Lisa Unger - Smoke

“I agree,” said Matt solemnly. “What can you see from your porch?”

“I can see the brown building with the stained glass window. They try to make it look like a church. But there’s no God in there. I know that for a fact.”

“You said you watch people go in?”

“Some nights they gather outside, groups of people. They look nervous and hungry like they’re waiting for a meal or a handout. A thin girl with bony shoulders and no tits opens the door for them after a while. They go inside; a few usually come out in the first half hour or so. Some come out a couple hours later. Others don’t come out at all.”

“You saw Lily Samuels there one night?”

“The girl on the news. I saw her. I told the nurse. She said it was dark and my eyes aren’t what they used to be. So I called the number they gave on the television. I have a phone in my room, my son makes sure I have a good television and my own phone number here.”

“He must be a very good son,” said Matt.

He made some kind of grunting noise that might have been assent or disdain. Hard to tell.

“So you saw her standing and waiting with the others?”

“That’s right. She looked lost,” he said. “Very sad. Sadder than the others, somehow.”

“Did you see her come out?”

“No. She didn’t come out that night.”

“That night? You saw her come out another night?”

The old man laughed. “No, son, haven’t you been listening? What I’m trying to tell you is that if they don’t come out the same night they go in, they don’t come out at all.”

What are you doing over here, miss?”

“I’m sorry,” said Lydia with an embarrassed smile. “I got a little lost on my way from the bathroom.”

The woman looked at her stonily. She had hard, angular features and creamy white skin. “You’ll have to return to the meeting now.”

“I was just heading back.”

The blonde woman who’d led the group gathered outside into the meeting walked her back to the auditorium. Lydia slipped back into the dark and noticed that the crowd had thinned considerably. Trevor Rhames was booming now, his voice resonating; he was pacing wildly; something about society trapping people in a prison of self-hatred and materialism. But she wasn’t listening anymore. She was looking for a way out. She scanned the room for other doors and saw one down by the stage. But heavy and metal, with a glowing red exit sign over it, it looked like an exterior door. Shit, she thought. It was always a bad idea to split up. Always.

They’d decided that to save time, Jeffrey would take the corridor to the adjacent building to see what was over there and she’d look for an administrative office with computers or files, maybe even a list of members. He jogged off down the hallway and disappeared while she watched. As soon as she turned the corner, the bony woman had been there, looking at her with hard, suspicious eyes.

Lydia took a seat near the back and turned to see the woman standing by the door, her arms folded like a sentry. Lydia glanced around her. There had been about thirty people in the room, now there were maybe ten. In the dark, all she could see were the backs of their heads. They seemed to be nodding just slightly, almost in unison.

If she got up to leave, they’d probably escort her out of the building. Jeffrey would be alone, not knowing she was out. Then she remembered the door leading to the kitchen. She could leave the building and then sneak back in that way. She got up and walked toward the door.

“Leaving so soon?” asked the woman.

“Yeah,” said Lydia. “I don’t think this is my cup of tea. No pun intended.”

The woman offered a wan smile. There was something so cold about her, something so stiff.

“We all find our way,” she said.

Lydia wondered briefly if that was true. Did everyone find their way in this world? Didn’t some people get crushed, or left behind? Or was that the way they found, their way, if not the way they wanted.

Two large men in the New Day uniform of blue jeans and white tunics were waiting outside the door. They wore the same cool, smug expressions. But all of them had those vacant eyes. They and the woman stayed close as she walked to the door. She felt their eyes on the back of her neck and she fought the urge to run or turn and punch one of them in their empty faces to see if they were really flesh-and-blood people. Out in the cold, they stood on the top stair leading to the church.

“Good-night,” Lydia said and walked up the street. The blonde lifted a hand in farewell.

Lydia pulled her coat tight around her and walked quickly north. She passed Dax sitting in the Rover but didn’t look at him. She could still feel their eyes on her. Dax didn’t look at her either; obviously he sensed something was wrong or saw the three standing in the doorway, watching her leave.

Jeffrey crossed from the church building through the breezeway with glass walls into the taller condo building. He pushed through a light-colored wooden door and entered an empty foyer where the only sound was the buzzing of fluorescent lights. The floors and walls were crisp white, the high ceilings a robin’s egg blue. The empty reception desk that stood in front of the entrance was a white lacquer semicircle. The space was antiseptic, meant, he thought, to communicate purity, cleanliness. Then he remembered what Matt Stenopolis had told Lydia about the “cleansing” period new members were required to undergo. The place gave him the creeps and an uneasy instinct whispered that they should get out as fast as possible. He paused for a second, glancing around for cameras, but didn’t see any. He walked over to the reception desk, on which sat a multi-line phone, a clipboard, and a cup of pens printed with the New Day logo.

Jeffrey realized when he held the pen in his hand that he’d seen the logo often on items like coffee cups, notepads. It hadn’t really clicked for him when he’d seen the logo on the van. But now he recalled seeing it on advertisements on the subway for things like depression counseling, addiction recovery, breaking the cycle of child abuse. The light blue line drawing of sunbeams reaching through cloud cover on a white background. He thought of the website and the brochures Dax had taken. It was outreach. Like the pedophile who picks the child with the lowest self-esteem, or the rapist who picks the smallest, most defenseless woman, they were trawling for people in the most pain, people who’d give almost anything to feel better.

The list of visitors was blank. But Jeffrey could see that heavy handwriting on the page above had left an impression on the blank sheet that must have been below it. He held it up to the light and tilted it, hoping to make something out. But his eyes were not great to begin with, so he gave up quickly. He took the sheet, folded it, and put it in his pocket.

The sounding of a soft bell startled him. He turned to see an elevator bank to his right. The lighted display above one of the doors indicated that the car was in a downward descent. He looked around for a place to hide.

Lydia walked nearly two blocks as quickly as she could without looking as if she were afraid or in any kind of a rush. She passed some shops that were closed for the evening, a small café, a copy and mailing center, a pet store. The neighborhood was an awkward mix of businesses, private homes, and condo buildings. Some of the homes were old and regal, adding a quaintness to the area which otherwise would have been like any other modern city block. They stood proudly beside the larger, newer apartment buildings that had cropped up, looking a bit out of place but refusing to give ground.

When she was out of sight of the church, she made a quick right and dashed between two condo buildings and followed an alley that ran parallel to the way she had come. She turned off the alley and cut through someone’s lawn and set off a motion detector as she passed, a floodlight lighting up the yard, revealing a rusted swing set and a sandbox filled with weeds. She moved quickly through a side yard and crossed a small dark street, underneath a canopy of towering elms. The night was dark and once she was off the main street, the streetlights there gave off little more than an orange glow. The neighborhood was quiet. She could see the blue flash of television screens and orange lamplight in bay windows.