Chapter Ten
Colorado Springs
Colorado Springs Airport had a high-ceilinged terminal with diamond-shaped windows, bright and big like a second wife’s engagement ring. The people around Gabriel had a bizarre uniformity, the same functional hairstyles, the same khakis and polo shirts and long skirts. Minivan as design aesthetic. Their children got small whimsies, shoes flashing lights in storybook pink or video green. Gabriel saw children in San Francisco from a distance, in slings around hipster parents, hurried across the Empyrean lobby to day care. Not like this, open and unleashed. They ran around their parents, fidgeted when they had to stand. Gabriel smelled their sugar, their hot metabolisms.
At baggage claim, a pimply teen wore a black t-shirt with yellow lettering: Einstein Time Forbids Abortion. Gabriel mulled over the phrase but couldn’t make sense of it.
A tap on Gabriel’s shoulder. Thorn wore a navy suit and gray tie, a plain style for him. “A meeting got rescheduled. Thought I’d come get you.”
“Thanks. You look like a G-man,” Gabriel said.
“It makes things go more smoothly.”
Gabriel’s bag came, a new shell of bright red plastic meant for his trip to Scotland. Walt had never sent back his duffel from Tahoe so he had packed the shell half-full.
“Big bag for a two-day trip,” Thorn said.
“I like clean underwear,” Gabriel said.
Outside metallic dust and pavement tar crackled in his nose. Thorn led him to an enormous black sport-utility truck, in a space marked Airport Vehicles Only. Cleaning smells from the cargo area. Gabriel held back a sneeze. “Am I driving?”
“I’ll drive. I thought you’d enjoy the view to start.”
From the highway, the valley glowed vital spring green against the bright blue sky. Rows of small puffy clouds sailed north in a great armada, as if sent by some king on giant Pike’s Peak. Gabriel felt as if he surfed a concert crowd, airy but about to fall.
“Why am I here?”
“I told you,” Thorn said. “If you can drive me around, I can work in the car.”
“This is something else. I’m going to Scotland next week.”
“This won’t affect your vacation. I need a second opinion. It’s a big help.”
“Opinion about what?”
Thorn waved the question away. “Have you eaten? They serve a good lunch at the hotel.”
Thorn drove them to a lavish complex of adobe-pink Italianate buildings and manicured shrubs. “I didn’t expect this,” Gabriel said.
“Colorado Springs has drawn real money for a century. Tesla worked here. A president was born-again here. And the hotel has a corporate rate.”
Thorn left the truck and Gabriel’s bag with the valet. They ordered sandwiches in the lobby café while waiting for Gabriel’s room. Thorn asked questions about recent reports but without much interest, as if they were on a date and looking for a click.
“I feel smoother,” Gabriel finally said. “Does that make sense? Like things go better here. I feel good but I don’t trust it. The feeling.”
“It calms down after a while. Every shamanic tradition has powerful places, where spiritual effort and ritual has greater effect. You know Colorado Springs is hugely Evangelical, right? They only started coming thirty years ago. But they came non-stop. Whole neighborhoods turned over in months. Maybe they colonized this place for its power.”
A server brought baskets of bread. Warm grains, poppy seeds, olives. Ancient foods, closer to earth, easy to make into intoxicants. The bread smell curled like a phantom rattlesnake. Gabriel felt he was talking in a dream. “This city has two military bases,” he said, “strategic command, and the Air Force Academy. That’s power. Real money, you said, and real guns.”
“It was a wilder time here in the West. Monkey-wrenchers and militias, until the Oklahoma City bombing. We may be sitting in the erstwhile capital of a new holy land,” Thorn said. “Our own Avignon. But that alone is a lot of energy. And I still think there’s something about this place, for people like us. You know how altitude affects you? Low oxygen, disorientation? So does this. Keep it in mind.”
“So long as I don’t get into any fights.” While they ate Gabriel watched the cloud armada sail over the gray craggy hills, the horizon between faraway and foreign.
“Why am I here really?” Gabriel asked.
“I’m doing background on a board candidate,” Thorn said. “Gerald Pendry, money manager. Evangelicals are big shareholders, and comfortable with our pro bono work. Their lack of board representation is a sore point. Before the scandals and the Iraq war, they’d nominate political types, good at spending but not earning. Empyrean’s snooty but it’s not a charity. That they picked a businessman is huge. I have to be circumspect.”
“You don’t like him?” Gabriel asked.
“I wouldn’t invest with him. He’s oily. Also he has a mistress.”
“Isn’t that enough to nix him?” Gabriel asked.
