The Happy Hour Choir (20 page)

When I sat down, she leaned in close. “Have you noticed how that Sam fellow makes goo-goo eyes at Tiffany?”

“No.” That would've required me to think about something other than Luke. I looked up, and sure enough, Sam was contemplating Tiffany with what could only be described as a soul-searching gaze. Or, by its scientific name, goo-goo eyes.

“Wake up and smell the coffee, Beulah.” Ginger snorted, her eyes watching as Sam joined Tiffany by the bar. “I think she might need a date with him.”

“Ginger, she's pregnant.”

“And?” There went the eyebrow, this time delicately penciled in.

I sighed. “So now you want me to play Cupid?”

She grinned. “Now you're getting the idea. What do you think it's going to take to get the two of them to go on a date?”

“One of them—probably him—asking the other—probably her—to go to the movies. If it's meant to be, I'm sure they'll figure it out.” I chugged half my Bud and eyed her other discarded beer because I didn't want to be having this conversation. Well, that and waste not, want not.

“But what if they need a little nudge in the right direction?” Ginger stared at the two of them, not a trace of a smile on her face. An invisible fist clutched my heart. She didn't think she had time for romance to take its natural course, and she wanted to make sure Tiffany was taken care of.

“Fine. I'll see what I can do, but I thought you only had one last request of me?”

Ginger patted my cheek. “I only had one last
formal
request of you. I may start making requests from the great beyond someday.”

Her hand trembled, and I leaned into it. Her face was so pale and wrinkled, her eyes so bleary. And I loved her so much. “I wouldn't expect anything less.”

“Now you need to pay attention to Luke, dear.”

He stood front and center in his jeans and cowboy boots with his black T-shirt. He hadn't needed my input to fit in; in some ways he was starting to fit in better than I ever had.

“Tonight, I'm afraid we have to have a serious discussion.”

Pete Gates and Mac booed. My last session aside, serious discussions were apparently not the norm for the Sinners to Saints.

“My superintendent has requested I stop leading this group.”

“What? Why?” Tiffany's face crumpled. She grabbed her stomach as the baby gave a seemingly indignant kick. I agreed with the baby. The superintendent had seemed so pleased that night.

Luke must have been upset and possibly disappointed that night, too. But he hadn't drunk too much or made a pass at me. I looked down at my shoes. I really was a lost cause and had no business obsessing over a preacher.

He leaned against the risers and crossed his arms. “The Methodist Church has always supported abstinence from—”

“You can't have sex if you're a Methodist? I'm outta here.” Greg Gates was already on his feet.

“No, no. Abstinence from alcohol,” Luke said. “It's not a hard-and-fast rule, but sobriety is preferred.”

“But I was finally learning something,” Mac interrupted.

And he had. He had been shaving, showering, and dressing better. I couldn't remember the last time I had actually seen Mac drunk at The Fountain. And, thank goodness, I hadn't seen or heard of him waiting around the side of the building to flash anyone.

“I thought you said the Bible only said we shouldn't drink to excess, that too much of anything was bad.” Pete Gates stood beside his brother. After several weeks of keeping their fists under control, the Gates brothers were itching for a fight—and this time not with each other.

“Look, you're all right.” Luke held out a steady hand. “
We're
right.”

“So what's the problem?” Sam's deep voice echoed off the walls.

“The superintendent made it very clear. It's either this or the church.”

And I'm sure the church's rise in attendance had nothing to do with having a minister who was willing to lead a Bible study in a bar.

“So, now we're chopped liver,” Greg Gates muttered.

“No, not at all,” Luke said. “But I made a promise when I took the church, and I have to honor it.”

Bill stepped forward. “Well, now what do we do?”

“I was hoping someone else would like to lead the group and keep it going because I believe we've done good work here. And I think we could do more good work, but that's going to be up to you guys. Sometimes I think I'm preaching to the converted.”

Indeed, he was. Each member of the Happy Hour Choir now went to church every Sunday because they were expected to sing. They also formed the core group of the Sinners to Saints Bible study, although every week a new person or two dropped in to check things out.

Luke stood with his hands on his hips. “Is there anyone who would like to lead?”

Silence reigned. No one wanted to step into Luke's cowboy boots. Knowing the powers that be had condemned the group, or at the very least weren't supportive of it, made everyone nervous. I felt somewhat condemned myself. What had ever possessed me to think I could take a group of tavern-goers and make a choir out of them?

“Luke, dear,” Ginger said. “Maybe it's too much to ask someone to lead the group permanently. Why don't you pass around a sheet and everyone can take turns? And I'm sure there's a book, isn't there? Something to guide us?”

