The Transformation

by Terri Kraus

  Or I could walk away and wait for the next job. That actually might be easier … safer … less stressful.

  Except he didn’t have a next job. He could wait, wait for the next big nonchurch job, but there was no guarantee another one would come quickly, and in these sorts of wobbly economic times, Oliver knew he couldn’t be picky.

  And he was here; he’d already endured the traffic. He would stay. He’d do the estimate.

  There’s something about this place.…

  Now his words were softer, perhaps because of the silence. “A church … but, well, she did say it used to be a church.”

  The holes in the stone facade were still visible where a sign had once hung.

  “It’s just a building now.” He looked down at Robert the Dog. “Right, Robert? It’s not a church anymore. Right?”

  Robert looked up, as if considering Oliver’s options, sniffed again, and then sneezed in a very uncanine-like manner.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE EARLY SPRING MORNING warmed as the sun rose higher over the city. Oliver had walked around the building, the church, three times, each more slowly than before. It was Romanesque in design, massive in execution. The cornerstone of the building bore the chiseled date 1888. The property it stood on occupied about half of a city block square of land.

  The stones would have been moved into place with mules and block-and-tackle back then. An amazing feat, Oliver thought, one that would be hard-pressed to be duplicated today, even with heavy machinery. With its thick chiseled stone walls, sturdy piers, groin-vaults—Oliver reveled in old architecture—this structure added up to a near-perfect building.

  Robert the Dog walked with him each circuit, sniffing the grass with some interest but never more than a few feet away from his master.

  “What a magnificent building,” Oliver said, his tone small, deferential, and yet the dog looked up. It was obvious to Oliver that his companion’s soul—or whatever it was that dogs possessed instead of a soul—was as impressed, as filled with awe, as Oliver was.

  But impressed was not the same as being enamored with the prospect of working on such a structure. Oliver was falling in love with this building. Immediately obvious to his contractor sensibilities and to anyone who had ever picked up a hammer and a nail was the reality that there would be no altering the footprint of these walls. Moving the stones would be horrendously difficult, and altering walls would require steel bracing, deep, thick cement foundations, and a huge amount of temporary supports. So the building was as big as it was ever going to be. The only possible way to expand might be with an annex, with a connecting hallway between the old structure and the new. But this existing church, the bones of this church, dictated that there would be no easy modifications happening.

  Oliver sat on the main steps of the church … the building. Robert the Dog sat next to him and stared down the cross street.

  “It’s a real church, Robert. I don’t know if I want to work on an historic church—like remodeling it and making it something different. Changing it into something other than a church, I mean.”

  Robert the Dog snorted. He snorted a lot in the morning. Oliver thought it was allergies but didn’t want to subject the dog to veterinarian tests and some fancy, expensive regime of daily pills or shots. Shots—maybe we could do shots. But pills—never. Robert the Dog could sense any pill, no matter how tiny, and would spit it out with obvious disdain on the floor, regardless of what meat or cheese it was wrapped in. So they both were resigned to live with a few springtime morning dog snorts and wuffles.

  “I know it’s not a church now. But still, it was God’s house once … consecrated ground. I bet He still cares what goes on here, you know?”

  The dog did not look up.

  “Maybe I don’t want to be the one who helps … destroy an old church. Maybe destroy isn’t the right word. Alter? Change? Something like that. What if she wants to make a … a … I don’t know … a nightclub out of this? Would you want me to do that? Really? To a church? What would God say? Worse yet, what would my mother say?”

  Oliver knew that if a stranger had come by and heard him talking to a dog … well, he couldn’t blame them for thinking it was clearly an odd situation. But having Robert there, listening, or at least pretending to listen, was something Oliver really needed—an ear, a face, someone to talk to. He couldn’t talk to his brother like this … and certainly not to his mother.

  “I need the job, but I’m not sure about working on this church. Maybe if I don’t want it so badly, it will look like I’m busy and she won’t expect a low bid. Do you think that will work, Robert?”

