Heavens to Betsy (19 page)

“It doesn’t feel right.”

“Betz, is this girl the woman for David?”

“No. Even if I didn’t have feelings for him, I wouldn’t be happy about this. She’s too young and shallow. He’ll be bored in a week.”

“Then you have no moral dilemma.” She swirls her coffee. “Now, let’s address the really tough issue. What dress are you going to wear?”

See why I have LaRonda in my life? She makes everything so simple, while all I seem to do is complicate matters.

I continue to visit Velva in ICU, and she’s much the same—over-breathing the respirator, which is good, but not enough for them to take her off it, which isn’t so good.

Another Sunday passes, less eventful than the one before, and once again the cash offering is very low. Now I’m beginning to worry without any help from Edna Tompkins. What if she’s right? What if people
are
voting with their dollars?

Gus suggested finding a way to monitor the cash box in the sacristy. It’s kept locked, and only he and the church business manager have a key. At least, they’re the only ones we know of. But church keys are like bunnies; they reproduce at an alarming rate. People will give a copy of their church key to their best friend’s sister’s cousins bridesmaid who needs to get into the sanctuary early for a wedding.

I absent-mindedly check e-mail as I wonder how, short of hiding in the closet with the clerical robes, we can monitor the offering box.

And then the answer appears before me, right on my computer screen.

A Web cam. That could work. I even know who could help me. David may be too cheap to pay for anything more than dial-up Internet access, but the boy does know his way around electronic stuff—except for his VCR, which for some reason mystifies him.

I push the Speed Dial button on my phone, and he answers just as quickly.

“St. Helga’s. Pastor David.”

“You have a good voice for a receptionist. Bet you don’t know how to transfer me to voice mail.”

“Hey, Betz.” I can hear his grin. “Fortunately no one’s asked me to do that so far this morning.”

“Secretary out?”

“Her kid has the vomiting virus. She offered to come in and bring him with her, but I declined.”

“I need your help.” David’s used to my abrupt jumps from one subject to the next.

“Personal or professional?” He sounds wary.

“Professional. I need you to help me install a Web cam.”

“Who are you spying on?”

“It’s not a who. It’s a what. Can you meet me at someplace electronic this afternoon to pick out the camera? We’ll have to come back to the church tonight after everyone’s gone to set it up. I don’t want anyone else to know about it.”

“It’s the work of the Lord, hon. I think someone’s raiding the offering.”

“Ouch. Then count me in.”

“Excellent. Circuit City at three?”

“Yeah?”

“How peeved are you on a scale of one to ten about dinner last week?”

“Help me install this camera and all is forgiven.” That’s not true, but what else am I going to say? I’m supposed to invite him to the fund-raiser, so I have to play it cool.

“I know you don’t approve of Cali.”

“It’s your life, David. I shouldn’t have been so judgmental.”

“I’m glad you feel that way.”

I take a deep breath. “Do you think Cali would let me borrow you Saturday night? I need an escort for the Nehemiah Project ‘do,’ and since my only recent romantic entanglement has just been rein-carcerated, I’m desperate.”

“Sure. I’ll even pull out my old tux for the occasion.”

David looks like James Bond in a tux. It’s so unfair. He’s a preacher. He shouldn’t get to resemble a young Sean Connery. I remember when we bought that tux at a consignment boutique. It was for his wedding to Jennifer. The wedding that never happened. Partly because he was the kind of guy who would buy a secondhand tux, and she was the kind of girl who wanted to register at Tiffany’s because David’s family is from New York City.

I try not to breathe my sigh of relief directly into the phone. I don’t want to sound like my obscene phone caller. “I owe you. In fact, I’ll spring for dinner. Somewhere nice.”

“No chili dogs?”

“Definitely no chili dogs.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing.”

I drop the receiver back in its cradle with a
thunk!
I had no idea it hurts this much to be in love.

In love! It’s not that bad, is it? But it is. My stomach does a full-twisting backflip with a 3.0 degree of difficulty. Why didn’t I see this before? It’s not just about having feelings for David. About being attracted to him.

And I mean that as the prayer of desperation and panic it sounds like.

I manage to hide my newfound realization from David when we meet to buy the Web cam. And even late that night, when we rendezvous at the back door of Church of the Shepherd, I play it cool.

“Betz, you do have a security code for the alarm, right? If the police get called, they send in the dogs first.”

David is wary of dogs because of an unpleasant visitation experience during field education in divinity school. How could he have known the house number in the church directory was a typo and that the reclusive homeowner kept a pack of dogs for running off door-to-door salespeople and pushy evangelists?

“I have a code. Don’t worry.”

We’re both dressed in black. All we need are stocking caps and some coal blacking to smear across our cheeks.

Okay, we’re about as stealthy as the Three Stooges. But I like the feeling of being co-conspirators.

