Justine helped. “Okay, you two, you’re embarrassing Anna. Let’s just go to the party.” She gestured toward the white stretch limo waiting on the driveway.
“They didn’t have black?” Beau said, as the four of them clicked across the driveway in their dress shoes.
Justine shook her head and laughed. “No. Didn’t you hear Miranda apologizing? She knows how you call the white ones ‘televangelist cars.’ She would have avoided it if she could.”
They all laughed.
“Okay,” Beau continued, holding the door for the women. “But if she starts making hair appointments for me at Big Hair R Us, I’ll know it’s a plot.”
Again, they all laughed, though Anna’s was the sort of laugh that follows the crowd, the sound of its uncertainty lost in the mix.
Not until they arrived at the gigantic mansion of an award-winning movie producer, did it occur to Anna that she was the third woman in Beau’s usual string of female escorts. She blinked over her contact lenses and assessed the other two women. Justine sat next to her in a silky red dress and red heels. Her shiny tan legs and little bit of cleavage would fit right in. In contrast to Justine’s golden coloring in that red dress, Dianna’s skin was milky and her dark hair and eyes stood out in her happy, peaceful face. Both women were taller than Anna, even in her highest heels.
These thoughts seemed to leak into the air around her. All three of the others got out of the car first and waited for her, the other two women each taking one of her arms, gently, but standing close enough for her to feel surrounded and safe. And they followed Beau’s commanding figure into the ornate double doors of the classic Italian-style mansion. As Beau, Justine and Dianna took turns introducing her, Anna accumulated the feeling of being the guest of honor.
When she had received the invitation, she paused to wonder whether Beau and the others realized how out of place she would be with their rich and famous friends. As a junior reporter on the celebrity beat for a small regional paper, she only interviewed minor stars of music or movies, and often, former stars, in fact. She thought she would be lost and smothered in the environment in which these people had learned to thrive. At least that’s what her anxiety told her.
Reality kept her reeling. She held onto her champagne glass without more than a small sip, feeling intoxicated already by her royal treatment, and by something else she couldn’t identify. Whatever it was, made her feel warm and giddy. She said little, in an effort to hide this compromised state, but she was among people in search of listeners all evening, so they welcomed her girlish smile and occasional brief question of clarification.
Whenever Anna found herself separated from the other three, within seconds one of them would swoop in and tow her to meet someone, or they would simply sidle up next to her and place a reassuring hand on her bare back. When Beau did this once, the tingles that crawled up into her hair and ran down the backs of her legs nearly tipped Anna off her precarious heels and onto the custom marble floor. Justine rescued her that time, making a face at Beau that Anna couldn’t decipher, perhaps a rebuke, but a humorous one, if that.
After about an hour of meeting famous people that she had only seen on screens, large or small, Anna noticed that guests kept pulling Beau into intimate conversation with plaintive looks on their faces. These were wealthy and well-known people that she had never seen look so child-like and needy, even if she suspected those conditions lay beneath the red carpet waves and smiles she had seen on entertainment TV.
Finally, she happened to be standing on the second step of the central staircase, leaning on the polished mahogany railing and listening to a veteran actress expound to Justine on her recent theater work, when Beau put his hand on the forehead of the man who had won the academy award for best director two years before. Anna watched as Beau removed his hand and said something to the dark haired man wearing small glasses, who nearly pitched over backward at those words. Beau’s strong right hand caught the director’s arm and steadied him, but this only brought the man forward so that his forehead pressed against Beau’s chest.
Anna looked at the people around this scene. Half of them seemed deeply fascinated, studying every move, like it was a championship chess match. Others acted as if they had seen it all before, glancing at Beau and the wobbly director and laughing, before returning to their conversations. It sort of reminded Anna of those guys in college who would always come to the frat parties with illegal substances to distribute. Everyone knew who they were and no one was surprised when someone lost their balance after their ministrations. Beau was like a Holy Ghost drug dealer, she decided. Anna laughed aloud at the thought, and suddenly she felt extremely drunk, her arms and legs loose and rubbery.
