3.

‘You. Where’d you put my hat?’

Luce’s new wife’s face is accusing but her body is polite: hands clasped, two feet’s space between them, despite the smallness of the converted laundry that serves as their bedroom.

Juanita likes her own space. Luce knows this because his body takes up too much of it.

‘Your red hat?’ Back in the day, Joya used to give him points for noticing colors, fabrics.

‘Mister, you ever see me in another hat?’ With a hiss of impatience, Juanita turns her back, fastidiously points out a bare hook on her shelf. ‘I had it right here. So?’

Luce is familiar with his new wife’s methods of storage: her hooks and baskets and dry-cleaning bags, and stacked plastic tubs strategically draped with tablecloths. Yet he’d never dare touch her things uninvited. ‘Sorry, Juanita. Haven’t seen it.’

‘He hasn’t seen it.’ Tugging the patchwork curtain aside, she bustles out, muttering. ‘The man hasn’t seen it. Somebody did.’

Luce takes Juanita’s absence as an opportunity to do what he often does in her absence: look at the portrait of Albert on her shelf. Albert was Juanita’s first husband, married to her when they were teens in Tuscaloosa. Albert was handsome. Albert died in an East Bay shipyard accident in 1942, breaking Juanita’s heart so bad she tried to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. Luce would’ve been fifteen in ’42: a tall and pink-cheeked blond boy, hitting home runs, poring over the G.I.s in Stars & Stripes.

When Juanita waltzes back in, hat atop her crimpy updo, Luce stops looking at Albert. ‘Look at that. You found your hat.’

They’re on the next bus to Geary Boulevard within ten, along with half the commune. Rondelle, a big blunt-faced girl who always has attractive boyfriends, takes up two seats while her latest, Ray, a smooth young thing in a velour shirt and striped bellbottoms, does chin-ups with the handstraps. Gina, a shaggy-haired white girl who works at the dry clean with Juanita, leans over her seat and tries to flirt with Ray — ‘I know who you look like in those pants! The Hamburglar! Can you steal me a hamburger, Ray?’ Across the aisle, Martha is giving Earlene some unsolicited advice on her wayward teen son, Jerome. Juanita sits by her pal Corazon, a hard-of-hearing senior, and starts loudly bemoaning the foolishness of the commune’s young people.

Luce stands apart, trying not to look like he’s eyeballing some men in tight jeans and T-shirts. When they get off at Castro Street without a glance his way, he strokes his silver stubble.

‘Should’ve shaved,’ he says quietly; then, loud enough for Juanita, ‘You think I should’ve shaved, Juanita?’

‘Too late now,’ Juanita says pragmatically.

‘Whassat?’ Corazon croaks.

‘Too late for the man to shave now.’

‘Mm-hm,’ Corazon agrees. ‘Too late now.’

From behind them, Rondelle lets out a groan over Martha’s latest boast about her twin sons, Joey Dean and Bobby James, both pioneers in the Promised Land. ‘Lady, Earlene don’t give a damn if your boy’s the next Tarzan, so how ’bout you give her some peace and quiet?’

‘Excuse me,’ Martha rejoins. ‘But how’s anybody supposed to find any peace and quiet with the likes of you screaming all over the place?’

‘I’m just sayin’ what everyone’s thinking.’

‘Whassat?’ asks Corazon.

‘Just more foolishness,’ Juanita explains.

By the time they reach the Temple, the cafeteria is packed. Juanita and Corazon join a table of seniors while Luce fetches their meals, then returns to queue up for his own. Waiting, his eyes go to Meyer and Joya, sitting to eat with Hattie, Tremaine, and Alisha, and it hurts, if he’s honest. He turns his attention to Dot and Paolo at the edge of the cafeteria, looking none the worse for whatever happened last night; piss-pants Bob Harris, a little ways ahead of him in line; Ray and those striped bellbottoms; where does Rondelle find these guys? Then, because last thing he needs is to get hung up on another straight man half his age, Luce glances to the back of the line and lands on Lenny Lynden, clutching an empty tray with the miles-away look of a mental patient.

Too depressing for words.

Dinner is some kind of potato-bean mush, soaked up with Wonder Bread. Luce wolfs it leaning against the wall. When something small collides with his leg, pokes him in the belly, he narrowly avoids dropping his plate.

‘Shouldn’t scare a man when he’s eating,’ Luce chides Hattie, ‘Unless you want to wear his dinner.’

Hattie titters unapologetically, flashing her bunny-rabbit grin. ‘Did you work at the railroad today, Brother Gene?’

