Chapter 40 Making Amends
He crossed paths with a woman and her dog.
He nodded politely, said hello.
The woman stopped and eyed him bird-like. She seemed to be in her fifties. She had stringy, blonde/gray hair. She wore a thin shift that hung from her shoulders and stopped at her knees, like a hospital gown. Her dog sniffed the air.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” Matt apologized.
“I’m not startled,” she said. “I’m intrigued by your aura.”
Matt wasn’t sure he had such a thing. He certainly wasn’t in the mood to discuss his with a stranger. He edged away from her.
The woman motioned skyward. “The moon is waxing gibbous.”
“Uh-huh.” Smiling. Still edging. Matt stole a quick glance at the moon, searching for this gibbous thing. Didn’t see it. Didn’t need to.
“You have a warrior’s aura, but it’s weak. Have you been in a great battle or struggle lately?”
Matt nodded. How could she know that? Or did she say that to everyone, figuring even bad hair days qualified as battles to some people?
“You should be recuperating. Healing. Drawing strength from the earth and the moon and your friends. But—”
“But what?” Matt asked. Despite himself, he was intrigued. He had been tired and lethargic since Colton’s take down. There’d been none of the endorphin high he would have expected after finally defeating the guy.
“You are cut off from your friends. It’s hindering your recuperation.”
Matt laughed bitterly. The clubhouse key felt heavy in his hand. He was about to be even more cut off from friends.
“May I?” The woman didn’t wait for an answer. She clasped her hands around his. Closed her eyes and just stood there, as if waiting to hear from the Mother Ship.
Her mongrel dog settled back on its haunches, watching.
A minute passed.
Matt shifted his weight, twitching. They were close enough he could see the woman’s fuzzy, frowsy eyebrows and smell garlic on her breath. She was bra-less. Her boobs hung low, like zucchinis.
“Be calm,” the woman soothed, patting his hands. She opened her eyes, stared into his. “You have such a young soul! No wonder you’re lost and out of touch with Mother Earth and Luna.”
Okay. Freak show over. Matt pulled his hands free. “Sorry. I have to go.”
“Celeste. That’s my name,” the woman said. “I live there.” She pointed to a townhome three doors away. “Feel free to stop by anytime.”
“It’s been nice to meet you, Celeste,” Matt said half-heartedly. He couldn’t help wondering if she’d grown into her birthname or had re-christened herself after one too many bongs.
Celeste laughed. “It doesn’t take a psychic to know that you think I’m a kook.”
She paused. “Listen to me, Warrior Prince. Smoke the cigar. Sniff the flowers. Eat the pie.”
“Huh?”
“Luna tells me you’re isolated from three friends,” Celeste said. “You need to heal those relationships during the gibbous moon. Three friends. Three signs: A cigar. Flowers. Pie. Follow the signs to peace and healing.”
Celeste’s dog stood, shook itself to limber up. It was ready to go.
Matt was, too. He turned to leave.
“Two more things,” Celeste said. “One: Luna’s rays are strongest tonight. Stand naked and absorb their healing power. Two: fuck as often as you can.”
Matt was taken aback. “Fuck for healing?”
“No, silly,” Celeste laughed. “It feels good, and someday you’ll be old like me, and there won’t be as many opportunities!”
Matt jiggled his key into the clubhouse’s lock. Eased open the door. Peered into the gloom.
No one was there, which was a good thing.
He didn’t want company. Celeste had been more than enough with her talk of Luna and that strange prophecy.
He was fine with sniffing flowers or eating a little pie, but smoking a cigar?
Maybe in the Freudian sense. Not literally. Tobacco and soccer didn’t mix well.
The way he saw it, Celeste had been about two minutes away from asking him to join her cult. Or buy crystals. Or copulate. Maybe fucking had been her goal from the beginning. If so, she’d have been sorely disappointed to learn that Luna had led her to Ganymede.
Matt stepped into the clubhouse’s little foyer, left the door ajar for light. No need to flip a switch. He wouldn’t be there long.
The kitchen was to his right. He laid the key on the bar top, by the phone.
“Hello dahling,” came a disembodied voice.
Matt jumped, sucked in air.
In the dark living room a spectral, shadowed figure sat in the overstuffed chair.
William! What was he doing there?
Even more shocking to Matt: why was William talking to him?
“I just returned my key,” Matt said. “I’m leaving.”
“At least have a drink with me. You owe me that much.”
Matt seethed. Whatever debt he’d owed William for having introduced him to the GM and for having mentored him had been erased by weeks of silent treatment. His hopes for reconciliation had long since curdled into indifference. He was past caring now.
