Cult Classic(26)

“I wouldn’t know. But I do know that no one who’s in a cult thinks they’re in a cult. Maybe you’re in a cult masquerading as a secret society. And Clive is your leader. Are you sure you haven’t had sex with him? Maybe he called it something else, like a ‘cleansing ceremony’?”

“You’re not funny.”

“Welp, you’re either in a cult or you’re a creative director,” I said, handing her back the card. “I’m not sure which is worse.”

“Keep it, it’s yours.”

“I can’t believe you managed to keep whatever this is from me. It must have been slowly killing you. I can’t decide if I’m pissed or impressed.”

“Lola! I’m not trying to be cloak-and-daggery. I just need you to come with me. All will be revealed. Why is this so hard? God, you’re so punishing.”

“What is with that word? I am not punishing.”

“Judgmental, maybe. Opinionated. Aren’t you at least curious?”

“Not really! You left me out of it for this long. You and Clive, apparently. Your new best friend. Also, if I’m being honest? Every time you drag me to some secret location, I wind up taking MDMA and talking to assholes in jumpsuits.”

“This isn’t that, I promise,” she whined. “Come on, I never ask you for anything.”

“You ask me for things all the time.”

She sighed and flapped her arms. It was unsettling to see her like this. The power balance in our friendship had always been weighted in her direction, not because she courted it but because she took for granted that the world would bend to her will—and so it did. The city was chockablock with genetic winners who still had to pay for their own meals and wait in line at the DMV. But Vadis’s conviction that the world would do for her was foregone, not manipulative. If I decided to be the kind of person that forgets to renew her passport but still manages to leave the country, I could be Vadis tomorrow.

We rounded the corner, metal doors in the sidewalk making a racket when we stepped on them. We came to the street with the same bright bodega where I’d purchased my cigarettes the night I saw Amos. The plastic cat was waving from its perch on the register. I remembered those cats were meant to symbolize luck. Good omens.

“Et voilà!” Vadis exclaimed.

It was an anticlimactic sight. Wedged between the bodega and a former tenement building was an old synagogue. I must have passed it a dozen times but had never really noticed it before. It looked uncomfortable, crammed between its modern neighbors, condos on one side and the bodega on the other, as if it had come second. There were turrets on each corner, guarded by a pair of lions, leering downward and frozen mid-roar. Beneath their paws were hooded security cameras. All the windows were boarded up except for a stained glass Star of David in the center, with some of the panes missing. The lower part of the fa?ade was decorated in graffiti, the top in pigeon shit, as if both species had come to an arrangement.

“You’re Jewish now?”

I glanced at Vadis, who didn’t respond, and then back at the building. Why the city’s defunct synagogues, in particular, had failed to morph into co-ops and coworking spaces, I never understood. Maybe there were landmark issues. Maybe they were condemned. Maybe an aging sculptor with a septum piercing lorded over them. Whatever the reason, many of these places were now the domain of rats. And those desperate enough to sneak into them. Which, apparently, included us.

“It’s not sneaking,” Vadis said. “Watch this.”

She took a step back, making sure a surveillance camera got a clear shot of her. A red light blinked dumbly. She marched in place. She hopped up and down. Eventually, she wrapped her sleeve over her fist, knocking on the doors until they shook. I could feel the words form in my mouth: Maybe we should just go. I’d never heard anyone say this sentence outside of a horror movie. Nothing gets the mansion gate to creak open quite like “maybe we should just go.”

“I really don’t need to go to some secret place.”

I imagined how annoyed Boots would be if he were here, dealing with the whims of Vadis, whose snobberies outperformed mine (she who always had to leave one party for another, she who simply had to find the hidden beach town only to declare it dead upon her arrival). He once said, apropos of nothing, “I can’t imagine Vadis using an airport bathroom” and I knew just what he meant.

“Let’s get pizza,” I suggested.

She ignored me, focusing her efforts on composing a rapid-fire text. Before she could finish, I heard a click. The door unlocked.

“Or that,” she said, rolling her eyes.

We entered a musty area that looked as I suspected it would, only worse, and smelled as I suspected it would, only worse. Unidentified particles floated through strips of light. A fire had blown through the roof at some point and the walls were dotted with holes. Some were torn down to the plaster, repaired with yellowing newspaper. Beer bottles, relieved of their labels, congregated in the corners. Cobwebs stretched between the charred beams overhead. Everything seemed wet. Over my shoulder, I caught sight of a few pedestrians on the opposite side of the street, peering at us with the New York–specific envy one has for people who have the authority to enter a place they’ve only seen from the outside.

Then the door banged shut and everything went dark.