The Transformation

by Terri Kraus

  “One was for stealin’ … from a homeowner. Jewelry. Some cash out of a safe. Not much, but enough to get arrested.” He shook his head. “Stupid.”

  Oliver waited.

  “The other was for manslaughter. Ten years, reduced down to seven, and five served.”

  Oliver wasn’t certain what manslaughter meant, exactly, other than someone winding up dead. He wasn’t sure of the legal definition, how it was different than murder, and how guilty a person was who was convicted of manslaughter, and if they had to get counseling or something for that, and whether or not they could still be bonded, even though most clients never asked if every worker was bonded. Miss Cohen had not asked, either.

  “Manslaughter?”

  The eldest Pratt nodded. “I know. This is sort of a surprise. I don’t want you to answer now. But I’m just askin’ you to think about it. And … well, we really want to work with you. Especially here. Somethin’ about workin’ in a church makes it all feel right, somehow. At least, this church makes me feel right. Maybe it’s the windows—and the big old stone walls and the rest. All the goodness in here. You go to church, don’t you?”

  “I do,” Oliver replied.

  “Well—think about it,” the elder Pratt said softly. “It’s okay if you say no. We’ll understand.” Silence filled the church until the eldest Pratt bobbed his head. “Just mull it over. We’ll come back on Monday to get the rest of our tools. My brother drove today ’cause my truck is in the shop, so we all came in his wife’s itty-bitty car.”

  Oliver watched as the three Pratt brothers picked up their lunchboxes and left the church without saying another word.

  Now what’s my weekend going to be like? Thinking about ex-convicts …

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE ROBE IN THE CLOSET at the New York Ritz-Carlton was nowhere near as plush or as well tailored as the robe from the Ritz-Carlton in Maui that Samantha had at home. She decided that the owners of the New York Ritz had bought economy—something no one ever expected when they stayed at a Ritz-Carlton hotel—and the disappointment saddened her more than it should have.

  Samantha did not like to travel. She liked being at places, but she hated getting to places. New York was on the top of her list for places she despised getting to and was not all that fond of actually being there. Sure, there were a great many wonderful sites to visit, awesome shopping and fabulous restaurants, exciting theater, but on this trip, Samantha felt no thrill, no tingling from anticipated experiences.

  Her father was off meeting a business associate—or that’s what he told her. She didn’t think he did much business in New York, but he did know a great many people and perhaps there was someone he had a legitimate reason to meet. Or he could have arranged a meeting with a paid “escort.” That’s what Samantha had first thought, then chastised herself for thinking such bad thoughts about her father.

  She loved her father. She knew he was a good man, or a mostly good man. But he was a man, after all, and she couldn’t fault him for still having needs. It had been twenty years since her mother’s too-early death and that many years was a long time to mourn alone.

  Samantha’s relatives lived on Long Island and would not arrive in Manhattan until the following afternoon. She and her father had arrived too late this evening for arranging a dinner way out on the other island, so now with her father gone for the night, she was on her own.

  In the past, being alone away from home had caused some anxiety. But as she grew older, being by herself—even in a big city or a strange city—was nothing that she couldn’t handle.

  She sat at the edge of the bed, in her not-quite-as-fluffy-as-she-was-used-to robe, with the television remote in her hand, flipping through the channels. At least the hotel management had not skimped on the cable offerings; there appeared to be several hundred different channels, as well as several hundred movies that could be rented at the touch of the button, and the obligatory selection of “adult” entertainment. Maybe that’s what her father was doing—watching dirty movies by himself in his hotel room. Samantha almost laughed at the thought, then was angry she wasn’t more upset at the image.