“Ouch!” David bumps into me in the doorway when I stop to punch in the security code. I jump about a mile, and not just from the surprise.

“It’s okay.” With the alarm system off, we switch on our flashlights and make our way down the darkened hallways. Here and there, security lights help show the way.

The sanctuary at night is a scary place. I find that very ironic. In full daylight it feels holy, a sacred space that provides comfort and inspiration. At night, in the dark, it’s just an empty cavern that could conceal any number of bogeymen. I’m glad David is right on my heels.

We slip through a side door and into the sacristy. It’s a smallish room off the chancel area where the altar is. Mostly it’s used to store sixty two-liter bottles of Welch’s Grape Juice for Communion. An ancient refrigerator grates and whines, struggling like most of the parishioners to do its part for the church. The deacons come in on Saturday mornings to prepare the communion trays for the next day. Then they store them in the refrigerator. By Sunday morning, the grape juice has acquired a metallic bouquet with a saucy hint of Freon.

The offering box is a wooden structure about the size of an end table that sits in the corner. It has a slit in the top for the deacons to drop the bank deposit bag into after they’ve collected the offering. A large silver padlock dangles down its side.

“What’s the best angle?” I ask David.

He runs the flashlight around the room. “We don’t want it to be seen.”

“Up high?”

“Probably. We’re going to need a ladder.”

“Great.” I can picture us wrestling a fifteen-foot piece of rattling
aluminum through the darkened church. We’d look like something out of an old episode
of I Love Lucy.

“Couldn’t we just stand on a chair?”

“Nope. Not tall enough.”

“But all we have to do is stick it up there, right?”

“That’s what the guy at the store said.”

I run my flashlight around the room. “What if we stand on the counter?” There’s a small cabinet covered with Formica where the deacons fill the trays.

“That might work if you do it,” says David. “I’m way too heavy. It won’t hold me.”

And that’s how I find myself clambering up onto the counter with David’s help. His hands on my waist scorch me, but I pretend not to notice. Once I’m up on the counter, he hands me the camera. “Be careful, Betz. If you drop it, that’s all she wrote.”

Great. No pressure. It’s not the only thing that’s about to crack.

I reach up as high as I can, but even in the dark I see that the camera’s going to be too obvious.

“No good. It’s not going to be high enough.”

I turn to climb down, and my right foot gets tangled with my left. With a yelp, I pitch forward and brace myself for a head-on collision with the tile floor. Instead, two arms and a formidable chest break my fall.

“Whoa!” David scoops me into his arms like a groom about to carry his bride across his threshold. I’m shocked he’s not collapsing under my weight, but he holds steady, unlike my heart rate.

“Thanks,” I say with a breathlessness usually reserved for preteen girls and asthmatics.

“Betz…”

“Yeah?”

“Are you okay?” His voice is as mysterious as the darkness around us.

No. I’m not okay. Not when I’m this close to what I can’t have. “Right now or in general?”

“Did you hurt yourself?”

It’s so dark. It would be easy to blurt something out. Something approximating the truth. Then I’d know. One way or another, I’d know.

“No. I didn’t hurt myself.” Or maybe I did, but not because of the fall. I hurt myself years ago in divinity school when I pretended I didn’t have feelings for him so I could be his friend.

Slowly, he slides me to the ground. I’m still clinging to him for support. It’s so clichéd, and still so intimate. No wonder it’s a stock device in all my favorite romance novels.

I think I know what’s going to happen, but it doesn’t. No lip-lock whatsoever. Just the opposite. He sets me on my feet, and his arms fall away. “Maybe we should get that ladder after all.”

“Maybe so.” My knees lock, and I think I’m going to keel over. I clutch the Formica counter for support. While we’re fetching the ladder, let’s see if we can find my sanity.

Twenty minutes later we find the ladder, but my sanity is still MIA. Another twenty minutes and two tries later, the Web cam is hidden behind some trimwork above a storage cabinet. You’d never
see it unless you were looking for it. But I have a wide-angle view of the offering box on the PC in my office. Now I just have to hide out here next Sunday after worship and see who’s been helping themselves to the first fruits of Church of the Shepherd. And do some mental self-flagellation for not helping myself to a little of David while I had the chance.

Am I getting on your nerves yet with my cowardice about coming clean with David? I know I’m getting on mine. So let’s change the subject.

The next morning I head for the monthly meeting of the Greater Downtown Ministers’ Association. I make this pilgrimage out of a desperate need for camaraderie. We gather at one of the downtown hotels for a rubber-chicken lunch, complete with guest speaker and senior-minister preening. The quality of the food never varies. Neither does the preening. The speaker’s the only thing that might hit or miss. But we attend anyway, out of some strange compulsion to flock with birds of a feather.