I matched with her in the middle of a Psalm. My phone pinged with a new Tinder notification, but I didn’t read her message until a few hours later at lunch. Her name was Kelsey, and the message was, Hit me with a random fact. I worked as a Bible proofreader in a town that hadn’t repealed Prohibition until 1985. Conservative was an understatement. There’s a card in Trivial Pursuit that says Wheaton, Illinois, has the second most churches per capita in the United States. I said hi back to her, followed by this trivia.
The day before I matched with Kelsey, the filmmaker Wes Craven died of a brain tumor at age seventy-six. He died on a Sunday. I read his obituary in the Chicago Tribune, and discovered a local connection—Craven earned an English degree from Wheaton College, the so-called Harvard of Evangelical schools. He was removed as the campus literary journal’s editor-in-chief after he published a short story about an interracial couple. That was fifty years ago, but the town hadn’t changed much since then. Last year, an English professor who had taught at the college for thirty years was fired after getting a divorce.
I had lived in Wheaton for the past three years after taking the first job that interviewed me. I had spent the previous six months sending out resumés with no luck. I grew up one town over, and ate dinner with my parents every Saturday night. I generally had no other weekend plans. If I spent the night and slept in my childhood bedroom—a requirement if I drank one glass of red wine at dinner—I went to church with my parents on Sunday morning, the first service of the day at seven o’clock, at the same church where I attended mass as a child for years, a tradition that ended only when I left for college. I felt young when I started at the Bible publishing company, fresh out of college with a full-time job, but now all the coworkers my age were married with children. The Wheaton College students made me feel even older. They were all engaged by graduation, with dozens of proposals and engagement photoshoots on campus throughout the spring semester, horror sequels more terrifying with each installment.
The library didn’t have the issue of the literary journal Craven had edited. “The archives for the campus literary journal only go back about twenty-five years,” the student worker at the circulation desk said. “Is there a reason you’re interested in this specific issue?”
I asked if she knew about Wes Craven, and she said she didn’t know who that was.
“The name’s familiar,” she acknowledged. “I think my dad likes him.”
I thanked her for her time, then walked back to my apartment. I imagined a young Wes Craven, younger than me, even younger than the librarian—years before the Scream series, before A Nightmare on Elm Street, before even the pornographic films he directed early in his career under a pseudonym—taking late-night walks along the same train tracks, twenty-five miles west of Chicago, where all my friends lived. I understood why Wheaton inspired Craven to write his nightmares. This town was a textbook setting for a horror film, a quiet suburb full of goody two-shoes, coworkers who called me “adventurous” because I went out for a beer or two on weeknights after work. Something had to be lurking nearby.
“I have to know it’s not all for nothing, living here for so long,” I said, drunk, to my friend Henry later that night, finishing a third PBR. I asked the bartender for another, and he told me to think about it, said he’d be back in a few if I still wanted one.
“It’s only been three years,” Henry said, patting my shoulder. We sat at the bar in Dry City, the only brewery in Wheaton, named after the town’s temperance into the Reagan years. I was surprised a brewery was allowed here, that the owners hadn’t been chased out of town by parishioners from the fifty churches in town.
Henry was a few years older than me, early thirties, with a wife and a three-year-old son. We played on the same basketball team at the YMCA. That was how I made friends now, by being bad at sports with unathletic dads. I later learned he was cousins with one of my coworkers. That was how small the town is. And they all went to church with each other.
In the past month, there had been several fires set around town, all suspected arsons. The day before I matched with Kelsey, the day Wes Craven died, a gazebo in the park had been set on fire, and on the Friday before that, a wooden playground at an elementary school. The other fires had also been near parks—a bench, a dumpster behind a middle school. A little free library. All tinder. The fires were all put out before causing major damage, but this was all people could talk about at the office. This was all the Herald would write about for weeks. I was too busy proofreading the Bibles to join the conversation, or that was what I told my coworkers at the watercooler.
The Bibles did, truly, keep me busy. I couldn’t believe how many different versions there were, and by now I could list the translations from best to worst. I once saw a bumper sticker on a red Ford pickup truck that read: If it ain’t King James 1611, it ain’t the Bible. Another asked: How can you escape the dangers of Hell? There were more words below that answered the question, but the print was too small for me to read.