Justine saw this transition, looked across the room to what Beau was doing, and smiled. She took hold of Anna, like the designated driver, and helped her to sit down on the stairs, a touch on her knees to be sure Anna remembered that she was wearing a short dress and sitting on the stairs in a crowded room. When she sat down, the angle granted Anna a look at Dianna sitting on the couch in the living room, near the entryway and the stairs. A woman that Anna didn’t recognize was crying and wiping her eyes as Dianna listened with compassionate intensity.
“Is this what they do at these libertine Hollywood parties? Heal people and listen to them pour out their hearts?” Anna thought. It was like they were the priest and priestesses of the rich and famous. Anna started to sober a bit. She set down her champagne glass, still the original one and half full. She leaned both elbows on her knees.
Justine had been keeping her in view. “Are you okay, dear?”
Anna started to cry, as if the concern in Justine’s voice delivered the dose of love that put her over her limit. “I wanna be like you guys,” she said, blurting it like the time she admitted to her mother that her prom date had dumped her the day before the big dance.
Justine laughed quietly through her nose and glanced at the woman with whom she had been talking. The tall blonde actress nodded graciously and retreated to the living room. Justine took up a seat next to Anna, hip to hip, pressing her knees and heels together and resting her elbows on her bare legs in imitation of Anna. Anna had begun to recover from the sudden catharsis and sobbed quietly now.
“Do you wanna meet Jesus?” Justine said, as if she were talking about the host of the party or someone in the next room.
Anna knew, of course, that God and Jesus would be involved somehow, but she hadn’t expected to meet either of them just then, especially at her first big Hollywood party. She had briefly wished she would meet some rich and famous actor who found her charmingly attractive. But meeting Jesus was something she would have to consider . . . at least for a minute or two. Had any other Christians she knew offered this introduction, she would have assumed it was metaphorical. After what Anna had experienced with Beau and his family, however, she assumed this meeting would be anything but metaphorical.
After these considerations, Anna said. “You mean meet him here?”
Justine looked around and seemed to change her mind. “No, let’s go out back by the pool.”
Anna hadn’t been given the grand tour, so she didn’t know where the pool was, nor did she know why it would be better to meet Jesus out there. But Justine was the expert on these things, so she agreed. Helping Anna to stand, Justine stepped delicately off the shiny steps, holding the younger woman’s hand as she led the way. Dianna had finished with the tear-soaked woman on the couch and was just getting up when Justine caught her eye. No words passed between them, but Dianna recognized something in Anna and fell into line behind her, on the way to the meeting by the pool.
As self-conscious as Anna had been about her appearance among the beautiful people, she forgot about all that as she walked hand in hand with Justine through the crowded hallways and rooms of the ornate house, tears still wetting her face, makeup beginning to sag a little, her hair damp from sweat, sticking to her forehead and temples in less-than-elegant clumps. All she c
ould think about was meeting Jesus in her little black dress and high heels. It didn’t seem like appropriate attire, nothing like the dress for her first communion, when she was a little girl, perhaps the first time she met Jesus in any real physical way.
Beau nodded slightly in their direction but made no move to join the train, perhaps aware that he was too big to be the caboose for that assemblage. He knew this was a crucial night for Anna. He didn’t know how or why exactly, but felt certain that Justine and Dianna were leading her to where she needed to be.
The big outdoor pool looked over the coastline a mile below, darkness leaving room for the imagination about what lay in between, represented by occasional lights flickering yellow or white under the influence of the wind. Anna gulped fresh air, tasting the chlorine from the smooth blue pool beside her, and a hint of the ocean far below. Tall palms lined three sides of the tiled deck, in clusters of four or more, and a dark green hedge with fuzzy, copper-colored buds and white blossoms, like magnolias, added a sweet fruity scent. The lighted pool radiated a greenish glow under chins and noses, mixing with a golden light from a combination of torches and sleepy floodlights. Several couples stood talking near the railing on the ocean side, or sitting on white padded chaises and chairs. One pair had slipped free of much of their clothing and swam in the far end of the pool, speaking playfully, but their voices remaining just above the subtle waves stirred by their treading water.
