No. Not looking for shirts, I thought. She’s doing what I was doing — looking for her sister.
From across the avenue she came toward me, lingering window to window, door to door. The Seagull Café was open and Penelope went in. I watched her through the glass, picking her way along the booths with a frankly accounting air, looking for something specific. She disappeared into the dining room, then came back into view as she approached the cashier. Asked questions. Most of the answers were headshakes or no’s. She pointed. To the 7-Eleven? Held out her phone. More headshakes and no’s, but also concern. Penelope stepped aside so a customer could pay. She scanned the dining room while she waited. When the cashier was free again Penelope asked her more questions and I could see some annoyance in the woman’s face.
Penelope came out, pocketed her phone, snugged the cowl, and continued. Measured, purposeful. If the business was open she went in. If not, she stared through the windows. Stared long and patiently. As if she could draw out the object of her desire with the desire itself. The humble seed of hope, I thought. The same seed that had brought me here.
She worked past me without a glance in my direction, down Avenida del Mar, crossed just before the library, and started back my way. Went into the coffee place, came out a few minutes later with steam trailing out the lid hole. The optometrist, closed. The yogurt shop, open. Penelope through the window glass, interrogating a young man who looked eager to help but kept pursing his lips, shaking his head. He looked at her phone pictures and shrugged. Seemed to offer her a yogurt, which she declined.
I watched her approach, but she didn’t look my way. My truck windows are almost illegally dark. Her face looked tired and drawn. Hugging herself again. By the time she walked into Mongkut Thai, she was directly behind me. I could see her in my oversized sideview mirror, starting in on a hostess with a colorful brocade dress and a welcoming smile.
I watched them in the mirror, the hostess’s no-longer-smiling face and Penelope’s backside as she asked her questions. I wanted to go help her, but that seemed like a crude intrusion. I felt sneaky and ashamed sitting there in the dark, watching my client struggle. Wearing out her luck against the odds. Pressing her hope so hard it began to dull. That was my job. But I didn’t move. Just watched her and the hostess, oddly proportioned in my mirror, conversing in the angled half-light, half-dark lobby. Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.
A moment later she was crossing Del Mar again, an easy trot to avoid the traffic, heading toward her cute yellow convertible.
I followed her a few cars back to the I-5 ramp off El Camino Real, then south. She drove at exactly the speed limit, middle lane if it was open, signaled her changes. Always a pleasure to tail a model citizen.
She cruised past San Onofre and through Camp Pendleton along the fog-dusted Pacific. Past the dark hills and the shining hospital and into Oceanside, where I expected her to exit for home. Where I would leave off and let her return to her domicile unfollowed.
But she continued south, all the way to Encinitas. Wound her way toward the Cathedral by the Sea, where Daley had been showered with attention by the youth minister whose gender Penelope had somehow gotten wrong.
I let her get some distance, watched her pass the church’s sign on Matilija, signal, and come to a complete stop at King’s Road. Turned and continued toward the church.
I followed to the first rise and pulled off the road. The coastal brush thumped and scratched at my truck as I squeezed in. Got my night-vision binoculars from the console and shouldered open the door, my cracked rib shrieking. Pressed my way through the buckwheat and manzanita to the top of the rise.
In the shorn fog stood the Cathedral by the Sea. Shapeless but graceful. Walls of marble and wood snugged together by shiny stainless-steel cables. The upswept copper roof. Outdoor and inside lights on. Double doors open wide. Through my field glasses I saw Pastor Reggie Atlas standing in the doorway, a man and a woman coming out, stopping to say goodbye to him, all cast in eerie green sniper’s light.
Penelope swung the Beetle wide into the big parking lot, keeping to the edge, as if for cover. She followed the curb past the central campus with its stately Canary Island palms and the classrooms and administration building, but stopped well short of the cathedral. Her lights went out and she waited, half hidden in the near dark, just as I had done at the 7-Eleven. Eight other vehicles in the lot.
People continued to leave the cathedral, all stopping to speak to Atlas. I recalled the Cathedral by the Sea calendar from the From the Lighthouse bulletin that I’d picked up on Sunday — Adult Bible Study: “By Jesus Chosen.” I glassed Penelope, black cowl unfurled high, face upturned and motionless.
Twenty minutes later, the Bible students had left. Pastor Atlas went back inside. The last of the cars trailed out of the lot toward King’s Road. Only the yellow Beetle remained, a muted swatch in the foggy half-dark.
Penelope got out, shut the door, and locked it with a fob. Zipped the fob into her purse as she headed up the sidewalk toward the church. Hugged herself again and leaned forward, as if into a headwind. Resolve over dread, force of will.
She climbed the steps and approached the open doors. Stopped at the threshold and said something. A moment later, Pastor Atlas came to the door and stopped. Ten feet apart.
In the night-vision green he spoke to her and she spoke back. No introductions that I could see. Something familiar in the exchange. A conversation resumed? She terse; he patient. Jab and feint, thrust and parry. Then an escalation, inaudible to me, but I could almost hear it in their postures — the accusatory aim of Penelope’s finger, the sad-faced appeasement from Reggie Atlas.
He looked past her, frowning. Then turned slightly and opened his hands in a welcoming manner, inviting her in. Penelope hunched in her black sweater, the white strap across her back. It looked like she was deciding whether to accept the invite.
With a suddenness that caught me by surprise, she yanked a silver cross from her purse and raised it at Atlas. Held it high. A vampire movie. Atlas looked disgusted, then flummoxed and hurt. He was mouthing a defense when she turned, ran to the steps, and started down. Fast and sure on her feet, white sneakers in descent, white purse swinging, and the silver cross still in hand.
Which was when a silver SNR Expedition pulled into the lot from King’s Road.
The driver cruised the perimeter, just as Penelope had done, heading for her car. About halfway there, he must have seen Penelope running, or the light on in the cathedral, or Pastor Atlas standing at the top of the steps. The Expedition cut across the vacant lot and swung to a stop in the handicapped parking as Penelope ran for her car and Atlas stopped halfway down the marble steps.
Adam Revell climbed out of the SUV, Atlas yelling at him, his words muffled by the heavy air. Penelope almost to her car, horn chirping and its lights flashing once. Revell caught between them, unsure what to do, looking at the fleeing woman, then to the pastor.
Atlas’s next words cut the night air: Get over here, you dumb sonofabitch!
Penelope’s car swerved sharply, then plowed for the exit, horses whining.
I broke brush to my truck, cranked it to life, and crunched backward through the scrub onto King’s Road. Threw her into drive, shot across the road, and tucked into the far shoulder. Plenty of room for Penelope to get by.
Headlights in the rearview.