and it was huge. The Helix, a therapeutic community he’d banked to stardom. Scientology in America claimed eighty thousand; the Helix would double that by year’s end. But who actually appreciated his work? He tossed his sunglasses in the trash and headed for a Laundromat across the street. A good place to think and summon faith in the possibility of a better future for himself.
In the Laundromat, where the redolence of spring—of flowers and grass, in essence, of renewal—was central, he felt his pulse slow down. D.C. wasn’t that big, was it? He walked the colonnade of washers and dryers and settled in at a table piled with rainbow gunnysacks.
Suds tided up the glass of a machine nearby. The Laundromat owner asked him twice if he needed anything. Perhaps just to wash the clothes he was in? Thurlow’s hair was up and out like thistle. He’d slept in his sweater, which felt like a blanket because he had gotten so thin. He sat there for an hour. He was just looking at a sock discarded in a basket and thinking, moodily, about its better half—Where are you, better half?—when he saw a parting of dress shirts hung on the line and Esme coming at him like a guest on tonight’s show.
He sprang from his chair. Over the years, he’d spent hours fashioning sentences and gestures to launch if ever they met again, but no matter: his gear malfunctioned. The words wouldn’t come. But Esme—the world rested lightly on her skin. Under a tube light that glowed in spurts, her eyes were green droplets flecked with gold. Still, her look was the kind that made you take cover. They had lived together once; he knew the signs. She was about to yell at him.
She said, “Lo, just what in the hell are you doing?”
“What do you think?” he said. “Of course I’m going to come after you.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
He looked around the room and saw it with new eyes. “How did you even know I was here?”—though the question wasn’t half out before he wanted to take it back. Esme didn’t work for the feds, or not just the feds. She worked for them all and always seemed to know things no one else could. “Okay, forget that,” he said. “Thank you for coming. Ida’s gotten so big. That was her, right? Were you bringing her to school? You look beautiful, you know. Same as always.”
She was wearing a wool cloche with its brim upturned, and a lemon scarf that dangled from her neck. “I’m going to start over,” she said, and she twined the ends of the scarf around each wrist like shackles.
He waited. Looked down at his pants, which were pleated at the waist. He’d actually left the hotel looking like this, in a squash-colored jersey and pants that creased at the waist.
“Let me ask you a question,” she said. “Have you really become a fanatic, or do you just think there’s something to be gained in pretending?”
“I’m on a mission,” he said.
She tilted her head back and released a dry and protracted groan.
“I was doing this when we met. You didn’t seem to mind back then. I’d say you even liked it.”
“You do realize that people are rallying across the country in your name? That there’s talk of real violence and uprising in your name? Have you lost it completely? Whatever ‘back then’ was, it didn’t involve this.”
He shrugged. He didn’t know what to say and knew if he said something incriminating it’d be all the worse when she listened again later, because probably every washer in this place was bugged, not to mention her earrings and brooch, which were, unbelievably, of a set he’d bought her so many years ago. He put one fist atop the other. She looked so pretty. He asked if she was well. He hoped she was well because he loved her, but because he loved her, he also hoped she was miserable.
She parted her lips, though she wasn’t smiling. Her front teeth were buckled. A capillary small as thread tacked across her forehead.
“Lo, I am just trying to protect you. If you carry on like this, it’s not going to end well.”
He nodded.
“Am I getting through to you?” she said. “If you don’t stop, they will throw you in jail. Or worse. You’re trying to make friends with the wrong people.”
He said he understood but that he knew what he was doing.