A woman stood in the corridor. Pale-skinned and willowy, with honey-colored hair twisted into a loose braid and coiled around the back of her head. She wore a high-necked peach crepe blouse with billowing sleeves and tiny fabric-covered buttons running down the front, paired with wide-legged white pants and white sandals with cork wedge heels. She was the cleanest, most well-groomed person Laurie had seen in a very long time.
In Lonely Satellite, Patricia is Pastor Kyle's wife. Originally from Miami, she moved to Las Vegas as a child and, as with Pastor Kyle, sought shelter in the subterranean communications facility during the 1984 nuclear attack. She serves as an organist for the Church of the Scorched Earth. She is also responsible for some mind-blowingly awful artwork:
A gigantic painted mural covered the entire wall behind the altar. Laurie recognized Patricia’s style, colorful and simplistic, from her wedding portrait. The mural depicted scenes of destruction, mushroom clouds and white-blue flames engulfing and obliterating a city skyline. Towering faceless soldiers in gray uniforms, their smart red caps emblazoned with a yellow hammer-and-sickle insignia, stood in rigid rows before the flames, their faces melting down to bone from the radiant light of the figure in front of them. Pastor Kyle, in his collarless white suit, his arms spread wide, stood bathed in the glow of a golden light from above. Behind him was a paradise, blooming gardens and burbling fountains and flowering trees, around which frolicked a throng of angel-faced children in white robes.
It was the tackiest thing Laurie had ever seen. And he’d been to Las Vegas.