Luke's wide grin caused my heart to skip a beat.

“You're right as always, Miss Ginger,” he said. “Taking turns is a wonderful idea, and I can always recommend a course of study.”

“That's what I thought,” Ginger said. “Now, you can write me down for next week and people can sign up after that.”

Tiffany opened her notebook and wrote Ginger's name then hers in painstaking cursive at the top of a page. She tore out the sheet and handed it to Luke.

Bill took the sheet and wrote his name, then Mac grabbed the sheet. Then the Gates brothers and Sam got into a mock fight. One corner of the paper was ripped, but it was all in good-natured fun. Marsha stopped knitting long enough to consider the sheet, but she passed it on to Goat Cheese, who passed it to Tiffany with a wink.

“I'm so glad you decided to continue,” Luke said. “I wanted to read you one more verse before I go: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself. ' Such simple words, so difficult to follow.”

We all stared.

“That's it,” he said softly. “I would say I'm going to miss you all, but I'm across the parking lot if you need me. Thank you for letting me speak with you about God's word.” He closed his Bible gently, and he stood.

Mac rose and started clapping, the sound reverberating off the cinder-block walls. Bill stood and joined him, then Pete Gates, then Greg. Sam stood, and Tiffany pushed herself to her feet with some effort. Even Goat Cheese and Marsha stood. Finally, Ginger leaned heavily on her cane, and that left me.

Luke's eyes now bored through me, his lips not even twitching up into a smile. Not until I stood and clapped as loudly as I could because I had seen change in others I could only hope to find for myself. I clapped because he wasn't the stick-in-the-mud I had first thought him to be and because he had been willing to bend the rules—well, some of the rules, anyway.

And when I clapped, he finally gave me the gift of those dimples.

He gave a curt, old-fashioned bow and ducked out the door. The applause faded, but the dull buzz of people talking over one another became a raucous roar.

Ginger put her two fingers to her mouth and gave a sharp whistle, something she had never been able to teach me. “I don't think we can top that, do you?”

Tiffany and all the guys around her murmured a lot of no's and shook their heads.

“Then I say we head home early, and I'll find something for next week.” Ginger tried to take a step with her cane, but she knocked over her half-full bottle of Heineken and her third-full bottle of Corona. Then she tried to bend to pick them up, but only succeeded in bending a quarter of the way down and panting a lot.

“For heaven's sake, let us get that, Miss Ginger,” Tiffany said as she moved her chair and bent to get the bottles. She lightly bounced bellies with Bill, and they laughed.

“I'm due any day now,” Bill said as he rubbed a towel across the rough-hewn wooden floor. “How about you?”

“Not until the end of December, I'm afraid,” Tiffany said with a grin as she picked up the two bottles and stood with a grunt.

Ginger shook her head at the two of them. “Thank you. I hate not doing for myself.”

Tiffany looked her straight in the eye and said something I wish I'd said: “Ginger Belmont, I've been living with you for three months now, and I've seen you do for everyone but yourself. Now, let us do something for you for a change.”

Ginger nodded, too choked up to say anything as Bill and Tiffany giggled all the way to the trash can and the big utility sink behind the bar.

Almost no one knew she was dying.

I kept thinking people were stupid if they couldn't see it, but most folks are really good at seeing only what they want to see.

Chapter 23

G
inger made me promise to talk to Luke on Sunday about a possible “double date” to help Sam and Tiffany get together. I had spent the previous three days making every argument I could think of against meddling. Ginger wasn't going for any of them, and when I asked her why she was so gung ho to see the two of them together, she said, “Because I'm a crotchety old battle-ax, that's why!”

And what could I say about how pregnant women shouldn't date? I'd jumped a minister's bones just because he'd been talking about Bathsheba. I could see the twisted logic that had caused my drunken mind to draw important parallels with my life, but I wasn't sure anyone else would.

No, Ginger was having none of it. She had even decided to take Tiffany to lunch somewhere else so Luke and I would have an excuse to sit together and discuss our impending date. I could almost see Ginger riding along as chaperone. Instead of holding people apart with her cane, she would use the curved end to pull them together.

Just the thought of it made me smile, and I almost added a verse to the doxology.

I stood to hear the reading of the word and marveled at how it felt as though I spent more time in church than at The Fountain. Rationally, I knew I racked up more time at The Fountain, but I spent more time thinking at church. It didn't hurt that Sundays were the only days I got to spend with Luke. Sure, he was in the pulpit, and I was above him in the loft—an irony not lost on me—but we were close on Sundays, in proximity if not in spirit.

