Dear Wife - Kimberly Belle Page 0,57

found. Not that anybody will ever come looking for an old piece of plastic, but it’s not up to us. You never know what you’ll find. Phones, keys, gum wrappers and Lord knows what else. Once I found a diamond earring. A real one, too.”

“How do you know it was real?”

“Have you seen the people who come in this place?” She snorts. “It was definitely real.”

I think of Charlene, the blonde receptionist I met my first day here, with her silky dress and sparkly jewelry, and I don’t argue.

“Anyway, wait’ll you see this place tomorrow morning, after the Reverend packs the house here tonight. There are eight thousand seats in this place, eight thousand bodies, and at least half of them drop crap out of their pockets for us to pick up.”

I reach inside a box for a fresh stack of bulletins. “This place is nothing like the church I used to go to.”

As soon as I say the words, I wish I could snatch them back. Not that Martina seems to notice my accidental sharing. She picks up a piece of trash from the floor, tosses it into the box and moves farther down the line.

“Have you ever gone to one of the Reverend’s services?”

She nods.

“What’s it like?”

“The services are cool. Very happy-clappy, if you know what I mean, but the music steals the show. It’s like going to a concert or something. It makes the hour fly by. We can stay tonight if you want to, but I say we wait until Wednesday.”

“Why, what happens on Wednesday?”

“The Reverend puts on a buffet dinner after the services. Fried chicken, lasagna, mashed potatoes, more food than you’ve ever seen. And you should see those hoity-toity types tear into that buffet like they haven’t eaten for days. They hover around the tables with their plates while the Reverend blesses the food, and his Amen is like the shot of a starting pistol. They dive into that food like...like what are those people in the Bible with the famine?”

“Canaanites?”

“Yeah, them. Anyway, if we stay for the service and then help clean up afterward, we get to eat as much as we want, and the Reverend pays overtime.”

Overtime and a free meal, the two magic words.

I nod, decision made. “Let’s wait till Wednesday then.”

I look to Martina for confirmation, but she’s looking over my shoulder. Her spine straightens, and her brows slam together. “What the hell are you doing here?”

I turn to see a woman—no, a girl—coming down the aisle toward us. She’s somewhere around sixteen or seventeen, though she’s helped along by her height, six feet and then some. Her skin is bronze and her hair is natural, a wild crown of curly ringlets over high cheekbones and big green eyes. She’s dressed like us, in the same khaki pants and God Works Here T-shirt, only hers are skintight, her shirt knotted on the side to reveal a seductive slice of coppery skin. She moves closer, and I see that she’s biting back a smirk.

“I work here. What’re you doing here?”

Martina shakes her head, and her hands tighten into fists. “You can’t work here. I work here.”

“Well I do.” The girl says it short and matter-of-fact. “Here I am.”

“Where’s the Reverend?” Martina pushes past, almost mowing me over in her hurry into the opposite aisle. “I need to find the Reverend.”

The girl rolls her eyes. “What are you going to tell him, that you stole my money?”

At the accusation, Martina does an about-face, arms slinging in fury. I press myself to the chairs and get out of her way.

“I already told you,” she shouts, “I didn’t take your goddamn money. I didn’t even know you had any until you accused me of taking it. And it’s not like it was your cash to begin with. That hooker you stole it from probably just came back to claim what was hers.”

They’re making a lot of noise, too much. I check behind us, scanning the rows of empty chairs, but as far as I can tell, there’s nobody else here. Still. I wish they would stop yelling and cussing.

The girl purses her lips. “That hooker did come back, and so did her pimp. Do you know what they do to people who take their money? You’re lucky they didn’t kill me.”

“What is that, some kind of threat? Because I didn’t take your stupid money, and if you know what’s good for you, you won’t make me say it again.” Martina’s accent is full-on south