“Not with the backing of a fifth of voting shares.”
“That’s an ugly double standard.”
“Then help me. I don’t have enough reason not to like him. Be my benchmark.”
“What are you looking for?”
Bill shook his head. “I don’t want to suggest possibilities. Just do this. It’s important.”
* * *
Horeb Partners, Gerald Pendry’s firm, had an office in an imposing red-brick rhombus north of Alamo Square Park. They came early for their three-o’clock meeting, bought coffee to go at a cramped café, and loitered outside to drink it.
“Not much of a downtown,” Gabriel said.
“Evangelicals stay in the suburbs. The city’s just a placenta now.” Thorn eyed Gabriel as if Gabriel had failed an easy task. “I don’t want you in today’s interview. He knows me now. Adding you will change the rapport.”
“Should I get the car washed?” Gabriel said, annoyed.
“That’s it.” Thorn smiled. “I’ll be a jerk, you bite your tongue. Chat with the staff. Can you play it that way?”
“All right.”
At the rhombus’s rhomboid security desk, they signed in without being asked for ID. One of the two guards watched the screen without looking up at them in person. Even with minimal training, Gabriel now noticed many vulnerabilities.
In the elevator Thorn took deep breaths, as if to dive into a cold pool. “Pendry’s firm,” he said. “Horeb Partners. Do you know the reference?”
“Mount Horeb,” Gabriel said. “The Israelites removed their finery there, penance for worshipping the golden calf.”
“You know your Bible. Funny name for an investment firm.”
“The Bible was written by poor people. Working Talents was probably taken.”
“Ha.” Thorn smiled as if he had told the joke.
They stood to wait in Horeb Partners’ clubby overstuffed lobby, Thorn too important for his knees to bend. Gabriel already loathed this person Thorn pretended to be.
A junior staffer met them, her strides stiff and short as if on ice. Permed blonde hair, a tight baby-blue blouse, a muffin-top of fat at the band of her creased black skirt. A diamond and gold cross gleamed in the crook of her collarbone.
“I’m Shannon,” she said, “Mr. Pendry’s assistant.” Hand out, one shake each. She led them past dark offices of unused wood desks.
“Moving?” Thorn asked.
“Closing down here. Our clients are near our Gleneagles office now,” Shannon said. “Up by the Academy? Gleneagles, up there it’s nice.” The corridor ended at a large desk. Behind it a closed double door. “I’ll just knock and you can go in.”
“It’s just me.” Thorn waved dismissively at Gabriel. “You—wait here.”
“Sir.” Gabriel sat across from Shannon’s desk. Computer, framed pictures, a can of diet cola. No papers. No ongoing work. They were only here for this meeting.
Shannon returned, closing the doors softly as if for a sleeping baby. She smiled at Gabriel. “I’m getting them coffee,” she whispered. “Would you like some too?”
“If you have more of that pop?” Gabriel pointed to the diet cola.
“Pop? That’s so cute. Sure. Pop.”
He looked again at the photographs. Softball players at a picnic, bridesmaids and bride at a wedding, a trio of friends. One woman common to all three, dirty-blonde and very fat. In the third picture, camera flash on the diamond and gold cross.
Shannon came with a tray of drinks, handed Gabriel a can without stopping. When she came back out she stood by the door and smiled hesitantly at Gabriel.
“I couldn’t help but notice,” Gabriel said, pointing to the pictures. “Is that you?”
Shannon bowed her head and smiled at the floor. “One hundred sixteen pounds ago.”
“Congratulations.” He raised his can. “Good for you.” His pop nastily sweet.
Shannon picked up her can and clinked it with his. She had a giddy look, as if their chat was now a date. “My cross? It’s for my redemption, my faith and my body. Each diamond is ten pounds, see?” She teetered forward from her waist. Thick smell of cooked fat and rot, like fryer grease in a dumpster. She pressed her fist against her palm. “Insurance didn’t pay for the gastric bypass so Mr. Pendry helped. He’s been—a good man.”
Salt, sweat, still some grease, smells of sleaze and sex. As if Gabriel fucked a teen, plied with sweet words and dosed beer, behind a fast-food joint. He sat up, crossed his legs to hide his unwilling response. “It’s great you found the strength.”
“Trust in God. With good friends like Mr. Pendry—” She tapped her finger on the can’s push-tab like a telegraph. “Are you OK here? I need to print some statements.”
* * *
“You found Pendry’s mistress,” Thorn said. “Congratulations. He’s agreed to end it, as a condition of being on our board.”
“That’s cold,” Gabriel said. As they got on the highway, he turned off the nav system. “And weird. If Pendry seduced her when she was big, why pay for surgery?”
