Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Crimson Haze

"After all you ... did for me," he was saying, "I feel that I've been derelict--"

"You're the world's worst delinquent all right, Devine," she interrupted. *'Listen: you didn't have to wine and dine me in retaliation for my makeshift prom night on the Big Sandy. That was just an experiment; me being a bit madcap . . . wild, impulsive creature that I am."

Her nonsense didn't break the ice, for there was none, but it broke through the thin skin of self-justification that was draping Matt like a cocoon. Temple hated apologies, especially when they were unnecessary.

Maybe her tactic worked, for Matt decided to quit tiptoeing around the reason for this evening out like a wild duck waddling around the dangerous puzzle of an ice-fishing hole. He inched his spoon a trifle closer to the knife--now was that a Freudian slip or what? Temple speculated--took a visible breath and began.

''I didn't end up in Las Vegas by accident. Temple."

She refrained from saying, too bad, and adding that she had always figured him to be a member of Gamblers Anonymous on the run from a cabal of mob accountants in New Jersey.

"I'm , . . looking for someone," he said.

She refrained from saying that almost everybody is.

'I'm . . . looking for a man."

Oh, no! Was this true confession time? Had Matt discovered that he was gay, after all? Well, hell, a thoroughly modern woman could use a good gay friend or two, of either sex, but it helped a lot if she didn't find them physically attractive. Temple sipped from her water goblet, trying to keep the ice cubes from clicking against her teeth. They were sexy, crystal- clear ice cubes, too, probably made with distilled water. Oh, well. The Blue Dahlia made an ideal romantic rendezvous, but there was no point in being flattered now.

"I've never been here before." Matt had noticed her looking around. ''I hope it's all right."

'Terrific." Temple resisted the urge to let a cold cube slide into her mouth so she could crack her teeth down on it and see if het fillings held.

''He's my father."

"Huh?" Temple was startled enough to scan the room again.

"The man I'm looking for," Matt said patiently.

Temple prided herself on not letting any relief show, although underneath the table her toes uncurled against the satin-smooth purple leather lining her best Kelly-green high heels. "Why the big secret, then?"

Matt wasn't quite listening, at least to her. "He's my stepfather, actually."

She nodded. This was going to be a complex night, given how Matt was leaking vital information at 33 1/3 speed. Laser disc, lightning-fast he was not.

That meant this information was important to him, that and the shamed way the word

"stepfather" sidled out of his mouth like a mud-spattered dog peeking from under the best couch. It also told Temple that this was not to be the romantic evening out that she might be inclined to hope for.

She wriggled her tootsies free of the confining toes of her shoes. Thanks to an old-fashioned floor-length tablecloth, no one could see her informality. No one could see her play footsie with Matt, either, because it wasn't going to happen, at least not tonight.

One thing that was going to happen tonight had her second-most-primitive urge polishing its pistons, though: curiosity. Matt was finally going to squeeze out some details about his family.

Temple slid her knife to line up with the tines of Matt's meticulously placed fork opposite her. ''Is he a good stepfather or a bad stepfather?'' she asked carefully.

Matt sighed again, a short, frustrated huff of air. ''Maybe okay by some people's lights. Bad by mine."

She nodded, not surprised.

Having gone this far, Matt must have decided to plunge in with both feet. His eyes and fingers fussed at the arrangement of the tableware while his voice and mouth rattled off a messy cornucopia of facts.

"My real father--odd expression, isn't it?--left my mother while I was still an infant. I don't know why, and she would never say. I knew her as a single mother, working all day and worrying all night. I guess finding a man to take care of her answered half of that unhappy equation. They got married, of course. I wish they hadn't; then he wouldn't have been real, my fake father. But they did. No big ceremony, but a church wedding. Marriage was it for women in St. Stanislaus parish, even as recently as the liberating sixties; that, the single life, or living in sin, which was as good as the streets for a Catholic woman. So she married him, and then we were all stuck. For eternity."

"You got away," Temple observed.

"Escaped, you mean. You're probably right. Into the neighborhood when I could, later into school. Finally into the seminary."

"What was wrong with him?"

"He drank. Just beer. Mom said at first, but 'just beer' can drown even a dry alcoholic, and he was a career beer-drinker. That's what men did in poor, working-class neighborhoods in Chicago. They drank. They still do. Only with him, the hard stuff came later."

"Did you have brothers or sisters?"

Matt's head shake was a gesture so abrupt and tight it resembled a tiny shudder. No, thank God, it seemed to say.

"After my real father left, there were no others. I think--"

Temple waited, beginning to understand what it must have been like for Catholic priests in the old days, behind their dark wooden confessional doors, listening and waiting and wondering when to speak, when not to speak.

Matt looked up, his expression both guarded and searing. "I think when my mother found out what my stepfather was really like, she made sure there were no more children." His eyes shut. ''It would have been a sin, of course. A mortal sin. She didn't go to confession much after he came along."

''Is your mother . . . still alive?"

"Sure." He seemed surprised by her question, which was natural, since everything he spoke of seemed steeped in the bitter dregs of days-gone-by. "She still lives in the parish. Retired.

Goes to confession now. He left, years ago, but after I did. She was a . . . beautiful woman."

"How many years ago did he leave? How old--"

"Was I?" Matt's mouth stretched clothesline tight before he spoke again. "When he left?

Sixteen. It was before I went into the seminary. I never would have left her alone with him."

"So . . . why do you want to find him now?"

Matt shook his head. "I was just a kid then. Maybe I'm still just a kid in a lot of ways. I don't .

. . understand. I need to understand that before I can understand"--his pale hands spread in the lamplight, over the empty place setting, as if offering an unconscious blessing on ...

nothingness--"this."

"Where you are today, you mean?" she prompted.

This time his smile was ironic, and personal, and quite charming. "Where I was before today.

But why I'm looking for him isn't the reason I asked you here. It's how. I've been trying in my own clumsy way to make inquiries, and nothing seems promising. I thought you might have an idea or two. You know how to get things done."

"Certain things." Temple sighed in her turn. How touching that Matt found her the Quintessential Organizer, the Fixer, the Solver. "Why do you think he's here in Las Vegas?"

Matt shrugged. "That was the only thing he cared about, cutting out on Mom and me and spending a few days--and half her paycheck--in Las Vegas. I came to regard the city as a kind of personal savior, after a while. For all its Sodom and Gomorrah reputation, it got him out of our house and our hair."

"But, Matt, that was--'' Temple was not adept at mental math, so there was a telling pause while she calculated and he hung on her every grimace.

"Seventeen years ago,'' he finally furnished for her.

''Seventeen years. So much has changed in Las Vegas since then, so many new places to gamble elsewhere in the country have cropped up since then. Your stepfather might have moved on to Atlantic City, or the new riverboat establishments near Chicago. He might be--''