The guy didn’t know my cycle, but he certainly knew women. So he didn’t come closer until I’d gobbled up three more. In a row. Then I handed back the empty box.
Forget what you’re thinking. This man was not a hunka hunka burnin’ love, but seemed to be my pudgy grandfather. Or a doppelganger dressed collar to cuffs with glitter galore, gold and gosh-awful fake-e-o alligator-esque cowboy boots, with spurs in the shape of skulls. They clanked when he backed up, reverberating like cymbals.
He squinted in the porch light as his chin dragged low. He grumbled, muttered, and withdrew his left hand from behind him, producing yet another box with the chocolatier’s signature label. I salivated, snatched it, and stepped back. You see, I’m not addicted to the stuff, I’m chocolate-enriched. I am not officially plump, I’m just short for my body weight.
Okay, that brings you the abbreviated version of why five minutes later my disgruntled relative was huddled on the beige sofa in the sterile Las Vegas condo I got with my current job and why I was stomping in front of him. See, I am usually the one who solves problems, being that I’m a minister and all.
Yes, you heard it right. I might not look like one as I am rounded on all the right edges and with a propensity for wearing clothes showing a smidge of cleavage and it’s true if you’ve heard that I have Victoria’s Secret’s site as my homepage. Like it or not, that’s me, Pastor Jane Angieski. I’m fully licensed, fully educated, and fully confused most of the time.
You’re not the first, you know, to wonder how a flashy woman like me got into the ministry business. Most folks do not come straight out and ask if I am a preacher because they’re so dumbfounded to find out I know the Good News backward, forward and well done in the middle. My response? “You see, they have quotas. Recall affirmative action? Needed more women who had some curves and padding in the ranks, and that’s me,” I say. The one who asks gets a glazed look and nods. Honestly? Hold on to something sturdy because here it comes:
During college, I worked in retail (see above Victoria’s Secret reference), at a mortuary where I applied make-up to the dearly departed, gave out contraceptives and condoms at a free clinic in Watts, and did time asking, “Want fries with that?” Along the way, I made enough so I could head to UCLA for a master’s in psychology because I’m outrageously curious about people. Honestly, a few days before graduation I went to a program on campus, because the A/C in my apartment was broken and I knew there would be cake and coffee. The program was to recruit grad students into the ministry. I signed on the dotted line right then, attended seminary, graduated with honors, accepted an assistant minister gig straight out the door, and got kicked out because I worked with the cops in tracking down hoods in the hood where I was the pastor for this ghetto church. The church council didn’t mind that I nabbed the bad guys looking like a lady of the evening who could do it all through the night. What they didn’t like was that I appeared on the front of the L.A. Times in a hot pink leather miniskirt, strappy sandals that only enhanced the look, and a blouse leaving little to the imagination of your Great Aunt Tillie. The story hit the national news, and wham, bam, thank you, ma’am, little old me was seen and talked about on 60 Minutes, MSNBC, Twitter, YouTube, and it then went viral. Time begged for an interview but better judgment snapped in. I declined — well, only because my denomination’s district council put the brakes on that one. Besides, I don’t always want to stay second fiddle in church hierarchy. I do have pride. I’d like to be known, someday, as an important minister, but not the television evangelist kind with those flapping eyelashes and hair like Marge Simpson. No offense, Marge, but it’s not a good look for either of us.
The happy ending to the above knuckle-rapping was that the jerks who were dealing, drugging, and pimping went to a “helping” place in California, clogging an overstuffed prison system even more, and I got thanked by getting my backside booted to Vegas. I wasn’t exactly demoted, but I’m no longer a full pastor. These days, if I should burp without saying, “Pardonnez-moi,” the council knows. Hence the youth minister I’m filling in for left exact instructions so I wouldn’t lead the teens on a slope that has flashing orange signs reading, “Beware: Point of No Return.”
Back to the man of the midnight hour — the grumbling continued, and like waiting out a storm, I sat down next to that huddled mass of manhood, Henry J. Angieski, Ph.D., my grandfather. In all my thirty-five years, I’d never seen him defeated.
