Scanning the downtown streets, I saw no signs of Mister-perfect-hair Proprietor, or Clare and Jimmy. And after all, unless they’d shadowed me, why should they be there? They had their own church, out among the weeds and train tracks at the end of Markle Avenue. In the corner of a parking lot I saw the familiar logo, as always with a different slogan:
NEW JERUSALEM
BUILDED HERE!
There was nothing scary about that; the logo was everywhere these days.
On Homegrown’s patio, a skinny, grey-haired woman in a print dress smoked a cigarette with one hand and held her wool coat closed against the autumn wind with the other. She ignored me, but I kept my eye on her as I approached. When I saw her take a last puff and shiver, I shivered too. For all I knew she was a cult member watching me as war
