He knew, of course, that procrastinating was only a dishonest tack to keep from confronting the dilemma head on. . but he just couldn’t let himself think about it too much.
Because frankly, it scared him.
Around three o’clock that afternoon, a long-time friend, Rev. Otis Trice, paid him a visit. Otis was a stout, dark-skinned man in his midsixties, with a round, bald head, wire-rim glasses, and a neatly trimmed snow-white beard. He entered the office looking as impeccably dressed as usuaclass="underline" polished black oxfords, gray wool slacks, white dress shirt, burgundy silk tie. Corey could not recall ever seeing him wear anything more casual than a pair of Dockers, and he doubted the man had anything denim in his entire wardrobe.
Corey shook his hand and invited him to have a seat.
“It is good seeing you, Brother Webb, indeed it is,” Otis said, easing into the chair. He smiled, revealing a gold-capped front tooth, a relic from his youth in his native Detroit, and dabbed at his shiny pate with a handkerchief. “We are certainly experiencing a sultry day today, are we not?”
Otis spoke with crisp, elegant diction that had earned him the moniker “The Great Enunciator” among his friends and family. An admitted hell-raiser in his youth who’d gotten drafted for Vietnam, Otis confessed that he’d found God when he’d miraculously avoided detonating a land mine that claimed the lives of two members of his platoon not ten seconds after he’d passed over it. Upon his return to the States, he earned a doctorate in theology and founded a small, nondenominational church in East Point, using his ministry to stimulate positive change in the community.
“It’s a hot one out there for sure,” Corey said. “Can I get you some water?”
“That would be excellent, thank you.”
Corey fetched him a bottle of water from the mini-refrigerator nestled underneath his desk. Otis accepted it gratefully.
Sixteen years ago, when Corey had found himself homeless after Grandma Louise had died, Otis, a family friend, had offered to bring Corey to Atlanta and let him live with him and his wife. The offer had changed the course of Corey’s life-and, almost assuredly, had saved it.
Leon had gone to prison barely a month before Grandma Louise’s death, and with his grandmother’s passing, the two major figures of Corey’s young life were gone. He had been in a fragile state, as liable to go down for a felony as he was to win gainful employment. Soon after bringing him to Atlanta, Otis had helped him land a job as an alarm installation technician.
The rest was history.
Otis crossed his legs. “How is the Webb family?” “They’re great,” Corey said. He glanced at the photos on the edge of the desk, felt a familiar rush of pride and love. “You’ll have to come over for dinner sometime soon. I know they’d love to see you.”
“We must do that soon, yes,” Otis said. He sipped water, his face growing troubled. “Unfortunately, I’m afraid that I’m not here to pay a social call, Brother Webb. It appears that I must enlist the services of your company for my church.”
“Did something happen?” Corey asked.
“Someone broke in this past weekend,” he said. “We believe it occurred late Saturday evening. These thieves helped themselves to our audiovisual system-it wasn’t much, mind you, about five thousand dollars’ worth of refurbished equipment, according to our insurance estimates. Certainly, a pale echo of the impressive systems that many churches lay claim to these days. But it was, alas, all that we had.”
“I’m so sorry,” Corey said. “The cops have any suspects?”
“We suspect neighborhood youth.” Otis shook his head sadly. “The very children that we strive so hard to impact with our ministry. We completed a police report, but the officer himself admitted that there’s only a slim chance that our equipment will be recovered.”
Even as Corey commiserated with his friend, he was thinking about those “neighborhood youth” who had almost definitely perpetrated the theft. Young Leon Sharpes-and young Corey Webbs, too.
It made him sick.
“Our insurance company has threatened to cancel our coverage unless we install a burglar alarm system,” Otis said, “a measure that, as you are well aware, I’ve long resisted, perhaps out of a naive belief that if you perform righteous works in your community and genuinely seek to serve those in need, you generate goodwill that others will respect and honor.”
“I wish things worked like that,” Corey said. “Unfortunately, your story is becoming all too common these days. If I had a dime for each call we get from nonprofits and small churches who’ve been burglarized, I could buy both of us a nice steak dinner.”
Otis offered a broken smile. “Can you help me?”
“Of course I can.” Corey slid open a desk drawer and retrieved a preformatted form that they used to create profiles of prospective customers. “And with this one, installation’s on the house, and I’ll see if I can cut you a nice discount on the monthly monitoring fee. That’s the least I can do.”
Otis shook his head. “No, I can’t allow you to do that, Brother Webb. Absolutely not. You have a business to run, expenses of your own-”
“If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have a business.” Corey smiled. “Don’t argue with me. Isn’t there something in the Bible about not blocking your blessings?”
“I believe you’re referring to the idiom, ‘don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.’”
“Yeah, whatever, don’t do that. Let me do this for you, Reverend, please. It’s my honor.”
“As you wish,” Otis said. “God bless you, son. Your grandmother would be so proud of you.”
Two hours later, he had scheduled Otis’s church to receive an emergency installation of one of their deluxe alarm and monitoring packages. He was tidying up a few more loose ends before leaving for the day when he called home. Jada answered.
“This is the Webb residence,” she said in a polite, careful tone. She pronounced “residence” as “res’dence.”
“Hey, Pumpkin. How ya doing?”
“Daddy!” she cried with glee.
Corey grinned. He never tired of hearing the excitement in his daughter’s voice when he talked to her. Once she reached her teen years, she would probably enter a sullen, rebellious phase and avoid speaking to him as much as possible. He wanted to bask in her adulation while it lasted.
“When are you coming home?” Jada asked.
“I’ll be home soon, sweetie,” he said. “Can I speak to your mother, please?”
“ ’Kay, Daddy,” Jada said. “Here she is.”
Simone came on the line. “Hey, baby. We’re having beef stroganoff for dinner.”
Corey laughed. “Okay, you beat me to the punch.”
“After all this time, I think I’ve figured you out.”
Leon’s face surfaced in Corey’s thoughts. Actually, you haven’t figured me out at all, babe. How I wish you had.
“You need me to pick up anything on the way home?” he asked.
“We’re good. I stopped by the store earlier.”
“Then I’ll be there soon.”
“There was one thing I wanted to mention,” she said. “I was going to wait until dinner, but. .”
He tensed, in anticipation of more questions about Leon. Or-horrors-that Simone had actually taken it upon herself to look up Leon on Google.
He cracked a knuckle, phone wedged between his shoulder and ear. “Go ahead.”
“I ran in to your friend Leon at lunch today.”
He almost shot out of his chair. “What?”
“You know the Chipotle on Roswell Road, near my office?”
“He was there?”
“I went there around one-thirty, and there he was.”
“Did he speak to you?”
“Did he speak to me?” She paused. “Umm, yeah, that would be a bit of an understatement. He sat at my table and started running off at the mouth like a carnival barker. You know I prefer not to do assessments outside of the office. . but he seems rather hyperactive.”