And then one morning his phone rang, and it was the diocese, and they were not calling to congratulate him on his efficiencies.
Three parishes on the east side keep a preferred-provider designation. It is not a contract exactly, and there is no money in it, which is why a consultant would never find it on a spreadsheet. It is just a line in the parish bulletin and a name the deacon gives a family at the kitchen table at eleven at night. Kowalski has held it since 1961.
What the diocese wanted to know was why the family care office had received nineteen preneed transfer requests in five weeks, all from the same three parishes, all handwritten, several of them on the backs of Mass cards.
Church basements do not organize. That is the thing Grant could not get his head around, same as his consultant. Nobody held a meeting. Mrs. Oleski told her sister at pierogi Friday at St. Stan’s, and her sister told the ladies who fold the bulletins, and by the second week there were men in that basement who had not agreed on anything since 1978 agreeing on this.
The diocesan office pulled the file, the way they do. And in that file, under a 1998 nomination for the Bishop’s service medal that I was never told about and never received because the paperwork sat, was a letter in Mr. Kowalski’s own hand.
Walter does not sell anything and he never has. He sets the room, he warms the pot, and he stays the extra eleven minutes that our business cannot bill for. When I am gone, whoever has this place will be tempted to save that eleven minutes. Tell them the eleven minutes is the business.
The eleven minutes. He wrote that in 1998, and Grant timed me at eleven minutes with a stopwatch twenty-eight years later, and I want you to know that I laughed out loud in a diocesan conference room, which I apologized for immediately.
They offered me a job before I got to the parking lot. Family care coordinator, cemetery office, three parishes, which as far as I can tell means I set rooms, warm pots, and stay too long, only now there is a pension attached and nobody with a stopwatch.
First thing I bought with my own money was a thirty-cup percolator. It lives in the vestibule at St. Stan’s. There is a card table under it with a box of the good tissues and a chair set slightly apart from the others, for the one who cannot come in yet.
Grant called me in March. He asked, very carefully, whether I would consider consulting. I told him I do not consult. I told him I would come sit with him for an hour, no charge, and show him how the chairs go, and he took me up on it and he cried once, about his uncle, and I did not mention it afterward and I am not mentioning it now.
The vending machine came out in April. He put a coffee station back in the hallway and he steams the flags himself now.
Some men dig. Some men preach. And some of us set the room right, and it turns out that is not a job. It is the last kindness anybody gets from a stranger, and this city was not willing to give it up.