Something Real

by J.J. Murray

Genres: Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance; Multicultural & Interracial Romance

Synopsis

Thanks to her black mother and her Irish father, Ruth "Penny" Borum is the color of a new penny. Big-boned and notoriously sassy, Ruth is nonetheless the organist and a member in good standing of Antioch, Virginia's most prominent black church--or at least she was until she dragged the popular Reverend Jonas Borum into an ugly divorce. Having lost everything in the divorce, Ruth scrapes by on what she can make as a hairdresser at Diana's, a tiny two-seat salon. Alone at night, in her basement apartment, she indulges in ice cream and argues with the Almighty. Did He have to take everything away? And when is He going to give something back? The Good Lord must have a sense of humor. That's the only conclusion Ruth can reach when He makes her fall head over heels in love. . .with a white man. Her friends are appalled, and Antioch, her spiritual home since birth, is ready to throw her out on her ear. Still, with the help of jump rope rhymes, a homeless man who hears God's voice in a mason jar, and two children who want a Mama as much as she wants them, Ruth's determined to prove anything is possible--even love between two people who couldn't be more mismatched.  .  ."Delightful! Sexy! Something Real is like a burst of sunshine." -- Romance in Color "J. J. Murray has outdone himself with his latest work. He has written a realistic story that could happen to anyone."-- RAWSistaz

Release date: November 20, 2014

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 417

Sample

I’ve been playing organ since I could reach the pedals, and I don’t wear the heavy shoes some organists wear. My fat feet are heavy enough. And I never had any lessons. When I hear a tune, I can play it. That’s my gift. God blessed me with a musical ear. Don’t show me no notes, don’t show me no hymnal, and leave the sheet music at the store. You hum it or sing it, and I can play it.

“You have a gift,” Grandma told me when I was very young. “And gifts get given. No need to get paid for having a gift from the Lord.” As a result, I have never gotten paid for all those services, baptisms, and receptions. When I was younger, I didn’t care. I just liked to play. I loved to be heard. I loved all the compliments I got, loved the attention. But later I learned that Grandma was wrong about the payment part. Grandma never had to hold the same note or play the same sad chord for ten minutes till Reverend Hamlin, Antioch’s preacher before Jonas, was satisfied that enough folks had fallen out, come forward, or felt guilty enough for being one-day-a-week Christians. Grandma never had to repeat the choruses of “I Prayed About It,” “He’s Able,” or “Hallelujah” forty times because those were the only songs anyone seemed to know. Grandma never had to play “The Wedding March,” “Always,” or “Endless Love” several dozen times a summer. At least at a wedding I sometimes got some form of payment, usually a crummy corsage or maybe a ten-dollar bill in one of those tiny thank-you note cards.

Though I can’t sing for shit (trust me), I know all the words. “I Want To See Him,” “His Eye Is on the Sparrow,” “I Still Have Joy,” “No Ways Tired,” “That’s Love”—just a few of my favorites. Till the divorce. The Sunday after the divorce became final, I played “It’s Over Now” instead of “Take It to the Lord in Prayer” during Jonas’s altar call. I wonder if anyone even noticed the significance. Now the only song that can get me through the day is “My Life Is in Your Hands.” And it is. It has to be. I’ve been praying nonstop for something, anything good to come out of all this, and when I play the organ, I feel good. I don’t feel the glory I once did, but at least I feel something. It surprised me that the church board at Antioch let me keep my unpaid “job” at the organ, and at first I took it for a sign from the Lord. God was still letting me give my gift.

Fact is, cheap asses at Antioch just didn’t want to have to pay anyone to replace me.

