The Most Dangerous Place on Earth(42)
—
Sarah had long russet hair that trailed into his mouth when they lay in spoons on piles of blankets and rugs on the floor. Her eyes were the color of mint. Pale and clear. Wide open.
They’d met on Valencia Street three months before. The day was windy, fog scudding across the sky. He walked down the street in slim dark jeans, a black T-shirt and hoodie. The hoodie was two sizes too big, but he liked the bulk it lent him. Hunching against the wind, he pulled the hood over his head. But in the moment he saw Sarah, the wind whipped back, stirred his hair and shocked his ears.
She was passing out flyers on the street. Although she was short, her body looked curvy and full under an oversized apple-red sweater and two pink and gold scarves that wound in loose cowls around her neck. Her hair was tangled and her cheeks pink from the slaps of the wind. The papers in her hand were small and bright and she was giving them away. Smiling in earnest and walking up to people on the street, extending offerings to those who passed pretending not to see her or turned their heads to roll their eyes and smirk. No matter how many people walked by, she continued to smile with clean, white teeth.
Behind her stood a dingy, white-box building with colored paper flags strung over the threshold; the flags twisted in the wind and smacked against the edges of the door. A sign above read, HIS UNIVERSAL LOVE MINISTRIES. As Nick approached, the door opened, and yellow light spilled onto the street, along with the hum of people mingling inside. But Sarah was outside, alone.
Nick pulled his hood over his head. He’d been harassed by plenty of Jesus freaks in the city before, and wasn’t in the mood to be indoctrinated. He fingered the plastic earbuds that he wore looped around his neck so he could slip them in at a moment’s notice, block out the noise of the world. Sped up to pass her so he wouldn’t have to be another asshole turning her down. He was that asshole, but didn’t, for some reason, want her to know.
But she reached out to him, catching the edge of his sleeve. Her touch was slight, a small bird finding footing.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Can I ask you something?” When she spoke, there was the smallest something wrong with it, a hint of a childhood lisp—it should have annoyed him but didn’t. She gazed up at him and he noticed the daubing of freckles on her nose and over the tops of her cheeks. She said, “Are you happy?”
“What?”
“There is love all around you. You don’t have to be alone.”
Nick searched her face for a hint that she was messing with him, but her eyes were wide open, her gaze unwavering. “Are you serious?”
She smiled. “Why don’t you come inside? There’s coffee. And cookies, I think.”
“Oh, fuck. Hold up. We talking Oreos? Or some, like, cardboard Nilla Wafer shit?”
She laughed, tilting her head back. The curve of her neck was creamy white. “I’m Sarah,” she said. That lisp again. Her hands, as she took his and led him into the white-box church, were precise and small and soft, and he told himself, She’s blazed or crazy, walk away, but something within him that was deeper than cynicism and deeper than embarrassment and deeper than fear said, Stay.
Nick went back to the church, again and again, until Sarah agreed to go out with him.
In Mill Valley, believing in God was something you just didn’t talk about. But his friend Ryan’s family was Christian, and once, when after a sleepover Nick’s parents had been too busy to pick him up, Nick had gone with the Harbingers to church. And the pastor or reverend or whatever had trembled red and declared that God was their constant companion, and Jesus the Truth and the Light. There was a whole thing about how God was Jesus and Jesus was God that made no sense, but Nick didn’t worry about that. He remembered instead the after part, when he stood in line with Ryan and his mom and dad and little sister, and when their turn came, the pastor gripped Nick’s hand in both of his and told him, “Son, always remember that Jesus loves you. No matter what.” Nick stared back, his hand trapped in the pastor’s palms. Beside him, Ryan jabbed his ribs. Nick just stood there, the squeeze of palms so wet and close that he wanted to pull away, but, just for a minute, he didn’t.
The first day he entered Sarah’s church, he wanted to laugh. The mantras, the chanting, the sitting cross-legged on the dusty floor discussing God’s abiding love—it all seemed so self-conscious, pretentious. The old guru in charge had taken the bits and pieces of religions that he wanted and left the rest behind. Nick couldn’t believe in it. But he did believe in Sarah.
So he stayed. Removed his shoes and socks and sat beside Sarah and watched as she placed her palms on her knees and closed her eyes.
“There is nothing but this moment,” the guru said. “We will close our eyes and feel the universal love move through us.”
Nick stifled his laugh by fake-coughing.
The guru said, “Now we will make one sound together.”
The people in the circle puffed their bellies, and then a low hum carried through the room, building power slowly, reverberating. Nick smirked and turned to Sarah, but she had her eyes squeezed shut and was humming as earnestly as all the others.
The rug they sat on was old and gritted and had bald patches in its oriental pattern. This was something his mother wouldn’t stand for. He stared at it, at one space where the rug had been worn but not worn through, and as he stared he shook his foot, which kept tingling and falling asleep, and felt the presence of Sarah’s body beside him and tried not to hear what the guru was droning on and on about. When the guru finally shut up, Nick closed his eyes and listened to the silence. The room smelled increasingly of feet. There was the occasional cough or sigh and, once, a low, whistling fart that cracked him up, but when he opened his eyes, he saw that the guru was staring at him and that no one else had laughed or even seemed to notice, so he made a straight face and forced himself to watch the worn spot on the carpet until after a year or two passed someone finally said,