Douglas Nelson - Cat On A Blue Monday

During the long pause, Matt imagined a dozen equally unfortunate scenarios. Temple would have been proud of him.

"He was . . . very bad, Matt. He insisted on coming over and stumbling about in the bushes with his own flashlight.

Of course he--we--found nothing, not after all that sound and fury. I finally got him back to the rectory. Matt, he needs you."

"No one needs me! I'm no longer practicing--"

"Father Hernandez is crumbling before my eyes. He made so little sense. I know his drinking isn't the primary problem; it's a symptom. The only alternative is to go to the bishop, and Father Rafe is such a proud man, and the parish is at such a delicate point in its fund drive--"

"And I'm the best that you can do," he interrupted a bit bitterly.

She refused to be buffaloed by his anger. "Yes," she said simply. "Please."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Come here when you get off work. Talk to him. I think Father desperately needs to share his problem, his sorrow, with another human being. He won't talk to me, to a woman, about what he must regard as a terrible failure."

"But to me he would?"

"He might. I don't know what else to do, Matt."

"Do you think you're going to win me back by making me function as what I used to be?"

"No. But I think you might win Father Rafe back to what he used to be."

"I'm that good?"

"You're the one person he might think would understand."

"He doesn't understand me."

"That's not what's needed here. We need to understand him, and to let him know that nothing can be as bad as he thinks. His isolation has distorted his thinking."

"So has the drinking. You're asking for a miracle here."

"No miracles. Just good pastoral care."

Matt's weary laugh came out as a brief bark. "I can call a cab and be at the rectory by three-thirty." He didn't want Temple in on this, not anymore. Besides, he couldn't use her indefinitely as a taxi service to his past. "You're lucky we live in Las Vegas, a town that never shuts down."

"Chicago's supposed to be the town that never shuts down, Matt, but the recession has done a pretty good job of forcing it to. I guess counseling is the one profession that never runs out of customers."

"Maybe." She had given him an innocuous-sounding name for this dangerous, unrequested intervention in an' other man's struggle with his own soul. Another priest's. Counseling, not ministry. All right. I'll be there," he promised.

"God bless you, Matt."

Las Vegas cab drivers, like their Manhattan counterparts, have seen everything. So the ponytailed driver of the Whittlesea Blue cab Matt called didn't raise an eyebrow when he was directed to Our Lady of Guadalupe Church. Las Vegas had more churches per capita than most U.S. cities; why shouldn't a midnight meanderer want to save his soul as well as spend a wad at some casino?

The neighborhood was dark, still and well-behaved. No lights glimmered now around the Tyler house, supposedly empty except for cats, or around the convent next door, but Sister Seraphina had made the proverbial "candle in the window" literal at the rectory.

Matt saw one thin, ivory wax candle winking in the rectory's kitchen window. He wondered if it was left over from last Advent or St. Blaise's February feast day, if it had been blessed or was merely an ordinary candle pulling ordinary candle duty.

Matt listened to the cab's wheels peel slowly away on the gritty pavement as he walked to the side of the rectory, then pushed the night's last button--the doorbell.

He heard the faint, hoarse ring of an elderly buzzer within, waited, then rang again.

Finally, other sounds came, like a blind man boxing his way through a maze. The door opened all at once, fully wide, filled by Father Hernandez, who looked smaller and older in civvies--a navy turtleneck and dark slacks. Matt would be willing to bet that he wouldn't touch a bottle while in uniform; even his breakdown would be regimented.

"Seraphina called you," Father Hernandez challenged. "What would we do without nuns to meddle?"

The question required no response, and Matt gave none.

He simply entered when Father Hernandez faced the inevitable and stepped aside.

"What are we supposed to do?" the pastor asked, traces of both bafflement and self-mockery in his voice.

"Talk," Matt suggested.

Father Hernandez turned and moved through the semidark kitchen, bumping into a countertop. Matt followed, avoiding comment, avoiding judgment.

The priest buffeted down the narrow, dark back hall ahead of Matt like a babe down a birth canal, caroming from wall to wall, blindly driving toward the light that poured like pale syrup from the open office door.

He lurched through that door into the room beyond, into his chair, which creaked to accept the body he threw into it. A green-glass-shaded banker's lamp lit the desktop's jumble without casting much light on Father Hernandez's face behind the desk, or on Matt's when he sat down in front of it.

Despite the hour, despite the situation, rectories had an ineffable cozy feeling, and Matt felt that trickle of warmth even now. Familiar ground, once his own. But not quite.

The desk lamp also illuminated the tall, clear bottle of tequila sitting under it, and the plain kitchen glass fogged with fingerprints beside it.

Jose Cuervo was evidently the friend of Father Hernandez that Sister Seraphina had suspected.

"Care for a glass? I almost said, 'Father.' " Father Hernandez gestured with a host's broad, sweeping hand to the solitary bottle and glass.

Matt realized he had never before confronted anyone who could be so dangerous to his own hard-won equilibrium. He nodded. He would get nowhere if he began on a holier-than-thou platform. Besides, he could use his own dose of Mexican courage.

Father Hernandez's dramatic eyebrows rose, but he pulled out a drawer and extracted a glass as plain and smudged as the one already in sight. He unscrewed the bottle cap and poured three inches of liquid into each smeary glass. No ice, no niceties.

Matt leaned out of his chair to accept it, then sipped. He'd had tequila before in a different form: the festive, saltrimmed, pale jade bubble of an oversized cocktail glass. Straight tequila burned like rubbing alcohol and had a sour, acrid aftertaste. He set the glass down on the desk, careful to place it on a clump of papers rather than on the naked wood, where it would sweat a pale ring into the finish.

Down the hall, the rectory's aged air conditioner droned like a snoring giant.

"What does she think you can do?" Father Hernandez asked after taking a long, almost loathing gulp of his drink. His voice wasn't slurred, but a bit loud and contentious. Matt didn't take offense; Father Rafe wasn't angry with him, although he might act like it.

"Sister Seraphina always had greater expectations of me than I could live up to," Matt replied.

"Don't they, though? Don't they all?" Father Hernandez leaned over his desk. "I don't blame you for leaving, you or any of the other thousands. It's not like it used to be. Everything's changed--the liturgy, the bureaucracy, the clergy, the parishioners." He eyed Matt carefully, as if he had to concentrate to see him, and maybe he did. "Was it the usual, celibacy? I can see that a young man who looks like you--"

"It wasn't celibacy," Matt said quickly. "Nothing so simple."

"Ah. You think celibacy is simple, do you? How long were you in?"

"Including seminary, sixteen years."

"It gets harder," Father Hernandez said, sitting back to drink again. "Not the celibacy, everything. Raising money, cutting corners when there are so few other priests and nuns to be found. We used to run on our clergy--our dedicated hundreds of thousands sworn to poverty, chastity and obedience.

Now we have all the worries and the expenses and none of the resources."