1.

There are mornings, lying in bed in his parents’ mansion in the Berkeley Hills, when Lenny Lynden dreams Jim Jones’s voice in his ear, Jim Jones’s hand reaching under the covers and taking out his cock. Jim tugging at him good-naturedly, talking all the while, until he wakes with damp sheets and a stickiness in his shorts. So ashamed he could die, or maybe kill.

These are the mornings Lenny swims to forget. In the kidney-shaped pool, back and forth, holding his breath, skimming the floor. Swims until the stickiness dissolves and there’s nothing but stinging blue, a nullifying coldness. A woman’s drowned voice, calling his name.

‘Mister Lenny! ’

Lenny doesn’t respond to the woman right away. The older Lenny gets, the slower he is to respond to voices, partly because he has more trouble telling the real ones from the imaginary ones. He stays underwater until his lungs start to burn.

‘Mister Lenny! ’

The woman’s legs are sturdy in white sneakers, a brown skirt to the knees. Danila doesn’t wear a uniform like the maids of Lenny’s childhood — this was his mother’s doing, after she became a socialist but before she left his father. Lenny blinks at Danila’s white shoes.

‘Mister Lenny!’ Danila repeats. ‘Phone for you.’

The early sun coats the water with a slick, dirty scrim of gold. Dust on the surface. Broken brown leaves. A leggy brown bug, propelling itself forward with tiny ripples. Lenny slides his palm under the bug. ‘… Who’s calling?’

It can only be work or the Temple, calling him to do more work. But the longer Lenny can delay this knowledge, the longer he can stay in the pool.

‘A lady.’ Danila scowls at the bug inching up Lenny’s wrist, then fetches his towel from the recliner and brandishes it. Obediently, Lenny sets the bug on dry land.

The phone is shiny and black, like a beetle. Lenny presses it to his left ear while digging the water from his right. ‘H’lo?’

‘Lenny, a car’s coming to take you to the airport,’ Su-mi Jones’s voice is on the other end, low-pitched and impatient. ‘Be ready with your bags in twenty minutes.’

‘Airport? You mean I get to go to—?’

‘Yeah, Lenny. You’re going to the Promised Land.’

Tank tops. Tube socks. Snot rags. Work boots. Fatigues. A clear-plastic rain poncho that makes him look like a jellyfish. Noxzema. Talcum powder. Insect repellent. Flashlight and batteries. A dozen or so other things Lenny wouldn’t remember, if it wasn’t for the Temple buying them in bulk, divvying them up with instructions to pack in advance, to be ready to leave at any moment. He’s been waiting almost a year for his moment to come.

Lenny’s dream has dried to an off-white patch on his navy bedsheets. Sorry, Danila. He makes his bed. He looks at the M.C. Escher picture overhanging his bed: black birds flying in one direction, white birds in the next, black and white birds morphing into an aerial view of black and white fields. Lenny won’t miss the picture, or the shelf of outdated encyclopedias, or the study desk with its hard chair and donut-shaped pillow, prescribed to him in the winter of eleventh grade, when he got hemorrhoids from sitting in the hard chair too long. Lenny changes into white jeans, a madras shirt, linen jacket. No time to shave. Not much to be done about his hair, except comb it over the increasingly Dr. Lynden-like expanse of his forehead. Lenny slings his carry-all over his shoulder, makes for the door with his suitcase.

King Henry VIII is dozing on the donut pillow like a fuzzy orange croissant. ‘Take care of the old man, King Henry,’ Lenny says. King Henry says nothing.

Downstairs, Danila is making breakfast for Dr. Lynden, which means Dr. Lynden must be awake somewhere in the mansion’s polished entrails — probably in his office, probably working on his latest book, the one he hopes will win him a Nobel. Lenny isn’t in the habit of disturbing Dr. Lynden when he’s working on his book. He scratches out a note, grabs an apple from the fruit bowl, mumbles, ‘Do svidaniya, Danila,’ and places the note in the apple’s place:

Gone to Jonestown.

Peace,

Lenny

Hair still damp, Lenny leaves the mansion without looking back.