  She flipped past sporting events and a plethora of religious talk shows, complete with hosts sporting bad hair and copious makeup, teary-eyed, pleading for money—at least that’s how Samantha viewed them. She flipped past old movies with far-from-believable dialogue and accents, new movies with depressing stories, crass situation comedies, horrid reality shows, and a dozen all-news-all-the-time networks where groups of talking heads competed with each other to see who could shout the loudest and drown out whatever opposition they faced. She stopped at an old black-and-white movie with Steve McQueen as a bomber pilot in World War II. And as she watched, she reached over to the nightstand, took out the room-service menu, and dialed the number. She ordered the “Surf and Turf”—a petite New York strip steak, medium rare, split lobster tail with drawn butter, with a baked potato, loaded with whatever it was they had, a salad with the house dressing, a piece of New York–style cheesecake with strawberries, and a carafe of coffee with cream.

  I should go out. It is New York after all … a tad more cosmopolitan than Pittsburgh, that’s for sure. But I don’t want to dress and take a cab and all that. And I really have a taste for steak and lobster, although I won’t tell Daddy I ate shellfish.

  The movie was interrupted by a shouted commercial for some miracle cleaner being sold by a man with a horrid English accent and offered only on TV and not in stores, as if that made the product more valuable, effective, and tantalizing.

  She walked to the window, adjusting her robe more tightly around her waist even though she was on the nineteenth floor looking out over Central Park and was certain no one could see her. The streetlights glistened through the first buds of leaves on the trees as cabs and cars jockeyed for position on the street below. She was so high up and well insulated that the angry traffic was only a whisper to her.

  She stared up at the darkness, or as dark as the New York sky gets, wondering what Oliver had accomplished today on her project. She wondered if he planned to stay there, in the church basement, over the weekend. She’d told him that he could, that she would not mind, even if she herself would find it very creepy, sleeping alone in a big, empty old church basement like that. But having a caretaker would be a good thing. What he didn’t know is that she would pay him for the time he spent there, protecting her investment.

  She wondered if Robert the Dog liked being in the city, where noises were bigger and lasted later into the evening. She wondered if she should call Oliver, just to check on things.

  She grabbed her purse and took out her cell phone. The little clock in the corner of the phone’s face read 6:35.

  “Six-thirtyish. Too late to call him?”

  She scrolled down the list of phone numbers saved in her contact list until she came to Oliver’s name. She placed her finger on the Send button, then hesitated.

  No. I shouldn’t call him. Not tonight. Mally was right. If I get involved with him, his work suffers. And I don’t want a repeat of the Mount Washington fiasco. Even if the physical part of the deal was fabulous.

  She paced the room, stopping to watch the movie, carefully taking in the scene where a wounded Steve McQueen fought against the vibrating airplane controls in a heroic effort to bring his badly damaged bomber back to England, only to die in a huge, fiery explosion as the plane lost altitude and crashed headlong into the White Cliffs of Dover.

  As the debris rained down to the sea below, Samantha found herself weeping. Tears rained down her face and great sobs tightened her chest, as if she and Steve McQueen were fighting the same battle—the same desperate attempt to bring in a wounded plane before spiraling to earth to face a horrible, preordained fate.

  And as she cried, berating herself for being so emotional over something so stupid as an old
movie, a tap sounded and a voice with a foreign accent called out, “Room service.” She wiped her face on her robe and headed to the door.

  The Pratt brothers stuffed themselves into the decade-old compact car with the youngest Pratt, Steven, in the driver’s seat. He was not the most intuitive driver and clutched at the steering wheel, his hands at the ten-and-two position, with a white-knuckle grip. He had to drive, he claimed, for he was the only Pratt listed on the car’s insurance policy, other than his wife; “And none of you look anything like my wife, so I have to,” he’d said.

  Gene, the middle Pratt brother, the most nervous, asked the question. “So did Oliver say anything that might mean we’ll get the job?”

  “He didn’t say anything like that,” the eldest, Henry, replied. “But he didn’t say no, either. Most people say no right away. Prison gets them nervous, and when manslaughter comes up—well, that sends them over the edge.”

  Steven called out, “But it wasn’t my fault. Everyone knows that.”

