did, every step she took, every breath she drew,

was solely for that day.

Never, she was certain, had a presidential hopeful enjoyed such a determined supporter

as did the man who had founded Good News Ministries, the billion-dollar TV evangelical

empire. When he had announced last year that he was thinking of running for America’s

highest office, Beverly had been ecstatic. It was the fulfillment of a dream, that he would

make such a decision. And now that he had, and now that they were hurtling full steam

toward the June primaries, Beverly’s anxiousness grew every day—he
had
to make it.

And with her connections and millions, she was going to see to it that he did.

Sipping the cinnamon-spiced tea, she gazed at the photo of him that sat on her desk in

its pewter frame. He had signed it, and added, “Praise the Lord.” His charismatic smile

beamed out at her.

The Reverend had met Beverly Highland only superficially, at fund-raising dinners

and heavily publicized political events. He knew very little about her, but she knew him,

intimately. She had watched his
Good News Hour
almost every day for years, missing only

once when she was in the hospital for a hysterectomy that had involved complications.

During her rocky convalescence, she had had a VCR installed in her private room so that

she could watch tapes of his sermons, and it was those
Good News Hours,
she told the

press upon her discharge from the hospital, that had urged Beverly through a speedy

recovery. Watching him on the screen, she had told the reporters, and listening to his

dynamic voice had filled her soul with the power and strength to get up out of that bed

and get back to work.

She had written and told him as much, including in the letter a check for one million

dollars.

She gazed at the calendar. June 11.

Good News Ministries was the largest “electronic church” in the United States. It

broadcasted daily over eleven hundred TV stations, published a weekly “magazine of

power,” owned a recording company, two airlines, most of Houston, and raked in mil-

lions of dollars monthly. It was estimated that nearly 90 percent of the population of the

South watched or listened to the
Good News Hour
at least once a week; the actual church

membership figures for the entire nation were impossible to count.

There was no doubt about it, the Reverend was a powerful man.

And he emphasized moral decency.

Setting her cup on its saucer, Beverly got up from her desk and found herself walking

back to the window. She was wearing a flowing caftan; its yards of pale blue silk whispered

BUTTERFLY

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against her bare legs. With her hand on the drape, she looked down at the magnificent

terraced garden that fell away from her hilltop house. It was such a beautifully, skillfully

landscaped setting that one wouldn’t guess that the hectic Beverly Hills business and

shopping district lay not too far away, awakening for a day of commerce and traffic.

Her gaze went down to the pool.

His name was Jamie, her secretary had reported.

Beverly watched him as he guided the pool sweep through the lime-green water. His

back was damp with sweat; sunlight played on the tanned muscles. His long blond hair,

drying from his swim, fell down to his shoulders Viking-like. And the jeans were too

tight. She wondered how he could even move in them. He had the kind of rear end that

girls seemed to go for these days—round and saucy.

“Sorry!” came a breathless voice behind her. “Got stuck on the San Diego Freeway!

Again!”

Beverly turned to see her secretary, Maggie, come hurrying in, a purse slung over her

shoulder, her arms full of papers, one hand clutching an attaché case.

“No rush,” Beverly said with a smile. “We have a few minutes yet.”

“I swear it’s a conspiracy,” Maggie mumbled as she reached for the telephone console.

Punching the button for the kitchen, she said, “Every morning the traffic gets worse and

worse. I would swear that I am seeing the same stalled cars blocking the same lanes—. Hi,

kitchen? This is Maggie. Send up some coffee, would you please? And a chocolate Danish.

Thanks.” Maggie Kern, at forty-six, was plump and intended to stay that way.

As she shuffled papers on the desk and continued to mutter about a conspiracy on the

part of the bus company to get people to ride the bus—“The same cars stalled every day,

I swear it, just to tie up the freeway”—Beverly looked down again at the young, blond

pool-maintenance man.

“Ah!” Maggie said when the coffee and Danish arrived. She clicked on the TV set;

Beverly immediately turned away from the window and went to the velvet sofa. The two

women sat, both shoeless, staring at the screen.

They watched the
Good News Hour
every day before starting work. Even when Beverly

had to travel and they were flying over the country in her private jet, or when they were

in a hotel room in another city, they always spent the first hour of the day watching the

Reverend.

Prostitution and pornography were his main targets, but he had also produced a

shockingly graphic antiabortion film. He organized raids on adult movie theaters, sent

Bibles and zealous young preachers into the darkness of Forty-second Street, Hollywood

Boulevard, and Polk, and, like Beverly Highland, had been instrumental in getting

Playboy
magazine off the stands in convenience stores.

If elected president, he had promised, he was going to clean up America.

The guitars and the Good News Singers belted out a lively hymn, and then he

appeared, marching onto the set and literally shouting to his TV audience, “Brothers and

sisters, I have Good News for you!”

There was no doubt about it, the man was positively magnetic. He
breathed
power,

like some fire-breathing dragon. One felt his heat come right through the glass of the TV

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Kathryn Harvey

screen. His voltaic spirit seemed to pour out from his energetic body. It was no mystery

why the Reverend was so popular, even among nonbelievers. He was a salesman, pure and

simple. A newsman had once commented wryly that GN’s electrifying founder could sell

kangaroos to the Australians. But what the Reverend sold was God. God, and decency.

And the main target of today’s sermonic attack was a magazine called
Beefcake,
sup-

posedly a magazine for women but which, because of its photographs of nude men in

seductive poses, was reported to be a favorite among gays. “I take my Good News today

from Paul’s letter to the Romans,” the Reverend shouted out across America. “And Paul

said that because men are such fools, God has given them over to do the filthy things their

hearts desire, and they do shameful things with each other. Because of what men do, God

has given them over to shameful passions.
Even the women pervert the natural use of their

sex into unnatural practices.
”

“Brothers and sisters!” he boomed as he marched across the studio set with an enor-

mous stride. “It pains my heart to have to admit this, but there exist in our beautiful

country today, houses of sin and corruption. Evil nests where Satan spawns his minions.

Where women sell their bodies and men go in lust and sin. It is such places that under-

mine the strength of our magnificent country. How can America continue to be the

world’s number one power, the leader to which all the nations of the earth eventually

turn, if we tolerate such evil practices in our midst? If men go to houses of prostitution,

then what becomes of the blessed married state? If women sell their bodies, then how can

our children grow up pure and knowing God’s Word?”

The Reverend shook a finger heavenward and hastily mopped his sweating brow with

a white handkerchief. “I say we must
bring down
these houses of sin and corruption! We

must seek them out wherever they are and cause them to topple! We’ll carry the torches of

righteousness and put them to their corrupt walls and watch them burn, like Satan’s own

hellfires!”

“Amen,” Beverly Highland said.

“Amen,” said Maggie.

When the show was over, they sat for a few moments in silence. Then Beverly sighed

and said, “We’d better get to work. The convention is only six months away. There’s so

much to be done.”

While her secretary went to the desk and picked up the day’s agenda Beverly Highland

went again to the window and looked out.

She was just in time to see the pool-maintenance truck departing down the long drive.