Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

Manx! I am not sure I can “do” either. But leave us not let Miss Midnight Louise know that! Like the Mystifying Max, misdirection is one of the few weapons I have left in a tricky, hostile world.

“So,” I say, “if you could hang around the New Millennium when you are not chatting up the Ma Barker gang for the move, it would help me out a lot.”

“And what will you be doing?’

“Fixing my Miss Temple’s personal and professional life, as usual,” I growl.

“She seems to have an inordinate amount of both, for a ginger-cream.”

I have never heard Miss Louise sound so . . . catty before.

“Just do your job. I will handle the delicate diplomatic bits.”

“Yes. I have glimpsed your delicate diplomatic bits and they leave a lot to be desired.”

That is Miss Midnight Louise these days. Ma Barker all over again.

Designing Man

“Thanks for coming,” Danny Dove greeted Matt at the door.

Matt wished that he was still so naive that he didn’t detect the inadvertent pun in that greeting.

The door Danny opened was one of a shining black enameled double set. This neighborhood was high-end and this Big White House (a domestic version of Hollywood’s Big White Set) was palatial. Still, Danny Dove, Temple’s bereaved friend and Las Vegas’s prime big-time show choreographer, stood in its doorway looking like death warmed over and fricasseed for good measure.

Matt felt uneasy, unsure quite how to take openly and obviously gay men like Danny. The church’s longtime “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy had put it crosier-deep in unaddressed issues about gay and pedophile priests. Who could hurl the first stone?

Matt the priest had been heroically virginal, playing by all the ancient rules. He was heterosexual, but he couldn’t disown his non-hetero seminary peers. Or non-seminary non-heterosexuals. Dogma was one thing. Real life was a lot more complicated, including his.

“How are you doing?” he asked Danny. Carefully.

“Rotten. Why else would I have asked you over?”

Matt didn’t mention his own resemblance to Danny’s recently dead significant other, Simon. He understood the need to clutch at a lost past. He still felt uncomfortable acting as a stand-in for a dead man, but his job wasn’t his own ease. Only the ease of others.

“Drink?” Danny asked.

Danny Dove was a sophisticated man. The toast of the Las Vegas Strip. A world-class choreographer. The best of his generation. Today, at high noon, he held his cocktail glass like Captain Hook had hoisted his metal claw. Part of him, but hated.

“Yeah,” Matt needed to roll with Danny’s needs before he could fully understand and address them.

“I always knew you were all right.” Danny headed for the cocktail cart.

Well, no. Matt had not always been all right, but he was getting there.

“To our mutual friend Temple,” Danny said, lifting his glass. “She tried to help.” He bowed his head over a major piece of Baccarat crystal.

Sometimes people needed the Eucharist. Sometimes some people needed St. Glenlivet more.

“I’m not sure why you called me,” Matt said.

“Raised Catholic, what else?”

“I’m not a priest anymore.”

“No, but . . . you feel like one, only as freaked out as I am.”

“Thanks. I think.”

“And. You look like Simon. You have his innocence. That’s what got him killed. Innocence. Tell me how to live in a world without innocence.”

“I can’t. I can’t live in it either.”

Danny sat, hard, on a white leather sofa. The whole house was a Big White Set from a thirties movie. Matt realized that anyone who didn’t fit into Here and Now invariably harked back to There and Then.

“I need a counselor,” Danny said. “I’ll go crazy with Simon gone like this. I’ll hurt someone, probably myself. I was raised Catholic, did you know?”

Danny had repeated himself, but Matt said no.

“If you guys don’t accept me, where’ll I go now?

“I accept you.”

“But do they accept you?”

“Maybe not. I haven’t asked yet.”

“So, you ask? You leave it up to them?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You’re supposed to be sure! You’re the goddamned religious nut.”

Matt held back a glib answer. Pain was a powerful force. Was he a freak, as Danny and Simon had felt in their own small, painful world? And if not, what was he?

Everyone wanted to be part of something.

He wanted to be part of Temple’s world. Part of that was Danny. A bigger part of that was what he felt for her, no matter what.

“So . . . Temple,” Danny said as if reading his mind. “You like her.”

“You could say that.”

“I can help you with that.”

And then Matt understood that the best thing for Danny right now was helping someone, in his view, worse off than he was. Like Matt himself. “How?”

“Lord! You don’t have the slightest idea about dealing with women.”

And a gay guy did? Maybe.

“So how far has it gone?” Danny was asking.

“I’m up against the great Max Kinsella.”

“Know about him. True love . . . and then love on the run. Temple’s a girl who likes to set her spikes into a groove and stay there.”

Matt sipped the expensive Scotch from the expensive glass. It tasted sharp and stung him.

“She’s loyal beyond belief,” he said.