34
lilac
A COUNTRY HAD NEVER SEEMED SO EMPTY and hollow as Spain did at that moment to Stalin Gomez. While Mom and Dad had their hearts set on a little house in Japan, Stalin had known immediately upon arriving to get them settled in that Japan would never be for him.
“Creepy, very creepy” were the only words that described for him the temples with dull golden statues smiling pacifically at him as he passed. The mélange of slippery sea creatures tacked to wooden planks with wicked looking nails would have been eerie enough at some sort of taxidermy for water creatures display. The fact that it was in a part of the market meant for grocery shopping had given him the heebie-jeebies.
With all the money he had pilfered from his bank account, Stalin bought his parents a three bedroom house in a cozy neighborhood full of foreigners, a shiny silver Lexus, and hired two servants to clean, cook, and fill the house with furniture. Then he had gotten back on the plane to a more pleasant destination, planning on sending his parents tickets to come visit.
They weren’t that old yet, after all.
Spain seemed like a perfect pick to settle down and hide. It was warm, they spoke Spanish, and rumors were that bathing was topless.
At first, the city of Cordoba, where Stalin had rented a nice flat, had seemed very cosmopolitan and smacked of Europe. All the excitement soon died away as he found himself lumbering down the gray sidewalks day after day, with no job, no steady girlfriend, and no friends to speak of.
The conversation he had with Alejo that day in the coffee shop about Jesus kept ringing in Stalin’s ears, ever since he had realized that for Alejo, the whole Jesus thing was more than just an intellectual debate about which religion was right. The exact moment Stalin had realized this had been when Alejo didn’t flinch with a gun to his head and had said he wouldn’t change his mind about Jesus being God.
That had been a very, very heavy day.
Today, Stalin’s heart felt heavy as well, and as he left the massive cathedral where he had been at mass he bought a strawberry ice cream cone from a vendor on the sidewalk. Then he turned down one of the ancient, narrow side streets to meander his way in the general direction of home. There really was no hurry; in Spain, no one went to bed before midnight, and at the moment it was just after seven. Stalin took a large lick of the sickly-sweet ice cream, the tried to clean a sticky drop of pink off his lips with the paper-thin napkin wrapped around his cone.
All of a sudden, he stopped, eyes falling upon a little sign with a picture of a white dove that said Libreria La Paz. Below, in smaller letters, it said, “Libreria evangelica”.
A Christian bookstore. And a non-Catholic one.
Something about the store drew Stalin towards its rugged stone steps like a piece of lint up the funnel of a vacuum cleaner, but he hesitated. He imagined himself walking into that store to browse books and finding himself swarmed by a pack of hunchbacked crones in black dresses and head coverings, who would then drag him over to a gold-crowned image of the Virgin and force him to recite the rosary until he was born again.
The glass door squeaked quietly and a little girl wearing a hot pink short set skipped down the steps, followed by a middle-aged guy in a polo shirt who could have been her father.
There you go…people younger than eighty come to this store. Maybe it has something for me.
Realizing he had been holding his breath, Stalin drew in a gust of air and then nearly shrieked, feeling the cold drip of melting ice cream soak his fingers. He hurriedly licked all the way around the cold cone, then each finger one by one, glancing around guiltily to see if anyone was watching. Finally, Stalin pulled himself together and clumped up the stairs to the bookstore, some part of him praying to God that there would be some books here worth reading that could explain to him more about what it was that wouldn’t let him just put Jesus at the back of his mind.
A bell over the door jangled softly as Stalin entered, and he was relieved when the man behind the counter only waved politely at him, then turned away to let the customer browse the shop in peace.
It was a small bookstore, with white wooden shelves filled with different titles lining the walls and a small section for music and t-shirts. Ignoring everything but the books, Stalin began at one end, noticing right away that the volumes seemed to be rather thin. Remembering to keep up on licking his ice cream so it wouldn’t flood the bookstore’s red carpet, Stalin cocked his head sideways to better scan the titles, getting more disgruntled as he went along.
In one section, he found books with titles such as “A New You in Forty Days!”, “God Can Control Your Diet”, and “Exercising for Jesus”. Puzzled, he moved on to the next rows of books and saw several covers featuring blown-up photos of people with white smiles with flashy clothes. “God Wants You to be Rich!” proclaimed one book with the image of a slick Hispanic man in an expensive purple suit. Stalin’s brows drew together as he read, “The Ten-Day Plan to Secure Wealth” and “Plant the Seed and It Will Grow”.
