Embrace Me (18 page)

“I'm surprised you'd say that. She's no beauty, but I find her face extremely accessible and friendly.”

“It's why we've always chosen live venues for Daisy. Pageants, musical theater, and now what she's doing at church. It all fits together with her ability to grab people. She's never been great on camera—but I guess it's worth trying, isn't it?”

“Of course.” I wiped my mouth and set my napkin back in my lap.

“What's so bad about her?”

Trician leaned forward, pressing her breasts atop the table, just behind her plate.

Her gesture annoyed me.

“Her nose. She had it fixed when she was seventeen, just before the state Junior Miss pageant. But it's not quite right. It was rather large beforehand. The surgeon said it might take two surgeries. But she's done fine enough without the second one. We could make another investment in her career, I guess.”

I smiled that smile.

She continued. “This show could go so far. It could give her the necessary platform for a recording contract, and her close proximity to Charmaine Hopewell will be such a boon. We'd need some help with the surgery, of course. We can't afford anything like that.”

“Are you sure plastic surgery is necessary, Trician?”

“It's one of the reasons I'm having a hard time in Nashville with her, Drew. They hear the demo and love her, but the headshot always stops them.”

She was using me. But I'd retain the upper hand.

“Well, I don't know. It's a lot of money to throw around.”

Trician grabbed my hand. “Drew, I need to explain something. I come from nothing. My family was trash, the laziest, meanest, worst kind of trash. I'm doing all I can to break that. Daisy deserves better.”

Oh brother. What an amateur manipulator. Charles Parrish would have eaten her cry for pity in a midmorning coffee break.

Never, never show your weakness.

Never.

What's next? Tears?

She took out a hankie. “Daisy and I are just going to have to work a little harder, climb more obstacles than those born to privilege. You'll never find a better sidekick. She ministers. You know it. You'd be a fool to throw that away.”

“I'll help you with it, then.” Why, oh why, did the Daisy package include Trician?

“You won't regret it.”

“There's something else I'll need from you, Trician. I'll need you to help me schedule guests. Can you do that? Pursue the more sought-after people?”

“I'm like a bulldog when I want something.”

Aha.

“Let me break the news to Daisy,” I said, and she agreed.

I don't know why, but as we drive down the streets of DC toward Foggy Bottom where my father lives, I feel the need to tell Hermy I used to be a minister.

“Just can't picture it, man. Sorry. Were you at one of those big Death Star churches?”

I almost crash the car. “
Death
Star?”

“Sure. You see those massive things. Big windows. Big gym buildings, glass lobbies, and all. Looks like you expect to see Darth Vader walking around in there giving orders, wreaking havoc on the galaxy. Why did churches stop looking like churches anyway?”

“It's less expensive to build simpler buildings.”

“I guess there's that, although—well, I dunno. Whatever. Were you at a Death Star?”

“Yeah.”

“You always at a big church?”

“Pretty much,” I tell him. “I started out as a youth pastor at a megachurch my father had connections to in Dallas. Loved the kids, but got a little scared they'd hold me back from my goals, not to mention I got into a little trouble with one of the kids' moms. Divorced from her husband for several years, lonely, and ripe for the picking. She came after me and I told her no thanks.”

“You don't like sex?” Hermy asks.

“It wasn't that, Hermy, sheesh. Can't a guy have morals every once in a while? She was persistent and I'll be honest, we made out a few times, got pretty hot and heavy, but I always cut it off just before we had sex.”

“Aw man. You have no idea what you're missing. You ever try it?”

“We were talking about how I became a pastor.”

“Oh yeah, right.”

“So I rebuffed her for good one night when she started pressur-ing me to bring us public. I said no. She got mad and said she'd tell the board I'd made ‘untoward passes' at her—”

“She said that? ‘Untoward passes'?”

“Yeah. Direct quote. So unless I resigned, she'd lie to the board. I was getting tired of it there anyway. The pastor wasn't going anywhere, the people loved him as well they should have, and I'd learned a lot. I didn't want to call in any favors from my father. I applied for a position at Elysian and moved up from there.”

“You know that woman could've been a little more original. Plagiarizing Genesis. That's lame.”

“Anyway, it put me on my guard. I wasn't going to make that mistake again.”

I pull up in front of my father's brick townhouse.

Hermy whistles. “Nice.”

“He got this from, well, you've heard of riverboat gambling, haven't you?”

“Sure.”

“Do the math.”

Hermy whistles, louder and longer this time. “So he gets it any way he can.”

“Preachers on the one hand, casinos on the other. Don't even try to figure that out.”

“I don't think I can.”

“No kidding. Let's get a room. I can't do this yet.”

