California: A Novel (15 page)

“They’re called shopping plazas,” Micah said. “But yeah, I know.”

“I guess that means you didn’t totally fall off the edge of civilization,” Cal said. Frida looked up and nodded, as if there was something to agree to.

“It wasn’t a perfect plan,” Micah said, “I’ll be the first to admit that. But it invigorated the Group like nothing else would have, and the encampment was stronger after that, as you’re probably aware.” He fought a grin. “And then there were all those copycats, which I honestly didn’t predict.”

Cal felt himself sneer.

“Everyone’s meeting at the Church before dinner,” Micah said as he turned to leave, “so you’ll get to see them. You’ll sit in a pew, but don’t worry, that’s where the religious stuff ends.” He smiled. “This isn’t a bunch of believers.”

“You do look like a cult leader with that beard,” Cal said. He forced himself to smile, to show that he, too, could take it easy, let go a little.

“I wish I could cut it, man,” Micah said. “But every time I try, I get a weird rash.”

“Creams,” Frida said suddenly.

“Yeah, use some of the stuff in the Bath,” Cal said.

“Maybe,” Micah replied. Perhaps because he could feel more questions coming on, he stepped back. “I have some things to take care of. You’ll need to wait here in your room for a few hours until I’m done.” He nodded at the closet door. “There’s a bedpan in there, should nature call. We’ve also got latrines, but I’d rather you didn’t wander off until everyone on the Land’s been brought up to speed about you.” He paused. “I’m not having anyone stand guard outside your room or anything, but please don’t make me regret that.”

Frida nodded again, as if she didn’t mind being a hostage. Cal didn’t say anything.

Micah closed their door, and once they had privacy, Frida took off her shoes and moved to the floor. She began stretching, going through the basic vocabulary of the few yoga classes she’d taken in L.A.: downward dog, cat-cow, child’s pose. Her breath became slow and throaty, almost mournful. Cal leaned back in the bed and watched her. The metal knobs of the headboard dug into his skull, but he let them.

Frida had turned to stretching as a way to counteract anxiety; after weed became too expensive, this was the only thing that worked. Cal could remind her to breathe all the time, but such exhortations only worked if she was willing. He loved that she stretched, that these poses relaxed her nerves. She fought the body with the body.

As she moved through the poses, he thought about what Sailor had told them. August lived here. He was a member of this tribe, not some lone trader. Frida had looked so stunned by the news that Cal had forced himself to look away. If he hadn’t, he might have done something rash: punched Sailor in the mouth, or laughed at Frida like a maniac, or even fallen to his knees.

Now Cal wanted to ask her how Sailor had known Frida’s name. How had he known she was Micah’s—
Mikey’s
—sister? Maybe Micah had told the Land all about his older sister, and August had finally put it together who Frida was. But Micah was never one to blabber about his personal life, especially not after he’d joined the Group, and August didn’t seem like the type, either.

On their drive away from L.A., Frida and Cal had agreed that they wouldn’t tell anyone about her brother’s ties to the Group. No one had to know her brother had died or that she’d even had a brother. Cal said it was for safety; Frida had said it was for solace.

It had been easy to follow this rule with the Millers, who themselves acted as if there were only the present and a glorious, pure future. If Frida had tried to confide in Sandy, Sandy would have certainly shut her up.

But this had nothing to do with the Millers. Frida must have talked to August about her brother—he didn’t explicitly trade for secrets, but that was what he was after all along, wasn’t it? It was obvious, Cal decided: August had returned from trading with Frida to tell Micah that his sister was just a couple of days away. That his sister was not only nearby, but pregnant.

If Cal and Frida hadn’t come to the Land, Micah might have come to them.

“This bed is awful. We can sleep on the floor tonight,” Cal said.

Frida was lying on her back with her arms at her sides, her hands loose. Corpse pose.

Cal slid off the bed and peered into his backpack. His jeans and his shirt had been removed, as had the flashlight and the sleeping bag. All that remained were his empty canteen, his sweatshirt, and a pair of socks.

“I can’t believe they took our stuff. Why would they do that?”

Either these people were playing mind games, and they wanted Cal and Frida to feel needy and vulnerable, or they were just used to grabbing whatever they needed, whenever they needed it. Maybe ownership meant nothing on the Land, and any old possession could be taken from you, at any moment.