Antioch Church. Where do I begin? Antioch is a male-dominated, y’all-womens-better-stay-at-home, and y’all-working-womens-better-keep-quiet kind of place. Jonas, of course, has used this defect in our church to his advantage, telling his version of the divorce which is about as close to the truth as white is to black. “She has become mentally unbalanced,” he told the deacons, “and, sadly, anything the poor woman says is a lie.” And being the big-lipped, thimble-brained carp that they are, the deacons swallowed his story hook, line, and sinker. They then passed the story on to their ignorant stay-at-home wives who care only about decorations for the next “Ladies’ Social.” That makes about two-thirds of our church population who no longer know how to or even want to speak to me. In a church of five hundred, I have never felt so isolated. If it weren’t for Tonya Lewis and Naomi Baker, two of the dearest friends that I’ve ever had in my life—and my need to be a weekly object lesson to Jonas’s flock of ignorant sheep—I’d be gone from this persecution.

But where could I go? Calhoun is a small Southern city with a gossip streak as long and wide and shallow as the muddy Calhoun River. Can’t nothin’ happen in Calhoun without someone knowing about it and puttin’ their mouth in it. Small minds, large mouths, houses too close together, too many folks fanning themselves on porches putting more hot air into the humid sky, and ain’t nobody got cable. Naturally, everybody knows about the woman who divorced the preacher, and I can’t even set them straight because everything I say must be a lie because the great Reverend Borum said so. Tonya and Naomi know the truth, and that’s all that matters to me. To the rest of them, I say, “BAAAA! Go on and be good sheep while your good shepherd takes out his rod and plows many a valley. Surely goodness and mercy ain’t gonna follow none of you—Dr. Bone-’em’s bad ways is gonna haunt y’all all the days of your lives.”

Right now, I’m just trying to keep my head above water. I’ve been nearly drowning in court-appointed this, that, and the other. I had a court-appointed divorce orientation (complete with videos) that told me what I already knew: “Divorce is shitty.” I had a court-appointed mediator who told me what I already knew: “You ain’t gettin’ shit.” I had a court-appointed psychologist who told me what I already knew: “Your brain is for shit.” And I even had a self-appointed court clerk goddess white bitch who told me that my handwriting and typing were for shit. They all did everything in their power to further victimize me because they were taking such major pains to protect Jonas’s career.

Fact is, Jonas wouldn’t have a career if it wasn’t for me because I wrote the damn sermons, nearly every last one of them. Oh sure, he wrote the rough drafts, and that’s all you would have felt in that church as much feeling and spirit he put into them—rough drafts of dull air. “Today’s sermon is on the love of God,” he’d write. “Please turn with me to . . .” I’d scratch that out and write, “People, (pause and take a deep breath), the Lord has brought me safe thus far (wait for an ‘Amen,’ Jonas), through many dangers (wait for it), toils (wait), and snares (wait); and what did He use to carry me? (pause; take a deep breath) I say, what did my (loud) glorious Savior use to carry me? (pause; another deep breath) He gave me His love. (If they don’t ‘Amen’ here, Jonas, repeat ‘He gave me His love’ till they do) . . .”

I gave those sermons fire, I gave those sermons depth, I gave those sermons feeling, and the church grew from thirty old, brave souls who met with us in a drafty, crumbling building ready for the condemned signs to five hundred and climbing in a totally remodeled, warm building. But did I get any credit for even one of those seven hundred sermons? You kiddin’? Since our divorce was finalized last month, the man’s been recycling my old sermons, and he still ain’t waitin’ long enough for folks to say “Amen.” I should have copyrighted those sermons so I could at least get a cut of the offering.

Everything I have tried to do since all this began is to protect myself. During the separation, I hired another psychologist, a hopefully impartial white female psychologist, to reevaluate me and Jonas this time. The tests were brutal invasions of my privacy, but I took them and tested as being reliable, dependable, practical, reasonable, conventional, loyal, and flexible. That’s me. Faithful as a puppy dog. I felt vindicated, especially when Jonas tested as being narcissistic and extremely self-centered. But somehow, this cold bitch psychologist with an ego the size of the North Pole ignored Jonas’s shortcomings because “large numbers of people in Reverend Borum’s profession share these characteristics.” In other words, I married a stuck-up man, and preachers, as a general rule, are stuck-up people. I paid a thousand dollars (in addition to my attorney’s retainer) for this ridiculous evaluation which only supported the court-appointed psychologist’s claim that only I, Ruth Lee Childress Borum, was dysfunctional.