My parents raised me Catholic, but I wasn’t religious, only because it didn’t factor into my daily life. If I were asked for my religious affiliation, I would list none, not agnostic, atheist, or nonbeliever. I listed my religious beliefs as spiritual on my dating app profile. Fewer questions. Of course, I pretended to be a devout Catholic during the interview for the Bible proofreader job—I even wore a silver cross I had been gifted by my parents for my confirmation; the administrative assistant complimented the cross, as did the human resources person who interviewed me and asked where I got it so she could buy one for her grandson’s confirmation present too. Now I wear it to the office every day.
On Tuesday, my coworkers passed around an envelope to collect money to rebuild the gazebo. I had walked past it that morning, and its burns were barely noticeable. The cute proposals would continue there without incident. The fire department had extinguished the flames before any real damage could be done, but the people in the office started to worry for the safety of their families in their large five-bedroom houses.
“There’s no way one arsonist would set this many fires in such a short period of time,” one coworker said. “They all have to be accidents.”
A second coworker said, “There’s no way a smart arsonist would do that. The college is right there. Not all the students are smart.”
“The next one’s going to be a church,” the first said, followed by the sign of the cross. The second coworker nodded, did the same, then said, “Amen.” I followed with a sign of the cross as well, after they both looked at me.
“Too easy of a target,” I said. I was in the kitchen to refill my water bottle, not chat about the arsonist, but I couldn’t help adding my two cents. “Toss a match, and poof, you set a church on fire. That’s how many there are here. You have to go out of your way to choose a target that’s not a church.”
Kelsey and I hadn’t messaged back and forth more than ten times before she suggested we meet up for a drink that night. The people I matched with on dating apps rarely initiated a date so soon after matching, but I had no plans after work, and hell, it was time to get back out there. Kelsey lived in Humboldt Park; I had self-described as an uncool suburbanite in my bio, but I told her I could catch a train and meet her at any bar in the city. Her choice. Kelsey suggested a speakeasy-style lounge in her neighborhood with cheap beer. We finalized the plans for later that night.
In the kitchen at lunch, I told one of my coworkers—Henry’s cousin—I was going downtown for a date later that night, and he said, “Be safe.”
I joked about how many deadbolts he had on his door, and he said, “I don’t see how you can laugh about safety during times like these. All the fires. There was another last night.” Monday night. The fire had been set at a small store squeezed in an alley between two buildings, a town treasure. A popcorn shop that still sold penny candy.
I said I hadn’t heard about another fire. Henry’s cousin’s face looked even more serious now. “It has to be the same person, the same pervert, setting fire to all of our most valued local institutions,” he said.
I asked if the fires had anything in common.
He recounted the damage thus far. “The gazebo, the little popcorn shop,” he said. “The playground. A few others. I had just dropped off a book at that little free library last week. No deaths, but major property damage to one of the school’s dumpsters. The Herald recently posted an update that the gazebo fire had been set on Saturday night, not Sunday morning as they had originally reported.”
“Is it all random?” I asked.
“This can’t be random,” he said, “so like I said, be safe.” If there were an arsonist in the suburbs, I would be safer in the city, and I said this to him, and he put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Please be safe, son.” He was only a few years older than Henry, no older than thirty-five, forty, at most. Maybe ten years older than me. “Would you like to join my wife and me for dinner tonight? Is that why you’re going on a date on a weeknight? Don’t have any food at your house? My wife is stopping by Aldi later this afternoon. I can call her and ask her to pick up some groceries for you. You’re due for a raise in six months. Your work has been immaculate. I haven’t found a single error in a Bible yet.”
The word of the Lord. I imagined myself as a preacher, with a call and response. My upper lip sweaty, I would shout, “If it ain’t King James 1611,” and the congregation would shout back to me, “Then it ain’t the Bible!”
I thanked Henry’s cousin for the offer, told him I would love to stop by for dinner another time, but said my fridge was well stocked, leaving out that it was mostly stocked with beer. His hand left my shoulder, and he told me, again, to be safe tonight, then left the kitchen.
