Uncle Fred went in for open-heart surgery leaving behind a printed note that mostly rehashed things Nick had known for years.
Number 3: Turn down the thermostat in the office every night to 58.
Number 7: Block any numbers that solicit charitable contributions.
Nick poured a little Peppermint Schnapps in his coffee as he laughed at number 14.
He wasn’t laughing at what it said, just that his uncle had taken the time to type it after saying five times a day, since when Nick was a kid who never wanted to work in his uncle’s real estate office, to now, when Nick had seven tedious years working for Ferlinposto Properties.
Number 14: This is a sales agency, not a rental agency. There are zero lease/rental or per month agreements.
He stood and looked at the map on the office wall, all the properties they currently owned marked with pushpins with little red apple stickers affixed to them. It was his Aunt Freida’s touch, the little apples.
Nick had created files of all the properties with 3D imaging, drone shots, fingertip access to any amenities.
Looking for 3 bathrooms? Nick could call up the properties they owned with 3 bathrooms.
And if you zoomed all the way out from the properties, the image of a little apple showed up, an homage to Aunt Freida.
It pained Nick that Ferlinposto had exactly one residential property with 3 bathrooms.
None of their commercial properties had more than two either.
Nick studied the map.
His Uncle wanted to service “the old neighborhood.” The neighborhood he remembered from its glory days. Drive-Ins. Hot Rods. Parades for the patron Saint of every ethnicity.
Nick gulped his coffee.
It’s a big old nostalgia film in Uncle Fred’s head. We could Section 8 the shit out of all the crappy bungalows and create a revenue stream…
The front door to Ferlinposto Properties opened so infrequently Nick forget there was a bell attached to it and he spilled coffee on the carpet.
He started to say “Holy Crap” and was able at the last instant to morph it into a “Help You?”
“I’d like to rent the church you all gots on Schoolcraft and Asbury.”
Nick maintained the salesman’s smile, like an old Paramount backlot with one thin stanchion backing up a facade.
The man, a rough late 40’s, Nick would guess, graying hair, leathery skin with deep wrinkles, roofer by trade maybe, shifted his weight and held out a checkbook as though it was a nearly done deal.
“I’m sorry sir, church is for sale, not rent. Wish I could help.”
Nick didn’t have to call up his files. They only owned one church, and you could only call it a church because it still had a pink steeple in front, with two obtuse triangle-shaped 1970’s style stained glass windows in front.
Uncle Fred had sold it in the ’90s to someone who made it Peace Fish Seafood, typical you buy/we fry set up, and then bought it back 18 months later when it went out of business almost at the same time the grocery store two feet to the west of it went under.
Fred had high hopes of selling the two as a package deal, maybe an urban congregation looking for a place of worship and community center or gymnasium.
“I ain’t in no position to buy the place,” the man said. It struck Nick that the guy had the brightest green eyes he had ever seen, but they looked like they were staring into an open field a hundred yards over Nick’s shoulders. Nick shivered.
The man, in a dirty black canvas jacket and blue coveralls, didn’t look like he was much in a position to rent anything either.
“Well, at Ferlinposto, we’re strictly a sales enterprise,” Nick said, “but might I inquire what you are looking for a church for? Are you a minister, Mister___?”
The man extended a dirty hand.
“Reilly Thurman. I’m not an ordained man of the cloth, no, but I’ve recently had…an awakening. Mostly through my boy, my son and…”
“Well, that’s a beautiful thing, Mr. Thurman, you, you, and your son but I’m unauthorized to make at rental deals for the church. If you’d like to gather some…financial resources from your new flock and–”
“Ain’t said I had a flock. I’m not looking to build a flock, nece- necessar-nessa-”
Reilly Thurman went into a protracted stutter.
Nick Ferlinposto felt bad for the guy. His leathery skin developed a sheen of moisture that looked like it could have been made of thin plastic.
When Thurman came out of the stutter, he said, almost aggressively, “I’m in need of a place to have a Christmas soul-saving event, to…to…to save souls, for my boy to save souls.”
“You’re just looking for a place through Christmas?”
“After that I can move on to the next town, I suppose, fy I haveta,” Reilly Thurman said and Nick Ferlinposto felt like the guy had walked in from 1885.
“Well, how much are you looking to spend to rent…temporarily occupy…the church, Mr. Thurman?”
“I have $610 to my name.”
Nick thought about it. Uncle Fred would be furious. But the church had sat there for two decades without a nibble. But Uncle Fred…
“I’m sorry, Mr. Thurman, but-”
“Youse can have it all. Six hunnert and ten. My boy was put here to save souls.”
