restaurants leading to the campus, I wanted to be anywhere other than there, anyone other than myself.
We reached the last residential corner above the commercial stretch. Emma stopped at the edge of the sidewalk to let a motorcycle pass.
I stopped too, several yards back, standing close to the trunk of a broad oak, hunkered deep in its shadow. I waited there. I watched her. I yearned to step out into the light, to stride up behind her and take her arm. I wanted her to turn and look up at me with those wicked, witty, incredibly sweet green eyes so I could tell her everything, everything.
I just didn't have the courage.
I stood where I was, hiding behind the oak tree. Waiting for her to cross the street and continue on to the campus.
But that was when things got strange.
Emma took a look around her. It was not an ordinary look. It was a slow, deliberate scan of the crossroads. It was as if she was searching for something or someone suspicious, out of place. It was almost as if she suspected she was being followed. She checked the cars going by, the faces of anyone near her. Then she glanced back over her shoulder to check the sidewalk behind.
I was so surprised, I only just had time to pull back, to pull up and stand at attention behind the tree trunk. My heart started beating hard. My breath started coming fast. An endless second passed, and then another.
Finally, I dared to peek out around the tree. Emma was on the move again.
She'd changed direction. She wasn't heading toward the campus anymore. She'd turned left, headed east, up another street of trees and lawns and houses.
Everything suddenly became a lot more difficult. Because Emma was moving with caution now, looking around her with every step, checking to make sure that no one was moving secretly in her wake.
And since, as it happened, I was moving secretly in her wake, it was no easy thing keeping up with her. I couldn't exactly creep from tree to tree like a cartoon spy. This was Berkeley, a town to the left of reality, and so feminist you could get arrested for your daydreams. The morning crowds were absolutely peppered with joyless silver-haired spinsters who looked like they did nothing all day but call the police to report men furtively following women. One false step and I'd end up in the back room of a station house with some six-foot broad hitting me over the head with Our Bodies, Ourselves.
I had to think fast. I spotted an apartment house, a brick building across the street. I ducked between two moving cars to get to it. Dashed up the front steps. Stood studying the mailboxes by the door, as if I were searching for a name. At the same time, I stole quick glances up the street. I watched helplessly as Emma moved farther and farther away. She was almost at the next corner now, looking around, looking nervously back over her shoulder.
Then she reached the corner, turned the corner. Hurried out of sight.
'Shit!' I spat between clenched teeth.
I skittered down the steps. I jogged up the hill after her, dodging and weaving through the oncoming crowd. I cursed myself with every yard. Not only was I a piece of slimy scum for following her, I was an incompetent piece of slimy scum, following her badly.
I reached the intersection. I looked up the street. She was gone. No-there she was, just moving out of the piebald pool of sun and shade under an autumn maple tree. I stood where I was, right out in the open like a fool, staring after her. If she had looked back just then, she would've seen me. She couldn't have missed me.
Then she did look-but she was one second too late. Realizing how exposed I was, I had just moved forward to hide myself behind the low hedge dividing one lawn from another. It was from there I watched Emma scan her surroundings one last time. She peered down the hill toward me, then up the hill, then to the left and right. Then, pressing her chin to her chest as if to hide her face, she turned down the front path of a husky brown two-story house. In four steps she was at the door. The door came open before she knocked or rang. A man stuck his head out, glancing around. Then he pulled his head back and Emma followed him inside.
I came out of my hiding place and hurried after her.
Half a minute and I was at the house. Then I spent another half minute hovering like the stalker I was around the eucalyptus tree on the edge of the lawn. From there I could see through a front hall window. I saw Emma peel off the adorable red beret, peel off her flaring coat. She handed them both to another figure, a man, the man, I assumed, who had met her at the door. I saw the man put his hand on her arm.
My heart plunged. I'd been right. She was meeting a secret lover.
But the next instant, my plunging heart did a roller-coaster climb. I saw Emma and her companion walk deeper into the house, toward the light of an inner entranceway. There, just before I lost sight of them, more people came from the room beyond to greet them. It was not a lover's meeting. It was a gathering of some kind.
Now, strange as it is to relate, I forgot all my caution. A combination of urgent curiosity and desperate longing overtook me. I was so focused on finding out what was going on, so focused on getting closer to Emma, on knowing her secret, that the need for stealth-the stealth on which everything depended-simply slipped my mind.
Boldly, stupidly, I stepped forth. I crossed the lawn, the shaggy lawn, the grass above my shoes, the last dew of morning clammy on my socks. I went to the house. I placed a hand on the rough surface of one of its wooden shingles. I pressed my face to the window. I peered through.
I could see shadows-two, maybe three people-just within the inner entranceway. The rest of the room beyond the threshold was out of sight. I heard a voice-a man's voice-speak in there, but I couldn't make out what he was saying. What the hell were they doing in there that had to be kept so secret?
I needed a better view, a window at the rear of the house that looked directly into that back room. I didn't hesitate. In fact, I was so wrapped up in what I was doing now, I barely took the trouble to conceal my movements at all. Like an old friend or a meter reader or the guy who mows the lawn, I sallied forth to the gate in the white picket fence beyond the far wall. Without hesitation-without even covering the noise-I opened the gate and walked into the backyard.
It was just a little square of land between this house and the one behind. Brick paths through shrubs, a lemon tree at the center. The windows here were larger, tall and open and clear. I was completely exposed as I approached them. My footsteps whispered loudly through the pachysandra.
I didn't care. I didn't even think about it. I was too curious, too fascinated. What was this? What was going on?
I heard the people in the house start singing. It sounded like a church choir. In fact, it sounded like church music, like a hymn. What the hell?
Just as I came close enough to make out the words, the singing stopped. That voice, that man's voice, rose again. It sounded steady and sure, but it was still too damned low to understand. I had to get closer. I stepped right up to the window. I pressed my face against the pane.
I looked in. I saw everything.
There was a large, open room. There were benches, rows of benches, facing the rear wall, eight or ten benches with maybe twenty-five people sitting on them. There was the man, the man whose lone voice I'd heard. He was standing in front of the others. Standing with his arms half-lifted, his hands open at his sides. Behind him, on that rear wall, heavy purple curtains hung. In front of the curtains, held up by ropes or wires, I wasn't sure which, there was a plain wooden cross about the height of a man.
I watched. The people slid in unison from the benches and went down on their knees. All of them, Emma too, went down on their knees, clasping their hands in front of them. The man before them lifted his eyes to the ceiling. He began to recite the Our Father, the Lord's Prayer. The others joined in.
By this time my jaw had fallen nearly to my chest. My mouth was wide open.
They were praying. They were Christians. All of them. Emma too. Emma was a Christian.
I could not have been more shocked if I had looked in and seen her fucking a horse.
How on earth? How in hell? What was she thinking? How could she possibly be a Christian? What happened to all that stuff her father told me? Homer to the deconstructionists? The realms of gold? What happened to her high school paper about God being an illusion of an illusion of our psychology or whatever?
I mean, no wonder she was hiding from the old man. No wonder she was afraid someone would see her coming here, that word of these religious high jinks would get back to Daddy. He was so proud of what he'd taught
