Two in the morning and Russ parks outside, lights off.
Ivan is standing at the old women’s kitchen window, behind a set of frilly drapes pulled partially open. His hands are in his pockets—baggy black sweat pants—and his shape is illuminated by the overhead kitchen lights. He stands very still. Straight and tall.
At first, Russ thinks Ivan is staring at his own reflection, examining himself. But from the street, he can see Ivan’s view out the window: it points directly into the living room of Ivan’s backyard neighbors, where an elderly couple has fallen asleep in the glow of the forgotten television, hands clasped together on the couch.
Ivan stands in the kitchen, watching them sleep, and Russ sits in his car, watching Ivan. Russ wonders if maybe Ivan too—so strong, so sure of himself—feels like a millisecond in the middle of an infinite, stretching night. Puny, fleeting. Lost to the dark.
Ines took Russ to church. Just once. They’d already been married a year, and Ines had suddenly asked him to join. Okay, he said, and he dug out his old scratchy brown suit. Delighted and surprised by her desire to share.
Ivan was delivering the sermon.
Ivan’s Sunday speeches had changed the churchgoing community. Ivan’s religion diverted from the devout Catholicism that many of the community members had known in their home countries. It took the basic principles they knew, but allowed more. Greater. Deeper. A combination of philosophy and religion, a devotion that had no strict boundaries, yet no less intensity, a formal introduction into American philosophy, all under the discerning gaze of God. Ines explained that Ivan had become a symbol, a beacon of hope: You can change. You can educate yourself, you can ask questions. You do not have to be a stranger inside your body, even in this cruel country.
So Russ went. They sat in the second row of plastic chairs: the church was a converted trailer, just a long box with cheap carpet, folding chairs, and a simple wooden cross. Russ fanned himself while Ines made her rounds, hugging all the stooped old women, guiding them gently over to Russ for introductions. Hóla, Russ knows to say. Cómo está usted?
Russ knew how to greet in the formal. During long nights on duty, he’d listen to the British accent on his Rosetta Stone. How are you? Cómo está? Muy bien, gracias. Very well, thank you.
When the service started, Ines shut her eyes and sang all the songs by heart. Between, she glanced sideways at Russ, nervous and expectant. Squeezed his hand. Russ sang along without really making any sound, and the few times Ines opened her eyes, Russ tried to look exultant. They talked about divine love and divine providence, and when Russ had sweated entirely through his suit—later, he’d have to peel the fabric off his thighs—Ivan took the podium.
We are here today to talk about the nature of evil, Ivan said, first in Spanish, then in English. How might we distinguish evil from God’s inherent goodness?
At the altar, Ivan gestured with oversized hands, and Russ recognized the desperation in his gaze. Ivan was not a man seized by the fervor of religion. Ivan was a man who had written a sermon on a sheet of notebook paper, memorized it, practiced in front of the mirror. Timed to perfection, the whole thing, down to the gospel smile and the feverish “Amen.” Every tilt of the head, every impassioned squeeze of the eyelids, every time Ivan clapped his hands together in praise—all of it, a show. Beautifully performed.
Afterwards, Russ joined the snaking line to speak to his brother-in-law.
My brother, Ivan said to Russ when they reached the front. Did you enjoy the service?
Very much, Russ said.
I hope you’ll come back soon, Ivan said. God is ready to hear of your sins.
To entertain each other, Russ and Lee played never-ending games of gin rummy on the middle console, using Lee’s old, tattered deck. Between shifts, they watched movies in the break room at the station house, sprawled on the stained, fraying futon. Lee’s favorite movie was Pulp Fiction. 1994. Cameron young, just starting school, and Cynthia had been all over Lee about taking on more responsibility around the house. I should just become a hit man, Lee said. Put all this training to good use. He’d pat his gun affectionately. But despite all their talk, neither Russ nor Lee had ever used their guns. As long as Russ knew him, Lee never shot a single living thing.
It wasn’t for lack of trying. Days off, they donned Russ’s father’s hunting gear, gifted to Russ for his twenty-seventh birthday; Russ had managed to utter a halfhearted thank-you. Russ’s father had been trying to teach him to hunt since he was seven years old, but Russ could never do it, could never pull the trigger at the right moment. Could never want to. Still, he’d gone with his father, at least twice every summer. The sergeant never spoke on the car ride home.
With Lee, it was different. They would traipse into the woods at the base of the foothills, a designated hunting area, clothed in camouflage and orange neon. Russ had never understood this combination—one color meant to conceal, the other meant to alert, layered on top of one another. They’d change in the backseat of the car so Cynthia didn’t suspect (she was wary of guns, especially for recreational use). Once, Lee fell out of the backseat and into the unpaved parking lot, trying to get his legs through pant holes without flashing the entire highway. It wasn’t lying to Cynthia, not really, since they never actually hunted a single thing. It was more about the ordeal—the walk through the woods with their guns strapped awkwardly to camouflage pants, listening for the rustle of animals in bushes and hearing only themselves, that panting, aging breath.
They’d stop at this rock for lunch. Hasty, white-bread sandwiches.
Once, Lee laid flat against it, breathing hard. You ever think how old you’re getting? he asked.
Sure, Russ said.
Sometimes I think it’s going to be the end of me, Lee said. Time. It’s going to be the end of all of us, isn’t it?
Russ remembers the swell of air around them, how the wind picked up and announced itself in every branch of every tree. A warning. It whipped a plastic sandwich bag out of sight, and when Lee bounded after it, Russ almost called out: Don’t go! That time, Lee came back. He crumpled the bag in his pocket and they stomped around in the woods until it was time to go home, or Cynthia would worry.
Back in the one-room church, Ivan stared right through him. Those glassy eyes. Unsettling smile. Ivan pulled him close for a threat of a handshake. At that moment, Russ was certain that Ivan—and maybe Jesus himself—knew every one of his shameful sinner’s secrets.