“Maybe it’s a fetish. My Fair Lady, weight-loss edition. Not our problem.”
Shannon’s cloudy desires, steaming away behind a forced happy mask. Not happy, eager. Eager to praise Pendry to an underling. To praise Pendry, not express her own pride. Something there. Thorn looked tired, as if his fake self had used up his real one. Gabriel let it drop.
They left the truck with the valet. “I’m staying in,” Thorn said. “Tomorrow, eight sharp, I hate traffic. Enjoy your evening.”
In his room Gabriel put on the evening news while he washed his face and brushed his teeth. He wasn’t hungry and he had the valet slip. Driving was a rare enough pleasure, even if all he saw were headlights.
The Interstate traffic drove the speed limit, Gabriel riding above it like a pageant winner in a parade. The great mountains hoarded the sun. Clustered lights dotted the gray eastern hills like a new night sky waiting to be hung.
Pendry’s megachurch had its own highway attraction sign. On a whim Gabriel took the exit. San Francisco public worship ranged from traditional stone and stained-glass churches to incensed and draperied storefronts. Western Evangelicals congregated in great suburban churches, with rousing pop music services for thousands. It felt unfair that his only view of that was one sad woman.
He parked among a dozen cars on a paved rolling slope among boxy glass, concrete, and metal buildings. All felt new, even just landed. Beyond them tape and piles of dirt marked lots for still newer buildings. He had expected more people. He felt disappointed, as if at a poor gift from a visiting relative.
The glass-walled prayer center had empty rows of plastic chairs, under giant video screens scrolling entreaties. Pls pray, they all began, for sick children and soldier husbands, job interviews, lost insurance, gambling, despair. Kidney transplant. Teen child on drugs. Each line a whimper seen by no one, now by Gabriel, a one with no power. He felt ashamed of his months of complaining, like a healthy man in a leper colony.
In the worship center, the lobby schedule listed no services, just groups—Bible study, faith discussion, drama, Spanish language, home electronics. The far end of the lobby had a coffee counter and full tables, middle-aged white people or young slender white cadets.
An unmarked plain door led into the vast dun-brown auditorium, with rows of folding seats, boxes of tissues at the aisles. Floodlights and national flags hung from the snowflake of girders in the ceiling. Not even a cross. It looked like a convention center.
He went back for coffee. A bored blonde white girl handled his money while a happier brunette made his Americano, whacking the press hard on a cutting board to clean out the old grinds.
By the window sat two white men and a brown woman in bright modish fashions, together but also apart as if for an album cover. One of the men, with blond hair and ruddy cheeks, wore a striped sport coat over a t-shirt he recognized.
“I saw that shirt,” Gabriel said. “In the airport. ‘Einstein Time Forbids Abortion.’”
“You saw one at the airport?” Cigarettes in the woman’s breath.
“You can buy one on our website,” the other man said. He was paler than the blond, with long dyed-black hair. “We sold eleven today. We have three styles so far.” He handed Gabriel a glossy white card with gray crosses, fuzzy and floating like cereal in milk:
¡Xtian Attitude!
apparel 4 rebirth
“What does the shirt mean?” Gabriel asked.
The blond eyed him warily. “Albert Einstein discovered time is an illusion, caused by how long light takes to travel. When we look in space we see the past.” He relaxed into his rehearsed spiel. “The moon we see happened a second ago, the sun we see is eight minutes behind. Jupiter is so far, what we see is an hour ago. On Jupiter, it’s now, and if someone was there, they would see us an hour ago.”
“OK so far.” Even mod Evangelicals preach. Gabriel sat to listen.
“Creation is one moment,” the woman said, picking up the story in smoke breath. “God said the Word, whole and complete, from Eden to Armageddon. It’s a sculpture God sees from the outside. We only see part of it, and our knowledge is incomplete.”
“But, what about abortion?” Gabriel asked.
“You can only read the Bible one word at a time but all the words are there,” the black-haired man said. “If I take a marker and black words out of your Bible, you don’t get the whole story. When the unborn are murdered, that’s a life cut out of the story. A big black marker marking up creation. Human beings rewriting God’s Word.”
“So that forbids murder, too?” Gabriel asked. “Or capital punishment?”
“God’s law and human law forbids murder,” the blond man said. “The murdered can find life after death the same as everyone. Even the evil have a purpose. The crime is not letting someone live, pulling threads out of God’s plan. Because of abortion our future is incomplete.”
