“That birthday was more like the end of the misguided beginning for me,” Matt mused, referring to when he’d left his vocation. “And the older Chicago neighborhoods and suburbs are hardly high-rise.” He eyed Temple uneasily. “I have to warn you. Carl Sandberg the poet was right: Chicago was always a brawling, sprawling city. The immigrant ethnics fiercely battled each other. No Irish priest would serve a Polish or German community church. There’s still surviving prejudice.”
“Good thing I’m a mutt,” Temple said. “Anybody who calls me Irish because of my red hair will have to have his or her mitts up.”
From the backseat, Louie seconded her assertion with a long, low growl.
“I just don’t know how Louie would adjust to being an indoor cat,” Temple said. “The sheer size of this city is stunning. Manhattan feels intimate in comparison, and Minneapolis is a shrimp. Now I see Vegas is really just a small town with a Disney World downtown blossoming atop the stem of a rhinestone Las Vegas Strip. The rest of it is low-rise and residential and alley cat friendly.”
“Not by law.” Matt’s eyebrows had lifted over the top rims of his sunglasses as he made his point.
“Louie writes his own laws,” she reminded him.
“Las Vegas is no longer in the lawless West, Temple. You know he should be confined to quarters at all times.”
She sighed. “He’d break out. I don’t worry about him there. Too much. Here, I would.”
“This would be a definite reverse in lifestyle. I like the idea of having our nights together. Maybe you and Louie could get a Zoe Chloe Ozone and cat act going in some medium.”
Another low growl from the backseat punctuated that comment.
“Sweet idea, but not likely,” Temple said. “I’m glad your mother phoned this morning. She sounded more upbeat.”
“Confession is good for the soul.”
“Who invented that quote?”
“You don’t ‘invent’ quotes, Temple, and you know it. I know you love a mystery, but Mom clearly wants us to set aside the ugly stalking situation for the moment, partly because the family sand trap is even more delicate to navigate. We can’t do anything serious about it on Sunday anyway. Let’s just try to get along.”
“And worry about things tomorrow. Okay. New conversation. I’m glad I’ll be arriving at your uncle’s house with your mother and cousin. I won’t stand out as an outlander too much.”
Matt’s laugh rang off the moonroof’s tinted glass. “Oh, you will, don’t worry. Low-profile and quiet don’t work in my family anyway.”
The Camry turned into the dark of the apartment building’s underground garage. Street parking spots were precious in Chicago neighborhoods. Matt glided the car into a “visitor” slot and collected Louie in his leopard-print carrier.
“He could lose a little weight.” Matt hooked the broad strap over one shoulder as he stood and locked the car.
This time Louie didn’t even bother commenting.
* * *
“Uncle Stach is such a hoot! He still won’t drink any German beer.” Krys shook her particolor, multilength-cut head. “Party” was Krys’s main mode. Zoe Chloe could take styling lessons from that girl.
Matt’s mother had unearthed a family album for Temple to scan, with appropriate commentary from Krys, Matt, and Mira herself.
Temple’s job right now was to share the long couch with the two women and look and listen as they flipped pages through Mira’s album—“There’s Matt at seven, in his white First Communion suit,” Mama said proudly.
“Even then he looked divine,” Krys kidded.
Temple thought he looked solemn and adorable, like a miniature really young Brad Pitt.
Krys was holding up her cell phone to run a more contemporary strip of shots. “This was Matt’s third-to-last trip back.” She thumbed the tiny button through photos she’d taken of them together by holding the phone camera at arm’s length. “Matt had been AWOL for a long time before then.”
Temple could believe that. The men looked boisterous, the women were always shown slaving happily in the kitchen, and the wall art was all religious. The entire scene would be a silent rebuke for anyone who’d left the priesthood. To the older generation, his act would be like leaving the U.S. Army to enlist in Al Qaeda. Unthinkable.
Krys, however, had no such scruples. She’d obviously ached to get her hot little hormone-charged teen hands on Matt and now was flashing this fact in Temple’s face.
As the only girl in her family of five kids, Temple didn’t get excited about female competition. There was at least one part of the Catholic religion she found sympatico and that was the concept of free will. If Matt found another woman (even if she was just an immature, overgrown girl like Krys) more interesting and attractive than he found Temple, he was welcome to walk.
Well, maybe Temple had just a tiny competition bone in her compact body. She did find Krys immature and note that her parade of photos was making Matt squirm in that well-concealed way he had of doing.
“Thank you so much,” Temple told Mira. “It’s so thoughtful of you to preview such a large, extended family to the new kid on the block.” Followed by a flick of the eyes to Krys. “Even though I work in a ‘people’ profession, it’s always nice to know the lay of the land.” Another swift glance at Krys and her string of “she smiled, he smiled” photos. What else could the poor guy do?
Matt was trying not to smile now and his dear mother remained oblivious.
Temple already felt her native, ex-reporter indignation rising in Mira’s behalf. It must have been a nightmare for the sensitive girl she’d been to “disgrace” her own family. She’d obviously not been given Instruction One about protecting herself from an early age, the way girls today were.
If the despicable Cliff Effinger was haunting her even from the grave—the watery Las Vegas grave, in fact—it had to stop here and now and in Vegas. She and Matt had stayed up half of last night in their posh suite shish-kebabing their brains for all they could remember about Effinger and how he might possibly have had something anyone would want, besides his cold dead slimy body in the deep, dark ground.
“Time to get on the road,” Matt said now, standing up. “Are we ready?”
Temple was reminded of The Magnificent Seven mounting up for an assault on the bandits terrifying the Mexican villagers.
“Ready,” she said. “Maybe Krys would like to carry Louie. It’s good exercise for the biceps and pecs. And you have all us ladies to shepherd to the car.”
But when Krys hefted the carrier, she stuttered backwards in surprise, having overcompensated. “Either your cat has lost a lot of weight, or it’s empty. What is he? The Cheshire cat, all teeth and no body?”
Temple hastened over to shake the bag. Empty. “Hmm. The zipper’s open. Louie will do that,” she told the two hovering females. “He, uh, makes his druthers known.”
“And he has a way with zippers?” Krys asked, skeptical.
Matt answered for Temple. “He’s the Houdini of the cat world. Nothing can cage him if he doesn’t want to be confined.”
“He’s loose in here?” Mira asked, looking around in alarm.
A good question. The apartment was only on the sixth floor, but Temple wanted to check all the windows. Every one was locked. They surveyed each room, hunting high and low and finding no trace of hide or black hair nor dashing white whisker.
“Will we ever find him?” Mira fretted.
“Not until he wants to be found,” Temple said. “He can pull this vanishing act in my tiny two-bedroom condo in Las Vegas.”
Privately, Temple was glad to have Louie confined to quarters by his own choice than pulling a stunt like this in a whole strange house, which was exactly where they were headed. Maybe this was a protest move on Louie’s part. Everything in Chicago would be strange or even risky to out-of-towners like Louie and her.