The Congregation squinted at the world through oily windows. Its derelict air was only partly relieved by a large and presumably symbolic sign that depicted an Egyptian pyramid incongruously balancing what seemed to be a stopwatch at its apex. The stopwatch, in orange neon, perpetually counted down the last fifteen seconds before eternity, and then, at eternity minus one, repositioned its second hand. The idea that eternity was negotiable provided the sole note of optimism.
There was no traffic at all. Even at four p.m. on a gray, rainwashed Sunday afternoon it seemed to me there should have been more.
Eleanor had asked her question the first time we circled the block, and now she peered through the window, furrows of worry lining her flawless forehead. "Why are they here? If religions make so much money, what are these people doing here?"
"Waiting for a bigger piece of the pie," I said, using an expression I knew she hated.
"Don't say that. It reduces the whole world to calories."
"Well, then, they're anticipating upward mobility," I said, looking for a parking space. "Demonstrating their faith. Think about the early Christians. Their sign was a drawing of a fish, carved in wood, not in neon. They met in dripping catacombs beneath the ground, in secret. If you'd been an early Roman real-estate agent, what odds would you have given that they'd eventually own the Vatican?"
"Anyway," Eleanor said, changing arguments as I maneuvered Alice into a microscopic slot between a Hyundai and a Hyundai, yet more evidence that the Koreans shall inherit the earth, "I think you've finally closed the door on whatever's left of your common sense. Impersonating a reporter? Don't you know that reporters are the only privileged class left in America?"
"Not quite," I said. "There are feminists."
"A laugh a line," she said.
"Besides, half the people who are real reporters are impersonating a reporter. Look at network anchors. You, at least, have a real press pass."
"I'm a writer, not a reporter," Eleanor said. "And this is Sunday. I should be correcting book galleys. Are you aware that this is Sunday?"
"Churches are open on Sunday, Eleanor. Remember?"
"I wasn't talking about the church. I was talking about you and me. Simeon, what the hell are we doing here?"
"We're going to ask these nice folks about the Church of the Eternal Moment. We're going to get a jaundiced view, to put it mildly. The Congregation of the Present, according to Chantra, is a grudge-carrying spin-off of the original Church, and they think they're talking to an L.A. Times reporter who just might nail the Church to the floor with a well-chosen adjective or two while making the Congregation look like the most reverent gathering since the Last Supper. Haven't we been over this before?"
"Judas was at the Last Supper."
"Every hostess makes a mistake once in a while."
"I'm not a detective," she said. "I've never wanted to be a detective. I didn't even want you to be a detective. Why did I let you talk me into this?"
"Why ask me? Do I know how your mind works? Have I ever known how your mind works?" I killed the engine, hoping I'd be able to bid it to rise again. "It's just this once, Eleanor. It won't kill you."
"Says you."
"Have you got your notebook?"
"If you ask me one more time whether I've got my notebook, I'm going to throw it out the window."
"Let's go, then." I reached across her and opened her door, less out of courtesy than from a conviction that she wouldn't get out at all if I didn't. She made a harrumphing sound and stepped out, directly into the path of the first moving automobile we'd seen in ten minutes. Its driver honked, swerved theatrically, and made a rude hand sign at us.
"Don't get killed yet," I said, getting out. "I'd just have to get a replacement, and I don't know where I could find anyone else dumb enough."
She stepped up onto the curb and straightened her skirt fussily. "You look very establishment," I said. "Just right for a card-carrying lackey of the imperialist running-dog press."
"Put a cork in the banter," Eleanor said shortly, "and let's get it over with."
The door to the Congregation of the Present swung open in front of us, revealing an empty waiting room. The congregation was evidently elsewhere. A bedraggled hanging arrangement of long neon tubes, trailing frayed-looking electrical wires, hummed at us and provided flat, cold light. The walls were a pale, sickly institutional green, bare except for two large and somewhat faded photographs of a woman and a little girl-not Angel and Mary Claire Ellspeth-and the floor was a hodgepodge of scuffed brown linoleum, warped and buckled in places. Here and there the linoleum had peeled away altogether, revealing the concrete slab beneath. A bucket in a near corner caught the slow drip of water that had collected on the roof.
"Very nice," Eleanor said. "We must spend more Sundays together. Your Los Angeles is so picturesque."
"Look intelligent," I said. "You're on Candid Camera. Don't look around for it. It's in the far corner, up near the ceiling."
"Gee," she said, giving me a big mean smile. "I hope my seams are straight."
"Make a note. Glance around inquiringly and write something in your notebook. And don't overact."
Eleanor opened her spiral binder and uncapped her pen with her perfect white teeth, SIMEON IS A SCHMUCK, she wrote. As she snapped the pad shut, a door slid open beneath the television camera and an enormous woman came in.
"Good afternoon and welcome to our home," she said, looking dourly from Eleanor to me. "I'm Sister Zachary. May I help you?" Sister Zachary was as big as a split-level house and she had draped her bulk in something that looked like a dust cover for a couch. White and flowing, it swept the dirty floor as she approached us. It was the first time the floor had been swept in some time.
"This is Miss Chan, from the Times," I said. "She's here to see Dr. Wilburforce."
Sister Zachary had a small dark mustache above tight, disapproving lips. She regarded Eleanor over it for a moment, then nodded reluctant acknowledgment and turned to me. "And you are?"
"My associate," Eleanor interposed, "Mr. Swinburne."
"That's an unusual name," Sister Zachary said grudgingly. "Are you related to the poet?"
"Very distantly. Not as distantly as I'd like, I'm afraid." Eleanor knew that I loathed Swinburne above all other poets, and that was saying quite a lot.
"Dr. Wilburforce is waiting for you, although I must say he was only expecting one." Her pursed little mouth turned down at the corners briefly and then she tugged it back up into a stiff, creaky smile of welcome. "Still, I suppose it'll be all right. Will you please follow me?" She swayed left as a preparation for turning, swayed back to the right to overcome inertia, and then launched herself back toward the door. Eleanor scrawled a note; yikes, it said.
"Where's the congregation?" she asked Sister Zachary's back as the Sister slid the door open.
"We're between services," Sister Zachary said without turning around. "The next gathering is at six."
"How many gatherings each day?" Eleanor pushed imperiously in front of me to go through the door first. I followed like a good dachshund.
"There used to be four," Sister Zachary said. Her voice was a bit wistful. "Now there are only two."
"And why is that?"
"Faith is falling off, don't you know," the fat lady said over her shoulder. We were trailing in single file down a narrow hallway with pasteboard walls, an obvious architectural gerrymander that skirted the large room to our left, where the worshipers, or what was left of them, gathered for devotions. Sister Zachary's ample hips brushed the walls on either side. "It's not just the Congregation," she added defensively. "It's the national climate. Young people don't believe in anything anymore."