by Teisha Mott
“You are the one who cold shouldered me! I did text you, and you barely responded.”
“Well, I was really busy!”
“And I was sitting around doing nothing?” Matt questioned. “Sweetheart, my entire life is a full-time job. Sometimes I have time to burn, but most times I don’t even have time to use the bathroom!”
Klao was beginning to feel foolish. “Well, you could have at least called…”
“I see!” Matt nodded. “So you have one of those weird phones that only work one way. That’s why you couldn’t have called.”
“But…”
“This isn’t a one way friendship, Klao! I don’t expect that you'll just sit there and wait for me to take the initiative to call you. What is that?”
“If you wanted to talk to me you’d call!” Klao snapped. “You didn’t want to talk to me, so you didn’t call, and I am not forcing anyone to want to talk to me.”
“Then what if I said the same thing? What if I said, ‘oh, Klao does not want to talk to me, that’s why my phone didn’t ring’. Then what? I don’t want to waste my time talking to someone who doesn’t want to talk to me either!”
“Oh, so that’s it? So because I did not call you, you decided that our so called friendship is a waste of your precious time?” Klao was beginning to feel less foolish and more cross. “Is that why you disinvited me from church?”
Matt’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
“Yes! The one time you could spare five minutes to call me, you told me I could not come to church!”
“I never said you could not come to church! I told you I had to go to St. Thomas…”
“So, obviously I could not go to church if you weren’t going to be there!”
“I called you about St. Thomas because I wanted to take you with me, you nitwit!” Matt snapped. “But you would have heard that if you hadn’t hung up the phone on me!”
“Oh!” Klao was back to feeling foolish. He was going to take her to St. Thomas? She hadn’t known that! She looked at the toes of her Nike sneakers that were almost covered by the wide legs of her Izzy carpenter overalls.
They stood in silence for a while. Klao stared down at her toes, while Matt stared down on her. Finally, Matt spoke.
“Klao M. Persaud?”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t call you last week.”
“You don’t have to be sorry. You were busy!”
“But I am, because I really missed you!”
Klao finally looked up. “You did?”
“Yes, I did, and I promise that I will find the time to call you every day from now on, okay – even for one minute!”
Klao smiled. “And I will call you, too.”
Matt smiled back and took her hand. “Look at that! We had our first fight and we survived!”
Klao’s heart was pounding. He was looking at her with that intense look again. She wondered if they had ‘only made up’, or they would kiss and make up. Although, she told herself, she did not want her first kiss with Matt to be at a place as depressing as The Wayside Inn.
But she needn’t have worried. Matt just gave her hand a gentle squeeze.
“Come. There is somebody I want you to meet!”
***
It had been a long day, but one well spent. Klao peeled off her overalls and the tank she wore under it, and pulled her tired body to the shower. Who knew volunteering could be so tough? How on earth did Matt do it every day? She had done a little bit of everything. She had met a homeless man called Rupert, who was the victim of police brutality, having been beaten up and set on fire more than once. He was in such a bad state that he could not even wash cars as he used to do, and was now beyond destitute. Matt wanted to know if there was any way Klao could raise a suit against the government to help Rupert.
Klao had been thrilled. That was why she had gone to law school – to help people like Rupert. She knew Mrs Reyes would freak if Rupert with his burnt skin and one eye looking like a tomato came into the pristine offices of Reyes and Green, so she decided that she would do this case pro bono, and work on it from home.
After speaking with Rupert, she helped Mary with song service (she could not sing like Mary, but at least she knew the songs), then she helped to serve the food, then to distribute the clothes. It was phenomenal how useful one felt after a day of doing good, Klao realised, and Bianca agreed. Bianca had spent most of the day in the clinic with Dr Tulloch. She expressed to Klao how badly in need of medical attention most of those people were. Forget that the public hospitals were now supposed to be free. They may be free, but somehow, these people at The Wayside Inn managed to slip through the cracks. Bianca had seen everything that day, from head lice to gastroenteritis! She promised Dr Tulloch that she would come back and help the following month.