Because of all this shit, I’ve been seeing a psychiatrist. I know most black folks don’t do that, but they have their mamas and their families. I don’t. My white daddy left the scene before I was born, and Mama died of a stroke when I was ten. I have no brothers, no sisters, no aunts, and no uncles, not even a second cousin twice-removed. My grandma, who raised me, passed twenty years ago, also from a stroke. And now, thanks to Dr. Holt, I am chemically fucked up. I don’t know if I’m going or coming . . . and I definitely ain’t doin’ any coming. Something about my drug “therapy” has destroyed my sex drive. Dr. Holt says that will come back (I doubt it) as he’s weaning me off one drug while weaning me onto another drug which takes three to six weeks to see if it works. I’m trying to sleep, but it ain’t easy. I’m on a new sleeping pill that leaves a metallic taste in my mouth. Taking one is like sucking on the lid of a four-day-old, unrinsed Spaghetti-O’s can. But it gets me five whole hours of sleep, and I can handle the shitty taste, because five hours beats none.

When JonASS and I first separated, my attorney advised me to do two things: get a job, then get disability insurance, you know, the kind of policy that protects your income in case you can’t work due to illness or disability. I knew why I needed a job: so I could pay my damn attorney. I could always cut and style a mean head of hair, so I found me a job at Diana’s, a little two-chair salon just around the corner from my one-bedroom apartment on Vine. That’s right. I live within spitting distance of the church I helped rebuild. But my “fame” nearly cost me a chance at the job. Shit, I bet the owner, Diana Poindexter, was thinking during the interview, I can’t hire the bitch I been talkin’ about! Weather in Calhoun ain’t that interestin’ to talk about all damn day! I had to convince her that I could turn my friends into regular, paying customers. Diana, who’s pushing fifty and who still wears a Diana Ross ’do and has posters of Diana and the Supremes all over her walls, asked, “Will they come weekly?” I had laughed just then because that’s exactly what Jonas used to do. That was also one of the reasons that we didn’t have any children. One “Dear Jesus!” or a “Yes Lord!” and he was through, leaving me blinking at the cobwebs on the ceiling. “Yes,” I told her, “they’ll come here regularly,” and I got the job. And Tonya and Naomi did become regular paying (and tipping) customers because that’s what true friends do. They chip nails on purpose or home perm their hair too long so I can have a job . . . to pay my attorney.

Six months of that, and I have money. Not much, but enough for a single forty-year-old divorced mother of none living in a single-celled apartment to survive on. Enter the disability insurance. “Why do I need this insurance again?” I asked my attorney. “Because you’re under a doctor’s care.” So I got the insurance, and, sure enough, they have some of my income, and now they’re protecting it for all they’re worth.

I tried to get some of my income back when I had my first breakdown and just couldn’t get out of bed for two weeks. Depression is the heaviest motherfucker on earth, and it hit me so hard and fast after a Sunday service that I had trouble even breathing. I had just played “He’s Working It Out For You” for folks to walk out to when—BAM—I felt so low. It felt like one of those dreams where you can’t move, and you know someone’s behind you grabbing at you, but you can’t move, and whoever it is will strangle you or stab you or rip your head off. It was like claustrophobia and that other phobia, that fear of heights thing, at the same time. I was boxed in and falling.

