Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Crimson Haze

"The crisis at the Gridiron," he finally clarified. i had promised Sister Seraphina that I'd attend Mass at OLG this morning."

"This is important to you, isn't it?"

Another pause, not nearly so awkward, merely thoughtful. "It's been hard for me to go, yes.

Hard to see myself in a different role. Naturally Sister Superfine tuned in on that. She's right. I have to confront it."

"Are you sure that you want to go with me?"

"Yes."

''Even though I don't know much about mass?"

''Yes."

"Sure, I'll go. Um, do I need a mantilla or something?"

"No! Temple, that's ancient stuff. Women haven't had to wear head coverings in church since the Church modernized in the late sixties."

"Too bad. I've always wanted to wear a mantilla. So dramatic."

"You can wear one if you want to."

"No, I can't. I don't have one."

''You sound nervous. Maybe you don't want to go."

"Yes, I do. And, hey, you sound even more nervous than I do."

"Then I'll need the support. I'll meet you downstairs at nine-thirty, okay?"

"Okay," she repeated, not at all sure of that.

Matt hung up, thinking about Temple, not the imminent mass. As usual, she had read him right. He was nervous. How much did she have to do with it?

Did he need a buffer between himself and the church now? Temple's presence, as a non-Catholic, might help him view the sacrament of mass with some distance. Since leaving the priesthood, he had found himself reluctant to attend. Was that the result of guilt, or envy?

One thing he knew: how hard it was to watch other men perform the rituals learned by heart and soul so long ago. At the masses he had attended since leaving, he seemed to view the rite through the wrong end of a telescope, as if he were standing at the church door watching a distant puppet show. Attending mass only emphasized his unique and separate status.

So maybe he wanted Temple there as a partner in crime. After all, now he had "last night" to fret about. Despite himself, he felt the same over scrupulous sense of guilt and edgy self-justification he had suffered in high school about confessing sexual sins. Not that he had allowed himself many, of those, but thoughts would come and demand to be classified as "impure" or not. Feelings came as well, and nocturnal emissions. They were all examined, agonized over, omitted from the confessional roster, then rejudged in harsher terms and presented with shame and self-disgust.

A few Hail Marys and Our Fathers usually sufficed to erase the errors, but Matt always felt that he had been lucky, that he had gotten off too lightly. In the triumph of time, he had erected such a barrier to these bitter failings that they seldom occurred.

Now the curtain of the temple--Matt winced at the aptness of that expression under the circumstance--had been ripped away, and then some.

Nothing . . . confessable, he devoutly hoped. He was so inexperienced, so armored against all sexuality, that he wasn't sure. One thing he was sure of: he was ''free" now. Free to marry.

Free to make the same impulsive mistakes other men did, free to take comfort in another's trust and tenderness. Free to reach out and touch someone, and call it wonder instead of weakness.

He was an ordinary mortal who had discovered that mutual compassion was the royal road to passion. Still the ancient anxieties stalked his mind, nipping relentlessly at every thought, every feeling, instilling savage terror. Would God strike him down if he received communion without confession? Last night he had violated the inner litany of no's he had obeyed--and hidden behind--since high school.

He knew that he must walk away from that ancient road in the name of mental health and healing, but old habits die hard, especially when being hard on oneself has become the strongest habit of all.

Matt smiled and stared almost fondly at his ugly old phone. He was lucky to have someone willing to walk new roads with him.

Temple was waiting in the lobby when the elevator cranked him down. She looked like a Sunday school kid in her beige linen short-sleeved suit, with matching pumps and a purse that wasn't the size of Communist China.

Matt was almost disappointed not to see white, wrist-length gloves on her hands, but the signature fingernails were uncovered, lacquered in a red as vivid as her unsuppressible hair.

''You're dressing the part," he suggested as they walked into the early morning warmth.

"Dressing what I think is the part. I still wish I had a cream lace mantilla." Her fingernails unconsciously both fluffed and poked at her curls. "I guess I;m not the Spanish type."

"What is your nationality?"

"Oh, bits of everything--English, Scots, French."

"Good Lord, your ancestors got around."

She shrugged. ''So did yours."

He shook his head. ''Half Polish, and reared all Polish. What my . . . real father was I don't know. Mom didn't want to talk about him."

''Devine. It could be French: de Vine."

"Whatever its derivation, it was always a pain to explain. I stood out like a sore thumb at St.

Stanislaus School, and later--"

"I'll drive," Temple said as they arrived at her car.

She unlocked the driver's door, then leaned across the seat to unlock his door, before donning her prescription sunglasses.

The car started eagerly and once she got it in motion, she smiled at him. "And later ... I bet you had a hard time living it down. No matter what role you played, that name was just too perfect."

He nodded. "Maybe. But I didn't mind it as much as you might think, the teasing. At least it wasn't Effinger.' "

Matt rolled down the window, since Temple hadn't put on the air conditioner. He decided not to tell her his new resolve: to pursue the enigma of the corpse that might be Effinger until every question was answered. A soothing breeze wafted into the car. Temple's casual presence took an edge off the Sunday obligation, made him feel part of an audience, rather than a performer.

Her easy resumption of their ordinary day-to-day relationship released any clinging guilt.

Life was a usually predictable, placid river with places to go; its whitewater patches were intermittent intensities--crises, pain, passion.

As they drove onto the school playground that functioned as a church parking lot, Matt studied the families trickling up the shallow stairs through the big wooden double doors of Our Lady of Guadalupe. He noticed the nuns greeting parishioners at the door, and felt self-conscious suddenly about being with Temple. How would Sister Seraphina construe this? As defiance, bringing a non-Catholic woman? As loudly and clearly announcing his ex-priest status to her?

''How nice to see you again, dear," she cooed at Temple when they had made their way to the top of the stairs.

Sister Superfine cooing?

Temple seemed to think nothing of it, she merely glanced with what she thought was surreptitious speed at the nuns' bare, grizzled heads.

''Matt." Sister Seraphina took his hand in her own cracked aged one. She squeezed, hard.

"Good to see you here."

He breathed easily once past the gantlet of nuns at the gate, but Temple suddenly pressed his forearm, her longish nails biting into his skin.

"Oh, God. I mean, excuse me. Molina!" she whispered in throaty despair. "Does she always go to this mass?"

"I don't know." The homicide lieutenant was entering by a side door with her daughter, who was wearing jeans, t-shirt and a defiant expression.

Matt paused by the Holy Water font to touch his fingertips to the cool sponge and make the sign of the cross.

Temple waited, but eyed the yellow sponge stranded in its grandiose stainless-steel-lined white marble bowl as if it were something dead washed up on a beach.

He leaned down to her, automatically whispering in church. "These old Holy Water fonts were once filled with blessed water, but since the trick with the red dye, I think Father Hernandez capitulated to modern times and converted to a Holy-Water soaked sponge. It's less messy and more economical."