Parting Glances A three-way overheard

SR. SERENA SCATTERPIN: Yes, I just got the cellphone pixs from Sunshine Partners Saugatuck confab. May I make a suggestion? Don't you think it's time you got a tummy tuck? And: a few cucumber isometrics wouldn't hurt your retrograde alignment either.
CHARLES: Problem is, Sister, that I've had so many cosmetic adjustments that one more tuck I'll be all tuckered out. Like Phyllis Diller, I've had so many face lifts I ain't got no knees.
But I did meet someone nice, who is, as the French say, 'bien fait.' Well put together. He prefers experience to endowment, intelligence to barbell ineptitude. Inner beauty to outer bar-hopping. Good manners . . .
SISTER: I'll mark my Saint-a-Day desk calendar.
FR. MANLY EVERHOPE: Hi! Charles! It's Father Manly. Hope you don't mind a little three-way. Conversation wise, of course. Who's that cherubic-looking kid, er, guy behind you? He looks like he just might be catechism pen-pal material. Do find out if I can email him. He's rather photogenic. Even without clothes, he looks angelic. Reminds me of an acolyte I once knew. Posed as St. Sebastian. Without arrows, of course.
CHARLES: Obviously he left you with quite a penetrating impression, Father. It seems a number of former acolytes are doing quite well, especially in L.A.; but, then again, everybody in L.A. does quite well, one way or another. There's something in the water, either chlorinated or holy. Sip now. Skinny dip later.
SISTER: All I can say, guys, is that these days Mother Church gives with one hand and takes away with the other. Thanks to Numero 16.
CHARLES & FATHER (together): Whatever do you mean, Sister?
SISTER: On the one hand $650 million's going to the spiritual welfare and upkeep of a number of chagrined altar boys (I'm sure at the expense of retirement benefits for nuns, priests, monseigneurs, Renegade Sisters of Mary, church, cathedral, convent upkeep), and on the other, heaven's gate's now slammed shut on anybody who's not an RC (as in Roman, not Recovering).
Some get paid for getting out alive. Others can't pay enough to get in dead. What kind of bingo game's that?
FATHER: I don't know, Sister. You've got to draw the cover-all line somewhere. When it comes down to it, it's a spiritual turf war. Playing the four corners of the card's not enough. If Holy Church says there's no salvation outside its greener pastures, so what? Who mows their lawn in America anyhow?
It's nothing new. The Mormons say it. The Seventh-Day Adventists say it. The Scientologists say it. The Jehovah's Witnesses say it. The Moonies say it. And, God knows, the fundygelicals all say it — to rip-roarin' excess. Everybody wants you to buy slivers of their half-baked pie in the sky. If God . . .
VOICE OVER: Beloved friends! (If I may presume that relationship, and I of all personages feel I'm entitled to). Pardon me for this very long-distance interruption. I'm somewhat bored today (especially with the sanctimonious — Right Behind vs Left Behind — simps who've been dropping in to gawk and gush, staying around for what seems like an eternity when actually it's only been 15 gawd-awful minutes). Oddly enough, I'm curious.
This Saugatuck place — I got your cellphone photo by satellite snafu — it sounds not unlike the Garden of Eden. I gather these Sunshiners really practice the Golden Rule there, and in so doing enjoy themselves. Is that true?
SISTER: Do unto others . . . CHARLES: as you would have them . . . FATHER: do unto you. (But do leave the altar boys undone.)
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