Somehow I filled out forms and gave them to Dr. Duckworth, my family doctor since I was born, and to Dr. Holt. They filled out the forms. The insurance people called me and asked me the same damn questions that were on the forms, they called Dr. Duckworth and asked him the same damn questions that were on the forms, and they called Dr. Holt and asked him the same damn questions that were on the forms. That was just so my “claim form” could go from Medical Review to being assigned a caseworker. How nice of them. Next, they took five to seven business days to pick daisies and their asses. They plucked off the petals and chanted, “She’s sick, she’s not sick. She’s sick, she’s not sick.” At the end of that period, I got an official proclamation that my “claim” was approved. By that time, I was feeling better and could leave the apartment without feeling small and dizzy, so I went back to work and became undepressed. Just being around other people and solving heads of hair helped me through.

I have still not seen a single penny of this income of mine that they’re protecting. I’m sure cutting a check will take at least three months because they have to have a review committee approve procedures for using scissors. If they’re anything like the church board at Antioch, which once took six months to decide on whether to decide to paint the lines in the church parking lot, I will never see my money again. Thank God I have lots of credit cards and big credit limits. You’d be amazed at how much these credit card companies are willing to risk on a preacher’s ex-wife, like I’m better able or more likely to pay since I’m so godly. I had to buy so much shit for my apartment. It was like starting completely from scratch: a table, chairs, dishes, silverware, glasses, and curtains for the kitchen; a sofa, chair, coffee table, curtains, and lamp for the main room; a bed, dresser, and night stand for the bedroom; a shower curtain, towels, toilet brush, cleaners for the bathroom. I have a feeling that my godly credit rating will go to hell by the time this divorce is finally over.

If the divorce ever ends, that is. Dearest Jonas—who never gave me birthday presents, who never gave me anniversary presents, who never gave me Christmas presents, and who never even gave me one measly card—sent me an anniversary card for what would have been our fifteenth anniversary. In it, the prick graciously included a check for the hundred dollars he shorted me in spousal support that month. It was the single largest gift he had given me in the history of our marriage, and he probably had to raid the offering plate to get it. At the bottom was a simple note: “Could you please return my ironing board and iron?” That he rarely used. That I slaved over with the Niagara starch. Nearly every night. For fifteen years. I returned them. I had to. They were part of the settlement . . . and now they’re part of the big oak tree out in front of his house. He’ll never be able to get up to that iron, though I’d like to see him try. I think it’s wrapped around a branch and a power line. The ironing board I couldn’t throw as high, but I doubt he’d want it now since the birds have pecked the padding out of it for their nests. All the settlement said was that I had to return them. The settlement didn’t say in what condition.

I should have married my senior prom date. Stuart Hart, a poindexter, an egghead, asked me to the prom in his squeaky geeky voice, and I accepted because no one else asked me. No one else had ever asked me to any dance. I was just that big-boned church girl who could play the organ, that light-skinned girl with the lightning smile and thunder thighs. Grandma told me that I was born big “with a head the size of a pumpkin.” I am kind of pumpkin-colored—imagine an almost new penny—with naturally reddish hair and orangeish freckles because of my daddy. I’ll bet he was Irish, which might explain my temper. I recently heard that Stuart is now a full partner in an Atlanta law firm, the corporate attorney for a big movie studio and a couple cable networks, easily making a half million a year. But (sigh) he’s married (happily) with five kids and a dog. Five kids. What I would do for just one child.

But . . . There was no room in our marriage for a child or a dog, because we already had both, but I didn’t know I did till I married Jonas Borum.

Reverend Ebenezer Hamlin was retiring after fifty years as Antioch’s good shepherd, mainly because the congregation had dwindled from two hundred to thirty during his final wheezy, gravel-voiced years. The church board, which made up half of the remaining members, urged him to retire, while secretly, I’m sure, wishing the old fart would just go on and die.

Reverend Hamlin refused to die, said he’d “go on a-preachin’ to his grave,” said “Jesus never retired—He was just sent home early,” said “God will call me home in God’s good time.” Which He did, taking Reverend Hamlin home the week after Christmas while folks were returning gifts at the mall. Folks said that God was just calling Reverend Hamlin to our rest, not his. Yes, old “Hambone” died in his sleep, most likely saving another generation from dying in theirs every Sunday morning.

