On Time (Persaud Girl)

by Teisha Mott

  “Yes, but the project is based in New York!” Samantha explained piteously. “I’m going to have to be a PE widow for twelve weeks! Twelve frigging weeks!”

  Klao looked at her sadly. She could not imagine having to live without her husband for twelve weeks. Matt was not even her boyfriend, and she missed him, having not heard his voice in four days.

  She sat still ruminating on Samantha’s pending ‘widowhood’ as she pored over June Charles’ file later that evening. A particularly depressing rerun of Law & Order was on TV. She was not watching, but the sounds from the TV were keeping her company. Minx was fast asleep in his box, having spent a good portion of the evening barking at his reflection in the mirror. Being single and alone was one thing, she thought, but being married or being in love and alone was something else completely. Samantha would be left alone with Caitlin for three months, while Jeremy went to New York to make fifty-million dollars. She was sure Samantha would prefer her husband home to the commission he would make on that Merger. Klao knew she would. She wondered whether she would be a St. Andrew widow if she were to marry Matt. The Church would always have to come first, she thought. She would be second place to the members who needed counselling. And the Wayside House Inn… She knew that because the previous week when she had spoken to Matt by phone every night, their conversations were constantly interrupted by Matt’s call waiting…

  The phone on her desk rang. She absently picked it up.

  “Yuh-huh!”

  “Klao Melissa Persaud!”

  Her heart did a little flip. “Matt! Hi!”

  “Sabbath looks like it was years away!” Matt commented. “How have you been doing?”

  “Good! Busy…” Klao did not want him to think she was sitting at home pining over him and wondering why he did not call her. “You?”

  “You don’t even want to know,” Matt told her. “But when I came in from church a while ago, I told myself that I am too blessed to be stressed, and too anointed to be disappointed… It has been one of those weeks… I’ve been too busy even to talk to you, and I missed it!”

  Klao did not comment. She thought being too busy to call her was a lousy excuse. But Matt did not owe her anything.

  “Yeah,” Matt continued. “But I knew you were okay, because I spoke to Mary. She said she saw you last night.”

  “Yes,” Klao closed June Charles’ file. “She dropped off her book. I showed it to Bianca. I think Bianca likes it.”

  “Awesome!” Matt said.

  Then silence. Klao frowned. She did not like the weird feeling between her and Matt. There was tension. It was unlike the easy, non-pressuring chemistry that had been there before.

  “So what you doing now?” Matt asked.

  “Going over a case,” Klao told him. “Court goes on holiday in a few weeks, so we are trying to wrap up as many loose ends as possible before then.”

  “And what do you do when court goes on holiday?” Matt asked.

  “Lots of stuff -- submissions, witness statements… I have one particular case that I want to wrap up in September as soon as we resume, so I will use August to get everything ready.”

  “I see!” Matt said.

  Silence again. Klao could hear him breathing on the other end of the phone. She could not think of one thing to say to him.

  “I’m going to let you get back to your case!” Matt said finally. “You think we can catch up tomorrow?”

  “Okay,” Klao said, sounding a bit nonchalant. “Bye!”

  “Klao, wait a minute…”

  “Yes?”

  “I told you I was not on to preach next Sabbath at church, but one of my colleagues asked me today to fill in for him over in St. Thomas. It was really short notice, and…”

  “That’s okay!” Klao cut him off before he could finish making his point. She did not want to hear him come up with some cockamamie story why he was not taking her to church with him next Sabbath. “I wasn’t going to come to church anyway.”

  “You weren’t?” Matt asked.

  “No,” Klao told him. “A friend of mine is coming in from Ocho Rios, and I had promised him we could have drinks Saturday night.”

  “I see,” Matt said again.

  “Yeah. So have fun in St Thomas!” Klao said. “Bye, Matt!” She hung up before Matt could say another word.

