Cat In A Crimson Haze

Chapter 42

Templetation

Temple wasn't sure which part of the sight that greeted her when Matt opened his door was more startling: the vision of a docile Midnight Louie in Matt's arms, or Matt's intriguingly bare upper torso that Louie was obscuring all too effectively.

"I called because, after moaning all the way home about Midnight Louie's apparent defection, I figured you would be relieved to know," Matt said. ''Not to worry. Apparently, he's come home."

''Why to your place, and not mine?"

Matt scratched Louie under the chin while Temple practically purred. Ah, the advantages of being a cuddly kitty cat.

"Maybe," Matt said, "it was there, and maybe he forgot which floor you were on after his prolonged absence. The bathroom window's still open for Caviar."

"Midnight Louise," Temple corrected him. "I think it's kinda cute."

"I wonder if Louie does." Matt regarded the cat, who blinked solemnly at his scrutiny. ''He's one Zen dude; we'll never know what he's thinking. Maybe he's here reclaiming territory a foreign cat had tainted, or maybe he just knew I had a particularly rough day."

Matt bent to put Louie on his own four feet again.

''Cats can be comforting, when they want to be," Temple agreed. "You want me to take him back to my place?"

"No." Matt had straightened again and so had his expression.

Temple watched Louie stalk around the sparsely furnished living room, sniffing this and that.

She was trying not to feel flustered and failing miserably.

For one thing, she and Matt were both so undressed, and not ready for it. She had rushed up to see Louie barefoot, wearing a terrycloth romper. Matt had obviously been in bed when Louie arrived, and had time to pull on only trousers in honor of her imminent arrival.

Why hadn't he pulled on a t-shirt while he was at it?

Sure, she had seen him in swim trunks by the pool, but that was outdoors and public. This was indoors and . . . intimate.

It didn't help that Matt looked so good without clothes.

Louie jumped on the sofa and began sniffing all the corners, no doubt discerning the traces of his new namesake. Temple wished she could smell motivations as easily.

Matt went over to evict him then turned back to Temple. "I know it's late, but I thought we needed to talk."

"Sure." Talk was cheap, if nothing else in human relationships was.

Temple edged over to the couch. They both stood awkwardly before it. At night, with the room so bare and the overhead light so bald, Matt's living room felt like an empty bus station, impersonal and chilly.

"Sit down." Matt followed his own advice and sat first.

Temple perched on the adjacent cushion. Lord, she was acting like an idiot!

"I went to the morgue today," Matt began. He laughed at his own opening line. "You're a bad influence. I never used to get involved in such macabre matters. Anyway, I wanted to make sure that the dead man they found at the Phoenix was my stepfather."

''And?" Temple was relieved that things were back to normal and they were discussing less stressful things like bodies and murder, even if the body in question was related to Matt.

He shook his head. ''I expected sheet-covered gurneys or stainless steel drawers, like in a horror movie. Instead, they have this Viewing room,' a cubicle actually. It's about as homey as the visitors' room at the jail. Beige walls and a picture window with a short drape over it. They pull the curtain and the star of the matinee is lying before you, actually several feet below, on a gurney, covered by a sheet to the neck, like he was sleeping. It's the oddest feeling in the world to look down on the dead."

''Especially on someone you knew."

Matt eyed her intently. "That's just it. I don't know if I knew him."

"What do you mean? Wasn't that why you went to the: morgue, to settle this once and for all?"

"Yes. But I should have known better. He's escaped me again."

"You mean the corpse isn't Cliff Effinger's? Molina will have a cow."

"Hold on, Molina already knows about this."

"She does? This changes the whole complexion of the Goliath heist."

"No, it doesn't. I said I don't know if it's Effinger. . .That means I can't tell. I can't identify him."

"Of course you can. This is the man who made you and your mother's life hell for years. How can you forget a face like that?"

"Temple, you don't realize how death changes people, especially their faces. I should have known better. I've anointed the sick at the instant of death, after all. Our faces, our features, they're merely muscular . . . masks. When the attitudes and tensions that form them leave the body, so does the familiarity. In death, the face elongates, and gravity pulls the skin, even the eyes, to the side. It's instant and impressive. Life is gone, as if the Master Puppeteer had loosened all the strings at once. The more the strains of life have distorted the face, the greater the change."