“I doubt my jeans are getting washed,” he said. He turned back to Frida, who hadn’t moved from the floor. “You should check your stuff, too, to see what’s left.”

Frida didn’t reply.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Micah is alive.”

“I know,” Cal said. He left his bag and sat down on the floor next to her. Her eyes were closed, but she didn’t flinch when he laid a hand on her stomach. It was warm, and her body moved with her breath.

“Kiss me,” she said, and he leaned down and did.

She pulled him on top of her and began kissing him more intensely, her hands on his back, crawling under his shirt. She wanted him. He felt how alive she was beneath his body, even after the shock. Or because of it. Cal pulled away.

“When do you think he’ll bring up your pregnancy?”

Frida didn’t say anything for a few seconds, and then: “Probably never.”

“Huh.” In a way, it made sense. Micah didn’t seem like the uncle type.

He tried to kiss her again, but she moved away.

By the time Micah came to pick them up that evening, Cal was hungry again. Frida wasn’t complaining, but he wanted her to be eating as much as possible. Didn’t morning sickness strike in the first trimester? If it did, she’d need all the calories she could get while she was well enough to get them.

Micah had changed his clothes. He wore a button-down shirt, the sleeves rolled up.

“Sunday’s finest?” Cal asked.

Micah laughed. “Man, I didn’t realize how much I missed you.”

Cal couldn’t help but laugh, too. Maybe this would be okay. Maybe all he’d needed was some rest and a little more information.

“Where’s my stuff?” he asked.

Micah raised an eyebrow. “I told you. I’m sure Dave just took them to get washed or something.”

“And the flashlight?”

Micah nodded. “Oh, don’t worry, he probably didn’t put
that
in the wash.” When Cal didn’t laugh, Micah said, “I’ll look into it.”

“Please do,” Cal replied. “And can we get Frida some jerky or something?”

Micah frowned and looked at his sister. “Are you hungry?”

Frida said she wasn’t.

“We won’t be long,” he said to Cal.

They peed in the bushes behind the Hotel. “It’s not prohibited, but not really encouraged, either,” Micah explained afterward, as they walked to the Church.

People were coming out of the buildings now. They were done making themselves scarce, Cal supposed. He recognized a lot of them, not just Fatima and Peter and Dave but the heavyset man who had given him a dirty look earlier and the blond-dreads guy.

Others were strangers, and their newness made him feel strange. He wanted to start giggling, but he held back and tried not to look at one face too long. There was a woman with long black hair and an open, round face; the guy she was with was tall and very pale, with a slump to his shoulders that made Cal’s neck hurt just looking at him. He was younger than the woman, probably by about ten years. Right behind them was an Asian man, not much older than Sailor, who walked with a slight limp and smiled at Cal and Frida when they passed. He was the exception; most of the people tried not to look as Micah led them onto the main road to join the procession.

The sun was going down, and it was getting chilly. Cal had forgotten his sweatshirt in the room—he could see it balled like a possum at the bottom of his backpack—and now he crossed his arms to keep in the heat.

“Cold?” Micah asked. “By the time we’re done, the Church will be sweltering.”

It sounded to Cal like a threat, but he couldn’t figure out how exactly.

The outside of the Church had been lit up with torches, and they lined the walls on either side of the entrance. As he got closer, Cal saw that they weren’t handmade, as he’d imagined, but the cheap tiki ones that people used to purchase for their outdoor parties, their ersatz luaus, so many years ago. He hadn’t seen the things in a long time. How was it that the Land had any? Cal tucked the question into his mental file of things to ask Micah.

He peered at the building before him. Except for two small windows near the roof, the Church looked like a big, enclosed square. There had to be two floors, Cal surmised, or an attic. Perhaps it was windowless on the bottom floor so that it could be used year-round, despite the weather, or it could be a place to hide during a tornado or a hailstorm.

He wondered if the double front doors were more secure than the door at the Miller Estate. If a town of people crowded into this church at night, without candles or tiki torches or solar lighting to illuminate the space, would they be able to see one another?

The small windows on the upper floor were, miraculously, intact. Miraculous, indeed. More like unbelievable, Cal thought. Micah had probably had them replaced in the last year or two, the panes coming from the same source as the razors, the tiki torches, and his Polo shirt.

