Strong Motion. Jonathan Franzen

light he passed a bank that looked like a mausoleum, a hospital that looked like a bank, an armory that looked like a castle, and a high school that looked like a prison. He also passed the Panaché beauty salon and the Somerville City Hall. The most prominent breed of teenaged girl on the sidewalks had frizzed blond hair, a huge forehead, and a sixteen-inch waist; the other prominent breed was overweight and wore pastel or black knitwear resembling children’s pajamas. Twice Louis was honked at from behind for stopping to allow surprised and suspicious pedestrians to cross in front of him.

      With the help of some recent Globes, he had brought himself up to date on the doings and sayings of the Reverend Philip Stites. Stites’s “actions” in Boston were attracting hundreds of concerned citizens from around the country, and to house those citizens who wished to participate in further “actions,” he had acquired (for the sum of $146,001.75) a forty-year-old apartment block in the town of Chelsea, directly north across the water from downtown Boston, on the Wonderland subway line. The building, which Stites immediately christened as world headquarters of his Church of Action in Christ, happened to have been condemned three years earlier, and soon after Stites’s flock had moved in and hung ABORTION IS MURDER banners from the windows, the Chelsea police paid a visit. Stites claimed to have converted the officers on the spot; this was later disputed. Under murky circumstances, a compromise was reached whereby every church member who entered the building had to sign a three-page waiver to protect the town from lawsuits. (A Globe editorial suggested that the mayor of Chelsea was in fundamental(ist) sympathy with Stites.) The condemned building apparently had almost no lateral stability and was liable to collapse even without the help of an earthquake.

      “What the state condemns,” Stites said, “the Lord will save.”

      A Globe cartoon showed a newsstand where nothing but dubious waivers were on sale.

      Renée lived on a narrow street called Pleasant Avenue, on the easternmost of Somerville’s hills. Her house was a shingled triple-decker with a slate-covered mansard roof. The branches of what appeared to be honeysuckle had engulfed the chain link fence in front of it, and Louis was almost through the gate before he saw Renée. She was sitting on the concrete stoop, leaning forward with her hands clasped, hugging to her shins the hem of an antique black dress. Its scooped lace neckline was half covered by the black cardigan she was wearing.