"Gruesome! Most of the dead people I've seen, except for funeral home visitations, have been people I didn't know when they were alive. And all those people on television shows waltz in and identify the body just like that."

"You see my problem? I was so focused on finding Effinger I forgot about morbid transformation. And I haven't seen him for seventeen years. I didn't have a prayer of making a credible identification. Close the curtain and call it quits."

''It's like with Max," Temple said slowly. ''You'll never know." Only Matt was facing lost hate, not love.

Matt shrugged. "Maybe that's better. Maybe that's God's punishment for my unforgiving need for vengeance."

" Max's disappearance isn't punishment for anything. Maybe God isn't that interested in you.

Sorry, is that blasphemy?"

Matt's laugh carried only a touch of rue. "No, that's good old secular reality, and I deserved it. This theological angst of mine must be wearing. I can't stop looking for my stepfather, and if I have to start with a stranger's body, I mean to find out who he-was and why he carried Effinger's I.D. I've discovered you can't drop unfinished business. That's why I wanted to talk to you tonight."

Temple waited, still nervous, while Louie prowled the perimeter.

Matt angled himself to face her more directly, so their knees--hers bare, his not--almost touched. His arm lay behind her along the top of the sofa's back cushions. She felt a little surrounded, by his seriousness as much as his position. Now she understood the lack of a shirt.

Baring his body was an unconscious metaphor for baring his soul. She wished she had a seatbelt; she had a feeling this was going to be a Bette-Davis-style bumpy ride.

"A lot has happened in the past twenty-four hours, but I realized something," he said, "when I was standing there in that bizarre cubicle yesterday afternoon looking down on that , dead body."

''About yourself?"

''That, and about you."

"Oh, great. I better get a different perfume. That's not the sort of ambiance it's supposed to evoke." Temple's fingernail was nervously tapping her teeth before she realized it.

"I know it's macabre, but you're not exactly unconnected with that scene." Matt's smile was self-mocking again. "What I realized is that I've been using my personal crises to avoid you, just the opposite of what I told you, and told myself."

"Yup. That 'Poison' has got to go. And I love the bottle, too."

"You're hiding behind humor again," he accused mildly, ' "but that's one of your most charming habits."

"Really? You think I'm charming?" Temple was pleased, even if she didn't think she was charming.

"I think more than that. I've been thinking a lot about that night on the desert, a lot about you, about . . . touching you again."

Here it is. Temple thought with despair, her nails picking at the lettuce-edged hem of her shorts, the moment I've been hoping for, and I'm going to sit here paralyzed with pleasure and fear, then say something dumb, or semi-funny, or say nothing at all, which will be the worst thing of all to do. Charming old me.

But this wasn't her scene; Matt was directing this one. She realized suddenly that playing stage manager gave her a sense-of control she needed to function. Here, she couldn't be sure where Matt was heading--he wanted her madly; he was giving her up for Lent. This was her big opening night, the possible beginning of a real relationship with Matt, and she had a bad case of stage fright.

"Am I scaring you?" he asked.

Temple shook her head forced herself to speak. "No. Never. I'm scaring me. I do it all the time."

"Funny. I never noticed. Too busy being me. Temple, I know you've gotten a few clues, but I'm kind of a mess. You're the bravest woman I know, but are you sure you want rush in where even archangels fear to tread?"

''Brave? Me?"

He nodded. ''In every way it counts. Mentally, emotionally, spiritually."

"I'm not . . . spiritual."

"I didn't say religious. We're all spiritual, under the skin. And sexual."

Uh oh.

Matt shifted position on the sofa. Temple tried not to jump. She succeeded.

"Okay," he said.

He was laying all this out very logically, like the good teacher he was. Temple wasn't fooled.

Homework was coming due. She listened intently as he went on.

"You have to realize that you're dealing with an overage but classically confused adolescent male. You know the home life I grew up in, the abuse. You don't know how deeply that undermines self-esteem. No matter that my grades were good in school, my behavior preternaturally perfect, that the abuse didn't scar me, that my looks were above average. To me, all that stuff outside the home was a lie. When people said I was smart, or well-behaved or handsome, I didn't believe them, because I knew how I really deserved to be treated no matter what I did or was. I hated their praise. It struck me as phony. My looks I hated worst of all. I wished for zits, buck teeth. I knew that--inside--I was really the ugly picture of Dorian Gray in the attic."

