Flabbergasted: A Novel

by Ray Blackston

  He kept on sweeping and said, "Oh my, that never happens 'round here."

  "It's blue and white."

  He still didn't look up. "Green 'n red, brown 'n tan, I seen 'em all. And most folk wait till the next Sunday to reclaim 'em."

  "But I'm going to New York. Might need it."

  "Letcha in in a see," he said. He was about an inch taller than me, brown skinned and lanky and seemingly used to interruptions. He propped his push broom against the brick sanctuary and introduced himself, telling me his name was Maurice, that he'd worked there for twenty-four years and had found many an umbrella left in the hall rack. "Son, we get so many umbrellas left here that five years ago our benevolent pastor began giving me the unclaimed ones ... so now all my relatives tell me they sick of getting these fancy Presbyterian umbrellas for birthday presents."

  I jiggled the chrome doorknob and moved aside. "Called a job perk, I reckon."

  Sweat beads covered his forehead as he reached in his pocket and produced a heavy ring of keys. "Yep, that's what it is, a perk. Now, tell me again what color?"

  "Blue and white."

  Maurice unlocked the side door and pointed down a dimly lit hallway, past various classrooms and offices, telling me my umbrella was probably still there on the rack. I told Maurice there sure were lots of eccentric people in his church and that after twenty-four years I imagined he had met them all.

  "Probably have," he said. "Which ones you met?"

  The names Darcy and Stanley and Ransom were met with shrugs, but when I got to the name of Allie, his eyes lit up.

  "Allie Kyle?" he asked. "Been knowin' that girl since she was a twoyear-old. She's an original."

  "Yes, she sure is."

  "A bit rambunctious as a child, though." And he turned to go back outside.

  I quickly tapped his shoulder, wanting him to stay and chat a minute. "How so?"

  "How so what?"

  "How was Allie rambunctious?"

  Maurice stuffed the keys in his pocket and held the door with his foot. "Smart child, don't get me wrong. And, well, she might not want this to get out, but when she was in kindergarten-my third year as sexton-she threw Fig Newtons at me. Every week."

  "You don't say ..."

  "After a while I started throwing 'em back. You know, kinda easylike, but the assistant pastor said sextons shouldn't throw food at the children. We still had the occasional battle, though, usually in the church kitchen, up until she went off to college. I think she live in Brazil now ... or some such place."

  Maurice said he had to hurry outside to take care of an air-vent problem and that it was good meeting me. Same here, Maurice. Then I was down the hall with the dim lights and past three offices. First the small office labeled MUSIC MINISTER, then the slightly larger office labeled ASSISTANT PASTOR, then the largest office labeled SENIOR PASTOR.

  I had often wondered if pecking orders were a sin, but I reckoned not.

  Curious, I peeked inside the pastor's office. Walls of commentaries filled the room-at least twelve commentaries for each of the four Gospels and five commentaries for all the other books, except twenty, maybe thirty, for Revelation, a book on which I had no comment.

  Satisfied as to the contents of a pastor's office, I walked farther down the hall, pausing to visit the men's room. A minute later I exited back into the hallway and saw glaring back from the far wall a corkboard labeled "New Members."

  I felt guilty for thinking what I was thinking-that there could be new single females joining the church-but guilt faded quickly as I stopped for a closer look. The corkboard contained no photos of single women, however, just three families and a single man about my age.

  "No young ladies, huh?" said a voice from down the hallway.

  I turned to see Maurice striding toward me, clutching a toolbox that swung green and heavy at his side.

  Embarrassed, I turned my back to the board. "I was just taking a quick look, Maurice."

  He set his toolbox on the tile floor and stood beside me. "Single folk always checkin' out the New Members board. Like God gonna send 'em somebody Federal Express."

  "Okay, I'm guilty. But no prospects this week, just another guy."

  What Maurice did next is forever etched in my memory. He turned, looked the length of the hallway, and then looked back at me. "Wanna have some fun?" he asked.

  "Secular or Presbyterian?"

  He raised a finger to my chest. "Wait right there."

