Hell on Church Street (6 page)

Card said, “You bet it is.” Only a man who made his living being meek could have accepted my ass-kissing so causally.

“What should we do?” I asked.

“Nothing for now, of course. I’ll talk to her tonight.” His face was tight with worry, the worry of a man with an unattractive daughter. All fathers fear that boys are predators, but the father of an unattractive daughter lives in terror of his daughter’s own low self-esteem.

I looked at my watch and said I’d better be getting down the hall but, “Maybe it would be best if you don’t mention that I was the one who spilled the beans.
For the sake of my ministry with your daughter.
She might very well hold it against me and I’m afraid that…”

“You’re right,” he said. “She needs to feel she can come to you about this or anything else.”

I nodded. “Exactly. I’m sorry to have been the one to bring this to your attention.”

He waved that away. “Glad you did. We’ll pray about it, and I’ll talk to Angela and her mother.”

I said I’d pray about it and left.

Back down the hall the kids were taking their seats. I preached them a good message that night on the dangers of alcohol. I was above reproach when it came to drinking, as I had never done it. Isn’t that sad? Never touched the stuff.

I preached it a little harder than usual since I was worked up about my love and her basketball player. I made sure to point out that while
some
religions said it was okay to drink, the Bible said it was wrong. Which, of course, the Bible didn’t say exactly, but I was giving the parents in the back of the room what they wanted to hear and what most of the teenagers present had already come to expect.

Take that, Catholic boy.

Oscar, for his part, didn’t seem impressed. He spent the entirety of my message looking around the room, sizing up the girls. He never even saw Angela. She might have been an empty chair for all he cared. She beamed, though, as if he’d come riding in on a rainbow. The pudding sisters giggled as they cast glances at him, but he never looked back at any of them. I doubt he even knew their names.

I went home after work that night more excited than I had been in a while. As I lay in front of one of my pornos, I contemplated the mechanics of stage one of my plan. I’d need to get Brother Card as riled up as possible against Oscar. Let him do the hard work. Then, slowly, I’d work on Angela. Shower her with attention, praise,
understanding
.

I paused in the contemplation of the mechanics of my plan because the porn had reached its pivotal moment, and I reached a pivotal moment along with it. I went to the bathroom and cleaned up and then returned to my bed. I popped in another video and let it play as background music of sorts while I thought.

The Cards…

Even if I could get Angela to fall in love with me, what about the parents? They wouldn’t approve of their only begotten daughter being with the likes of me. I knew that. Do you doubt it? Do you think they would be happy to have me as a son-in-law? Don’t bet on it. They wanted me where I was, leading the youth group, teaching the study lessons. They trusted me (at least Brother Card did), but they wanted me in my place. No one had ever wanted me to move freely about, doing what I wanted, chasing
their
daughters. Does that sound self-pitying? Maybe it is. Then again, the third fundamental truth of life is this: to 99.9% of the world you don’t exist. I’m not being self-pitying when I say that because I’m talking about you.
You
do not exist to most of the rest of the world. How many people even know you’re alive? Of those, how many care? Don’t add it up if you’re the type that gets easily depressed. Me, I’m not easily depressed. Never was. This nasty little world has always kind of amused me. I knew the world wanted me in my place—in a box on a shelf in the garage that they could take out when they needed it. That’s why I became a youth minister in the first place, to serve a function. People would need me. (There’s truth number four for you in case you’re keeping count: how much people “care” about you is directly proportional to how much they actually need you.) They needed me to teach their zit-faced children about Jesus, to read the Bible to the kids and tell them, yes, it does say what your
grandpappy
told you it said. I was a tool and they cared for me like a tool, kept me clean and out of harm’s way.

But now I wanted something. My love. I didn’t know how to get rid of the Cards, but I hadn’t ruled anything out.

I was thinking about all of this when someone knocked on my front door. I sprang up and turned off the television so quickly you would have thought my parents were coming through the door. After I got dressed, I hurried through the darkened living room to the front door.

When I opened the door, Angela was standing on my welcome mat. I said her name, and she started to cry.

Chapter Six

She wasn’t wearing a coat, and when I pulled her to me and hugged her it was not a pleasant experience.

Leading her inside, I said, “You’re freezing.”

“I walked over,” she said.

I sat her down on the couch and knelt next to her. A long strip of light from my bedroom gleamed across the hardwood floor of the living room, but she and I were in the dark. We were very close, but it wasn’t an erotic moment. She smelled like cold wind and snot.