The fires had been set on two Fridays, three Saturdays, and now one Monday. The arsonist was busy mid-week. And no Sunday fires.
The arsonist had rested on the Sabbath, too tired to set fire to a building that evening after waking up early for church that morning, after praying with their family, head bowed. I remembered King James 1611, how it’s written in that version: “And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.” Repetitive, yes. But perfect use of a semi-colon. The arsonist had rested on the seventh day of the week from all his work which he had made.
I did more research into the fires that afternoon. The Nextdoor website, the Herald’s comment sections, church newsletters. Facebook, local blogs. The Bibles could wait, especially my current project, a poorly illustrated kids’ version, an unintentional textbook on the uncanny valley. The gazebo was located in a park named after a prominent Black businessman from the early twentieth century; the popcorn shop, owned by an interracial couple who purchased the business from its original owner last year after he retired. These particulars hadn’t been printed in the paper, but I had researched for hours after lunch.
I would write an op-ed if the fires continued, decrying the conservatism that encouraged this behavior. The arsonist had to be a right-wing nut, but not any of my coworkers, because although some fit the label, they were not the type to set fire to their own town—that would lower their property values.
Kelsey and I had joked about how she was wearing a Carhartt beanie in four of five pictures on her profile. I learned she worked part-time at the front desk of a rock-climbing gym and was in a one-year relationship with a woman she had matched with on the same dating app. Back for more? I asked. Gotta catch ’em all, she answered. Their relationship, she said, was openish, and her partner was out of town for a while, and when I asked for more information about that, she said she was out of town for two weeks. That was why we had to have the date today, before her partner was back, because she was busy most other days.
The train ride to the speakeasy was an hour. I got there fifteen minutes early and sat alone at the empty bar. The Prohibition era décor made me feel like I was in the Roaring Twenties, or Wheaton in the ‘80s. I ordered a special cocktail with a fun, pun-based name at the very bottom of the menu, then learned it was the most expensive drink on the list. A list with too many choices always made me nervous. They got me.
A blonde in a Carhartt beanie entered the bar with a man, and they sat at the opposite end of the bar. They ordered two beers. I didn’t think the woman was Kelsey, but I wasn’t positive, so I checked my app, then messaged her I was sitting at the bar. The woman didn’t check her phone. Maybe this date was a joke, and she and her friend had invited me here to see how long I would wait at the bar before I left.
Another man in his twenties entered the bar and sat a few seats down from me, then he ordered a drink, an Old Style. That was the type of drink I generally ordered at bars, and for round two, if there were a round two, I would ask for a PBR, or the four-dollar special beer I had never heard of before. The cocktail in front of me cost thirteen dollars. I was foolishly optimistic Kelsey would be there soon, so I calculated what the date’s total cost would be if I also paid for her drinks, a cocktail, but probably not the most expensive cocktail, and maybe a beer for each of us. Doable on a humble Bible proofreader’s salary.
I scrolled through all my messages with Kelsey as I sat at the bar with my fancy cocktail. One of the first things I said to her was a lie. First, I said I worked as a Bible proofreader in the suburbs in a God-fearing town that hadn’t fully repealed Prohibition until the 1980s. Fact. They say it has the most churches per capita in the United States, I noted in another message. (That was false, yes, but it’s not as impressive to be second place.) Not the best foundation for a strong relationship between us, but then again, she had a girlfriend, so what was the best-case scenario here? I closed the app after seeing I hadn’t received any new matches.
A second blonde wearing a Carhartt beanie opened the door, walked past the couple that included her doppelganger, then asked the other man sitting at the bar if he was here for a date. I embarrassingly waved her over. The man and I looked nothing alike. He was far better looking, so it must have been wishful thinking. Kelsey and I shook hands, and she sat down on the barstool next to me. She ordered a PBR from the too-friendly bartender.
The fun tête-à-tête of our online messaging faltered in real life, and we sipped our drinks silently. I feared if I didn’t say something soon, she would start flirting with the bartender, so I said to her, “Did you know Wes Craven was woke?” Kelsey asked who that was, and after I told her, she said her parents banned from watching R-rated films until college. I told her about how Craven had been removed from his position on the campus literary journal for publishing a story about a couple in an interracial relationship. I said this was even before Loving v. Virginia, and she said she didn’t know Wes Craven was that old, and I said he’s not just old, he’s dead.