"That's terrible! Horrible. That's like an anorectic, who has what every woman in the world nowadays is brainwashed to desire, supreme slimness, and still sees herself as fat in the mirror when she's skeletal."

"Same issue, different approach. I hated it when girls, even some of the lay teachers at school, started cooing over my looks."

"You became a priest because you didn't believe you were handsome?"

"No, it's more complicated than that. I didn't have a decent role model for sexual relationships. There was the dirty little secret of the violence at home. I was mostly terrified of becoming like him, Cliff Effinger. To me, sex was violence. The physical outlet of martial arts let me glimpse the rage beneath my gold-star deportment. I didn't want to risk a sexual involvement, because I might find rage there too. Most of all, I never wanted to have children, never wanted to risk doing what was done to me to someone else."

''People don't usually become what they hate."

"Except in cases of abuse. There are three routes for a child of abuse: become a perpetual victim, become a perpetrator and victimize others; overcome the past and do neither. The last path is the least taken, because the early patterning is so unconscious, so impossible to overcome. I'm right to fear my own rage."

''But you understand the process so well; you help others with it."

"Knowledge isn't everything. I'm still surprising myself: Look at what I did to this place when I heard Effinger might be dead."

Temple looked around the restored but barren room. "You damaged things, not yourself or others."

"Brave new Temple." Matt looked down, then took her hand, the one that was still worrying at her hem. "When I saw you take that in stride, I really got scared."

Oh, Temple thought, this is so mature. This is such important stuff. And, oh, rats, Temple thought again. Maybe Matt is right. Maybe this is too much for me. I'm walking wounded myself.

"So," he said, "the priesthood saved me from the family demons. I could hide from women and children, yet serve them, care for them from a distance. My real father vanished, my 'fake'

father was a monster, but the parish priests were my ersatz fathers, and so encouraging of my vocation. By becoming one of them, I could become perfect as my heavenly Father is perfect, to paraphrase the New Testament. No one would think it odd that I avoided sex; it was part of the job description. The priesthood was a great place to hide out, and everybody praised me lavishly for my choice, especially since I was so good looking, they said. Even that became palatable as long as I didn't use it."

"When did it fall apart?''

"When I grew up, grew more confident in my ability to function in an abuse-free environment, I started analyzing more than my spiritual state of grace, and my outward actions.

I found some pretty corrosive, un-Christian buried emotions. By the time I applied to leave, I had built a case that clearly showed misguided motives. That's why celibacy was no problem for me.

I'd learned to deflect even the mildest sexual message. A lot of priests are casual nowadays about wearing the collar, but I clung to it. It was my wedding ring to Mother Church; it warned women off."

"And challenged some, I bet, even some Catholic women."

"Teenage girls, and older women. I was the pet of the flower society ladies, who were all over sixty. Still, I kept it harmless. The last thing I was going to do was take advantage of it."

"Poor things," Temple said, thinking of all those starry-eyed women mooning over Father Devine, who was so nice and so handsome and so impossibly unattainable, by vocation and inclination. No, not by inclination, by upbringing.

"I agree. What a waste of everybody's energy, including mine."

"So now what do you do?"

"You asked that at the tacqueria after I administered the anointing to Blandina Tyler, and my answer is still as muddy. I'm trying to settle my anger with the old days. You're right, given my lifelong abstinence and fear, I'm finding celibacy a hard habit to break. It's so safe, isn't it? So removed. I can even feel superior in a secular way, because of AIDS."

"And," Temple added, "your religion looks on most sexual behavior as sinful in some way, as far as I can tell."

"That's another reason I left. I was having a tough time reconciling what some of my parishioners did--good people trying to lead decent lives--with the letter of church law.

American priests have a particularly hard time with that; that's why we're called liberal."

"So you still don't know what you'll do?"

"No."

And he was still holding Temple's hand, which she was holding motionless. In fact, she was holding her entire body and mind in a state of suspended animation.

"No,'' Matt repeated, looking her hard in the eyes, "but now I at least know what I want to do."