  “Even the judge knew it. It was accidental, but the fix was in for a manslaughter charge,” Gene added.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Henry replied. “No one cares. Besides, we all said we’re not goin’ to talk about that anymore. It’s ancient history. Either he’ll give us the job or he won’t. And if he doesn’t, we’ll keep doin’ what we’re doin’, okay?”

  The other two Pratt brothers remained silent.

  Henry did not speak for several miles. It’s not that this job is so much different than all the other jobs we didn’t get. But it’s time to start buildin’ things again. A man can only do so much tearin’ down. It’s time. We paid our debts. We did wrong, and now it’s time for us to do what we do best again, for sure.

  “They goin’ to sell beer and stuff at that church restaurant? I mean, isn’t that against the Bible?” Steven asked.

  “Would be if it were still a church,” Gene replied. “I bet there are churches out there that allow for drinkin’, even though they’re still a church now. I heard some churches have kegs of beer for their picnics and stuff.”

  “That so?” Steven replied. “Why don’t we go to a church like that, then?”

  Gene shrugged. “I dunno. I guess I never could tell what churches serve beer from the outside. I mean, I heard people talkin’ about a church like that, but I never thought of goin’ to church just for the beer.”

  Henry stared out the window. Workin’ in a church … maybe we should start goin’ to church again. It’s been a long time. Maybe here, where people don’t know about our pasts, after all the years that have gone by, it’s time again to start. Oliver goes to church, and he’s an okay sort of guy.

  Henry rolled the window down a few inches, letting the air flow against the side of his face. Maybe we’ll do that. Maybe goin’ to church is a test or somethin’ … like if we go, we’ll get the job. And workin’ in that church feels different somehow. It’s makin’ us more honest. Maybe we should start goin’ to church to prove somethin’ to Oliver.

  He took a deep breath. I don’t think it works like that. But still … it wouldn’t hurt to go.

  Steven interrupted his thoughts. “How do you decide on a church to go to? There are a lot of churches out there. How do you find the good ones?”

  Gene spoke up. “Maybe you get some sort of sign when you’re ready. Like somebody comes and tells you about it. God works that way, don’t He? Like in all those movies?”

  The eldest brother snorted. “Naw. It don’t work that way. No one is goin’ to walk in off the street and tell you about God and all that. Don’t work that way at all.”

  Oliver pulled into his driveway a few minutes past seven that Friday night. He felt as if it had been a long week. The first week on a new job often felt the most overwhelming. He was not sure why, just that it was. Robert the Dog leapt from the open window when the truck was at a complete stop. He ran in circles around the small backyard, sniffing and wuffling as he went, making sure this was indeed the same backyard he had left five days prior.

  From the looks of his mother’s house, she was gone, the windows all dark, the shades all pulled. Oliver grabbed his duffel bag, now filled with dirty clothes, and dragged it up his stairs.

  It’ll be nice to have a home-cooked meal for a change.

  Taped on the glass of his front door fluttered an entire page from a yellow legal tablet. It was not a note from his mother—of that he was sure. She reused old envelopes and paper bags and grocery store receipts to leave notes, never wasting an entire sheet of paper for something as short as a note. That the note was not from his mother provided a visceral sense of relief.

  He whistled for Robert, who immediately tore up the steps, his nails clacking like castanets on the wood. He unlocked the door and tossed his duffel bag inside. Robert tore around the apartment, making sure everything was as he had left it. Oliver retrieved the note from the door and switched on the recessed lights by the entryway.

  The note was written in pencil, with great swoopy curves to the letters. He glanced at the bottom before he read a word.

  It was signed Paula and the P was nearly four lines high, with a spiral flourish on the top left of the letter, like a feminine John Hancock signature on the Declaration of Independence.

  He looked back to the top. She had written Friday afternoon on the right-hand side of the paper.

