Carole douglas - Cat on a Hyacinth Hunt

"Ah, guess I should use the EI. lingo. Pissed. I never said that to a lady before. Never said that to anyone."

"Heard it, though, I bet. So Molina was duly grateful."

"Not really. She didn't have enough grounds to arrest him, but they kind of... coaxed him into going downtown for an interview. Then Molina lectured me for involving myself. I thought that was that, until she called me just after I got home and asked me to come in to watch his interrogation."

"Watch? Like behind one of those two-way windows?"

Matt nodded. "I'm not sure who she hoped to learn more from: Effinger, or me. Molina's tricky. She's always thinking of something you haven't gotten to yet."

"That's just the impression she wants to give. Carmen the Omniscient, always in control."

"Speaking of control--" Matt rotated his wrist. "We're due for dinner now."

"Nice watch."

"Huh? Oh. Christmas present from my mother. That's where the real mystery was solved. In Chicago."

"And I have to wait until we shift tables and settle down again to hear that." Temple struggled upright in the crowded bar and joined Matt on the fringe of the huge, echoing central casino. "Where to next?"

"Uh. Yon butcher shop, I guess."

"Oooh, someplace gruesome to discuss buried secrets." His, she devoutly hoped.

Not hers.

Chapter 6

Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot ...

Gallagher's steak house had an impossible -to -miss gimmick: its window-glass facade displayed massive hunks of meat in the process of aging, perhaps visibly, while you watched.

Temple swallowed, but not in anticipation.

How on earth was she going to chew steak in her condition, even if it was from the five -

week-aged tender, flavor-intensified king- size cuts on raw display here? Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive. Robbie Burns knew about a lot more than true love and red, red roses.

They passed under the red-brick apartment building facade that reminded Temple of Rudy's rent- controlled building, only that dump didn't have three red awnings over arched windows.

But the side was trellised in black metal fire escapes. She could almost see a black cat sitting high on some gridlike balcony.

Temple felt as if entering Gallagher's was like stepping into her bathroom mirror: serious forties noir. The wooden floors flowed into dark wood dadoes, with creamy upper walls framing huge black-and-white photo-portraits of long-gone stars: Bogie and Bacall and Barrymore and Bergman.

Diners at the hundred or so tables glanced up at them. Temple realized that she and Matt were the Yvette and Solange of the New Year's Eve crowd, an accidental metallic symphony in silver and gold. Except for her red hair. Always the bad-luck sign.

The maitre d' led them to a table beneath Bette Davis and Paul Henreid smoking the farewell cigarettes from Now, Voyager , a fitting placement, Temple thought. Bonjour, Tristesse .

When the waiter brought the menu, Temple glanced with trepidation through the entrees listed between aisles of famous faces.

Matt unhesitatingly ordered the dry aged New York sirloin.

Temple hesitated.

"You're entitled to any entree except the King Crab legs, ma'am," the waiter prompted her.

"It's just that I... went to the dentist today. I guess the ... red snapper."

The dinner included soup or salad. Temple settled for the gum-mable beef barley soup; Matt ordered the Caesar salad. Temple took her potatoes mashed; Matt his French fried.

Soon after their orders were given, the waiter returned with glasses of New York wines; red for Matt, white for Temple.

"I thought you sounded a little slurred," Matt mentioned. "I hope the dentist wasn't too bad."

"Actually, making an appointment for between the holidays was the smartest thing I ever did."

"No trouble?"

Temple smiled. "No trouble. Just a temporary discomfort."

"Dentist appointments can be rough."

She nodded and sipped her white wine. "So tell me about Chicago."

Matt shook his head, smiling. "Cold. Snow-choked. What the artists call 'unforgiving.' "

"You mean a demanding environment."

"This time, I demanded back."

"How so?"

"I saw it from a distance, for the first time. I'd avoided going back for years. Told myself it had been blighted by Effinger. But he was long gone, and all that was left were relatives and school-mates. And I realized that they were a blight too."

"I'm glad I just visited Aunt Kit. Going home for the holiday can be . . . wearing."

"You don't know what you started with that red Goodwill sofa, Temple. I thought the last thing I needed was some extravagant statement, but in Chicago I discovered that's exactly what everybody around me needed. My mother, my cousin Bo and his wife, their would-be punk-artist daughter Krystyna ... It was like 'Return to Elm Street,' only I was Freddy Krueger."

"You!"

"You've always seen me the way you wanted me to be, not the way I've seen myself. I was a freak. The last one in the family to enter the religious life. These people are descended from Polish immigrants. They live and breathe the Catholic religion and family values. And yet . . .

none of my contemporaries and none of their children have made any more commitment to religion than sending their kids to Catholic schools. Which are nowadays taught by laypeople mostly, not clergy.

"I was like the fall of the last knight in a game of chess. I expected to be ostracized. Instead, they were afraid of me, as if they had been found wanting, not me for leaving the priesthood. It was. . . weird. And my mother was even weirder."

"How?"

"I hadn't seen her from that distance before. So . . . beaten down. So self-shrinking. I discovered that the anger I thought I'd felt for Effinger really belonged to her."

"But.. . you said you'd learned so much in Chicago. You were so . . . optimistic when you called me in New York."

He nodded. " The Paradiso , but first the Inferno ."

"I get the idea, but not the reference."

"Catholic poet. Dante. The so aptly named 'Divine Comedy.'"

Temple nodded.

"I had to go to the bottom of the well before I could bob to the surface again and see the sunlight. Speaking of 'Devine,' that isn't even my real father's name."

"You learned about your real father?"

"Not much. A one-night stand that began with a meeting at a church vigil stand. You know, racks of candles lit to a saint or the Virgin Mary. Or the Blue Mermaid. It's an old-fashioned, an old-country tradition, and the Polish parishes in Chicago cling to the something old, something Virgin Mary Blue."

"Matt. Maybe it's me or maybe it's the white wine, but I'm not following all of this."

He shook his head. "I think it's me, and the red wine. We always use it in the mass, for blood. Don't worry. The point is my mother was one of these foolish virgins schooled to be ignorant past the age of consent. She was nineteen. He was a Romeo with a Roman candle.

Bound for Vietnam, a volunteer lighting beeswax to the Virgin and meeting her incarnate in my mother, and leaving the aftertaste of New Testament shame, only no angel excused the carnal amid the spiritual. No Holy Ghost claimed fatherhood. Only Effinger, by default."

"Would you mind translating for an unbeliever?"

"You're no unbeliever, Temple. Quite the contrary."

Their soup and salad came, wafted down from above, like homely manna.

"It's simple," Matt said. "My mother was unwed and pregnant. A source of terrible shame in her community. When Effinger came along and saw her vulnerability, he offered to marry her.

Why not? She had a two-flat to rent and was willing to work, even if he wasn't. She . . . used to be good-looking before she tried to become invisible. I wasn't even in preschool. They hadn't heard of it in that neighborhood. Kin looked after kin, unless you were the kind of kin not spoken of. A bastard. My mother married to protect me from that label."