The Last Suppers by Diane Mott Davidson

Author:Diane Mott Davidson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307428455
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 1994-09-03T22:00:00+00:00

12

Bob Preston peered down at our plates, then glanced around the restaurant. He sat tentatively, frowning at the Western-style light fixture hanging down over our table.

“This is awfully bright,” he announced. “Makes it hard to see.” He proceeded to start unscrewing the bulb. Unfortunately, it was too hot. Bob yelped, dipped his fingers into his wife’s ice water, carefully wiped them on the clean napkin of the place setting in front of him, and unscrewed the bulb a few more revolutions before dipping, drying, and unscrewing again. Finally he had the bulb out. He reached across and with extreme delicacy placed it on the empty seat at our table for four.

Agatha tilted her head to focus on this little drama. “Poor Bob,” she murmured sympathetically once the lightbulb was dispensed with. “Can’t stand bright light.”

“Ahhh,” said Bob when Heidi Dale rushed up. But before she started to take his order, she sent a confused look at our light fixture. “Don’t worry about it,” Bob assured her with a wave of pinkened fingers. “All we need you to do now is turn off that damn noise.”

“What?”

“Turn off the polka!” he bellowed. Several bikers turned unshaven faces in Bob’s direction, but he glared back. “Look, I need hash browns on one plate, two poached eggs on another, and sliced fruit—no honeydew melon on that, okay?—on a third. Got it, honey?” The waitress finished scribbling, nodded once, and took off.

“Bob,” I began conversationally, “we were just beginning to miss you. Everything okay at church?”

He grunted. “I guess. If you don’t mind listening to Montgomery. I swear, that man is boring. And after what our congregation has been through, you’d think the diocese could send us someone who could preach. What do we get? A froggy-looking guy who shouts bad poems at parishioners. And then that obnoxious seminarian, what is his name, Hartley? Kid drives me nuts. He sees me getting into my car, an Audi that I earned the bucks to buy, thank you very much, and he starts preaching at me about the evils of money.”

Agatha had undergone an astonishing personality change since her husband’s arrival. Instead of being spaced-out, she was now demure. She smiled vapidly.

I asked, “What do you think’s going to happen to the parish?”

Bob Preston puffed up. “If the Lord wants us to—”

I said, “Stop right there, Bob.” Agatha regarded me in horrified silence; her husband merely shrugged. I went on gently, “For the sake of argument, let’s assume the presence of the Lord, okay? What do you think the people are going to do?”

He shook his head and pulled in his chin, assuming the dismayed expression of an oilman who’d drilled a dry hole. “I don’t know if you can assume God’s presence, Goldy. That’s what they did during Pinckney’s time, and the place was as dead as smashed and bloodied roadkill, I’m telling you.”

I pushed the plate of unfinished Müsli away. “And you thought the place came to life under Father Theodore Olson?”

The waitress arrived with Bob’s order.

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