Quick footnote on my family: He and Gram couldn’t have children, and knew it before they married. Gramps always says it like this: “Uncle Sam really needed me and thought a tropical Asian trip might help me to understand humanity better.” That meant he was unemployed after grad school, was drafted and sent to Vietnam. About Dad? Gramps says, “I found the son of my heart there, always hanging around the barracks. He had red hair, like your Gram, and the most intense almond-shaped eyes I’d ever seen. When I was accepted into the doctorate program, your Uncle Sam let me come home with the things I found there, from the bullet wound in my knee to a ten-year-old kid.” Gramps and Gram made it official — adoption was different then. They couldn’t trace Dad’s biological parents; the country was in shambles and of course had already been invaded by the French, English and Russians before the US stepped into the mess. Then Gram died, a painful battle with cancer, and a couple months later I came into the picture. When my parents decided that parenthood didn’t shake, rattle, or roll on their personal Richter scale, Gramps once more manned up. Story goes that they piled their macrobiotic rice, pine nut smoothies, ceremonial drums, unfiltered carrot juice and love beads inside a rusting, purple VW van dotted with painted daisies, dumped pint-size me on Gramps’ doorstep, and went in search of their bliss. I believe they were ten years past the real hippies. Last I heard, when I was sixteen, they were in Sedona, finding and selling therapy rocks to tourists. I’m happy for them, really, but getting a rock in the mail for your birthday stinks. That’s enough of me, at least for a minute, as it was the grunting, grumbler grandfather on the ghastly sofa that this is all about.
He sighed from the pointy toes of his red boots. Then grunted. I would have sworn he swore, but I knew better.
“Call me Onesimus.” The statement ended in a pheewee.
“What-a-muss?”
“Get a clue, you’re a preacher. You should know this stuff, always spouting it off as you do all Bible belting and never letting a man swear without raising those eyebrows. Oh, don’t give me that look, girl. Won’t do you any good this time. I’m immune. Been looking at myself to long one of your freeze-frame frowns frazzle me. You know I’m talking the truth.”
My mouth flapped, “Old or New Testament?” If only someone had videoed my mouth gaping and eyes blinking, I would have been a shoe-in for America’s Funniest Home Videos. “Onesimus, Pastor.” He spoke as if I were a dolt, which I felt like. And a stranger, which I certainly wasn’t.
He never calls me Pastor. Never before had he even raised his voice to me. “Who are you and what did you do with my grandfather? My gramps is happily living in Carlsbad, California. That’s right along the Pacific and north of San Diego. My gramps is in bed right now, not in Vegas, baby.”
We stared at each other, and then a two-watt light bulb my brain flickered. “Do you mean Onesimus, as in the slave the Apostle Paul writes about?”
“Bing-a-ding ding, girl. Listen, Jane, I’m having a crisis, one that’s, well, personal, as personal and private as it can get for a man.”
From the dancing rhinestones on his denim shirt, past the belt buckle, which was the size of Rhode Island, to the candy-apple red Mustang convertible, which I noticed since it was in the middle of my driveway, the man was either auditioning for a low-budget movie or had lost his senses. Besides, my grandfather never needed help. Never wore cowboy clothes, either, for that matter. He was dependable, taught music at the university, and played with an aging boomer band who’d just found out they were hip. The man had style, grace, out of GQ. Okay, there wer
e some fifty-and sixty-something women circling like ravenous seagulls chasing a fishing boat, but he always chose right from wrong when it came to women. Then again, I never had a conversation about the birds and bees with him.
“Ohhhhhhh, personal and private,” I muttered, regretting my decision to have the second Lean Cuisine dinner, even if it was diet food because I absolutely, positively didn’t want to discuss my grandfather’s sexual inadequacies or performance.
Heck-o, I never intended or wanted this talk. But I blurted in more than a squeak than a pastoral voice, “Crisis? Men your age are past that. For Pete’s sake, don’t tell me you’re here in Vegas to marry an eighteen-year-old half-dressed dancer who wears pink feathers that glow in the dark with matching pasties that barely cover her nipples. Or that she’s employed in a strip club as a stripper.”
A giggle came from me, a grunt came from him.
“Say any of that is true, and I’m kicking your knickers back to Carlsbad.” I yanked his sleeve, being careful not to dislodge one of the three million rhinestones on that part of his shirt. He either didn’t get my little joke or … Wait, this couldn’t be.
