Carole Douglas - Cat in a Midnight Choir

“What’s going on? Who’s that speed demon?” she demanded. For the first time her deep, dark voice trembled like her flesh.

“That’s my problem.”

“Drugs? Somebody’s after you?”

“No drugs. Just after me.”

The black motorcycle, a Kawasaki model aptly called the Ninja, swung in a circle and tilted closer and closer until it ringed Matt and Letitia into an invisible circle of containment.

“It sure does stir up a lot of hot air,” Letitia complained as her tangerine outfit expanded to blowfish proportions.

The Ninja revved and came whooshing by, forcing them to back step.

Matt circled Letitia, keeping between the motorcycle and her.

“Hey, man,” she objected, “don’t play the hero. I can take that thing. Who’d you think’d be left standing after a head-to-headlight?”

Matt laughed, his tension easing. “You’re addicted to counseling, you know that?”

“It’s cheaper than a lot of things. Oh, that machine is snortin’ now. Here comes El Toro.”

The dark motorcycle charged, cutting it even closer than before.

Matt tensed to pounce as it passed. Motorcycles were powerful, fast, and maneuverable, but they rode a very fine line of balance. If he could tip that balance he might be dragged over the asphalt, but the bike might skid, tip.

He lunged as the heat and sound roared at them like a dragon’s breath. Grabbing at the handlebar jerked him off his feet, sent him rolling on the asphalt without the protection of biker leathers.

Khakis and a linen blazer kept the asphalt from breaking through and he was up as fast as he was down, but fifteen feet away from Letitia.

The Ninja cut a close, wobbly circle; its rider was forced to throttle down and drag a booted foot on the ground to stabilize the bike.

Then it revved again and drove straight ahead, between Matt and Letitia.

He tried to lunge and grab once more, but only ended up smacking the red taillight good-bye. Letitia huffed out a protest.

He glanced at her. Still upright. Still all right.

The vanishing bike’s driver lifted a right hand off the handlebars and flourished something long and dangling like a trophy, or a scalp.

Matt ran toward Letitia.

“My beads!” she was bellowing. “That bastard ripped off my tribal beads.”

“Are you all right? Your neck?”

“The world’s worst Indian burn.” Letitia removed her palm from her nape and examined it in the glare of the streetlight. No blood. “Now I really need that bleeding Bloody Mary. And you’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”

The place was called Buff Daddy’s and the clientele was all black.

Rap and hip-hop twitched off the sound system, the rapid-fire rhythms and lyrics as relentless as musical machine-gun fire.

Matt made his Polish-blond way in Letitia’s wake to the corner table she commandeered like a petty dictator. The speakers were far enough away that you could hear someone talk if the language was English.

A tall, pipe-cleaner-skinny waitress with an awesome arrangement of interwoven dreadlocks took their orders. Matt joined Letitia in a Bloody Mary, suddenly reminded of another wise woman of color and size, this one from the musical South Pacific .

Her tangerine false fingernails curled around the tall thick glass of tomato juice and vodka as soon as it arrived.

“This is a three B. M. night,” she announced. “Glad you’re driving me home.”

Matt noticed that her chocolate complexion had grayed to the color of cold cocoa. “Then one’s my limit,” he said.

“Didn’t plan on getting you drunk and compliant anyway,” she chuckled, drinking from a straw that rode alongside the usual celery stalk. She twiddled the celery like a swizzle stick and winked. “Good drink for dieters.”

Matt just shook his head.

“No use playing innocent. What you got after you? The mob? Some crazed Elvis nut?”

“Elvis. That’s what I thought the motorcyclist was at first. And a motorcycle did follow me one night…a motorcycle cop — maybe.” He shook his head again, wanting to clear away the biker roar he still heard, still felt. “After tonight, I have no doubts. It’s my stalker.”

Letitia made a face, shook her celery playfully. “Not this kind of stalk, I guess. Stalker. What gender we talking about here, Matt?”

This time he laughed as he shook his head. “I didn’t think anybody could get me to see the bright side of this…Female.”

“Ooh, well, then.”

“If you say ‘relax and enjoy it,’ I’ll steal your celery.”

“Nobody steals one more thing off me tonight.” Her mock defense softened into a radio cajole. “Tell me about this Leather Lady on wheels, Matt.”

“First off, I didn’t know she had wheels. I’d seen a motorcyclist following me, but like you I’d assumed it was male.”

“You thought it was really Elvis! Admit it!”

“Well, it did occur to me. He was a speed freak. Things had been pretty weird, especially at the Elvis impersonator competition.” Matt actually nibbled his celery stick.

He wanted to remain sober, after all. No, he didn’t. For the first time in his life he didn’t, and he couldn’t get drunk. He had to drive. The story of his life.

“So how’d you pick this freako up? Through the show?”

“No. She came first.”

“Now, no dirty talk. I might get outa control.”

“Dirty talk?”

“How long were you a priest? Never mind. Where’d she come from?”

“Out of the blue. Looking for another man. She thought she’d use me to lead her to him. She seems to have gotten stuck on me.”

“Like an old LP that gets in one groove and won’t jump out of it.” Letitia had drunk half her Bloody Mary and was working on the celery stick. “That pepper vodka really gives this bite!” She waved at the waitress for a follow up. “So. She’s not the usual groupie.”

“Definitely not. The second time I ‘met’ her, she cut me.”

“You’re not talking high school snub here?”

“Razor. Superficial, but a lot of blood loss.”

“Jesus!”

He kept silent, listening to the piped-in rapper excoriate “ho’s” and “hot mamas.” Why’d anybody want this as aural wallpaper? It was like listening to Hitler. Except nobody here was really listening, which made it even worse. Cultural nihilism was easy to ignore until it got into the communal bloodstream and then it lashed out and bit.

“Jesus,” Letitia whispered this time. “Where’d she cut you?”

Matt put a hand to his right side. Didn’t mention it was where the spear had pierced the God-man she’d just invoked without much thinking about it.

Catholic kink might be a little out of Letitia’s line, as much as she knew about human nature when it came softly over an anonymous radio line.

“Poor baby!” She was now halfway through the second Bloody Mary and growing a little unfocused.

That was all right with Matt. If he was finally going to confide the whole story to someone, he’d prefer a slightly tiddly confessor.

Her sympathy, her distance from the whole conundrum that was Kitty/Max/Temple made Letitia the perfect big sister. He could even picture her in a habit, with rosary beads instead of the African trade variety. Now, that would really horrify her.

“Say, Matt, you’re doing okay here.” She looked around the funky bar.

“What you do mean?”

“For a sheltered white boy.”

He didn’t bother to tell her that he’d haunted black Baptist churches for the music for years. If he hadn’t become color-blind, he’d become color-immune.

“You’re so strange. Way ahead of the rest in some ways, way retarded in others. Must be the priest thing. Anyway, what does this witch-woman want?”