“No prob.”

I drove Daisy out to Lake Coventry, to the Cunninghams' pier. The Cunninghams owned a vacation rental home out there and they let me use it when I needed to get away to write my sermon in the quiet. When I told her about the show, to be called
Faith Street
, and asked her to be the permanent musical guest as well as a cohost, you know, be the interviewer on “sensitive women's issues,” she wound her arms around my neck and squealed. Her breasts flattened against my chest and I couldn't gauge whether she was being forward or oblivious. I chose oblivious because it suited me. But she felt good against me. I couldn't deny that.

I pulled myself away and we walked around the lake, laying down big, big plans.

EIGHT

VALENTINE: 2008–2009

I
look up from my work. During the week between Christmas and New Year's Eve, I made thirty bracelets, ten necklaces, and twenty pairs of earrings. I hear fireworks popping somewhere across town.

“New Year's Eve depresses me more than any other holiday,” I say to Lella who's lying on my bed. We just finished watching
An Affair to Remember
.

“I surely know what you mean. Thanksgiving and Christmas we can somewhat re-create that family feeling with the group here at Blaze's. But New Year's Eve is for people who can dance and go out in public.”

“And next year is just going to be the same as last anyway.”

“Oh, but surely not! We'll save up more money and look at more house plans. And I was thinking, Valentine, maybe we could travel a little bit, just you and I, next fall after the season closes down and pick out a spot we'd like to live. Maybe even start paying on a lot somewhere.”

“Great idea. I can start researching on that now.”

She sighs. “Valentine, long ago you surely had dreams other than settling down with a legless-armless woman. Before you were burned?”

“A century ago I wanted the typical life. A good man who loved me for me. Actually, I was quite pretty pre-Drano, Lell. I wanted kids to love and care for, to help with their homework, and bake cookies for school parties. I wanted to just be there for them.”

“I'm truly sorry your mother wasn't like mine.”

“My mother had a lot of issues. Why did your parents put you on display, Lell?”

“They were poor, uneducated, and hopeless.”

“But surely—”

“No, Valentine. There was no way out for them but me. Please trust me on this.”

“Sorry.”

She softens. “As am I. Some things are too painful to talk about.”

“I know exactly what you mean.” I reach for the Martinelli's and pour us each a cup. “Did you ever have a dollhouse, Lell? I always wanted one.”

She nods, comets of delight speeding across the surface of her eyes. “Mother would bring it down off the shelf of our trailer and set it in front of me. She'd place everything just so, exactly as I'd ask her to. After we'd arranged the house she'd tell me the most delightful stories of the imaginary inhabitants.”

“My camper's kind of like a dollhouse you live in.”

“It surely is.”

“I'm ready to get back on the road, I think.”

“You always say that on New Year's Eve, but you never mean it on New Year's Day.”

Charlie Parker's version of “Embraceable You,” live at Carnegie Hall in 1949, mellows me with its sugar-crystal trumpet as the clock continues to tick toward a new year. Only four more hours left until I can kiss this one good-bye. “This rendition is a little cheesy.”

“Sometimes we all need a bit of cheese, Valentine.”

A light tapping rattles the door. “Valentine?”

“It's Augustine,” Lella whispers, eyes shooting off those comets again.

Oh, Lella! You like him?

“Come on in!” I adjust Lella's collar just so and grab my scarf.

The door inches open. He peers around it first. “Okay to come in?”

“I just said so, right?” I pointed to a space heater on the floor. “But hurry up and shut the door, okay? We've got bootleg warmth going in here.”

“What?”

I sit on the desk and push the chair out with my foot. “Have a seat. In case you didn't notice, the house is freezing. Blaze keeps the heat at, I don't know, fifty-five degrees?”

“It's sixty, I believe,” Lella corrects.

“Yeah. Sixty. And so Lella has a hard time with the cold. On our walk last night, someone put this heater out by the curb to be picked up.”

Lella nods. “I said, ‘Valentine, why not take that back with us and give it a go? Maybe they're just wasteful folk who simply don't need it anymore.'”

“So we plugged it in and suddenly we're in sunny Florida.”

“Is it too hot in here?” Lella asks.

“No way. This is a treat.”

“You seem like the conservationist type.”

“I am. But if you two don't deserve a little warmth, I don't know who does.”

I move to the bed, cross my legs Indian-style, place a pillow on my lap, and settle Lella's head on the softness to give her a better view of Augustine. It's easy to see why she likes him. There's something cute about his face, even though not much of it shows with that beard he wears.

His T-shirt tells me
God is not a Republican or a Democrat
. I point to it. “Does anybody really think either of those things?”