  Klao felt really bad as she stared at June Charles’ file. Let Matt keep his stinking old church. Who said she wanted to be a Seventh-day Adventist anyway? She sighed. He said at church that he ‘liked her liked her', but now he did not even want her around. What did she do to turn him off? Perhaps Bianca was right. Perhaps she was being punished by God for not remaining ‘circumspect’. How could she expect that she could be with a preacher when she was not even a virgin? A preacher could never be with a girl like her! A preacher had to be with a girl like … like Georgia, who planned AY Cantatas; or a girl like Sister Rittie! A girl like Klao Persaud, who had allowed a slug like Vishal Chadeesingh to steal her virtue, belonged with no one. She could bet that after Saturday night, Ricard Shalkowski would not want her either. He would not kiss her at the door, and he would not call her again. She was going to be alone for the rest of her life, and there was nothing she could do about it.

  ***

  Matt stared at the cordless phone in his hand. He knit his brow in frustration. What the dickens had just happened? Why had Klao hung up on him? And why had she been so short? In his mind’s eye, he recalled the bubbly, beautiful girl who had been in his house last Sabbath. She seemed to be having the time of her life. She had enjoyed service and Sabbath School and lunch and AY… She had gotten the seal of approval from Mary and Marvin. Only Sheena seemed a bit sceptical, and that was because Klao was not Seventh-day Adventist. Sheena did not think that Matt, as the pastor of the church, should encourage a relationship with a non-Seventh-day Adventist girl.

  “Get her in the church before you start dating her!” Sheena had advised.

  Matt knew she was right. Klao was a really nice girl, and he really, really liked her. All his life, Matt had imagined the kind of girl he was going to marry. He knew she would have to be a Christian and a Seventh-day Adventist. That went without saying. She had to be pretty, although ‘pretty’ came in many different forms. She had to share his passions – for service and for the church… He could imagine his wife serving food next to him at the Wayside Inn. His father, Leonard St. James, had loaned him the money to start the Inn, and Matt knew it could not fail, so he pumped much of his efforts into it. The Inn was still in fledgling stage, and required a lot of time and work. His other half would have to be someone who understood that. She would have to be someone who cared about the needs of the indigent of the society as much as he did. Matt had imagined that he would probably end up with someone like Georgia Maragh, the busybody AY leader at St. Andrew, and the daughter of the First Elder.

  Georgia was twenty-six, like Klao, and apart from being AY leader, she taught Sabbath School and led the Youth Choir. She was a Master Guide and was present at the Wayside Inn every Sunday morning. Like Matt, she had been a Seventh-day Adventist all her life, and a Christian for about twenty years. Georgia had been one of the first persons to make Matt feel welcome at St. Andrew. And Georgia could bake a mean cheesecake. But as time progressed, Matt realised that Georgia was a ‘surface Christian’. She was one of those people who were ‘so Heaven bound that they were of no earthly good’, and sometimes, she was just downright evil! Too many times, she made Youth Choir members cry; too many times, she had spread false rumours about who was sleeping with whom; too many times, she took the matters discussed in the Church board meeting to other non-board members of the church. Georgia had even tried to start a rumour that Mary was the one who had reported to Matt that Celeste and Devon, the young couple he had to disfellowship the previous week, were pregnant. Poor Mary, who had done nothing of the sort, was ready to renounce God and kill Georgia. Matt had to beg and plead with her not to waylay Georgia after choir practic
e and punch her in the nose, as she had planned to do.

  Georgia also had had a huge crush on Matt. The entire church knew, although she pretended to be shocked whenever anyone said anything about her and Matt. Matt pretended he did not hear when people referred to her as ‘Sister Pastor’. Mary constantly voiced her annoyance with Georgia being called ‘Sister Pastor’. Georgia would marry her brother only when worms grew ears! But she did not have to preach on that matter, because Matt knew that Georgia would never be Sister Pastor while he was the Pastor in question – especially now that Klao M. Persaud was in the picture.

