I stopped before exiting the church’s double glass doors. The sermon resonated well, but I cursed just as well. I grabbed my coat from the hanger. I pulled, but the zipper wouldn’t budge.
Lacy flakes accumulated and spread across the parking lot, frosting the skeletal hickory trees.
“Need help?” a woman’s sweet voice said as though she needed to put in her good deed for the day.
“It’s stuck,” I said, struggling to zip my jacket zipper.
“Hell.” I shrugged. “I’m stuck.”
“Let’s worry about one thing at a time,” she said, grinning. Something about her said the holy woman was good in bed. God forgive me, for I have sinned.
She put her hands on the zipper and poked her tongue through the side of her mouth the way you’d do when you try to put a peg in a triangle. She had Polo along her neck, and I wanted a taste of her life.
She forced it down and then pulled it to my chin.
The broken zipper, that is.
She laughed as though I had another jacket to wear.
My cold eyes softened. “You know what?” I said. “There’s no use in crying over a flooded carpet.”
“You’re not stuck anymore,” she said.
“God does work in mysterious ways,” I said, more condescending than she understood.
“Stuck in general, are you?” she said.
I paused, looked down, and looked at her. “It’s a long story.”
“We’re all children of God,” she said. “I’m here.”
I narrowed my eyes and motioned. “Who are you?”
She gestured from head to toe. “Guess a name.” She tilted her head and batted her lashes.
I gasped and widened my eyes. “Kailey?”
She nodded. “I changed my hair to red.”
“Right,” I said. “Red.”
“I know this is going to sound crazy.”
“We met at Fort Benning, Georgia,” I recalled.
“It didn’t work out with Max, and you always told me about how God forgives.”
“Yeah, I guess I did say that.” I almost forgot about grace for myself.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t tell you I was married until.”
“I still remember the night I asked you to marry me,” I said. “God. I was such an idiot.” I raked my fingers through my thick, dark hair.
“The answer was always yes.”
The pastor poked his head in the entry. “Oh, I didn’t know anyone was still here.”
Kailey shifted her eyes between me and the pastor. “Actually,” she said. “Can you do one thing for us?”
The pastor held his hands up. “As long as it’s not robbing a bank, we should be okay.”
“Marry us,” Kailey said.
“You sure?” I said.
“You sure?” the pastor asked Kailey.
“Never been surer of anything in my life.”
The pastor looked at his watch. “Let’s get on with it. I’ve got an appointment with a hooker in an hour,” he joked.
“Gum in his jacket zipper did the trick,” Kailey said.
The pastor winked. “That’s how I got your mother.”