"Is love always such a bloody ingredient?"
"Okay. Like English muffins need honey. That's something warm and gooey."
"Why food comparisons?"
" 'Cause we're eating? Or were." She grinned at their empty plates. "Seriously, what makes you think this guy is a celebrity?"
"He keeps talking about what everybody expects of him. Even mentioned that his wife's body is famous!"
"Before or after the baby?"
"Apparently both."
"Galloping galoshes! Do you suppose he could be--wow--Bruce Willis? In Vegas to open another Planet Hollywood or whatever?"
Temple was truly excited, but Matt knew he looked blank.
"You do know who Bruce Willis is?" she asked.
"Yeah . . . some sweaty actor in action movies. Die Hard Sixteen"
"But you don't know he's married to Demi Moore?"
"Who?"
Temple shook her head. " Vanity Fair magazine cover girl, nude and ninety-nine months pregnant. Starred in Striptease postbaby."
Matt shook his head. "Never heard of her; never seen her, and not sorry."
"Good God, man! Don't you watch Hot Heads?"
"Not before ... or since your pal Crawford Buchanan became a stringer for it. When would I watch it? Not at six-thirty, when I'm on my way to work. When it's rerun at ten-thirty, I'm on-line, so to speak."
"But you do know what time it's broadcast! I call that a serious slip into popular culture, Padre."
Matt found himself smiling a bit sheepishly. "When Buchanan was bugging us at the Hell-oween Haunted Homestead, I had Electra tape the show for a few nights to see if anything ran."
"And did it?"
"No. I think Buchanan was more interested in heckling you than getting footage. Midnight Louie was to be seen slinking out of camera range during the vermin-activists' segment. That did run."
"Too bad. Wouldn't you know it? You look like a movie star and I sassed Crawford back, and he wouldn't use either one of us."
"I wish you wouldn't say that."
"What?"
"My looks."
"It's true. Pretty people get on television more, and move up in jobs faster and get paid more."
"Talk to ConTact about that."
"You must have some fancy advanced degree after all those years in seminary. I bet you haven't even tried finding a position in keeping with your background."
"I thought we were here to talk about my mysterious promiscuous caller."
"That's why you're here. I might want to talk about something else. Conversation is a two-way street, you know. I must admit an anonymous promiscuous caller with claims to celebrity status is a lot more interesting than finding lucrative employment for an ex-priest."
Matt finished his beer. "Look. I want to settle this question of my past, of whether my stepfather's dead or not. That was the reason I came to Las Vegas: to find Cliff Effinger.
Everything else, including my so-called career path, will have to wait until that's settled."
Temple nodded seriously. "Meanwhile, the hold-body-and-soul-together, easy-to-get low-paying job is eating at your ethical soul."
"Just this one caller. I could blow the whistle on him; refuse to take his calls. Then, every time I pick up the paper and some male celebrity has committed suicide --granted that doesn't happen a lot--I can blame myself."
"Is he the only one of your clients who's been such a pain in the principles?"
"Oh, some are heartbreakers. The abused women who never walk away, the unwanted old who call mostly for company. Some are pains, especially the compulsives. I can handle them. But it's hard to be sympathetic to an obviously privileged guy whose problem is getting too much sex when--"
"You've never gotten any."
"I was going to say, when so many needy people are stuck in horrifying situations because they haven't the money to escape them. There's nothing personal in this."
"Then why are you blushing?"
"I'm . . . not judging the man's sins, only his sincerity."
"There you go, turning big vague concepts like sin into word games and turning your 'client'
into 'the man.' Methinks he's getting under your skin. You did call me here to get my opinion, didn't you?"
Matt tried to keep from squirming on the hard wooden seat. Right now Temple was making him feel ten years old and under the thumb of Sister Linus John. And all because she had mentioned the unmentionable . .. sex. As in: his lack of it.
"I just don't understand where he's coming from. Confession is not even called the same thing it was when I was a child, and fewer people use the Sacrament of Reconciliation now that it's face-to-face and so . .. unblaming.
"Maybe you don't understand where I'm coming from. Literally. St. Stanislaus in Chicago is an old-country parish so far behind the times masses were said in Polish once Latin was abolished, but a Latin mass is still said there every Sunday to this day. They even imported a Polish priest so none of this 'modernization' would infect the parish. I may have grown up there in the sixties and seventies, but it was as if I were in the forties and fifties.
"So I take sin seriously, and especially sexual sin. It's different in Western Europe, France, Italy, or even in the rest of the Americas, where priestly chastity is an often-flouted convention, not a conviction. But Eastern European Catholics--and the Irish too--are fanatically nineteenth-century Catholic, with zero tolerance for sexual immorality."
"Is that why Pope John Paul the Second is Polish? Isn't he the first non-Italian in decades?"
"In centuries," Matt said. "The church grinds even more exceedingly slow than justice. That's why an Iron Curtain cardinal became the first non-Italian pope; he was stoutly out of touch with modern times and mores; he was more nineteenth-century than twentieth because of his isolation and having had to fight for the right to practice religion in a godless state. The Curia will never let a loose cannon like Pope John the Twenty-third slip through again."
Matt could see that his reference to Pope John meant nothing to Temple. She hadn't been born during the brief "open window" tenure of the late, lamented pope of ecumenism. Religion could still be as deep a dividing chasm as race or gender.
Temple was thoughtfully sipping her wine, which was almost untouched.
"You know, someone like your caller, the Don Juan type, usually is afraid of real intimacy."
"After all those ... conquests?" Matt couldn't keep the incredulity out of his voice.
"If you can believe him." Temple smiled wryly. "That's another thing about Don Juan types.
And you said it: conquests. That's what it is for these guys, like winning at poker, or getting a hole in one or ... oh my, listen to me! I'm knee-deep in double entendres despite myself."
Matt frowned. He hadn't been listening that hard and had evidently missed some subtlety.
"What do you mean that 'conquests' are the key to it?"
"From his point of view, proof of virility. From the woman's point of view, proof of attractiveness. He may win the one-night stand, but even a professional party girl likes to think that there's something special about her, that the union was more than just a scorecard. Unless she's a competitive player too, of course. And then you have the duel of titanic egos."
"If that's the case, what's sex got to do with it?"
"Aha! By Jove--a very promiscuous god, by the way, the great-granddaddy of promiscuous gods--he's got it! I don't think that sexual record-setting has anything really to do with sex. See, that's your hang-up. You're thinking this guy's having all this lurid fun. And he isn't. Every conquest is a failure, because there are more women out there he hasn't converted. Everyone has to adore him, and prove it. His charisma has to triumph over and over. Woman after woman."