Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

“Silver is the coolest car color,” another man said.

Then Matt realized that it was his car, his relatively new silver Crossfire two-seater, they were all talking about. And blushed.

God! He was a real boy now. He wanted to sleep with a woman without benefit of matrimony. He shouldn’t lose it like this back on the old stomping grounds. Actually, he didn’t want to sleep with Temple without benefit of matrimony; he’d gladly marry her first. Except she wanted to sleep with him and wasn’t sure she was ready for matrimony. What’s a good Catholic boy to do?

Matt turned from the table to the filling room, knowing he looked sheepish.

“It’s mine. The car.”

He was going to add an apology when Nick, whom Matt characterized as the Progressive Cleric, ex-version, came over and pounded him on the back.

“Good going, Devine. Losing the lust for a simple Honda Civic provided through parish donations is the first sign of becoming a civilian. What’s it do?”

The same first question Temple had asked. This time Matt didn’t hesitate.

“One forty.”

The men in the room nodded sagely. Who would have thought it? Priests could be guys who talked cars and speed. Their first names and thumbprint IDs began to come back to him: Jerry, the Really Nice Guy, with acne scars and thick glass lenses; Paul, the Earnest Thinker, already in trifocals and thinning hair; Damian, the Theologian, bald and distant; Nick, the Coach.

They were a mixed bag as to age and home state, all the city of Las Vegas had to offer in terms of resident ex-priests. LV wasn’t exactly a Mecca for the religiously inclined, at least not along the Strip. It had one of the country’s largest numbers of churches of all denominations in the residential areas, including Molina’s home parish of Our Lady of Guadalupe. It even hosted one of Temple’s Universalist Unitarian churches, housed in a shopping center. Okay, he’d looked it up, thinking if they got married soon . . .

“The first and last time you attended was a zoo,” Damien noted with a chilly quirk that passed for a smile. “What brings you and your fancy new car back now?”

Damien was an ascetic. The disdain in his voice echoed the stern voices from Matt’s seminarian past. The original Father Damien had founded an island refuge for lepers when they were truly pariahs. Matt felt right now that he’d kinda like to go there.

“Lighten up, Damien.” Nick pulled Matt into the circle. “Attendance here isn’t mandatory, like Sunday mass. You’re just jealous of the wheels.”

This was so absurd that everybody laughed, including Damien. A little.

“I forgot about that,” Matt said as he took a seat in the circle. “They were offering such good deals and the mileage is pretty good—”

“God, Matt, are you going to plead guilty for avarice or energy consumption, make up your mind! Religious or secular sinner?” Jerry joked.

Matt sighed. “Probably both.”

Nick leaned back in his chair, the natural leader. “Let’s introduce ourselves and our life states,” he said, looking around at two new guys, both older.

They went around the circle. Phil and Tom were new in town, Phil a college instructor, Tom an administrator for the local National Public TV station.

“That means I’m working my old con: raising money.”

Everyone laughed. Parish priests were renaissance men in every respect except husband and literal father.

When Matt’s turn came, he merely said he was a radio counselor at a local station.

Nick didn’t prod him to say that he was the radio shrink in town, Mr. Midnight, syndicated nationally and a frequent national talk show guest. A man who had an on-air popularity. A man who made money. Even ex-priests could get jealous, and the group’s driving force was support, not rivalry.

Matt decided that he should have asked to drive the old Probe he’d passed on to Electra tonight. That anyone would look at his car had never occurred to him, although Temple sure had, and sure had looked good in the passenger seat. He felt a shiver that was surely confessable just thinking about that. The questions he wanted answers to were so corrosively personal that his hands were sweating, as they had in the dark St. Stanislaus’s confessional in Chicago when he was eight and was trying to decide whether to declare a “bad thought” to commit murder, or not.

That was then. This was . . . so now. His unthinkable, unsayable sin didn’t involve bodily harm to his hated abusive stepfather, but bodily delight with his beloved Temple. Definitely a better class of failing. Only she wasn’t his. She was hers. And there was the rub.

“Matt,” Nick said, regarding him with kind eyes. “You’ve obviously come tonight because you have something the group might be able to help you with. What is it?”

There it was. The pastoral role of the priest. To succor the sick, uphold the shaken.

He didn’t know these men well. He feared they might, would, judge him. And Temple. He couldn’t stand them judging Temple. Still, he needed . . . something. Help.

“I’d mentioned before I’d met a woman,” he said, “but she was claimed. I don’t think she is anymore.”

Nick smiled. Jerry smiled through pursed lips. Damien lifted an intellectual eyebrow. Tom nodded. Phil sighed. Paul frowned.

It was Eve and the Garden all over again.

“You’ve got guts.”

Nick pulled Matt aside as the men shuffled out, the hour near eleven P.M. Matt needed to get to the radio station for his midnight show.

“Listen, Matt, we all have our way of integrating into the secular world. No one way is right.”

“The church says—”

“You the definitive expert on the subject?”

“No, but I know what’s expected of us.”

“Perfection. Right. Listen. The love of your life—don’t deny it, I can tell—the love of your life grew up in a different church, with a different standard. I admire the UUs. Their hearts and minds are in the right place, and so is yours. Look at it this way. The woman you love is eminently lovable, good, kind, and true.”

Matt nodded. He loved Temple for her heart and mind. The body came after. But, oh, boy, did it count.

“She’s also imperfect, as we all are.”

“Maybe.”

Nick laughed. “God, I envy you that first dawning of total love. I had it. I’m happy and so is my wife, but life dulls the edge. The point is, Matt, that her experience, her standards, are valid to her. You have to respect that. Falling in love isn’t a conversion assignment. You’re not among the pagans, looking for babies. You give. She gives. You love. She loves. If you love her, you accept her. As she needs to be accepted for the moment. Capisce?”

“Are you the godfather, Nick, or the Godfather?”

“I’m Italian. I’m Catholic. I’m both, you’d better believe it. And do as I say.”

“Which is love, unconditionally.”

“Is that so hard?”

“No. In this case, not at all.”

He left with a lighter heart, knowing now what he had to do.

Rushin into Trouble

“Any idea,” Temple asked Randy after meeting him in the New Millennium lobby the next day, “why the honchos called this top-secret meeting?”

“Other than murder?”

“Shhhh!” Temple eyed the hotel’s Spaceport entry now behind them. It looked like a flying saucer, the fifties’ riveted-silver-metal variety. Crowds of squealing people were still pouring through the doors that goosed them with a whoosh of air as they decompressed into the hotel’s interior.

Silver-skinned and clad robot types directed the tourists to various areas, including an upward-flowing water slide that would take them to the external roller-coaster ride that circled the hotel’s solar system every half hour.