Douglas Nelson - Cat On A Blue Monday

Matt shrugged. "The same, I guess."

"Okay, but I'll order your sauce on the side--they have a great tomatillo salsa that will leave your tonsils unscalded. Y agua ," she told the waiter last, pointing to them both.

Now Matt would soon have plenty to fiddle with.

"This doesn't strike me as your kind of place," he said.

"It is now. But you're right." She hated mixing metaphors, mixing Max and Matt, but there was no escape, not even for a verbal magician. "Max found it," she admitted. "I'm not that adventuresome. Max always said that the best thing about Fernando's was that nobody here speaks English. It's perfect for six-cups-of-coffee mornings."

"Oh," Matt leaned back to let the waiter set a tall, olive-green, nubby plastic glass before him. "Did Max have a lot of six-cups-of-coffee mornings?"

Temple smiled, shakily. If she wanted to find out the scoop on Matt, she would have to dish up a bit of her and Max. "No, and not too many mornings, either. He usually slept until eleven. Fernando's is a little more lively then."

"I keep the same hours," Matt noted after a slow sip of water.

"You going to be able to get off of work tonight?"

"Maybe, if they can call someone else in. But there's no point. I won't get any sleep anyway. I'm not used to normal work hours now."

Temple nodded. "Then the best thing to do is to start mainlining caffeine and keep going until . . . what time do you usually get home? Three-thirty A.M.?"

He nodded.

"And Sister Seraphina called you at--?"

"Four-thirty. ' '

"Then the cat was attacked before four."

He nodded again, clearly not as interested in the night's exact chronology as she was. "Temple, you must be wondering--"

"I am beyond wonder," she said quickly. Nothing was worse than an ex-reporter's need-to-know, and right now she was so very needy. "I'm too tired. But I am congenitally nosy-"

"You've got a right to know." he began, leaning back again as a heavy, white-porcelain cup filled to the brim with molasses-dark--and thick----coffee was placed before him.

" Leche, por favor ," Temple asked the waiter before unfurling her paper napkin and drawing out the spoon. How long could she put it off?

A small blue pitcher of milk arrived, and then the waiter left. Temple poured a pale stream into her coffee, stirring until the black color softened. The cup was too full. She'd have to drink it down a little before she could mix the just-right shade of tan.

"I don't have a right to know anything," she said after another moment. "Of course . . ." She sighed. "Given my wild imagination, it might be in your best interests to head me off at the pass."

He sipped the steaming coffee as if to gather Columbian courage. "I was a priest."

Four little words. Hearing them put Temple in the kind of daze Matt had visibly occupied ever since Sister Seraphina's call. She was getting hooked on a priest --after the debacle of Max? Oh, puhleeze. No. . . .

"You'll have to bear with me," she made herself say. "I'm a fallen-away Unitarian. We know a little about everything and not much about anything. You were a priest?"

He nodded.

"An . . . Episcopal priest?"

He shook his head, but couldn't help smiling at her hopeful tone. "No."

"No." Temple contemplated her coffee cup, and then added enough milk to bring the contents lapping at the brim. She concentrated on spilling not a drop as she lifted it to her lips and sipped, saying a little prayer so she wouldn't spill, so she wouldn't spill her overflowing uncertainties. "I didn't really think that Our Lady of Guadalupe was big in the Episcopal Church, but they do have nuns, I think, and they do call them 'sister'?"

Matt nodded. "You know more than you think you do."

"But you were a Catholic priest?"

"Yes."

"The kind with the usual vows--um, poverty, chastity and obedience?"

"Yes."

"The celibate kind?"

He tried hard not to hesitate. "Yes."

"And now you're not a priest, officially."

"Yes."

"But if you were a priest, why did Sister Seraphina call you? Why didn't she ask this invisible Father Hernandez everybody talks about but nobody sees? And why would an . . . ex-priest perform some kind of rite?" Temple knew her spate of questions was a form of denial, yet she denied on, like poor befuddled Peter in the Garden. I know you didn't want to do it. Aren't you . . . disqualified from doing that now? Isn't it a . . . sin?"

Matt leaned forward, his arms and hands curved around his coffee cup as if defending it, or seeking warmth.

"It's a judgment call and a delicate situation. In an emergency, if the person is dying, Sister Seraphina could administer the sacrament herself, even a lay person could. But if the person's condition is more uncertain, and a priest is available . . . Father Hernandez was not. Miss Tyler had been having a fierce feud with him and would have been even more distressed to see him."

"I know about that," Temple put in. "Father Hernandez had this perfectly silly notion that God doesn't allow cats in heaven. If poor Miss Tyler had seen Midnight Louie, I'm sure she would have seen the point in that."

"The theological point," Matt said, "is that animals don't have souls, and only those with souls can get to heaven."

"Only those with souls in apple-pie order," Temple added solemnly, wondering about Matt's.

"The . . . sacrament used to be called 'Extreme Unction' and was associated with the dying. Nowadays the church recognizes the healing nature of the ritual and it's given under much less rigorous circumstances. It's called the anointing of the sick, and the reason you were so puzzled by it--besides being such a fierce Unitarian--is that a lot of Catholics haven't witnessed it, even today. It was the most private of the sacraments, and to some, the most frightening. To a devout Catholic like Miss Tyler, the sacrament could have a strong healing and calming effect, as you saw. Sister Seraphina was right that she should have it, was right to decide that Father Hernandez would upset her, was even right to call on me. A woman of Miss Tyler's generation would not have accepted a nun administering a sacrament; priests and doctors are like gods to such women."

He laughed wearily at their delusions, and then said with the intensity of someone convincing himself: "I was part of the necessary psychological efficacy of the sacrament, as well as its spiritual aspect."

"But Miss Tyler is feuding with Father Hernandez! How can she do that if she's such a devout Catholic?"

Matt smiled his first full-wattage smile of the morning. "Devout Catholics, more than anyone else, consider themselves privileged--no, obliged---to point out personal failings to their parish priests."

"Oh. It must not be fun to be a parish priest."

"No."

Were you!"

"For a while."

"Oh."

Out from the kitchen came the waiter bearing two large oval plates heaped with mounds of food. Mexican food had an earthy, yet limited color range--yellow to red to brown and was not highly textured; everything was chopped into such tidy, digestible piles. Yet it was . . . Temple searched for the proper mental tribute: it was Yummy on the Tum-tum-tummy. Especially when that tummy was dancing a solo of uncertainty.

She and Matt studied their plates with awe after the waiter left.

"That's a lot of food," Matt said finally. "I don't know if I've got the stomach for it."

"One taste and you'll know you don't. That's what makes Mexican food so much fun; it's an endurance contest."

He offered a pale smile and spooned some of the milder salsa on his eggs. Temple made sure her eggs were basted in green sauce and took a big bite.

Umm, who would believe minced vegetables could have such zip? Those scrambled eggs, no matter how fluffy, could taste so substantial?