  The note read:

  Dear Oliver,

  Your mother said you would be home this afternoon. My mother has offered to babysit for Bridget tonight, which leaves me free for the first time in months. I know this is being very forward (your mother said it was okay and that you wouldn’t mind), but let’s go out tonight—dinner, a movie? Some drinks afterward … and then, who knows what? What do you say? Call me as soon as you get in. I’ll be waiting.

  (Your mother said you would call me back and let me know, because you’re a “good boy.”)

  I’ll be waiting.

  Yours,

  Paula

  Robert the Dog was nosing his water dish along the kitchen floor. He did that when his bowls were empty. Oliver put the note on the counter, ran the water till it got cold, filled the dog bowl, and opened the pantry door and pulled out a half-filled bag of Kibbles—not the off-brand from the warehouse store, but the good brand advertised on TV as recommended by vets. Robert seemed to like the cheap brand better, but Oliver thought it might be loaded with all sorts of chemicals. So in order to keep the peace between him and Robert concerning diet and nutrition, he mixed it half and half, the good with the bad—or, more exactly, the expensive Kibbles with much-less-expensive “kibbles.”

  Robert set to both bowls with gusto, as if the trip back from Shadyside had left him famished and dehydrated.

  As Oliver kicked off his shoes, the phone rang. He knew he should have bought caller ID, but he hadn’t. It might be Samantha. So he picked up the phone.

  “I saw your truck pull up. Did you get my note?” Paula asked, her voice perky.

  Oliver shut his eyes. So much for my home-cooked meal. He didn’t want to go out but felt out of options even before this conversation started. “I did. I just got in.”

  “I know that, silly. I saw your truck, remember? I wanted to catch you before you got naked and jumped in the shower or something.”

  Oliver had planned on doing exactly that. The shower in the basement of the old Presbyterian church in Shadyside didn’t exactly meet spa-level qualities in terms of water pressure, ambience, and cleanliness. But the fact that Paula mentioned showering, without clothes, made him feel awkward because of the intimacy it suggested.

  Awkward and a bit … peculiar. He felt a prickling inside him—a feeling not unpleasant, but more unplanned and unexpected.

  “Well, I do need to get cleaned up.”

  “I know. But men don’t take long, do
they? I mean, getting ready—you don’t take long, do you?”

  Oliver sensed she had layered her words with a secondary meaning … then wondered if it might be just innocent chatter. Paula could chatter on, seemingly, without effort. That was so far beyond his abilities—like dunking a basketball or running a marathon.

  “Since you don’t take long, I’ll call Angelo’s for dinner reservations—say, in forty-five minutes? That’s long enough, right?”

  Oliver would have sighed loudly but didn’t, because again it reminded him too much of his mother’s responses. “Sure. Dinner will be fine. I’ll be ready in twenty minutes.”

  “You are such a doll, Oliver. I mean that. This is my first date in months and months and months.”

  This is … like a real date? Is that what it is?

  “I love having Bridget and all that, but I sure miss having a good time, too.”

  Well … we’re having dinner together. And Angelo’s is a place where people take dates. So I guess it is a date. Sort of.

  “You’ll come get me, then? In twenty-five minutes? I’ll be waiting … unless you have another way in mind to start the evening.”

  This time Oliver was certain she meant something else altogether but decided to completely ignore any implication of impropriety on his part. “Sure. I’ll see you in twenty-five minutes.”

  Taller unlocked his door, as quietly as he could, opened it a crack, and listened. His apartment, the first story of an old, intricately decorated, devotedly maintained Victorian mansion on Greensburg’s north side, only a few blocks from the art museum, appeared dark and blissfully empty. The owner of the home was curator at the art museum and a near fanatical homeowner.

  Taller slipped inside and listened again.

  Nothing.

  He switched on the light and carefully set his keys into a bowl on the carefully arranged table in the entryway. It also displayed two candles in tall, straight glass pillars, a clear low bowl filled with bits of polished blue seaglass, and a cobalt blue dish he had found digging in an abandoned farmstead in Somerset County three summers ago. He slid it over two inches, back to its proper place.