After three consecutive Sundays of only singing and testifying, candidates to take Reverend Hambone’s place began preaching at us, trying to win us over. It was quite a show, too. All of them were young, fine black men who preached hellfire and brimstone, who strutted and pleaded, who sweated all over the threadbare carpet.

They weren’t hired.

Then Jonas showed up. Boring as lint. Dry as hot sand. Dull as a butter knife. Tedious as watching dust settle.

Jonas was hired.

During his first sermon, we had to listen hard since we had no idea what he was talking about. He quoted something from Dante’s Inferno, and I could hear someone in the choir whisper, “Dante Who?” and someone else replying, “Oh, that’s Mattie’s sister’s nephew’s boy.” He quoted from Pilgrim’s Progress, “by that great writer John Bunyan,” and another whispered, “Bunions? What he talkin’ ’bout bunions for?” Finally, he quoted from C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, and I started looking it up in the Bible. Let’s see . . . Letter to the Corinthians, Letter to the Galatians, Letter to the Ephesians . . . but no Letter to Screwtape. “These famous quotations will be illuminated by the end of our discussion of sin.” There was no illumination during that sermon. The man lost us from the first “thee-thou-thy” and had us scratching our heads at his constant reference to someone he called Wormwood. Still, it was different, a change of pace from Reverend Hamlin, and it really made us pay attention . . . so we could have some shit to talk about after the sermon.

Back then, the choir outnumbered the congregation most Sundays. Antioch’s music was and still is a blessing to all who attend. Folks seem to come for the music like some folks attend football games to watch the halftime show. Naturally, we had a bigger budget for choir robes than for the building fund. Jonas, to his credit, noticed this discrepancy and approached the music committee, which back then was just me and Mrs. Edna McKinney, the choir master.

Mrs. McKinney was a bitch’s bitch, cruel and demanding, requiring Wednesday rehearsals past midnight if necessary, screeching, “Louder!” and pounding her fists if she heard a stray note. She was also the best damn choir director Antioch’s ever had and probably ever will. At only four feet seven (if that) and maybe eighty pounds, Mrs. McKinney could make even the most tone-deaf person sing like an angel. Unfortunately, I was never an angel. “Ruth, you just hum, softly, please, in your head, please,” she’d tell me. I miss her a lot, because the new director, Cedric Lee, a sweaty man who closes his eyes to sing every damn song, has made himself into the featured soloist and probably thinks he’ll be a star someday with his little towel and glass of water.

Jonas approached Mrs. McKinney and me and asked, rightly, that we put off buying robes for a year to get Antioch’s roof reshingled. “It’s in really bad shape, Sister McKinney,” Jonas said.

“No,” Mrs. McKinney said quickly.

“Kinda hard to keep singing if rain’s comin’ down on you, Sister McKinney.”

“There will be showers of blessing, Reverend.”

“Be right cold, too.”

“The Lord will provide, Reverend.”

Jonas shot his eyes at me, and I shrugged. “It’s not something that can be patched, you know. The shingles up there now were put on over seventy years ago.”

“They’ve held up thus far,” Mrs. McKinney said. “I don’t see any leaks. And, Reverend, the Lord surely wouldn’t let it fall.”

“I’d hate for anything to ruin those nice robes y’all have, Sister McKinney. Such beautiful colors. The blood red of Christ and the electric blue of heaven.” Which matched absolutely nothing in the church. The choir looked like a bunch of folks from an old roller derby team. Thankfully we have golden robes that match everything now. “Who picked out those colors, Mrs. McKinney?”

“Why, I did, Reverend,” Mrs. McKinney said, her hand to her chest. He was getting to her.