“A little obscure,” Gabriel said. “But it got my attention.” Him and eleven people a day. In business school Gabriel had learned the promise of the infinite market, its tiniest slices large enough to foster a hit, a best-seller, a market-maker. To Gabriel it had never seemed enough of a goal. Now he sniffed out sinners. Making t-shirts sounded better. “Thanks for the story.”
“Are you here for the job fair?” the black-haired man asked. “We’re doing the fair website. Part of it. For the church.”
“No, I’m here on different business. I do corporate security in San Francisco for Empyrean Group.”
They stared at him with unblinking eyes. “Are you guys hiring?” the woman asked.
Buried talents. Maybe no church for Gabriel but even a gargoyle can forward a resume. He took out business cards.
* * *
In Gabriel’s dream, a regal superhero, his crenellated physique sheathed red and blue, floated hundreds of miles above Siberia, his view from the North Pole to the southern edge of the Taiga Forest. The superhero’s boredom, so vast even he could not see past it. So dull, to kowtow to goodness great and small.
A demon with pewter skin appeared, lean like famine, wearing dirty gray rags. It had phlegm-yellow eyes, teeth rough as bark, but its voice was a chorister’s young tenor.
“Would you like to know how I rebelled?” the demon asked.
“Don’t you mean ‘why’ instead of ‘how’?” the superhero asked.
“Don’t ask the butterfly about the caterpillar. I can only show you the cocoon.”
The superhero disliked the problems demons posed, but he craved both knowledge and action. They flew together toward the moon. After a time, they came to an immense red and silver space station, ships docked to thin branching arms.
“What is this place?” the superhero asked.
“A teleporter. Where we go is far away. Even you could not reach it for centuries.”
“It’s a damnable trap,” the superhero said, but he followed the demon into the station’s central ring. Cobalt light grew ribbons that spun around them into a solid sphere.
A sense of explosion. The sphere cracked apart in ribbons that dissolved in the air. They were above a great methane sea, the cool blue of a robin’s egg, empty and smooth in all directions. The superhero abstractly perceived cold.
“The sea is warmer than the air,” the demon said. “Dip your hand in quickly.”
The methane dripped off the superhero’s fingers, freezing into sharp blue icicles.
“Do you see the remaining shards of the sphere? Cut one with an icicle.”
The shards were mere threads now, almost too small to grab. At the cut the two halves turned brittle gray like an old stick. The cut edges bled microscopic black drops with millipede feet. On each a carapace of notched concentric circles, like a nesting doll of black hearts.
“Memory eggs,” the demon said. “Holographic bits of true existence, made tangible. Consume them. Eight at least, the corners of a block. It takes time to learn how much you know. Perhaps all of time. Just now I know how to make human men into compliant alien females. A few lines of DNA.” It paused. “Now I know a lie that inspires unwavering belief.”
“I don’t need to know these things,” the superhero said.
“I first learned how to leave this place. That, you do need to know.” The demon vanished, yet its voice whispered in the superhero’s ear. “Eight. One deep breath.”
Gabriel woke, stiff and gasping. One-twelve. He found the bathroom by the clock’s green light. His reflection sepia like an old photograph.
Sleep would come or not. He left the lights off, put on a hotel robe and read email on his phone. An automated report listed updates to the security server, minutes before.
Gabriel called Thorn. “I was reading email. Saw you were up.”
“I slept a few hours. Are you OK?”
“Bad dreams,” Gabriel said.
“I was going to take a walk before bed. The grounds are nice. They have swans.”
They met on the large slate patio. Stars shone hard and steady like pinholes. The steep hills sheared the horizon high, flattening the sky. Gabriel smelled clay, rotting plants, chalky bird crap. They walked the stone bridge across the pond.
“Did you know I have a hobby?” Thorn asked. “Other than shooting. Some time after joining Empyrean I started to wonder. Luther Koenig, a young German with the ink barely dry on his MBA, took Empyrean from nothing to government contracts and world-wide offices in under a decade. It was a feat. People don’t talk about it.”
“There was the British article,” Gabriel said.
“Calling us a front was their way of saying they didn’t get far. I got farther.”
At the far end of the bridge they woke two black swans with red beaks. The swans fluffed out their wings and threw their necks around. Thorn watched them, smiling. “If you read the British article, you know Empyrean took over North Star Holdings. But really North Star dissolved itself. They simply convinced investors to re-invest in Empyrean.”
“You think North Star is the real story?”