“It's a good thing Matt has going!” Bianca told Klao as she dropped her home. “He is a good man!”
Klao knew that. She smiled to herself as she poured shampoo into her palms and lathered her hair. Matt. She liked him, regardless of his tattered jeans and old T-shirt. She had managed to look beyond all of that and see the human; the kind, compassionate, caring individual who was inside. She frowned a bit as the shampoo got into her eyes. The individual who refused to kiss her. Why wouldn’t he kiss her? Vishal did not have a problem kissing her, and neither did Ricard Shalkowski, so she knew she was kissable. But not to Matt.
Later, as she blow dried her hair, dressed in a cool, breezy tank dress, she wondered whether Matt had ever kissed anybody. Instantly, Georgia Maragh’s face came to her mind. Georgia had spent most of her day buzzing around Matt. Klao had noticed, although only Mary had been brave enough to say it aloud, that Georgia really did not do anything. Her main aim for the day was just to make sure that she was in Matt’s presence at all times. Klao had asked Mary whether Matt and Georgia had dated in the past, and Mary almost flipped her lid.
“Don’t even say that in joke!” Mary said, poking Klao with one of her French manicured nails.
Klao was dying to know the history behind Mary and Georgia. All she managed to find out that day was that Georgia was the daughter of the first elder – the distinguished looking gentleman with the bald top, who had congratulated Matt on his message that Saturday – and that she called herself ‘Sister Pastor’. Klao had also discovered that Georgia definitely did not like her. And she was smart enough to know that Georgia’s ‘ought’ against her had everything to do with Matt.
Klao brushed her dry hair up into a ponytail. She picked up Minx, who had been following her around.
“I had a good day today!” She told Minx. “Next time I go to the Inn, I’ll take you with me.”
Minx responded by licking her face.
“I think I really like Matt!” She confided in her puppy, as she snapped his leash on to his collar. “He is a really nice man.”
Minx barked in agreement.
“And I think he likes me too – except that he doesn’t think I’m kissable.”
Minx cocked his head and looked at her.
“Yeah, it’s probably too soon to be thinking about kissing anyway!” She agreed with Minx. She placed him on the floor and tugged at his leash. “Come on!”
She was tired but the day was not over. She had only gone home to shower, change, and grab her puppy. She was meeting Bianca, Mary and Sheena up at Grandma Sylvia’s house. They were going to finalise the words for Bianca’s wedding invitation. She would not stay long, though, because Matt said that he would stop at her house after Sunday evening services.
Klao was happy. She was happier than she had been in a really long time. Whoever would have guessed that her happiness would have come from a Preacher Man?
199
On Time
chapter eleven
Klao rocked as she sang along with the great Ella Fitzgerald through her iPod and completed her time summary. Not that there was anything much to complete. She had been padding like crazy. Court had been on holiday fo
r two weeks, and both Mrs Reyes and Mrs Green had gone on vacation, leaving her and Marlene to hold the fort.
Klao loved August. That was the most stress free month in the life of an attorney. No trips to court; no opposing counsel talking down to her, no taking home work… She did not even wear dark suits to work in August! That Friday, she had actually worn jeans and a shirt! She sat at her desk, working on her time summary and waiting for Matt to come back on line.
Matt! Just the thought of his name made her smile. It was impossible to believe that he was the same person she had been so mean to three months ago in the supermarket. Now he was one of her best friends and her confidante, and the guy she hung out with at nights, and the guy who she could call to fix things and chase lizards, and the guy who picked her up for church on Saturday – yes Saturday mornings…
He was the first person she spoke to in the morning when she woke up – after God, of course. He had got her into the habit of reading her lesson study guide and spending time with God before she started her day. And he was the last person she spoke to at night – including God, because he always prayed with her before telling her goodnight on the phone. They chatted forty times per day. The last time she looked at her phone bill, it had rows and rows of Matt’s number on it. He called her sometimes for the most inane things: to tell her that he saw a dog that looked like Minx or that there was a bird’s nest in a tree by the Wayside Inn.
