We wait in line for half an hour at the port before he’s cleared to dock. We talk about our favorite artists, favorite bands; I file away his answers (Dali and David Hockney, the Beatles). Just before we get a dock slot, he looks me in the eye and gives me a small, tight smile. It hits me right between the pecs.
As he stands to help a deckhand with a rope, he looks over his shoulder. “Thanks.” The word is quiet. Maybe imagined.
We say goodbye with a firm handshake. Other people come and go around us. The sea breeze blows my hair back off my shoulders. For a second, he looks like he might reach out and touch it. Instead, he gives me that small smile again. He turns away without a word—and that’s that.
I wear his soft, expensive clothes on my short trip back to the Sierra. That must be why I feel different: rich guy threads. Sometime that night on the cruise ship, I realize I’ve still got his hook in me. The next day, I hardly climb out of the bed. I think of Lana, but more so, I think of him.
He turns out to be the last person I fuck on the trip. Three days later, I meet with my prospective mural client in George Town. She wants three murals—all on old brick buildings she’s converted into long-stay rentals—to be completed as soon as possible. When I decide to stay and do them right away, I tell myself it’s not because of him—some nameless fuck I spent one night with.
Each night, when I tuck into my rented room alone, I tell myself the same lie: hell is other people. Even men and women I could fuck. I need some time to myself. Especially after what went down with Lana.
It’s late May before I’m finished with the murals—abstract pieces incorporating imagery of waves, billowing sails, a curl of smoke, a man’s green eye. I stick around for the formal unveiling and do an interview with the local paper. Then I hop the last flight of the day from Grand Cayman to LaGuardia and pull a hat over my eyes to try to catch some Zs.
That’s when I hear it.
I hear him.
My body flares like a camera flash went off inside me. I sit straight up, glance around.
An elderly woman in the seat next to me flinches at my movement. I trace the sound of his voice to her iPad. I reach for it.
“Excuse me…” She draws it back, even as I try to get a glimpse of the screen.
“What is that? What’re you watching?”
She turns the screen to me, face crinkled in confusion, and there he is: my captain. He’s wearing a crisp button-up that’s somewhere between powder blue and indigo, a pair of sharp-looking dress pants, and a navy blazer. Behind her iPad’s “pause” button, his blond hair looks like spun gold. He looks fucking dapper on the stage.
“What is this?” I demand.
“It’s Sunday.”
“What?”
She sighs, shaking her head and clucking. “It’s church,” she says flatly, as if she’s not surprised I don’t know.
My head buzzes. Suddenly my mouth is very dry. “I don’t— What?”
“Evermore United.” That comes out definitive and proud, and also as if it’s self-explanatory.
“Who is that man?” I point to the screen.
“That’s Luke McDowell. Surely you’ve heard of him. Luke McDowell? Of Evermore?”
I shake my head, my gut doing a slow roll as she sighs again.
“Luke McDowell is the most famous pastor in America. He runs Evermore, in San Francisco. Evermore has tens of thousands of members. Two schools. Its own bank.”
“Luke McDowell?” I rasp.
I stand up, gripping the chair in front of me before I note the bathroom line and sit back down beside her.
“You should give it a try sometime,” she’s saying. “There are recorded sermons and podcasts. Even a Sirius radio channel. He’s got great words. I knew his father. All the McDowells went to Yale—Luke and his father, his grandfather.” She grins. “Isn’t he handsome?”Part IIOneApril 1998Luke—Age 11
You know when your throat feels like a frog climbed in and curled into a little ball, and now it’s stuck? And your stomach feels like you’re on a roller coaster?
That’s how I feel as I follow Mrs. Lehman through the corridor, past closed doors that seem to squeal and giggle as the kids behind them do their Sunday school lessons. She leads me past the water fountains, past the meadow mural Mom’s friend painted, to the far-end stairwell—one that hardly anybody uses.
She’s wearing a pink dress that looks like Pepto-Bismol and some white high-heels. The heels clack-clack against the shiny stairs. I’ve got on my loafers, and they clop-clop-clop. The clops sound kind of rude and stupid. They hurt my ears, so I try to walk a little different, but I don’t know how, so it’s just loud and stupid.