Five minutes later, she was gone. Morrell and I went down to Devon Avenue for samosas and curry, but I found it hard to recapture my earlier celebratory mood.
10
Unions? Not a Prayer!
“Heavenly Father, Your power fills us with awe, and yet You condescend to love us. Your love pours down on us constantly and as its proof, You sent us Your darling Son as a precious gift to bring us close to You.” Pastor Andrés’s public voice was deep and rumbly; with the mike over amplifying him, and the faint Hispanic accent, he was hard to understand. At first I strained to follow him, but now my attention wandered.
When Andrés first came into the meeting room with Billy the Kid, I’d been startled enough to wake up for a moment: the pastor was the man I’d bumped into yesterday morning at Fly the Flag—the one who wondered if I were drunk at nine in the morning. His church, Mt. Ararat Church of Holiness in Zion, was where Rose Dorrado and her children worshiped. I knew the ministers at these fundamentalist churches wielded tremendous authority in the lives of their congregations; maybe Rose had confided her fears about sabotage to Andrés. And maybe, in turn, Andrés had persuaded the plant owner to explain why he wouldn’t bring in the cops to investigate the sabotage.
It wasn’t possible to squeeze past all the people between me and the front of the room to talk to him before the service; I’d intercept him on his way out at the end. If the service ever did end. Every now and then, what seemed to be an approaching climax jerked me briefly awake, but the pastor’s deep voice and accent were a perfect lullaby, and I would drift off again.
“With Your Son, You show us the way and the truth and the light, with Him at our head we will move through all life’s obstacles to that glorious place where we will know no obstacles, no grief, where You will wipe away all our tears.”
Nearby, other heads were nodding, or eyes shifting to wristwatches, the way we used surreptitiously to peek at each other’s test papers in high school, all the time imagining no one could tell our eyes weren’t glued to our own desktops.
In the front row, Aunt Jacqui had her hands folded piously in prayer, but I caught a glimpse of her thumbs moving on some handheld device. Today, she was wearing a severe black dress that didn’t quite match the evangelical mood of the meeting, despite its color: it was cinched tightly to show off her slim waist, and the buttons down the front ended around her thighs, allowing me to see that the design on her panty hose went all the way up her legs.
Next to me Marcena was sleeping in earnest, her breath coming in quiet little puffs, but her head bobbed forward as if she were nodding in prayer—no doubt a skill she’d learned at her fancy girls’ school in England.
When we’d left Morrell’s condo at six-thirty, her face was gray and drawn; she’d slumped in the passenger seat, groaning. “I can’t believe I’m going to chapel at dawn after three hours’ sleep. This is like being back at Queen Margaret’s, trying to make the headmistress believe I hadn’t crept into hall after hours. Wake me when we’re ten minutes from By-Smart so I can put on my face.”
I knew how little sleep she’d had, because I knew what time she’d gotten in last night: three-fifteen. And I knew that because Mitch had announced her arrival with considerable vigor. As soon as he started barking, Peppy joined in. Morrell and I lay in bed, arguing over who had to get out of bed to deal with them.
“They’re your dogs,” Morrell said.
“She’s your friend.”
“Yeah, but she isn’t barking.”
“Only in the sense of barking mad, and, anyway, she provoked them,” I grumbled, but it was still me who stumbled down the hall to quiet them.
Marcena was in the kitchen, drinking another beer, and letting Mitch play tug-of-war with her gloves. Peppy was on the perimeter, dancing and snarling because she wasn’t included in the game. Marcena apologized for waking the house.
“Stop playing with Mitch so I can get them to lie down and shut up,” I snapped. “What kind of meeting went on this late?” I took the gloves away from Mitch, and forced both dogs to lie down and stay.
“Oh, we were inspecting community sites,” Marcena said, wiggling her eyebrows. “What time do we need to set out? It really takes almost an hour? If I’m not up by six, knock on the door, will you?”
“If I remember.” I shuffled back to bed, where Morrell was already sound asleep again. I rolled over, hard, against him, but he only grunted and put an arm around me without waking up.