In the dark, the pool seemed an enchanted place to Anna. Dianna and Justine also smiled at the beauty of the setting. Justine gently pulled Anna around to face her, near a table with unfurled umbrella—shading them only from the stars, as Dianna tucked in close to them. The darkness, the captivating beauty of their surroundings and the intimate nearness of the other two women, left Anna feeling protected and private.
Without exchanging a word with Justine, Dianna spoke first. “Jesus is here to meet with you, Anna. He loves you and he wants you for his very own.”
The romantic tone of Dianna’s voice, the stimulating proximity of these two beautiful women and something that hung in the air, mixed with the sweet scent of the flowers to send chills down Anna’s back again. Then she felt a presence, just as if a fourth person had joined their little circle. This invisible person was electric. Her chills turned to shivering, and then to shaking. Yet she felt more peace than ever before in her life. Justine and Dianna simply stood by, propping Anna like the bride’s maids that they had become to her.
To a stranger watching, it would have appeared that Anna swooned suddenly, losing consciousness and flopping backward, even as her knees buckled. Her trajectory would have landed her first on her rear end and then her back, but Justine and Dianna dipped quickly, tightening their subtle hold to catch the petite young woman, as she met her creator and her lover.
Justine pulled Anna’s skirt straight, and laid her limp legs to the side, for modesty sake. Dianna pulled a chair around so that when she sat in it she shielded Anna from anyone more than a few feet away. Justine sat on the mosaic tiles, her legs bent around to her side, leaning over Anna to watch and wait with her.
When Anna was eleven years old, she and her father had been home alone one week, while her mother travelled to care for Anna’s dying grandmother. Anna and her father soldiered through with carryout and questionable cooking, but they also played together. One night, it was a board game, another it was watching a softball game played by her father’s company team. And one night, they stayed at home and listened to her dad’s old collection of Motown vinyl records. Amidst the crackling pops and past the subtle hissing, she absorbed the romantic songs of love lost and love found. Then her father asked her to dance with him. She had always seen him as a romantic figure, conscious of his attentive ways with her mother, when Anna was around and especially when they thought their little girl wasn’t watching. When he offered to dance with her that night, like a man at a club addressing a young wallflower, she knew he was sharing with her the romance of his love for her mother. The parents fought, of course, and ten years later they would divorce. But Anna soaked that night in the romance of their peaceful and agreeable times.
That night, long ago, she danced with her little feet on top of her father’s brown dress shoes, humming along to Diana Ross and the Supremes, singing about love that lasts. Though her natural father had faded from her life now—with the acrimony of the divorce and his remarriage to a woman not enough older than Anna for her to feel comfortable with his choice—she still remembered the feeling of his strong hands and feet carrying her around the living room, under the light of two floor lamps and the glow from the stereo.
On the ground there, next to the swimming pool, Anna experienced a moment with a living and passionate God, who swept her up with the warmth and romance of that daughter dance, and carried her far above any feeling she had ever experienced in any waking or dreaming moment in her life. She met Jesus, her dance partner, her true lover and best friend. After a half hour, when the experience started to fade, her most lasting thought was, “How did I miss this before?”
When Beau arrived next to the pool, he saw Dianna and Justine helping Anna off the ground and into one of the smooth white-cushioned chairs. “Time for a baptism?” Beau said.
Justine looked over at Anna. “One thing we like to do, to get a fresh start with Jesus, is to be baptized in water. Basically, it’s a sort of ancient ritual that says, ‘I’m leaving my old life and taking up a new one with Jesus.’”