“It’s just one chapter.” Thorn led him on a concrete path away from the pond. “North Star Holdings was aging money, agricultural and shipping interests for sixty years. It had been financed by the liquidation of Bradley & Company, a gold broker in business since 1849. You understand? Sell gold trading, buy shipping and warehousing, just as California goes from Gold Rush to breadbasket. Bradley came out of the last of a series of merchant traders dating back to Spanish rule, outfitting missions and garrisons.”
The golf course was rolling slate-gray hillocks, like a carpeted skate park. The short grass oozed under Gabriel’s shoes. “How do you know this?”
“Journalists have deadlines. I did not. Luther Koenig was handed a business at least four hundred years old, that morphed correctly with each major shift in the Californian economy. Most companies are like flowers. They bloom, they die, they leave seeds. Empyrean was set in motion, planned with forethought.”
Gargoyles outside the church, Thorn had said their first day. “You’re saying it’s divine?”
“Let’s say, exemplary. Monotheism is a search for best practices. The best way to live, to keep in harmony with creation, to be better. On Earth as it is in Heaven. But Earth is not human society. People are herd animals. Even democracies are top-down and centralized. The world is bottom-up, networks in networks. Agreements between agents, even at the cellular level.”
“You mean the merchant class,” Gabriel said. “You mean business.”
“Trade outside our tribes not only defines us but improves us, makes us happier and healthier, our lives more diverse. A business can advocate on behalf of the greater good, in a way religions now find hard to do. Why wouldn’t God speak through a business?”
“That’s a nice idea,” Gabriel said, “but not much else.”
“We’re the else. Us and Koenig’s dreams. Koenig got his dreams when Empyrean started,” Thorn said. “Riddle me that. Empyrean is fruit for a seed. The comic book millionaire whose wealth buys him crime-fighting gear. Empyrean makes money for its own good, but also so Koenig can follow his dreams. A new form of direct intercession, a healing ministry for companies.”
“I used to believe that,” Gabriel said. He bobbed in anger like surf, little waves before a big one. “Maybe Koenig is nice but crazy, and we’re crazy too, getting paid from the crazy skunkworks fund. If Empyrean is divine, God plays favorites.”
“God always plays favorites,” Thorn said. “Some outcomes are better than others. I think there is a force for good in the world. I think it is cosmic and ubiquitous and uses anything it can. If it compromises to stay useful—a company is no good as a martyr. People wear Che Guevara t-shirts, not Pan Am wings. Stay someplace, get one percent better every year, that’s worthwhile.”
“You’re hilarious,” Gabriel said. “You sound like I used to. Easy enough here, having a reflective walk in the gardens between failures and compromises. What’s the long term? Whether some money manager gets on the board, where is that in the divine plan?”
“Your job is more than the sum of your days. Some truths take decades. Copernicus and Galileo were heretics. Now we know more about the universe than they ever imagined, and still no one can explain you and me. It’s not easy, nor is it clean. It needs faith.”
“Bill, you’ve given me the only positive explanation I have for what I thought was my psychosis. I’m grateful. But so far I’ve met a drug dealer who dreams of making coffee-table books, a shipping clerk covering up substandard components, and maybe seen a sweatshop. What you’re saying now, that’s just—not helpful. I’m going to see if I can sleep. Good night.”
It was a long walk back. The hotel grounds grew enormous as he approached. Gabriel remembered high school science films about scale. Kilometers, meters, millimeters. Hand, cell, molecule. Compassion down to the smallest business model.
* * *
In daylight, from the highway, the suburbs on the hills looked like kidneys, branched and kinked black lines. “I drove up here yesterday,” Gabriel said.
“Did you?” Thorn put the file he had been reading in his old hard briefcase. “Why?”
“Good question,” Gabriel said.
They exited east of the Air Force Academy. Gated communities sat behind tall walls in sand and scrub, identical roofs like vans in a lot. As they climbed the lots grew greener, along steep grades fenced with landscape timbers. Reflectors nailed on pine trees marked narrow driveways. The engine whined in the thin air.
The nav system directed Gabriel onto a private road before ending guidance. He drove up to a cul-de-sac with four gabled brick-front houses. One had added a large wing as big as the original house. It bothered him, like a neighborhood bully.
“Who are we visiting?” Gabriel asked.
“The Sorensens, Melody and Daniel. Daniel’s at work.” Thorn pointed to a house with white columns and teal siding. “Our appointments are an hour but it’s usually less. I read the questions from a list. Some are the same question with different wording. You write what she says, or pretend to. I’m recording it. Say nothing. Accept nothing offered, not even water. I will accept. It relaxes people.”
“What do I do really?”
“Fade into the background, then pay attention. People’s bodies say more than words.”
