Church Folk - Michele Andrea Bowen [116]
Dance for him? Alone, in front of all these men? She took a deep breath, hoped for the best, and began moving her hips from side to side, with her purse still hanging on her shoulder. Once she got confident with this movement, Saphronia, to her own surprise, began feeling kind of good and feisty all over. She snapped her fingers, gave the pastor a seductive look, swung her shoulders back and forth, and rolled her generous behind around. When she noticed that the pastor had moved back to get a better view of her and that she had caught the attention of several ministers, she put her hands on her hips and shook her butt harder, shimmying on down to the floor and staying there, shaking for almost five seconds. When she stood back up, she looked in the mirror and saw Marcel's reflection as he walked toward the small group of preachers, who, by now, had formed a circle around her. "What if he doesn't recognize me?" she thought, but then panicked, thinking, "What if he does?"
"Embarrass him"—that is what Precious had said, and now was the time to do it. When she knew that Marcel was looking at her, Saphronia dropped down on the floor in a squat, put a hand on each knee (still holding her purse up on her shoulder), and rolled her big butt around in the nastiest way she could imagine.
Marcel's first thought when he saw her was that she certainly wasn't a hostess who had been hired and trained by Cleotis. And his suspicion was confirmed when he saw her reddish blond head bobbing up and down in that circle like she was dancing, of all things. The women who worked here had all been told a hundred times that dancing, unless specifically ordered by him or Laymond, was not allowed in the Sanctuary.
When he first approached the circle of preachers, he couldn't see Saphronia's face. Then, as he glanced in the mirror, the reflection solved the mystery of her identity. Seeing his fiancée shaking her butt for those preachers, he got a sickening feeling high up in his stomach. And when she dropped down on the floor and rolled her butt all around, he thought he was going to mess in his pants. He had never seen Saphronia so much as wiggle her hips. And here she was letting a group of men ogle her as she rolled those hips around like she was sitting on top of a man.
Marcel took a deep breath to calm his nerves, pushed a few preachers aside, and walked into the circle and right up to Saphronia. Quickly surveying the small group to see if there was any recognition of her in their faces, he thanked God no one but he knew who she was. He stood right in front of her and watched the shock spread across her face when she realized that he had seen her—and that he was not going to make a scene and reveal her identity to the other men. Instead, he pulled her up off the floor and over to him, saying softly, slowly, with pure venom in his voice, "I ought to whip your tail good for pulling a stunt like this."
Saphronia pressed even closer to Marcel, putting her arms around his neck, so the ministers thought she was coming on to him. She whispered in his ear, "You do that, and I'll pull this hot wig off of my head so fast it will make your head spin. And then I'll make sure that even the dumbest preacher in this room knows exactly who I am. So there isn't going to be any tail-whipping tonight, Marcel. And there is nothing you can do about what I have just done."
Marcel was stunned, listening to Saphronia. All he could do was grab her arm and pull her out of the room. As he dragged her to his office, he was silently praying that there wasn't more to this little fiasco than what had already been displayed.
Opening his office door, Marcel shoved Saphronia in and slammed it shut before anyone else came along. Seething, breathing hard, and looking like he was going to burst wide open, he shouted, "What is your problem,