Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

Matt sat on the prewarmed chair, rolled it closer to the table, donned the headset, wiped his wet palms on his khaki-clad thighs.

He had to let his anxiety go. It would show in his voice, the tightness in his throat, and he was here to ease anxiety, not spread it. Mr. Midnight, the radio persona, settled on him like a gossamer cloak. His body slipped into a posture both relaxed and alert. He kept a notepad and pen at his right to jot down the callers’ names, issues, key words. That cool fat pen barrel between his fingers felt like an alabaster cigar. He doodled some loops. Temple’s first name. That was the usual. He kept and destroyed the sheets each night. If they married and she took his last name, she’d sound like a place of worship. Temple Devine. That didn’t strike him as out of place.

If they married . . . if Max had waltzed himself totally out of the picture with this last escapade—who was he kidding? Himself, of course. He wanted to talk to Max so badly because he needed to find out the man had done Temple wrong. Temple Kinsella just did not have the same ring as Temple Devine. Not that she’d take anybody’s name but her own. Still. He wrote the new combo. He was literally loopy over her, had been for months, but hadn’t felt free to feel it.

And so Matt did what he did with the disembodied voices who called five nights a week to ask him for instant on-air advice and comfort. He imagined how sad Temple would feel if she thought every loyal bone in her body had been devoted for two years to a creepy secret stalker.

And, loopy or not, Matt did not, deep in his way-too-honest soul, want Max Kinsella to be a guilty man.

Riding Shotgun

“Hide-ho, honey!” Ambrosia greeted Matt as he stepped out of the glass booth at two A.M. She was lofting his cell phone like Perry Mason revealing Exhibit A. “This mockin’ bird don’t sing. Not one little ringy-dingy outa this cell phone. Daddy is not gonna get either one of us a diamond ring. No, sir. Is that bad?”

Matt reclaimed his cell phone with a sigh. “I’m probably taking this way too seriously.”

“You do have that tendency, sweet cheeks. Hey. Ambrosia’ll buy you a drink to wind down with.”

“Thanks. Another time. I’m sorry I kept you up so late. I need to, ah, gather my notes. I’ll leave in a bit.”

“You vant to be alone,” she accused in a dead-on Garbo voice. “Sure thing. Curtis here is putting ole WCOO on digital autopilot until morning. Don’t linger too long brooding, my man. It’s bad for the face. Trust me.”

Matt stood dreaming on the other side of the door to the waiting room long after Ambrosia had sailed out like Cleopatra’s Barge heading over to anchorage as a famous restaurant at Caesar’s Palace.

Talking to the people out there in Radioland had given him a sense of perspective. They were all trying so hard. Trying to stay afloat in this down-sizing economy. Trying to keep love in their lives. Trying to make sure their children didn’t feel the losses they had, although that was always impossible. No matter how much a parent tried to “make up,” there was always some new psycho-social stress to make kids’ lives hard. Tragically, it was often caused by the parents’ own anxiety.

Matt breathed deeply, and allowed as he didn’t control a single thing in his life and the larger world beyond it. Just let go of trying to insist that God—or the Fates if you were a secular person—would ensure that things would go your way.

By the time he stepped out into the tepid Las Vegas night air, he was at semi-peace with himself.

His fancy new silver car shone like a slick magazine ad under one of the parking lot lamps. All alone. It had the same sleek mechanical beauty of the Hesketh Vampire motorcycle that had originally belonged to Max Kinsella, but Matt would have pushed his new car off a cliff if he thought it would make Temple feel one sixteenth of a scintilla better about the ugliness Carmen Molina was about to drop on her.

Turned out he didn’t have to sacrifice his car.

A low, throaty growl drew his attention to something glinting outside the wash of parking lot lights. A motorcycle. Not the Vampire. Flashier but oh-so-familiar.

Matt edged over warily, like a kid to a high-end bike on Christmas morning. He knew that bike, that figure in glitzy leathers, that shining black helmet as round as a pumpkin on Halloween.

The rider revved the engine as his leather-gloved hands wrung the bike’s handlebars. Matt approached. The rider tossed him a helmet that had been tethered to the back.

“Rock or roll?” he asked with something of a Southern accent.

Matt shook his head, not sure if he needed to clear it or to derail a rueful laugh. This was the motorcycle that had shadowed him during those dark nights when someone sinister had seemed to be on his tail light, his motorcycle’s tail lights. When he’d ridden the Vampire he’d gotten from Electra after Max Kinsella had let her have it.