  Klao M. Persaud. Matt had never met a girl who had bowled him over so badly. His head told him she was nowhere near his ideal, but his heart did not care. Years of practicing restraint had prevented him from kissing her at her front door last Saturday night, and since then, he had been having some not-so-’pastorly’ thoughts about her. Fortunately, the week so far had been a whirlwind, so he did not have time to ruminate on Klao. He missed talking to her and texting her and hearing her laugh. It had been only four days, but it felt like four years! Finally, finally, it was Wednesday night, and church was over, and he had ten minutes free, so he had picked up the phone and called her…

  But she was… Angry? Sad? Sick? Matt could not figure which. Mary had seen her Tuesday night, and said she had been fine… Was she angry with him? Matt’s frown grew. Was she angry that he had leaned in to kiss her? Was she totally grossed out by him? His heart fell a bit. That must be it. She did not want him. She had met Matt the Minister, and was turned off. That is why she had shut him down so quickly. He had wanted to ask her if she would go to St. Thomas with him on Sabbath, but she was not even interested in going to church. She was going to be having drinks with some random friend from Ocho Rios. A friend who, no doubt, had been to ‘La Fa’ before, and who wore Izzy jeans and ate Häagen-Dazs ice cream. A friend who was more of her ilk than a poor, simple pastor could be.

  Matt returned the cordless phone to its cradle. He thought he knew the voice of God. He thought God had told him that Klao was worth pursuing. Obviously, he was wrong. Matt sat at his desk, and bowed his head into his hands. He hated feeling like this. He hated being unsure about anything. He hated any form of angst in his life. All through growing up, Mary had been the angst ridden twin – always wanting to be popular and always wanting everything to be just so. Matt was the laid back twin – the cool one: like Shaft! He did not know how to deal with angst. Usually, when stuff happened – how to deal with Georgia, an issue with the Inn, and the like, he turned it over to God. He decided that was what he would do with this whole Klao situation.

  “God, please tell me what to do!” He whispered into his palms. “Is she angry with me? Are we supposed to be together? Please, please tell me what to do!”

  He remained, with his head in his hands, waiting for a response. There was silence in the living room of his townhouse. A dog barked in the distance. Matt sighed and raised his head. He wished he lived in Bible times, where God would just appear and say ‘Matthew, Matthew’ and give him an answer. No such luck this time. Mary always kidded that she would not want to literally hear God’s voice, lest she turned white and never turned back black. Matt wouldn’t, at that moment, mind turning white, if it meant he would have an answer to his question.

  He wandered around the house, locking up, before finally making his way into his study. He was tired, but not sleepy. Might as well use the time to prepare his notes for the impromptu sermon he was going to have to preach on Sabbath. Pastor Kelly had told him the theme for the day was love. Love. There were so many messages he could preach on love – from John – the Gospel or the Epistles -- 1 Corinthians, or Songs of Solomon, or Hosea…

  Matt started. Hosea! Hosea was all about love. Unconventional love! Excitement was pulsing through his veins. He grabbed his huge Message Bible from the shelf and flipped through it to Hosea 1. There it was! There was his answer, looking at him from the pages of the Good Book. Who said God did not answer prayers?

  “The first time God spoke to Hosea he said, ‘Find a whore and marry her. Make this whore the mother of your children…’” Matt read aloud.

  Of course, Klao was not a whore, but the principle was what mattered. God told his servant to marry a woman outside of his faith. Matt would trade his seven years at La Sierra if God was not telling him the same thing! He flipped through to chapter two, and his fingers scrolled down until he found the verse he was looking for.

  “And then I’ll marry you for good – forever! I’ll marry you true and proper, in love and tenderness. Yes, I’ll marry you, and neither leave you nor let you go!”

  “Thank you Jesus!” Matt breathed, as he marked the pages with a Post–It. “Thank you so much!”

  He knew that everything was going to be fine. He and Klao would work out. After all, it was God who ordained it!

  ***

  It had been the most frustrating, disappointing night. Klao sat on the stool at the bar at Christopher’s Lounge in New Kingston and contemplated ordering a stiff drink – a whiskey, neat, or perhaps a round of Jose Cuervo tequila shots. Something potent was the only thing that could get her through the night.

  Klao swung her legs that did not quite reach the ground, although she was wearing three inch heels, and looked at the man sitting next to her. Ricard Shalkowski was too gorgeous. His skin was light brown and flawless. His eyes were big and pale amber. His hair had ripples and waves, and just the right amount of product in it. His dark Izzy man jeans hugged his butt, and Klao could make out a firm, toned torso under his loose white shirt. He looked good. It was just too bad that he had the personality of a blank white wall.

