Free The Social Climber of Davenport Heights by Pamela Morsi

you?”
    “Well, yeah,” he admitted.
    “Really?”
    “Sure,” he said. “All the time.”
    “Does he answer?”
    “He doesn’t speak to me from a burning bush,” David said, sounding a little defensive.
    “Of course not,” I agreed. “But still, you ask him and you feel like he answers.”
    He nodded. “If I’ve got something that I have to make a decision on and I’m not sure which way to go, I put it to him.”
    “What do you say?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “What do you say when you ask God to help you?”
    “Well…it’s not so much that I say anything,” he explained.
    David appeared increasingly uncomfortable with the conversation.
    “Do you just assume that he knows and then assume that he answers?”
    “I don’t assume anything,” he said. “I let God give me a sign.”
    ‘A sign.’
    “Yeah, it’s like this, if I need to decide whether to enter the Pro-Am this year, I say, ‘Okay, if I make this hole in three strokes or less then the answer is yes. If it’s four, then it’s no.’”
    I stared at him for a moment, disbelieving.
    “You think that is the same thing as praying?”
    “Well, maybe it’s not exactly praying. But golf is not completely a game of skill,” he assured me. “Luck plays a big part.”
    “And luck is God?”
    He nodded. “Well, sure,” then added, “if I think it’s not luck I do two out of three.”
    So much for the omnipotent golf gods.
    “Have you thought any more about therapy?” David asked me.
    “I’m fine,” I assured him. “I lived through a frightening experience. But it’s over now and I’m almost completely back to normal.”
    He chuckled. There was a skeptical sound to it.
    “Well, if this is normal, it must be a new kind,” he said. “I don’t ever remember having such a deep conversation with you.”
    The truth made me a little defensive.
    “We’ve talked about serious stuff before,” I insisted. “Maybe not often, but sometimes we do. Anyway, we don’t have all that many serious things to discuss.”
    “No, I guess not,” he agreed. “And we usually don’t talk at all on the way home from church. You’re always on the phone.”
    “Oh my God!” I said suddenly, digging my cellular out of the bottom of my purse. “I forgot to turn it back on.”
    It rang as soon as I did.
     
    In the days that followed, I forced my life back into a more normal mode. I resumed working with a renewed enthusiasm that was only partly feigned. I clearly remembered my promise to do good. But I hadn’t gotten specific. Selling real estate is good. It’s honest, much-needed work, and it requires significant amounts of energy and creativity. Much more so than simply writing checks.
    However, there was one more check that I wanted to write. I wanted to write it and simply put everything behind me. Theman who had rescued me deserved a reward. Yet I hesitated to take that final step to closure.
    Finally, on a Saturday morning, not too early, not too close to lunch, I drove out to the area of town where it had all happened. I hadn’t been out that way since that awful night. The very idea of being there again gave me an eerie feeling. I slowed down as I passed by, expecting to see something, but except for some scarring on the guardrail, there was no evidence that a man had died here, or that I had lived through the most frightening moments of my life.
    I took the exit and backtracked to the Bluebonnet Manor Assisted Living Center. The parking lot was about half filled and I pulled the Z3 into a space that faced the freeway. As I got out of the car, I gazed down toward the site of the accident. It was a very long way. My vision was better than twenty-twenty with my contacts, but I couldn’t distinguish anything at that distance. I might have been able to see a wreck, but I wouldn’t have seen anybody trapped inside a car.
    No one could have seen me. No one could have heard me.
    I made my way to the wide, glassed-in entryway. Inside, the