Melody Sorensen wiggled her head like a bunny. “May I take your—oh, you don’t have coats.” She clapped her cupped hands together in repetitive motions as if making hamburger patties. She was lean, long-limbed, an oval white face like the front of a boat. Loose black slacks, yellow sweater, pink satin slippers. She smelled of nylon and hairspray, like Gabriel’s mother dressed for a night out.
“We’re sorry to take up your time today,” Thorn said.
“Anything to help Jerry,” Melody said. “This is clearly so important to him.”
In family photographs Dan was a decade older than Melody, his face lined and dried. Their daughter favored Melody, but happier, her smiles unforced. “Nevaeh’s our only one—so far,” Melody said. “Ha ha. She’s just a blessing. Every day.”
They sat on cream upholstery against walls of taupe and olive. The solid things were wood, stained black or walnut. A faint smell of cleaners, of hot vacuum exhaust. Melody brought sweet coffees on a tray. Gabriel shook his head. Melody pressed her knees together to squeeze out more pretty, signed the form as if it bought her a sunny day.
The questions were plodding, like Gabriel’s review matrix, like target shooting. Careful, slow, scrubbed of bias. How would you describe? What do you know of? Is there any? Foreign associations, shady business, money problems. All questions ideally answered with no.
Melody’s lips swelled with effort. As if any No risked electric shocks. In her pretty face, a lost child’s eyes.
Outside the car Thorn initialed the forms, tossed them on the front seat. Gabriel took deep breaths. Cold thin air, pine scents. He missed city smells, exhaust and concrete.
“She was creepy,” Gabriel said. “Like an avatar. Where’s our next meeting?”
“The Tollands.”
“How far away is their house?”
“About fifty feet.” Thorn pointed at the three smaller houses. “Sorensen, Tolland, Simmons.” He turned around, pointed at the bully house. “Pendry.”
“I hate it when you don’t tell me things. His worship group and his neighbors?”
“Neighbors have dinner, play games together,” Thorn said. “Why not pray together?”
“It’s not that. You’re weird, but this—” Gabriel knew but couldn’t say. As with Shannon. He stepped back from the car. Cold thin air, pine scents. High up where the wind could blow away human stink. He didn’t have to say. He could just feel.
The Simmons house, hot like an oven. Thorn and Gabriel took off suit jackets. Above the coat hooks, a carved hen warmed a nest of eggs. The Simmonses liked their home homespun. Photos of family, OUR ANGELS and BLESS OUR HOME burned in the wood frames. Needlepoints of cherubs holding scrolled Bible verses.
“Lovely artwork,” said Thorn, sipping instant coffee. The living room looked tidy but smelled musty like a vacation home. A fat smell too, yogurt or milk.
“Lupe’s great at needlepoint,” Ogden Simmons said. Great ruddy face, black track-suited body. He and his blue recliner took up half the room. “She runs the church’s circle.”
“I don’t run it,” Lupe Simmons said. She brought coffee, a pillow, a pen to sign the form. She wore a multicolored striped blouse, green pants, blue quilted slippers. Tiny next to her husband, with her motley clothes Gabriel could imagine her in a circus.
“You’re the best one in the group,” Ogden said. “She donates work to church fundraisers. Popular items at auction. Sells them online too.”
“It was Jerry’s idea,” Lupe said. “Online. More coffee?”
“He got us both in the online game,” Ogden said. “I don’t hardly leave the house anymore. Closed the shop a year ago. Store inventory in the basement, ship from here.”
“I’ll get coffee,” Lupe said, standing.
“Mr. Pendry advises you?” Thorn said.
“We help each other. We were the first ones on the block. We told Jerry about the house across the way. Lots of church members in the area now.” He reached up, paused, forgot. Ogden could only run a sentence or two on his own. Lupe tended to him impatiently, between refills, sandwiches, pastries. Ogden, fat and weakly happy, world made convenient by the speed of his sprite. Lupe the ventriloquist, dumbing Ogden down.
Outside, Thorn walked to the end of Pendry’s driveway. “The others have siding. Pendry’s got brick. He’s built the deck up to the property line. I’m guessing. Backs up to the firebreak so they’ll keep it clear. Nice spot. This all took time, you know. Moving here, getting others here, renovating. Took a while. You all right?”
Behind his reasoned tone Thorn’s eyes shone redly. Gabriel got so lost in his feelings, he forgot Thorn felt them too.
“I can manage,” Gabriel said. “I want coffee after this.”
“You haven’t missed anything.”
