-		He didn't recall much more of the concert. He wasn't certain if his choir was on key or following him at all, nor was he sure if his trumpet player or his pianist performed their parts up to an acceptable standard. He did not hear any further the majestic sounds of Mrs. Bea's organ and he did not ponder over his guitar player vacating his spot beside the pulpit before the program's end. He was only aware of his own mechanical motions and the lyrics he had to sing and the role he had to uphold for a certain period of time until the final song, the closing prayer, but he could not escape from the truth in his soul that here it was again. Here it was for the taking and how it was that someday his beating heart would still and his fever would cool and his imagination would no longer romp among the pleasure fields of his own desire. Though he tried his best to reason it all away and strove to deny the voice he heard and knew exactly what dire consequences lay in store for him if he dared to choose repeating the dark covert actions of his own black past, still his soul's vision showed to him now the sight of the woman Paula in his bed, and he felt again her hip against his and the flick of her fingers upon his wrist. He smelled her perfume and imagined the honey of her skin on his lips, and when the handshakes were through and the crowd was gone and he was at last alone in his office on the second floor of the Maxwell Street Baptist Church to surrender completely to his sensations and to the dark stranger who had once more taken up residence in his heart, he could not help but remind himself again how short his seasons beneath the sun and moon truly were. When he inevitably, as he knew he would, gave himself up to his stranger and to the pleasure fields and answered yes, yes, he was not surprised to look up then from his vision and see her before him in his doorway with that look on her face, the look he knew would be there, and Paul Ayers knew the time had come to abandon himself once more to the hot gusty gales blowing through his soul. from Where Or When Welcome To the Ralph Bland Website