Anna had heard of baptism. She had seen it portrayed in movies. And she trusted this little congregation of people implicitly, like she would an old family doctor . . . times three. She looked at the pool. “Here?” She sounded just a little doubtful, but had lost most of her skepticism, at least temporarily, so she wasn’t as doubtful as she would have been a month ago.
“Sure,” Beau said. “No time like the present for a new start. And it’s a way to make a sort of public declaration about it. I’m thinking this is public enough.” He looked around at the wandering and philandering couples entering and lingering by the pool.
Dianna laughed, but said nothing. Anna got the feeling that she didn’t need to say anything, because Beau and Justine already knew why she was laughing.
Still quite groggy from her intoxicating encounter, Anna felt no compulsion to ask about that joke. She just strained her neck looking up at Beau and said, “Will you baptize me?”
If she had been more calculating, more of a climber by nature, Anna might have asked this because Beau was arguably the most famous Christian on the planet, perhaps with the exception of the Pope. The Pope would have fallen into second place in California, however. But Anna asked, instead, because it seemed fitting that Beau would bring her into this wonderfully warm family, against all the nay-sayers and accusers. It was because of Beau, after all, that she even started to consider joining the Jesus people.
“Of course,” Beau said. “It would be my honor.” With that, he sat down to remove his shoes and pulled his jacket off to leave it on the chaise closest to the pool. Dianna left, striding toward the pool house, saying something about towels and robes.
Anna watched, a look of wonder and distraction on her face. Justine could see she was worrying about something.
“You can just go in in your dress, I think. It’s black, so it won’t show too much when it’s wet.” She checked the tag in the back and said, “I don’t think you’ll do it any harm.”
Anna kicked off the one shoe still on her foot, the other already lying under her chair. “So, I don’t do this to get saved or anything, I just do this to say I’m following Jesus from now on?”
“Exactly,” said Beau.
“She’s not as drunk as I thought she was,” Justine said, looking at Beau when she said this.
“I didn’t even finish one glass of champagne,” Anna said. But her voice tailed off at the end, as if she had just figured out that Justine was referring to something else.
Justine smiled. “Yeah, no
t that kind of drunk.”
Anna nodded, standing up and looking at Beau to lead the way. He was back in bare feet, even at a fancy party, and so was she. He was going to get his dress pants and shirt wet. She almost felt some regret, but mostly a sense of ironic humor that she couldn’t even translate into words. She just giggled as she watched Beau step down the stairs into the shallow end of the pool.
As she followed, Anna noticed Dianna returning with arms full of white towels and bathrobes. From behind her, as she stepped down into the warm water, she heard a man shout. “Hey, Vince, Beau’s baptizing someone in your pool again.” A more distant voice returned with a question. Then that first disembodied voice replied, “It’s that new girl he brought with him.” Another question followed, almost audible this time. “No, she’s not one of his wives, I don’t think.”
By the time Anna had followed Beau into about three feet of water, her little black dress billowed upward only slightly. She turned around just in time to see the host of the party leading a dozen other elegantly dressed men and women. Here came the public part of her public statement.
Justine and Dianna each kicked off their shoes and sat down on the edge of the pool with feet playing languidly in the water. The host and company stood next to the shallow end, drinks in hand, and just watched, no comments, no looks of bafflement or disdain. They had seen this before.
“Anna Conyers,” Beau said. “Do you declare here before this company, that you have met Jesus and would like to live the rest of your life loving him and being loved by him, even into eternity?”
It sounded like an appropriate religious ritual to Anna. She didn’t know Beau was just making it up. “I do,” she said, repressing a giggle at the wedding reference that her answer implied. Then her face took on a dreamy, watery-eyed smile that led Justine and Dianna to think that she had just gotten the connection between her intimate experience with Jesus and being a bride. She had never done either of these before, but the look of awe-struck wonder on her face testified to her joyous acceptance of the combination.
If You Really Knew Me (Anyone Who Believes Book 1) Page 24