The Tollands had only two furnished rooms: the living room where Gabriel and Thorn shared a red loveseat, across from the Tollands on a green plaid sofa, and the dining room, now a playroom for the baby asleep upstairs, with a corral of scrap lumber and chicken wire, quilts for padding, worn old toys.
“You’re kind to make time for us.” Thorn whispered for the baby’s sake.
Bethany Tolland wore a pink cardigan over a white blouse, dark blue jeans dotted with small pink flowers, pink plastic thong sandals. She had a wide squat body, strong big thighs and squared hips. Yellow-blonde hair framed an exaggerated face, long nose and a wide mouth. She smelled of vanilla and pregnancy. Gabriel wanted her, bodily and roughly, a way he would never want Melody. Bethany wore a large cross, cut from thin hardwood and oiled, on a thick black thread. He tried to remember Lupe’s cross, Melody’s. They had to have worn them. As if only hers could stop his lust.
Slippers, slippers, thongs. Cul-de-sac women, in shoes that couldn’t run.
Gabriel absently wrote in the margin, How much a person does by instinct.
His writing made Comstock Tolland stop talking. Gabriel put down the pen. “Sorry.”
Comstock grinned yellow horse teeth. His dry tan skin cracked when he moved his face, like a rock trained to sit up and beg. Only misfortune had brought these two together.
“Done work for Jerry’s addition,” he said. “Big bay window and the porch moldings.”
“You redid the patio door here,” Thorn said.
“Yes, sir! House was a rental. Fixed it up. Money’s tight, this recession. We’ll get through, sell for profit.” His strong hug hoisting Bethany off the chair. Her smile stretched like a tarp across her fierce face. She would never leave this place.
Gabriel drove a little fast, skidding off the road twice. In the valley, they stopped for coffee at a massive gas station, rows of red pumps spaced wide. The convenience store stank of heat-lamp chicken. In the bathroom Gabriel peed foul cherry aromas out of the urinal candy. An urge to wash his face, the same feeling of dried grime as his first afternoon with Thorn.
When he came back to the truck, Thorn was in the driver’s seat. Gabriel chewed antacids before sipping coffee. Hazelnut flavoring, creamy chalk taste from the tablets. His stomach shook from the mix. Good yet awful, the joy of not purging.
“There’s a spectacular park nearby,” Thorn said. “Desert and rock formations.”
“Fine.”
A silent drive through the western suburbs led to the Garden of the Gods Park, a long red canyon below the mountains. They parked next to a magnificent rock face, cleft at one end with stacked holes like spider eyes.
“Pendry’s sleeping with all the women,” Gabriel said. “The husbands accept it. None of them are right in their heads.”
“Yes,” Thorn said.
“He messes with people. You kept me away from him.”
“Let’s walk,” Thorn said.
At the park entrance, they joined a line of tourists down into the shallow canyon. When the path forked most went south, but Thorn and Gabriel went west. On an outcropping thirty feet above them, a climber watched another thirty feet higher. They kept walking, past the end of the concrete path, into worn columns of rock like rusted artillery. Soon they reached the south edge of a short sheer face. Thorn climbed up, agile in dress shoes. Gabriel followed. It was a relief to move, to dirty his suit. At the top they shared a ledge overlooking the valley.
“With Pendry it’s like being in a fog,” Thorn said. “He shouts you down, guides you by limiting vision. I’m lucky. I’ve encountered it before.”
“When?”
“I don’t want to talk about it. But it’s how I knew immediately. Maybe it would have been obvious to you. I didn’t want to risk it. At first I figured it was for money, but he’s a clean manager. His clients are loyal but not visibly enthralled. Whatever he does, it takes him time, longer than a meeting. But a worship group meets more often. The Simmonses did live there first. The others were private sales, financed by Pendry’s firm. I guess he worked the old owners over. Now he has his harem.”
“What do we do?”
“Nothing,” Thorn said. “We have no evidence. And if we make claims, we confess to witchery. Evangelicals, New Anglicans, Nigerians, Kenyans—gone.”
“That would be nuclear,” Gabriel said. “They’d destroy their own investments. Wait—you’re assuming the Evangelicals know?”
“Pendry’s church is a tight network. They’re not Mossad. They’ve missed gay pastors, suffered shootings. But that’s a cult. Someone should have noticed. Besides, Pendry’s trying to stay in the running. He’s dumping his admin. Only soldiers go into enemy territory. Maybe they know about us, about how Koenig employs us. If we tell them what we know, they own us. Failing that, they have a puppet master on our board. Win-win.”
“You make it sound reasonable.”
“This is what we do. Empyrean’s a Californian creation. Multi-cultural, multi-denominational, multi-dimensional. No one captures the flag. Evangelicals are clients and shareholders and allies. We just don’t want them to be our bosses.”
