Midnight Louie 14 - Cat in a Midnight Choir (40 page)

“You know about Thomas Merton?”

“Know? I’ve read him. Along with Proust and Genet and a lot of very depressed Frenchmen and women.”

“Your name — women in your field often take geographic names.”

“So. You have experience with women in my field.”

“No! No, I don’t. I’ve just observed.”

“I went to Vassar, yes. Graduated. Observed.” She slid onto her tailbone, revealing an impossibility: yet more leg.

My God, the woman was a stork! He sipped more champagne. Obviously, he needed to be tipsy. He noticed her glass was empty and got up to refill it.

Outside the sky was the color of a Maxfield Parrish print, that heavenly, morning-glory blue that is fading fast to green and will soon flash a fringe of yellow before dousing itself in the utter dark of night.

“I’m glad to see you enjoying something,” she said, heavy emphasis on the
something
.

“Nature’s hard to beat.”

“And you don’t think I’m very natural.”

“I never said —”

“‘Natural’ is not an advantage in my line of work. Or in this town. I love both of them. What’s the matter with being unreal? Is reality that great a trip?”

“Reality, usually no. People, though. Authenticity is —”

“Gawd, if I hear that pretentious word again! Au-then-ti-ci-ty. Only phonies flaunt au-then-ti-ci-ty.”

“Call it honesty, then.”

“Fine. How about you give me some.”

“What kind do you want?”

“There are varieties, like…dry honesty? Sec, or triple sec? What’s your pleasure? Or maybe it’s wet honesty, like a wet dream.”

Someone knocked at the door. Fortuitously.

Matt jumped up to answer it. A waitress wheeled in a large cart draped in white linen (
a young cowboy draped in white linen
) on which floated silver Merimacs and Monitors of covered dishes. A huge exotic flower blossomed from a vase like a tropical fungus. There were tiny sterling salt and pepper shakers, glittering glasses, another bottle of wine.

“By the window,” Matt said, unwilling to let the sunset go and leave him alone with the electric lights. He reached into the slick eel-skin wallet to peel off another hundred.

“Thank you, sir!”

Something in the tone was ironic, forcing Matt to overcome his shame of witnesses to really look at her. She was a clone of Barbara Eden as the sit-com genie, all bare midriff and glittery lavender veils and long blonde ponytail. She was petite enough to remind him of Temple, although much curvier, an observation that felt disloyal, as if this whole situation wasn’t a betrayal enough.

She rolled the hundred tight into cigarette-size and deposited it in the valley of her push-up bodice. Above the veil that covered her lower face, her eyes glittered like the dappled water in the darkened pools below, blue-green.

She winked and left, a real “working woman” who’d hit the jackpot of a big tip in a high-dollar suite. And all she had to do was flash a little flesh, push a cart, and do her job.

Now
her
, she was interesting. A mystery. Who did she really work for? What kid was going to get a special outing out of that hundred? What significant other would she wave it at as proof of a job well done? What small luxury would sit on her crowded bathroom shelf in what ordinary house or apartment…

“Hey, Big Spender,” said the woman lounging in the chair.

Matt remembered the rest of that line: spend a little time on me.

Matt edged the food cart between them. Vassar was forced to sit up to examine her dinner.

“Oh, this side’s yours. Mine’s the sea bass.”

“Shall we spin the table or change seats?” he asked.

“Spin the table. Do we get a kiss when it’s done?”

“Dinner first. It looks superb.”

“The dinner he compliments,” she said to the window with a shrug.

She was slightly tipsy, and he was all too sober.

“You’re…superb, too.”

“Too.” She washed away her moue with a sip of champagne and a pointed look at the distant wine cooler.

He rose and filled her glass again.

Outside the night had turned midnight blue.

Was he guilty of rejecting a hooker? Another pretext for anguished self-examination.

“No, really.” He sat opposite her, examined her beautiful face, all bones and makeup. Her eyes…what color were her eyes? He couldn’t tell.

He lifted his champagne glass. “You are beautiful, intelligent, sophisticated. The race of men must bless your existence.”

“They reward it, that’s for sure.” But she seemed mollified.

Matt decided that the condemned man deserved a hearty last meal. He concentrated on the cutting of his tender pepper steak in brandy-whatever sauce. It melted in his mouth like Lady Godiva chocolates.