Luke read from Hebrews that morning. “Now faith is the assurance of all things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen....”

Luke kept reading about the merits of faith, his steady baritone guiding his lambs, a record-breaking eighty-two of them in the fold that day. I was still stuck on that part about “all things hoped for.”

I had wanted.

I had hoped.

I had not received.

And before then I had received what I didn't want. Then, just as I wanted what I had received, it was taken away. I rubbed my temples as my mind worked through hope, want, and receipt. Had I given up faith because I'd lost Hunter, or had I lost my faith because I'd stopped wanting and hoping?

And did I dare hope for something, or someone, else?

I'd never been happier to play the final chords of the postlude.

 

Because there were only two of us, Luke and I had to share a cozy booth at Las Palmas.

“I'm so glad you invited me to lunch, Beulah.” Luke dipped a chip into his salsa. “I've been worried about you.”

“Worried about me?” My heart thudded against my rib cage. I had to sit on my hands to keep them from pulling me to the end of the booth so I could run away. It'd been so long since it was just him and me. My mind played a never-ending loop of each one of our kisses.

“Yeah, Miss Ginger doesn't have much longer, does she?”

Hope did another nose-dive. He wasn't worried about
me.
“No, I don't think so. Well, I don't know. The oncologist has no idea for sure.”

Tears stung my eyes. Commiserating with Luke might help me feel better, but it also felt as though I was violating Ginger's sacred trust.

He considered me as he ate. His eyes took on a world-weary sadness. “I've seen a lot of sick people, Beulah. I've seen a lot of people die. I've also seen a lot of people worry themselves sick trying to take care of those people, especially fielding outlandish requests.”

My chip froze in midair. Did he know about Ginger's plan?

“That's not a criticism,” he added. “Just be sure you don't forget how to take care of yourself.”

I cleared my throat. “It's good that you don't think honoring final wishes is a bad thing, because I have one for you.”

“Oh?”

I took a deep breath, letting him wonder what the wish was. “Ginger thinks that Sam and Tiffany should lighten up and go on a date instead of”—here I paused for air quotes—“making ‘goo-goo eyes' at each other.”

“Me too!” Luke's eyes lit up. “Well, let me back up. I'm not in the business of telling couples who should date and/or get married, but they seem to really like each other.”

I decided to test his ministerial super-mind-reading powers by simply looking through him calmly.

“What?”

I kept looking at him.

“Uh-uh,” he said with his mouth still full. It was cute the way he forgot his manners in that moment of epiphany. “I'm not going to set them up on a date.”

Close, but no cigar.
“No, Ginger wants us to go on a double date with them.”

Luke leaned back as the waiter slid a bean burrito in front of him, then it was my turn to lean back for my chimichanga. “A double date?”

“I know, I know.” That damn blush only he was able to cause crept up my neck and into my cheeks. “I'll tell her you refused. I promised her I'd ask, but I didn't promise anything else—”

“I'll do it.” His expression couldn't be read.

I couldn't look away. “You'll what?”

“I'll do it,” he said as his fork sawed into the burrito. “It is a final wish, after all.”

“Luke, I hate to tell you, but she's already made about two hundred final requests, so I'm not feeling bad about blowing this one off.” I shifted uncomfortably, but that brought my knees against his, reminding me of our very first lunch together.

“Still, how are you going to feel if there is one thing left you didn't do for her?” The sun from the window caught a hint of stubble on his stubbornly set jaw. “We'll go, and they can take it from there. Easy as that.”

“Easy as that?” I echoed. “No, not easy as that. The minute we go out, a lot of things are going to happen. Folks are going to start talking again and—”

“I don't care what people say. I never did.” He was already a third of the way through his meal, and I hadn't started. “Besides, we're here having lunch. Alone. Right now.”

“But you didn't . . . you wouldn't—”

He leaned forward to whisper, “Take advantage of you while you were drunk?”

I blushed. “When you put it that way.”

“I thought,” he started, then gauged how much of himself he wanted to give away. Finally, his eyes met mine with an unexpected vulnerability. “I thought you only wanted that one night. And that's not good enough for me.”

My heart got stuck in my throat, and tears stung my eyes. “That's not what I meant. Even drunk that's not what I meant.”

“Then maybe we do need to try this again. From the beginning.”

My heart kept time with the Tejano music.

“From the beginning.” I swallowed hard and willed those tears back. Somehow we were going to try this all from the beginning. “But what are people going to say? You're lucky no one saw me on your porch that night. Or my car in the parking lot.”

“Oh, they did.” He took another bite, completely nonchalant. My stomach was too knotted to even consider my lunch. “Miss Lottie finally called Tom up.”

