Janice idly opened her sketchpad and began doodling. She seemed to think better with her fingers moving across paper. She grinned. "Then we have the same problem right now."
"Except for him it's not a problem. Not being celibate is a problem.''
"By problem you mean 'sin.' "
"In the strict sense, yes."
"Hmm. It's hard to believe a grown man in this day and age--and a good-looking one... but, hey, what am I complaining about? A perfectly safe man. Shrink-wrapped, you might say."
"Let's hope not too tightly. So what was his second assignment about?"
Janice rolled her eyes. "One centerfold-gorgeous female."
"Really? Red hair?"
"Black was the color. I hope it's not his true love, but l got the feeling that there was no love lost between them. Are you sure he's not doing investigative work? He sure acts like one of guys."
"Did he give you a name for the femme fatale?"
"Nope, but l could tell she gave him the willies. He seemed almost superstitious about my capturing her image on paper, like she was an evil spirit or something. Is there such a thing as an opposite-angel?"
"They're generally called demons, or devils, or were in the Middle Ages."
"I was reared by cheerful agnostics. All this religion mythology is pretty alien to me. I find it fascinating," she confided, leaning forward.
Oh, Lord, Molina thought.
Janice ripped the top sheet off her sketchpad with one broad, sweeping gesture and handed it to Molina.
"Warming up again."
Molina blinked at her own image. Unlike her official photos, which made her look like a Russian census-taker, stern and authoritative, Janice had caught her in a listening attitude: relaxed yet wary; analytical, with a hint of humor peeking through. She felt like Star Trek's Mr.
Spock placed in one of those four-photo quickie booths and forced to assume a uncharacteristically frivolous expression.
"Very nice," she told Janice. "Thank you."
"Oh, it's not the real you." Janice's warm smile made the white-streaked crinkles around her eyes into an asset rather than a signpost of early middle-age. "I'd never get down to that deep a subterranean level in the first try, but it's a start. Now. Are you going to let me see the photos of the corpse you've been guarding, or not?"
Chapter 30
Baptism in Fire
"Oooh, here he is! Mr. Midnight. Ready to roll on your debut show?"
"Roll over and play dead maybe, Leticia."
"Oh, come on, Matt. Don't be shy. You do this every night at ConTact." Leticia took his arm and steered him toward the control room.
When they reached the door, she had to hang back and give him a playful push inside. And she could push.
"I'll be right here, baby," she promised, following him in. "Mama Ambrosia."
In the background, an ad pitchman pushed a fistful of consonants over the microphone.
"Can we talk?"
"You let me worry about when and what, until you get the hang of it."
He sat in the rolling steno chair and then sat up straighter so his mouth would have a clearer shot at the mike. Leticia perched on the mobile rolling stool she used.
"I can hardly wait to see the contact sheet on those photos of you. Now don't pretend to be so shy. I'm even thinkin' 'bout trying my ugly mug on camera for some promo."
"Your ugly mug? You're . . . unbelievably gorgeous. Why haven't you done photographs before now?"
The question stopped her effusiveness. leaving Matt feeling he'd committed a huge faux pas. Which he hastened to correct, naturally only making it worse. "Is it because you're African-American, but your voice isn't?"
"Now there is where you are wrong. I am not African-American."
"I don't mean to--"
"Of Course you don't. But any fool could see l am not African-American. I am black, and white, and Cherokee and French and Spanish and Arabian. Yeah. I can trace all those tiny trickles in my bloodstream. No. I've just always felt that Ambrosia must be universal. But if this billboard gig works for you, and I think it will, then maybe I'll come out myself, hmmm?"
"You ought to," Matt said. "We can't have shy people on an advice show."
"You are so tight, honey, now sit back while I do my intro and get ready to rock and roll."
She 'd finessed him into the opening moment so he hardly felt it. Then her voice, as magnificently velvety as her black/white/Cherokee/French/Spanish/ Arabian skin, segued into a spiel about meeting Mr. Midnight, magic man of milk and honey who would listen to every hurt and offer every help.
Even while Matt cringed at the blatant pitch, he felt the soothing poultice of her perfect voice. If only everyone could medicate with words. . . . He had done it before, now he had to do it in front of an invisible audience.
"Mr. Midnight?" came the first voice, quavering and female.
"Yes?" he said self-consciously.
And then it took over, the process. She poured out the thises and thats of her life. Anxieties and hopes. She was a bubbling spring of doubt and indecision. He was the unseen but well-felt rock she effervesced all over.
He used the leading question like a lawyer. He soothed and probed. He discounted her failures and suggested successes. He did all the things he had done at ConTact for months. She chirped her thanks as she said goodbye and he wondered what he had given her besides air time.
Leticia was nodding approval and cueing the tech guy to run a commercial. She turned the sound clown to a drone.
"Wow. Okay. Fine. We're cooking. Remember those tryouts.
Those naughty callers. They all won't be easy."
"You thought that was easy?"
"You make it look easy; that's the trick. Easy."
After the commercial, three more calls came in, all people Dr.
Laura would have sniped into sniveling apology for existing. Matt hated that old-time derision. Backing people into a comer and then forcing them to repeat the old self-abusing truisms like the rote little robots they were expected to be. Dr. Laura was popular the Way Don Rickles was popular: Everyone liked to see someone else raked over the coals.
Matt didn't believe in dispensing hellfire; there was enough of it here on earth. He wanted to build up rather than tear down.
Maybe that didn't sell. Maybe that didn't make for a good show.
"That was he doing here? He glanced at Leticia, smiling and nodding as if she were listening to jazz only she could hear.
He was all wrong for this. This "gig." My God. how could he hack out of it, with all the money they'd spent on photographs and Temple so proud of her art direction and his palms sweating genteelly and his voice going out where everyone could hear and yet he could hardly hear his own thoughts? What good could he do here, except to his bank account, and what was his bottom line but arrogance and greed?
Out of here. He needed out of here.
And then her voice came on the line. The woman-girl who would change everything.
"Mr. Midnight?"
So hokey. So hopeless. How had he been seduced into this travesty?
"l--l don't know where I am," she said.
"You mean in your life?"
"No. I mean . . . right now. I'm in this strange place, and I don't know how I got here. It's like, um, a bedroom, only it's got its own bathroom and we never lived in a house like that, and it's got a radio and a TV in the bedroom and we never had "a house like that. I mean, our radio was in the kitchen, only it was broken, and the TV was in the main room, along with the extra beds."
"Why don't you know where you are?"
"Because . . . because I feel so sick!"
"Sick, how?"
"It's cramps, you know. No, you don't know. The worst cramps in the whole wide world."
Her breath caught, and then a shriek came over the phone line that seemed to pierce his eardrums.
He stared at Leticia, whose limpid dark eyes rolled with uncertainty.
"And my breathin', it's so rough. Like I had the fever that time, when l was small. I'm not so small now. I don't understand. I'm all swelled out and I feel like I got the runs."