Carole Douglas - Cat in a Midnight Choir

“I think she really wants to destroy the man she was looking for and can’t find. So she’ll settle for me.”

“She’ll kill you?”

“No. Not physically. That would be too kind.”

“Gee, Matt. You gotta remember you’re dealing with Bloody Mary here. I am feeling no pain from my necklace rip-off, okay? But I am also feeling no pain, so ’splain it to me in teeny-tiny syllables of one word. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah. Okay. She wants my history. My past. Everything that was sacred in it. She wants my priesthood.”

“I don’t get it.”

“What if somebody came to you and demanded that you do the one thing that most undid whatever you were, or everybody at the radio station would be killed? And that person could do it.”

“Wait. I’m trying to think what would take that much away from me. Being made to do something would.” Letitia’s face suddenly sobered, grew ashen. “I wish you hadn’t asked me that, Matt.”

“I’m sorry. You wanted to know. I —”

Her extravagantly manicured hands cupped her exquisite face, which wore a mask of slack horror. “I hadn’t thought of that for thirty years.” Her eyes interrogated him. “How’d you know, Matt. How’d you know?”

“I don’t. I don’t know anything.”

“Someone comes and stirs up the worst hurt, the worst hate in your whole life.” Her hands entwined, twisted, the nails clawing into the dark backs until dead white moons appeared there. “The ones who call at night. Call us. They all have hurts like that. We make them feel better for a while, but we don’t really cure anything for good. Only until tomorrow…when we talk to a whole new set who are all the same, really. God, if Someone came for me, she’d bring memories of Him back.”

“God?”

“No! The devil. My own particular devil, whom I will now drown in a third Bloody Mary.” She lifted a dagger-nailed forefinger, signaled the waitress. “Tell me about your devil.”

For some reason, Matt felt obliged to distract Letitia from the monster in her past that his trouble had raised from the dead. He was a good counselor. He would sacrifice himself to prevent anyone around him from suffering. Just open a vein and he would bleed tomato juice and pepper vodka.

He understood how utterly Kitty O’Connor had trapped him.

“She wants my vows,” he said. “My virtue, I guess. She wants me to sleep with her.”

Letitia blinked. “I heard a hundred sob stories from girls up against it, but I never heard a guy complain.”

“I’m not a guy. I’m an ex-priest. I made promises of chastity.”

“Ex, baby. That’s all history.”

“No, it’s my choice now. It’s a sin outside of marriage.”

Letitia snorted.

“In my religion it is. Especially for me, who was holier than holy.”

“Listen, plenty of priests have made the news —”

“They are not me and I am not them. I was a faithful servant, okay? Think of me as a monogamous married man. I love my wife. I’ve been faithful to her. And some woman comes along and insists that betraying my wife is the only way for my wife, and me, to live.”

“That’s sorta like the reverse of that movie a few years back, where the rich dude offers a couple a million if the wife will sleep with him. People sleep with the wrong people every day. What’s the big deal, really?”

“When it’s wrong.”

Letitia was suddenly silent. Her hands twisted. “Yeah. Sometimes it’s wrong, no question.” Sweat jeweled her forehead like a diadem.

“Letitia. You asked. If it’s too…”

“Too what, Matt? Too big of a problem for Ambrosia? Too hard for a black Baptist to understand a white priest?”

“Letitia. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have tried to unload this on you. I was weak.”

“You? Weak? You don’t have a headlock on weak.” She wiped a hand over her mouth, painted the color of a hot pink camellia. The lipstick washed off onto her palm, like a stigma. “It’s abuse, that’s what it is. Plain and simple. Doesn’t matter how old you are, who’s doing it, why. Forcing is abuse. You gotta resist. I didn’t, but you gotta resist.”

“Letitia.”

“That’s me. The lusty virgin. Pretending I’m gonna get you drunk? Who am I kidding. I couldn’t ever get myself drunk enough for it. Not after…that. Oprah’s not the only one, just the most, what, public, successful? Does she ever still get the night sweats, I wonder. Is that why her weight never stays off? Yeah, we’re worldly. We know the score. We are too hip to hurt. Too old. Too successful. Huh!” She swiped the sweat on her face away with the back of her hand, streaking the exquisite glittering makeup, the mask.

Matt leaned his chin on his balled fists, watched her intently across the table. The music hummed like a buzz saw, a hive of venomous hornets. The music threatened, abused, and everybody ate it up like it was normal. No, just common. Not normal.

“That’s why you can really help me,” Matt said. “What can I do? You saw how she threatened you for just walking out of the radio station with me.”

“Was that it? The bitch was jealous of me?” Letitia started laughing. “If she only knew —” Tears replaced the sweat beads on her cheeks. “Oh, Matt. You are my project, boy. I am not going to let anybody take away from you what they took from me when I was just a kid. Just a kid. I guess you’re just a kid, too, in some ways.”

“If I give in, everybody around me’s safe. I know she’ll keep her word, because she knows that their safety will sear me as much as their danger if the price is right. Or wrong.”

“She’s mean. She’s bad. She might do anything, right?”

He nodded.

“Then you have to be ready to give in.”

He drew away, sheer repugnance pushing him back like a fist.

“No. But on your terms. Your innocence is her price, right?”

He nodded.

“Then you have to lose your innocence. Even if she holds a gun to your mother’s head, then you can give in and she hasn’t won what she really wanted. She’s not the first one! That’s what they want, to get to you before you can say yes or no, to make you a fool forever, hopeless, weak, stupid!”

“But it would be a sin.”

“So sin! That’s better than being a victim. A martyr. Sin and get what — confessed, and it’s all gone. Don’t you believe that? Isn’t that what Catholics believe?”

“Yes, but —”

“Yes, but. I didn’t have any ‘yes, but’ when I was seven years old. I just did the best I could and it wasn’t good enough. You’re older. You’re smarter. You outsmart that wicked woman. You put yourself in a condition that whatever she gets from you, it isn’t what she wants. And don’t you dare get so damned nice that you fail to protect yourself. You owe it to every kid who never had a chance to do better than that. You take away what she wants before she has a chance to get it. Get it?”

Matt nodded numbly. Letitia was right. If someone holds a weapon at your head, disarm the weapon. Especially when the weapon is yourself, your better instincts, your conscience, your integrity.

“I get it, Letitia. Thanks.”

“Okay.” She sat back, gathered the externals that were Letitia and Ambrosia and his producer together. “You want my extra celery stick?”

“Thanks.”

“I’d help you out myself, you understand, but it’s better for our professional relationship —”

“You’re absolutely right.”

“You have any…candidates?”

“A few. Maybe.”

“Honey, just look at the nightly groupies.”

He frowned.

“I know the Elvis shtick isn’t for you. But there must be a nice girl somewhere —”

“It’d have to be absolutely secret. To protect…her.”