Heavens to Betsy (7 page)

“Oh yeah. You have a date. I forgot about that.” Did he really? He looks über-cool, not at all concerned about my plans for the evening, but how weird is it that he would turn up like this?

“He’ll be here in a minute. Did you want something?”

I step back into the living room, and David follows me. He looks at his watch. “Are you running late?” He gives me the once over as impersonally as if he were selecting a pork chop at the grocery store. “You look ready to me.”

A flush creeps up my neck and spreads across my cheeks, but it’s not embarrassment. I feel hot from head to toe, but not in a
sexy
way. In a volcanic way.

“That’s all you have to say? I look ready?” My voice skips up a good third of an octave.

David swallows, the universal signal from a male of the species when he realizes he’s messed up. “So, you’re not ready?” he asks cautiously. “You look fine to me.”

“Fine? I
look fine?”
I am standing here in heels that a streetwalker would envy. I’m wearing leather pants, a see-through shirt, fashionably cropped and tousled hair, and discreet but helpful makeup. And the man whose casual touch has sent me into this torment says I look fine? Not fine as in “Hey, babe, you’re
so
hot,” but fine as in “Well, you’re no Gwyneth Paltrow, but you’ll do.”

“Well, to be perfectly honest, you look weird.” David has apparently decided to go for broke in the compliment department.

“Weird?”

“Yeah. Not like you. You’re all … sexy and stuff.”

From his tone of voice, I perceive this is not a good thing. Why
do I not just take out my ego and spread it on the floor so he can more conveniently stomp on it?

I toss my hair back, which I can do now thanks to these new layers, and remember that I look hot. The good kind, not the temperature kind.

I take two steps toward David until I’m standing an eyelash from him. With these heels on, I have a shot at looking him in the eye, tall geek-man that he is. He’s still wearing his clerical collar, which only emphasizes that he’s swallowing again. Hard.

I lick my lips, and I swear to God it’s not intentional, but some primal female instinct I never knew I had.

“Would it amaze you, David, to discover that some men actually find me attractive?” Before he can answer, I place a finger on his lips. Every part of me feels as if it’s been wired to an electrical outlet and switched to high voltage. “No, don’t answer. I don’t think I want to know.”

We’re standing in the middle of my living room, frozen like that for what’s got to be the longest moment of my life, when the doorbell rings a second time. I look over David’s shoulder, and there, standing in my doorway, is LaRonda’s hunky brother, James, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Denzel Washington.

“I think my date’s here,” I whisper to David. “You have a key. Lock up when you’re done with the computer.”

“LaRonda is a genius, and I will never doubt her again.” I dutifully repeat her words into the phone. It’s the next afternoon—Sunday—we’ve
both finished our church duties for the day, and she and I are in full postmortem mode.

“I told you the makeover would be worth it.” She’s crowing in triumph, but I don’t mind. It was well worth those few moments of makeover misery to see the expression on David’s face when I walked out the door with James. And my evening with James was the cherry on top. He was funny and gallant, and he treated me as if I had a brain. He also took me to the Melting Pot, a fondue restaurant I adore. David will never go there. He says if he’s going to pay that much for dinner, he wants someone else to do the cooking.

“I’m never wearing leather again.” I wince and tug at my jeans.

“If you play your cards right, you shouldn’t have to.”

“So what am I supposed to do now?”

LaRonda sighs into my ear that particularly resonant sigh of the long-suffering. “Do you think you prefer James to David?”

“Well, don’t be offended since he’s your brother and all, but, no.”

“No problem. James said you all had a friend vibe going, but nothing beyond that.”

For the first time in my life, I’m relieved a guy just wants to be friends. “So what do I do now?”

“You call David and ask him out.”

The warm flush of social success disappears as quickly as teenagers cutting Sunday school to head to the Donut Den.

“Just like that? Out of the blue?”

“Look, Betz, you have him off balance. Now’s the time to move in for the kill.”

For a preacher, LaRonda has excellent predatory instincts. She knows just when to pounce, which is how she gets her congregation
to do things they didn’t think they could do. Like build a fifteen-hundred-seat sanctuary. Or partner with a sister church in South Africa to build a school for AIDS orphans. Then again, maybe those predatory instincts are why she’s flourished as a solo pastor while I’ve collapsed under the weight of conflict and criticism. She knows how to go in for the kill while I would rather not witness the carnage.

“Okay, so I call him. What kind of date are we talking here? What if he doesn’t realize I’m asking him out?”

LaRonda’s laugh is like buttercream icing on warm cake. “He’ll know you’re asking him out.”

“How?”

“’Cause you’re going to tell him.”

I don’t know if I can. That would be putting it all on the line, no holding back, free-falling. “So I just say, ‘Hey, David, I’ve recently developed the hots for you. Wanna have dinner?’”

“That’s a start.”

“I don’t know if I can do it.”

“Well, no one else is going to do it for you.”

LaRonda continues to half-scold, half-coach me for the next twenty minutes. I dither, doing my best to keep her from hanging up. Finally, though, she shuts me down.

“Call him. Now. Bye.”

Call David. I’ve done it a million times. I know all his numbers by heart—home, church office, cell phone. I know his address, his birthday, his shoe size, even his IQ. What I don’t know is whether he’ll laugh, cry, or scream if I ask him out.

I haven’t felt this stupid and awkward since junior high. The only place I’ve ever found courage is in prayer, so I climb into my favorite
overstuffed chair, cross my legs, set my hands on my knees, palms up, and hope for a little divine inspiration.