“He died earlier this week,” I said. Two days ago. Then I asked her if she had seen the film about the Loving case, and she said she had, then she asked if I had seen it, and I said I hadn’t.
“I recommend it,” she said into her beer glass, then there was more silence.
I said nothing about Deep Throat. I learned that before he became a Hollywood success, Wes Craven had worked on pornographic films. I had a joke I wanted to make about Deep Throat, but it wasn’t fit for a first-date. The joke, in fact, was a meta-joke, and it was: “I have a joke I want to make about Deep Throat, but I’ll just swallow it and keep it to myself.” A bad joke was worse than no joke. I racked my brain for other fun conversation topics. I hadn’t been on a date in months.
“Tell me more about you. You and your little froufrou cocktail,” Kelsey said. “Is that a flower in there? Here, let me try it.” She held out her hand, then I slid her the sweating cocktail glass. “That’s not bad,” she said. Kelsey popped an ice cube from my glass into her mouth, wiped her fingers on her shirt. The bar bathed us both in red light.
That’s when I told Kelsey about the fires in Wheaton, the ones from the past month, the ashes of which hadn’t even cooled yet.
I told her what my coworker told me about the fires, what my research had led me to believe: the fact that the arsonist, who refused to set fires on Sunday, was a religious nut, but that wouldn’t help narrow down the suspects in a town where everyone attended church. The bar’s red light was a fitting filter for the rambling, this out of body experience, speaking in tongues, stealing language word-for-word from news articles and nasty comments from Nextdoor wine moms alike.
“You’re onto something here,” Kelsey said, then she asked for another beer. The bartender had flirted with her when she made her first order. The two were flirting now too. I excused myself to the restroom.
The bar’s bathroom had the same hellish red glow. I studied my drunk face in the mirror, fixed my flyaway hairs, exhaled. Round two.
After I returned to my seat at the bar, I asked Kelsey to define openish, and she laughed down into her second beer, then looked back up at me and said, “You English majors and your definitions. You’re the word nerd. Why don’t you define it for me?”
I gave a wave of my hand. “I’m off the clock,” I said. “I can bill you, but my rates are ridiculous for a freelancer.”
Then she said she had to give me her whole life story, in the beginning, et cetera, et cetera. “Ahem,” she began, with the flourish of an English literature professor about to announce a final paper’s due date, or a campus administrator ready to decry a student editor’s dereliction of duty to the campus literary journal.
Kelsey told me she had been raised as an evangelical Christian in a conservative small town in central Illinois, near Amish country, where she lived with her parents and seven siblings, and she hadn’t dated in high school, then she moved to Chicago to attend the Moody Bible Institute, the only college that had received her parents’ blessing, and she dated the same boy for four years after she met him during college orientation her first week in the city. Then after she graduated, they broke up, and the next week, she met the woman who was now her girlfriend. Kelsey said they were openish because it had taken her twenty-two years to finally understand it was fine for her not to date a man, but now she was in a long-term relationship and felt like she was missing out on all the best parts of being young and wanting to fuck in a city of three million people.
“So that’s the story about that,” she said. I didn’t ask if her girlfriend knew if she was on a dating app, held my tongue, for the time being. “I have to figure out what I want to do when she’s back next week,” Kelsey said. “My lease ends at the end of next month, and we’re thinking of moving in together.” Her roommate was fine, but he was a boring guy in his thirties with a job in finance, and she said she wanted to live with a roommate who was “like, fucking fun,” she said, after searching for the right words for a few seconds. “I just want to have fun for once, hence, this date,” she said, finishing her second beer.
“I’m from the suburbs,” I said, gulping down the rest of my beer. “That’s where fun was invented.”
I asked Kelsey how her girlfriend felt about being openish, and she said there was a don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy. “This all started because I went on a solo bike ride around Lake Michigan, and by the end of it, I was so horny I fucked a guy in his tent up at Illinois Beach.” Kelsey said when she met back up with her girlfriend after her Tour de Lake Michigan, she told her she wasn’t sure if she could be monogamous. I hadn’t said anything, so a minute later, Kelsey added, “I rode that bike to get here tonight. It’s a top-notch model.”