  He ducked into the pastor's office. I heard a drawer open and shut. Out he came with a Post-it note on his finger. He walked back to the New Members board and stuck the yellow Post-it across the bottom of the single guy's picture.

  I edged closer to read it: Only here to meet girls.

  "How embarrassing for that guy," I said. "Is this how you church janitors have fun?"

  With a slight smile (or a smirk, I couldn't quite tell), he shoved his toolbox into a storage closet. "The pastor hates it when I do stuff like that, but I gotta keep 'im stirred up. Helps energize his sermons, if ya know what I mean."

  I read the note again, shook my head, and said, "Gets lonely here in the church hallways, don't it, Maurice?"

  He paused to consider the question. "Occasionally, but everybody got their quirks, son." He pulled a mint from the pocket of his jumpsuit.

  "Can I have-"

  "Help yourself."

  We walked together toward the exit, unwrapping mints as we made our way down the hall. "I'll never let my picture get on the New Members board, Maurice."

  "I'll go easy on ya," he replied.

  "You gonna leave that note up?"

  He fumbled with his pound of keys and said, "Now, don't you worry 'bout that. The senior pastor, he'll yank it off when he comes in tomorrow morning. Then around lunchtime, he'll call me to his office ... and we'll have ourselves a little chat."

  "I bet you get chatted with frequently."

  "'Bout twice a week."

  I shook hands with Maurice and asked if he would like to come along on the next singles retreat. He said yeah but the wife would never approve.

  On the drive home, I remembered that my umbrella was still in the hall rack.

  I didn't go directly home. Nope, I stopped at the Publix grocery store to buy a bag of dark chocolates. The ones with the little gold wrappers.

  I don't know exactly why I did that, what with her being all content and at peace in the rainforest and spending time with that Thomas fellow in Peru. But since she was a missionary and had asked nicely for 'em, I went ahead and bought 'em.

  Finally home, I sat out on my deck at sunset, pen in hand, surrounded by deep crimson snapdragons while addressing a box to Allie Kyle, in Ecuador, South America.

  I even wrote her a little note, telling her all about Beatrice Dean and the flowers, about my upcoming trip to New York, and about the fact that I'd actually read six Proverbs last night-a world record for three generations of the Jarvis family.

  I concluded my note with two observances.

  First of all, Allie, a Proverb from Mr. Solomon in the eighteenth chapter states clearly that if a man finds a wife, he finds what is good and will receive favor from the Lord. Favor. Not calamity, but favor. This is in direct contrast to Stanley, who quotes from Corinthians (which is only somewhat easier to find than Galatians) that a single man should not seek a wife. How all this squares up with the oft-quoted "seek and you shall find" is beyond my powers of reason. And if Stanley knows he should not seek a wife, why is he now dating muscular Number Eight? Hmmm?

  So does Corinthians trump Proverbs? Or vice versa? (I have already concluded that they both trump Stanley.)

  Also, after four months of visitation, I've come to believe that the singles at North Hills Prez are looked upon, by church leadership, as something of an oddity, the licorice at a potluck dinner.

  This too is troublesome.

  Your sand dollar continues to hibernate.

  Jay

  After thirteen of my self-adhesive stamps self-a
dheeded to the box, I stared at the strange address, at the odd mix of numbers and letters that made for an Ecuadorian zip code. I might as well have been sending the box to the planet Neptune.

  In my note, I decided against including a vague question about her social life. None of my business to ask, but I did buy the jumbo bag of dark chocolates for her and even sealed the interior of the box with extra bubble-wrap stuff so they wouldn't get crushed, and I hoped she wouldn't share them with Thomas the Peruvian evangelist.

  Plan B

  After getting over the initial shock of Alexis saying yes to my dinner offer, I decided on a French place in the foothills of North Carolina. Inlaid with gray stone, the restaurant appeared to be nestled into a bank of dogwood trees. Summer's sun descended behind the Blue Ridge mountains as we entered; the lights dim, my cologne subtle, our chemistry undecided.

  For I had been on time; Alexis had been on the phone.

  I'd tuned in to a jazz station; she'd changed it twice.

