AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“My personal verse.”
“Did you really believe that? That you were going to Hell?”
“My mom believed it. She believed in evil forces. Like the devil was hiding in the bushes just waiting to grab you. If you didn’t fight him off, you know, he’d drag you down. Like with the couch. We had this couch. See, we lost everything in a fire when I was thirteen. So we moved into this little apartment, but we didn’t have any furniture or anything. So this really nice woman across the street gave us a couch. It was this old beige thing, smelled like incense. Me and a friend lugged it up the stairs. Well, then the woman invited us over for dinner one time, and my mom saw that she had a Ouija board on the shelf. She absolutely flipped out. The devil was in that house. We had to leave right away. We couldn’t even finish dinner, and I wasn’t supposed to talk to the woman anymore. And we had to get rid of the couch too, of course, because the devil was in it. It was contaminated. This guy from the church brought over a pickup truck, and I helped him lug it back down the stairs and load it, and he took it to the dump. So we had to go back to watching TV sitting on folding chairs. It was just stupid. When she found out I was gay, she probably thought the couch did it.”
“What happened?”
“When?”
“When she found out?”
“Oh. It… it wasn’t pretty.”
“I’m sorry.” There was a brief lull. “Have you tried to talk to her since?”
“Yeah, right.” Ian quickly changed the subject. “So now I’m going to do community service in a church. Ironic, right?”
“Well, it’s not so ironic. Things happen for a reason. I’m thinking… no, forget it.”
“What?”
“Well, maybe God wants you back.”
“Maybe.”
Paul drove home filled with a warm glow. He had learned more than he had ever expected about Ian in one afternoon. He finally felt he could say that he knew the young man, that they were friends. Ian’s life was much different than Paul had imagined, but he never went back and revised his image completely, starting from scratch. Instead, he built upon the impression he already had. He was fleshing out the biography of “Ian the Angel.” Every new fact was interpreted in that light. This allowed him to see a side of Ian that others often missed, for all of this was true about him: he was a chain-smoking alcoholic who used coarse language and had sex with men without ever catching their names. He was also a beautiful soul, warm and positive, compassionate and bright, an innocent who longed to be loved.
It was not unusual for people to come to the church to perform community service. What was unusual was for the minister to take a personal interest in them. Usually they called and Julie found some tasks for them to do, signed their papers, and sent them on their way.
Ian was different. Two weeks before he was to be released from treatment, Paul started talking to Julie about what sort of jobs they might have for him. Hardly a day went by without Paul making some statement about Ian's upcoming service work:
“There are a lot of leaves on the playground, you could have Ian rake them,” Paul said. “You know,” he said, “I noticed that the fence by the third-grade classroom needs repair, maybe that’s something Ian could do.” “Maybe we could have Ian check the books in the children’s library and make sure they’re in alphabetical order.”
In the lunchroom, Paul told the staff about visiting Ian in the hospital and how well he was doing. He spoke in great detail about helping Ian sell his car. (Ian didn’t think he needed it anymore after losing his license for his driving offense.) And he mentioned several times that he would be driving Ian to the church himself. When Ian actually arrived with Paul on a Wednesday afternoon, he was nearly a celebrity.
When she saw Ian, Julie sat up straighter and her eyes grew wide. She brushed a nonexistent strand of hair from her forehead. “I’m Julie,” she said.
Emily and Marlee were soon standing at the desk as well. Marlee giggled when she introduced herself. Emily played with her hair.
“Hi, I’m Ian,” he said, nodding his head slightly. He seemed uncharacteristically shy. In his zeal to introduce Ian to the staff, Paul had forgotten that the whole thing might be uncomfortable for him. He was, after all, there to do community service for drunk driving. It was not the kind of situation where a person normally tried to draw attention to himself. Paul suddenly wished he had talked a bit less. He put a hand on Ian’s shoulder and
directed him away from the women.
“Here,” he said, “I’ll show you what we have for you to do.”
Paul sent Ian out to rake the grounds and came back inside. The women in the office were still huddled.
“Don’t forget, you’re married!” Emily was saying when Paul came into earshot.
“But I’m not dead!” Julie said. “And don’t forget, you have Bob.”
“Who’s Bob?” Emily said, giggling. “Marlee’s single.”
“He’s too good-looking for me,” Marlee said. “Those cute ones are always trouble. They always know how good-looking they are. They’re heartbreakers.”
“He could break my heart,” Emily said.
“I’m telling you,” Marlee said, “the good-looking ones are always trouble, especially the cute ones. They’re the worst.”
