Unknown - 15_Cat_In_A_Neon_Nightmare

Something, or somebody, really bad had scared him.

That was her first thought. Her second was that it had scared him enough to “forget” a face as movie-star memorable as Matt Devine’s. Good luck for Carmen Molina. A puzzle for Lieutenant C. R. Molina. It would be intriguing to see whether self-interest or professional curiosity won this game of cat and rat.

Chapter 42

Wake-up Call

“Okay, honey,” Ambrosia was crooning into the mike as if the gray foam sound-muffler was toasted meringue ready to be eaten, “here’s a little something to cheer you up.”

The upbeat anthem of “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” percolated over the radio speaker as Matt stepped into the studio and closed the door.

Right now he was trying to converse with Leticia Brown between the raindrops … during the three dead-mike minutes that a song or commercial break would take before she had to get back on the air as Ambrosia and talk to the people.

“I can’t believe it,” she repeated as she stared at him. This had been her mantra during their tête-à-tête through the previous song too. “That she-witch is really dead? Like melted? Tall pointy hat and all?”

“Melted away. Out of my life anyway, and anybody else’s. Forever.”

“You almost sound disappointed.”

“Sorry, you mean.”

“No, I say what I mean. I’m not like those poor uncertain souls who call you and me. You sound dis-ap-pointed.”

“Why would I be disappointed?”

“A body can get used to being persecuted, you know. That’s not uncommon. At least someone’s paying you attention. That’s better than being invisible. If you know what I mean.”

“I do. It’s called ‘playing the victim,’ and it’s common to oppressed people. You believe I was doing that?”

“I don’t know. All I know is you’re entitled to a little meanness after all the spite and spit that was aimed at you. Celebrate your freedom, boy! Wiggle you ass like the football players do in the end zone. Spike a football. Stomp an ant. Be not nice.”

Leticia shook her shoulders in what Matt had seen described as a “Watusi” dance move. Given her three-hundred Spandex-draped pounds and the fact that she always wore heavy shoulder pads no matter the outfit, she did look a bit like a linebacker for the Amazon Large League.

“Any man’s death diminishes me,” he quoted John Dunne.

“That was no man, honey. That was an e-vil wo-man. I never play anything that downer for my dear little lambs, but there is a song about women like that. That is the worst species of demon on earth.”

“No mercy?”

“No mercy. Be a little human for once. Gloat like the rest of us.”

She suddenly leaned into the mike and cooed to it as if to a baby. “Now isn’t that better, sweetie? Sadness should run away to the corners of your vision like raindrops on a windshield. Is it all better now?”

“Better,” the listener repeated.

Who dared argue with Leticia/Ambrosia? Darn few. Her smile was a union of Cheshire cat and Crest White-strip as Matt backed silently out of her domain. It would be his cocoon and his hot seat soon enough. He glanced at the schoolhouse clock on the wall: time writ big and simple, boiled down to Big Hands and Small Hands and the slender, restless Second Hand.

He wondered if you had a secondhand conscience when you were supposed to take pleasure, or relief at least, in another person’s passing.

The listener’s voice coming over the speaker was a woman’s now. Women always sounded a little breathless and young on speaker systems. The microphone exaggerated higher vocal tones, and had since the talkies had come in and made a falsetto of matinee idol John Gilbert. Remember him? Not much.

This woman caller also sounded hesitant, unused to dialing radio programs.

“I guess I can ask for a song dedicated to someone,” she said.

“Ded-i-cated to the one you love.” Ambrosia quoted the old song, talking the melody in perfect rhythm. Rappin’. “It’s for someone named … Vassar.”

Matt’s heart stopped for one too many times in the past few days.

“Vassar,” Ambrosia echoed. “A classy lady, I take it.”

“Very classy.”

“School friend?”

“You could say that. She’s … dead now.”

“Aw, sorry, honey child. Well, I think I can find a song that’ll talk to the both of you, even now.”

Carole King’s “You’ve Got a Friend” came over the speaker, but Matt barely heard it after automatically identifying the tune and the lyric.

He was busy doing a mental post-mortem on the voice of the woman who had requested a song in Vassar’s name. Was there anything of Kitty O’Connor in it? No. It was a softened American accent, friendly but monotone, with still a sobered bounce beneath the syllables. Someone really in mourning. For someone named “Vassar.”

Mau headed posthaste for Mike’s tech booth.

“Who is that? Where’d the call come from?” he asked.

Mike eyed the rectangular gray screen on the telephone and shook his ear-muffed head. “Cell phone or pay phone, no caller I.D. on this one. Or maybe he knew the code to turn off the originating number. Oops, gotta fade and then it’s your two hours on the air, dude.”

Matt backed out of the booth, silently shutting the door.

Somehow he had known that this call would be haphazard, untraceable. At least the request hadn’t been phoned in by Elvis from who-knows-where. Two stars to the right and straight on to morning. Elvis had always been a Lost Boy, if not Peter Pan himself.

Leticia was already standing, pushing back the studio chair, making way for him.

“I like that,” she said. “Ending my show on a sad note but with an upbeat tune. Paradox is what they call it. Makes for good tension on radio and in the thee-ay-ter. Miss Carole King. What an album Tapestry was. We are Woman, hear us roar. At least now and then. Here. I kept it warm for you.”

She wasn’t kidding. Leticia pushed the leatherette-upholstered chair his way. He knew the surface would be obscenely hot from her overflowing bulk.

Cocoon or womb? Sometimes Matt wondered which better described his show and his nightly workplace.

He donned his headphones and sank onto the chair, spun it to face the mike. No music. His show had no music to face, only faceless voices, the music of the night. Lone wolves howling in the dark.

Oh, wait. He had theme music. He waited for it to fade, and then only his voice conducted the orchestra of regret and fear and pain and hope that came cascading over the airwaves every night but Monday. The Midnight Hour. His. Two hours actually, it had become so popular. Would someone crash his party tonight now that the name of Vassar had been invoked? But Kitty O’Connor, the only one with nerve enough to masquerade on live radio, was dead meat now. Wasn’t she?

* With Kitty officially dead, Leticia didn’t linger after her show to protect him.

She headed home.

Matt fielded calls and touchy ethical questions and borderline schmaltz, his mind only half on his job. No one claiming to be Vassar phoned in. Not even anyone pretending to be someone else who could easily be Kitty O’Connor. Not even a bad Elvis impersonator. For a moment he wondered if Elvis was a rock-‘n’-roll Gospel guardian angel who had vanished once Matt’s personal demon was dead.

Whoa! Such speculation was not solid theology. And Elvis had faced plenty of his own demons, especially one falsely-named Colonel Tom Parker who had outlived him as obscenely long as he had plundered Elvis’s earnings and his artistic soul.

Kitty O’Connor as an Irish Colonel Parker, now that was a thought!

Meanwhile Matt had tired, sad, earnest voices to answer. He did the best he could while still caught in his own tired, sad, earnest confusion.