It looked like the outside of the Church had been painted professionally, and though its surface was chipped and stripped in sections, patched here and there with mismatched colors, it certainly wasn’t a nineteenth-century undertaking. Roaming bands of settlers must have defaced the building in the years since the town had closed, and the Land’s solution to this vandalism had been to paint over it; here and there, the Church’s stark white surface was marred by squares of beige, eggshell, and even pistachio green. It looked a little sloppy, but Cal liked the bedraggled quality it lent the building. Now it was less somber church and more local high school. Besides, the steeple rising into the sky looked as unscathed as it must have been two centuries earlier; the barbed wire around its body merely confirmed its glory, made its pierce into the heavens more powerful.

A sign at the front welcomed visitors. In the fading light, Cal couldn’t read the text clearly, but it was obviously for tourists, most likely describing the religious life of the town before it had been abandoned. Micah pulled him along, said, “You’ll have plenty of time to read that later.” With his thumb and index finger, he flicked the air between him and the sign. “Besides, those moron amusement-park developers didn’t care about this place’s history. They fucked this building up. It doesn’t look as old as it should, as it
is.
”

Inside, it was so bright that Cal’s eyes watered. He hadn’t seen light like this since leaving L.A., and even then, electricity had been scarce. He thought of gas stations in the middle of the night; of his mother’s desk lamp, which she’d fed with high-wattage lightbulbs, despite the threat of fire; of the streetlight that used to burn into his bedroom window unless he secured the curtain closed. All that, years ago.

“I need sunglasses,” he said to Frida. “I feel like I’m stepping onstage.”

In each corner, an industrial light, the kind used on construction sites, was connected to a car battery. How wasteful it seemed. The lights emitted a terrible droning buzz. Such a noise would’ve been normal just five years ago, but now it struck Cal as insidious—unbearable, certainly, should they have to sit near one. He looked at Frida, who had placed her hand on her abdomen, as if to palm their child’s ears. Cal’s stomach dropped. The sounds of technology, the insistent whirs and hums and sighs of motors, computers, lights, clocks, cooling and heating systems, masked an entire, secretive universe, a world beneath the world. Their child would be, could be,
should
be, a creature capable of discerning the smallest shifts out of silence. Like a woodland creature, ears pricked to the slightest movement miles off, he would truly be able to listen.
Listen.
He imagined Micah, or his suicidal dupe, saying that word, and his stomach dropped farther.

“Our meetings can’t run too long for this reason,” Micah said, and nodded to the lights. “We don’t want to waste our resources.”

“Resources,” Cal repeated. He didn’t bother asking why they just didn’t use candles for the meeting. Clearly, these lights played into Micah’s theatrical streak.

“Follow me,” Micah said.

People were already packed into the pews that began just a couple of feet from the entrance and continued in orderly rows toward the front of the large square room. The walls were made of plaster and blank, without iconography. The ceiling was high. Micah had said that they weren’t a religious group, and Cal was relieved.

The second floor was most likely accessed through the unassuming door behind the raised stage. There was a podium on that stage—a pulpit? Was that the correct term? Frida would probably wonder the same thing, but the difference was she wouldn’t be embarrassed that she didn’t know for sure. Both of them had been raised heathens; that had been Frida’s father’s word, said with a snobbish little guffaw—but it was true. Cal’s parents weren’t believers, so neither was he. He occasionally prayed, as he had done before their journey here, but it was a pitiful begging to no one in particular. He didn’t see the point of worship.

This was probably only the fourth or fifth religious establishment Cal had ever set foot in, including the tiny storefront church down the block from their apartment in L.A. That place had low ceilings, and three rows of plastic patio chairs had faced an altar covered in a disposable tablecloth. There were spelling errors in the literature (even in the Spanish text), and about as much atmosphere as a Laundromat. But the people there had been so taken with the Lord.
Jesús es Dios,
they told him, clutching their Bibles, their babies. An old woman had led him in; he’d been on his way home from work, drunk from the homemade cider a coworker had brought, and he’d thought, Why not.
“Pues,”
he’d said to the woman,
Well,
and walked inside. Those churchgoers had spoken of end times, which would have made Cal uncomfortable when he was in Cleveland or at Plank, but by the time he lived in L.A. such talk was commonplace. Before CNN had gone dark, he’d heard the phrase tossed around by most of the pundits.
Pundits, pulpits.
What was the etymology of these two words?