"Really? Priests cuss?"
"Really. And Father O'Reilly in Tucson was in the habit of cheating at golf."
Bo laughed. "Yeah. But I don't remember you getting into jams when you were a kid. Mr. A Plus all through school. Mr. Clean."
Matt nodded. "Kinda abnormal, when you think about it, isn't it?" He kept his eyes--and smile--on Bo's profile until he got a return look.
His cousin's face went slack with confusion, uncertainty, a brief glimmer of something. His thick gloves lifted from the wheel as he flexed his fingers.
"I guess you learn things about human nature in the religious life. I dunno. We working stiffs with families, we kinda rush through life, wondering where the time and the money went."
"I never had much of either," Matt said, wondering if that were a blessing or a handicap.
He looked out the window at the huge, pale mounds of snow by the roadside, lit intermittently by streetlights so they seemed to be an endless exhibit of snow dunes, dimpled with brown sprays of slush.
"How long you staying?" Bo asked.
"Just past Christmas. I decided I owed myself a holiday vacation for once."
"Yeah, being the celebrant doesn't allow much time for celebrating. I hope you can tilt a stein or two while you're here."
"I hope I can do more than just tilt it."
Bo's blue eyes crinkled with humor. He laughed like a bear, hearty as all outdoors, and punched Matt lightly on the knee. "That's a good one. Caught me there. You know, having a relative that's a priest makes you kinda step careful."
"I know. You shouldn't do that, not with any priest. It's an isolated life in many ways. Let them be a little human now and again."
"Bo nodded, serious."Yeah. There aren't that many priests left any more. That's why we had to go all the way to Poland." He frowned. " 'Course, they're a little old-fashioned there. Want to put the foot down on earrings on schoolgirls, and you know the howl you'll raise if the girls can't visit the Piercing Pagoda in the mall, even little Heather-- Heck, I seen babies in earrings. And the boys are startin' in, like they're not men unless they got a pearl stud in one ear." He glanced apologetically at Matt. "Didn't mean to complain; we're lucky to have Father Czerwonka."
"I doubt the state of people's ears has much to do with their state of grace. Seventy years ago the taboo was see-through stockings on flappers' legs."
"Now they have see-through swimsuits! Honest to God. Not that I seen-through one, or even seen one, but you read about these things in the paper."
"You should see Las Vegas."
"Yeah, Father Matt. I wonder about you being there. Pretty eye-opening, ain't it?"
"It's a city, like anywhere. Most of the people there live ordinary lives."
"What about living off gambling? Used to be we could all point at Las Vegas and shake our fingers, but now the lottery and the Indian casinos and bingo games are everywhere. My very own mother visits the bingo hall once a month."
"I don't know, Bo. I'm younger than you. I don't have to worry about anybody's taste in earrings but my own, I--"
"Father Matt--you don't ... I mean--Jesus!" Bo wrenched his eyes from the freeway, trying to glimpse the other side of Matt's face.
"No, no. Not me. Don't worry. Some inconsequential things hold. I shall not wear my trousers rolled." The reference was lost on Bo, but Matt smiled to hear an imagined Temple twitting him: "another Nostradamus line, Divine."
Back to Bo. "I promise you I'll go to my grave without an earring. Remember that later."
"Whew. Everything's changing, you know. Hardly can figure out what to think or do any more. Unless you go to one of young Father Czerwonka's sermons. It's inspiring, to hear someone that sure."
He's younger than I am, you say."
Bo nodded.
"Give him a few more years in America. He won't be so irritatingly sure any more."
"Yeah. It is irritating. I mean, what does he know about Mary Margaret and me never hearing anything at home but the kids squabbling and the dogs barking, and we're supposed to-- Oh, God, that crazy fool Buttinsky! Did you see how he cut in front of me? And nothing but ice slick right here. Look at him, tooling along like he's in the right."
Bo's vehicle swept by the offending minivan, his fist punching a horn blast. "Damn asshole ... By God, it's a woman!" His invective sputtered out from sheer shock.
Matt had tuned out the plaint of the middle-aged blue-collar-guy-who-meant-well, but-the-world-was-making-it-hard-for-him-to-understand-it.
Places had an attitude their people reflected, Matt thought. Bo's was pure Chicago Sandburg, brash and decent and worried he might not be. He would never have trousers to wear rolled or unrolled, only jeans or pants. He would never have a red suede vintage sofa. He would never have any rest until he died, confused but hopeful that it was all true, the bit about heavenly reward and what ye sow ye shall reap, and what he had mostly sown had been kids, and he was mostly pretty damn proud of how they had turned out, earrings or not.
Matt kept his face to the window and the dark. He was beginning to half recognize intersections and storefronts. He was getting closer. He was coming home.
Chapter 27
"Cold and White and Even..."
"You're making a big mistake," Temple told Kit when they were back at Cornelia Street, safe and warm and tired from hiking six blocks for a cab.
"Nonsense. I'm reporting possible evidence to the police."
"I'm telling you, you'll be sorry."
"I'm doing my duty as a citizen. I will have no regrets."
Tossing her head and assuming a Sidney Carton-going-to-the-guillotine pose, Kit dialed the precinct station number on the card that Lieutenant Hansen had handed around generously.
No one on the case was available, but, Kit said later, "A very nice desk sergeant took down my name and number and the fact that I might know who the dead man is."
Temple shook her head and went to gaze out the living room's glassy prow. What a view! If only New York had a touch more neon, like Las Vegas, that would be a show! Every building here was so . . . gray and staid. Not a neon flamingo in sight. And if some backstreet storefront windows offered a clutter of sleaze, you had to be passing by to notice it.
True, the city glittered in a starry sprinkle of little yellow light bulbs, the ones Temple called fairy lights. But the buildings were so high, the main avenues so wide and the other streets so narrow, that this modest dusting of glitz paled against the cold, wet-asphalt-gray of a December day in the Big Apple.
If so many yellow cabs didn't populate the streets, New York would be positively gloomy. She wondered if Matt would have a good Christmas in Chicago, where it might be colder, but at least it would be a white Christmas.
"Aren't you changing for bed?" Kit asked as she breezed by, lowering the blinds on the windows. "We don't have to retire right away, but we can at least get into our comfy jammies."
"Auntie, that is a loathsome scenario. Here I stand in the most sophisticated city in the world, and I am being urged to get into my jammies at only three-something p.m. by a female aunt. Couldn't we at least go listen to Bobby Short at the Carlyle Hotel?"
"One does not just crash that kind of venue. But why don't you want to change out of your street clothes?"
"Because we're going to need our street clothes very soon."
"I just told you; we're not going out this evening."
The phone wheedled for attention.
"Yes we are," Temple said dourly, "and it won't be a hot spot like the Carlyle Hotel."
"Yes?" Kit crooned to the phone. She always answered it as if she were in a play, and Noel Coward might be on the line's other end. "Yes, Lieutenant."
Kit turned and nodded significantly to Temple, one of those "You see?" nods that Hardy was so expert at bestowing on Laurel.