“You have a keen eye, Sister McKinney,” Jonas said with a smile. “A keen eye and a keen ear. You have created the best choir I’ve ever heard, too. Y’all ought to travel, to compete.” Oh, how that man could talk from those thin-ass lips under a thin-ass moustache, thin-ass nose, and thin-ass eyebrows. He put his thin-ass fingers on Mrs. McKinney’s bony little hand. “Take it to the Lord in prayer, Sister McKinney.”

Mrs. McKinney seemed a little out of breath. “Well, we could put it off for six months . . .”

Jonas smiled then, but not at Mrs. McKinney. He smiled at me. “Wonderful. And then maybe we can get the piano tuned, the organ fixed up a bit . . .”

Antioch’s roof reshingled, the piano tuned, the organ a little less dusty, and Antioch started to change. Jonas ordered two offerings taken per service, stressed the hell out of tithing, and even siphoned off some of the flower fund from old Miss Paula, Antioch’s self-appointed flower arranger who never met a lily she couldn’t tape somewhere. Pews were replaced or refinished, windows replaced or scrubbed clear of eighty years of filth, grimy railings cleaned or sanded and painted. A new neutral carpet appeared under our feet. If nothing else, Jonas Borum was a practical man for a practical people. Jonas helped Antioch bloom again. We had chosen well.

On Easter Sunday, Jonas was, as usual, as dull as a wait at the doctor’s office, but he got the service started on time (10:30) and ended the service precisely at noon. That had never happened before. I had noticed that the services were getting shorter and shorter over his first three months, but to pull off an Easter Sunday miracle like that? A ninety-minute Easter service at a black church in the South? Unheard of! Miss Paula told me afterward, “Christ for sure be comin’ back this evenin’. I’m goin’ home to pack.”

But word got out. There’s a black church in Calhoun that isn’t on Colored People’s Time? It starts on time and ends on time? What, I can get home in time to catch the beginning of the first football game? Wait, you mean I can get out of my heels and serve Sunday lunch before four o’clock without rushing? Hold on here. You mean, I won’t have to beat my kids in the pews during the service because they can’t sit still? Where is this heaven of a church?

Normally empty pews started filling. Clock and watch watching became all the rage. Alarms beeped all over the sanctuary at 11:59. Jonas even removed his wristwatch and laid it on his Bible before every sermon, and every service ended precisely at noon. Mrs. McKinney remarked, “You could time a pound cake to that man.”

More folks turned into more money turned into new sidewalks, new front steps, new oak front doors, and new light fixtures . . . Antioch was reborn.

At a church board meeting in October of Jonas’s first year, the board voted to give him a raise. They also hinted, and they said it almost exactly like this, that he should “perhaps, um, well, in order to be able to more fully do your duties as spiritual leader of Antioch Church, maybe, um, well, this is so delicate, but, um . . . You should marry . . . and, um, perhaps, well, we don’t like to say these things, and we normally wouldn’t, but it’s just that, well, you know . . . Your further tenure here could depend on it . . . so you take it to the, um, the Lord in prayer, Brother Jonas.”

I was shocked. What nerve! All that he had done in just nine months, and he was being threatened with marriage? The church board proved to me that there wasn’t a generation gap at Antioch—it was a generation trap. The old ways hadn’t passed away like the verse says, and nothing was new.

I lingered after the meeting and found myself alone with him for the first time. I waited at the front of the sanctuary till the last crusty board member left before saying, “They have got some nerve, huh?”

He shrugged. “I understand their concerns.”

“Don’t mean you have to listen to them,” I said. “Or do what they say. I mean, telling a grown man to marry to keep his job after all the wonderful things you’ve done? You’ve quadrupled the daily attendance, tripled the membership rolls, fixed this place up, and made it shine, and they tell you that you need a wife to keep your job? That is so wrong.”

“It’s their right, Sister Childress. They’re the board. They were here before I got here, and they’ll be here long after I’m gone.”