  The dog turned his head and offered what looked like a sidelong pickerel grin.

  “Yeah … I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  It was at the moment of the dog’s imagined grin of agreement that Oliver saw something out of the corner of his eye—a person coming toward him. Cars had gone past and a few pedestrians had walked by on South Aiken while the pair sat on the cold stone step, but they were anonymous cars, anonymous people, not stopping or slowing, passing on their way to somewhere else. But this singular person headed directly toward the church, as if on a mission. Oliver knew it had to be Samantha Cohen.

  Robert the Dog stood up and offered a soft welcome growl.

  “I think it’s her, Robert.”

  The woman looked both ways at the curb, then jogged across, her mane of dark hair flowing behind her like a living halo of curls and waves, like some wondrous creature inhabiting an underwater reef.

  Oliver normally did not notice such things, but he noticed today—she was that eye-catching and attractive, even from a distance. A tall woman, she had to measure nearly six feet, maybe even taller than Oliver, and she was smiling widely. Her dark eyes were the color of buttered rum with a swirl of cinnamon, a drink Oliver had never once consumed but had heard about in sophisticated movies featuring burly men in ski sweaters by crackling fireplaces of rough-hewn stone with rustic lumber mantels. Artsy, for sure. Exotic, Oliver thought, and quite … he didn’t know how to describe this beautiful woman but tried striking, then gorgeous. Yet even those words did not justify how pretty she was.

  Long legs. Very long legs. Like a dancer. And womanly. Oliver did not want to blush trying to think of the proper—or modest, or chaste—adjective to describe what he saw. Buxom flashed through his thoughts, but he banished it as quickly as it arose.

  “You must be Oliver Barnett,” the woman said, her voice as rich, warm, and syrupy as it had been on the phone. “I mean, who else would be sitting on the steps of a church at this time of day, unless you were a hobo or a homeless person, and you don’t look like one of those at all. I’m Samantha Cohen.”

  She stuck out her hand—long fingers with the scarlet polished nails trimmed short, not long and witchlike, the type that scared Oliver. Even the women in church with long, curved nails would set internal warning bells ringing. This woman set none of those bells off, but a bell of a different type.

  Samantha wore some sort of quilted black Asian-style kimono/geisha jacket. Although Oliver knew little about clothing styles for the feminine form, he guessed it was silk. Delicate embroidery decorated the sleeves and collar, and knot-and-loop closures, rather than buttons, marched up the front. Oliver impressed himself by noticing such detail. Then he observed her slacks—so loose and flowing that they appeared to be pajama bottoms.

  He blinked. Pajama bottoms? She walked here in pajamas?

  “And who is this fine-looking, noble dog?” Samantha said, sweet as honey, and held out her hand to Robert the Dog. Robert, as if assuming the person-to-dog introduction was to be expected, lifted his right paw and let Samantha bend down and take it and gently pump it up and down a few times. She did not adjust her geisha jacket, and Oliver could see more of her than he felt comfortable seeing. He tried not
to look.

  “Robert,” Oliver said. “Robert the Dog.”

  “Nice to meet you, Robert the Dog. Did Oliver and you walk around this place? I bet he told you that this might be too big of a job, right?” She leaned closer to the dog, and Robert stood up and lifted his head toward her. “Did you tell him he’s wrong? You should have.”

  Then Samantha stood back up, tugged her jacket back into place, and fished around in its left pocket. “Let me show you around, Oliver and Robert the Dog. Follow me.”

  She hurried up the steps, inserted an enormous key into a gigantic lock, and turned it with a grimace until a tumbler or two fell with an ironlike clunk. She grabbed the massive door handle.

  Oliver decided her nail polish was more magenta than red.

  The door hesitated, then swung open on hundred-year-old-plus hinges with hardly a squeak … perhaps simply a metallic whisper. The interior glowed, filled with the early-morning light now tinting through a thousand slivers of glass in a wall of stained-glass windows.