Everything was superb. The best garlic mashed potatoes he had ever eaten. Even the vegetables were tasty, crisp, worth gobbling down to the last sprig or floret. The champagne bottle was empty, so he had to open the wine and switch to the squatter glasses.

He drank, she drank. The food disappeared and so did the any visible trace of the world outside.

“Most men,” she said over dessert, a tiramisù, “would envy you.”

“From what I know of most women, and that’s not a lot, they’d be wild with jealousy to see how much you can eat and still look like you do.”

“That’s one of the reasons I decided on this profession. It occurred to me I had certain advantages for it. Some are metabolic. Wealthy men usually like to eat well. I can keep up with them in that respect as well. Men are bored by women who peck at food like chickadees, whining all the while.”

“You don’t whine.”

“Apparently I don’t impress you either.”

“You do! I can’t say how much you impress me.”

“But.”

“But…I’m a special case.”

“I’d figured that out. Most men — in other words, my usual clients — fall into two or three, categories.”

Matt drank a bit more of the red wine. It was amazing. He glanced at the label, resolved to memorize it so he could find it again, although he might not be able to afford it again, not after tonight.

His watch said a quarter to ten. He didn’t have to go to work. It was Monday. The most beautiful woman in the Goliath Hotel was sitting across from him, and if he could get it together, by tomorrow morning when he checked out he’d be a Real Man. A sinner. A human being. A ruined priest. Ex-priest, rather. And no longer Kitty-bait.

All he had to do was what came unnaturally.

“Your usual clients?” he prompted politely, as if he were counseling someone on the radio help line.

“They’re powerful men. Rich men. They have insecurities along with many securities of the financial sort. They crave the best of everything to prove their worth, in both senses of the word. I’m one of the bests they can afford. Then there are the other men. They have issues. They can’t afford me, but they will. Now I have to add the dot-com geeks who’ve never felt desired in their lives. I’m something they can’t afford
not
to have. I’ll make them feel like the billion dollars they made overnight.”

“So sometimes you’re a reward, sometimes you’re an extravagance. And sometimes you’re a therapist.”

“Oh, you are a quick study, Thomas. Doubting Thomas.”

He ought to have gone on red alert at that, but the meal and the wine had made him mellow.

“The problem is,” she continued, “you don’t fit into my client profile.”

“Why not?”

“You’re a combination of all three. You have some money, but not enough to keep this sort of thing up. You have issues, but you hide them like a pro, like me. You’re not a geek, but you need to be babied along like one. You don’t want a trophy, loathe trophies; you’re not desperate to lead the high life, la vida loca dinero; and you don’t want a therapist. So what do you want? Or should I say, need?”

“Hmm. Cards on the table.”

“This
is
Las Vegas.”

She leaned forward, elbows on the immaculate linen, like a saloon girl in a cheap Western.

“You’re pretty accurate,” he said. “I wouldn’t be here if I weren’t forced to be. You’re not my trophy, or my reward, or my Cracker Jack prize for accidentally being somebody. You’re my…savior.”

Her eyes narrowed. He still couldn’t see their color, but it didn’t matter anymore.

“Savior? I’ve never been called that before.”

“You’ve never had a client like me. I’m an ex-priest.”

“I’m not Catholic.”

“But you must know that priests make promises of chastity, to live as celibates.”

“Catholic priests.”

“You sound like you were raised Episcopal.”

“As a matter of fact…but that’s history.”

“Childhood religion is never history.”

“You
are
a priest!”

“Ex-priest.”

“But not ex-celibate.”

“Right.”

“So some friendly neighborhood Catholic spinster wouldn’t be ecstatic to help you out?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. There’s an…impediment.”

“Oh. You’re impotent.”

“How the heck would I know?”

“Don’t be testy, we’re getting somewhere here.”

“If I am impotent it’s situational. I’m trapped.”

“How? You’re an ex. You can do whatever you want.”

“Leaving the priesthood isn’t like leaving a religion. You don’t throw over all the traces. You’re still obligated to be a moral person.”

“‘A moral person.’ Listen to yourself. Get real.”

“So I’m a geek. Apparently there are a lot of them out there nowadays, cyber and otherwise.”