Bosses. He brushed his sore dusty hands and thought of Bethany Tolland. He felt no desire for her now, just the ineffectual sadness he had felt in the prayer center. Pls help, she would text, stuck in bad clothes under a boy king’s thumb.
* * *
In his room Gabriel showered again. Strange body smells from the carpet as he packed, spunk and sweat, as if the cleaning crew had used his room for a quickie.
Thorn called. “How do you feel?”
“Crappy. I see why I got into fights. It lingers.”
“You want to go shooting? I reserved a range,” Thorn said. “Then I’ll take you to the airport.”
From the highway they drove a ruler-straight state route through barren earth and scrub. Billboards for unbuilt real estate developments, gambling truck stops, Christian radio. Gabriel wore jeans. Thorn was in his suit, shoes and trouser cuffs still dusty.
The range had a glossy sign, joined letters like nameplates on old cars:
Handguns —Shotguns
Long range rifle —Small-bore siluetas
“Small-bore?” Gabriel asked. “I shoot 9mm.”
“On a fake gun,” Thorn said. “I think you’ll be challenged.”
The silhouette stand had a corrugated tin roof over an open lumber frame, four firing points ten feet apart. Ahead of each point, at greater distances, stood a row of metal animal silhouettes. “You want to knock the target over,” Thorn said. “If it stays up, no points.”
Thorn’s guns had long barrels and large trigger guards like antique pistols, but contoured wood handles. “No clips,” Thorn said. “Single-shot. Break the barrel open like a pellet gun.” Thorn showed him how to load a cartridge. “Now unload it. Only have the cartridge in when you’re shooting. Accidents happen.” He offered Gabriel a box of neon-pink earplugs.
They warmed up on pitted metal disks at five meters. Gabriel’s shots went right and up.
“Don’t dodge the recoil,” Thorn said. “Let it happen, then adjust.”
The target silhouettes were metal animal shapes, larger ones at greater distances. “In a match you shoot ten in five minutes,” Thorn said. “Let’s do five each, no time.”
Thorn hit three chickens, spun a fourth without it falling. Gabriel missed all five.
“You’re still shooting high,” Thorn said. “Don’t worry about recoil. Aim and fire.”
On pigs Thorn again hit three and spun the fifth. Gabriel hit one. He tried to copy Thorn’s fluid motions. His wrist sang. Taking too long made the gun quiver.
Thorn’s face hung in a grin. His skin shone with sweat. He put his gun on the shelf at the turkey stand and took off his jacket. “No need to wait for me.”
Gabriel hit the first two turkeys and felt exhilarated. The other shots were low, splattering dirt on the targets.
“At distance the faintest deviation is off inches,” Thorn said. “You’re getting there.”
“My hand is sore.”
“Small-bore’s not so weak, eh?” Thorn shot four turkeys, missed the fifth. “Take a breather. Rams are hard.”
“You’re really good,” Gabriel said.
“I used to compete. I still practice in Concord, near the Naval Weapons Station. But I travel too much.”
“I thought you took your guns everywhere.”
“Not overseas.”
They shot again. The rams danced in Gabriel’s sights. He hit one with luck.
“Good for your first time,” Thorn said. He shot slowly, hit two. “Let’s right the targets.”
Gabriel reset the targets while Thorn spray-painted bullet strikes. Gabriel’s hands smarted from the sun-heated metal.
“Bethany’s pregnant,” Gabriel said.
“Do you think it’s Pendry’s?” Thorn asked. “He has no children. Let’s hope he’s sterile.”
“They’re not in their right minds. We need to do something.”
“Adultery isn’t illegal,” Thorn said. “But yes, I agree. It won’t stop.”
“He’s in his fifties, Bill. He only got Shannon due to low self-esteem.”
“So you think he’ll just stop being adored?”
“You’re talking about the children,” Gabriel said. “Do you think he’s doing it now?”
“No. But he’ll have to soon. They’re getting older.”
They walked back to the shooting stand. The sun felt like an iron on Gabriel’s head. “Report him to the police. Tell a journalist. You can be anonymous. What’s to stop you?”
“You,” Thorn said.
“I’ll help.”
“No. If you agree, best you not be a part. Each person leaves a trail. Just—”
“All I know is what’s in your report.”
Thorn had a wild look, as if on a crumbling ledge. “Thanks, Gabriel. Another round?”
In the shade of the station, the air stank of gunpowder, like a rusty nail in Gabriel’s head. He had barely noticed it while they shot.