  It had been a bad Saturday. Klao had woken up in a bad mood. She had wanted to go to church, and had even picked up her Diane von Furstenberg jersey wrap dress from the cleaners the Monday before, but now that Matt did not want her there, she could not go.

  Andie had told her she was being ridiculous.

  “I don’t know what you mean by he does not want you to go!” She had said. “Matt cannot determine if you go to church or not. Go to church if you want to go to church! And if you won’t go to St. Andrew, come to Kingsway with me and Nate!”

  But Klao did not want to go to Kingsway with Andie and Nate, and she did not want to go to St. Andrew if Matt was not going to be there. Who would she sit with? Mary had told her on Thursday that she was going to St. Thomas with her brother, so she would be totally alone. Klao had moped around the house the entire day, and not even thoughts of her date with Ricard Shalkowski could cheer her up.

  Finally, it was time to get ready for her date. Ricard had told her exactly where they were going. No need for surprise. So she had chosen for Christopher’s dark washed Izzy skinny jeans and a simple, chic, timeless Izzy ruffled halter top in black, that Aunt Elisabeth had declared was cut to make any woman appear two inches taller and five pounds thinner. Klao used the flat iron to straighten her hair, and wore it loose. She was putting on her Mac lip gloss – this time she hoped to look kissable – when Ricard rung the buzzer.

  Klao tripped over Minx and banged her shin into the wall as she scurried to get to the intercom.

  “Ye-es…” She said, hoping the pain did not sound in her voice.

  “It’s Ricard!” Ricard said, and she promptly let him in.

  “Come on in!” She smiled, opening the door. “Welcome!”

  Ricard smiled back, and Klao’s heart melted. “Matt who?” She thought.

  “Have a seat!” She said out loud. “I’ll be ready in a few secs!”

  “Do you have a dog?” Ricard asked as he sat.

  “Yes, he’s somewhere around,” Klao replied on her way back to her room. “His name is Minx. Don’t mind if he stares at you!”

  “Yeah, I thought I smelled a dog!”

  Klao did a double take. Did this punk just say her house smelled like dog? Her house did not smell like dog. Miss Gem had come in just yesterday and had cleaned, and her
dog was groomed probably more often than Ricard Shalkowski himself. What did he mean ‘he smelled a dog’?

  Klao smiled sweetly. “Excuse me?”

  “I have an over sensitive nose,” Ricard explained. “I can smell rain, dirt, animals – especially dogs. I’m not too fond of dogs, especially house dogs! If there has to be a dog, it should stay outside.”

  Klao’s smile fell. That was strike one. He did not like her dog. That alone should have been a deal breaker, but since he was already there, Klao decided that she would still go out with him. She kissed Minx in the privacy of her bedroom before leaving with Ricard. She felt a little bit cheered up when he led her to his shiny five series BMW. Clearly, he was doing well as an accountant, if he could afford a five series BMW that looked fairly new!

  “You look really beautiful, tonight, Klao!” Ricard told her, as he held the door open for her.

  “Thank you,” Klao smiled. A nice car and compliments! So what if he did not like dogs? The evening could only look up!

  The evening spiralled continuously down. Bianca and Andie had been right. Ricard was the stiffest and most boring man Klao had ever met in her entire life. His idea of a joke and Klao’s were as different as day and night. He asked Klao a myriad of questions about Law and her cases. Klao did not want to discuss law and her cases. It was bad enough she had to discuss those with Mrs Reyes! Ricard also could not comprehend that Klao did not do criminal matters. And constantly he raised ongoing issues with her; issues that, in truth, she did not give a ‘frying duck’ about. Then Ricard started talking about his job as a CPA, and as she sat listening to him, she could feel her arteries hardening, her bones decalcifying, and her hair turning grey. After a while, she could not hear him at all. She could just see his lips moving. She knew then that it was possible for one to be bored to death.

  Ricard said something that was supposed to be funny, since he was cracking up with laughter. Klao did not hear what he had said, but she managed to force a laugh.