She called him also for the most inane things: to tell him that she had not yet tasted the corned bread he had left in her fridge, or to ask him whether he agreed that the actress, Tilda Swinton was the dead ringer of comedian Conan O’Brien. They had been discussing, a few moments before, the life altering issue of whether he should make fish in coconut cream and curry fish for Sabbath lunch, or just do one. But he had to leave to take care of something at church.
Klao hoped he would do both, because she could not decide which she preferred. She also hoped he would not ask her for the containers he had loaned her the week before, because she still had not eaten the left overs of last week’s lunch that were still properly preserved in her freezer. Matt insisted every week that she take some food home and have it during the week. He was convinced that she did not eat properly and needed someone to take care of her. Klao smiled again. He could have the job if he wanted it…
“Why do you look like pleased puss?” Marlene asked, coming into her office. “What you up to?”
“Nothin’!” Klao responded, turning off her iPod and minimising her time summary and the Facebook screen before Marlene could see that it was open on Matt’s profile.
“Uh-huh! Not up to anything nuh? Are you having internet sex with the pastor again?”
“No!”
Marlene shook her head in disbelief. “People like you give new meaning to the term ‘Lay Preacher’!”
Klao blushed. “You are so crass. Matt and I are friends. We have a healthy, friendly relationship. Nobody is ‘laying’ anybody!”
“Not yet!” Marlene said wisely. “But I promise you, that will change before you know it!” She flung her long, lean body into Klao’s chair and swung her jean clad legs over the arm. “The man is converting you for himself and you don’t even realise it. He carries your lunch here every day…”
“Twice, Marlene.” Klao corrected. “He carried lunch for me twice!”
Marlene fanned her off as though that was insignificant. “And you are on the phone with him a million times a day. You stopped wearing earrings…”
“I never wore earrings to begin with!” Klao pointed out. She thought pierced ears were creepy, and had cried when Bianca and Samantha had theirs done as teenagers.
“Whatever! One of these days you are going to come in here with your skirt at your ankle, and we’re going to have to call you ‘Mrs Pastor’!”
Klao rolled her eyes. “And would that be such a bad thing, being ‘Mrs Pastor’? Aren’t you the one who said he is a man and I am a woman so we should go for it?”
“That’s before I knew he was a pastor!” Marlene lamented. “And a Seventh-day Adventist pastor at that! How can a young, handsome boy like that waste his life being a pastor?”
“And what is so wrong with a Seventh-day Adventist pastor?” Klao asked. “And just so you know, I like going to church on Saturday. It is far more interesting than going on Sunday. I like the people and I like the service…”
“And you love the pastor!”
Klao did not say anything. She did not know that she loved the pastor. In her mind the word 'love' didn’t mean anything unless the word 'make' was in front of it, and that was not something she could even consider as far as Matt was concerned. She was attracted to him, of course, and Andie always spoke about the ‘special infusion of grace’, but she wondered whether Matt had any carnal feelings whatsoever. All the time they were hanging out, his hand had never even brushed her bosom by accident, and he had never ever kissed her! Well, that was not exactly true. One Saturday night at a church social, she had accurately guessed every one of his clues during a particularly heated round of ‘Taboo’ and he had been so thrilled that he had grabbed her and planted one on her forehead. She had been stunned and Georgia Maragh had left the game... But a romantic kiss? Matt had not even attempted one.
She had discussed the situation at length with Bianca and Andie and Samantha. Bianca and Andie told her it was fine that he had not kissed her or made any untoward passes at her. Andie, who understood Seventh-day Adventist men more than any of the others, explained that they were a bit more reserved than other men, and believed that any form of intimacy should be reserved for marriage, or at the very least, until the engagement. It kept them ‘circumspect’. And especially as a Minister, albeit a liberated Minister, Matt could not go around, kissing and feeling her up. What would he tell his congregation about shunning temptation, and avoiding the lust of the eyes and flesh? Already, he was pushing the bar by dating a non-Adventist girl. Samantha, however, who was struggling through the trauma of being a 'PE widow', did not agree.
