Church Folk - Michele Andrea Bowen [101]
Precious got off the phone as soon as she heard Laymond Johnson's heavy footsteps in the hall. She was kind of scared of him and didn't know what he would do if he found out she had called Marcel's fiancée about catching him in bed with another woman. He had some connection to Bishop Otis Caruthers and could mess with her money. She let him knock several times before she went and opened the door. When she finally did, he stood over her sulking in the doorway and looking like he wanted to say something to her about making him wait. She saw him gaze over her shoulder, letting his eyes linger on the couch. She looked up at his face and he gave her that old ugly grin she hated. She thought he had a whole lot of nerve acting like he was expecting something other than what he came for.
Precious went and got Laymond's stuff, put it in a large brown envelope, thrust it in his hands, and practically slammed the door in his face before he could say anything to her. She pressed her ear to the door and then put on the extra lock when she heard his heavy, angry breathing coming from the other side. He took his time leaving and she stayed frozen in that position at the door until she was certain he was gone.
Chapter Twenty-three
SAPHRONIA SAT BY THE TELEPHONE THINKING about what Precious Powers told her. At first, Saphronia didn't want to hear what Precious Powers had to say, but now she wished that she had not been so terse with her. She wanted to know more. The closer the wedding got, the more unsure she was of Marcel. And she was so torn—all her life, her grandmother had told her that the only way she could be somebody big was to marry a prominent pastor. But now that she was about to achieve that goal, she was coming to question the wisdom of this thing.
She went into the bedroom of their suite and made sure her grandmother was asleep before she got the briefcase Marcel told her to keep safe for him. He had also instructed her not to look inside, saying it was a test to see just how trustworthy she would be when they married. But now, after talking to Precious, she was getting ready to fail this test with flying colors. Saphronia checked on her grandmother again. When she heard a steady stream of snoring, she sat down on the floor and opened Marcel's briefcase.
The first thing she pulled out was a folder containing minutes from the business meetings he had attended at the conference. She dug down in the case some more and touched something that felt thick, soft, and leathery. She opened the case wider and struggled to pull out a fat, red leather address book with a bunch of money stuck in it. Not just dollar bills, either—these were big bills, nothing short of a fifty and mostly hundreds. Saphronia frowned and started to count all of this money. It was a lot, even for a preacher, to have on hand.
She flipped through the book some more and came to a section with the names, telephone numbers, and church names of a number of ministers and bishops whom she had seen at the conference. Next to each name, in a column titled "Type," was a description. Some men had "fair-skinned only" next to their names, while others had specified "long legs a must," or "chocolate delight desired." And there was even one emphatic statement, "no short nappy-headed gals, please."
The last three pages had only women's names on them. Saphronia didn't recognize any of those names and wondered if Marcel had affairs with them. At the end of the second page, she saw the name Precious Powers with several numbers next to it, including one that had been hastily scribbled in the book with a pencil.
She lay the red leather address book on the floor and dialed the penciled in number, hanging up at the first ring. What if Marcel was with Precious Powers and answered himself ? Saphronia, who had always prided herself on her very proper and distinctive speech, knew that he would recognize her voice if she so much as breathed into that telephone.
"But," she thought, "this woman is angry with Marcel. She would not have him over there after what she found out."