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I move around the space—it’s maybe 10 x 10—touching all the shit he bought me. Someone bought me, I correct. I want there to be a card, some kind of note, but there is nothing. Nowhere in the house.
I assume the same someone who left the paints left a car key on the kitchen counter. It goes to a pale blue Prius in the garage that dominates the ground floor. At about five forty-five, I drive from Haight toward Parkside.
I spot the church as soon as I pass 39th Avenue. It’s fucking massive—at least five stories—and it’s stately-looking, like a capitol or college. Other little buildings made of the same brown and pink stone crop up around me, and I realize it’s more like a college campus than a “church.”
That main building has to be the size of a small hospital. It’s built kind of like a cathedral, with stone walls, wooden shingles, and big, almost gothic-looking stained glass windows. Big trees tower all around, and there are grounds around it, like a castle. There’s a thick, stone sign on the front lawn, which says EVERMORE UNITED CHURCH in thick engraving.
Pastor Luke McDowell is carved below it.
I don’t notice that my foot has stalled out on the pedal till the Prius almost stops beside that sign.
Fuck me. This is his place. Why am I here? I laugh as I realize I feel ill.
I park in the stone deck behind that big building and draw my phone out of my pocket. Should have Googled before I said “yes.” For the longest minute of my life, I worry that somehow he’s gotten married. Maybe just married—under the radar somehow, so I didn’t catch it on TV.
I’m near panting with relief when Google turns up nothing like that.
Dammit, man. Pull it together.
You don’t even know the guy, I tell myself as I walk through a breezeway to the small door I was told to enter. He probably doesn’t know you’re here. He’s moved on. Why do you think he never answered all your texts that night on New Year’s? If he wanted to keep in touch after that, he would have.
I stop by the door, try to slow my racing heart. Then I punch my pass code in and stare at the door as it clicks open. I step into a hall and look around. High ceilings, rich beige walls, carved crown molding, sleek, dark marble floors…
My chest is too tight.
I walk back outside…kneel in the grass by the breezeway. My inhaler’s in my pocket. My hands fumble with it. Get it in my mouth…compress the top and draw the medicine into my lungs. The annoying fucking shaking starts, but I can breathe.
It’s okay.
I feel weird as I stand back up. Part of me wants to go to the rented townhouse, get my shit, and head on to the airport.
I swallow a few times. You know why.
Last year, I saw my dad again. The man who impregnated my mother, his mistress, between fathering children with his wife. I was at the Met of all damn places. Rainy April afternoon, just needed to get out and let my brain unwind a little.
We stood side by side in front of some big fucking mask at an exhibit about Treasures of the Ancient Americas. I realized we’re almost the same height. He moved on a little, and I followed him. He looked right at me once, and he looked so much like me that it stole the air out of my lungs. Recognition never crossed his face. I’m reviewed now, with pictures of me sometimes, and he cares so little that he never even Googles me. Or he does know and ignored me.
So that’s it. I can’t stand to see Luke if it’s like that. I’m all fucked up, and it hurts. It’s like…an ache. A physical one.
So it seems crazy that I step back inside, shut my eyes, and stand there in the hall. I smell fresh paint...citrus cleaning shit…a hint of those bathroom air fresheners… There’s a sort of musty, putty scent.
You’re okay.
I’m gonna risk it—getting busted up. Because if his eyes spark when they land on me…if I get to rest my gaze on his face. If he knows me. Then I’ll catch on fire again.
I need it.
I am not a failure. I’m not what I sometimes fear. My solitary life is not devoid of meaning. There is richness in the day-to-day. There’s so much fucking opportunity. It’s sort of devastating when you realize every avenue is open. I’ve just never wanted any person the way I want him. That’s the long and short of it. I crave him. Him. The only person I can’t have. And so it doesn’t feel like a risk…the getting busted up.
I look down at myself and down the hall, and start to walk. It leads to a hexagonal atrium that’s filled with trees and benches; each of the five “walls” is the mouth of another hallway.