  It was the most beautiful sight Oliver had seen in decades. Maybe even longer.

  Robert the Dog entered the quiet space, lit by the dense blues and purples and reds and greens and golds of the stained glass catching the first light of the sun, and padded slowly up the middle aisle. It was flanked by rows of heavy, dark wood pews with blue velvet cushions and thick stone piers supporting the arched ceiling. He made his way up to the choir, with its elaborate woodwork facade, and stopped just before reaching the high altar, then turned around and stared back at his two human companions.

  Samantha had taken Oliver’s hand—a first time ever in his career as a contractor that a client, or potential client, had taken his hand—and led him around the interior. She pulled him down the side aisles, pointing at the splendid, original, old stained-glass windows in pristine condition, with the apostles and disciples and Jesus and Moses and virtually every top-ten Bible story rendered in finger-thick leaded glass.

  “Aren’t they stunning?” she asked, not waiting for a reply but providing the answer herself. “Yes, indeed. And that big round one … it’s glorious. Like God’s eye, isn’t it?”

  He nodded.

  “We’ll have to find a way to light them to their best advantage,” Samantha added. She pointed to the rafters. “Are they mahogany?”

  Oliver stared, even as she pulled. “Probably not. Maybe oak. Or walnut. Stained to look like mahogany. Or a mahogany veneer.”

  She squeezed his hand (another first) and replied, “Well, whatever they are, they’re glorious. We’ll need lights on them, though. We’ll need to illuminate those beauties.” She ran her other hand over one of the pews. “We’ll keep these for seating. Or some of them. Have to section them up, for sure. And the pews in the balcony will have to go away, too, because that’s where the live music will be. The organ up there, I’m not sure about that yet. It came with the church. The pipes will stay, of course … part of the ambience. And then there’s the altar or whatever Christians call that area … that will have to go as well. I’m assuming that the height difference in the floor here, with these few steps, is not just wood framing. I would like this area level, all at one height with the rest of the space, but I’m not sure that can be easily done. And the … pulpit, is it? Maybe that could be turned into a reception desk.”

  They arrived back at the front of the church and Samantha let go of Oliver’s hand.

  “What do you think? Magnificent space, isn’t it?” she said. “Can’t you just see it at night, the windows illuminated, the space lit by a hundred candles?”

  Seldom rendered speechless, Oliver felt tongue-tied this morning. He was caught up now, not only in the beauty of the building but in this woman’s energy. The fact she had actually touched him, held his hand, was so disconcerting that he was having trouble forming a logical string of thoughts.

  Church, stained-glass windows, cut-up pews, altar, pulpit, steps. Christians, holding my hand, God’s eye.

  Samantha looked directly at Oliver, then turned to the dog. “I’ve overwhelmed him, haven’t I, Robert the Dog?”

  If Robert could agree, or look like he agreed, he did just that with a curious tilting of his head.

  Samantha smiled. “I do that a lot. My father says that’s a good skill to have when negotiating, because the other side gets all … bamboozled … and that means you can then get expensive for cheap.”

  She sat down next to Robert on the first step of the platform and wrapped her arm around him and pulled him close. “Is he bamboozled, Robert?”

  The dog leaned into this strange woman and tilted his head backward and up, to stare into her eyes.

  “You’re not bamboozled, are you, Robert?” she said and gave him another quick hug, which Robert obviously enjoyed.

  Oliver slowly turned around, trying to take the interior in, ignoring Samantha’s dialogue with his dog, as if he were listening to a soft whisper in a far corner. Not a whisper, really, but an insistent plea in a small but powerful voice. He craned his neck to the side so as to catch the voice.

  There is something special about this building. I don’t know what it is that I feel, but there is something here, inhabiting this space. Something … illuminating. Something exposing? Is that it? Under God’s eye.

  “Mrs. Cohen?”

  And the truth will set you free. Maybe that’s what I’m feeling.

