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Henri
“Absolutely not,” I repeated for the fourth time as I pushed my sunglasses to the top of my head.
Gabriel, always the softest of touches, merely sat on the front stoop of his parsonage, looking far too much like a man in love. He and his hockey player were deliriously enamored of each other. DJ and our tabernacle’s man of the cloth were a well-suited and handsome couple. Add in Gabriel’s son and the family was complete. I shook off the poke of envy. Feeling jealousy over a fine man’s newly found love was petty from a man of my refinement. Papa would be stricken to know that his only son was feeling something so base.
“Henri, if you’d just let me finish explaining,” the pastor implored as a hot summer wind blew through the trees around the home that had come with his new position. It was only eight a.m. and the air was thicker than our cook Madame Lorrie’s beef bourguignon. If only this horrid weather was as enjoyable as my cook’s stew. Sadly, it was not. Even in cool summer trousers and a crisply ironed short-sleeved shirt, I was sopping wet already. Something that I detested. How Gabriel managed the heat in that black shirt and high collar, I had no clue. Yet he looked as cool as a glass of unoaked chardonnay.
“I am not sure there are enough explanations to be found to encourage me to open my home to that little…instigator.” I folded my arms over my chest to emphasize just how firmly set I was on not bending to his wishes this time.
“It will only be for a few weeks. A month at the most. All the rentals in town are full since it’s peak tourist time, and we have the big race coming up.” Gabe ran a hand through his dark, thick curls and then hit me with his coup de grâce. “If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself, you shall support him as if he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you. Take no interest from him, or profit, but fear your God that your brother may live beside you.”
I exhaled so loudly and so long my head spun. “Quoting Leviticus is unfair.”
Gabe smiled as if he knew he had won. Which he had and quite neatly. “Given that you’re one of the most generous and well-respected members of the church council for this congregation, as well as the most famed vintner in the Finger Lakes, I knew you would understand how God’s wishes for taking in those who are struggling would free your soul from any possible worry about clashing personalities.”
“Now you’re just applying a bit too much sugar to the vat.”
He chuckled, sat back, and smiled at me. “A little sugar goes a long way when someone has to swallow something slightly bitter.”
“And now you’re hitting me with Mary Poppins. Please do stop. You had me with the Bible quote and well you know it. Whenever the bristly pup rolls out of his bed, tell him he can ring me up at the winery and I’ll have Barnaby come fetch him.”
Gabe stood, offering his hand, and I took it. His grip was firm but buffered with kindness as he placed his left hand atop our joined ones.
“Thank you, Henri. I’m sure the light of your good deeds will not go unseen.”
As if the good Lord had been watching and was in a twisted mood, Philip Greco, wearing boxer shorts with Wile E. Coyote on them and nothing else, ambled out onto the front stoop. Bared to the world were his hairy chest and legs. His hair was ratty and uncombed as if he were straight from the pastor’s guest bed. His whiskery face still bore the marks of his pillow. He was sipping what I assumed to be coffee from a heavy mug with an image of a duck in a tutu. I’d never seen such a sight this early in the morning. My father would have taken a switch to my mother and me if we had dared to parade around in our undergarments.
“Yo,” Philip said, yawning and scratching his well-made abdomen. How could a man so perfectly constructed be such a thorn in my side? What kind of madness was it that made me half-hard looking at those strong calves while I knew he was a first-class pester ass? “Hey, Henry, you’re looking properly starched this morning.”
“It’s Henri,” I explained for the hundredth time, using the proper pronunciation of own-ree and not the nasally hen-ree most Americans insisted on using. “And I see you are looking properly crude. Do you not own trousers?”
“Sure, I own pants, but I just didn’t feel like putting them on right off. I like to let the boys dangle a bit before confining them.” I gaped. Philip winked, and I shot a look at Gabriel, who was still cradling my hand between his.
The good man of the cloth smiled serenely as he gave my hand a squeeze. “There is no finer testament to a loving soul than to embrace those who rub us the wrong way,” Gabriel whispered as he released my hand. I was sure he had just made up that little tidbit. Clever man. Drawing in a deep breath, I glanced from Gabriel to Philip. He was staring at me over the top of his mug, those dark eyes making me feel itchy in my own skin. I’d be a massive walking hive by the time I’d done my Christian duty.
“Pastor Gabriel has informed me you’re seeking a room for a few weeks. I, as is fitting an elder of the church, have graciously agreed to allow you to sleep in one of my spare rooms at the chalet until your apartment is suitable. Please have your things ready by noon so that Barnaby can come fetch you.”
I turned to go when Philip’s voice cut through the muggy air—and my already jangled nerves—like a rusty cleaver.
“Yeah, that sounds good and all, but I ain’t really one to be fetched. Dogs get fetched, sticks get fetched, and lands can be fetched. Phil Greco isn’t fetchable.”
I drew in a breath before slowly turning to glance at him.
Gabriel was slinking to the church like a sneaky polecat I saw. “Got to get things set up for Bible camp,” the good pastor informed us. Off he ran, leaving Philip in his boxers, staring down at me with a glint in his eye that could either be impishness or something more volatile.
“You’re making a mountain out of an anthill, but if you object to the word fetch, which merely means to retrieve, then let me find another word that will soothe your delicate sensibilities.”
“Yeah, please do.” He took a loud sip of his coffee. The urge to call him bad names was overpowering, but we were on the parsonage grounds and using vulgarities showed a weak mind as Papa always reminded me.
“Please have your things ready by noon so that Barnaby can collect you,” I slung out.
He mulled that over at length and then nodded his rumpled head. “Collect works. Kind of reminds me of collecting the trash, though. Did I ever tell you about my cousin Frankie? Actually, his name is Francesco, but we call him Frankie. He worked for the Borough of Queens in the sanitation department for a few years before he went west to live his dream of being a lineman in Wichita. One day Frankie found this old typewriter in the trash outside this dead writer’s house. Since he wasn’t good at typing on a keyboard as he was missing his middle finger due to a graphic accident with an irate rabbit at the Bronx petting zoo, he wasn’t sure about taking it but since he figured he could pawn it, he took it home. Seemed that the typewriter was haunted. Hand to God, he said he would wake up in the middle of the night and hear the keys clacking away. Aunt Mona’s stepbrother is a priest, and he came in to exorcise the typewriter in the end. Seemed the ghost wrote a whole novel in less than a month. Frankie sold the rights to some publisher in Jersey but never saw a dime because they folded after investing in a bad pickled egg scheme. Last I heard, he still had the typewriter. I should call him to see if it’s still writing its own books or not…”
I stood there stunned, lost, and muddled. What the hell had we even been talking about, and how did it end with a ghostly typewriter and a rabbit that ate fingers?
“Yes, well, all that aside, please have your things ready for noon,” I said, easing away from the talkative man with the killer abs and calves and thighs. “I must return to the vineyard now.”
“If you give me ten minutes, I can ride to the chalet with you.”