“She’s not some chorus babe, Jane. She has to be, well, I’d say, eighteen or nineteen. But she could be sixteen. I’ve never asked.”
“Whoa, hold the phone. Not a chorus girl? Who is she?” I could no longer hide in the kitchen.
“She’s got nothing to do with this. I’m like a package of ham that’s been shoved to the back of the refrigerator. The whole world is out to get me, although Switzerland stays neutral. Lately I wake up in the morning and wish my parents hadn’t met.”
“Get out of here.” Mr. Rhinestone started to get up and I grabbed him. “I’m kidding, Gramps. You’re better at telling jokes than Jerry Seinfeld.”
“Humor is another way to be serious, Miss Pastor Lady. My problem is the damn-blasted stroke.”
“The stroke happened, you didn’t cause it, Gramps, and the physical therapist said you’d be okay. What changed?” I could feel the corners of my mouth head south. I looked around the room for his Bertha, his ever-present guitar. He was alone, and that troubled me enough, until it finally sunk in that he hadn’t reputed that she might be a chorus girl. For once in my life I was speechless, at least for five seconds. “Are you huffy like this to the folks you preach to? Wonder that they let you get in back of a pulpit.” He planted his boots in the middle of the “it comes furnished” living room.
I stuck out my arm, because I could sense he was about to bolt. “This isn’t about me, Mister. When were you going to tell me about this girl? Have you, um, married an adolescent? If you’re sure she’s at least eighteen, um, should I be relieved? Wait. What’s happening to my orderly world?” I held my head and rocked it back and forth.
“Stop your yammering, Jane, for sanity’s sake. It’s not like she’d have me,” he said and waved a hand in the air, raked it through his abundant steel-gray hair, and frowned. Deeply. He pushed past me and limped to the front window, stretched back the tan drapes. I followed, and we looked at the convertible.
I had to grab the above-mentioned drape for support when it hit me. Ton of bricks to the noggin. He was doing it with a teenager. I slapped my mouth. I tried to take a long, cleansing breath. In and out, yoga style. I sputtered, “Are you, well, cohabitating?”
He didn’t even look my way. He wasn’t using the cane, so that should have been a good sign until he said, “I’m old, feeble. I’m useless. I’m disabled.” He retreated to the sofa, slumped over, blending in with the beige fabric so much that if it weren’t for rhinestones I could have convinced myself this was a nightmare and the result of the diet cupcakes I had for dessert. I stared. Was that a yes or a no to my question on lusting after a teenager? His face turned to pea soup with undertones of eggplant and I winced as he slid the knee-high cowboy boots off his feet. He rubbed his toes and then let his head flop back. With his eyes closed, his face was a street map of wrinkles.
When could this all have happened? We talked every other day at least, emailed, and this was the first I’d heard of any setback or a, um, teenage romantic interest. Or his extreme lifestyle makeover to a rhinestone cowboy.
Do you think about ministers as uptight, buttoned down, repressed and sometimes clueless? Heaven help me, I’m not like that and I never get speechless. I like talking, but right then I was without a comeback, snappy or otherwise. As an itinerant pastor, actually, which means I fill in for ministers when they’re on sabbatical or away from their flock, I need a stock of flip answers because most of the time I’m cross-examined about my credentials. That was definitely the case in point when I arrived six weeks ago at Mega Church, USA, technically known as Desert Hills Community Church. Don’t know what they were expecting. What they got was a slightly less busty version of a young Dolly Parton, just slightly, without the good lookin’ makeup. It wasn’t what they’d ordered in a new youth pastor. Honestly, that’s what I heard when I was quietly taking care of business in the ladies’ room as two of the office staff were chatting about me. It wasn’t the Dolly comment that hurt, mind you — I love her — it was the dig about my inability to apply cosmetics.
Yes, being a Chatty Cathy helped in most of the scrapes in which I’ve found myself, but right then, I opened and closed my mouth and still nothing came forth.
With my history of relatives abandoning me (note to self: check the Internet to see if parents have been incarcerated again lately), I was floundering big time with Gramps, who was the color of rotten grapes and breathing unevenly on my sofa. My finger fluttered to my robe’s pocket and my cell, ready to punch 911.