  “It’s Miss Cohen. Samantha, actually, but Miss Cohen works, if you like that sort of formality. And yes?”

  “It’s a truly magnificent building. I’ve never seen anything like it or felt it … I mean, as churches go … except maybe in books. But when … how … why—”

  “And you want to know what, too, right? You want to know what I plan to do to this wonderful old church filled with all these ancient mementos of God and heaven and Jesus, right?”

  Oliver held open his palms, as if in supplication. “Yes.”

  Samantha stood, and because she was on a step higher than Oliver, she towered over him. Even Robert the Dog had to crane his neck to keep her face in view. In the glistering blue and purple and red and green and gold light, she was much more beautiful than Oliver even first observed.

  “Well, Oliver, I plan on making this into a nightclub and a restaurant—maybe more one than the other. I’m not sure of that at the moment. Can’t you just see it? Intimate booths, crisp white tablecloths, simple vases of blue flowers, lots of blue votives, cool jazz music. I’m still looking for an executive chef. I’m tempted to call the place Blue, because of that big round window. The gorgeous shades of blue in it.”

  Oliver had been stunned into silence with his first apprehensions coming to fruition.

  Samantha broke the ice by softly asking the question that had apparently been on her mind ever since meeting Oliver. “Why did you name the dog Robert?”

  It took a moment for Oliver to compose himself enough to answer. It was not that the scope of the project had derailed him. He was just so surprised to have made a correct guess earlier about what she planned on doing to the magnificent structure.

  “Robert was the name I always wanted to have,” he answered.

  “Instead of Ollie?”

  Oliver Barnett shook his head—he hoped not in an angry, but in a kind, bemused way. “Not Ollie. It’s Oliver. But I would have liked to be called Robert. I’m not sure why.”

  Oliver Barnett had never really liked his name, never felt at peace with the way “Oliver” sounded as it came out of his mouth. And when he signed documents, that big initial, that all-important O, always seemed, to him—and maybe only to him—lopsided, more oval than round and perfect. A circle had to be just so, or it wasn’t a circle, but something else.

  His friends claimed that if anyone was an Oliver, it was he—that the roundness and the sharp finish to the name perfectly suite
d him. What a “sharp-finishing name” was exactly, he did not understand, but it was his given name. And what person has the right, or the audacity perhaps, to go and change it now? So he would scold himself whenever the name-changing urge came upon him.

  He blamed his mother.

  In time, Oliver grew bold enough to ask for the full, three-syllable rendition of his name, sometimes insisting, but insisting in a very nice way.

  He could blame his mother for a lot of things … but he didn’t, not really. And even if he did, it would never be to her face. Never.

  A shaft of sun came in through a clear section of window and he caught a glimpse of himself in the reflection of the glass display case by the altar, to the left of Samantha and Robert.

  Oliver stood a breath under six feet tall. Had he taken his baseball cap off, he would have noted that he needed a haircut ($14 at Discount Clippery, east of where the Greengate Mall used to be and where a huge Wal-Mart now stood). He wore his hair short, eliminating the need for hair dryers, styling gel, and false pride. The blond color had been, for a few years now, edging ever so slightly toward gray. The latter better matched his eyes, a sort of gunmetal gray with a heavy tint of warmth in them. He was no longer stocky, but because he had been most of his life, he still carried himself as if his clothes bore the tag Husky, instead of the standard Large. The extra pounds had come off only a few years before, after twelve months of agony, deprivation, and exercise, and he was now lean and fit. His face, previously rather round, was now not that far from angular, with the beginnings of a pair of jowls gone and his almost-double chin eliminated. It still looked odd to him—as if he were simply borrowing a narrower face from someone younger, someone better looking than himself.

  “I don’t have a battered self-image,” he told his friends, “just a buttered one … with lots of salt.”

  Samantha Cohen interrupted his thoughts. “So … Oliver, you want to hear about my plans? Or do you want to bail right now?”