“Reverend, if they suggested as much to me, I’d be out the door.”

He sat in the first pew and sighed. “I don’t have that luxury, Sister Childress.”

“And please call me Ruth. That ‘sister’ business is as old-fashioned and stale as the bow tie Deacon Rutledge wears.”

He smiled. “Ruth.” He sighed again. “You know just about everybody here, don’t you?”

“Yes. Born and raised in this church.”

He squinted. “Why haven’t you married?”

I dropped into the pew on the other side of the aisle. What a question! “I’ve, um, I haven’t found the right man, and I wasn’t exactly blessed with beauty.”

He didn’t answer right away. Doesn’t he know that I’m fishing for a compliment? “Inner beauty lasts forever,” he said eventually. So I ain’t pretty, but I got pretty innards. Thanks a lot. “You know something, Ruth? I like watching you play. Watching your feet marching, almost dancing, your hands flying. You are really talented. I know you could be playing for a different church, a bigger church, on a nicer organ, most likely making a nice salary. But you stay here. Why?”

Now, those are compliments. “This is my home. I love this old building, that dusty old organ, the dusty old people.” I laughed. Quit your babbling, girl. “I wouldn’t dream of going anywhere else.”

“Hmm,” he said. “Building, organ, people. No mention of the preachin’.”

Oops. “Well, to be honest, Reverend, you’re, well—” I looked at him, and he seemed very interested. “You’re sometimes too . . . logical, like maybe you’re more of a teacher or a professor than a preacher. It’s like we’re all in school or something.”

He dropped his head. “I’m boring.”

Least the man knows the truth about himself. “Well, I didn’t say—”

“No no,” he interrupted. “I’ve heard folks talk. ‘Bore-’em Borum,’ they call me. ‘Least he gets us out in time for the kickoff,’ they say.” He rubbed his hands through his thinning, neatly groomed hair. “Guess I need a little fire, huh?”

Boy, you need a flamethrower, a blowtorch, and a bolt of God-honest lightning. “Well, there are a few things you could do to spice things up, but not too much at first. Gradual-like. Antioch isn’t a place for drastic changes, you know.”

Then he looked me dead in my heart, I swear, and asked, “Would you help me, Ruth?”

Damn right I did. I helped him with those sermons, lighting a match or building a fire here and there, and eventually the amens came, the hands started to rise, folks started to sway, the testifying lasted longer, the singing came from the heart, and we sang that extra chorus like we really meant it. Jonas compensated by shortening his sermons, and, I swear before God, Antioch became warmer all over and under and everywhere in between.

And so did I. Working next to that man, and being able to tell folks that I had a “date” with a preacher every Saturday night (I didn’t tell them what for), and, God forgive me, listening to “my” sermons all the way through each Sunday—I thought I was getting closer to God. I even prayed that Jonas would think I was truly beautiful on the outside, too.

One evening we were tackling I Corinthians 13, the so-called love chapter in the New Testament, when he touched my hand for the first time. I froze. Then he said with the most serious eyes, “I’ve never been in love, Ruth.”

My meaty hand had never felt better, and I felt a tingling in another place, too. Damn, gettin’ moist in the pastor’s study. “Never?”

He shook his head. “How can I preach on love, Ruth, if I’ve never been in love?”

I tried to pull my hand away to point at the Bible, but Jonas wouldn’t let go. “This chapter is about God’s love, right? You know all about God’s love, Reverend.”

He let go, leaving traces of his warm, skinny fingers on my hand. “Yes, but . . . I want to make it relevant.” Jonas firmly believed in the adage, “If the congregation can’t apply it, don’t try it.” He stared into my eyes. “Have you ever been in love, Ruth?”

My eyes popped. “Me?” Oh, I had some lusting crushes on some traveling singers, a guest pastor or two, once on a pianist who played so beautifully one Sunday that I was in tears. But he never came back. Probably because the piano w