I wait. And wait some more. I try to clear my mind, to wipe away the words and simply sit in God’s presence. The words, though, don’t want to leave. Neither do the images. Passing notes to David in Intro to Theology. The two of us doodling caricatures of the disciples in New Testament Exegesis. His hand on my thigh exactly eight days ago.

I abandon contemplative meditation and decide to cut straight to the chase.
Well? What do you think Big Guy? How about a little divine intervention here?

If you attended a liberal divinity school as I did, then you know it’s completely improper, politically incorrect, and otherwise
verboten
to refer to God in male terms. But I grew up talking to “him,” and it’s a little hard to change pronouns at this late date. Maybe if I have a daughter one day, she’ll talk to “her” the way I talk to “him.”

I close my eyes and hope for an answer. Nothing. I don’t know if that means God doesn’t approve or he doesn’t want to get involved in something as irredeemable as my love life, opting instead for something easy. Like peace in the Middle East.

My breathing has slowed, and I do try to focus. Breathe in, two, three, four. Breathe out, two, three, four.
Grant me faith, O Lord.

The warmth starts in my midsection and then gradually steals up into my chest. Over the next few minutes, it spreads through my limbs and up the back of my neck until my scalp is tingling.
Grant me faith.
The words replay in my mind. When every part of me is bathed in that warmth, I slowly open my eyes. Then I reach out and pick up the phone.

I punch in David’s number, digit by digit, as deliberately as if I
were a preschooler learning how to dial a phone. The receiver is still warm from my long conversation with LaRonda. Each ring seems to echo in my ear.
One. Two. Please, God, let me get the machine. If it rings four times, I’ll get the machine.

“Hello?” It’s not the machine. It’s David, breathless and sounding perturbed.

“Hey, David. It’s me.”

He hesitates for a millisecond. “Hey, Blessing. What’s up?” he asks, as casually as if last night never happened.

What’s up? My hopes. My blood pressure. The likelihood that I’m about to crash and burn the most precious friendship I’ve ever had.

“Nothing. Just trying to unwind from church.”

David doesn’t understand why Sunday mornings wear me out. Every time he leaves his church and climbs into his beat-up old Volvo, he’s as charged up as an addict on speed.

I clear my throat. “What are you up to?”

There’s a muffled noise and some rustling on the other end of the phone. Then his voice comes through, loud and clear. “I just got out of the shower.”

The rustling is probably him toweling off his hair. I decide I’d better not speculate what the other muffled noises might be.

“Want to head over to Radnor Lake for a walk?” The words fall from my lips before I even know what I’m doing. I hadn’t meant to say them, and yet they feel so natural. It’s what I might say to David anytime I call him on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

But it sure doesn’t qualify as asking him out on a date.

David is quiet for a moment, and suddenly it’s awkward again, like it was last night. I can hear him swallowing over the phone.

“Yeah?”

“Well, I just figured you’d be doing something with the guy from last night.”

“With James?”

“Yeah. You two looked pretty tight.”

“Oh.”

“Listen, I assumed you’d be tied up, so I went ahead and made other plans.”

“Other plans.”

“Yeah.”

My stomach feels as if someone punched me in the solar plexus. I can tell from David’s tone of voice that these plans involve a female.

“That’s cool. We can do Radnor another time.” I hate the slight catch in my voice because I know David will hear it. He knows me too well not to.

“Look, Betsy, about last night…”

“Yeah?”

“About what I said…”

“What you said?” Babies in the church nursery couldn’t look as innocent as I sound. As if every word he’d uttered wasn’t burned on my brain.

“About … you know … about your outfit and stuff.”

Where is he going with this? Is he apologizing, or is he going to tell me again that I looked ridiculous?

“I didn’t mean it to sound like it did.”

“Did it sound like something?”

I’m doing it again. Ducking for cover. Emotionally cutting and running. Here’s a chance to get real with David, and I’m lying through
my teeth to avoid it. It makes my prayer seem as false as it felt.
Grant me faith
, indeed!

“I was afraid I’d insulted you.”

My laughs as empty as the chalice at the communion table on Sunday morning. The presiding minister always lifts up the silver cup as he says the Words of Institution, but the truth is, in our tradition that cup is flat empty. All the juice is in the trays of shot glasses the deacons pass through the pews.

“David, I never expect you to find me attractive. We’ve been friends too long.”

That lie cuts my tongue like a shard of glass. Why can’t I be honest? This is the time. I know it. It’s never going to get any easier than it is right now. And I can’t do it.

“Oh, well, good. That’s good then.” He hesitates for a long moment. “Look, Blessing, I’d better go. I have to pick up my date in twenty minutes.”

“Oh, sure. Have a good time. And don’t wear that Dave Matthews Band T-shirt. Wear a real shirt, with a collar.”

David sighs. “I don’t ever go anywhere without a collar, one way or another.” He sounds as tired and as empty as I feel.

“Bye, David.”

“Bye, Betz.”

I hit the Off button on the portable phone and toss it onto the coffee table. It lands with a clunk next to the remote and the Pizza Hut coupon I clipped from the Sunday paper. I’m glad I have caller ID because LaRonda will call before the evening is out for a full report, and I can’t bring myself to tell her that despite her excellent coaching, I’ve failed at Asking-Out-Your-Best-Friend 101.