“Okay. So you need someone to break you in to normal life. I’ve been hired for that before. You’re not my first virgin.”

“Maybe not, but I’m your first reluctant virgin.”

“Why? I’ll give you a night to remember. I am very good at what I do.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“Thomas.”

“And I do believe you’re a product of Vassar. And I do understand you’re an attractive lady.”

“But. You’d prefer another lady.”

“Maybe I would, but I can’t.”

“Because you’re impotent.”

“Because I don’t know, and I don’t much care. I’ve got a psycho in my life, my work. A woman who likes to corrupt priests.”

“Even ex-priests?”

“Even ex-priests. There aren’t too many innocent men out there anymore.”

“Tell me about it. Women, either.”

“So…she’ll hurt any woman I have anything to do with. Anything, anyone! My landlady who’s sixty-something. A pre-teen daughter of a friend.”

“Unless —”

He nodded.

“So you need to sleep with me first.”

Silence.

“But you don’t want to.”

“I don’t want to be coerced into sleeping with anyone.”

“I get you. I was there once. Yeah, I was a virgin. Everybody was. Almost everybody gets over it, one way or another.” She poured some more wine in her glass, her face softening under the makeup. “There was a guy I dated, my freshman year in college. Big, gorgeous guy, football player. Said I was a prick tease one night. Maybe I was, maybe I was just a virgin. I wasn’t after that night.”

Her eyes of no color were black holes.

“Date rape?”

“Didn’t have the phrase all over the newspapers then. I believed that I’d got what I deserved. It’s true. I wanted a boyfriend, but I didn’t want to sleep with him. Not yet. I didn’t know what it was about. I wasn’t ready.” She smiled over her glass rim. “That’s why I’m so good at my job. I can tell the guys who aren’t ready from the ones who’ve always been ready.

“I’m sorry, Thomas, but you’re not ready.”

“I’ve got to be. This woman is dangerous. I’ve got to disarm her. I’ve got to take away the thing in me that she covets.”

“You can sleep with me but you won’t lose your innocence.”

“You think so? She doesn’t really care about innocence, just the fact of it. Did I mention she was insane? Someone told me to try this. There’s no way she could suspect that you were in my life, no way she could hurt you. You’re the only safe woman in Las Vegas for me.”

“Now you’ve gone and made me feel my work is a duty. I’ve gotta save you from a date rape. I don’t know, Thomas. I work better when the goals are more crass. Orgasm, power, money. Sure, I can handle the insecure. But you’re not insecure, just…inexperienced. And you don’t want to do it. That’s kind of insulting. It doesn’t exactly turn me on, and I work better when I’m turned on.”

“You actually…enjoy your work?”

“Yes.”

“Because you’re in control?”

“How can I be in control? I’m bought and paid for.”

“Oh, come on. You’re leading the willing sheep by the fleece.”

“We call it short hairs in the business.”

Matt shook his head. Apparently sexual transactions allowed for no dignity. “You’ve got to admit I’m an interesting client.”

“Unique.”

“So, now that you know my problem, can you do anything about it?”

“It takes two. You’ve got to be willing and able to hold up your end of the bargain. I’m a very sexy lady, but if you really don’t want to get into it, I can’t make you. How have you managed to remain celibate anyway?”

“I’ve been looking for the right woman.”

“How right does she have to be?”

“Not involved with anyone else.”

“And you found one who was.”

He shrugged. He didn’t have to tell her about Temple.

“So there is one woman somewhere you’d have no trouble sleeping with.”

He nodded. “If we were married.”

“Married?”

“Married. But…I realize that’s a high qualification. I believe that I could slip off the straight and narrow if I weren’t careful.”

“Okay. You have a libido.”

He nodded, cautiously.

“Then I can help you.”

“I don’t seem to be cooperating tonight.”

“I haven’t done anything yet.”

“No, and it’s because you sensed that my heart isn’t in this. You’re not used to dealing with reluctant clients. I don’t blame you for feeling insulted. I would be in your shoes.”

“If you were in my shoes, honey, you wouldn’t be here.”

She’d expertly slipped into a vaudeville drag-queen twang that he couldn’t help smiling at, even as she waggled a foot in the outlandish high heels.