  With her loose charcoal skirt, black top, and only the slightest hint of makeup, Alexis could've passed for French. Her silver necklace and silver bracelet complemented her brow piercing. "Like it?" she asked, catching my gaze.

  "Very cool," I replied with first-date exaggeration.

  As I looked around for the maitre d', she leaned close to whisper, "This looks like a place where nobody talks loud."

  "The whispering French ..."

  "Sounds like a movie title."

  Watching the well-heeled patrons, I suddenly became Jarvis the Restaurant Critic: Here in the hushed pageantry of fine dining, men in suits and women in pearls are both status and quo. They sip gracefully, eat reverently, and select their cutlery from table settings grand and meticulous. Burgundy napkins match the waiter jackets; soft music begs formality.

  "Look, Jay," Alexis whispered again. "Three forks per setting ... three spoons, too!"

  "Wow ... a Brady Bunch of utensils."

  A pleasant little man named jean sat us at a window, smiled, and said he'd return with menus. A shallow stream curved just below the awning, and the gurgling of water over rock set a mood more suited to a fourth date than a first.

  "Hungry?" I asked.

  "Yes, very," she said, playing with her smallest fork.

  On the drive up the mountain, I had chosen literature for an appropriate first-date conversational topic. I eased in slowly. "So, Alexis, is Tolstoy your favorite writer?"

  She inspected her middle spoon and said, "Who?"

  "Tolstoy ... you were reading him at the beach."

  "Oh, I just borrowed that book from someone to try and conform. Actually, I hate reading. On the beach I'd much rather scope out a cute guy's bod. And who was Tolstoy, anyway? Wasn't he that Russian who controlled all the nuclear weapons, the one Reagan was always arguing with?"

  "I think that was someone else."

  She clinked her water glass with the spoon and said, "History. Pffft."

  Startled, I managed to recover as we accepted our menus from the smiling waiter named jean.

  "Sir," she said, pointing at page three, "what is this word?"

  "Cordon bleu," said jean, with emphasis on bleu.

  "Let us think on it a minute."

  "Very well. Would you like to try a red wine, perhaps a merlot?" asked Jean.

  "Yeah, whatever," said Alexis. "Wine, tea, beer, just something to wash down the food."

  Perhaps mademoiselle would prefer warm Coke in a can. Flustered by our lack of chemistry, I was tempted to order cereal. But I didn't.

  Instead, from memory, I flipped through the dating handbook, landing dubiously in the H column. "Hobbies, Alexis. What sort of hobbies do you enjoy?"

  Now brandishing the mama spoon, she said, "I've been helping T.J.- he's my ex-rebuild a carburetor for his bike."

  Jean brought ice water, then two small glasses of merlot.

  "And how long were you two together?" I asked, sipping with extended pinkie.

  She slurped, wiped her lip, and said, "Off and on since tenth grade. We're currently off. But he'll come roaring up to my apartment any day now, I'm sure."

  Since she asked no questions of me, I just continued on. "Ya know, Alexis, I had a completely different picture of you-after seeing you on your beach towel, pretty, looking so artsy and cultured with your sevenhundred-page novel."

  She rearranged the spoons, small one in the middle. "You think I'm pretty? Really?"

  "Absolutely."

  "No one ever tells me that."

  Perhaps you distract them with your table manners. "Not even T.J.?"

  "Nope." And she took a second slurp.

  I set down my glass. "And you've been seeing him since tenth grade?"

  "We met in geometry."

  "And you feel the two of you will get back together?"

  "Highly probable. Then we'll split up again."

  By the time we finished the main course and agreed to split a creme brulee, I was out of questions but sure of one thing: If Solomon himself had walked into that very restaurant at that very moment and sat down at our table, he would've been unable to explain women to me.

  I wiped a bread crumb from my shirt. "At the beach, Alexis, I was part of a late-night discussion about how guys should treat women."

  "You mean how guys must treat women."

  "Yeah, okay, how they must treat them."

  She licked the baby fork as jean delivered dessert. "That stuff should be baked in early, Jay."

  "Flowers?" I asked.

  "Constantly."

  "Anniversaries?"

  "Lavish her from dawn to dusk."

