Thank you for sending me your fine brochure entitled God's Farm. I appreciate your invitation to become a fruit-bearing member of Christ's Body. I like fruit very much. Bearing fruit sounds suspiciously like pregnancy, though, and I'm getting too old for that sort of thing. Also, is it necessary to be a member of Christ's Body, or could I just bear fruit associatively as it were? I know you want me to have the full God's Farm experience, but I've been to farms and I can definitely detect a heaping pile of cow manure when it's in front me.

So, how long have you been out of prison? I remember you from Nashville, you see. I remember when you went on the lam because the cops finally figured out you were fronting a very shady operation behind the doors of that store of yours with all the fake Nudie coats and rhinestone-embellished pantsuits. Imagine my surprise when I received your brochure here in California. I guess I've been gone longer than I thought.

It's been exactly three years, in fact. Three years ago this Halloween we jubilantly headed west with our dog, two cats, and a few odds and ends stuffed into our Mazda. It took a long time for me to recover, much longer than I thought it would take. I had a hard time getting the hang of socializing again, for instance, after doing without friends while exiled in the South. In Nashville I had no one to call up and chat to, no girlfriends to go shopping with, no acquaintances with like interests. I had John and the Internet for companionship. So it wasn't easy to get used to going out again, and attending more than one social event a month. When I finally started agreeing to meet people after work for drinks about a year ago I knew it was a breakthrough of sorts. Now, of course, I have something going three nights out of seven. It's so good to be home again.

So you can see that I'm not interested in turning away from the Satanic life of Adam and Worldly Lust. Far from it. I embrace it. At least, if having an occasional beer on Friday nights with Spike and the others is worldly lust I'm for it. If meeting Michael for coffee and comic book exchanges at Borrone's every other Saturday night is Satanic, okay. It's hard for me to see the harm in going to the Stanford women's volleyball games with my husband, but maybe you would think I was immured in the darkness of sin. I don't see it that way, though. For me Nashville was a cold, dark outpost of hell. I am infinitely grateful to be living in the light and bustle of my part of the world again. If that ruins my afterlife, well, I wasn't going to be turning up in the same place you are, anyway. I believe there's a special place reserved for those who manipulate the fears and innocence of others to make money.

Thanks but no thanks, Lucy

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