Chapter Four

Los Angeles shifted into morning by merely rotating the cast of characters. The night people stumbled home as the day folks darted between them, rushing to work. The skyline was wrapped in the same nasty, gray housecoat of fetid smog it wore every day. Traffic was an unhealthy clot of every kind of vehicle jockeying for the last open inch of roadway, intermittently coagulating into a total, immobile blockage.  Mark Foster eyed the coffee sitting in his car’s cup holder as he drove down Van Nuys. He always regretted that he had ordered extra hot for the first few minutes. But the truth was, he enjoyed the little game he played with the coffee every morning. That first tentative sip could be so much perfection or it could leave a little reminder on his tongue that patience is a virtue. The numbness that the scalding drink inflicted would whisper to him all day that he had a secret morning ritual.

He kept it secret because it was so cliché. Now that every truck driver in Marin County went to Starbucks, carrying a giant, sleeved, cardboard cup was not the status symbol it had once been. He might as well have been drinking a can of Coke. But he was determined that he would not give those cretins in his Coral Canyon office the satisfaction of knowing that he had not moved on to something new. He had his reputation as a trendsetter to maintain. He would not be thought of as ordinary.  So he drank the hot Cinnamon Dolce Latte cautiously at first and then gulped down the rest as he pulled into the staff parking lot.

They already talked about him enough, in his opinion. For instance: the debate over his love life—it had gone on for years. The fact that he was approaching middle age and had never married was a bewilderment to their miniscule minds. Phone conversations they pretended not to hear, discussions about his lunch appointments, were all scrutinized for signs that he might be involved with some person. There were two camps: those who were absolutely certain he was gay and those just as convinced he was a player.  How did he know this? Someone from each camp would regularly tell on the other one. 


It irritated him that they could be so small-minded. The truth was that while he truly loved and admired women and genuinely enjoyed the company of most men, when it came to sexual attraction, he felt nothing. Nada. No tingling, no craving, no moment when his brain switched into “pursue and conquer” mode. To him, people were just people. Some of each gender were beautiful, some repulsive, some engaging, some dull. 

He sat in the parking lot playing with his keys - the secret, sleeved cup now stuffed under the seat. He had started to feel a peculiar knot in his stomach, like something was wrong, like he needed to call Blaine. He pushed the feeling away. He was late for staff meeting. He quickly made his way through the front offices to the conference room. “Good morning, folks,” he said to the array of people gathered there. “Good morning, Pastor,” three or four of them echoed back.