Temple tried not to swallow, which was so obvious. "What?" she asked softly in a voice as hoarse as if she had laryngitis.

He answered with another question. "Would you ever consider... I'm not used to all these euphemisms ... sleeping with me, making love?"

"That's easy. I have considered it. Often." Temple saw more in his eyes than the surface question. "But whether I would actually do it would depend."

"On what?"

"On what's going on with you, and with me, and with us."

"You wouldn't have to be married . . . ?"

She shook her head. "I never have been. I've had hopes. Especially with Max. I made it out of high school a virgin, and was most disappointed about that. I mean, it wasn't the done thing, even for Midwestern girls, who are a bit socially retarded. There was a guy my freshmen year in college. We were both desperate to become worldly wise, and didn't have much chance of that with each other. But we liked one another and accomplished the landmark initiation without any trauma. I had a solid but unexciting long-term relationship with a man in Minneapolis, before we agreed to split. Then along came Max."

Matt lifted her hand, kissed the top of it.

Temple's suspended animation melted like milk chocolate in a hot saucepan.

"Max was your Real Thing," he said, gently prodding the past out of her, as she had nudged it out of him.

"So I thought. I mean, he swept into the Guthrie for a weekend stand and he swept me off my feet--literally--and out of there so fast it made my whole family's heads spin. It was so flattering, and exciting, and, God knows, I was in a rut there. But when you're dropped to ground after that kind of rush, the downfall is brutal."

Matt kissed her hand again. His brown eyes were warm with empathy and understanding and the intense fascination of dawning infatuation. No one had seen him look like this, Temple thought. No one but her.

"That's my problem," she said. ''You're not the only one with a conscience."

"You'd think I was," he broke in with the self-deprecating humor that was surfacing nowadays.

''You see. Matt, I've been kind of mad at myself for being attracted to you from the first. I thought maybe I was being shallow, reacting just to surface, or I was on the rebound from Max.

And I felt guilty, like I was married to Max, and shouldn't be looking at another man so soon. But I've been looking, oh yes, and kicking myself, which is really punishing, considering my high-heel collection. And now that I know more about you, I can also worry if I'm interested because you're sexually inexperienced, and I can be in control, which is ego-building after the Max let-down, and if it's fair to follow up on my inclinations."

He frowned. "Relationships are hell, aren't they?"

Temple laughed. "You got that right. At best, we're all hoping to be honest and trying to be true. But we're only human."

"So," he said, "you haven't answered my major question."

"Women aren't used to saying these things first. It's more flattering that way. But, speaking from raw instinct, without letting scruples get in the way, yes, I'd sleep with you, especially if it didn't involve much sleeping. Besides, I feel an obligation."

He looked shocked for the first time during this rather shocking conversation. "Obligation?"

"Now that I know so much about you, I feel it's my duty to ease you into the real world. I wouldn't want you getting hurt by somebody else."

"I'm an act of charity? I don't think I'm flattered."

"Then we're even," Temple said.

"This is . . . hypothetical," he added. ''I don't honestly know how I'll react to the pressure of an intimate adult relationship. The intensity of the feelings, the sensations, scare me sometimes."

"Yup. Typical adolescent male. Tell you what." Temple gently withdrew her hand from his.

Matt looked worried. He should. She was having another one of her bright ideas.

"Why don't we zip back into our handy-dandy time machine and go back to post-prom night.

It's the last summer before we go off to college and nobody in the world is bothering us. But we're a couple of square kids from Podunk and we do have a few primitive rules. Just necking, no petting. Just nice romantic kissy-face, which girls are crazy about anyway, so you want to learn it right for the future anyway, and we have all summer to practice."

''Won't that be . . . hard on you?"

''It should be hard on you, and then some. But it's been done before and hasn't hurt anyone.

This is the nineties. Fools don't rush in like they used to, and, besides, getting there is all the fun.

Believe me."

Temple finally fulfilled one of her favorite fantasies. She edged closer and put her arms around Matt's neck, gazing deeply and playfully into his eyes. She wet her forefinger and ran it smoothly over his lips, upper, then lower.

"I promise," she swore tenderly in the instant before their: mouths met, "to be gentle."