that man is a technological being, and that technological skill is what God gave man to set him apart from animals.'
'I thought that was blushing,' Dixie said.
'The automatists say that man will reach his height when he invents the machine that controls him. Or her,' I added apologetically.
'Don't worry about sexist language in this context,' Chantra said. 'That's men talking.'
'Computers?' Eleanor cast a hostile glance at her Macintosh, temporarily banished to the coffee table.
'Whatever. Faith is a peculiar thing.'
'How would you define faith?' Chantra asked.
'I wouldn't even try. St. Paul, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, says that faith is 'the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.' In the Church of the Eternal Moment, I'd say that the things hoped for are wealth, power, and a sense of self. The things not seen are Aton.'
'And the management of the Church,' Eleanor said.
'Bingo,' I said.
'Just be careful with the Church of the Eternal Moment,' Chantra said. From what I've heard, people have a way of going in and not coming out.'
'From what I've seen,' I said, 'they sometimes come out dead.'
'Sounds like the Times to me,' Eleanor said stubbornly.
I looked at her for so long that Dixie burped twice. 'Maybe it is,' I said.
Chapter 11
'Are you sure this is the right place?' Eleanor said again.
The Congregation of the Present occupied a flyspecked one-story storefront wedged appropriately between the temporal parentheses of an open elementary school and a closed funeral parlor on a run-down block of Vermont Avenue. The flat-black asphalt and yellow swings of the school playground were slick with rain, and the funeral parlor's ragged hedges had snagged pounds of bright paper trash. I wondered how a funeral parlor could have gone out of business.
The Congregation squinted at the world through oily windows. Its derelict air was only partly relieved by a large and presumably symbolic sign that depicted an Egyptian pyramid incongruously balancing what seemed to be a stopwatch at its apex. The stopwatch, in orange neon, perpetually counted down the last fifteen seconds before eternity, and then, at eternity minus one, repositioned its second hand. The idea that eternity was negotiable provided the sole note of optimism.
There was no traffic at all. Even at four p.m. on a gray, rainwashed Sunday afternoon it seemed to me there should have been more.
Eleanor had asked her question the first time we circled the block, and now she peered through the window, furrows of worry lining her flawless forehead. 'Why are they here? If religions make so much money, what are these people doing here?'
'Waiting for a bigger piece of the pie,' I said, using an expression I knew she hated.
'Don't say that. It reduces the whole world to calories.'
'Well, then, they're anticipating upward mobility,' I said, looking for a parking space. 'Demonstrating their faith. Think about the early Christians. Their sign was a drawing of a fish, carved in wood, not in neon. They met in dripping catacombs beneath the ground, in secret. If you'd been an early Roman real-estate agent, what odds would you have given that they'd eventually own the Vatican?'
'Anyway,' Eleanor said, changing arguments as I maneuvered Alice into a microscopic slot between a Hyundai and a Hyundai, yet more evidence that the Koreans shall inherit the earth, 'I think you've finally closed the door on whatever's left of your common sense. Impersonating a reporter? Don't you know that reporters are the only privileged class left in America?'
'Not quite,' I said. 'There are feminists.'
'A laugh a line,' she said.
'Besides, half the people who are real reporters are impersonating a reporter. Look at network anchors. You, at least, have a real press pass.'
'I'm a writer, not a reporter,' Eleanor said. 'And this is Sunday. I should be correcting book galleys. Are you aware that this is Sunday?'
'Churches are open on Sunday, Eleanor. Remember?'
'I wasn't talking about the church. I was talking about you and me. Simeon, what the hell are we doing here?'
'We're going to ask these nice folks about the Church of the Eternal Moment. We're going to get a jaundiced view, to put it mildly. The Congregation of the Present, according to Chantra, is a grudge-carrying spin-off of the original Church, and they think they're talking to an L.A. Times reporter who just might nail the Church to the floor with a well-chosen adjective or two while making the Congregation look like the most reverent gathering since the Last Supper. Haven't we been over this before?'
'Judas was at the Last Supper.'
'Every hostess makes a mistake once in a while.'
'I'm not a detective,' she said. 'I've never wanted to be a detective. I didn't even want you to be a detective. Why did I let you talk me into this?'
'Why ask me? Do I know how your mind works? Have I ever known how your mind works?' I killed the engine, hoping I'd be able to bid it to rise again. 'It's just this once, Eleanor. It won't kill you.'
'Says you.'
'Have you got your notebook?'
'If you ask me one more time whether I've got my notebook, I'm going to throw it out the window.'
'Let's go, then.' I reached across her and opened her door, less out of courtesy than from a conviction that she wouldn't get out at all if I didn't. She made a harrumphing sound and stepped out, directly into the path of the first moving automobile we'd seen in ten minutes. Its driver honked, swerved theatrically, and made a rude hand sign at us.
'Don't get killed yet,' I said, getting out. 'I'd just have to get a replacement, and I don't know where I could find anyone else dumb enough.'
She stepped up onto the curb and straightened her skirt fussily. 'You look very establishment,' I said. 'Just right for a card-carrying lackey of the imperialist running-dog press.'
'Put a cork in the banter,' Eleanor said shortly, 'and let's get it over with.'
The door to the Congregation of the Present swung open in front of us, revealing an empty waiting room. The congregation was evidently elsewhere. A bedraggled hanging arrangement of long neon tubes, trailing frayed- looking electrical wires, hummed at us and provided flat, cold light. The walls were a pale, sickly institutional green, bare except for two large and somewhat faded photographs of a woman and a little girl-not Angel and Mary Claire Ellspeth-and the floor was a hodgepodge of scuffed brown linoleum, warped and buckled in places. Here and there the linoleum had peeled away altogether, revealing the concrete slab beneath. A bucket in a near corner caught the slow drip of water that had collected on the roof.
'Very nice,' Eleanor said. 'We must spend more Sundays together. Your Los Angeles is so picturesque.'
'Look intelligent,' I said. 'You're on Candid Camera. Don't look around for it. It's in the far corner, up near the ceiling.'
'Gee,' she said, giving me a big mean smile. 'I hope my seams are straight.'
'Make a note. Glance around inquiringly and write something in your notebook. And don't overact.'
Eleanor opened her spiral binder and uncapped her pen with her perfect white teeth, SIMEON IS A SCHMUCK, she wrote. As she snapped the pad shut, a door slid open beneath the television camera and an enormous woman came in.
'Good afternoon and welcome to our home,' she said, looking dourly from Eleanor to me. 'I'm Sister Zachary. May I help you?' Sister Zachary was as big as a split-level house and she had draped her bulk in something that