“If you want to kiss him, go right ahead!” She advised her cousin. “And see if he kisses you back, and if he has any physical reaction to you. I do not know how you can date a man without having a clue if he is sexually attracted to you!”
Andie had glared at her sister. “Of course he’s sexually attracted to her. She is pretty. She is sexy. He is a man. He eats salt. But he is a man held to a higher standard, and he must adhere to it!”
Samantha had just rolled her eyes.
But Klao had been wondering about what Samantha had said. She wondered really if Matt had any sexual feelings towards her. That Wednesday night when he had stopped to see her on the way home from church, she decided to test him. As he hugged her goodbye, she attempted to mash her body close to his to see if she would get a reaction. Not only did she not get a reaction, but he had politely eased her away. Klao had been mortified. Fortunately, Matt had never spoken of the incident, and neither did she. But it did not stop her from imagining what it would be like when he finally kissed her… what it would be like to be kissed by a man of God… She smiled.
“Look at your face!” Marlene said, breaking into her daydream. “The pastor has you weak!”
“Whatever, Marlene!” Klao tried not to blush, but failed miserably when her BlackBerry started to ring, and Matt’s smiling face came on to the screen. She hoped Marlene did not see that it was Matt calling, but the look on Marlene’s face showed she knew exactly who was calling. Klao was only glad that the phone was on vibrate mode, so Marlene would not hear the sappy, cuppy-cake song that she had set as Matt’s ring tone.
“Hey Matt!” She responded.
Matt’s voice rang through the office as he sang, “Here’s to the prettiest girl in the world…. Cheers to the prettiest girl in the world…”
Klao gasped. Christopher had messed with her BlackBerry last weekend, and since then, sometimes when she answered it went straight to speaker phone!
Ma
rlene was beyond amused. “Is that for me or Klao, Pastor Matt?”
Klao wished the ground would swallow her. She would have to get Christopher to readjust her phone.
Matt was nonplussed. “You, of course, Mrs Smith Stewart. You are the prettiest girl in the world!”
“You flatter me with your smooth tongue, pastor, but it is Ms Smith Stewart… And your voice isn’t half bad!”
“Thank you!” Matt responded, and Klao could almost hear him smiling. “Will I see you at church tomorrow?”
“Absolutely not!” Marlene declared. “I’ll never set foot into a SDA church!”
“Never say never, Counsellor!” Matt warned. “Ever hear that ‘man plan and God mash down’? Where’s Klao?”
“Right here Matt!” Klao answered quickly. She took the BlackBerry off speaker, and shooed Marlene out of her office.
“Bye Pastor Matt!” Marlene called, as she left.
“Sorry about that!” Klao said. “I don’t know what Christopher did to my phone…”
“Don’t sweat!” Matt told her. “I like talking to Marlene. By the way, that song was totally for you.”
Klao smiled. “Really? Do you think I’m the prettiest girl in the world?”
“No doubt about it!”
“Even prettier than Halle Berry?”
“I think Halle Berry is over rated!”
Klao smiled. “Well, you’re not too bad yourself!” She told him. “You’re cute! You look like Nick Cannon!”
“Buttons and puppies and babies are cute!” Matt contradicted. “I am a man. I am not cute! In fact, I resent being called cute! And I don’t look like that guy!”
Klao laughed out loud. She, Mary, Sheena and Bianca had spent almost all of last Sunday trying to convince Matt that he looked like ‘Mr Mariah Carey’. Matt could not see it. He thought they were teasing him. They were arguing about it on Grandma’s front porch, when Grandma came out and glanced at Bianca’s MacBook.