“I haven’t been to the beach up there,” I said.
“Very sandy,” Kelsey said. “Ten out of ten.” Then she ordered another beer, and I asked for a beer too, both PBRs.
“Three dollars,” she said. “That fancy cocktail you drank first cost as much as four point three three three three three three three PBRs. I bet you feel like a fool.” The bartender set the two PBRs in front of us.
“I figured you weren’t going to show,” I said. “Then that girl on the other end of the bar who looks just like you walked in, and I thought you were playing a joke on me.”
“There’s no one over there,” she said, her tone completely flat. I shifted my weight on the barstool, looked over to where the first Carhartt girl and her boyfriend had been sitting, but they weren’t there. They had disappeared.
“Oh,” Kelsey said. “They’re sitting over there.” They had moved to a booth behind us. “That girl doesn’t look anything like me.”
“Come on. You’re twins, right down to the beanie,” I said.
Kelsey asked if I had any Bibles in my apartment, and I asked if that was her indirect way of asking to go back to my apartment with me.
Then before she could answer, I said, “No, I don’t. Never get high on your own supply.”
Kelsey said, “In the future, if someone ever asks me if I have a Bible connection, I’m going to say, ‘I know a guy,’ and that guy’s you.”
I asked Kelsey if she wanted to order another beer, and she said we should go back to my place. I calculated the cost of an Uber back to my apartment from here. The next train back to the suburbs was scheduled to leave in over an hour. I said I could order an Uber. The drive back would be about forty-five minutes. The cost of the Uber would make me forget about how much I spent on fancy cocktails.
Outside the bar, Kelsey asked if there would be room in the Uber for her bicycle.
I asked just how drunk she was, but this sounded ruder than I expected, so I told her we could cancel the Uber, walk her bicycle back to her apartment, then Uber from her apartment.
“Fuck it,” she said, and we hopped in the car that had just pulled up, leaving her bicycle locked up in front of the bar. I fell asleep on the ride back. Three beers. That’s all I had to drink. Three beers, and a cocktail. Two beers? Yes, two beers. And a shot. I forgot about the shot I ordered when Kelsey was fifteen minutes late. The bartender, the one who flirted with her, had a shot of Malört with me. I had to proofread Bibles first thing in the morning the next day. I started at eight o’clock on the dot. Proofreading more Psalms, drinking cheap coffee, chatting about suspected arsonists. King James version. If it ain’t, et cetera, et cetera, I thought in the car, half-asleep, into her shoulder.
The Uber conversation was worse than the first-date conversation, because I was half-asleep. I couldn’t stop talking about giants. I had no Bibles on my bookshelves, but I did own a book that collected all the books that had been excluded from the Bible, the apocrypha. My favorites were the ones that had giants in them—the Nephilim. Historical giants, like Goliath, but huger. In high school, even as my religious views waned, I obsessed over books banned from the Bible. I owned both Banned from the Bible I and Banned from the Bible II, three-hour documentaries from the History Channel, on DVD. I had even taken an English class my freshman year of college about the Bible as literature. Kelsey asked if I had reviewed the Bible on Goodreads.
“I bet you had no idea you would be proofreading those bad boys one day, huh?” she said into my shoulder. “You should slip a banned book back into a Bible when you’re doing your final checks. See how many people notice. They’ll be like, ‘Oh, I don’t remember this one. This must be a deep cut.’”
The car dropped us off in front of my office building. I must have used that address the last time I ordered an Uber. I asked Kelsey if she was fine walking to my apartment, and she nodded. It would take less than ten minutes. At the bar, I had told Kelsey that in the office we had the oldest Bible in the United States, so after we got out of the car, she asked if I could show her. I lied that I didn’t have the key fob to get inside, but then she looked at me, and I said, “It has to be fast.” I said I might not be able to open the door outside of work hours, but she yanked the key fob out of my hand, held it up to the door, and it opened with a click.
“It’s a miracle,” she said, then she handed the key fob to me.
“Do you see any cameras?” I asked.
“You’re the one who works here,” she said. Kelsey entered the building first, and I jogged to catch up to her, asked if she knew where she was going.