‘Mm-hm. Day shift.’

‘I still want you to take me to see the trains.’ She toys with the rainbow beads around her neck; a present from Dot, from the days when she still had time for beadwork. ‘If I’m going to drive a train someday, you should let me see them.’

Horse-riding was all the rage with Dot and the other one. Hattie’s obsession is driving: trains, Temple Greyhound buses, heavy machinery in the Promised Land … you name it, she wants to drive it someday. ‘We’ll see,’ Luce says, wiping his mouth, frowning at the grate of his stubble. ‘Should’ve shaved. What d’you think?’

Hattie stands on her tippy-toes to touch his cheek, laughs uproariously. ‘Yeah! Yuck.’

She shadows him through the cafeteria as he returns his tray, happily comparing his hirsuteness with other men in the vicinity. It occurs to Luce yet again that he didn’t think of her during last night’s death-rehearsal; that Joya is indisputably the better parent; that he shouldn’t feel so smug that Hattie favors him. They join the shuffle up to the auditorium, passing by Lenny Lynden, who’s sitting on the floor, apparently engrossed in his uneaten bread crusts. Terra stands nearby with her arms crossed, looking down at Lenny and the crusts apologetically.

‘Lenny needs to shave, too,’ Hattie whispers gleefully. ‘Why is Brother Lenny sitting there?’

‘Likes the view, I guess,’ Luce tries to joke, yet there’s something so sad about that young couple with nothing but bread crusts between them, he ends up frowning.

‘He’s going to miss the film about the Promised Land!’ Hattie says, in a tone of fastidious concern that owes something to Joya. ‘Phil Sor-en-sen’s film.’ She slips her hand into Luce’s. ‘Brother Gene, I want to sit with you tonight.’

‘Sure,’ Luce says, flattered, even as his throat threatens to close up. ‘Sure, you’ll sit with me. Uh … you sure? Sure you don’t wanna sit with all the kids?’

He’s rambling; he knows it; knows Hattie knows. But even more, he knows something’s wrong. With his body: too tight-fitting, heavy as an ox, every orifice seemingly shrunken. With the bodies around him, packed like sardines, unfamiliar, though if he racked his brain he could probably name everyone. Someways ahead, he catches sight of Juanita’s red hat, floating amid the crowd like a jellyfish. ‘That’s Juanita’s hat,’ he says matter-of-factly. He stops in his tracks; places a steadying hand on Hattie’s shoulder.

‘Um, Brother Gene?’ Hattie bites her lip.

Luce hunches down, so his gaze is level with those rainbow beads. ‘Just a minute.’ He breathes through his mouth, for his nostrils feel like a pair of cocktail straws. He straightens up, pats Hattie’s head, walks a few more steps. Can’t go on.

‘Must’ve ate too fast.’ Through the throng, he can make out the projector screen being set up where, just last night, they were saying their goodbyes. ‘I ate too fast … that’s all.’

‘Are you going to throw up?’ Hattie asks with a nine-year-old’s peculiar mix of curiosity, concern, and disgust.

Luce shakes his head — though now the possibility has been brought up, it does seem like that, a possibility.

‘I just need some fresh air.’ Though Juanita’s red hat is already some distance away, he points it out, rather than send her back to Joya and Meyer. ‘Go to Juanita. Go on.’

Hattie looks at him like she’s a puppy he’s just driven to the woods, told to run free, and driven away from.

‘Go on,’ he repeats. He pets her hair, lies through his teeth — the lie of the deadbeat dad who really does only plan on getting that pack of cigarettes from the corner shop. ‘I’ll be right back.’

Whatever his intentions are when he goes to the parking lot, dry-retches by the dumpster, it’s the sight of Evelyn Lynden that decides it. Evelyn, whom he’s not used to seeing outside meetings, let alone outside, let alone outside after dark on her own with her back turned. Bent to reach something inside her small European car, and though he doesn’t want to know what it is, neither does he want to alert her to his presence with any sudden movements. So he stands and watches her pull from the car not the expected box of files but a little boy, her boy, the one they call ‘Soul’. About two years old and so adorable it’s hard to believe he came from a rape in a Mexican prison, as the story goes. But Luce never believed the story. Doesn’t believe it now, watching those chubby arms circle her neck, the round face press against her lapel, something of Jim Jones already about the eyes and nose. She slings her bag, shuts the car. Glides toward the building, creasing her chin to say something to her child. Then, as quick as she appeared, she’s inside the Temple, out of sight.