Page 33 of Priest (Priest 1)
Millie huffed, as if I’d confirmed every one of her darkest fears. I glanced over to Poppy, some immature part of me wanting to make sure that she had laughed and then wishing I hadn’t once I took in how marvelous she looked. She wore turquoise skinny jeans and a nowhere-near-loose enough t-shirt, a soft thin cotton that reminded me of the shirt she wore Saturday night…the shirt I’d sucked her nipples through. Her hair was in a messy braid thrown over one shoulder, and her eyes were more green than brown in the sunlight filtering in through the vines covering the pergola, and her lips were back in their trademark red, and why did she have to be so fucking sexy all the damn time?
“Sit, my boy, before the Riesling gets warm,” Millie told me. “Now, Poppy, tell Father Bell what you just told me.”
I pulled out a wrought iron chair and settled in, already sweating in the early September heat. Millie poured a third glass of cool wine and I accepted it, grateful to have something I could stare at other than Poppy.
“Well,” Poppy started, “to start off, I’m not familiar with what you guys are doing for fundraising or what you have done in the past, so I don’t want to step on any toes or anything.”
“You won’t,” I promised.
“But tell me if I do. This is your project after all.”
“It’s the church’s project,” I said. “And since you’ve been coming to St. Margaret’s, I’d say that makes it your project too.”
She flushed a happy little flush, as if this pleased her, tra
cing circles around the edge of her iPad as she talked. I remembered my thoughts about her during our meeting, that she was a born volunteer, someone who loved to help. I saw it in her eyes as she talked, the excitement and the purpose. “I’ve noticed that Weston has a huge number of seasonal festivals, which isn’t unusual for a bed and breakfast town,” she was saying. “And I noticed on the church website that you advertise that you keep your doors open for visitors during these festivals—have you ever done more?”
“Not really,” Millie said.
“And how many visitors do you usually get?”
I tried to remember. “Three? Four?”
Poppy nodded, as if I’d proved her point. “I think a festival is a perfect opportunity to bring in more donors, if we take advantage of it the right way. This building is over one hundred and fifty years old—and that kind of old charm is exactly what people are coming for. That and booze. So you set up on the sidewalk, you give away local wine and whiskey from the distillery, but you stay away from the usual church sale fare. They’re not coming in to buy recipe books or rosaries—they are coming in to see. And you give them the booze for free, so they feel unconsciously obligated to you.”
I could see the Business Poppy right now as she layered through her points efficiently and easily, rolling her stylus through her fingers as she talked. I saw the wealthy boarding school girl, the Dartmouth grad, the woman engineered for large boardrooms and corporate victories.
“So anyway, you make the church a destination for the people wandering around. That’s step one. But more importantly, you reach out to the local newspapers and the Kansas City television stations. You turn St. Margaret’s into a local interest news story, the kind that goes viral on Twitter and Facebook. The church is about preserving Midwestern tradition—you emphasize the things Millie says you are planning to do—keeping the original windows, restoring the original hardwood floors and repairing the old stonework. People love that stuff. And then, step three, which is really step zero because you do this part before you do anything else, you make a Kickstarter for the renovation, so that when the stories air and the posts get reposted, there’s an easy link for people to follow. You’ll increase your fundraising footprint from the Weston area to the entire Kansas City Metro—and possibly even farther out than that.”
This woman was so damn smart. “So why not just do the Kickstarter and the news thing?”
“Because,” Poppy said, leaning forward, “you need to bring a crowd of people into the church, to see it with their own eyes, to learn about its history and potential restoration. You need them to go back to wherever they came from and seed the push. They’re the ones who will be the most likely to start sharing and tweeting, they’re the ones who will help you overcome that first clutch of inertia, because they are invested now, they’ve spent time and energy in St. Margaret’s. They are your disciples. You teach them, and then you say, ‘Go thou and do likewise.’”
“You’ve been reading up on your Bible,” I said approvingly.
She smiled. “Just a little. Millie invited me to the Come and See meeting next week. That verse was on the back of the brochure.”
The Come and See meetings were for people interested into joining the Church, and now it was my turn to hide my happy reaction. Despite everything that had gone wrong between us, she was still sincerely interested in exploring the faith.
“I think your idea sounds fantastic,” I said. “We’ve pretty much exhausted all of the usual means, and I think our own parish is tapped dry of funds. You make it sound so easy though—how expensive will it be to offer free wine? How do I even get in touch with the news people?”
Poppy tugged the cap off her stylus with her teeth and starting jotting notes onto her iPad. “I’ll take care of it. The wineries here will donate the wine—that’s easy. And the news stations are always looking for stuff like this, it’ll be little more than sending an email, which I’ll do this week. And I’ll set up the Kickstarter too. You will see—it’s not that much work.”
“It feels like a lot of work,” I admitted. “I mean, I think you’re right and I want to do this, but it does feel like a lot.”
“Okay, it does look like a lot, but really, I promise it won’t be. Especially with me doing the setup—all you’ll have to do is be charming and square-jawed for the cameras.”
Millie patted my arm appreciatively. “He’s good at that. He’s our secret weapon.”
Poppy’s eyes flicked to mine. “Yes, he is.”
We spent the rest of the hour planning, deciding on what festival made the most sense for our fundraiser (Irish Fest) and who would do what (Poppy would do mostly everything, but Millie and I agreed to be conscripted wherever we were needed, giving Poppy our personal email addresses and phone numbers.) And then Millie climbed in her gold Buick sedan and drove the two streets over to her house while Poppy and I walked back in the direction of the church.
“I won’t be able to come to confession today,” she said out of nowhere. “I have a conference call. I hope that’s okay.”
“Most Catholics only go to confession once a year. You’re fine.” But I was a little disappointed. (And of course for all the wrong reasons.)
“I was wondering…”