“Stay here,” I said, as if she were going anywhere. I fetched some Kleenex, and she blew her nose. After throwing the tissue away and getting her a wool blanket, I went into the kitchen and microwaved some hot tea packets the Ladies Auxiliary had given me in a housewarming basket.

I paced the kitchen. Was now the time? This quick?

I shook my head.
You have to wait. You want to do this, but you have to wait it out. You don’t know what’s happened. If you pour it on too quick, it could scare her off. Take it easy.

I noted my fortune in having just jerked off. Had I been humming along at full capacity when she showed up, I don’t think I could have controlled what would have happened.

When the tea was ready, I took it in and gave it to her and sat down on the floor by her legs. Sweet, understanding guy.

“You seem better,” I said.

And she did. She wasn’t crying or shivering. She grinned and sipped her tea.

“Want to tell me about it?”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“I’d fill out the census for you,” I said, but I thought,
Rein
it in
… 
Don’t flirt
.

She smiled. “Have you ever been in love?”

“No,” I said.

Leaning forward, holding the cup with both hands, she said, “I think I am.”

“Why?”

“Why?”

“Yeah.”

She frowned. “I don’t know. I just feel love. Why haven’t you ever been in love?”

I sighed. “I’m married to the work, I think. I want to serve God. Some people can do that without being married, some can’t. Paul said that it was better for us not to marry, provided we could control our…urges. I’ve just always been able to control mine.”

And Jesus, what a load of horseshit that was. Angela, my sweet untarnished goddess of light, thought about what I’d said for a while.

“Urges?” she finally said.

Here we go…

“Sexual,” I explained. “But emotional, too. Are you having trouble with those?”

She shut her eyes and let the steam from the tea waft across her face. “I didn’t run away from home, you know.”

“I didn’t figure you had.”

“I just had to get out of the house.”

“Is everything okay there?”

She shook her head and looked at me. “My father…”

“Is a good man,” I said.

She took a sip of tea and said, “I know he is. He loves
me and all,
but he’s such a …” she tried to think of a word that wasn’t a cuss word and came up with “…pedant. Do you know that word? I looked it up a couple of weeks ago for a paper I was doing in English. It means someone who’s always bringing up little things to make
themselves
look smart because they don’t know anything big. And that’s what he is. That’s why he’s always quoting the Bible at whatever I say. No matter what point I try to make with him he brings up some scripture that proves I’m wrong.”

“I
thi
—”

“And the thing is,” she said, “I believe the Bible. I know it’s God’s word and whatever it says is right and all that, but
everything
I say can’t be wrong.”

“Of course not.”

“Did he tell you about Oscar?”

“Oscar…the boy at church tonight?”

“Yeah.”

“Is…Oscar the object of your affections?”

She took a long hard gulp of tea.

I said, “He seemed like a nice enough boy.”

“He’s just a boy at school. I think he’s cute or whatever, but my father thinks I’m obsessed with him for some reason. He doesn’t approve of him, so he doesn’t like me having a stupid little crush on him.”

“And why not?”

“Well, Dad doesn’t want me to like anyone, but mostly it’s because Oscar’s Catholic.”

“Surely it’s not just that he’s Catholic.”

“Oh yeah,” she said moving closer to the edge of the couch, “that’s all it is.
That he’s Catholic.
Now what kind of sense does that make?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

She frowned. It was as if she’d just heard herself talking about the love life of a movie star. “Plus, none of it matters anyway because…Oscar doesn’t even know I’m alive, which, for some weird reason, my father doesn’t believe. I mean, how is it his business who I like anyway?”

I mumbled out some more
your daddy loves you
business.

She shrugged. “I know, but he acts like I’m sinning by liking a guy. Oscar doesn’t even know my name. It’s crazy.”

If she was uncomfortable sitting in the near dark she made no sign of it. She had warmed up now and even in the dim light I could see more color in her face. Angela. Such an ugly name, I think. Yet even now it sets me on fire. Angela. My angel.

“So what are you going to do, kid?”

She shook her head. “Go back home, I guess. My parents would kill me if they knew I was here.”

“Why?” I laughed.

She frowned again, this time at my dimness. “At an older guy’s house in the middle of the night? They’d die. My father would drop dead, and Mom would kill me, you, and then herself.”

She laughed and seemed so much older all of the sudden. Was she used to sneaking out of the house? And she called me
an older guy
.

I shrugged it off. No Big Deal. “I don’t think they’d mind but—”

“You’re wrong,” she said.

“But,” I laughed, “maybe you shouldn’t tell them you came over. No need worrying them about something that’s not a problem.”