“And you’ll be out on the 26th?”
“Yessir. But no sooner. But the 26th. Sir.”
Nick grabbed a rental agreement online and hastily wrote up a copy before he changed his own mind.
The two men stood and Nick walked around the desk to show Reilly Thurman out.
The man paused.
Without warning, he lunged and wrapped his arms around Nick Ferlinposto.
“Thank you, sir! My boy is gonna save souls with his Harpsichrist!”
***
Nick Ferlinposto was playing poker, and losing big, when Uncle Fred left a voicemail.
“Millroy Williamson says there’s a disturbance going on in the church on Schoolcraft. Freida won’t let me leave the house, I still got a got-damn IV. I know you’re not stupid enough to have rented out the place. Go check it out. Call 5-0 if you have to.
Nick gladly left the poker party.
It took him longer to scrape snow and ice off his windshield than it had taken him to lose $192 playing cards.
He drove to the old storefront church with purpose, only slowing when he realized that whatever was happening, he had given Reilly Thurman and his son permission to do whatever it was that they were doing. He just hadn’t believed some strange, crusty, blue-collar guy was capable of putting people in the place.
Nick parked across Schoolcraft and walked over. There were about four cars in the vacant grocery store lot. The front door of the church was propped halfway open.
Nick saw a banner hanging in front and cringed.
You idiot. Why didn’t you tell them no signage?
He stopped on the curb and read the sign, spraypainted in silver.
“ Revival-Souls Saved Feturing Robert Thurman and His HarpsiChrist. $10 Donaton Free Holy Wine.”
Nick blinked and read the free wine part again before sprinting to the door of the church.
A meaty, leathery hand wound up in his solar plexus.
Reilly Thurman.
“Oh, it’s you, Misser Ferlinposto,” Reilly said with a bright smile, though his eyes still seemed focused on something behind Nick. “My boy is getting ready to play another selection. Join us, no charge for you sir, praise The Lord.”
The two pews–the fish joint had not left pews behind, Nick was certain- were full of people, almost all of them holding white plastic cups.
Six empty half-gallon jugs of Lambrusco were on a folding table, with one full and one-half full one remaining.
In front of the alter, a portly man in his mid-twenties in an ill-fitting grey suit sat on a chair with a small harp balanced on a pudgy thigh.
Though he was no expert, it would seem to Nick that the man, obviously Reilly’s son, had some sort of intellectual disability.
Reilly seemed to nod at his son.
The man leaned and began to pluck the strings of the harp.
At first, it was just a string of what seemed to be unconnected notes, then Reilly’s son found a groove and worked the strings over in a melodious sequence that reminded Nick a bit of a baroque Stanley Clarke.
He stepped closer to the man and watched the fat fingers dance agilely through the strings.
There was something at the crest of the harp that Nick couldn’t quite make out. He took a few steps closer.
A scrawny woman in a dirty pea coat offered him a sip of her wine, which Nick declined with a shake of the head and a deft salesman’s smile.
The contraption at the front of the harp was an ornate crucifix., rigged up with a tube coming out the back of it.
Nick watched the man play. The scrawny woman tried to insist he take a sip of wine from her white cup.
Nick backed up a few steps still watching Robert Thurman’s fingers dance. For lack of a better word, Nick thought, the melody he was playing was heavenly.
Then the younger Thurman stepped on a pedal near his feet. The crucifix separated at the center of the chest and bubbles wafted out.
Robert Thurman smiled, then bellowed “Jeeeeesuus!, Jesu-uh-uh-us!” as though he was a kid wandering a neighborhood, trying to call a dog to come home. Even the bellow was moderately in key, and a few neighborhood drunkards in the crowd tried to harmonize Robert’s calls for the messiah. A few people stood up and began to dance.
More people walked through the door, and spying the wine, seemed more than happy to give Reilly Thurman ten bucks.
Nick poured himself a cup of Lambrusco, took a hearty sip, and watched the performance.
Robert Thurman was working up a sweat and bubbles from the diaphragm of Christ danced all over the small church.
“Jeeeeesus,” he sang/yelled, and people answered with a refrain of their own.
Nick scanned the room.
Everyone in the place was smiling, drunk, enraptured or all of the above.
Except one guy, standing near the door, scowling.
Nick’s Aunt Freida was holding the guy’s hand. She was smiling, and her cheeks looked like apples.
***
Photo Courtesy Getty Images.
He is risen! Praise the Lord! Glad to have you back Jimmy. This is a really good one.
Made me LOL at the end.