Free Six Easy Pieces by Walter Mosley Page A

about four? That would be good for me. I have to go with the minister to an interfaith dinner at six.”
    “Four’ll be fine.”
     
     
    WHEN I ENTERED the church that afternoon, I ran into a small, elderly man wearing overalls and pushing a broom.
    “Afternoon, brother,” the older custodian hailed.
    “Afternoon,” I replied. “I’m supposed to be meetin’ a Lena McCoy.”
    “You wanna go all the way to the pulpit and turn right. You’ll see a green door, it opens onto a stairwell. Take the stairs two flights up. Go in that do’ and you’ll see a woman.”
    “Mrs. McCoy?”
    “Naw. That’s Mrs. Daniels. She’ll show you to Lena.”
    “Thank you,” I said.
    “Nuthin’ to it.”
    As I walked toward the pulpit, I could hear the swish of the janitor’s broom on the concrete floor. It was a comforting sound, reminding me of my job at Truth. It felt like a long-ago fond memory, even though I had just come from work.
    I needed Bonnie even more than I let on.
     
     
    “MR. RAWLINS?” Mrs. Daniels said, repeating my name. “I don’t have no Rawlins on the minister’s schedule today.”
    “I’m here to speak to Mrs. McCoy,” I said.
    The church receptionist was round and pleasant-looking, but she didn’t like me much. “Is this church business?” she asked.
    “Yes, ma’am,” I said.
    She stared at me a moment too long.
    “Listen, lady. I have important business with your minister’s assistant. If I walk outta here, it will be you who has to answer for it.”
    I’d lost another opportunity at making a friend. The receptionist waved her hand toward a door behind her.
    I knocked, and woman’s voice said, “Come in.”
    I entered, coming upon a medium-sized black woman who was sitting behind an oak desk in the middle of a large, sunny room.
    “Mr. Rawlins?”
    The room had a plain pine floor with bookcases against the wall behind the desk. There was a baby avocado tree in a terra cotta pot next to one window.
    “Mrs. McCoy?”
    The woman got from behind the desk and went to a door between the bookcases. She opened this door and turned back to me.
    “Come with me, please,” she said.
    That half-turn told me a lot about Mrs. McCoy—the woman. She was around thirty-five, but still had the bloom of youth to her face and figure. It was a nice figure, but her deep green dress played it down. The color of the dress also blunted the richness of her dark skin. She wore makeup like an older woman might have, with little color or accentuation. But the sinuous motion of her turn revealed the sensual woman that lived underneath her clamped-down style. She was at home in her body, dancing with just that little turn.
    We came into a room that was even simpler than the assistant’s office. The minister’s office had a plain floor with no bookcases at all. There was a podium holding a large Bible next to the window, and a simple painting of the face of a white Christ hung on the far wall. He didn’t even have a desk, just a table with two chairs pulled up to it. The only means of comfort in the room was a wide-bed couch pressed into the corner.
    “This is Reverend Winters’s office,” she said. “No one will bother us in here.”
    She took one of the chairs at the table, and I sat in the other.
    “What can I do to help you, Mr. Rawlins?”
    “Your husband was unhappy to hear me on the phone this morning,” I said. I decided to find out a little bit more about the woman before hearing what she had to say about Etheline.
    Lena looked down and then back again. “Foster is old-fashioned,” she said. “He doesn’t like gentlemen unknown to him calling me on the telephone.”
    “You’d think Reverend Winters would have known that and had me call you at the office.”
    “He has so much on his mind,” Lena said. Her face took on a soft glow when talking about her boss. Even the severe makeup couldn’t hide the feeling she had for him.
    “Did he tell you why I was here?”
    “Yes. It’s about