You see, he wasn’t just my grandfather and a professor, he’d become a heartthrob. With his band, Slam Dunk, he created classic rock hits that you can’t stop humming and did it time and again. Sort of a Paul McCartney-esque guy, and maybe I’m a bit partial, but I think he’s better looking, in a grandfatherly way, than Sir Paul. He had friends, recording sessions, folks he knew at church and even an on-again, off-again romance with my good friend U.S. Senator Geraldine English.
While looking after Gramps as he recovered from the stroke, I licked my wounds from being sacked along with the serious reprimand from the council and spent quality time nagging him. That kind of stuff. Home was Carlsbad, California, and if you think about golf and tennis at La Costa, locking-block kid heaven of Legoland and a chi-chi beachy town just north of San Diego’s city limits, you’ve got a snapshot of where Gramps calls home, and sometimes me, too. If you’re singing a Beach Boys song or something from the Mamas and the Papas, you’re a bit younger than Gramps, but you probably know the kind of surf city where I grew up.
So after his stroke, I was Nurse Nancy. I needed a time-out, still store from the above-mentioned butt-kicking. When he refused all coddling, I accepted this temporary position at Desert Hills, which came with a pint-size furnished condo that had no charm or style. Somehow it suited me; I didn’t want to care. I was a temp. I would be out of the job in six months, so it would have been nuts to drag anything personal to the desert. I’m to the point when a man asks me out, I tell him to step back and think it over. How was I going to counsel Gramps with this track record? Wait, don’t answer that.
“Did you have a setback?” I swallowed fear, and it tasted just like the second boxed chicken Alfredo.
Mumble, mumble. “Yes.”
“When?”
“Not another stroke?”
I have no idea why, but I moved to the door and walked out on the porch. Okay, he’d driven here. He could control a car. That had to be a good sign, or had I been hallucinating about the car in the driveway? Even in the streetlamp’s meager glow, that Mustang was red. I closed the door. “Gramps, why aren’t you driving your Tundra truck?”
“Wanted to breathe new-car smell again before I died.”
“So you rented it, good. When did you arrive?” Call it a premonition, but I was glad I was near the sofa when he said, “Three weeks ago.”
>
Now it was my turn to collapse into one of the two nondescript loveseats in my beige and glass living room. “Excuse me?” I clucked. “You’ve been in Vegas for three entire weeks and you are just now coming over here to see me?”
He tilted forward, lacing his hands, resting his forehand on his fingers and, silly me, I assumed he was praying until he said, “Trying to figure myself out. All I discovered was I am a limp, broken and empty shell. Crumpled. Look at me, really look, Jane. There’s no man left. I know I’m not the first to seek refuge in the bright lights of Sin City. Yeah, all I found were bright lights and an old, big city.” He studied the cream-colored Berber carpet as if the answer to the meaning of life were in the weave.
I checked it out, too. I didn’t find any help so I said, “What you did wasn’t that unusual.” I was walking a long, thin line, like the one in the middle of a highway, with two semis heading straight at me. “Lots of men find they want a playmate.” I added, “Like your very, very, very young one.” It was grunted under my breath. It was snide. It felt good. I’m a preacher, but I’m human.
Gramps ignored me, which was just as well, and talked to the carpet, holding his head in his hands. “I’m on the run. From the world, friends, co-workers — heck, even strangers. And especially God. The body you see is as good as it’s going to get, but honestly, Jane, I’m hurting. I am angry, angrier than when your grandmother died, a heck of a lot angrier than when your folks decided parenting wasn’t their thing. Didn’t know I could get so stinking mad. I’m stinking angry at myself for getting old. I’m a worn-out geezer, a windbag, a codger.”
I circled him with my arms. He was small. When did he shrink? “Oh, Gramps. I love you. Why did you wait so long? Why didn’t you tell me? You’re not alone.” I squeezed his shoulders, and then it hit me. I pulled my arms back, stiffened my back. “Wait one confounded second. I have called you. I emailed, just today, I sent you a joke. The one about Las Vegas. Remember it? Americans spend three hundred billion dollars every year on gaming in Vegas, and that doesn’t even include weddings and elections? You wrote back, ‘Ha Ha,’ and said everything was fine.”
Killing Casanova Page 16