A thin rivulet of strawberry ice cream escaped down the side of Stalin’s cone and over his hand, splatting onto the carpet below. A curse was on the tip of Stalin’s tongue, until he remembered where he was and gulped, glancing over at the man behind the counter. Seeing the guy safely reading, paying no attention to Stalin soiling his store and cussing, Stalin turned back to the books, pretty confused.
He had studied Christianity in depth during his masters and PhD, of course, along with all the other religions. They may not have been the most exciting reading in the world, but he remembered a plethora of thick volumes about theology and Christian thought. Those books were not just a little weighty; they were the kind you could use for weight-lifting around the house, if you ever did such a thing.
Where were those kinds of books here? The shiny books Stalin saw lined up around this bookstore seemed to be about anything except Christianity. Wasn’t there anything here that just told about Jesus?
Plop!
Stalin stared in horror as the mushy pink mound that was left on top of his cone slid onto the floor with one fluid motion, falling with a soundless whoosh onto the cherry red carpet. Now he did swear, albeit under his breath, then jerked his head up as he heard a soft chuckle, coming from nearby.
Spiky, white high heels turned into long legs, then a flowery skirt and a tight, lilac-colored jacket. In front of Stalin stood the most beautiful woman he had ever seen—and that was saying a lot. Her hair fell to her waist, and was chestnut brown with shimmers of red. With twinkling eyes, the woman was regarding Stalin with amusement: first his face, which he intuited must be a shade between lobster and beet red, and then the flattened pile of melting ice cream staining the carpet.
“Too hot for ice cream today,” she remarked, and then twisted her waist gracefully to pull a packet of tissues out of her purse. “Don’t worry; this carpet is so worn no one will ever notice.”
And just like that, she scooped up the fallen ice cream with a wad of tissues and tossed it into a trash can standing against a pillar in the middle of the small room. Stalin felt his mouth hang open as she raised her hand and he saw long, perfectly-manicured nails painted lilac and silver.
Most importantly of all, he saw no wedding band.
“I’m Shannon,” the amazing creature said, holding out one perfect hand towards Stalin. “My father always loved Ireland so he gave me an Irish name.” Her accent told Stalin she was all Spanish, however. He forced himself to close his mouth and reached out to shake her hand with one of his own sticky ones.
Many smooth things to say flooded Stalin’s mind at the moment, but unexpectedly, all of them seemed out of place here in the middle of this Christian bookstore, surrounded by the surreal sound of churchy music floating from a stereo. Instead, he said, “Don’t they have any books here that talk about something…serious? I feel like I’m in the self-help section of some bookstore. Where can I find books about something like…the atonement, for example. Or the theological arguments for why Jesus was divine.”
Stalin found himself taken aback when Shannon chuckled again, a deep, full-throated laugh. “You won’t find anything like that in here,” she said in a conspiratorial tone. “If that’s what you’re after, the man you want to talk to is my father.” Stalin blinked in surprise. “He’s the pastor of an evangelical church here,” she explained, “but he’s also quite a scholar. My daddy has written three books, and he has a whole room for a library with all kinds of fat books about everything you can imagine. There are a lot about the atonement.”
Stalin felt himself staring. “Have you ever read any of them?”
“A few,” Shannon flicked her hand dismissively. “Ok, quite a few. I’m working my way through them. I’m getting my PhD now and my thesis is quite…theological. So I get some studying time in, yes.”
Shannon pulled a purple cell phone out of her purse and glanced at the time. “Daddy’s waiting for me at home now, so I’ve really got to go.”
Heart sinking, Stalin pressed his lips together so his jaw wouldn’t hang open again, gawking at Shannon. Then, in a magical, wonderful moment of awe, Stalin saw Shannon’s full lips open again and the words that she said were: “Why don’t you come home for dinner tonight? A guy like you, interested in learning more about Jesus and theology…my daddy would love to talk to you.”
Stalin felt as though the flaming arrow of Cupid had pierced his chest.
“I’ve really got to run, though, so make up your mind quick.” Shannon placed the phone into her purse and half-turned towards the door, beginning to walk out. Stalin took in the skirt, the legs, the high heels, and one millisecond was all it took for him to propel himself forward, like a dog hooked to a leash, towards Shannon and her daddy the pastor who would tell him all about Jesus.
THE END