“I can feel it,” she said, then she grabbed my hand, pulling me in the wrong direction.
“The Bible’s this way,” I said, guiding her in the right direction. From the foyer, we entered a hallway lined with bookshelves containing all the company’s books, mostly Bibles, plus religious studies textbooks and the boss’s autobiography. Then the Bible appeared in front of us in its display case. Kelsey squeezed my hand and asked if she could hold it. I said we could try to open the case, but even I hadn’t held the Bible. The administrative assistant said the Bible had been a gift to the boss from the president of his alma mater, the same school Kelsey attended. The company had a lucrative contract with the college and many other private Evangelical schools.
“I bet I had one of these in college,” Kelsey said. “They made us take all these religious studies classes. That wasn’t even my major. I still have like three Bibles at my apartment. I’ll look for your name in the acknowledgments: ‘Thank you to God, the Father; Jesus, the Son; and Caleb, the Proofreader, for their contributions to the Good Book.’”
“The real Holy Trinity,” I said.
“The college gave us a Bible at graduation too,” she said. “They handed them out with the diplomas, but they’re nothing compared to this beauty.” Kelsey asked if I got a graduation present, but I didn’t remember.
“Anything from your parents?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I didn’t even take any pictures that day,” I said.
I asked if her parents got her a graduation present, and she said they gave her a bike, the one she used to get to our date. The one from her trip around the lake, locked up in front of the bar, miles away from us now.
“It’s the only thing my parents gave me that I’m grateful for,” she said. “I wanted to tour the college here, but my parents said Wheaton was too liberal,” she added with a smile.
If Kelsey had gone to Wheaton College, her life could have been different. Mine could have been too. We could have known each other years earlier. And where would she and I be now? Moving in together? Ethically non-monogamous? Fucking in tents? Proofreading? We were still holding hands.
“Now let’s see if we can get this open,” she said. Kelsey let go of my hand and used her phone’s flashlight to inspect the display case. “It’s just plastic,” she said.
“I don’t think my boss expects anyone to steal his old Bible,” I said. “People here trust each other.”
Her hands hovered inches from the case, then we heard sirens. I jumped. Red lights flashed past the window, past the office building, to a real emergency.
“It’s another fire,” I said. When I looked back at Kelsey, she held the large Bible in both hands. “It would be funny if you pulled out a gun and said, ‘This is a stickup,’” I said, first as a joke, but then I worried. Kelsey reached a hand into her back pocket, then she pulled it out to flip me her middle finger.
“I’m just fucking with you,” she said. Then she set the Bible on a table, started to flip through its pages. “This book is beautiful.”
“The monks who transcribed these old Bibles were all terrible proofreaders,” I said. “I would be fired if I missed that many errors. They didn’t even have dating apps back then. How could they be so distracted?”
“Probably busy trying not to die from the bubonic plague,” she said. “One cough from the guy next to you, and you’re worried the rest of the day. And then you’re dead. A real toxic work environment.”
“They left notes to each other in the margins of these old Bibles,” I said. “If one monk disagreed with a change that another made, like he didn’t agree with a word choice, he wrote a note to the guy who worked on the transcription before him. Heated arguments. If I flipped through this Bible long enough, I bet I could find one monk calling another monk a motherfucker.”
“I bet that makes you feel better about your boss,” she said.
I could still see the emergency vehicle lights through the office windows. “The fire has to be close,” I said, but there were no parks in this area. Or schools. The fires before today had all been in the residential parts of Wheaton, but this was near downtown. I opened the maps app on my phone to see if there was a church nearby, and of course there was. The arsonist had been taking off the Sabbath, but this had not been out of their love for the Lord. They hadn’t spared the town’s churches from their spree. I whispered to Kelsey that I wanted to show her something.
The church down the block burned before us, and she held my hand, the Bible under her arm, and she asked if this was the church where I attended mass with my family as a child. If it was where I was baptized, where I received my first communion, where I was confirmed. The church where I would be married, if only because my family would insist their son have a Catholic wedding.
I didn’t even think about the truth anymore. It wasn’t the church from my childhood, but I said yes, and she held my hand tighter.