On the day Jesus returned to earth, I was at my desk laboring to finish a novel that I hoped would get me hooked up with a new agent, who could help me find me a publisher, and jumpstart my writing career which was all but dead after the lackluster showing of my debut novel six years prior.

I’m not kidding—if publishing wasn’t already difficult in previous generations, it had gotten even harder recently, what with editors being constantly bombarded by so many wannabe young writers with their angsty stories, and Congress reviving the old Comstock obscenity laws forbidding vulgarity of any kind in literature. The Supreme Court sanctioned the curtailment of the First Amendment. I was livid. But I can’t talk about that right now. The Lord had arrived, and the whole earth went completely apeshit.

And rightly so. I don’t mean to understate affairs. It was just so…well, unexpected is hardly the word. In fact, a sufficient adjective eludes me at the moment. I mean, what word serves to describe the end of the age? Of all history? The end of the time of all material existence which began roughly 13.7 billion years ago? Yes, that age. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

It was a hot summer day, really hot. Climate change hot. Scattered clouds. The birds quiet under the miasmic heat (now there’s an adjective for our times), the cicadas’ squalls welling up louder as if celebrating the heat.

Connie was doing an online yoga class, and a thin voice squawked across the house. Liam was at summer camp and Zadie was curled up like a kitten in my recliner watching a cartoon on her mother’s phone. I had just warmed up a plate of leftover lasagna, trying to hold off pouring myself an early glass of wine for another hour or two in order to keep my focus.

I don’t know, maybe we should have been expecting it. Every day was an Ozone Action Day now. Greenland had melted to about the size of the Florida peninsula. More animal species were on the Endangered List than off.

And there’d been four new pandemics since COVID-19 (remember COVID? Oh my, we were so young) I mean, hadn’t we been joking It’s the apocalypse for years? Year after year for so long it quit being funny.

When I looked out the window to see what was going on—Jesus riding on the clouds with myriads of angels in his train—I realized I was not getting any more writing done today, and I went ahead and poured myself that glass of wine. A big full glass. An indecorously full glass.

And of course, when something like that happens, as a writer, you want to go and see it. You never know when something will be good material you can use later. So I mechanically slid my phone in my back pocket and slurped enough wine to keep from spilling. Zadie let out a little whine because her show had gone to buffering. Connie’s yoga class also froze up and she came into the kitchen to refill her water bottle.

“Have you seen outside?” I asked.

“What.”

“You’d better take a look for yourself. You’ll want wine.”

“Is that what that noise was?”

Oh yeah. The trumpets. That’s what first distracted me from my dystopian love story. Here I am, channeling my subterranean melancholy to dredge up some jaded, cyborg love banter when a triumphant peal of ten thousand silver clarions rattles me completely out of my groove.

The ear wants to place a jarring loud sound like that, to quickly identify it. “Dear God,” I thought. “The air conditioner can’t be going out in this heat.” It took a half a second to realize it was not the sound of failed fan bearings or the brakes from some truck or even one of the fighter jets from the nearby air force base that would occasionally go blasting just yards over the house and rattle the pictures on the walls. This was musical and, as I listened, quite lovely. So I went outside to look.

When Lord Sabbaoth appears in the sky with a vast and dense company of angels following close behind, one could be forgiven for mistaking the sight for an alien invasion. We all know how that’s supposed to look: an immense dark, usually metallic structure the size of Connecticut that blocks out the sun and hovers ominously overhead. In this case, it definitely was a massive something in the sky. But this one was blindingly white, and somehow more humanoid (as you would expect) instead of the gray-black, industrial, multi-faceted machine that seems stuck in Hollywood’s imagination.

Connie came out with the wine glass at her lips, her eyes popping open wide, and we stood there looking up at heavenly glory, wondering what was going to happen next.

“Holy Christ,” she said. “Is that…” I didn’t respond. We didn’t have words to form the question. We didn’t need to; the question seemed to answer itself the longer we stood there. All thought of space aliens left us. This was clearly not that. We passed some minutes in shock, looking, listening. Connie finished her glass of wine and ran back inside to refill it. When she came back, she had a piercing look in her eyes and tension in her shoulders.

“What’s this going to do to Cancun?” she asked in a whisper of astonishment.

“Yeah. I was just wondering that.” She looked at me, then up at Jesus, then back at me, her eyes even more ablaze. She pointed a thumb at her chest.

“Because, ahem, I’m still going.” She took another big gulp of wine that dripped down the sides of her mouth, still locked eyes with me. “I am. STILL. GOING. Damn it! I don’t know about you, but I’m going to fucking Cancun, Jason! In three weeks, I am gonna lay on that goddamn beach and drink Mojitos like a little bitch!”

“Yes, yes, of course I still want to go too! Take it easy. Cancun’s not going anywhere.” I tried to think of something to say in the moment, all in silence but for the periodic trumpet blast, looking up at the sky teeming from horizon to horizon with angels that seemed to be multiplying, pouring out of nothingness, as if they had not all arrived yet. Connie slumped down on a deck chair. Her voice grew thin like she was about to cry. She was crying.

“I’ve been so looking forward to Mojitos on the beach. Reading my book. This can’t mess that up. Jesus wouldn’t spoil our vacation, would he?”

“I wouldn’t think so, darling. I’m sure he’s got big plans though. You know, maybe the Eternal State is, well, what if it’s better than Cancun?”

“Impossible,” she spat. But I could tell the idea had caught her imagination. Her eyes slowly softened. I could see the wheels turning. She began to breathe heavily. She looked at me like a child at the gates of a theme park and I squeezed her hand. The crisis was averted.

Meanwhile…

 

You would think that the Lord would have been pleased to come back and find his people in control of America. And you would think that his people would be pretty amped enthusiastic at his return. Quite the contrary and the irony was palpable. In fact, our Christian government was having none of it. It was an alien invasion pure and simple, and that meant nukes. The entire US nuclear arsenal was set on high alert. At some point, a delegation of angels came down to explain what was going on. They even brought Bibles along with them to show the President and congressional leaders ‘chapter and verse’ where all this was described: Jesus returns, establishes a one-world monarchial government based on roughly socialist principles, with him as king of the whole planet. Oh, and the US Constitution would be null and void. Yes, including the Second Amendment.

That all came as news to them. They raised questions about literal versus figurative interpretation. They questioned the translation the angels were using. The King James was cross-referenced and appeal was made to the inspired 1611 Authorized Version. In the end, the angelic delegation returned to the sky in a huff and the Christian government officials returned to Capitol Hill where they called for immediate war against the atheistic space commies who were coming to take away their guns.

 

Back home, Connie and I stood there in the glow of wonder, I held up my glass and she clinked it with hers. I kissed her forehead. She leaned in to me and rested her head on my chest, feeling cuddly, nostalgic, and wine-happy.

“I wonder if they’ll have Mojitos in the new heavens and new earth.”

“It wouldn’t be much of a heaven if there weren’t.”

“And yoga. Will they have that?”

“They will if you want it.”

“I think I will want it.”

“Our bodies might just automatically stay fit and trim. Imagine, no beer bellies, no cellulite.”

“Oh, okay. Right.” She thought for a moment. “Well, it’s still good for meditation, and well, I just feel so much better when I’m centered, you know? What about your novel?”

“I plan to keep working on it. I’ll have to make some adjustments now. This will change the plot, and probably some characters too. Motifs and whatnot.”

“I can’t wait to read it.”