“Are you still frocked or whatever?”

Luke chuckled, “Still a man of the frock, yes. Tom told her to mind her own business and to think and pray on the possibility that she might need to find a home in another congregation.”

I sucked in a deep breath. That would explain why I seemed to feel additional invisible daggers of Christian love and fellowship each Sunday morning. “But still.”

He gave me a full smile, the one with the dimples. “Beulah. I. Don't. Care.”

My heart squeezed in on itself, and my fork stopped in midair. All of the color and warmth drained from my face then rushed back all at once.

“Beulah Land, are you blushing?” He smiled enough for me to see both dimples again.

“Shut up.”

“Oh, that was a classy comeback,” Luke said. “I don't know if I can go out on a date with such a quick-witted woman.”

“Can I get you anything else?”

Neither of us looked up at the waiter, but we both said, “No, thank you” at the same time.

“Okay, then, here's your bill.” He laid the bill on the table. My hand hit the bill first, but that left Luke's hand on top of mine. He let it rest there for an inordinate amount of time, his thumb stroking the top of my hand. Finally, he slid the bill out from under my fingers, his eyes never leaving mine.

“Lunch is on me,” he declared.

“Then thank you.” I took another bite in my bid to catch up with him. “I was only trying to be an independent woman.”

“No man—or woman—is an island,” he said as he put the check out of reach and returned to his burrito.

“So, we're really going to go out on a date. Do you think that will work?”

“Of course,” Luke said. “You can tell Tiffany that you're nervous and would feel better if she came along just in case—”

“Why do I have to be the nervous one?”

“Because Sam's not going to come along with a nervous man. That's not what men do. My approach has to be that I really like you—obviously—but you'll only double date since we've had some ups and downs.”

I rolled my eyes at him. “And you really think this junior high plan is going to work?”

He studied me as I took a couple bites more. “Yeah, I think it will because they
want
to go out. We're merely lending them an excuse.”

“Aren't you supposed to be against devious machinations since you're a minister?”

“Still human,” he said with a shrug as he slid to the edge of the booth. “Besides, it's for a good cause.”

Too true,
I thought as he took the bill to the cashier. The thought of going out on a date with him—even a fake date—did make me nervous. And taking Tiffany along would make me feel better about the whole thing. Of course, her presence would make me feel better because I would know I was doing something good for Ginger, not because I needed her to help me overcome a case of nerves.

“Don't rush,” Luke said as he slipped back into the booth. He slid two Andes mints across the table. “I don't have anywhere to be this afternoon.”

I stared at the mints. He'd noticed I always bought one on the way out the door. And he'd remembered. I was about to shed a few tears over Andes-mint thoughtfulness. I cleared my throat. “I think I'm full.”

I handed one of the mints back to him, and we ate them slowly as we left the restaurant. We took a seat on the bench where Ginger had lectured us on how we were going to have to learn to work together.

“So, when are we going on this first date?” Luke asked.

I frowned. I worked every night but Wednesday when I had choir practice, and Sam and Tiffany were both going to Bible study. That only left Sunday, the other night The Fountain closed.

“Next Sunday night?”

Luke nodded. “Any preference for where we go?”

“I thought all first dates took place at the movies,” I said.

“True, but I usually go for something a little different.”

Usually?
The thought of Luke with another woman made me want to take up cat fighting. But then curiosity got the better of me. “Such as?”

“Wouldn't you like to know,” he said with a cryptic smile. “Since Tiffany's pregnant, I think a movie would be best.”

I thought of how her bladder had to have shrunk to the size of an acorn. “A short movie would be even better.”

Luke shrugged. “I came up with the backstory. You pick out the movie.” He extended his hand. “Deal?”

“Deal,” I said as we shook hands.

It would be hard to say who held whose hand a little too long.

“I guess I should be going,” he said as he slowly withdrew his hand.

“Yeah, I need to check on Ginger and to quietly tell her the good news,” I said.

He walked along the side of the building a couple of steps. “I'll see you on Wednesday to talk about the hymns for the bulletin?”

“I'll drop by around noon.”

He squinted against the sun to study me. “Sounds good,” he said, looking like he really didn't want to go.

Funny, I didn't want him to go, either.

He turned for the parking lot, and I gathered my purse in front of me. My emotions swirled around, excitement mingling with apprehension. I knew my way around men, or at least I'd always thought I did. Truth be told, though, I'd been on precisely two “dates” in the past ten years. I didn't know how to act or what to wear.

I didn't even know if he would still want to date me if I told him the whole truth, but, if we were going to start at the beginning, I would have to tell him everything eventually.