Unknown - 16_Cat_In_An_Orange_Twist

He’d been in the army. Germany. Well remembered how the noncoms had taken the green lieutenants in hand. They were underlings, but they looked out for those naive, smart, upwardly-bound doofuses with something bordering on paternal affection. Didn’t envy them the pressure one little bit. No way. So this was not his first duty call baby-sitting a suddenly rudderless superior officer. Usually the young lieutenants were blind drunk on the town, though. They weren’t blind-mad female furies, which was another critter entirely.

It was probably career suicide to get too friendly with hisfemale boss, but … God knew he knew how to raise a daughter into a woman. And in some unnamable way, the formidable C. R. Molina had always struck him as a motherless child.

He wasn’t even sure she would show, but drove his Honda Civic to the place they’d agreed upon. At least he’d get good ribs and a light beer out of the deal, either way. Light beer tasted like a urine sample, but his metabolism didn’t burn off selfindulgence like it used to now that he was fifty.

How old was Molina? Nowhere near her fifties, for sure. Maybe forty, though. She was notorious for having no personal life beyond her only daughter. Mariah. Must be eleven or twelve now. Alch winced. Bad age. Bitchy age. Going through all that social and hormonal upheaval. No picnic. Not for a single mother. Not for a single father.

Because he’d done it. Raised a daughter pretty much by himself. Got through “training” bras and the unspeakable tampon transition, and all those sticky intrasex issues that were embarrassing even when you were unrelated and middle-aged. Vicky never alluded to that old stuff, but she treated him with affection and an expected amount of tolerance. He was her “old man” now, and she could never imagine that he had ever been anything else to anybody else, especially her mother.

Alch was musing on that when he went through the food line. Then the rich smell of hot smoke-flavored sauce returned him to the present. He found an isolated table and now sat nursing his beer. Fewer calories that way. He wondered if he should wager with himself whether Molina would show up.

She did, entering the place like a SWAT team member forced to go through a school cafeteria line. She scoped out the

people in line, checked out the tables, spotted him, all in one second flat.

He nodded from across the room. She grabbed a tray and shuffled through the long line of options like any bewildered cafeteria customer. It was hard to pick a meal in a few split seconds.

They’d each ordered and paid for themselves. Only way Molina would allow it, he knew.

Man, that woman would be hard to date.

Not that Alch did that much. Got out of the habit when he was raising Vicky. She was paramount. His kid. And now she was gone. Job over. Position phased out. Except for his day job.

Alch made a minor effort to rise as Molina brought her brown tray to his table, but her hand waved him back down, like a

faithful dog.

She sat and removed her plates from the tray, then frowned at his place setting.

“What?” he asked.

“I didn’t know they sold beer.”

“Sure. You can go back for one.”

“What do they have?”

“A bunch of brands. I always get the Amstel Light. Unfortunately. It’s better than Coors Light, at least.”

“I’ll be back,” she said, utterly unaware of parroting the Schwarzenegger catch phrase from The Terminator flicks.

Alch pulled a face at her vanishing back. Beer with the lieutenant. Well, well.

She returned not only with a beer but with two, neither light. “Dos Equis. You deserve full flavor after this afternoon’s debacle, Morrie. And so do I, God help me.”

He wisely didn’t follow up on that opening. Better to let the food and drink take effect first. He’d learned that from Vicky, even if it had been Pizza Inn and Dr Pepper in her case.

“T h i s i s g r e a t b r C. R… . i s k Carmen e t said, , ” after tseveral h eminutes l of i silent e umutualt e

eating and sipping. - All around them people came and went. The din of sliding trays and clanking silverware and plastic tumblers hitting Formica tabletops echoed, creating a benign, vaguely muffled background, like they were in a movie scene instead of real life. “So who was that masked man?” Morrie finally asked.

She shook her head. “You sure know how to kick off an interrogation, Detective.”

“Don’t think of me as a detective.”

“What should I think of you as?”

“I don’t know. Maybe what you need at the moment.”

“Need. That’s the second time you’ve used that wimpy word.”

“It’s not wimpy. It’s … reality. Look. I know you’re the boss. I know you’re tough. More than that, I know you really care

about how you do the job, how we all do the job. I also know you’re a girl. Hey! Don’t bristle. It’s true. I raised a girl. By myself. I know the territory, even if I’m only a grudgingly tolerated visitor to it.”

“Your daughter makes you feel like that?”

“All kids make you feel like that. You’re a parent. Whoever wants to be ‘a parent’? You always thought you were more

interesting than that.”

She shook her head at him, but it wasn’t denial, it was recognition. “I was an accidental parent.”

“Who would do such a thing deliberately?”

“Lots of people set out to do it.”

“They’re crazy. They have no idea what it involves, do they?”

“No, they don’t.”

“So what’s the problem? You know you’ve got to name it or go crazy. I’ve been almost driven crazy by my daughter. Because of my daughter. Because I love her more than anything and I’m just a way station on her life journey. Because I’m bound to be left behind, but if I can do anything to make her life better, or brighter-”

She interrupted with her hand, clamping hard on his forearm across the table. “Does she appreciate it?”

“Hell, no. Not now. When I’m gone … maybe.”

“Oh, Morrie-”

“Drink your beer. It’s solid stuff. It’s solider than ninety-eight percent of what we do every day. Enjoy every calorie. You look back, and that’s all you got. So what’s the trouble?”

“I don’t do this,” she said.

“Do what?”

“Tell. Tattle. Whine. Admit. Admit guilt, failure, lack of control.”

“Me neither.”

She laughed. “Why do I feel I’d like you for a father?”

“Because you don’t know the hellion I used to be. True.” She didn’t laugh, though he’d meant her to. “This violates every

professional rule I’ve set myself.”

“Maybe you set yourself the wrong rules.”

“Apparently. My daughter is spiraling out of control, asking unanswerable questions. And now, I meet an unanswerable .

fragment from my past.”

“That guy at Maylords.”

“Guy. Don’t I wish. Just some ‘guy.’ Unfortunately, he’s Mariah’s father.”

“Whoa. Holy shit. She know it?” Silence held. “He know it?”

“I know it. That’s all.”

Morrie chugalugged real beer, trying to make Molina’s messy personal life jibe with her impeccable professional trajectory.

None of the messiness really mattered, except to her.

“You’re a single mother,” he said finally. “It’s rude of anyone to speculate. It certainly doesn’t enter into job history, like it used to. Those were the bad old days. I can’t tell you the speculations made then about me and Vicky. A father with one daughter. Wife dead? Wife divorced? Wife run off? Wife murdered? Whatever the scenario, I was considered weird. Father with daughter. Not the norm.”

“That’s why I respect you so much.” It was murmured. Muttered.