Unknown - 16_Cat_In_An_Orange_Twist

“We won’t patronize a restaurant,” he said. “I know another place. Nobody from Maylords would go there in a millennium.” “Oh? You got good at sneaking around since I last knew you?”

“I got better at dodging reality. I recommend it from time to time.”

Jerome’s teeth worried his already cracked bottom lip. His hair was the gray-beige color of cold coffee with artificial creamer that had been congealing too long. His beard was the same constant three-day growth favored by punk movie stars. Matt always wondered how they kept their fashionable five-o’clock shadows at just the right length to mimic a homeless man with an expiration date. The chic antigrooming fad mocked male vanity at the same time it celebrated it. Like most fashions.

“Lunch somewhere discreet? Maybe,” Jerome was saying, not thrilled about the concession.

“Jerry!” The voice was female harpy. Even Matt flinched.

He turned to see the same willowy brunette who had harassed Janice at the opening advancing on him and Jerome.

“You can’t deal with clients,” she informed Jerome when she was still twenty loud steps away. “I’ll handle this.”

Matt waited until she was abreast of them and they were eye to eye. “You can’t handle this,” he told the woman Temple had called Beth Blanchard. “I’m not asking you to lunch.”

Her incredulous but speculative glance flicked to Jerome at warp speed. That told Matt how well she knew the corporate culture at Maylords.

“I’ll want those prints moved as soon as you get back,” Beth warned Jerome, tainting even his rare hour off.

Matt met her eyes, unimpressed by her bullying personality. She finally looked away, then turned and clunked down the travertine main drag through the store.

“I h o p e t h o s e a r e changed,” Matt muttered as she stomped away.n ‘ t J a n i c e ‘ s p l a c

“They are. And Simon’s. Everything that Simon does she needs to undo.”

“What is her problem?”

Jerome just shrugged, which was his problem.

Jerome was even more impressed with Matt’s new car than Temple.

Matt hadn’t meant to make such a problematical statement, but being around the wishy-washy Jerome reminded him how important it was to follow your own druthers no matter the reaction.

Jerry was a classic case of being everybody’s dogsbody.

Matt zoomed them through the drive-by window at McDonald’s, then headed for his secret oasis in greater Las Vegas.

Matt could see the fast food soothing the savage breast in Jerome. Neither of them had enjoyed a normal adolescence.

Matt turned up the radio as they cruised toward his own favorite refuge.

“Sorry to be a bitch,” Jerome said, cramming the soft fries in his mouth en route.

Matt hated the word “bitch” whether it was applied to women or men, but he understood it was a password to a secret hierarchy.

The parking lot at Ethel M’s candy factory had room enough for him to stash the Crossfire all by its (hopefully) unscratched lonesome under a shade tree.

“A candy store?” Jerry asked, looking around.

“A picnic site.” Matt grabbed his white bag and headed into the maze of curving walkways and exotic cactus.

“It’s free,” he said when they were seated on an artsy bench. “One of the few things that still are in the New Las Vegas. I used to come here before the traffic roared outside the perimeter and shade was not an option.”

‘ “It must have still been desert then.”

Matt nodded. “It’s been improved. Upgraded. Gotten comfortable and pleasant. I liked its old, thorny side better.”

“Forty days and nights,” Jerome mumbled through his Big Mac. “God, it is so good to get out of that Maylords place.”

“What’s so wrong with it?”

“That bitch, for one thing.”

“Why does the management tolerate someone like her? She causes nothing but dissension.”

“And that keeps all our eyes on her and not on management. Haven’t you figured out group dynamics yet? Somebody’s got to be top dog; somebody’s got to be low man on the totem pole, usually me. Somebody’s got to be slave driver and draw all the anger away from management. She’s their whipping girl to my whipping boy, that’s all.”

“She does a good job of whipping everyone. Janice is the stablest person I know, and she’s at the end of her tether.”

Jerome nodded. “Cool lady. Knows her stuff. Bad news if you work for Maylords.”

“Why? It doesn’t make sense. She and the others were paid for six weeks of training! That’s unheard-of. Then they’re treated like-”

“Say ‘shit,’ Matt. We’re out of seminary. No one’s chalking check marks Upstairs on every word that comes out of your mouth. They … we … Maylords’s employees are treated like shit. Why are you surprised? Guess you haven’t worked much in the real world, and that radio gig of yours is another loner assignment. You don’t have to struggle and grovel like the rest of us. Again.”

“This is about Maylords, not about seminary.”

“They’re not that different, don’t you get it? I went from the frying pan into the fire. I always have. You just skated over the burning coals and took them for foot warmers. You always have.”

“Why are you blaming me? Did I do anything then that aggravated you?”

“Yes! You survived without getting your extremities dirty. Sorry. That’s not your fault. It’s just that what’s wrong with Maylords is what was wrong with seminary and you’re finally asking the right questions and it’s too late. For me. Not for you. So pardon me for being a bit self-involved.”

“Go ahead,” Matt said, finishing his quarter-pounder. “I was dense about a lot of things. I don’t blame you for being mad.

Just … clue me in. Unless you think I don’t deserve to know.”

“It’s just that … man, I thought you always knew. I thought you were the one it worked for, and it was just me-screwup, ugly me-who didn’t get it right.”

“It was dumb luck, Jerome. That, and my being so screwed up already that I’d learned how to glide through reality without

really noticing. My fault. Not yours.”

“Mea culpa.”

Matt nodded. “My fault. We don’t need to put it in Latin anymore. What was I supposed to be so good at that you weren’t?” “Playing the secret power game. Man, I don’t want to go into this!”

Sweat was beading Jerome’s hairline, and Matt guessed it wasn’t from that actionably hot McDonald’s coffee he wasdrinking. Matt sipped his Fresca, glad he had chosen cool over hot. Or was that a habit?

“All I want to know about is Maylords,” Matt said into a lengthening silence. “We don’t need to discuss seminary days.

We’re both beyond that.”

“No! That’s the point. I’m still the same old asshole I was then. St. Vincent’s, Maylords, it doesn’t matter. I was cast in my

one role and here I stay, for eternity. I guess you could call it Purgatory, or Hell’s more like it. At least you get out of Purgatory, or you did. I’m still there.”

“Maylords is a secular institution, a store. They sell furniture for inflated prices. Okay, maybe that’s a little shabby, but it

isn’t a sin. Maylords isn’t a religious institution.”

Jerome snorted. “It’s still the same subterranean game: top dogs and underdogs, corruption and coersion. Hell, they all oughta be the mafia.”

“So something crooked is going on at Maylords.”

“Let me count the ways!”

“The nameless security forces-”

“Are window dressing. It’s a game. The management thinks it’s the CIA.”

“Furniture isn’t getting ripped off?”

“Please! The markup is horrendous. The stuff is worth one-fifth of what they charge wholesale, and nothing on the black market. They act like everyone and his brother is hot to make off with it, of course, but that’s just because the big cheeses like to play policemen.”