Scylla & The Monsters of the Enneagram by Whitaker E. E

Author:Whitaker, E. E.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Oaklea Press Inc.
Published: 2023-11-08T00:00:00+00:00

16: Honesty

In desperate need of a stiff drink, I plop down winded at the familiar bar, and I call out, “Tony, make me a double, please.”

Maria sits next to me chowing down on extra spicy wings and seasoned fries. She turns to me, her lips and fingers covered with buffalo sauce, and once again asks about the events of the last hour.

Annoyed, I say, “I told you, when y’all left, I was standing in the street, not making a scene, or doing anything at all. Then a reporter recognized me, and he and others started coming after me. I ran down the sidewalk and got rid of them in the park on third street.”

Maria says, “Hmmm. Is that so?” One eyebrow raised, she looks at Tony who is leaning on an elbow listening in on her interrogation. “So you’re telling us it took more than forty-five minutes for you to walk four blocks and with those long legs of yours.”

She slaps my leg and takes a sip from her third bottle of Dos Equis.

Tony chimes in, “Alright, we won’t push yeu.” He slides my double bourbon on the rocks across the bar. “We’re just curious, that's all.”

I’d been avoiding the part in the story about the Baptist church scene for two reasons. One, I didn’t want to dredge up old memories again. And two, I’m still processing everything about my mother, Tony and the Laine brothers. Plus, I didn’t want to turn the drama of the day away from Maria and onto me. But they both stare at me begrudgingly. Taking a swig, I cave to their curiosities.

I mumble under my breath. “Okay, so I might have taken refuge in a Baptist church on the way.”

“What?!” Maria chokes out with a mouth full of food and holds her buffalo fingers in the air like a surgeon in mid operation. “You were in a Baptist Church?”

I take a sip of my drink, sigh, and brace myself for reason number three, Maria’s gift of sermonizing any situation.

“You haven’t stepped foot in a Baptist church for over a decade. Suddenly, you find salvation in the very place you met Satan thirteen years ago. I’d’ve thought you choose the camera crews over those backstabbing Baptists, but hey, I’ve been wrong before. Wow! Now, that’s exactly the kind of redemptive story I needed today. Praise the Lord. My suffering has been redeemed!”

Tony’s eyebrows rise with Maria’s cheering, and he gives me a strange stare of confusion as he watches Maria flaring her hands above her head.

I wave her down, and try to ease the moment. “Okay now, Joyce Meyer, calm down.”

Tony raises his hand towards Maria. “Question. What d’yeu mean, the very place she met Satan?”

Maria replies with a slightly tipsy slur, “Alex, you haven’t told him that story?”

Maria turns to Tony and begins the story—my forehead plops into my left palm.

“When Alex was seventeen, she caught a Baptist pastor molesting a teenage girl in his office. Well, you know Alex well enough to know she wasn’t just going to walk away and do nothing.

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