William must have taken Matt’s silence for acquiescence. “Close the door,” he said. “Bring a tumbler for yourself. I’ve already got one.”
Matt played along. He found a tumbler, fumbled his way into the dark living area. William would get a shared drink—and nothing more. Matt would sip in stony silence.
But not in darkness. He wanted William to see his face while they marked the end of their association.
Matt reached for the light switch.
“Just the corner lamp, please,” William said. He sounded tired.
Matt clicked the lamp. Its single bulb emitted a soft, golden glow, like a porchlight on a foggy night.
William sat illuminated in his overstuffed chair, which seemed less Godmother’s throne, more booster seat. His clothes were disheveled, his face puffy. He caressed a tumbler of amber liquid.
At his feet stood a bottle about two-thirds full of the same murky stuff he was drinking. A crumpled bag of McDonald’s fare rested near the bottle. The air smelled of fryer grease and salt.
Matt sat on the couch. Stared at the coffee table that separated him from William.
It was littered with newspapers and their clippings, all apparently devoted to Colton Langley, who had achieved more notoriety in his one week of infamy than in his previous twenty-one years as golden boy and heir—and that was a LOT of ink.
William reached for Matt’s tumbler, poured in a small bit from the bottle at his feet, then handed the drink to Matt.
“It’s scotch, dahling.” William drawled out the vowels. He held his glass up in a toast, said something that sounded like “Slanj-a-va!” and took a sip.
Matt did not return the toast.
There’d been a time—just weeks in the past—when Matt would have asked about that mysterious phrase. Not anymore. He was no more interested in William’s cult of gay sophistication than in Celeste’s pseudo paganism.
“Scotch is a gentleman’s drink,” Willliam said. “It’s meant to be sipped and savored. Wet your lips, then let a few drops seep into your mouth. Hold it there while the flavor coats your tongue.”
Matt raised the tumbler to his lips, let the fiery whiskey pass between his teeth. It tasted of burnished wood and leather chairs and wet wool and sooty fireplaces. In short: it conjured Victorian gentlemen’s clubs.
His eyes watered.
“You drank too much, dahling,” William scolded.
Matt shrugged and, since he did not want to meet William’s gaze, busied himself with the news clippings in front of him.
There was Molly’s photo of Colton and Bella being led into the police station.
The front-page headline screamed “Inhoffe Intern Gay Scandal.” Another headline: “Inhoffe Blames Intern Hiring on Staff.” And, accompanying a close-up photo of Bella in drag: “Female Impersonator Claims Rape.”
“He’s in hell, you know,” William said of Colton.
“He calls me at least twice a day, just sobbing. Fired from his Senate internship before it even began. Kicked out of MCU. His dad got him an apartment in Weatherford, told him not to come home ‘til he’s ‘straightened out his shit.’ He’ll have to enroll at Southwestern Oklahoma State University in the fall.
‘SWOSU.’ What kind of school name is that?
He’ll be a SWOSU Bulldog, for Christ’s sake.
And that’s assuming he doesn’t go to jail.
Even if Bella refuses to testify about the fake rape, Colton’s still facing charges for public intoxication, public indecency, resisting arrest, and assaulting a police officer. ”
Matt knew now that Bella’s black eye had resulted from a similar “assault” on one of the cops. Her face had brazenly connected with the officer’s flying fist, bruising his knuckles, ergo “assaulting a police officer.” It was a tidy fiction, one that befitted Colton.
Bella’s charges had been dropped once the District Attorney came to the tardy conclusion that even drag queens could be victims—not of police misconduct, mind you—but of attempted sodomy by faggoty college boys.
It was not lost on Matt that William was in contact with Colton. Whatever. William was an adult. If he wanted to be codependent with a psychopath, that was his concern.
Matt ventured another sip of scotch, which, this time evoked craggy castles and highlands and kilts and the massive, hairy balls they shrouded, balls that gay boys everywhere dreamed of licking.
Still, …the watering eyes at the end. This was a drink that lulled you with soft kisses then slapped you hard on the cheeks for your audacity.
“Your silence is churlish,” William said. “And, no, the irony is not lost on me. Can we fast forward to the part where you start talking?”
Matt shook his head.
William swirled the scotch in his tumbler. “Normally you and I could settle our differences with sex. But, as you know, The Handshake Rule precludes that.”
“So, this is my fault?” Matt asked, unable to remain silent. If he had completed the first round of handshakes with all the GM members, he and William would be free for seconds (thirds actually, if the locker room Kraken coupling counted).