  I took a second bite of our very sweet dessert. "What about restaurants?"

  She slurped again and said, "Easy ... if you have to buy cheap tires for your car in order to afford her the best dining, then buy the cheap tires. Same for football tickets. But for heaven's sake, if she orders a grilled cheese with four pickles, don't say that four-pickled grilled cheeses are your all-time favorite."

  "You're good friends with Lydia, aren't you?"

  "I don't know anyone named Lydia."

  "Honest?"

  "Honest."

  Jean removed the empty dessert plate, eyed his tip, smiled broadly, and said to please come again soon. Outside, Alexis and I watched the stream from a footbridge, the mountain air crisp, the dating air awkward.

  "Chilly up here after the sun goes down," said Alexis, clutching her arms.

  "Yes. Yes it is."

  "Mind if we talk in your car?"

  "Sure."

  "I hate being cold."

  After unlocking her door, I was walking around the back bumper when she leaned across the seat to return the favor. Men love it when women return the favor. For if they do not return the favor, we get annoyed and start diluting our compliments, telling them they look nice (instead of beautiful) and are funny (instead of hysterical). It is surely a game, and according to the Circle of Nine, the game has been in extra innings ever since Eve bit into her Red Delicious. I had always pictured the fruit as green and sour, but Ransom and Steve insisted it was a Red Delicious. Even Stanley concurred.

  In darkness, my ignition key found its slot. "Alexis?"

  "Yes?" She was playing with the radio dial.

  "Don't mean to probe into all your personal stuff, but I have a question that-"

  "Ask it, Jay. Aren't first dates a time for discovery?"

  "Sure, but ..."

  "So whadda you wanna know?"

  "What I wanna know is, if you're so sure of getting back with Tj., who's Lutheran, then why do you hang out with the singles at North Hills Prez?"

  "A girl has to have a Plan B."

  Mountain highway twisted before us like tar-covered ribbon as I began comparing her strategy with my own. But Plan B? After gurgling rivers and French cuisine, I was a Plan B? "At least you're honest."

  "Can you change the station?" she asked.

  "Sure."

  Deranged static escorted us down the
mountain. Then that beach music again. Two hundred miles from the Carolina coast and they still tried to cajole everyone to sit in sand and watch golden tans.

  "Turn it up," she said.

  I turned it up.

  Ten seconds later, she turned it back down. "Jay?"

  "Yes?"

  "Tonight, I was your Plan B, wasn't I?"

  How did she know that? "How did you know that?"

  "I'm a woman."

  "Okay, you were Plan B." But what you don't know, oh piercy woman, is that Plan A is simply not geographically available. She's somewhere in South America. . . and hopefully not with Thomas.

  After another five minutes, the mountain shrunk behind us. "You can turn the music up now," she said. "But can we listen to something else?"

  "Sure." I found the golden oldies station. Chuck Berry was singing "Maybelline."

  Again she reached over, muted the sound. "Jay?"

  "Yes?"

  "You forgot to ask a blessing before the meal."

  "Sorry. Is that important to you?"

  "Somewhat ... helps to be genuine as we carry out our dating agendas."

  How did she know I had an agenda? "How did you know I had an agenda?"

  She looked out her window and summoned perfect female nonchalance. "Because I'm a woman."

  We were back inside Greenville city limits, the tree-lined highway hiding suburbia, the mountain fully shrunk. She was now in charge of tunes, and she'd tuned into an alternative music station, yet another song of angst.

  The second verse was dreadful, so this time I turned the volume down.

  "Alexis?"

  She pulled her raven hair over one shoulder. "Yes?"

  "You slurp."

  "I know. I didn't want you to like me."

  "I don't. I mean, I do, but maybe not in that way."

  "I just didn't have anything to do tonight," she said.

  "Me either."

  "So ... maybe we can do this again if we're both bored?"

  "Maybe. But you have to promise not to slurp."

  "I promise."

  On an empty Howell Road, a stoplight tinted us red, then lunar green. The third verse of angst faded to static, and she thanked me for dinner. I told her she was welcome but that I just had to know more about female strategy.